Is a capo safe to use on an electric guitar?
Let's find out if this is true or not.
Many moons ago I was told by somebody (I honestly don't remember whom) that you should never put a capo on an electric guitar. Why? I wasn't told that part. But gosh darn it, you'd better not do it or bad things will happen.
Is this true? No. Or to be more specific, using a capo on an electric guitar neck is only bad (somewhat) in a very specific situation which I will explain in a moment.
Use the right capo
On the electric guitar, it is required to use a capo made for steel strings and not made for nylon strings.
Most capos can support both nylon and steel strings. But if the capo is specifically made for nylon strings, chances are the capo spring won't be strong enough to hold steel strings down to the fret. The reason for this is that since nylon strings hardly require any pressure to hold them down, only a lighter capo spring is required. With steel, more pressure is needed, hence the need for a stronger capo spring.
When shopping around for a capo, the product listing should state up front what type of strings it will support.
If you want something that will absolutely work on an electric, use what I use, the G7th Performance Capo. It will hold strings down on an electric without buzzing all over the place. I've had mine for years, and it still works just as good as the day I bought it.
Will a capo damage an electric guitar neck?
No.
Contrary to popular belief, it will not damage frets, not screw up the truss rod and not damage wood if you use one properly.
How to use one properly? Follow the same rules for capo use as you would on a steel string acoustic. Place the capo properly on the neck, don't squeeze it super-tight, avoid bending notes when the capo is in use, and always remove the capo when done playing.
The one instance where you shouldn't use a capo on an electric guitar is...
...when the neck is finished with nitro. More specifically, brand new nitrocellulose lacquer.
Guys that spend the extra cash on a nitro finished neck do want wear to happen, but only from the fret hand and not a capo. Use of a capo may result in premature undesirable marring of the nitro finish.
Yes, I am saying the entire reason to avoid capo use on an electric guitar with newly finished nitro is specifically to promote a more desirable look over time from fret hand wear only. Fret hand wear is the desirable wear, while wear from a capo is undesirable.
Acoustic guitar players that regularly use capos on new guitars with nitro necks will tell you capo use is 100% okay. True? Yes. But bear in mind they're all using necks with significantly darker woods. On electrics with light color necks (e.g. Fenders with maple necks), premature wear is a lot more obvious - especially on necks finished with nitro designed to wear quickly (e.g. Fenders with "thin skin" nitro).
In the end, it's all about appearance first. Use of a capo on a newly finished light color nitro neck may result in an undesirable look on the back of the neck over time.
If you really really care about the look (and let's face it, if you're dropping several thousand on a Fender "thin skin" nitro finish guitar, you do care), don't put a capo on it.
What neck finish handles the capo best on an electric?
Just about anything not nitro.
However, best-of-the-best would be gloss urethane just because it cleans up so easily and can take a ton of abuse.
Fortunately, most electric guitars do have gloss urethane finished necks, so chances are you already have the best neck finish for capo use.
My experience with capo use on an electric
I've never had a problem with it. My capo use has never resulted in wood damage, fret damage, finish damage or damage of any kind.
However, I do use a quality capo.
Ordinarily, it's true the word "quality" doesn't mean much where guitar stuff is concerned, but in this instance it actually does. Don't go cheap with your capo, because it won't hold the strings down properly, lose its position periodically and quickly become annoying to use.
It is worth it to spend extra on a better capo. Again, I've been using the same one for years. Originally, I thought I spent way too much when I originally purchased the one I did, but it's lasted the test of time and still works great, so I have no complaints.
Guitar and parts availability shortage predictions
Can you expect a shortage?
Yes, there will be a shortage. In fact, there is a shortage happening at the time I write this in early 2021. What will be difficult to acquire depends on what you're trying to buy.
I'm going to break this down into two categories, complete guitars and parts.
Complete guitars
What this means is the purchase of a fully assembled guitar, like the kind you buy in a guitar store.
In North America, guitars made in the USA, Canada and Mexico will actually still be plentiful. It's unlikely there will be any shortage of those.
However, for any guitar made outside of those territories, such as Korea, Indonesia and Japan, getting complete guitars may prove to be difficult.
Currently, there is existing stock. But once that stock runs out, getting new stock might not get back to normal until mid-2021.
Guitar parts
Necks and bodies will still be easy to acquire. Plastics (knobs, pick guards, nuts, etc.) will still be easy to acquire.
Metal hardware components and electronics however is a different story.
A whole bunch of things like potentiometers, tuners, bridges, pickups comes from outside North America.
Right now, these things aren't hard to get, but once again, that's because stock currently exists.
However, parts don't run out of stock like guitars do. Fully assembled guitars have a "shelf life" of sorts whereas parts really don't.
For example, if a completed guitar sits in storage for too long, it becomes unplayable and can't be sold. Parts on the other hand can sit in storage for several years and still be as good as the day they were made.
The only thing that really ruins metal hardware parts and electronics is corrosion/oxidation more than anything else. How soon that happens depends on metal type and whether it was treated with anti-corrosion solution or not.
Two more things to take into consideration is that it's rare there is ever a rush on guitar parts, and to the best of my knowledge, guitar parts are never manufactured using the just-in-time manufacturing method. (The car industry uses this method but it really doesn't work for guitar part manufacturing.)
What should you do?
If the guitar part is metal or if it's an electronic, manufactured outside North America and is still available for cheap, buy it now.
For everything else not metal or electronic, you don't have to buy now.
Pedals to make an electric guitar sound old timey
If you don't have the amp for this, pedals are available to help you out to get this sound.
What is old timey? In the world of music, any published song that is over 15 years old is considered an oldie. That technically means any song from 2006 at the time I write counts as oldie music.
However, when guitar players want an old timey sound, they're usually referring to decades much older than that. Specifically, the 1950s and 1960s.
It used to be all about the amp
In the 1950s, guitarists really didn't use pedals much, and instead used whatever effect the amp had installed in it. And yes, I said effect, as in single effect, because most amps didn't have multiple effects in them.
It wasn't really until the 1960s where pedals became a normal thing for guitarists.
Amp effects, generally speaking, were limited to four things. Reverb tank, tremolo, vibrato and rotary.
The reverb tank was just a spring in a box. Tremolo is in some respects was supposed to emulate the rotary effect, but ended up being it's own stutter-type sound (I talked about that recently). The rotary sound came from organs that had a rotating speaker for a wob-wob-wob-wob type of sound. Vibrato is a modulation effect that changes the pitch of the sound up, down, then back up again.
Then the '60s came...
The earliest effects as far as I'm aware were the fuzz box and the booster, but I believe those actually appeared before the '60s.
What absolutely did appear starting in the '60s was the envelope filter, as in the wah pedal.
Also during this era was the refinement of the delay effect. Now if you really want to get particular about this, technically the delay effect goes all the way back to the 1940s, as it came about shortly after magnetic tape players came into being.
However, what most guitarists agree is the "real" delay effect that really set the mark was the Echoplex from 1959. That was the unit that gave the guitarist fine control of delay speeds. And as the Echoplex was improved over time, it also introduced volume controls for dry signal and such. This effect was also one of the first that started as tube-type and then was later made as solid state.
The old timey effect checklist + one modern effect
I'll start with the modern effect first because this is kind of important.
Part of the old timey sound is a loud tube-type amp. The tubes when hot in combination with a loudspeaker that breaks up in a desirable way (like a Celestion) really brings together that nice old sound.
Obviously, you can't crank an amp up super loud all the time, so the next best thing for home recording is something I've mentioned many times before, compression. Get a compressor. No, it will not sound the same as an amp with white-hot tubes blaring a Celestion loudspeaker. But you can listen to it with headphones or your computer speakers.
After that, this is the old timey list:
- Booster
- Fuzz
- Rotary
- Vibrato
- Tremolo
- Tape Delay
- Wah
Let's go over each of these.
Booster can be emulated with a compressor and light overdrive/distortion. You probably already have an overdrive/distortion effect. All you need is the compressor.
Fuzz can't really be emulated with overdrive/distortion because it doesn't bring out the "fat" sound fuzz has. You'll have to buy one. Fortunately, fuzz can be had cheap.
Rotary is very difficult to get right, and not cheap at all. Some would say "Oh, just use a flanger, that works." No, it doesn't. A proper rotary effect needs active switching to emulate the speeding up and slowing down of the simulated rotating speaker, and has to do so in a way where it doesn't sound like a mess. Not easy. It is routine to see better rotary floor effects go for over $200 - especially for the ones that have stereo capability. Rotary is also something you can't just on/off. There's a process in learning how to use it right. It takes time. Nothing about rotary, even with modern pedals, is 100% automatic. There is a learning curve and that's just the way it is.
Vibrato is the effect you go for if you want that hippie-era '60s vibe. I'm not a fan of this effect, and most vibrato pedals sound like a warbly mess. And even on amps that had this effect originally, they didn't sound that great either.
I covered tremolo in detail here, and yes, get this. Very good effect to have, both for old timey and modern sounds.
Tape delay is weird because you can go cheap or super-expensive. There are many delays out there. For the old timey sound, all you need is something that has 300ms of delay time, which is all of them. You can go cheap with this.
Wah is an effect I both love and hate. Love the sound, love the control of the sound, hate the hardware. My favorite wah of all time is the VOX V847A, as it has notably more "growl" and "bite" compared to a Dunlop Crybaby. But I hate the maintenance involved. These pedals use lubricant for the pedal mechanism to work. That lubricant will dry up, so it's required to periodically take the pedal apart, clean it, and re-lube. I can't stand that.
There's only one solution to this: Use optical wah. The Morley PWO Power Optical Wah is such a pedal. No lube at all because it, obviously, uses optical tech to do what it does. No pots to wear out. No lubrication required. Great pedal. The only reason I've not bought one is because it's not cheap and never has been. But it is lower in price compared to the VOX V847A.
Can all this stuff be emulated with software?
With the rotary and wah effects, absolutely not.
For the other stuff, yes.
To get that absolute old timey vintage tone that covers all the bases, you really need that rotary and wah. The rotary has to be purpose-built to the task, and the wah has to be manual style with no software control.
Oh sure, there have been many attempts to emulate the rotary and wah in software, but they're all terrible.
The only question you have to ask yourself is if you need rotary and wah or not. If not, software may cover everything you need. But if it doesn't and you really want "the full set" of all the old timey sounds, spend some cash on that rotary and wah. Both are very nice to have.
Blue's Clues Learning Watch (it's kinda ridiculous)
Would I dare wear this thing in public?
The story behind this watch is that the special person this was given to didn't like it. I was then asked if I wanted it since I like watches. I said sure, why not. And of course I had to make a video above it, seen above.
Yes, this is a real watch. Expensive? Not at all. And surprisingly functional.
I'm going to mention a few things not covered in the video I made about it.
Let's talk about the manual. It is informative, but done somewhat backwards. What I mean by that is that I'm 100% certain none of the parents who buy this thing will know you can turn off "Try-Me" mode. The reason for this is because you have to dig into the manual just to find where that information is stated.
Why does this matter? No parent would think for one second that this thing can function as an actual watch. They'd just assume the Try-Me mode is the regular mode when in fact it isn't. Getting the watch out of Try-Me mode should be on the very first page. Instead, it's on page six.
When the watch is put to regular operating mode, then it can actually do watch things. It tells the time. It has a countdown timer. It has an hourly signal feature. It has an alarm. And it has other stuff.
Will the intended user (kids age 3 to 6) ever use these features? No. And this means none of the features will ever be used by anybody who ever gets this...
...which is kind of a shame, because I can tell whoever designed this thing really tried, succeeded, but also failed at the same time.
Where the wins happened: Correct volume (not too loud), button action is just right, display very legible, strap very comfortable and doesn't irritate the skin, very nice menu animations that are done right.
Where the fails happened: Everywhere else.
This watch is way too big for a 3-year-old. I have a 6.5" wrist and it fits me, a grown man. It shouldn't. This thing is gigantic. 42mm diameter and 30mm thickness with cover closed? This thing is a brick!
The menu system is cute and friendly, but way too complicated not only for kids but most adults. I'm positive that moms are never going to spend the time figuring out how to use this thing. It should be no more difficult to figure out than a Casio F-91W. That, or the menus need to be redesigned so that reading the manual is absolutely not required to figure it out.
I'll put it to you this way: This watch stumped me, and I know watches. When I first received it, I knew it had a watch function because of the right side clock button but could not figure out how to get it out of Try-Me mode. Only after getting the manual did I figure that out, which is why I put it in the video. Nobody would know how to do it otherwise.
No water resistance? For a kids watch? It says right in the manual that the watch can't handle being submerged in water at all. If you're going to make a product for child, it had better be able to handle water. This watch can't.
This needs to be repurposed as an adult watch
Even with all its flaws, I like this watch even though I'd never wear it in public.
If this were redesigned and repurposed, it would be a winner.
For example, if the case was black, buttons in gray, cover removed, external speaker removed, slimmed to a maximum 15mm height, had a straight strap (same material) that was slightly longer, front sticker removed, front OK button removed, games removed and had 30m water resistance...
...this would make for an excellent adult fashion watch. Quartz watches with matrix displays are cool, and I wish there were more of them around.
As a kid's watch, yeah I suppose it works only because kids don't care about watch functions at all. But all that function going to waste is such a shame.
Again, if it were redesigned and repurposed as a fashion watch, then it would be great.
My Christmas fixings
No, this is not about food.
Some of my Christmas "gifts" to me this year were in the form of fixing a few things I own.
Mean Green calculator rides again
Above is a really cheap Radio Shack calculator. For those interested, it's catalog number 65-1009, and that's not just for the single calculator. It's the part number for a three-calculator set that came in a blister pack. Each calculator was a different color. Green (seen above), purple, and blue. I probably have the purple and blue ones somewhere.
This calculator is either close to or over 20 years old. Every time I think this calculator is gone, it somehow magically shows up in a box somewhere. Incredibly, this thing still worked on its original battery after all these years. I finally decided to clean it up and change the battery. It was obvious this calculator was never meant to be taken apart, but I had nothing to lose so I did it anyway and was able to fix it up and make it work again like new.
Is this a collectible item? Not in the slightest. But this calculator is great. Extremely slim, easy to read, actually has an off button (probably the reason the battery lasted so long), super-easy-press soft buttons... it's great. I was happy to fix it.
I had to order a specific battery cell just for this calculator called an LR1130, formerly known as a GP189. It also goes by AG10 for some reason. No idea why. And, of course, I couldn't order just 1 or 2. I had to order 10. While the cost of this was just $3.42 shipped, now I have 9 batteries I'll probably never use... for a calculator probably not worth more than a dollar. Oh, well.
Garmin nuvis still working
Speaking of battery replacements, I just did the same thing with two Garmin nuvi GPSes I own.
Before anyone asks, yes I know the phone can navigate. I don't like it, which is why I use a nuvi.
I have my daily driver GPS and a second identical model as a backup because I like it that much. Both had their original batteries from the early 2010s. Changed those both out with replacement 1200mAh batteries and they're good to go.
Car stuff
The latest with my car (it's over 10 years old) is that I installed a fuse tap, a.k.a. add-a-fuse, add-a-circuit or whatever it's called.
I did this for my dashcam so it doesn't have to use the 12V port. The tap was installed to the accessory fuse so power is only delivered when the ignition is on. The reason for installing it this way is so the dashcam is never draining the car battery when the engine is off. Cheap tech, but works great.
Guitar fixings?
Not too much to report here just yet. I'm not going to get into my Strat project until sometime in 2021. That's the plan, anyway.