Back in the middle of March, I posted about buying a new Martin OM-28. I love the guitar, but had an unusual problem. The capos that I already owned, in one way or another, didn’t work on it very well. They all seemed to need to be tightened too much. All of the standard measurements, (neck relief, action heights and nut height), are all to spec and the guitar plays well. I was afraid I might even damage the neck of the guitar.
Yesterday, I got a Shubb F1 Fine Tune. While I haven’t figured out what the issue with the others is, this one works great. No buzz, great tone and I don’t need to crank it down.
@GDPiper169 check the radius of your other capos. Martan guitars have a 16 inch radius on the fret board. Gibson are 12 in so inexpensive capos try and work for both. Most Classical guitar necks are flat with no radius at all.
Your Shubb capo should work very well the stirrup style capos are use a lot in Bluegrass and so are Martin D18 and D 28 bith guitars have 16 in radius necks.
@stitch Thanks. My other guitars either have a 16" or 15" fingerboard radius and the capos have no problem. One of my capos is a Katz Eye cradle style that was specifically sized for this guitar, including the 16" radius. I’m not sure, but this may have something to do with the Martin “2025 Refresh” of the standard series. Among other things, the fingerboards are slightly thinner and more rounded at the edges. The guitar is more comfortable and sounds better than the previous model, IMO, but the neck is a little different. Anyway, my problem is solved. Thanks again.
@Ontime My local shop does a lot of Youtube videos. The owners are 3 brothers that are locally well known bluegrass players. They did a blind test of a dozen or so capos. They rated your model of Shubb just below a $250 Elliot for tone. The one I got sounds better than any of my other capos. It made me a Shubb guy.
However, playing live I’ll always use a G7, always gets just the right amount of pressure with no adjustment and no risk of buzzing. I lost one and replaced with exactly the same model, I wouldn’t be without it.
@mathsjunky I have a G7 ART. It works well on some guitars, but again, I have to squeeze the daylights out of it to work on my OM-28. I don’t know why. Perhaps I’ll never know.
