Customer Reviews

Voice Capo

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'll caveat this review by disclosing that I am a 35 year-old, amateur, journeyman guitarist (no virtuoso). I bought this product on a whim because I am not good at managing my disposable income. I have been very pleased with this compulsive purchase. Delivered and works as advertised, it is easy to set up and use. I've been having a lot of fun with the new combinations. I definitely recommend this as personal buy or gift for the special musician in your life.

Neat concept, and I was really looking forward to this, but it simply does not work with my Martin D-15 guitar. Before opening it, I measured the neck against the packaging which has a size indicator to show if it will work with your guitar, and mine was well within the guidelines.

1st off, it's pretty annoying that you have to stick on 50 tiny little pads including 2 for each string on each of the 1st four frets plus a couple mounting strips along the sides. If it worked however, I'd be willing to overlook the fact that they don't simply stick these on for you, as the trigger pads and shims are not dependant on the type of guitar you have at all, anyway. They're one size fits all, so they might as well come in place.

2nd, a full spare set of trigger pads and shims would be nice. Instead you just get a few spare trigger pads and shims which hold the strings down, but no spare mounting strips. Hopefully you choose correctly between the thick and thin mounting strips, because if not, they tear when you try to remove them after use and there are no spares...

Also, it states to slide the voice capo up the neck if the triggers won't stay down (which they often won't) and to move the voice capo down the neck to eliminate buzzing. The problem is, the low E string always buzzes against the inside of the voice capo, even when it is all the way down, and even though the guitar is right in the middle of the acceptable range of neck widths. Then of course the triggers don't stay down, and when you move it the other way to try to get the triggers to stay down, the buzzing worsens, even if you're lucky enough to get the trigger to stick.

In addition, the triggers don't line up with the strings very well at all and the slick surface of the "trigger shims" causes the triggers to slide off of the string unless its nearly perfectly aligned. Basically what this means is that you can't get the voice capo to hold down the strings where you want, or if you can, its muffled or buzzes most of the time. Also, it can't simply bar the fretboard to act as a regular capo, since the triggers don't align with the strings well, making it pretty much useless.

The plastic triggers also wobble around a lot when you push them in, giving the whole product a cheap feel to it. This thing takes so much calibration just to get it to produce muffled notes and buzzing strings that it is simply not worth the trouble.

This is a really great, innovative product! Well designed and easy to use! I've been playing guitar for over 17 years. My styles include rock, jazz, blues, classical, and bluegrass. I've had many capos over the years, but never one like this! Voice Capo has helped me explore new sounds and possibilities that I never really considered before. In literally seconds, you can punch in a different chord and start experimenting with alternate tunings right away. Sounds incredible! I love using it with slide. Great for beginners to advanced players. Highly recommended!

I've seen partial capos that do allow you to hold down only a few strings, but those are all on one fret. You can't really do much on one fret. I can form any chord I want now. My only complaint is that I can only use it on the first four frets, but it's so much better than the "competition" that I'm giving it 5 stars anyway. Sweet invention!

This is a cool idea. I bought it because I play rock/pop music and about twice a night I need to play slide guitar. I don't like hauling an extra axe for one or two songs and I don't like retuning for an open tuning. So, normally, I'd just play in standard tuning and just play a little sloppier. This is cool for being able to slap it on in a couple of seconds and be in open E or G or A tuning.

A couple of reasons why I don't review it higher:
1) you can't use it on all of your guitars. It comes with a pack of various size shims. You pick the one right for your neck and stick them in there. They are not removable. So, if you shim it out for a tele, but then want to slap it on a gibson, sorry, it will wobble around on the gibson and not hold tune. So, in other words, it only works on guitars with the same diameter neck.
2) You have to stick on a little tiny pad and then a smaller pad cover for each of those buttons (30). I don't see any reason why they don't do this at factory. It's tedious and even if you have a steady hand, as I do, you're not gonna get each of the 60 stick-on pads on there perfectly.
3) The buttons pop up sometimes. If you depress five or six buttons to get a desired tuning, every now and again, one of the buttons will pop back out. This has only happened a couple times and while I was just playing casually, but I'm sure you could imagine the implications if this happened in the middle of a song at a gig.

The way I see it, this thing is kinda like a talk-box. It's a fun novelty and has a cool purpose, but don't expect to use it more than a couple of times.

I love experimenting with altered tunings, so after watching the website videos, I was sold on getting this thing. It is truly a unique and inventive idea, but the construction quality really hinders it's application. There's quite a bit of assembly involved before you even start, as you must carefully stick the rubber pads for each of the fretted note points. They say the device fits all guitars, and you are given a couple of "shims" that you can attach for a better fit, but once these are adhered, you can't take 'em off without wrecking things, so you've pretty much got to find the best fit for whatever guitar you'll be using with it most. This takes away the whole "compatibility" of a capo in my opinion. Once you get the necessary shims in place, the next task is finding a good fit. Even with the attached strip, the Voice Capo kept slipping around, and a few "fret button" settings produced clear notes, but the majority of them were choked off or extremely buzzy. I found that sometimes the "buttons" wouldn't end up pushing down the strings all the way as well. Needless to say after about an hour of futzing with different "tunings", I was NEVER able to get the clear ringing chordal sound the videos showed.

Again, this is a really cool concept, but it needs some re-thinking of the design to make it a worthwhile purchase.

i found this to be a fun toy, and thought the idea was genius, however there were many flaws to it. the longer review on here explains many of the flaws that i also encountered, such as the ringing of strings and inability to get a completely clean sound.

I purchased this Capo for my friend who is just getting started on the guitar. It came in a nice box with instructions showing me how to quickly adjust it to his guitar. The capo is great for him as a beginner because it teaches him chord structure and allows him to experiment playing in key. He seems to really enjoy using it and it's impressive to see how many chords and scales he has learned in a short period of time.

Most capos go from $20 to as high as $40, however, they only cover 1 fret and do not allow you to choose strings. This thing covers 4 frets allowing me to form a C, G, D, F, etc. and then noodle around on top of that. Worth every penny... this thing is gold!