dAndrea Spider Capo Standard (SPD STD)

Another important rating for this capo apart from handling and quality is what use it has for the musician. Its taken me a while to get my head around using this capo as I haven't really understood what it can do until now. Apparently you can do lots of flash stuff either side of it around the 5th fret, but I'm not in to technical prowess playing so I didn't get very far with it at first. Consequently, for some time I didn't know what use I was going to have for this capo so I left it in the drawer.
Very recently though, I found myself needing to work around E minor open tuning for one of my songs to introduce more overtones on some of the chords, but I don't like to tune strings higher because of string breakage and I didn't want to detune to D minor. So I tried the Spider capo and found that I was able to combine an Eminor open string sound and revert to some of my regular chords when I wanted to as well. This has enabled me to get the best of both worlds (EADGBE and EBEGBE) for this particular song and I wouldn't have discovered this if I had not got this capo as an additional part of my kit.
On the handling part it is a bit fiddly compared to a regular capo, but you can adjust it to fit any fingerboard width. Also, the tension on the strings can be gauged, which is good as it limits tuning issues.
Quality-wise it I initially wondered if the plastic string pieces would be strong enough, but after some use now it seems very well made and none of the parts have loosened off at all.

The spider capo is an extremely versatile tool for guitarists and songwriters. If you like the sound of open tunings on the guitar, you will achieve that sound extremely quickly with this capo. You won't necessarily need to learn entirely new chord positions either, as most configurations will allow for standard chords and certainly barre chords.

The build quality is quite robust, although it feels quite delicate and not something you would just throw into your gig bag. A small protective case would be an ideal solution for this. I have found something suitable, but a fitted case included in the price would have been better.

This capo will fit most guitars but it does sometimes need fine tweaking to get the notes to ring true and slight tuning is often required, depending on the configuration.

That aside I can highly recommend this for guitarists and songwriters interested in experimenting with the sound of their instrument!