A capo is a device a musician uses on the neck of a stringed instrument to transpose and shorten the playable length of the strings—hence raising the pitch. It is a common tool for players of guitars, mandolins, mandolas, banjos, ukuleles and bouzoukis. The word derives from the Italian capotasto, which means the nut of a stringed instrument. The earliest known use of capotasto is by Giovanni Battista Doni who, in his Annotazioni of 1640, uses it to describe the nut of a viola da gamba. The first patented capo was designed by James Ashborn of Wolcottville, Connecticut year 1850.
A luthier is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments.
A multi-scale fingerboard is an instrument fretboard which incorporates multiple scale lengths. This allows each of the strings to have a different string tension and thus, balanced tonal characteristics.
The Elias Howe Company was a 19th and early 20th century musical firm located in Boston, USA and founded by Elias Howe, Jr. (1820–1895). His company was successful, selling more than a million copies of his music instruction books by 1892. Howe was cousin to the inventor of the sewing machine and related to Julia Ward Howe, composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Shubb is a company that specialises in producing capos for all kinds of stringed instruments. The company was formed in 1974 by banjoists Rick Shubb and Dave Coontz. Shubb capos remain a top-selling capo forty years after their invention. Shubb wanted to create a capo that would not make his instrument go out of tune, which has resulted in ongoing efforts to refine his invention. Since 2016 at least 80% of Shubb's Capos are manufactured in China.
The tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was initially developed in its acoustic form by Gibson and C.F. Martin so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on guitar.
The Weymann Mandolute was one of the products sold under Weymann, the Philadelphia-based brand of Weymann and Sons, established 1864. The 'mandolutes' were actually mandolins with eight strings and tuned exactly the same. The scale length is also within the standard mandolin scale; between 13 inches (330 mm) and 13+7⁄8 inches (350 mm). They advertised using scientific principles to create vibrations, power and volume as well as sustained sweet and mellow tones, all in the same instrument.
The banjeaurine, also spelled banjourine or banjorine, was a miniature variant of the banjo, designed to play lead instrument in banjo orchestras from the 1890s to the 1930s.
The qinqin is a plucked Chinese lute. It was originally manufactured with a wooden body, a slender fretted neck, and three strings. Its body can be round, hexagonal, or octagonal. Often, only two strings were used, as in certain regional silk-and-bamboo ensembles. In its hexagonal form, it is also referred to as meihuaqin.
The mandolin-banjo is a hybrid instrument, combining a banjo body with the neck and tuning of a mandolin. It is a soprano banjo. It has been independently invented in more than one country, variously being called mandolin-banjo,banjo-mandolin,banjolin and banjourine in English-speaking countries, banjoline and bandoline in France, and the Cümbüş in Turkey.
Mandolin Brothers was a musical instrument shop in New York City. It was founded in 1971 and was located in Staten Island, New York. It closed the doors of its physical shop in 2017 and was sold to a California buyer who continues the brand online.
Richard Shubb is best known as the inventor of the Shubb Capo, a very popular guitar and banjo accessory. His 1978 patent is cited by Sterner's Capo Museum as being one of the most significant improvements in the development of the capo. He also invented the lever-operated banjo fifth string capo, the compensated banjo bridge, and holds several other U.S. and international patents on musical instrument accessories and improvements.
John H. Lee was the stage name for John D. Haley, an American banjoist, composer and author of the late 19th century. He was known as a harmonist, writing lessons for playing harmony on the five-string banjo and employing "remarkeable fingering" to construct chords. He promoted three new types of banjo for S. S. Stewart, the banjeaurine, Little Wonder picolo banjo, and six-string banjo, performing on the instruments alongside William A. Huntley.
Gruhn Guitars is a musical instrument store located in Nashville. Founded in 1970 by George Gruhn, an expert on vintage American guitars and related instruments, Gruhn Guitars is known as a mecca for professional musicians and well-heeled collectors of vintage musical instruments.
Oscar Schmidt was a musical instrument manufacturing company established in 1871. During its long existence, Oscar Schmidt has produced a wide range of string instruments, not only guitars but also numerous models of parlour instruments such as autoharps, celtic harps, guitar zithers, the "guitarophone", marxophones and bowed psalteries.
Collings Guitars is an Austin, Texas–based stringed instrument manufacturer. The company was founded in 1973 by BillCollings. In addition to acoustic guitars, Collings Guitars manufactures electric guitars, archtop guitars, mandolins and ukuleles.
Blackbird Guitars is a musical instrument company that manufactures acoustic guitars and ukuleles from composite materials, including carbon fiber and ekoa, a flax linen reinforcement fabric in a bio-epoxy matrix. The company has made contributions to both the field of luthiery and the field of composite design, notably with the composite all-hollow unibody instrument design used on all Blackbird models, as well as the development and use of Ekoa in the construction of fretted instruments.
Samuel Swaim Stewart, also known as S. S. Stewart, was a musician, composer, publisher, and manufacturer of banjos. He owned the S. S. Stewart Banjo Company, which was one of the largest banjo manufacturers in the 1890s, manufacturing tens-of-thousands of banjos annually. He also published the S. S. Stewart Banjo and Guitar Journal from 1882 to 1902. He is known today for his efforts to remake the banjo into an instrument of cultural sophistication and for his high-quality banjos. For Stewart, that sophistication included learning to properly sight-read music, so as to be able to play the "proper repertoire" for middle-class citizens.
Alfred Adolphus Farland Sr. was a Canadian-American banjoist, playing in the classic banjo style for more than 40 years. He played the banjo wearing a tuxedo, bringing an air of sophistication to the instrument, when the 19th-century image for a banjo player tended toward the comic, the racist and the crude. He had a reputation for entertaining "cultivated audiences" with banjo adaptations of European classical music. Farland's adaptations included Bach violin sonatas, Beethoven violin sonatas, a Mendelsson violin sonata, Brahms dances, and some of Chopin's nocturnes and waltzes. His performances of this kind of music on the banjo were seen in 1900 as successfully "stretching the limits of the instrument."
