The Secret to Shubb Capos’ 50 Years in Business? It’s the Little Things

Sometimes, it’s the little things that make all the difference. Few people know this as intimately as Rick Shubb, whose capos might seem like optional accessories until it’s time to play familiar chord shapes in unfamiliar keys, a task most acoustic guitarists face regularly. The things Shubb capos do best—looking good and being easy to use while not changing an instrument’s intonation—are the result of dogged determination to get the details just right.

Raised in the folk-music hotbed that was 1950s Berkeley, California, Shubb fell in love with the banjo as a teenager, particularly inspired by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’ 1957 classic Foggy Mountain Jamboree. At 15, Shubb was playing on TV and in dance halls; soon, he was jamming with David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, and Doc Watson and helping establish the Berkeley Fiddler’s Convention. As bluegrass gained popularity, Shubb stayed busy in the San Francisco Bay Area and on tour, teaching, recording on commercials, appearing on soundtracks for movies like 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and gigging in the Pacific Northwest and Nashville. A concurrent career found Shubb creating distinctive artwork for the iconic counterculture gem Humbead’s Revised Map of the World, an unreleased Grisman record, and a Last Gasp comic book, as well as posters for the short-lived Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival and legendary Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco. 

This stew of musical and artistic activity set the stage for Shubb Capos. Beginning in 1974, Shubb managed the business from Northern California, and his one-time student Dave Coontz oversaw the manufacturing, first in Iowa and then in Missouri. After creating a fifth-string capo for banjo and a compensated banjo bridge, they released the first production-model Shubb guitar capo in 1979, and capos have been Shubb’s main obsession ever since. The company sold its millionth capo in 1999 and five millionth in 2015. A year later, with most of the company’s manufacturing moved to China, Shubb and Coontz amicably dissolved their partnership. As the company makes its way toward the 10-million mark, the product line includes steels, slides, and a dazzling array of capos for steel-string, nylon-string, 12-string, banjo/mandolin/bouzouki, dobro, and ukulele, as well as partial capos, all available in eye-catching styles that Shubb could hardly have imagined five decades ago.

“If you stick around long enough, somebody will notice. You just do what you do,” says Shubb, who turned 79 in January. “You don’t think about how much time is passing, and then a landmark like this jumps up, and you say, ‘What—50 years? No.’”

You started as a musician, and your capos are inspired by personal experience. Would you say that your whole perspective is to make musicians’ lives better? 

Absolutely. Musicians are my people!

What kick-started your love for banjo?

When I was about 15, the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs hit me like a thunderbolt, and I set about trying to learn a three-finger roll. I didn’t have a banjo, but my brother Bill—a law student seven years older than me—did. He would go to the library to study in the evenings, and I would sneak into his room and play his banjo. I was eventually discovered when he found pick marks on his banjo head. I used metal fingerpicks, and he did not. When confronted, I couldn’t think of any way out of it, so I just admitted it.

Was he angry?

He said, “Scruggs style? Show me.” So, I played a little for him. I thought he was going to chew me out, but instead he said, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” It was the first time that I’d ever done anything better than my big brother. It’s funny how something that small stays with you, but it does. 

Were there advantages to teaching yourself, decades before instructional videos or YouTube?

It took longer and it was harder, but figuring something out for myself helped me learn it better, I think, and play with more honesty.

Perhaps there’s a connection between doggedly figuring out banjo parts by ear and starting a company with more conviction than know-how.

That’s probably true. I had a couple of role models, though. Earl Scruggs and Bill Keith, two of my musical idols, were both involved in products for the banjo, so the idea of being a musician and developing a product was not foreign to me. I guess that made it a little easier to step into that world. 

Your first product was for banjo, right? 

It was the banjo fifth-string capo. The banjo needs a fifth-string capo because the fifth string is shorter than the other four, and if you put a capo where you normally would, it doesn’t change that fifth string. The only fifth-string capos that were commercially available back then were wire springs that didn’t put enough tension on the string, but I had an idea for a lever that would. 

Did you try to get it made?

I approached some people in the music-products business, but I couldn’t get anybody interested. Nobody thought it was worth spending a lot of time developing products for banjo, because there was no future to it. What set me apart in those days was that I took it seriously.

How did you make it happen?

I described it to Dave [Coontz], who was then my banjo student, and he just sort of sat there and nodded. I thought that was the end of it until the following week, when he came to his lesson with a prototype. It was pretty clunky, but I tried it on my banjo and it worked. Each week, we’d make a new one; I’d play it on some gigs, talk about what it needed, make another one, and run another round.

What a stroke of luck that you met Dave, who was on the same page and forged ahead with you.

Yes, it was. It was a good partnership for many years.

Was the guitar capo next? 

We didn’t even get to the guitar capo until four or five years later. The second product we made was a banjo bridge. We had wanted to do a guitar capo before we did the banjo bridge, but we were running into some snags, and I felt like the banjo needed this compensated bridge urgently. I stopped making them after a while because I couldn’t defend the patent; it was based on a well-known principle. But it’s a feather in my cap to have pioneered the compensated bridge on the five-string banjo. And now that we were in the business of making fifth-string capos and compensated banjo bridges, we thought, well, nobody really likes their capos. 

What makes a good capo?

It should be adjustable. It shouldn’t put the instrument out of tune. And aesthetically, it should not offend the instrument.

What sets your capos apart?

They close onto the neck like your hand. You feel more and more resistance, and then at the very end, it relaxes and settles into position. The first time I snapped it onto my guitar neck, I said, “Man, this is it. This is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life.”

Tell me about the serendipitous milling-machine accident.

The machine spat the part out and it flew across the room. Dave picked it up, and it had bent the piece similarly to the way we had been bending them, but not exactly the same. He decided to try it, and bingo! It was the right shape. 

Did customer feedback play a role, too?

It always has, and it still does. The first version of the capo did not have a Delrin cap on the end of the screw or the little Delrin roller that you see on them now. It was just a bare metal screw against a bare metal surface. After you used it for a while, it started to scratch a little groove in the middle piece, and eventually, it would wear out. Somebody suggested putting a cap on the end of that screw, and he sent us a sample of a Delrin acorn nut he’d bought at a hardware store. He was right. Direct input from a single user changed the product.

You and Dave seemed determined to make the best product you could.

When you go into business, there are several things you weigh against each other, including market share, profit, and customer satisfaction. Both of us felt like product quality was number one: If we make a little less money, then so be it, but we’re making the best thing we can. No compromises. That was that was the foundation of that partnership.

What are you doing to celebrate the anniversary?

The 50th anniversary gave us some extra incentive to do something special, and we’re having fun with it. We’ve got a line of capos we just came out with, including Violet Sky, which shines like a night sky. It’s beautiful. Before the year is out, we’ll have five new models that’ll only be for sale this year, for the anniversary. 

What excites you about the future of capos?

Partial capoing. We make two different partial capos: one of them covers three inside strings, and if you use it from the treble side, it skips the first string and covers 2, 3, and 4, forming an A chord. But mainly it is used from the bass side, skipping string 6 and covering 5, 4, and 3 at the second fret, which emulates a DADGAD tuning. It’s a fabulous creative tool because you can take a song you already know, put the partial capo on, and discover new stuff. And I’m excited about our Anniversary Collection. These are beautiful capos. I’m especially fond of the Sequoia [engraved, plain brass], and I can hardly wait to release the first solid titanium T1 capo.

What would you tell someone who’s considering following the path you took?

Don’t be so in love with what you expected to happen that you miss what can happen. I imagined that I would be some combination of banjo player and graphic artist, and that I would make my living as a staff artist on a comic book or something like that. I could very easily have missed this product because it was different, but I knew a good thing when I saw it, so I gave it the time and attention it needed. I’m satisfied with the musical life that I’ve lived and the music that I’ve played. It worked out very well.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.