Capo Capo A capo (short for "capodastro", "capo tasto" or "capotasto" , Italian for "head of fretboard"; Spanish: " cejilla" or "capodastro"; French: "capodastre"; German: "Kapodaster"; Portuguese: "capodastro", Serbo-Croatian: "kapodaster"; Greek: "kapotasta") is a device used on the neck of a stringed (typically fretted) instrument to 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 the term "capotasto" is by Giovanni Battista Doni who,
Tuning mechanisms for stringed instruments not yet learned to tune precisely using pegs alone. Pegs for double bass and guitar family instruments are usually geared, and are called tuning machines or machine heads. They often use a worm gear. The gearing ratio varies; while higher ratios are more sensitive, they are also more difficult to manufacture precisely. Machine heads may be open, with exposed gears, or closed, with a casing around all the gears. Geared pegs for violin family instruments also exist, although they have not gained wide use, which has to do with the extensive and irreversible physical modification that must be made to