Capo plays a B note for any capo position at or below the seventh fret), and thus a performer does not need to adjust for or relearn the entire fretboard as they might with retuning. The scale length of the strings of an instrument affects the timbre of the strings, and thus the use of a capo may alter the tone of the instrument. Musicians also use capos to bring a guitar tuned below standard up to standard tuning. Manufacturers sometimes recommend tuning a twelve-string guitar a whole-step or more below standard to offset the additional stress of the additional strings.
Seven-string guitar A. Seven-string semi-acoustic archtop guitars were used by jazz-guitarist Ralph Patt after he began exploring major-thirds tuning in 1964. Patt's tuning is a regular tuning, in the sense that all of the intervals between its successive open strings are major thirds; in contrast, the standard guitar-tuning has one major-third amid four fourths. Major-thirds tuning has a smaller scope than standard guitar-tuning, and so Patt started using seven-string guitars, which enabled major-thirds tuning to have the E-e' range of the standard tuning. He first experimented with a wide-neck Mango guitar from the 1920s, which he modified to have seven strings in