S & S capo

[Richard Moody]

Fred Sturm writes...
> A side-effect of the low deflection angle is the tendency to create
> obnoxious sizzling noises.or by
> muting off the forward duplex section by inserting hammer felt wedges,
> folded bushing cloth, or the like between two strings. Doing this, of
> course, also results in loss of the "bloom" or whatever one wants to
call
> the positive effect. I guess I shouldn't omit
> that one can also voice them out by needling the hammer in some
instances.

Sometimes the "sizzling" noises can be gotten rid of by tape, duct or
scotch placed on the wire as it crosses the duplex bar.This works if the
sound can be gotten rid of by light finger pressure on the offending
segment. I found that felt inbetween the strings resulted in to much tonal
loss as Fred observed. Its uneasy to think of the effects of the tape
residues there, but it worked, and for long periods of time there were no
sizzles without the tape.  But this was an M that even though in a
recording studio was a d-o-g.  Yet the engineers chose it over another M
that I considered definitive of the M sound.  It was later that this
engineer's best friend started "howeling" 
	When asked what caused these zings I mumbled something about microscopic
rust spots caused by sweat or breath vapor from the player.  (Which now
makes me wish I had tried flossing)......  They could relate to that as
they used spit shields (I don't know what they call them) in front of
their thousand dollar mics.  We talked about putting a felt cover over the
pins out to the agraffs and bearing bar, but nothing came of it. 

Richard Moody