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I now know exactly what the capo issue is with my Yamaha, and most likely other nylon string guitars.
Pick up your guitar tonight, and press down a string with your finger. Say for example 1st string 5th fret. Take a close look from the side. You will see that the string lowers until it hits the fret, however the string does NOT contact the fretboard, Your fingertip basically dents in and absorbs the string. Now play a note and press extra hard, you can alter the pitch by pressing extra hard. This is due to that little bit of space under the string that allows the string to be stretched. That is the space between fret contact, and fretboard contact.
When the guitar is capo'd the string is pressed down beyond mere fret contact and thus the string is stretched and the pitch changes (i.e. out of tune).
also since the face of the capo is essentially flat, then the strings being different thicknesses they stretch different amounts (i.e. the G stretches a lot because it is really fat, and the thin high E stretches very little) so this would make the problem even worse.
N85ae, Just a thought. The capo your using may not be correct for your guitar. The capo should clamped down just enough to make contact the fret plus a little. This way you won't be stretching the string by pushing it down to the fret board. Also, depending on the capo, you might be able to add some padding to the bottom so the padding impacts the fret board and allows the string to ride up into the pad and not be stretched to the fret board. Maybe some thick felt, 1/8" would probably work. What kind of capo are you using.
The capo should clamped down just enough to make contact the fret plus a little.
Well, regardless of the type of capo I might use, if it is not clamped very hard, I can actually play so hard as to "vibrate" or buzz the open string against the fret the capo is on. Especially Open A or Open D string. So when I clamp any type of capo hard enough so that won't happen, the tuning problem results, as described/observed. The only other type of "wrong" capo, would be the curved kind for acoustic steel strings, in which case the problem I describe is worse.
n85ae, your obervations go directly with what I was saying in response to the orginal question. Remember "scalloped" fingerboard or "high frets"???
Ricardo, indeed you are correct. I guess I didn't really get you point on the first post. I think I'll just live with the neccesity of retuning, as it's not such a big deal.
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