The Shubb 5th string banjo capo was the product that got it all started  back in 1974, and to this day it's STILL the only fifth string capo worth putting on a banjo. It operates on a lever principle, not a spring, so it provides sufficient pressure to fret the string without muting the tone. It slides on a slim, dovetailed bar which mounts flush to the neck, which makes it sturdy and unobtrusive.

 

The Shubb Capo company began in California in 1974, when Dave Coontz and Rick Shubb collaborated to design and produce their fifth string capo for banjo. Before that, Rick Shubb worked as a professional 5-string banjo player and teacher, and Dave was an auto mechanic and a banjo student of Rick's. One night at his lesson, Rick was talking about his dissatisfaction with existing methods of capoing the fifth string. Rick described an idea that he had for a fifth string capo that operated on a lever principle, so that it would provide sufficient pressure for a good tone, and ranted about how he couldn't get anyone in the music products trade interested in making one. Finally, Dave Coontz said "if nobody else will make you one, I will."

The following week he came to his lesson with a fifth string capo true to Rick's description and drawings. It was roughly hewn out of aluminum, and didn't look like much ...but it worked well. Rick used it on a gig that week, and had some ideas for improvements.

For the next few months Rick would go to Dave's auto shop in Concord two or three nights a week. He'd arrive at 7 PM (closing time), they'd eat at the local Denny's, then work until midnight making improvements on their fifth string capo. Rick would test-drive it at gigs, and return with more ideas for improvements.

Eventually Rick was satisfied with it. It did the job for him onstage, and that was all he had set out to accomplish. But requests from other players prompted them to make a few more. Their course was charted the day they bought a small, second-hand milling machine and set about making a hundred units.

Around 1975 Dave moved from California to Iowa in search of elbow room. About that same time, Rick moved to Oregon in search of something or other. For the sake of continuity, they kept the address for the capo sales the same; that of Rick's mother's house in Oakland.