Tenor guitar
Encyclopedia
The tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

. The instrument (in its acoustic form) was developed so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on the guitar. Later, solid-body
Solid body
A solid-body instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on an electric pickup system to directly receive the vibrations of the strings....

 electric models were also produced.

Construction

Tenor guitars are four stringed instruments normally made in the shape of a guitar, or sometimes with a lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

-like pear shaped body or, more rarely, with a round banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

-like wooden body. They can be acoustic and/or electric and they can come in the form of flat top, archtop
Archtop guitar
An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players.Typically, an archtop guitar has:* 6 strings...

, wood-bodied or metal-bodied resonator or solid-bodied instruments. Tenor guitars normally have a scale length
Scale length
*Length scale, - a significant concept in physics used to define the order of magnitude of a system*Scale height, - a specific parameter in physics denoting the distance over which a quantity decreases by a factor of e...

 (from bridge to nut) of between 21 and 23 inches.

History and development

The earliest origins of the tenor guitar are not yet fully clear but it now seems very unlikely that a true four-stringed guitar-shaped tenor guitar appeared before the late 1920s. Gibson built the tenor lute TL-4 in 1924, which had a lute-like pear-shaped body, four strings and a tenor banjo neck. It is possible that similar instruments were made by other makers such as Lyon and Healy and banjo makers, such as Bacon. In the same period, banjo makers, such as Paramount, built transitional round banjo-like wood-bodied instruments with four strings and tenor banjo necks called tenor harps. From 1927 onwards, the very first true wood-bodied acoustic tenor guitars appeared as production instruments made by both Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

 and Martin.

Almost all the major guitar makers, including Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

, Martin, Epiphone
Epiphone
The Epiphone Company is a musical instrument manufacturer founded in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulos. Epiphone was bought by Chicago Musical Instrument Company, which also owned Gibson Guitar Corporation, in 1957. Epiphone was Gibson's main rival in the archtop market...

, Kay, Gretsch
Gretsch
The Gretsch Company was founded in 1883 by Friedrich Gretsch, a twenty-seven year old German immigrant recently arrived in the US. Friedrich Gretsch manufactured banjos, tambourines, and drums, until his death in 1895. His son, Fred, moved operations to Brooklyn, New York in 1916...

, Guild
Guild Guitar Company
The Guild Guitar Company is a USA-based guitar manufacturer founded in 1952 by Alfred Dronge, a guitarist and music-store owner, and George Mann, a former executive with the Epiphone Guitar Company...

 and National
National Reso-Phonic Guitars
National Reso-Phonic Guitars is a manufacturer of resonator guitars and other resonator instruments including mandolins, ukuleles and 12 string guitars.The company was formed in 1989 by Don Young and McGregor Gaines, in a Californian garage...

, have manufactured tenor (and plectrum) guitars as production instruments at various times. In collaboration with Cliff Edwards, Dobro
Dobro
Dobro is a registered trademark, now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation and used for a particular design of resonator guitar.The name has a long and involved history, interwoven with that of the resonator guitar...

 built the four-stringed round-bodied resonator tenor scale length instrument called the Tenortrope in the early 1930s. Makers such as Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

 even used to offer the tenor (or plectrum) models as a custom option for their six string guitar models at no extra charge. Gibson also had a line of tenor guitars under their "budget" brand name of Kalamazoo. Budget tenor guitars by makers such as Harmony
Harmony Company
thumb|right|250px|A collection of Harmony guitars:SS Stewart gold acoustic, H73 [[Roy Smeck]], H37 Hollywood, Silvertone 1446, H44 StratotoneThe Harmony Company was an American company that, in its heyday, was the largest musical instrument manufacturer in the USA...

, Regal
Regal Musical Instrument Company
The Regal Musical Instrument Company was established in 1908 in Chicago. By the 1930s, they were one of the largest manufacturers of musical instruments in the world.Regal specialised in:...

 and Stella
Stella (guitar)
Stella was a brand of guitars. The Stella brand was owned by the Oscar Schmidt Company and was founded around 1899. Stella produced low-mid level stringed instruments. Stella guitars were played by several notable artists including Leadbelly and Charlie Patton. Doc Watson began playing on a Stella...

, were made in large numbers in the 1950s and 1960s and are still widely available.

Tenor guitars were manufactured continuously by both Gibson
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

 and Martin from the 1920s until the 1970s. National
National Reso-Phonic Guitars
National Reso-Phonic Guitars is a manufacturer of resonator guitars and other resonator instruments including mandolins, ukuleles and 12 string guitars.The company was formed in 1989 by Don Young and McGregor Gaines, in a Californian garage...

, formed by the Dopyera Brothers, also made significant numbers of resonator tenor and plectrum guitars between the 1920s and 1940s, some of which were also used by jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 musicians as a second instrument. Dobro
Dobro
Dobro is a registered trademark, now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation and used for a particular design of resonator guitar.The name has a long and involved history, interwoven with that of the resonator guitar...

, another company associated with the Dopyera Brothers, as well as National
National Reso-Phonic Guitars
National Reso-Phonic Guitars is a manufacturer of resonator guitars and other resonator instruments including mandolins, ukuleles and 12 string guitars.The company was formed in 1989 by Don Young and McGregor Gaines, in a Californian garage...

, also built various resonator tenor guitar models.

Tuning

Tenor guitars are normally tuned in fifths (usually CGDA, similar to the tenor banjo or the viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

) although other tunings are possible, such as "guitar tuning", "Chicago tuning," or baritone ukulele
Ukulele
The ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....

 tuning (DGBE), "Irish" or "octave mandolin
Octave mandolin
The octave mandolin is a fretted string instrument with four pairs of strings tuned in 5ths, G, D, A, E , an octave below a mandolin. It has a 20 to 23 inch scale length and its construction is similar to other instruments in the mandolin family...

" tuning (GDAE, like a violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 but one octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

 below) and various "open" tunings, for slide
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...

 playing. The tenor guitar can also be tuned like a soprano/concert/tenor ukulele, using various versions of GCEA tuning.

The normal CGDA tuning is very "open" and it gives the instrument unusual voicings from both open and closed chords. The fifths tuning also makes for easy moveable chord shapes. The instrument is equally well suited to both rhythm
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...

 and lead
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...

 playing.

Though books are available for the standard tunings above, books are also available for more esoteric tunings as well such as GDAD, CGBD and DGBE in the Chord Genius series of books published by Northern Musician Services. One of the main attractions of this instrument is its breadth of available tunings.

Related instruments

There are versions of the tenor guitar with four strings but a scale length of around 25 inches, similar to that of a six string guitar. Some have said that these guitars cannot be tuned to the normal CGDA fifths tuning because the A string cannot be tuned to pitch without breaking. This is untrue as there are specific string sets to address this issue; furthermore a seven string or baritone guitar string set can be used using only four specific strings. These guitars can also be tuned to a reentrant
Reentrant tuning
A reentrant tuning is a tuning of a stringed instrument where the strings are not ordered from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch ....

 CGDA tuning where the A and sometimes the D are pitched an octave lower. They can also be tuned to DGBE (equivalent to the top four strings of a six-string guitar), or other fifths tunings, such as GDAE.

The plectrum guitar is a close four stringed relative of the tenor guitar with a longer scale length of 26–27 inches and tunings usually based on the plectrum banjo - CGBD or DGBD. Plectrum guitars are also very suitable for guitar tuning–DGBE–because of their longer scale length but are much less suitable for CGDA tuning because of the high A string. Plectrum guitars were not made in as large numbers as tenor guitars and are now more rare.

Plectrum guitars played a similar role for plectrum banjo players in this period as the tenor guitar, but they were less common. One of the best known plectrum guitarists from the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...

 was Eddie Condon
Eddie Condon
Albert Edwin Condon , better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion....

, who started out on banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

 in the 1920s and then switched to a Gibson L7 plectrum guitar in the 1930s and stayed with it all his musical life up to the 1960s.

In 1968 Eddie Peabody
Eddie Peabody
Captain Edwin Ellsworth Peabody was an American musical entertainer. His career spanned five decades and he was perhaps the most famous plectrum banjo player ever...

, a very well known plectrum banjoist who performed from the 1920s through to 1970, designed a six string, four course, electric guitar-like instrument with a plectrum scale length of 26 inches and plectrum tuning of CGDB. It was called the Banjoline
Banjoline
The Banjoline is a type of electric guitar developed by Eddie Peabody in conjunction with Rickenbacker. Although its name suggests a combination of banjo and mandolin, it is technically considered to be a type of plectrum guitar, a variant of the electric guitar, resembling the banjo and mandolin...

 and it was mainly manufactured by Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...

. The Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...

 version of the Banjoline
Banjoline
The Banjoline is a type of electric guitar developed by Eddie Peabody in conjunction with Rickenbacker. Although its name suggests a combination of banjo and mandolin, it is technically considered to be a type of plectrum guitar, a variant of the electric guitar, resembling the banjo and mandolin...

 was based on their hollow-bodied 360 guitar model and it had two pick ups with a selector switch and two sets of volume and tone controls.

The six strings were grouped into four courses with the C strings doubled as an octave pair, there were two G strings doubled in unison and the D and the B strings were single strings. It also had an Ac'cent tremolo arm. It was available as the standard model 6005 and the De Luxe model 6006 and it came in three colours Fireglo, Mapleglo, and Azureglo. The De Luxe 6006 was double-bound with checkered binding and it also had checkered binding on the headstock.

Due to its doubled strings and electric pick ups, its sound was similar to that of the doubled strings of the twelve string electric guitar that had been made famous by Rickenbacker as played by George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...

 of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 and Roger McGuinn
Roger McGuinn
James Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...

 of The Byrds
The Byrds
The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964. The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in 1973...

. Eddie Peabody recorded two LPs playing his banjo classics on the Banjoline
Banjoline
The Banjoline is a type of electric guitar developed by Eddie Peabody in conjunction with Rickenbacker. Although its name suggests a combination of banjo and mandolin, it is technically considered to be a type of plectrum guitar, a variant of the electric guitar, resembling the banjo and mandolin...

 for the Dot label, which still exist today. They are entitled Eddie Plays Smoothies and Eddie Plays More Smoothies.

It is reported that versions of the Banjoline
Banjoline
The Banjoline is a type of electric guitar developed by Eddie Peabody in conjunction with Rickenbacker. Although its name suggests a combination of banjo and mandolin, it is technically considered to be a type of plectrum guitar, a variant of the electric guitar, resembling the banjo and mandolin...

 were also built by other manufacturers, such as Fender, and possibly even Vega. Vega certainly built at least one tenor scale length solid-bodied two pick up electric guitar with six strings arranged in four courses. Unfortunately, although the Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker, is an electric and bass guitar manufacturer based in Santa Ana, California...

 Banjoline
Banjoline
The Banjoline is a type of electric guitar developed by Eddie Peabody in conjunction with Rickenbacker. Although its name suggests a combination of banjo and mandolin, it is technically considered to be a type of plectrum guitar, a variant of the electric guitar, resembling the banjo and mandolin...

 was made in quite large numbers, it was not commercially successful. However, it remains a fascinating instrument with a unique sound and a wide range of very interesting tuning possibilities.

Use and performers

Tenor guitars are now very closely associated with the tenor banjo with its similar standard CGDA fifths tuning and they initially came to significant commercial prominence in the late 1920s and early 1930s as tenor banjos were slowly being replaced by six string guitars in jazz bands and dance orchestras. Tenor banjo players could double on tenor guitars to get a guitar sound without having to learn the six string guitar. This is a practice still carried out by many contemporary jazz banjo players. This period is generally regarded as the initial "golden age" of the tenor guitar. Two of the McKendrick brothers, confusingly both named Mike - "Big" Mike and "Little" Mike, doubled on tenor banjo and tenor guitar in jazz bands dating from the 1920s. According to Bob Brozman
Bob Brozman
Bob Brozman is an American guitarist and ethnomusicologist.He has performed in a number of styles such as Gypsy jazz, calypso, Blues, ragtime, Hawaiian and Caribbean music. Brozman has also collaborated with musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds such as India, Africa, Japan, Papua New Guinea...

 in his book on National instruments, The History and Artistry of National Instruments, they both played National tenor guitars and they are both shown in the book in photos with their National tenor guitars. "Big" Mike McKendrick both managed and played with Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

 bands while "Little" Mike McKendrick played with various bands, including Tony Parenti
Tony Parenti
Tony Parenti was an American jazz clarinettist and saxophonist born in New Orleans, perhaps best-known for his decades of work in New York City.-Biography:...

. Brozman's book also features photos of Hawaiian music bands that include players with both National tenor and plectrum guitars. The Delmore Brothers were a very influential pioneering country music duet from the early 1930s to the late 1940s that featured the tenor guitar. The Delmore Brothers were one of the original country vocal harmonising sibling acts that established the mold for later similar acts, such as the Louvin Brothers
Louvin Brothers
The Louvin Brothers were an American country music duo composed of brothers Ira Lonnie Loudermilk and Charlie Elzer Loudermilk , better known as Ira and Charlie Louvin. They helped popularize close harmony, a genre of country music.-History:The brothers adopted the name Louvin Brothers in the...

, and even later, the Everly Brothers. The younger of the Delmore brothers, Rabon, played the tenor guitar as an accompaniment to his older brother, Alton's, six string guitar. Rabon favoured the Martin 0-18T tenor guitar and the Louvin Brothers later recorded a tribute album to the Delmores that featured Rabon's Martin 0-18T tenor played by mandolinist Ira Louvin, but tuned as the four treble guitar strings. Another interesting 1930s band to feature the tenor guitar was the Hoosier Hotshots, considered to be the creators of mid-western rural jazz. Their leader, Ken Trietsch, played the tenor guitar, as well as doubling on the tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...

.
In British Columbia, Canada, Professor Douglas Fraser plays thirties jazz with “The Genuine Jug Band” on a 1939 Gibson arch top tenor guitar. A musical style called Texas fiddling uses the tenor guitar as part of its rhythm accompaniment. Well known exponents of the tenor guitar in Texas fiddle music include Jerry Thomassen, Al Mouledous, and Gary Lee Moore. Thomassen has a signature tenor guitar named after him that is built by luthier Steve Parks. Gary Lee Moore has produced an excellent teaching resource for playing the tenor guitar as backup for Texas fiddling, entitled Getting Started in Fiddle Backup, obtainable as a free pdf download - see External Links. In the 1930s Selmer Guitars
The Selmer Company
Henri Selmer Paris company is a French family-owned enterprise, manufacturer of musical instruments based in Paris, France in 1885. It is known for its high-quality woodwind and brass instruments, especially saxophones, clarinets and trumpets...

 in Paris manufactured four string guitars based on guitar designs by the Italian luthier Mario Maccaferri that were to be marketed to banjo players as a second six-string guitar-like instrument. The two main four string models offered by Selmer included a regular tenor guitar, with a 23 inch scale length, tuned CGDA, and the Eddie Freeman Special, with a larger body and a longer scale length, using a reentrant
Reentrant tuning
A reentrant tuning is a tuning of a stringed instrument where the strings are not ordered from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch ....

 CGDA tuning. The Eddie Freeman Special had been designed by English tenor banjoist Eddie Freeman
Eddie Freeman (musician)
Eddie Freeman was a noted English jazz musician of the first half of the 20th century and a transcriber and teacher of flamenco guitar music in the latter half. Born Edward F...

 to have a better six string guitar sonority for rhythm guitar work than the normal tenor guitar with its very high A string. However, it was still tuned CGDA so that it could still be played by tenor banjoists. The Eddie Freeman Special was based on a six string model and it had a larger six string body and a six string scale length of 25.25 inches, rather than the tenor's smaller body and normal 23 inch scale length. The CGDA tuning used was re-entrant with the C and D tuned in the same octave and the G and the A tuned in the same octave, lowering the overall tone. The tuning and scale length give this very unusual four string guitar a sonority that is very close to that of the six string guitar, compared to a regular tenor guitar. Maccaferri heavily promoted the EFS guitar through the Melody Maker and Eddie Freeman even wrote a special tune for it called 'In All Sincerity'. There are also promotional photos of the well known British singer, banjoist and guitarist Al Bowlly
Al Bowlly
Albert Allick Bowlly was a Southern-African singer, songwriter, composer and band leader, who became a popular Jazz crooner during the 1930s in the United Kingdom and later, in the United States of America. He recorded more than 1,000 records between 1927 and 1941...

, playing the Eddie Freeman Special and it can be seen in use by Ray Noble's guitarist in a recording session photo of his orchestra. This guitar, unfortunately, was not commercially successful in the 1930s, possibly due to concerted resistance by the British six-string guitar fraternity, particularly Ivor Mairants
Ivor Mairants
Ivor Mairants was a professional jazz and classical guitarist, teacher and composer.With his wife Lily in 1958 he created Ivor Mairants Musicentre, a specialist guitar store in London that was the first of its kind in the country and is still among the foremost of its kind in the...

. Many were subsequently converted to much more valuable six-string models because of the Django Reinhardt connection. Originals of the Eddie Freeman Special are now very rare and are consequently highly valuable. Within the last three years, modern Maccaferri-style luthiers, such as the late David Hodson in the UK and Shelley Park in Canada, as well as others, have started building this four string model again due to demand from their customers. Many have now been made and they are becoming more widely played. They are considered to have a beautiful sound and offer a very broad range of tuning possibilities including CGDA, GDAE, DGBE, CGBD, DGBD and ADGB. As the six string guitar eventually became more popular in bands in the 1930s and 1940s, tenor guitars became much less played, although some tenor guitar models had been made in very large numbers throughout this period and are now still common. Tenor guitars came to prominence again in the 1950s and 1960s, possibly due to the effects of the Dixieland
Dixieland
Dixieland music, sometimes referred to as Hot jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s.Well-known jazz standard songs from the...

 jazz revival and the folk music boom. At this time, they were made by makers such as Epiphone, Gibson, Guild and Gretsch as archtop acoustics and/or electrics, as well as a range of flat top models by Martin. Around this time in the 1950s and 1960s, electric tenor guitars were also referred to as "lead guitars," although the rationale for this is not now clear, unless it was for marketing purposes. Lead playing on a six string guitar often involves just using its top four strings. A major player of the electric tenor as a lead guitarist in the bebop style from the 1940s to the 1970s was the brilliant jazz guitarist Tiny Grimes
Tiny Grimes
Lloyd "Tiny" Grimes was an American jazz and R&B guitarist. He was a member of the Art Tatum Trio from 1943 to 1944, was a backing musician on recording sessions, and later led his own bands, including a recording session with Charlie Parker...

, whose recordings with The Cats and The Fiddle and others are well worth investigating. Tiny used guitar (DGBE) tuning on his tenor guitars, rather than tenor CGDA tuning. The Martin 0-18T flat top acoustic tenor guitar was played in the late 1950s by Nick Reynolds
Nick Reynolds
Nick Reynolds was an American folk musician and recording artist. Reynolds was one of the founding members of The Kingston Trio, whose largely folk-based material captured international attention during the late fifties and early sixties.- Early life :Growing up in Coronado, California, his...

 of The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

. The acoustic tenor guitar became a popular instrument in the folk music boom of this period, particularly this model. In 1997, as a tribute to the Kingston Trio, Martin re-issued 34 limited edition 40th-anniversary commemorative sets (40 sets had been planned, but only 34 orders were received and executed) of the three main instruments used by the Kingston Trio to celebrate their founding in 1957. The commemorative set included a custom Martin Kingston Trio KT-18T tenor guitar with "The Kingston Trio" and “1957–1997” engraved on the fingerboard in mother-of-pearl and its label was signed by C. F. Martin IV, the CEO of Martin Guitars and 4 of the surviving members of the Kingston Trio. Since the death of Nick Reynolds in 2008, Martin Guitar Company has now announced that it will be producing the 0-18T Nick Reynolds Commemorative Custom Artist Edition. The Martin 0-18T Nick Reynolds Commemorative Custom Artist Edition encompasses many of the elements of the original 0-18T that Martin discontinued in 1989. This classic tenor guitar features premium solid tonewoods throughout: a top of Sitka spruce with ¼ inch non-scalloped braces, back and sides of genuine mahogany, and a neck carved from solid mahogany. Old Style 18 appointments abound, from the rosette and five-layer black/white top purfling to the tortoise brown body binding and Delmar tortoise brown endpiece. The finish likewise emulates the original: straw aging toner on the top, dark stain on the back and sides, and Martin’s flawless polished gloss lacquer on the body. Also stained dark to match the body, the neck receives a satin finish. The East Indian rosewood headplate provides a warm background for the familiar “C. F. Martin” gold decal. The headstock is also fitted with classic Grover Rotomatic enclosed chrome tuners. In a departure from Style 18 appointments, the fingerboard and bridge are crafted from black ebony. Abalone
Abalone
Abalone , from aulón, are small to very large-sized edible sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Haliotidae and the genus Haliotis...

 pearl position markers of diminishing size at the 5th, 7th and 9th frets lead to Nick Reynolds signature in mother of pearl between the 19th and 20th frets. The nut and compensated drop-in saddle are both genuine bone. A black ebony heelcap, and a beveled and polished black pickguard, complete the appointments. Each Martin 0-18T Nick Reynolds Commemorative Custom Artist Edition guitar bears an interior label that combines Nick Reynolds’ facsimile signature with the actual signature of Leslie Reynolds, Nick’s widow. A special tenor Geib style hardshell case is included with each guitar. Authorized C. F. Martin dealers are now taking orders for the open-ended 0-18T Nick Reynolds Commemorative Custom Artist Edition (including left-handed instruments, which may be requested at no additional cost). In the near future, a list of participating Martin dealers will be posted at http://www.martinguitar.com According to the Elderly Instruments
Elderly Instruments
Elderly Instruments is a musical instrument retailer in Lansing, Michigan, United States, with a reputation as a "megastore", a repair shop and a locus for folk music including bluegrass and "twang". Specializing in fretted instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, mandolins,...

 web site, this guitar is expected to become available from 30 June 2010. Martin Guitars had previously released a production tenor guitar - the Martin LXM Tenor "Little Martin" since they stopped regular production of the Martin 0-18T tenor in the late 1970s. The new Martin LXM tenor guitar can be seen here at Elderly Instruments http://www.elderly.com/new_instruments/items/LXMTEN.htm and Elderly also sell vintage tenor guitars.

Current use

In the last five years there has been an upsurge of interest in the tenor guitar and specialist luthiers such as Joel Eckhaus of Earnest Instruments now build a range of tenor guitar models or can adapt existing instruments. Tenors are now even being manufactured in small numbers again with models offered by Gold Tone Instruments, Breedlove guitars, Weber mandolins, the AF tenor by Aria Guitars, Bowerman Guitars, the Blueridge range of tenor guitars from Saga Music, and Lark in the Morning among others. Amistar, a builder of resonator guitars in the Czech Republic who closely follows in the footsteps of the Czech Dopyera Brothers' tradition of making National and Dobro resonator guitars in the U.S., offers several tenor guitar models that are comparable to those offered in their golden era by both National and Dobro, as well as a modern electric/acoustic tenor model, The Stager.

Modern players of the tenor guitar include Neko Case
Neko Case
Neko Case is an American singer-songwriter, best known for her solo career and her contributions as a member of the Canadian indie rock group The New Pornographers....

, Josh Rouse
Josh Rouse
Josh Rouse is an American folk/roots pop singer-songwriter.-Biography:Born in the small town of Paxton, Nebraska, he moved to various places in the Midwest during his childhood due to his father's military career...

, David Tiller, Adam Gnade
Adam Gnade
Adam Gnade is a San Diego, California-born American musician and author currently living on a farm in rural Kansas. In his bio he defines his music as "talking-songs", which he describes as mixing the spoken vocals of talking blues songs with country music, Appalachian folk, noise, psychedelic...

 , Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, guitarist, poet, and songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums, and is widely considered a feminist icon.-Biography:...

, Carrie Rodriguez
Carrie Rodriguez
Carrie Luz Rodriguez is a Mexican-American singer-songwriter and the daughter of Texan singer-songwriter David Rodriguez and well-known Texas painter Katy Nail, and is the granddaughter of prolific Texas essayist Frances Nail. She sings and plays the fiddle, mandobird and tenor guitar...

, Kim Warner and Joe Craven
Joe Craven
Joe Craven is a Freestyle folk, world and roots music multi-instrumentalist, singer and award winning educator. Joe is the Director of RiverTunes Music Camp and a Co-Director of the Wintergrass Youth Academy...

. Jason Molina played a tenor guitar for much of his early work as Songs: Ohia
Songs: Ohia
Jason Molina is an American singer-songwriter, originally from Lorain, Ohio. He first came to prominence performing and recording as Songs: Ohia, both in solo projects and with a rotating cast of musicians...

. The instrument is often used by musicians looking to replace or augment sounds produced by more conventional instruments. Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...

 features a tenor guitar on the title track of his 2004 release Delivery Man
The Delivery Man
The Delivery Man is the 21st studio album by Elvis Costello, released on Lost Highway Records, B0002593-02. It was recorded with the Imposters at Sweet Tea Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. It peaked at #40 on the Billboard 200.-Content:...

. On the video for "Club Date: Elvis Costello & the Imposters Live in Memphis" he is seen playing an orange 1958 Gretsch
Gretsch
The Gretsch Company was founded in 1883 by Friedrich Gretsch, a twenty-seven year old German immigrant recently arrived in the US. Friedrich Gretsch manufactured banjos, tambourines, and drums, until his death in 1895. His son, Fred, moved operations to Brooklyn, New York in 1916...

 Chet Atkins 6120 single cutaway
Cutaway (guitar)
In guitar construction, a cutaway is an indentation in the body of the instrument adjacent to the neck of the instrument, designed to allow easier access to the upper frets....

 archtop tenor guitar. The only known modern player who is known for using tenor guitars exclusively is roots rocker Lynda Kay of the Lonesome Spurs.

They find most use in their original role as rhythm instruments in jazz and blues, as well as combining with six string guitars in jazz, blues, folk or ethnic music settings. Being tuned in fifths, they also work well with both mandolin family and violin family instruments. They can also fit into the mould of 'ethnic' sounding instruments, such as the bouzouki
Bouzouki
The bouzouki , is a musical instrument with Greek origin in the lute family. A mainstay of modern Greek music, the front of the body is flat and is usually heavily inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The instrument is played with a plectrum and has a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but...

.

Tenor guitars can be very difficult to locate since they were mostly manufactured in the United States. Up until relatively recently they were usually regarded as musical oddities with little value but now they are becoming very attractive to both players and collectors, particularly the National resonator instruments.

Production tenor guitars by Gibson and Martin from the 1940s to the 1960s are still generally available, such as Gibson's ETG-150 electric/acoustic tenor guitar and Martin's 0-18T acoustic tenor guitar. Original tenor guitars in good condition by any of the major guitar makers are considered very desirable, both as instruments for playing, and as interesting collectibles in their own right. Some specially ordered custom tenor guitar models can be extremely rare since only one of them may have been manufactured.

Prominent UK users of the tenor guitar include the Lakeman brothers, Seth Lakeman
Seth Lakeman
Seth Bernard Lakeman is an English folk singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar, but has also mastered the viola and banjo...

 and Sean Lakeman, and John McCusker
John McCusker
John McCusker is a Scottish folk musician, record producer and composer. An accomplished fiddle player, he had a long association as a member of the Battlefield Band beginning in the 1990s and was later a band member and producer for folk singer Kate Rusby...

 and Ian Carr
Ian Carr (guitarist)
Ian Carr is an English guitarist and producer from Yorkshire, who has performed with Swåp and The Kate Rusby Band.Until the late 1990s, Carr was a part of The Kathryn Tickell Band...

, who both play with the Kate Rusby
Kate Rusby
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer and songwriter from Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sometimes known as The Barnsley Nightingale, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times...

 Band.

Terry Bohner, a character in the mockumentary film A Mighty Wind
A Mighty Wind
A Mighty Wind is a 2003 mockumentary about a folk music reunion concert in which three folk bands must reunite for a television performance for the first time in decades. It was directed by Christopher Guest...

about the U.S. folk music era of the 1950s and 1960s, uses a tenor guitar.

Sting used a tenor guitar on "Dead Man's Rope," from his 2003 album Sacred Love
Sacred Love
Sacred Love is the seventh studio album by Sting. The album was released on 30 September 2003. The album featured smoother, R&B-style beats and experiments collaborating with hip-hop artist Mary J. Blige and sitar player Anoushka Shankar...

. Jeff Martin, main songwriter of the band Idaho
Idaho (band)
Idaho is a rock band formed in 1992 in Los Angeles, California, founded as a duo by high school friends Jeff Martin and John K. Berry. They were signed to Caroline Records in December 1992 by Brian Long, then released the The Palms EP and Year After Year full-length in 1993...

, exclusively uses custom-made tenor guitars manufactured by California-based Carruthers Guitars.

Lou Barlow
Lou Barlow
Louis Knox Barlow is an American alternative rock musician and songwriter. A founding member of the groups Deep Wound, Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion. Barlow is credited with helping to pioneer the lo-fi style of rock music in the late 1980s and early 1990s...

 plays on a four string custom made electric guitar with four strings with a similar spacing like a bass guitar.

Wes Borland
Wes Borland
Wesley Louden Borland is an American musician and artist, best known as the guitarist for the band Limp Bizkit. He has been in several other bands as well including: Black Light Burns, The Damning Well, Goatslayer, Big Dumb Face, and Combichrist...

, the guitarist for nu-metal
Nu metal
Nu metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It is a fusion genre which combines elements of heavy metal with other genres, including grunge and hip hop...

 band Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 1995, the group's lineup consists of Fred Durst , Wes Borland , Sam Rivers , John Otto and DJ Lethal . The band achieved mainstream success with their second studio album Significant Other, released in 1999...

 plays a low-tuned (F#1-F#2-B2-E3) tenor guitar on the songs Nookie
Nookie (song)
"Nookie" is the first single released from the album Significant Other by Limp Bizkit. It was nominated for "Best Hard Rock Performance" at the 2000 Grammy Awards....

, The One, Full Nelson, and Stalemate
Three Dollar Bill, Yall$
Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ is the debut album by American nu metal band Limp Bizkit, released July 1, 1997 through Flip/Interscope. It was produced by Ross Robinson and was certified 2x Platinum by the RIAA in July 2001 in the US...

.

Churchill Brauninger played various tenor guitars with his San Francisco-based bands Dirtbox, Three Ball, and Crosley Field, ranging from traditional acoustic guitars such as Martin, Framus, Regal, Harmony and Kay, to short-scale bass guitars strung as tenor guitars, such as the Vox Panther, Kay SG, and Supro.

Further reading

— An Identification Guide for American Fretted Instruments.
— A comprehensive chord dictionary instructional guide featuring both standard and Irish tuning.
— Gain the freedom to play any chord, any song. Tenor Guitar Chord Genius books in most tunings
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK