The first consideration in the development of the guitarrone was the transfer of Renaissance and Baroque lute music to the guitar. This is only possible to a very limited extent, especially with the baroque lute due to the many additional strings and the extended tonal space in the bass range. The second consideration was the transcription of music for keyboard instruments, which causes even greater problems in both the bass and treble ranges, since the arranger is constantly forced to octave and accept breaks in both the bass and the melody in arrangements for guitar. At the same time, the entire "normal" guitar literature should be playable without any compromises. Very quickly the idea of adding a higher string and several lower strings came up. To my astonishment, I found out while researching on the Internet that the guitarist Paul Galbraith has been playing a guitar with a high a' string and a low _B string since the 90s. However, with this instrument, the downward pitch range is too small for lute music, and does not go up far enough for the transmission of piano music, since Galbraith's fretboard has the normal number of guitar frets (19 or 20). By expanding the fretboard to 31 frets while making access to the high frets much easier with an extended cutaway and the addition of another two low strings, this is much easier. The "normal tuning" of the guitarrone is: a', e' ,h ,g ,d ,A ,E ,D ,_H ,_G. Retuning the 10th string to _E results in a usable range of six octaves. The second version of the guitar, which was completed in November 2014, had the following changes:- 11 instead of 10 strings, a', e', h ,g ,d ,A ,E ,D ,C , _H ,_G (_A)- 13 instead of 10 tuning pegs- reduction of the frets to 27- neck-body transition at the 12th instead of the 14th fret- the possibility of stringing double strings (e.g. like in a renaissance lute string 1 single, strings 2-6 double)- to facilitate the retuning to chitarron tuning (strings 1+2 an octave lower), two inactive strings run past the fretboard, the have their own tuning pegs and bridge holes. If you want to change the tuning, you relax the active strings, place them next to the fretboard and tighten the other two. With a little practice, this takes about 30 seconds.
