4 string guitar - what is it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Armistice
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Armistice

Armistice

Son of Yoda
Just sitting watching the Elvis Costello live in Memphis DVD and on the track "Delivery Man" he's playing what appears to be a Gretsch 4 string guitar - doesn't sound like it's in standard tuning either, maybe tuned as a mando?

Anyone know what the hell it is?

And no, it's not a bass in case anyone was going to suggest that, it's a big semi-acoustic body with a very thin neck and only 4 strings...
 
Yeah, it's a tenor guitar but they've been around for a lot longer than that.
 
If it was a tenor guitar (although all the ones I have seen have a small body), it is indeed tuned in 5ths like a mandolin.
 
ggunn said:
If it was a tenor guitar (although all the ones I have seen have a small body), it is indeed tuned in 5ths like a mandolin.
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Tenor guitars are tuned all sorts of different ways, but most of the guys I know who play them tune them like the top four on a guitar, D-G-B-E. Other guys tune them to open chords, or else like a tenor banjo (which is where they were most popular, in the thirties when guitar started to take over the banjo in popular and jazz recordings/bands. The guys who had been playing tenor banjo switched to tenor guitars.)


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Thanks peoples..

Hey Light - do you actually know who originally said the "talking about music is like dancing about architecture" thing? Been trying to find out - it seems to have been attributed to all sorts of people..
 
Rabon Delmore of the Delmore Brothers(one of Country music's most important and influential groups) played a tenor guitar. He used it like Light is talking about for that banjo style, dixieland rhythm while his brother Alton did incredible six-string flatpicking over it. I had never heard of or seen one till I got into the Delmores and I haven't found them being used anywhere else(though I haven't really been looking).
 
4 strings. I'm hip. Simplify. That's what it's all about. Less is more.
 
daryle_ackerman said:
How much? Did you have to e-mail him to get a quote? I would do so myself, but it's probably beyond my budget.
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i didn't e-mail him myself, but a member at Harmony-central did and he said it was something like $2500...
 
I'm probably dating myself for being somewhat archaic but check some of the old Kingston Trio recordings from the late 1950s - mid 1960s. Tenor guitar figured very prominently in their sound. Nick Reynolds tuned it to the octave of a soprano ukulele.
 
There is a bit of a resurgence of tenor guitar interest among mandolin players lately.

Usually tuned like a mandola CGDA.
 
YeshuasFan said:
I'm probably dating myself for being somewhat archaic but check some of the old Kingston Trio recordings from the late 1950s - mid 1960s. Tenor guitar figured very prominently in their sound. Nick Reynolds tuned it to the octave of a soprano ukulele.
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I was a big Kingston Trio fan myself; I taught myself guitar basics by learning their songs. I still trot out "MTA" from time to time.
 
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