Baritone guitar

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Mustapick Deep Baritone Guitar

The Baritone guitar is a variation on the standard guitar, differing with a longer scale length that allows it to be tuned to a lower range. The Danelectro Company was the first to introduce the baritone guitar in the late 1950’s. The baritone guitar was not originally a hit with either the general public, or the average guitar player. However, its unique sound quickly found its way into Surf music of the day, such as on some of the Beach Boys hits, as well as into background music for many movie soundtracks, especially the Italian Cowboy movies made in Europe starring greats like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. The Baritone was also used by country artists and can be heard on recordings by Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakam, George Jones and Willie Nelson, often doubling the acoustic bass part of the song. Folk-Pop singer Jimmie Rodgers also favored the baritone guitar, which can be heard to good effect in the opening bars of his recording of "Woman from Liberia". The baritone guitar was also used in some Barenaked Ladies and Stevie Ray Vaughan songs.

A normal guitar's standard tuning (from lowest string to highest) is EADGBE. Baritone guitars are usually tuned a fifth lower (ADGCEA), a fourth lower (BEADF#B) or an octave lower (EADGBE). Gretsch, Fender, Jerry Jones, and many other companies have produced baritone guitars since the sixties albeit always in low numbers due to low popularity.

Using a regular guitar to tune lower requires loosening the strings, which can cause them to rattle against the frets and also to produce a less powerful tone that is often less defined in pitch. So besides having a relatively large resonating chamber (in the case of acoustic instruments), baritone guitars produce their deeper tone by being larger in some other dimensions as well, allowing the strings to be tuned lower while remaining closer to or at normal tension (in the same way a bass guitar compensates its lower tuning by having longer and thicker strings than a standard guitar). On a normal acoustic guitar the strings are typically 24.9" to 25.7" long, and the 6 strings range in diameter from .012" to .054". The string lengths of various baritone designs range from 27" to 30", and the string gauges range from the normal .012-.054" set to sets as thick as .017-.080".

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