At 06:01 AM 7/6/2005, Arthur Ness wrote: >Those early 6 course guitars were also double (and sometimes triple-) >strung. I don't know when the single strung guitar became common. But >that shouldn't be too difficult to determine. There's a fine new book out >on the early history of the C.F.Martin firm. By a professor at the U. of >North Carolina.
6-course guitars were rather unique to Spain. Elsewhere the progression seems to have been to leave 5-course guitars single strung just before it became commonplace to build guitars to carry six single strings. The earliest 6-string guitar of which I'm aware to carry a readily datable label is a 1785 Fabricatore in the collection of James Westbrook. Dr. Thomas Heck is serving as consultant to sell a G. Vinaccia for which he has transcribed the label's date as 1779, but I am a little skeptical of the transcription. Interesting to note that Fabricatore and the Vinaccia family were also at the fore of the development of the Neapolitan-type mandolin (i.e., that which modern players would recognize as a mandolin). Dr. Heck wrote a decent article on the topic of early 6-string guitars that is slightly outdated, but still a worthy read: <http://www3.uakron.edu/gfaa/stalking.html>. I am a great fan of C.F. Martin's pre-Civil War guitars and late 19th-early 20th c. Neapolitan-type mandolins. I have owned a few Martin instruments ranging up to as modern as 1929 and handled instruments spanning the whole range of the shop's production. There have been a great many texts devoted to the shop's history and product. C.F. Martin arrived in New York and began producing guitars in 1833. Before, he worked in the Staufer/Stauffer shop in Vienna. While Staufer was close to the fore of 6-string guitars as a new concept, Martin didn't enter the scene until the concept was a couple-few decades old. Best, Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
