Lute-Guitar, Steel String

The steel string lute-guitar is an attractive and lightweight instrument of a similar size and scale to a standard classical guitar but with a body like a lute. In keeping with the character of a lute, the bowl-shaped body is achieved by edge-gluing together staves of uniformly thin Lacewood bent to a specific shape with no heavy internal bracing to retain its form. Lacewood is a light-colored hardwood that has color similar to maple and has distinctive rays that provide what is known as a "beeswing" pattern. A member of the sycamore family, its timbre characteristics are similar to maple generally providing a brighter tone than rosewood. European spruce is used for the soundboard and, in keeping with the design of 16th-Century lutes, its soundhole is a carved rosette in an attractive geometric pattern which is cut into the soundboard itself and is not inlaid of different material. Most exciting is that the soundboard bracing pattern follows bracing used in world-famous Kohno classical guitars. The mahogany neck has a shape is similar to a classical guitar with a 45mm wide nut of ebony. The top of the peg box has a woman's head carved on the top. Using standard steel classical guitar strings, it is tuned like a guitar in e, b, G, D, A, E tuning. If it is to be used for lute music, the 3rd string may be tuned a semi-tone down to F# to enable lute fingering. The guitar is outfitted with smooth-operating gold tuners with black ebonized tuning key buttons. The overall length is 1030mm and the scale length is 647mm, similar to a normal guitar. Satin lacquer finish. Special Note: The strings put on the instruments in our workshops, while playable, are put through some rigorous testing. They should probably be replaced for improved playability, sound quality, and better tuning shortly after you receive the instrument.