Irish bouzouki even 27 inches (66 to 68 cm). These longer-scaled instruments are generally acknowledged to possess greater volume, sustain, and tonal richness but some players find the stretches involved in fingering too difficult and so prefer shorter scale lengths. Irish bouzouki The Irish bouzouki () is an adaptation of the Greek bouzouki (Greek: μπουζούκι). Johnny Moynihan is credited with bringing the first "tetrachordo" (4 courses of strings) Greek bouzouki to Ireland and retuning it to G-D-A-D (in intervals he first used on the mandolin). In the mid-1960s, Moynihan established a presence for the instrument in Irish music with the folk trio
Irish bouzouki families are related and the bouzouki is a part of that. At any rate, since the genesis of the Irish bouzouki in the late 1960s, luthiers have incorporated so many aspects of mandolin construction, particularly when building archtop Irish bouzoukis, that for most it is a moot point. For many builders and players, the terms "bouzouki", "cittern", and "octave mandolin" are more or less synonymous. The name cittern is often applied to instruments of five courses (ten strings), especially those having a scale length between 20 and 22 inches (500mm and 550mm). They are also occasionally called "10 string bouzoukis"