Baglamas Baglamas The baglamas () (plural "baglamades") or baglamadaki (), a long necked bowl-lute, is a plucked string instrument used in Greek music; it is a version of the bouzouki pitched an octave higher (nominally D-A-D), with unison pairs on the four highest strings and an octave pair on the lower D. Musically, the baglamas is most often found supporting the bouzouki in the Piraeus city style of rebetiko. The body is often hollowed out from a piece of wood ("skaftos", construction) or else made from a gourd, but there are also baglamas with staved backs. Its small size made it
Bouzouki better suited to the kind of virtuoso playing he was famous for. Today, the tetrachordo is the most common bouzouki used in Greek music, though a few traditionalists still prefer the trichordo, particularly for the older "rebetika" style of playing. In addition to developing the modern tetrachordo bouzouki, Manolis Hiotis was a pioneer the use of amplification for the instrument, which he may have been using as early as 1945. However, the earliest documented use of amplification for the bouzouki comes from a 1952 photograph, showing Vasilis Tsitsanis and Yiannis Papaioannou playing bouzoukis, each with an electric guitar-style pick-up attached