Acoustic bass guitar of acoustic bass guitars. The bajo sexto, with six pairs of strings, resembles a twelve-string guitar tuned an octave lower. The heavy gauge strings generate a large string tension, yet the guitar is built relatively lightly. Musicians began to use the bajo sexto in Texas in the 1920s with the rise of "Tex-Mex" music, and remains in common use to play parts that would be played by the piano in traditional American popular music. It matches the standard tuning of a 12-string guitar, one octave lower. The tuning of these instruments is (capital letters are an octave lower than small
Eight-string guitar and six-string variants. The standard tuning (from low to high) is F#, B, E, A, D, G, B, E. Many prefer to tune the F# to a low E (E1), the same note as the lowest string on a four-string electric bass in standard tuning, and providing the guitar with a fuller sound by having three different E strings. Like the seven-string, the first mass-produced eight-string guitar was made by Ibanez guitars in Japan; the RG2228. The main design issue faced with an eight-string guitar is tuning stability with the lower strings. This is due to the neck being constructed