Octave twelve Octave twelve An octave twelve is a type of 12-string guitar fitted with a short-scale neck and a small solid body. It is tuned one octave higher than a standard guitar giving it the tonal range of a mandolin and enabling a guitarist to achieve a mandolin sound without learning mandolin fingering. The effect is similar to that of capoing a standard 12-string guitar at its twelfth fret. However, unlike a standard 12-string guitar, the courses of strings tuned in unison, rather than in octaves. The octave twelve was invented by engineers at Vox, which sold the octave twelve as
Romantic guitar Gagliano in Naples. This guitar, which was displayed in the Heyer Museum, Cologne before that museum was dispersed, showed some important differences from the modern classical guitar. It had 5 single strings, inlaid brass frets, a long neck relative to string length (the fretboard meeting the body at the 11th fret), a pegged bridge and a characteristic figure-8 shaped tuning head. It lacked only a sixth string to make it identical with the early romantic guitar. The earliest extant six-string guitar was built in 1779 by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) in Naples, Italy. The Vinaccia family of luthiers