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 Novax Guitars. Five of the strings are tuned to the standard guitar's upper five (A, D, G, B, E), while three of the strings are tuned to the standard bass guitar's three lowest (E, A, D). The bass and treble sections have separate pickups and are sent to separate amplifiers. Hunter also has a ten-string guitar based on the same principle—a combination of standard six-string guitar and standard four-string bass. The eight-string guitar is used by modern heavy metal guitarists such as Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström of Meshuggah, Dino Cazares of Fear Factory, Stephen Carpenter of Deftones, Greg Burgess