Electric mandolin 4-string version. A related instrument, the Bahian guitar, was developed in Brazil beginning in the 1940s. Bahian guitars typically have a solid body and 4 or 5 single-course strings tuned in fifths, but are considered to be electric versions of the cavaquinho rather than the mandolin. Both four string single course and eight string double course solid body mandolins have been produced by several makers, as well as five string single course models. From 1956 to 1976, Fender produced a four string version which they simply called the "Fender Electric Mandolin". Its body shape was based on a smaller version
Mandolin of the Neapolitan." Brescian mandolins that have survived in museums have four gut strings instead of six. The mandolin was tuned in fifths, like the Neapolitan mandolin. In his 1805 mandolin method, "Anweisung die Mandoline von selbst zu erlernen nebst einigen Uebungsstucken von Bortolazzi", Bartolomeo Bortolazzi popularised the Cremonese mandolin, which had four single-strings and a fixed bridge, to which the strings were attached. Bortolazzi said in this book that the new wire strung mandolins were uncomfortable to play, when compared with the gut-string instruments. Also, he felt they had a "less pleasing...hard, zither-like tone" as compared to the gut