It enables sending each of its six strings to one separate channel of an amplifier, and further to six separate loudspeakers in a room. It is played with finger technique on medium steel strings and sounds like an electric guitar. The instrument was built in 1998. It was presented at the Frankfurt Music Fair in 1999. The first radio live transmission (surround > stereo), and the first surround live concert took place in Munich in 2002. After several more years of technical and musical development, the Huber preamplification was added in 2007. Surround guitar concerts in Vienna 2007, Prague 2008, Munich, Hamburg, Münster, Lüneburg, Meaford, Ontario (Canada), and Berlin 2009, followed.