Extended Range Guitar

11 String Guitar 

Like most classical guitarists, I play the conventional Spanish guitar with 3 nylon treble strings and 3 silver wound nylon filament strings. 

While I still enjoy the 6 string guitar, I have always appreciated lute music and early music in general. I have also made many guitar arrangements of music for other instruments such as lute and keyboard.

The lute is pear shaped, largely strung with gut courses (mostly pairs of strings tuned in unisons or octaves), has a low action and is most effectively played with the flesh of the fingertips. These points make it difficult for a musician to combine performing on lute and guitar using right hand fingernails and modern guitar technique.

My interest in making arrangements of other instruments' music and in playing early music more faithfully than possible on 6 string guitar, eventually led me to seek a guitar that had additional strings. In 2019 I commissioned my first 11 string guitar from the Swedish luthier Heikki Rousu.

11 String Guitar in Conventional Tuning by Heikki Rousu, 2019

On this guitar, the first 6 strings are as on a normal guitar and the extra bass strings descend diatonically from the E 6th string, as in the Romantic tuning of a 10 string guitar. Strings are usually tuned (1-11) E, B, G, D, A, E, D, C, B, A, G but the extra basses are altered chromatically depending on key. 11 string guitars can alternatively have all strings of the same length and on the fretboard, in which case special strings are needed which gradually increase in thickness.

On my guitar the highest sounding 8 strings are frettable & of the same length (approximately 650 mm scale length). Strings 9-11 operate like diatonic harp strings, played open, and increase incrementally in length. The left hand stretch beyond 8 fretted strings is rarely needed in lute music so having a fretboard under strings 1-8 only, makes the neck less heavy. Having strings 9-11 as unfrettable, gradually increasing in length, means normal E 6th strings can be used, ensuring an even tone and easy availability. Strings 7 & 8 are respectively high and extra high tension E strings.

The advantages of my guitar compared to 6 string guitar are:

• more sympathetic resonance 

• wider range in the low register

• ability to play directly from Renaissance lute tablature (with 3=F# tuning)

• more faithful transcriptions of Bach's music and better arrangements of the music of other instruments

• somewhat easier left hand fingering (as more bass notes are available as open strings).

The potential disadvantages are:

• frequent and more complex damping of the bass notes is needed to avoid a sustain pedal effect when not wanted

• right hand disorientation due to the unfamiliarity of the position of the extra basses, necessitating much practice, time and effort to use them effectively and accurately.

Other Extended Range Guitars:

At one time or another I have used other, differently designed 11 and 13 string guitars, all excellent. These were / are:

• 11 String Alto Guitar by Roman Kutzenov, 2021. Similar to the above guitar by Heikki Rousu but pitched up a tone, fingerboard joining body at the 10th fret and only 7 strings under the fretboard. Roman is not currently building guitars but his instruments are known for their power due to modern construction methods.

• 11 String Guitar by Martin Woodhouse, 2025. Martin is best known for his 8 string Brahms guitars played by artists such as Paul Galbraith and Joseph Ehrenpreis. www.woodhouse-guitars.co.uk 

• 13 String Guitar by Michael Sander, 2021. This is tuned in Baroque lute D minor tuning, specifically designed for reading music by S. L. Weiss and his contemporaries. In this tuning it is possible to read directly from the surviving original manuscripts written in French tablature. https://www.feinegitarren.de/en/