Way back in the day, tenor guitars were made to encourage banjo players to pick up the guitar and proved popular with bands like the Kingston Trio. There are a few high profile tenor players around today such as Neko Case, Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac), Elvis Costello and of course Seth Lakeman.
I myself have a few tenor guitars including an old mahogany Martin and as you would expect it sounds great, but one thing with old Martin tenor (and 6 string) guitars is that although the neck will be reinforced, it wouldn’t have an adjustable truss rod (Martin introduced adjustable truss rods sometime in the mid 1980’s, however this little beauty does! The reason I mention that it has an adjustable truss rod is because over the years, old tenor guitars tend to have suffered numerous string gauges and various tunings meaning that the neck can be in need of a reset.
Here’s some other spec for you….
- Size 5 – 12 fret body size with 14 fret neck joint
- Solid genuine Mahogany top back and sides
- Dovetail neck joint
- Genuine mahogany neck
- 2 way adjustable truss rod
Bone nut & saddle - Solid East Indian Rosewood Fingerboard & Bridge
- 23” scale length
- 1 ¼” width at nut
- 1 ½” width at 12th fret
- Supplied in a luxurious CF Martin Custom Shop embroidered case
Don’t forget, this UK artist edition guitar is made in the custom and is signed by Seth and the CEO Chris Martin making it a very unique instrument.
In short, 6 strings are great but 4 can be just as much fun.