Roosebeck Lute-Guitar (6 String, Variegated Bowl Back, Geared Tuners) Padded Nylon Gig Bag

The Roosebeck lute-guitar is an attractive and lightweight instrument of a similar size and scale to a standard classical guitar but with a bowl back body like a lute. In keeping with the character of a lute, the bowl-shaped body is achieved by edge-gluing together staves of uniformly thin hardwoods bent to a specific shape with no heavy internal bracing to retain its form. The bowl is made of two alternating woods: Lacewood is a light-colored hardwood that has color similar to maple and has distinctive rays that provide what is known as a "beeswing" pattern. A member of the sycamore family, its timbre characteristics are similar to maple generally providing a brighter tone than rosewood. The dark-colored wood is sheesham rosewood that affords a warmer mellower tone. The combination of the two offers a blended timbre as well as a desirable look. European spruce is used for the soundboard and, in keeping with the design of 16th-Century lutes, its soundhole is a carved rosette in an attractive geometric pattern which is cut into the soundboard itself and is not inlaid of different material. Most exciting is that the soundboard bracing pattern follows bracing used in world-famous Kohno classical guitars. The mahogany neck has a shape is similar to a classical guitar with a 51mm (2 inch) wide nut of bone. The top of the peg box has a woman's head carved on the top. Using standard nylon classical guitar strings, it is tuned like a guitar in E4, B3, G3, D3, A2, E2 tuning. If it is to be used for lute music, the 3rd string may be tuned a semi-tone down to F# to enable lute fingering. The guitar is outfitted with smooth-operating gold tuners with black ebonized tuning key buttons. Padded Gig Bag. Free Shipping.

Important Specifications:

Item overall: 41" L x 7" H x 12.5" W
Body/Bowl: 20" L x 7" H x 12.5" W
Body & Neck: The body is sheesham and varigated lacewood and neck is mahogany
Nut: bone; Neck at Nut: 2" W; Nut: 2" W
Neck at Body Joint: 2.25" W Strings at the Nut: 1.75" W
Strings at Bridge: 2.25" W
Scale Length: 26"
Soundboard: The sound board is spruce and has 1 laser cut rosette sound hole
Frets: There are 19 metal frets
Tuning Pegs/Levers: There are 6 mechanical geared right angle tuning pegs/levers with a 14:1 ratio.
Strings: 6 like a classical guitar
Tuning: We recommend using the standard for classical guitar tuning: 1 (E4), 2 (B3), 3 (G3), 4 (D3), 5 (A2), 6 (E2).