Baritone guitar

Overview

The the baritone guitar is a guitar variant with extended scale length, a typically larger body, and heavier internal bracing than a standard guitar — design choices that allow it to be tuned to a lower pitch (most commonly between a fourth and a fifth lower than the standard EADGBE tuning, giving either B to B or A to A — both transposed from standard tuning). The extended scale supplies enough string tension to keep the lower pitches responsive; without it, the strings would otherwise be too loose for clean response.

The instrument has been built in both electric and acoustic forms. Electric baritones — produced since the 1950s by Gretsch, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, ESP, PRS, Music Man, Danelectro, Schecter, Burns London, and many others — have always been niche but have a devoted following. Acoustic baritones are produced by Tacoma, Santa Cruz, Taylor, Martin, Alvarez, Ovation, and a number of specialist luthiers.

Origin & History

Earlier 19th-century low-tuned guitars existed (the contrabass guitar, the larger “harp guitars”), but the baritone guitar in its modern recognisable form was popularised in 1956, when the Danelectro company released its electric baritone. Danelectro’s lineup quickly attracted Hollywood film-music composers: the instrument’s distinctive tone — full bodied in the low register but still articulated rather than muddy — fit the emerging surf-music aesthetic of the late 1950s and the spaghetti-western film-score sound of the 1960s.

The instrument’s most famous early use was in the Tic-Tac bass sound of mid-century Nashville studios, where a baritone guitar doubled the upright-bass line an octave higher with a clearly articulated tone that the bass alone could not produce. The technique, used extensively in the Nashville Sound and rockabilly recordings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, established the baritone guitar as a studio session instrument well before it had any significant solo identity.

The 1960s and 1970s brought further use in surf music (the Ventures, the Beach Boys), in spaghetti-western film scoring (most prominently Ennio Morricone’s collaborations with Sergio Leone), and in country music (Glen Campbell, Buck Owens). From the 1990s onward the instrument found a renewed home in alternative rock, post-rock, doom metal, and modern atmospheric and ambient genres, where the lower fundamental and the longer sustain suit a sound aesthetic that the standard guitar cannot reach.

Construction & Materials

A baritone guitar typically has a scale length of 27 to 30.5 inches (685 to 775 mm), compared with the standard 25.5-inch (648 mm) Stratocaster scale or the 24.75-inch (629 mm) Gibson scale. Body and neck construction otherwise follows standard electric or acoustic guitar practice — solid bodies (alder, mahogany, ash) for electrics, dreadnought or jumbo bodies (spruce top with maple, mahogany, or rosewood back and sides) for acoustics.

Strings are heavier than standard, typically gauged 13-72 or 14-74 in B-to-B tuning. Pickups on electric baritones are usually broader-window humbuckers or P90s rather than narrow single coils, to capture the lower fundamentals cleanly. Acoustic baritones use heavier internal bracing to handle the increased string tension. Tuning machines must be capable of holding the heavier strings at low tension without slipping.

How It’s Played

The baritone guitar is played in the same way as a standard guitar — fingerstyle, plectrum, or hybrid — and uses the same chord shapes (transposed by the tuning interval). A standard E-major chord shape on a B-tuned baritone produces a B-major chord; the player thinks in standard chord shapes but sounds at the new pitch.

Standard technique covers everything the standard guitar covers — strummed chords, single-note lead lines, fingerstyle arrangements, alternate tunings — but with the lower register opening up textural possibilities the standard guitar cannot reach. The instrument is particularly effective for chord-melody arrangements where the bass note can carry weight while the melody sits comfortably in the middle register.

Cultural Significance

The baritone guitar has occupied a recognisable but narrow niche across multiple genres for nearly seven decades. The spaghetti-western film-score association — Ennio Morricone’s tremolo-baritone melody on the title themes for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and related Sergio Leone films — gave the instrument a lasting cinematic identity. The Nashville Tic-Tac bass technique made it a studio standard in the late 1950s. The 1990s alternative-rock and modern-metal revival (Pat Smear, Brian Setzer, Alex Lifeson, John Petrucci, James Hetfield, Stephen Carpenter of Deftones) gave it a new generation of association with heavy textures and atmospheric writing.

In contemporary practice the baritone guitar appears regularly in film and television scoring, in instrumental rock, and in the small but active singer-songwriter community that prefers its lower fundamental as accompaniment to a tenor or low-voice singer.

Notable Examples & Recordings

• Nashville reference: Grady Martin’s Tic-Tac bass work on Marty Robbins’s El Paso (1959).
• Spaghetti western reference: Ennio Morricone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), the central instrumental melody.
• Modern rock reference: Pat Smear (Foo Fighters), Stephen Carpenter (Deftones), John Petrucci (Dream Theater).
• Acoustic reference: Bob Brozman’s baritone-acoustic work, Pat Donohue, Stephen Bennett.

Related Instruments

• Guitar — the standard six-string Spanish guitar.
• Seven-string guitar — an alternative way of extending the low range.
• Russian guitar — the seven-string open-G tuning Russian variant.
• Bass guitar — the electric bass instrument tuned an octave below.
• Acoustic bass guitar — an alternative low-register acoustic instrument.
• Tenor guitar — the four-string variant tuned in fifths.
• Cigar-box guitar — a related folk-string-instrument tradition with its own tuning conventions.

Where to Hear It

Live: at modern rock, metal, and instrumental concerts; in country and Nashville-style sessions; in many film-score recording dates. Recordings are widely available across the genres mentioned above; the Ennio Morricone film-score catalogue is the canonical introduction to the spaghetti-western baritone-guitar sound.

• Wikipedia: Baritone guitar
• Wikidata: Baritone guitar (Q64038)
• DBpedia: Baritone guitar
• Wikimedia Commons: Baritone guitars

Learning Resources

A student baritone guitar costs around 300 to 700 USD; intermediate Danelectro, Squier, or Gretsch baritones 800 to 1,500 USD; professional Fender Bass VI, Gibson, PRS, Schecter, or boutique baritones 2,000 to 5,000 USD; high-end custom and acoustic baritones substantially more. Standard guitar method material applies directly with the tuning interval transposed mentally; specialised baritone-guitar method material is rare. The Mel Bay Baritone Guitar Method and a small number of YouTube tutorial channels document the contemporary practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is the baritone guitar tuned?
Most commonly to B-E-A-D-F♯-B (a perfect fourth below standard guitar tuning) or A-D-G-C-E-A (a perfect fifth below). Both tunings keep the same fourths-and-major-third interval scheme, so all standard chord shapes work, just transposed.

Is the baritone guitar a bass?
No. The baritone guitar overlaps with the upper range of the bass guitar but is built and played as a six-string instrument, fits within standard guitar technique, and produces a treble-and-mid sound that sits clearly above the bass register.

What’s the difference between a baritone guitar and a Bass VI?
The Fender Bass VI is a six-string electric instrument tuned an octave below standard guitar (E1-A1-D2-G2-B2-E3) — essentially a six-string bass. A baritone guitar is tuned a fourth or fifth below standard (B1-E2-A2-D3-F♯3-B3 — or A1-D2-G2-C3-E3-A3) — between standard guitar and Bass VI. They overlap but are distinct instruments.

Can I tune a regular guitar down to baritone pitch?
Briefly and partially, yes — but the strings will be too slack at the lower tunings, the intonation will be poor, and the tone will be muddy. A genuine baritone needs the longer scale length to produce the higher string tension required for the lower fundamentals.

Did Ennio Morricone use a baritone guitar?
Yes — the central melodies of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and several other Leone film scores were played on Danelectro and similar baritone electrics, often by the studio guitarist Bruno Battisti D’Amario. The instrument is one of the defining sounds of the spaghetti-western genre.