Reason #9 for owning a Blueridge guitar – Tenor Guitars!
Like their Earthquake parlor guitars from bygone days, Blueridge makes four-string tenor guitars based on the original C. F. Martin Designs from the 1920s, but available for an enjoyably affordable price in the Contemporary Series. They offer all sorts of musical possibilities for harmonizing with other players, or for solo experimentation.
Initially designed for tenor banjo players who wanted the sound of a guitar, these unique four-stringers quickly became an integral part of folk music groups like the Kingston Trio, country music acts like the Delmore brothers, while also seeing duty in the jazz orchestras of Louis Armstrong and many others. You may not know it, but you’ve likely heard tenor guitars on contemporary recordings by artists as diverse as Limp Bizkit, Annie Di Franco, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Elvis Costello, and Amanda Shires!
These 14-fret Blueridge tenor guitars have a slender neck with a 22.9” string scale and an 0-size body. Available in two rosewood models, BR-70T with abalone inlays and BR-60T without abalone, and two mahogany models, BR-40T and the BR40TCE that has a cutaway and onboard L. R. Baggs electronics!
They can be played in the traditional tenor tuning C3−G3−D4−A4 (the same as a viola or mandola,) or D3−G3−B3−E4, the same tuning as a baritone ukulele (identical to the bottom four strings on a guitar.) In Celtic music, tenor guitars are strung to be tuned one octave below standard violin tuning, G2−D3−A3−E4. In all cases, they add a clear, ringing quality to any arrangement, and are a lot of fun to play all by themselves.
