
Looking cool: My Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom with its Gibson buddy.
The baritone electric is a unique, quirky instrument that can go where regular guitars can’t.
When the term “baritone guitar” comes up, it’s often met with either indifference or “Oh, that’s the guitar from the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns.” But the baritone electric is a unique, quirky instrument that can go where regular guitars can’t. Let’s take a brief look at it and discuss several of its uses in music production.
The all-knowing Wikipedia describes the baritone guitar as “a variation of the standard guitar with a longer scale length that allows it to be tuned to a lower range.” The Wiki sages go on to tell us that the baritone first appeared in classical music and that Danelectro was the first to introduce the electric baritone in the late 1950s. They also proclaim that the baritone was not originally popular with players or listeners. Ha! Thanks, Wikipedia—I like that last part!
I like to think of the baritone as a cross between a 6-string guitar and a 4-string bass. A baritone has both growling lows and shimmering highs, and it uses very thick strings. For example, the D’Addario Baritone Nickel Round Wound XL set I use on my Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom is gauged .014, .018, .026, .044, .056, and .068. Baritones are often tuned a perfect fourth lower than standard: B–E–A–D–F#–B (low to high). Two other popular tunings are A–A (A–D–G–C–E–A) and C–C (C–F–Bb–Eb–G–C).
Besides Fender and Danelectro, other companies have produced baritones over the years, including Jerry Jones, Ibanez, Schecter, Gretsch, and Music Man. These manufacturers still have baritones in production, as do Eastwood, ESP, and Taylor. You can find other models—including Danelectro’s cool Doubleneck Baritone/6- String—on the used market.
Scale length varies on different instruments, but as a reference, my Jaguar has a 28.5" scale, and the Jerry Jones JJ Original Single- Cutaway measures 28". Gibson made a Les Paul Studio baritone for two years, and it has a 28" scale, as well.
Made popular by the Band’s Rick Danko, the Fender Bass VI is often referred to as a baritone guitar. Jack Bruce briefly played one during Cream’s early days. The Bass VI has a 30.3" scale, which puts it in the realm of a short-scale bass, and it’s often tuned an octave below standard guitar.
Yes, Duane Eddy played a baritone on the Peter Gunn theme and in Westerns and surf music in the ’60s, but that was just the beginning. The Cure made great use of the baritone in the ’80s, and then, in the ’90s, guitarists got heavy with it. Bands such as System of a Down, Type O Negative, and Dream Theater have featured them, too. Mike Mushok of Staind had a signature Ibanez model, but he now plays a signature PRS with a 27.7" scale. His string gauges run from .014–.068.
My producer/engineer friend D. James Goodwin (the Bravery, Norah Jones, Devo) turned me on to the baritone. He currently uses two models, a reissue of the above-mentioned Fender Bass VI and a Jerry Jones. “I put a Tele-like fixed bridge on my Bass VI,” Goodwin notes, “to avoid the tuning issues you get with the tremolo. This makes it much more stable. It’s heavy and feels old, which I love. The Jerry Jones definitely sounds more hollow and not as thick as the Fender. It also responds to effects in an odd way, which is likely due to the pickups. It’s a cool bari, but I use it mostly for texture or something out of the ordinary.”
Goodwin tunes his baritones differently. “My Jerry Jones is tuned G–C–F–B%–D%–G. I tune my Fender Bass VI to E–E, an octave below standard. The Fender has a really rubbery quality when you tune it that low, and it sounds amazing. Complete Duane Eddy tone! I use it a lot to double bass parts. It can thicken a bass track without making it muddier. For instance, I’ll double the bass with fuzzed-out baritone in a chorus or a bridge of a song, just to give it some extra guts. It makes things feel more powerful. But sometimes it just becomes a chordal texture—I’ll play chords, maybe down an octave from a guitar, just to create an interesting, wide texture.”
But the baritone is not just for the bottom of a mix. “I sometimes use it as a lead instrument, played up high,” Goodwin continues. “The timbre becomes dark and very unexpected, which is a nice twist in a common guitar solo.”
Both Goodwin and I have also replaced the stock pickups in our Fenders with Curtis Novak models, which are reasonably priced and drop right into either a Jaguar or Bass VI. While Novak doesn’t make a specific “baritone” pickup, he’ll custom-wind them to your specs.
I use my baritone in several different ways, as well. It can handle thumping low-end bass parts and super thin, nasally high parts. It sounds great with effects, and I often rely on my standard SoundToys EchoBoy delay and Eventide H3000 Harmonizer presets to create a wide, dimensional sound field. My bari Jag sounds killer plugged into my old Gibson and Magnatone amps with some ’verb and vibrato.
For those of you who watch Pawn Stars on the History Channel, you can hear my distorted baritone during each episode. It’s on one of the bumpers where the program goes to the quiz, and it sometimes appears on cues throughout the show. Sounds kind of like a bass, but kind of not.
Baritone guitars are a different animal. They’re sometimes odd to play due to their tunings, the necks can bend because of the increased string tension, and all the switches on my Jaguar drive me crazy. But plug one in and hit a chord, and you’ll say “Damn, that’s cool!”
[Updated 2/7/22]
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The National New Yorker lived at the forefront of the emerging electric guitar industry, and in Memphis Minnie’s hands, it came alive.
This National electric is just the tip of the iceberg of electric guitar history.
On a summer day in 1897, a girl named Lizzie Douglas was born on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, the first of 13 siblings. When she was seven, her family moved closer to Memphis, Tennessee, and little Lizzie took up the banjo. Banjo led to guitar, guitar led to gigs, and gigs led to dreams. She was a prodigious talent, and “Kid” Douglas ran away from home to play for tips on Beale Street when she was just a teenager. She began touring around the South, adopted the moniker Memphis Minnie, and eventually joined the circus for a few years.
(Are you not totally intrigued by the story of this incredible woman? Why did she run away from home? Why did she fall in love with the guitar? We haven’t even touched on how remarkable her songwriting is. This is a singular pioneer of guitar history, and we beseech you to read Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues by Beth and Paul Garon.)
Following the end of World War I, Hawaiian music enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity. On their travels around the U.S., musicians like Sol Ho’opi’i became fans of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, leading to a great cross-pollination of Hawaiian music with jazz and blues. This potent combination proved popular and drew ever-larger audiences, which created a significant problem: How on earth would an audience of thousands hear the sound from a wimpy little acoustic guitar?
This art deco pickguard offers just a bit of pizzazz to an otherwise demure instrument.
In the late 1920s, George Beauchamp, John and Rudy Dopyera, Adolph Rickenbacker, and John Dopyera’s nephew Paul Barth endeavored to answer that question with a mechanically amplified guitar. Working together under Beauchamp and John Dopyera’s National String Instrument Corporation, they designed the first resonator guitar, which, like a Victrola, used a cone-shaped resonator built into the guitar to amplify the sound. It was definitely louder, but not quite loud enough—especially for the Hawaiian slide musicians. With the guitars laid on their laps, much of the sound projected straight up at the ceiling instead of toward the audience.
Barth and Beauchamp tackled this problem in the 1930s by designing a magnetic pickup, and Rickenbacker installed it in the first commercially successful electric instrument: a lap-steel guitar known affectionately as the “Frying Pan” due to its distinctive shape. Suddenly, any stringed instrument could be as loud as your amplifier allowed, setting off a flurry of innovation. Electric guitars were born!
“At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.”
By this time, Memphis Minnie was a bona fide star. She recorded for Columbia, Vocalion, and Decca Records. Her song “Bumble Bee,” featuring her driving guitar technique, became hugely popular and earned her a new nickname: the Queen of Country Blues. She was officially royalty, and her subjects needed to hear her game-changing playing. This is where she crossed paths with our old pals over at National.
National and other companies began adding pickups to so-called Spanish guitars, which they naturally called “Electric Spanish.” (This term was famously abbreviated ES by the Gibson Guitar Corporation and used as a prefix on a wide variety of models.) In 1935, National made its first Electric Spanish guitar, renamed the New Yorker three years later. By today’s standards, it’s modestly appointed. At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.
There’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but that just goes to show how well-loved this guitar has been.
Memphis Minnie had finally found an axe fit for a Queen. She was among the first blues guitarists to go electric, and the New Yorker fueled her already-upward trajectory. She recorded over 200 songs in her 25-year career, cementing her and the National New Yorker’s place in musical history.
Our National New Yorker was made in 1939 and shows perfect play wear as far as we’re concerned. Sure, there’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but structurally, this guitar is in great shape. It’s easy to imagine this guitar was lovingly wiped down each time it was put back in the case.
There’s magic in this guitar, y’all. Every time we pick it up, we can feel Memphis Minnie’s spirit enter the room. This guitar sounds fearless. It’s a survivor. This is a guitar that could inspire you to run away and join the circus, transcend genre and gender, and leave your own mark on music history. As a guitar store, watching guitars pass from musician to musician gives us a beautiful physical reminder of how history moves through generations. We can’t wait to see who joins this guitar’s remarkable legacy.
SOURCES: blackpast.org, nps.gov, worldmusic.net, historylink.org, Memphis Music Hall of Fame, “Memphis Minnie’s ‘Scientific Sound’: Afro-Sonic Modernity and the Jukebox Era of the Blues” from American Quarterly, “The History of the Development of Electric Stringed Musical Instruments” by Stephen Errede, Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
In our third installment with Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder Richard Hoover, the master luthier shows PG's John Bohlinger how his team of builders assemble and construct guitars like a chef preparing food pairings. Hoover explains that the finer details like binding, headstock size and shape, internal bracing, and adhesives are critical players in shaping an instrument's sound. Finally, Richard explains how SCGC uses every inch of wood for making acoustic guitars or outside ventures like surfboards and art.
Featuring torrefied solid Sitka Spruce tops, mahogany neck, back, and sides, and Fishman Presys VT EQ System, these guitars are designed to deliver quality tone and playability at an affordable price point.
Cort Guitars, acclaimed for creating instruments that exceed in value and quality, introduces the Essence Series. This stunning set of acoustic guitars is designed for musicians looking for the quintessential classic acoustic guitar with fabulous tone all at an exceptional price point. The Essence Series features two distinct body shapes: The Grand Auditorium and the OM Cutaway. Whatever the flavor, the Essence Series has the style to suit.
The Essence-GA-4 is the perfect Grand Auditorium acoustic. Wider than a dreadnought, the Essence-GA-4 features a deep body with a narrower waist and a width of 1 ¾” (45mm) at the nut. The result is an instrument that is ideal for any number of playing styles: Picking… strumming… the Essence GA-4 is completely up for the task.
The Essence-OM-4 features a shallower body creating a closer connection to the player allowing for ease of use on stage. With its 1 11/16’th (43mm) nut width, this Orchestra Model is great for fingerpickers or singer/guitarists looking for better body contact for an overall better playing experience.
Both acoustics are topped with a torrefied solid Sitka Spruce top using Cort’s ATV process. The ATV process or “Aged to Vintage”, “ages” the Spruce top to give it the big and open tone of older, highly-sought-after acoustics. To further enhance those vintage tones, the tops bracing is also made of torrefied spruce. The mahogany neck, back, and sides create a warm, robust midrange and bright highs. A rosewood fingerboard and bridge add for a more balanced sound and sustain. The result is amazing tone at first strum. 18:1 Vintage Open Gear Tuners on the mahogany headstock offer precise tuning with vintage styling. The herringbone rosette & purfling accentuates the aesthetics of these instruments adding to their appeal. Both acoustics come in two choices of finish. Natural Semi-Gloss allows the Sitka spruce’s natural beauty to shine through and classic Black Top Semi-Gloss.
A Fishman® Presys VT EQ System is installed inside the body versus other systems that cut into the body to be installed. This means the instrument keeps its natural resonance and acoustic flair. The Presys VT EQ System keeps it simple with only Volume and Tone controls resulting in a true, crisp acoustic sound. Lastly, Elixir® Nanoweb Phosphor Bronze Light .012-.053 Acoustic Strings round out these acoustics. This Number 1 acoustic guitar string delivers consistent performance and extended tone life with phosphor bronze sparkle and warmth. The Essence Series takes all these elements, combines them, and exceeds in playability, looks, and affordability.
Street Price: $449.00
For more information, please visit cortguitars.com.