Tenor Guitar - Current Use

Current Use

In the last five years there has been an upsurge of interest in the tenor guitar and specialist luthiers such as Joel Eckhaus of Earnest Instruments now build a range of tenor guitar models or can adapt existing instruments. Tenors are now even being manufactured in small numbers again with models offered by Gold Tone Instruments, Breedlove guitars, Weber mandolins, the AF tenor by Aria Guitars, Bowerman Guitars, the Blueridge range of tenor guitars from Saga Music, Lark in the Morning and Ozark among others. Amistar, a builder of resonator guitars in the Czech Republic who closely follows in the footsteps of the Czech Dopyera Brothers' tradition of making National and Dobro resonator guitars in the U.S., offers several tenor guitar models that are comparable to those offered in their golden era by both National and Dobro, as well as a modern electric/acoustic tenor model, The Stager.

Modern players of the tenor guitar include Neko Case, Josh Rouse, David Tiller, Adam Gnade, Ani DiFranco, Carrie Rodriguez, Kim Warner and Joe Craven. Jason Molina played a tenor guitar for much of his early work as Songs: Ohia. The instrument is often used by musicians looking to replace or augment sounds produced by more conventional instruments. Elvis Costello features a tenor guitar on the title track of his 2004 release Delivery Man. On the video for "Club Date: Elvis Costello & the Imposters Live in Memphis" he is seen playing an orange 1958 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 single cutaway archtop tenor guitar.

They find most use in their original role as rhythm instruments in jazz and blues, as well as combining with six string guitars in jazz, blues, folk or ethnic music settings. Being tuned in fifths, they also work well with both mandolin family and violin family instruments. They can also fit into the mould of 'ethnic' sounding instruments, such as the bouzouki.

Tenor guitars can be very difficult to locate since they were mostly manufactured in the United States. Up until relatively recently they were usually regarded as musical oddities with little value but now they are becoming very attractive to both players and collectors, particularly the National resonator instruments.

Production tenor guitars by Gibson and Martin from the 1940s to the 1960s are still generally available, such as Gibson's ETG-150 electric/acoustic tenor guitar and Martin's 0-18T acoustic tenor guitar. Original tenor guitars in good condition by any of the major guitar makers are considered very desirable, both as instruments for playing, and as interesting collectibles in their own right. Some specially ordered custom tenor guitar models can be extremely rare since only one of them may have been manufactured.

Prominent UK users of the tenor guitar include the Lakeman brothers, Seth Lakeman and Sean Lakeman, and John McCusker and Ian Carr, who both play with the Kate Rusby Band.

Terry Bohner, a character in the mockumentary film A Mighty Wind about the U.S. folk music era of the 1950s and 1960s, uses a tenor guitar.

Wes Borland, the guitarist for nu-metal band Limp Bizkit plays a low-tuned (F#1-F#2-B2-E3) tenor guitar on the songs Nookie, The One, Full Nelson, and Stalemate.