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This particular page was created 15/12/2004 and last updated 15/03/2006
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| | Data:- Body shape: Lute
- Top: Arched
- Back: Arched
- Frets: Fixed
- Strings: 4
- Courses: 4 ( 1 - 1 - 1 - 1)
Pre-war instrument manufacturers had a bad habit of "borrowing" names from historic instruments and applying them to their new inventions with little reagard to historic accuracy.
Gibson's "tenor lute" of the 1920s is a good example of this. It's in no way related to the 16th Century tenor lute but is rather an A style alto mandola with an extra long neck and (usually) single strings - or a mandola-shaped tenor guitar if you like.
The tenor mandola was a rather unsuccesful instrument, the combination of a small mando body and single string simply weren't able to produce much tone to speak of. Gibson did try building a more sensible eightstring version too (essentially a tenor mandola but intended to be tuned CGDA), but somehow even that one suffered from having a wimpy little tone.
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