Tenor Guitars
The tenor guitar is a small, short-scale four stringed guitar, characterized by a bright, sweet sound with little bass. Some tenor guitars have a tinny high end well suited for blues. Like it's 6-stringed cousin the baritone guitar, the tenor guitar is an amazingly versatile instrument. Capable of a very wide variety of open and standard tunings, it is equally well suited for slide, fingerpicking, and flatpick style guitar. It has become popular with bluegrass, blues, and in Irish music. Tenor guitar is also the standard rhythm instrument for Texas style fiddle.
The scale length of a tenor guitar is typically smaller than that of a standard guitar, coming in at around 22" to 23". The tenor guitar is traditionally tuned in fifths - to CGDA - and is believed to have originally been developed for tenor banjo players trying to make the transition to guitar as tenor banjo began fall out of favor with jazz orchestras in the late 1920s. Since it was tuned the same as a traditional tenor banjo it would help to make the transition to the new instrument easier. One series of early tenors made by Selmer had a standard 26 inch guitar scale and was meant to be used with reentrant tuning of CGDA. Many of these were made into six strings guitars so there are very few available in their original condition; consequently originals have become extremely valuable. Selmer copies are currently made by a number of luthiers specializing in tenor guitars. Vintage tenor guitars were made by every major instrument maker, including Martin, Gibson, Kay, Harmony, and Stella. National produced several models of resonator tenor guitars.
If you play tenor banjo or violin-family instrument, the fifth-apart tuning as well as the spacing of the strings on a tenor guitar will feel familiar to you. As previously mentioned, standard tuning is CGDA - same as the tenor bango, cello, and viola. Another common tuning is GDAE - same as a violin - and commonly used in Irish fiddle music. There are a number of reentrant tunings - with the strings "out of order" as on a ukuklele. The most common of these is CGDA. Last but not lest, since a tenor guitar is designed to be tuned in fifths, it is well suited to a wide variety of open tunings. The chord patterns are quite simple.
Tenor guitars can be pricey, but there are models available at virtually every price point. The Martin X Series LXM Little Martin Tenor Guitar goes for $450 new and is probably the most popular model, also the most widely available. The Blue Ridge Tenor guitars are also widely available, the lowest coming in at around $370. On the high end, the Breedlove tenor guitar is around $2000. Goldtone makes several models that fill in the rest of the gaps. At around $250, the Goldtone TG-10 is probably the lowest-priced tenor guitar available. The Aria AF Tenor Guitar comes in and around $700.
It is possible to string a baritone ukulele to be tuned the same as a tenor guitar. This is an option for those who cannot afford a tenor guitar, or who want to give it a try before trading up, since baritone uke's are generally cheaper than tenor guitars
Electric tenors are available, however they are not currently in production by any of the major manufacturers and as such are rather pricey. Earnest Instruments, however, produces a line of tenor guitars in various configurations, including a Selmer style acoustic, a resonator Tenor known as the Radiator, as well as several electric tenor guitars - including the Tenorcaster, the Rosetta, which resembles a Les Paul Standard, the Flying TV (like the Gibson Flying V), and an archtop model, the Veronica.
