GUITARRON MEXICANO

The guitarrón mexicano (literally "Mexican large guitar" in Spanish, the suffix "-ón" denoting "large") or Mexican guitarron, is a very large, deep-bodied Mexican 6-string acoustic bass played traditionally in mariachi groups. Although similar to the guitar, it is not a derivative of that instrument, but was independently developed from the sixteenth-century Spanish bajo de uña. It achieves audibility by its great size, and does not require electric amplification for performances in small venues. The guitarrón is fretless with heavy gauge strings, most commonly nylon for the high three and metal for the low three. The guitarrón is usually played by doubling notes at the octave, a practice facilitated by the standard guitarrón tuning A D G C E A, which uses the same between-strings intervals as a guitar but is a fifth lower overall. Sometimes the high A is lowered an octave putting it one octave above the low A.
The guitarrón was the inspiration behind Ernie Ball's development of the first modern acoustic bass guitar, released on the market in 1972.

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