When someone talks about acoustic steel guitar, one usually thinks to the folk guitar, queen of the finger-picking style, arpeggios by the fire and rhythmic companion for contemporary popular music.

But just from the Middle Ages, and especially during the 16th century you could find distant steel guitar ancestors. Very early, musicians tried to played some of those instruments in a fast rhythm style, known in those days as “battling guitar style” (in France), or “rasgueando style” (in Spain).

That’s the reason why guitar makers looked to increase the sound volume by setting them with steel strings, preferably to gut strings.

That was the origin of the cittern, the mandola, the bouzouki and many other distant guitar cousins ideally suited for band playing (that Englismen called brocken consort), and those kind of instruments surely had a great part in the birth of our modern folk guitar.

A good acoustic steel guitar should have a perfect tuning, a warm and clear sound, with enough bass and medium. You can eventually increase the harmonics by doubling the strings (octave and unison).

You will find here 6 and 12 strings acoustic guitars, traditional instruments (cittern and mandola), exotic ones (Turkish saz) and some more widely known as the mandolin, most of them set with doubled strings.