The Design and Construction of The Guitoma

Throughout history, instruments have been continuously modified to improve their performance ergonomics or to augment their musical capabilities compared to earlier versions. This project aims to modify the guitar to augment its musical range to match that of the 88 key-pitch range of a piano. The Guitoma has a design similar to the guitar but includes three additional strings to capture this expanded pitch range. This required modifications to the bridge, neck, and headstock of the guitar. The bridge was expanded to hold nine strings, the neck became wider to fit the new strings, and the headstock was enlarged to fit additional tuning pegs. In addition to designing and building the Guitoma, a spectrometer was used to perform vibration analysis on both the standard acoustic guitar and the Guitoma to evaluate how the modifications affected the acoustics of the new instrument. The final phase of this project involved writing and learning to perform a new composition on the Guitoma to further assess its performance capabilities.