The Design and Construction of The Guitoma

Modifying a musical instrument has always been a great field of interest. Throughout history, many instruments were continuously being improved for either a more manageable way a musician would play the instrument or to improve it from its previous version. This project aims to modify the guitar with the achievement of accurately containing the 88 key-pitch range of a piano. The Guitoma has a similar design as the guitar but three additional strings were added to the initial 6 strings to capture the piano pitch range. This required modifications to the bridge, neck, and head of the guitar. The bridge was changed to hold nine strings, the neck had to become wider to play all strings, and the head had to accommodate the nine strings to be held. Besides designing and building an instrument, vibration analysis was used to evaluate if the modifications should be expected to affect the acoustics of the guitar body. A music composition will be written for the Guitoma to further assess its performance capability.