Original 19th Century Romantic Terz Guitar

A beautiful and exceedingly rare original 19th century Terz Guitar in restored ready to perform condition. It bears a hand inscription from the maker and repair label.

A wonderful instrument with great volume and a crystal ringing, both bright with great projection and coated in a velvety warm singing tone, representing the desirable "Terz" sound and timbre. Well balanced through all registers with excellent intonation. Ideal string action makes this a very easy guitar to play.

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Built with excellent and precise craftsmanship use top grade materials. Spruce top, beautiful maple sides and back. Old ebony tuning pegs that work very smoothly, one has been replaced. Beautiful one piece curved back, I believe the excellently executed "bowled" back adds to the excellent ping and projection. There are some cosmetic nicks and dings, but it appears there have not been any cracks to the sound board.

The hand written inscription is a bit difficult to read, but has been deciphered as:

Thomas Simon

Instrumentenmanufaktur

Mittenwald a.d. Isar. 1880

There is also a repair label with a large portion of it missing making it difficult to identify.

An ideal instrument for use in historically informed performance practice of the 19th Century Classical/Romantic repertoire. The Terz guitar was an immensely popular instrument of the period and I think an essential instrument for the serious historically oriented guitarist.

String Length: 55.5 cm

Width at Nut: 4.4

I have marked the condition as "very good" this is based on its age and as a historical peformance ready instrument.

Do not hesitate to ask any further questions.

About the Terz guitar - Taken from the Early Romantic Guitar page:

Terz Pitch and Scale

The Terz guitar is tuned a minor third higher than a regular guitar, the same tuning as if you put a capo at the third fret of a normal guitar (e.g. open strings are G-C-F-A#-D-G). It has a much shorter scale length, typically 530-570mm, Italian Terz guitars were tiny in size, whereas Viennese Terz guitars adapted the Stauffer model, with its pronounced upper and lower bouts, to the smaller scale.

Finding a Terz Guitar

Period Terz guitars are extremely difficult to locate; this can be a long, frustrating, fruitless experience. Some of them are mis-classified as "child guitars" because of the much smaller body size, and short usually 56 scale. Since Terz guitars fell out of favor and fell into obscurity for over 100 years, many of them were used by children as cheap guitars, eventually thrown away, and very few survive.The surviving instruments can be in bad condition, as they are often mistaken for a "child's guitar". It is much better to get a replica.The smaller size does not make them cheaper to build than bigger guitars; in fact sometimes they can be more difficult because common moldings do not exist.

Popularity of the Terz Guitar

In the early 19th century, the terz guitar was so popular that the majority of duets published called for the primary guitar one part as terz guitar with one normal second guitar. This is usually indicated by the notation "tierce" or various other spellings. In Vienna, the terz guitar was especially popular, and in fact many original editions of duets from Vienna in this time period do not specify "terz", but the guitar parts are often in different keys off by a third (for example guitar 1 is 3 sharps / A major and guitar 2 is no sharps / C major), which is an indication of terz guitar being required. So common was the terz guitar for ensembles, that it was assumed. The terz guitar does not seem to have been used for solo music, although there would be no need to indicate that, since any guitar score could be played on a terz guitar or a normal guitar. The terz guitar was used for ensemble situations, where its treble range and brightness resulted in superior projection: it is often found in guitar duos, piano with guitar duos, and other combinations, including terz guitar with full orchestra, as in the case of Giuliani's 3rd concerto. The amount of music written for terz guitar in ensemble situations was vast.