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Permalink Reply by Korrigan on April 17, 2018 at 12:32pm

That's a charango, though they are usually 10 strings (five double courses, tuned GCEAE) and are 370mm scale. Probably yours was meant to be a souvenir rather than a playable instrument but don't let that stop you from having fun experimenting with it.

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Permalink Reply by Hans on April 18, 2018 at 3:47am

Thanks, guys! Could just have googled "armadillo guitar", of course, but it's much nicer to get info from you folks here on CBN...

... so this is the toy version of a charango, I guess. Most likely made out of a pichi or dwarf armadillo native to Patagonia (thanks, Wikipedia!) You're probably right, Korrigan, that this was a cheap souvenir, something to bring back home to boast about the exotic places you visited without setting you back too much... and my uncle never struck me as the musical type.

The funny thing is that while some things seem to be done very sloppily (the string spacing at the nut and the fret markings for example) other things seem to be properly crafted (the neck and soundboard are carved from a single piece of wood and have a nice shellac-ish finish on them).

... anyway: I'll probably not put more tuners on it because I'm not sure the headstock would withstand that. And I'll have to stick with the two single courses, double course in the middle, and two more single courses, because otherwise I'd have to make a new bridge. But I'll put a properly spaced nut on it and figure something out for the pegs. And then I'll tune it G-C-EE-A-E to emulate the standard charango tuning.

As for burying it: I agree with you, Richard, that one should not kill wild animals for the sake of building instruments, of course. But who knows what the story of this thing is. Maybe the armadillo's meat served as a family dinner? And the armadillo charango thing seems to have a long and venerable tradition. So burying it instead of using it might also not be the respectful thing to do... plus I have to admit that since I caught the CBG bug I can't help the urge to make every strange broken instrument I find (and every remotely box-like object) playable...

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