The Vinaccia family of luthiers is obvious for developing the mandolin, and may have built the oldest surviving six string guitar. Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) has his signature on the label of a guitar built in Naples, Italy for six strings with the date of 1779. This guitar old-fashioned been examined and does not show tell-tale rune of modifications from a double-course guitar although fakes are popular to exist of guitars and identifying labels from that period.

They were expanded often used as accent instruments in ensembles than as solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in aboriginal music performances. (Gaspar Sanz' Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española of 1674 constitutes the majority of the surviving solo corpus for the era.) Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished because the Renaissance guitar is bare plain and the Fender Stratocaster Baroque guitar is bare ornate, with ivory or paper pulp inlays all over the neck and body, and a paper-cutout inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole.