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In 1934 the great Cuban Tres player Isaac Oviedo brought his Tres to Puerto Rico during a tour, and taught the guitarist of the Trío Lirico named "Piliche" how to play it. After Oviedo returned to Cuba, Piliche asked the instrument maker Medina of Santurce to make him one, as he described it, tal como se lo describiera. That is how, we believe, the tradition of the Puerto Rican Tres began. To learn more about this noble tradition, visit our page on The Cuban / Puerto Rican Tres
The "Seis" The Seis is simply the name the Cuatro Project gives the cuatros that is has seen, or built, with six pairs of strings instead of five (12 total). They are not traditional instruments, strictly speaking, but rather contemporary inventions by certain makers who were asked to furnish a cuatro with provision for an extra string course. Some musicians have asked for them because they want to broaden the instrument's range higher or some lower. Other are guitarists who just want to play a cuatro without having to relearn its string intervals.
The Jibaro Guitars
The Puerto Rican Bandolín
The "Cuatres"
The mysterious  Jabao	The jabao taino is currently believed by many researchers to be just a legend. But Fernando Colon, second son of Cristobal Colon names the jabao in the Antiguas Crónicas de Viajes as "a kind of guzla with three strings." (A guszla is toda a single string eastern-european folk instrument that is played with a bow, but the Guzla of Colón's time was an instrument of Moorish ancestry) There are plenty of tales floating around about "a three-stringed" instrument that the Tainos made, and some who even claim that the cuatro was derived from that. In fact the word, jabao, is a reference to a light-skinned man of mixed race ancestry, usually from the Caribbean. So perhaps the jabao was "jabao", especially if the face or soundboard was made with a light-colored wood, like yagrumo. But it is a word that originates in the Afro-Puerto Rican tradition: "Jabao es el mestizo que quiere pasar por blanco..." Also jabao is an endearing nickname in Cuba. The only aboriginal string instrument of this hemisphere that there is evidence for is the Berimbao of the Amazon region and the Gualambao of Paraguay, which both are one-stringed instruments derived from a hunter's bow--and the bow-harp of the Plains indians of North America, also derived from the hunter's bow. There is however, evidence of other Taino instruments: most of them percussion instruments. But nothing tangible has been found about an aboriginal stringed instrument in Puerto Rico. Just references to the name, and a persistent legend. And the truth about legends is that they all have a germ of truth. So what can that germ be? My considered guess is that the enslaved aboriginals may have crafted a stringed instrument to mimic what they saw the Spanish colonists to have brought from the peninsula--which is the given explanation for the creation of the "charango" in the Altiplano region of South America. And the jabao is the memory of a memory.
The Trasporte
The Loarina
The modern Puerto Rican Requinto and Quinto guitars
Puerto Rican Classical guitars
The "Violarina"
The Biguela or Vihuela