Description: The ronroco is a 10 stringed lute found in Peru and Bolivia. The ronroco is played either solo or with other instruments, charango, guitar and percussion. Like the charango the ronroco is constucted from a tree trunk. In the case of my specimen its constructed of the same pieces from neck and body although re-attached during the construction of the ronroco. The neck is of some ironwood, rosewood with slightly angled strips of bamboo in the neck for ornamentation. A sound hole is drilled into the ronroco's neck as an accoustic means to amplify the instrument. On the front of the sound board its cut from two pieces of wood a hardwood and what appears to be pine. The same string-set available for charango may also be used for the ronroco. The ronroco is tuned much lower approximately an octave below in the standard Cmaj7 tuning for the charango or in the case of my instrument being tuned to 4 cemitones below the Cmaj7 charango tuning.

Ronroco Tunings

Standard	C-G-E-A-E
4 cemitones below	C-F-A-D-A

 

Citations: Rene Hugo Sanchez (My Space Page) > Construction of the Ronroco (Spanish language web site) via google translate >