Compare the tone of the Renaissance guitar CLICKY #1 and the tone of the Yamaha guitalele CLICK #2.

They sound pretty similar to me.

Remember that Renaissance guitars, lutes, vihuelas, and such—and the classical guitar, up until sometime in the mid-Twentieth Century were strung with gut. Sheep gut. Byproduct of the slaughter house. Nylon strings came in right after World War II (ref: article in a copy of The Guitar Review, a magazine published by the New York Classic Guitar Society back in the 1960s).

The Renaissance guitar was pretty much the ukulele of its day, and regarded as such—except by a few composers who wrote some pretty nice stuff for it. And they got flak from other composers and musicians for "wasting their time and talent on such a worthless instrument."

Like I said above, the music comes from the musician, and a good musician can get music out of some of the darnedest things. PCV pipe!?? I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't heard it!

Don Firth