(From the Afri-Can website) The forefather of the tin can guitar was called a Ramkie. This was a form of long necked plucked lute, which had three, then later four strings and tuning pegs. This instrument was made and played by tribes in the Cape region of South Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries It was not originally a copy of the guitar although in its later development it acquired certain guitar features, notably a capo tasta. The earliest description of the Ramkie came from O.F. Mentzel, a resident of the Cape during the period 1733-41 who witnessed the Khoikhoi tribe making and playing the instrument. The accounts of early travellers in the region associate the instrument with the Khoikhoi. However, a man by the name of Thompson, witnessed a Bushwoman playing a Ramkie in 1823 at a place Bloem Fonteyn in the Roggeveld, in central Southern Africa. The kind of music produced on the instrument was repetitive chord playing, with finger-stopping, which frequently accompanied dancing. Later specimens acquired tin-can bodies, which replaced the earlier half gourd and gut-string construction. Today the Ramkie is obsolete, having been replaced by the western commercial guitar and “homemade” versions. It is generally accepted by historians that the South African guitar has been around for much longer than anyone imagined and predates even the colonial influences. It is worth noting that this instrument is descended from an original South African instrument and is not just a homemade copy of the western guitar, which it has become.

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This brings the D'Aquisto name from Jimmy D'Aquisto through Fender and now Aria.

If you are really looking for a Jim Hall inspired D'Aquisto guitar get the Sadowsky Jim Hall model guitar.

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