During the seventeenth century we can observe the gradual transition from the four-course renaissance guitar to the five-course baroque guitar. Baroque guitars are often characterized by particularly fine decorations, especially with regard to the sound hole, rosette and inlays of all kinds; the tuning approaches that of the modern guitar (D-G-A-B-E) with the two lowest courses octaved and single string chanterelle. A large number of instruments of this period remain in museums, often delicately decorated and embellished with fine wood inlays, tortoise shell and ivory but also with silver, gold and precious stones, made by the great masters of the time, including Voboam, Sellas and Stradivarius himself.

The guitar became popular at all major European courts and in addition to seriousart music, written in tablature, the first chord booksappeared, aiming to spread guitar practice among amateur musicians and in the popular music. At the same time virtuoso musicians such as Francesco Corbetta, Robert de Visee and the Spanish Gaspar Sanz contributed to the development of a very refined instrumental technique and enriched the repertoire with their own compositions. The limited extension of the five-string guitar began to be too small for the most demanding musicians and, during the 1700s, experiments by various luthiers in Italy, Spain and France demonstrated the usefulness of a low sixth string; in the same period we witness the shift from tablature to staff notation, with the subsequent assimilation of guitar music with that of other instruments.