First you added information that was NOT CORRECT except for the reason you gave for Yepes s death And it is not constructive to to add biased unneutral opinions like Yepes was the most notorious Second it is a well established fact that RAMIREZ and Yepes invented his ten string guitar As I said Bernabe was an apprentice at the Ramirez shop then but the first Yepes type ten string guitar was a RAMIREZ guitar Moreover Ramirez had the idea to construct a guitarra d amor with multiple string resonators INSIDE the body of the guitar This was rejected by both Segovia and Yepes as impractical It was Yepes who solved the theoretical and technical problems by adding only 4 strings tuned a very specific way C A G F alongside the normal 6 strings You want a verifiable source Here Ramirez III Jose 1994 The Ten String Guitar in Things About the Guitar Bold Strummer pp 137 141 ISBN 10 8487969402 Third I clearly said Yepes fretted bass notes even when the same bass notes were available as open strings F or G are very often played fretted rather than open I have this in his own handwriting and own fingering yet you will presume to know better and call this fact worthless because it disproves your ignorant unconstructive remark about Yepes short hands being a reason for playing a 10 string guitar Furthermore Yepes frequently uses the 7th fretted because it is the lowest string but not frequently the 8th as you mistakenly claim which is a minor 7th higher than the 7th string Moreover these strings can be used to voice chords as originally written in the urtexts by non guitarist composers like Ponce or Rodrigo that are impossible on the 6 string except in the edited versions Being able to use open strings as crutches for a lack of technique was certainly NOT part of Yepes s entirely musical reasons for inventing his guitar though I will add many ten string guitarists today who are second rate guitariats in general have adopted the instrument to make up for weak techniques This has NOTHING to do with Yepes s own performance practice on his instrument As someone who has studied for over a decade with one of Yepes s leading long term students as someone who has thoroughly researched all aspects of the 10 string guitar as someone who has access to many many unpublished manuscripts and annotations I can safely say that I know what I am talking about Yepes even frets A2 and G2 on the 10th string rather than play them on the open A2 and G2 strings 5 and 9 in an example I have in his own handwriting and the reasons for doing so are in the context entirely MUSICAL and not about any technical limitations which exist only in your imagination you know nothing