One guitar, two voices.

Most instruments speak in one register. A guitar lives up top, a bass holds the bottom, and filling both usually means two players or two overdubs. A dual-output instrument breaks that rule: it carries two genuinely different voices and sends them out on two separate jacks, so one player can cover the guitar part and the bass part at the same time.

The Bacci Leonardo is built around exactly this idea. It is a baritone guitar with a full guitar output and a dedicated bass voice from a Modern Bass capsule on the three low strings, each with its own volume and its own jack. That second jack is the whole point: send the two voices to two amps and one player fills the room, keep them on two tracks in the studio and the mix stays yours after the take.

This article explains what a dual output actually is, how it differs from a stereo guitar or an octave pedal, how the Bacci version works, the three practical ways to use it, and how to decide whether it belongs in your setup.

The phrase dual output gets used loosely, so it helps to be precise. A stereo guitar usually takes one instrument and splits it, for example sending the neck pickup to one output and the bridge pickup to another, for stereo width or for running two different amp tones. The two signals are two halves of the same guitar voice.

A dual-output baritone is different in kind. The two outputs carry two separate instruments: a guitar voice across all the strings, and a dedicated bass voice generated from the low strings alone. You are not widening one sound, you are playing two.

That distinction matters because it changes what you can do. With two halves of one guitar you get a bigger guitar. With a guitar voice and a bass voice you get an arrangement, the parts a band would split between two people, coming from one instrument and one performance.

On the Leonardo, the guitar output is exactly what you expect: the full range of the instrument, voiced for the baritone register. Alongside it sits the bass voice, produced by a Modern Bass capsule that reads the three low strings and gives them their own body, their own volume control and their own jack.

Because the bass voice has its own volume, you balance the two at the instrument before anything reaches an amp. Roll the bass voice back for a mostly-guitar part, bring it up when you want the bottom to carry, and the relationship between the two is in your hands in real time.

The platform under all of this is a 28-inch scale. A baritone's longer scale is what lets the low strings stay tight and defined, so the bass voice speaks as a real pitch with definition and not as a loose, woolly rumble. The scale and the capsule work together: one keeps the low notes clear, the other gives them a voice of their own.

A baritone is a guitar with a longer scale, tuned lower than standard, usually B to B or A to A. You play it exactly like a guitar, the chord shapes and technique are identical, it simply lives in a deeper register between a guitar and a bass. That in-between position is precisely why it makes such a good dual-output platform.

Start from a standard guitar and the low strings are too high to double as a convincing bass. Start from a bass and you lose the chordal, melodic top. The baritone sits in the middle, close enough to a guitar to play like one and low enough that its bottom strings can carry a genuine bass line. Splitting those low strings off into their own voice is a short, natural step rather than a stretch.

It is also why the Leonardo feels familiar from the first minute. Nothing about the playing is new. The novelty is entirely at the output, in what you choose to do with the second jack.

The instrument stays the same in every case. What changes is how you patch it, and that decides what you walk away with. There are three practical setups, from the simplest to the fullest.

A practical note for each. In the one-cable setup, treat the Leonardo as you would any baritone and let the scale do the work. In the two-channel setup, a little high-pass on the guitar track and a little low-pass on the bass track keep the two from fighting in the low mids. In the two-amp setup, physical separation between the cabinets, or a DI on the bass voice, keeps each voice clean for the mix.

The clearest case is the solo or duo performer. A single guitarist can hold down a bass line and a chordal or melodic part at once, filling a stage that would otherwise need a rhythm section. Loop the bass voice and play over it, or keep both live, and one person becomes a section.

In the studio it is a time machine. Two parts from one take means the feel is locked, the two voices breathe together because they came from the same hands at the same moment, and you still have them on separate tracks to mix independently. For writers and producers working alone, that is the difference between sketching an idea and finishing it.

It also opens sounds that neither a guitar nor a bass reaches on its own. The guitar voice gives the chambers their acoustic breath, the second output gives the low end, and an octave or filter on the bass voice pushes it into synth-bass and ambient territory while the top stays articulate.

There are other ways to chase a guitar-and-bass sound, and it is worth being honest about where each one stops.

An octave pedal on a normal guitar drops a copy of whatever you play an octave down. It is useful, but it tracks one blended signal, it struggles with chords, and the low octave is an effect on the guitar rather than a true, separately controllable bass voice. A bass VI, a six-string bass tuned like a guitar an octave down, gives you a real low instrument but then you have lost the guitar register, you are playing a bass. Stacking two instruments, a guitar and a bass through a splitter, means two necks and two performances, which is exactly the thing a dual output removes.

A dual-output baritone is the one approach where a single performance produces a real guitar voice and a real, independently controlled bass voice at the same time. That is the gap it fills, and it is why it is a category of its own rather than a variation on a pedal.

Every Leonardo is designed, built, voiced and set up by Bruno Bacci himself, one at a time, in his workshop in Pescia. There is no production line: the scale, the strings, the pickups and the finish are chosen when you order, and the instrument is built around the sound you are after.

Because it is handmade to order, the dual output is not a bolt-on feature but part of the instrument's design from the first cut, which is why the two voices sit together as naturally as they do. Every Bacci is backed for life by a lifetime warranty from Bruno himself.