“Connect with your heart and with just a few notes, you can do magic”: The Last of Us composer Gustavo Santaolalla shows off his “Guitarocko” Strat – a 1-of-1 Fender designed to mimic the ronroco

Argentinean composer Gustavo Santaolalla is the latest guitarist to feature on the Fender Presents video series, and has used the occasion to show off the mind-boggling prototype of his “Guitarocko” Strat.

The highly decorated musician, whose trophy cabinet includes two Grammys, two Academy Awards, and a Golden Globe, is responsible for the scores for both the game and TV versions of The Last of Us, with his Latin rock influences crucial to their success.

The Guitarocko, then, embodies his musical DNA: it’s a modified Stratocaster heavily inspired by the Ronroco, a traditional stringed instrument that originated in the Andes. Santaolalla’s hybrid is a one-of-one creation plucked from his imagination. It features a mini Stratocaster body alongside a custom bridge for the doubled-up stringing arrangement, a custom nut, and lipstick pickups.

The video shows the guitar being put through its paces on the series’ post-apocalyptic main theme, which has become iconic in the gaming and TV worlds.

“For me, it’s super important to work. I don’t sit down and wait until the light bulb goes ping,” he says, echoing the famous Picasso quote, “I hope inspiration finds me working.”

“With inspiration, sometimes it takes more time and sometimes it happens immediately. And The Last of Us was one of those. I woke up, I got out of bed, and somehow I knew the ronroco was going to be there, and the melody came out like it was downloaded.”

The ronroco originated in Bolivia but soon became prominent in neighboring countries like Peru and Santaolalla’s homeland of Argentina. It’s a relative to the charango but is pitched a fourth lower. Traditionally, its body was fashioned from an armadillo or tortoise shell and typically has 10 strings each doubled up like a 12-string guitar.

“With this instrument you can play and you can comp melody at the same time, which is almost impossible with the charango,” he adds of its benefits. “It just doesn’t have the body to do that.

“After many years of playing the ronroco and playing rock on an electric guitar, I started to think, ‘What if I could do something that is a mixture of a ronroco and an electric guitar?’

“There’s one thing that makes characteristic of the ronroco; the middle string is in octaves,” he expands. “All the other strings are the same octave [the typical Argentine tuning is D-G-B-E-B].

“So I thought, ‘Well, I have six pegs [on an electric guitar] – I can do it you know with single strings and just keep the one the octave one.’”

The guitar, then is a normal six-string electric for the most part, save for the middle two strings being squashed together with a 12-string-like spacing. The strings above and below the all-important middle octave are strung as usual.

First, he worked with his guitar tech, Alex Frink, to turn the concept into a playable reality. Then, after establishing a relationship with Fender, he showed the company the prototype; it then worked on what the composer calls “a more formal prototype.”

“It’s incredible where we where we got already,” he smiles. “The pickups are incredible too. It gives you a lot with very little. You just have to connect with your heart and with just a few notes, you can do magic.”

Playing with a crystalline guitar tone, the main theme has a little more twang on the Guitarocko than on the warm, nylon-stringed ronroco, but this version of the theme is no less stirring.

It’s to be seen whether or not this could ever develop into a full production model signature guitar – but considering Strandberg made a five-string guitar for Jacob Collier, it doesn’t seem wholly out of the question.

The game/TV show has a history with guitars, with protagonist Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey in the adaptation, often seen strumming an acoustic guitar. Taylor once released a replica of it, and in a full-circle moment, that recreation featured in the show’s second series.

A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He’s also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.