Do you really need six strings to do what you want to do with the guitar? A Tenor Guitar has four, but six gives you more options. Same thing for me. Consider six.

You might not need all six of those strings, but you can do more with six. And so can I.

A 12-string guitar doubles those notes, and it gave us some of the best of the Beatles and the Byrds. It also doubles what I can do with six. Consider 12.

A Baroque version of the Lute, a close relative of the guitar, had a variant called the Theorbo, with 14 strings, and it was six feet long. This sounds intimidating, and it is, and believe me, we're going to explore that thing. And 14 is more valuable to me than 12. Basic math.