In its most developed form, the vihuela was a guitar-shaped instrument with six double-strings (paired courses) made of gut.

Plucked vihuelas, being essentially flat-backed lutes, evolved in the mid-15th century, in the Kingdom of Aragón, located in north-eastern Iberia (Spain).

Vihuela bodies were lightly constructed from thin flat slabs or pieces of wood, bent or curved as required.

Vihuela (and violas da gamba) were built in different sizes, large and small, a family of instruments.

A second generation of vihuela, beginning sometime around 1490, took on the now-familiar smooth-curved figure-eight shaped body contours.

Top decoration, the number, shape, and placement, of sound holes, ports, pierced rosettes, etc., also varied greatly.

Unlike modern guitars, which often use steel and bronze strings, vihuelas were gut strung, and usually in paired courses.

The tablature system used in all these texts is the "Italian" tablature, wherein the stopped frets are indicated by numbers and the lowest line of the staff represents the highest-pitch course (or string), resembling the neck of the instrument in playing position; Milán's book also uses numbers to indicate the stopping of the courses but exceptionally it is the top line of the staff that represents the highest-pitch course, as in "French" tablature.

Performers adept with the vihuela include the Scottish composer Robert MacKillop,[4] English lutenist Julian Bream[5] and the American artist Hopkinson Smith.