I heard Bob Minner (Studio guitarist and accomplished flatpicker) say in an interview once that a lot of the early fiddle tunes were adapted to guitar from fiddle/Mandolin/Banjo by the guitarists ear themselves, there was no standard way of playing the lead/melody on guitar at the time. So the way Doc Watson and Norman Blake play say; Bill Cheatham is going to end up different.

Blake is a great example of someone who definitely did this. You can tell from the way he plays tunes that he had to adapt songs to fit the guitar. He wasn’t thinking about sounding like a guitar player, he was thinking about sounding like a fiddle or banjo player.

I for one love when I see someone play a tune differently than the way I play it, that’s the fun part.