A quicky

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Mark Wybierala
Posts: 469
Joined: Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:14 am
Location: Central New Jersey

A quicky

Post by Mark Wybierala »

Started as one of those awful little 19" scale useless guitars and now its an electric mandola. The modifications are only the headstock, the neck width, the nut, and the bridge. About four hours of work and its now fun and a delight to play. Tuning is C/C (split octave .016P/.036W), G/G (split octave .010P/.024W), D/D (unison .016/.016) A/A (unison .009/.009). The pole pieces of the pickups not being aligned to the strings is irrelevant. String output balance is fine.

The neck has been narrowed at the nut by about 1/4" total and I did this on my belt sander with an 80 grit belt - frets and all. I didn't do any fret leveling afterwards. The only fretwork was beveling the fret ends to the fretboard and progressive sanding of the fretboard edge. Playability is excellent with no observable need to do any leveling.

The bridge saddles were replaced by a single saddle made from 1/4 X 3/8 solid brass stock. I drilled and tapped the height adjustment and intonation holes, radiused the top, rough shaped it on my belt sander and then performed the finer detail of the shape and offsets with files. Intonation, even with the split octave strings is very good. Four of the string-through anchors are used and the other four strings use the now available intonation screw holes. It works.

I think the pictures clarify the rest of the processes.
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neck sm.jpg
neck sm.jpg (23.82 KiB) Viewed 6297 times
mandola bridge sm.png
mandola bridge sm.png (93.04 KiB) Viewed 6297 times
IMG_1638sm.jpg
IMG_1637.JPG
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Mark Swanson
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Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2012 11:11 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan USA
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Re: A quicky

Post by Mark Swanson »

Very cool! i could play that.
  • Mark Swanson, guitarist, MIMForum Staff
Mark Wybierala
Posts: 469
Joined: Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:14 am
Location: Central New Jersey

Re: A quicky

Post by Mark Wybierala »

The best I can do is noodle around but I've been noodling a lot on this and my octave mando recently. Its such a change from the tonal pallet of a guitar and there are these unanticipated wonderful harmonics that just happen.
John Clifford
Posts: 180
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:08 pm

Re: A quicky

Post by John Clifford »

Great idea, Mark. I've got one of those little toy Fenders that I rescued from someone's trash. I cleaned it up and it plays OK, but this makes me think about other options for the trashcaster.
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Beate Ritzert
Posts: 599
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 8:20 am
Location: Germany

Re: A quicky

Post by Beate Ritzert »

Nice, cool project.
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