Mandolins. Worth buying one?

Kittyfrisk · April 2023

guitarjack66 said:

Tannin said:

Does a fish taste like turnip?

Anybody else want to get up and dance while shattering crockery?

I don't even need to dance to enjoy that

Kittyfrisk · April 2023

Tannin said:

Does a fish taste like turnip?

Apparently Carp do, but not as nice

Image: /plugins/EmojiExtender/emoji/fb/3.gif

Stratavarious · April 2023

Yep.. spend to get a solid musical instrument.. £600-900 will get something good. On my second now,

I put a K&K transducer pair in mine. Perfect reproduction through a Radial DI. Gets used most gigs. You will pick up the chords and scales fast.. and the guitar chords but upside down trick is a lifesaver if lost.

Try a few to get a feel for the necks which are narrow. My number one mando has a slightly wider nut which is nice. I use mine with stainless steel flatwounds which give a nice, solid, woody tone.

camf · April 2023

FYI, I’m going to put a very nice little Fylde mandolin up for sale under acoustics as soon as I can. It’s cedar and mahogany and a very sweet sounding wee thing. I bought it before lockdown but aside from working out some basic cowboy chords I never really got into it. I’ve got a crazy week ahead but I’ll get an ad and some pics up soon. It’s a lovely wee thing with really good hardware (schaller mini tuners etc.). So if you’re looking for a great entry/mid level mandolin it’ll be worth a look.

Cheers,

cam f

malcolmkindness · April 2023

camf said:

FYI, I’m going to put a very nice little Fylde mandolin up for sale under acoustics as soon as I can. It’s cedar and mahogany and a very sweet sounding wee thing. I bought it before lockdown but aside from working out some basic cowboy chords I never really got into it. I’ve got a crazy week ahead but I’ll get an ad and some pics up soon. It’s a lovely wee thing with really good hardware (schaller mini tuners etc.). So if you’re looking for a great entry/mid level mandolin it’ll be worth a look.

Cheers,

cam f

I'll second this, Fylde mandolins are excellent.

camf · April 2023

Cheers Malcolm, as a beginner with little fat fingers, I found it very easy to play. The problem was that, at my age, it feels like I should focus as much as I can on singing and playing my guitar. I also admit I struggled getting my head round the different tuning and chord shapes. I had lots of fun for a while and even worked out a couple of songs. I wish I’d tried it years ago and things might have been very different.

springhead · April 2023

malcolmkindness said:

guitarjack66 said:

bluecat said:

I had a mandolin hanging on the wall gathering dust for years, mainly because the neck was too narrow for my fingers.

Is the narrow neck a constant with mandolins? I expect it is?

Pretty much standard yes, unless you go custom. I have a custom mandolin with a 35mm nut and I find it a great improvement.
Also, as others have said, a cheap mandolin will not be as good as a cheap guitar.

I've had a basic Tanglewood mandolin for years and hardly played it. However I was recently asked to join a band on guitar, slide and occasionally mandolin. I've fitted a cheap pickup in mine and have done the first gig with it but would like something better. Anyway, I went to Hobgoblin in London a couple of weeks ago and their summary of nut widths was that the narrower ones are preferred by bluegrass players and the wider ones for folk people. They reckon the bluegrass involves more chords, barre chords up the neck and hence close string spacing is good. Some mandolin chords you're holding two pairs of strings with one fingertip. The folk stuff is more single string melody picking and wider spacing helps. They had some lovely Hathaway mandolins, made here in London which sounded wonderful but they were the wider spacing and I think I need something narrower.

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

@springhead Good info about the narrower ones for Bluegrass and the wider ones for folk. Gets me thinking again. A nice round hole folk mandolin would be nice. Might be more comfy. When I say nice, I mean nice and cheap !

ToneControl · April 2023

Tried a cheap one, did the same again a few years later, both awful to play

Much more fun:
Blueridge Tenor guitar
Fender Mandostrat

Open_G · April 2023

guitarjack66 said:

A Mandolin sound is a thing of beauty but in this day and age of technological advancement I would imagine some gadget,gizmo or pedal/amp setting could satisfactorily replicate the sound? Does a bazouki sound similar,even?

Bouzouki sounds nothing like a mandolin. Even though a common tuning is an octave below they have a zing that is just not there for a mandolin and while playing tunes is perfectly doable they are quite a stretch given the scale. They seem to be used for chordal work a lot more. Probably closest thing I can think of is sound to a bouzouki is a cittern.

ToneControl · April 2023

ToneControl said:

Tried a cheap one, did the same again a few years later, both awful to play

Much more fun:
Blueridge Tenor guitar
Fender Mandostrat

I'll expand on this:
I think the main joy of playing a mandolin is the tuning being in 5ths, and the higher register - the mandostrat delivers those. It's true that the 12-string effect is missing, but with just 4 strings, much more control is possible when playing with skin and nails rather than a plectrum

The tenor guitar is somewhere in between, I'd recommend everyone try one.

For anyone wanting to compose songs with a different feel, I can't recommend enough the purchase of a 4-string instrument tuned in 5ths

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

Open_G said:

guitarjack66 said:

A Mandolin sound is a thing of beauty but in this day and age of technological advancement I would imagine some gadget,gizmo or pedal/amp setting could satisfactorily replicate the sound? Does a bazouki sound similar,even?

Bouzouki sounds nothing like a mandolin. Even though a common tuning is an octave below they have a zing that is just not there for a mandolin and while playing tunes is perfectly doable they are quite a stretch given the scale. They seem to be used for chordal work a lot more. Probably closest thing I can think of is sound to a bouzouki is a cittern.

An octave mandolin or short scale bouzouki could also be worth considering

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

double post

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

ToneControl said:

Tried a cheap one, did the same again a few years later, both awful to play

Much more fun:
Blueridge Tenor guitar
Fender Mandostrat

I had one of those Epiphone thunderbird or mandobird or whatever they were called. Just the 4 strings. Could never find a use for it in a live scenario. I think a tenor electric guitar could be interesting though, but might just sound like a regular electric guitar...

ToneControl · April 2023

Creed_Clicks said:

ToneControl said:

Tried a cheap one, did the same again a few years later, both awful to play

Much more fun:
Blueridge Tenor guitar
Fender Mandostrat

I had one of those Epiphone thunderbird or mandobird or whatever they were called. Just the 4 strings. Could never find a use for it in a live scenario. I think a tenor electric guitar could be interesting though, but might just sound like a regular electric guitar...

seems to be quite a few available nowadays

ToneControl · April 2023

intro to Tenor guitar from one of my favourite classical players, he used to play Bach on a tenor banjo

ToneControl · April 2023

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

@ToneControl that sounds beautiful. If I close my eyes, it does sound like a standard acoustic at times, but with the tunings, the melodies are different. Tenor guitar does sound less harsh than a mandolin for sure...

OilCityPickups · April 2023

Tannin said:

Does a fish taste like turnip?

Only the 'lesser marbled turnip fish' ... and that's endangered.

ToneControl · April 2023

Creed_Clicks said:

@ToneControl that sounds beautiful. If I close my eye, it does sound like a standard acoustic at times, but with the tunings, the melodies are different. Tenor guitar does sound less harsh than a mandolin for sure...

what was interesting was that when my brand new Blueridge Tenor guitar arrived, via my luthier, we had a play with it, and found that:

One of the recommended strings would snap whilst tuning up for the first time, with no nut or bridge issues causing it - it was simply very tight
It sounded shrill and harsh

My luthier has made some £5k level acoustics from scratch, and knows his stuff, and recommended tuning with the recommended string sets, but 2 semitones down. This way it's got less of that piercing sound you get from strumming a mandolin, and more of a guitar tonality.

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

@ToneControl my eyes, not my eye! The Blueridge worth a punt?

ToneControl · April 2023

Creed_Clicks said:

@ToneControl my eyes, not my eye! The Blueridge worth a punt?

All my other acoustics are £3k+, I'm very fussy about acoustics. For this I was not sure how much I wanted one,
I tried out the Martin ones in Denmark St (this was in 2011). There was one over 1k that I liked, and a cheaper one that had laminate sides or something. I bought a Blueridge BR60T, I think about £450 back then, it played and sounded like the £1k+ Martin.

I found my old emials on this so can tell you my report to my luthier back in 2011:

Tenor now tuned to CGDA, lots of fun. Strangely, at 32(C), 22, 14, 10(A), the A is very very tight.
The one on it snapped, and I put another on, feels odd having the top 2 so much tighter

The standard CGDA set was 50% tighter than usual on the top 2 strings, which would often break during putting a new one on. I replaced both with 0.001 thinner gauges, and it plays much better now

Creed_Clicks · April 2023

@ToneControl Did you try different strings to try and tune to GDAE? CGDA sounds like it would be a sweet spot alright.

ToneControl · April 2023

Creed_Clicks said:

@ToneControl Did you try different strings to try and tune to GDAE? CGDA sounds like it would be a sweet spot alright.

It's 12 years ago, but I think I started with GDAE and didn't like it

Redlester · May 2023

Interesting comments above on the difference in sound quality between the cheaper ones and more expensive ones being more marked perhaps than for guitars.

I'd say even a budget one is good if you're looking to a) get the overall experience b) want to try it and c) have fun trying something new.

I had one and loved it for a while. I didn't stick with it because I realised that to get anywhere near good you had to apply yourself. But it was easy to enough to learn the major and minor chords and take it from there.

They can be bloody loud.

BTW, for an idea of how great they can be outside the rather more typical folkie-type contexts, check out some of the stuff Vivaldi wrote for the mandolin.

Stratavarious · May 2023

I love flatwound stainless strings on my mando, eliminates the shrill, tinniness,

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Mandolins. Worth buying one?

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