# General Mandolin Topics > Vintage Instruments >  I finally found my dream mandolin... sort of

## nmiller

"Sort of" because it's not technically a mandolin at all: it's a ukulele. But, before you throw something at your screen in disgust, know that I string it as a mandolin. How can that work? Take a look at this:

  
 
I already had two resonator mandolins, a biscuit-bridge and a spider-bridge. I knew that National made a few tricone mandolins (a few = less than 60) but due to their rarity I never hoped to find or afford one. Then I saw this uke, which I didn't know existed until I saw it on a store's website. National made some relatively conventional single-cone ukes, but apparently the early tricone mandolins were also available with ukulele necks. The tricone mandos and ukes were really the same instrument with different numbers of strings. Since the neck was built to take the tension of eight steel strings, I realized that I could set up this uke like a 4-string mandolin without any risk of damage.

It turns out that the tricone ukes are even rarer than the mandolins: there were six known to exist, and from what I've read, this makes seven. As a Style 1 it was the plainest of all the models available, but the original owner rectified that with a little custom engraving:


The instrument is mostly original, but the banjo-style planetary tuners were replaced with the modified guitar tuners you see here long ago. Aside from the green tarnish all over the top and sides of the body, there's not much wear; the original frets and board look almost untouched. I'm trying to clean up the tarnish, but it may require industrial amounts of metal polish.

The sound is loud but warm, with the sustain that you'd expect from a tricone guitar. It lacks the chorused effect of doubled strings, but on the other hand I can easily play the 15" scale with medium action. The neck is dead straight except for a slight dropoff over the body, but it's hard to reach up there anyway. It's a shame they discontinued this design, but I understand that the setup was just too much of a pain to be mass-produced. I took the coverplate off for a photo, but I didn't dare remove the cones; everything I've read says that they're extremely difficult to replace.

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Marty Jacobson

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## Bob Clark

Wow.  I am speechless.  Just wow.  How about a sound clip, when you get a minute.  Again, wow.

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## F-2 Dave

I'm not really a resonator guy, but that's really cool.

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## Marty Jacobson

Sweet, nice find. Rarer than hen's teeth. I'd love to hear that.

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## Bertram Henze

Looking like an oil refinery, it must sound awesome to make up for that...  :Wink:

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## Timbofood

Nifty!

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## John Soper

Cool, cool, cool...

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## Mickey King



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## allenhopkins

You have found an amazing rarity.  What's the serial number?

Oh, and a wild shot in the dark: could this instrument ever have been to Australia?  There's a Percy Frazer orchestra leader mentioned *here* in Melbourne.

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## Russ Donahue

Way cool...like the oil refinery look under the hood.

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## nmiller

> Wow.  I am speechless.  Just wow.  How about a sound clip, when you get a minute.  Again, wow.


Today I took it for an appraisal by a vintage instrument dealer who specialize in the rare & obscure; they had a similar reaction to you. I'll try and record a sound clip before the weekend's out.




> You have found an amazing rarity.  What's the serial number?
> 
> Oh, and a wild shot in the dark: could this instrument ever have been to Australia?  There's a Percy Frazer orchestra leader mentioned *here* in Melbourne.


While it's not impossible, I am skeptical that National had any international distribution as early as 1928. The serial is 136.

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## mandroid

There were 4 string Mandolin (melody) banjos so perhaps the Resonator version of those ?

Though the friction pegs with that E string on a short scale,  was a PIA to tune .. Nylon, being elastic seems easier .

geared tuner would make the tuning easier 


 that concert or similar uke scale length?

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## nmiller

There's an ad from 1928 reproduced in Bob Brozman's book saying "The Mandolin and Ukulele same size and same type except stringing and tuning". Both had 15" scales, which I believe is a concert uke. The original tuners were actually banjo-type tuners with planetary gears, not true friction pegs and intended for steel strings.

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## darrylicshon

I always wanted a resonator mandolin , yours looks great

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## nmiller

Here it is:



No effects, just some light compression to even out the higher peaks. It's strung with Martin 80/20 .010s. And yes, I did tune it up before recording; intonation on these things is always... let's call it "interesting".

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Bob Clark, 

Cary Fagan, 

Dobe, 

lorrainehornig, 

Rush Burkhardt

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## Michael Weaver

Looks awesome and sounds awesome! Thanks for posting.

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## ambrosepottie

Beautiful sounding. It doesn't look like the cone assembly can be rotated easily to compensate the saddle like on a Dobro spider. Theres a screw keeping it perpendicular to the neck. But maybe that screw can be moved a bit to the side to allow the whole thing to rotate? Or have a compensated saddle made?

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## nmiller

The ledge that the cones sit on is cut and lipped so that they can't move more than a millimeter, so in practice the bridge can't be rotated at all.

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## Jim Garber

Very cool. I have never seen one of those, only the uke-shaped Nationals.

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## mtucker

> I'm trying to clean up the tarnish, but it may require industrial amounts of metal polish.


That's a nice old National! I'm late to the party, and this is your old relic so you can do as you wish, but I wouldn't use any kind of polish/abrasive on it.clean it, frets etc. and leave the patina ...

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## lorrainehornig

All I can say is I'm blown away! I love this!

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## Phil Goodson

Gotta say it sounds MUCH better than I expected.   Good show!

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