Originally Posted by
Martin Jonas
That sounds nice. This appears to be a new Hora model, rather fancier than their standard bouzouki. It looks to me that it's based on the same underlying design, but with a nicer stain, a soundhole rose instead of the (ugly, in my opinion) scratchplate inlay, and a much nicer-looking chunky ebony bridge with a slanted saddle for compensation rather than their flimsy standard bridge. As the bridge was always the weak point of their setup, that's likely to be a big improvement.
I have one of their standard zouks, but fortunately a custom model (through Troubadour) without any inlay or stain, and have replaced the bridge myself. Mine sounds fairly similar to yours.
As for string gauges, the scale length is 660mm, almost exactly twice standard mandolin scale. So, using standard mandolin string gauges for GDAE tuning will give you the same string tensions as for a mandolin. I think my string gauges are medium-light mandolin gauges, 11-37 or something like that. Unfortunately, while most mandolin string sets (e.g. d'Addario) are far longer than needed for mandolins, they aren't quite long enough for the zouk, so you'll need to either buy a pre-made set for bouzouki in those gauges or buy single strings.
Martin
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