I bought a $50 Rogue mandolin from MF a few years ago, because I love the sound of a mandolin and I wanted to try one. I quickly gave up on it after it shredded my fingers though. I gave it to my bro in law. He recently gave it back to me. I tuned it up and played it a bit, and again wound up with very sore fingers. Being a wannabe guitar player for a good long time, I've learned a few things about setups, and after these years without that mandolin, I quickly realized that the setup on it was really bad.
I leveled the frets a bit, filed the nut slots down, lowered the bridge, and set the intonation, and suddenly this thing is surprisingly easy to fret, and for a cheapo laminate and my untrained ears, it sounds pretty decent. It's the first instrument other than a guitar that I could actually make some passable sounding noise on.
I really love the nice orderly and logical perfect fifths tuning. Makes figuring out chords and scales quite easy, compared to a guitar.
I believe I'm hooked.
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