I've been wanting a mandocello for a long time, but could never find the money to buy one, as they tend to be rather expensive (if I could find one at all). A few years ago I hit on the idea of taking an old beater guitar and tuning it to kind of a pale imitation. I put a heavy gauge E on bottom an tuned it down to C, used a medium gauge A turned to G, a standard light D, a medium B tuned to A, and just because it's still a 6 string neck, put a couple light Es on top just to try to balance the tension.
This is a 30+ year old Yamaha guitar that my father gave me when he started playing seriously again and got a good instrument. I've got a Martin as my main guitar, so this was just lying around before I decided to experiment. It's not a great instrument sound wise, but it's built like a tank and still plays well after all these years of alternate abuse and neglect. Getting to the point, would it be possible to convert this from a bizarre imitation to something closer to the real thing? I assume it would just need a new nut and bridge, and new tuners? How much work and expense am I looking at if I want to try something like this? Is it even worth it? Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated!
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