Let me take a guess. If this doesn't apply then you can ignore it. I have a mandolin friend who came from guitar, and really had trouble with how small the distance between frets is. When he came to visit I discovered he was fretting in a non standard way. In a guitar way.
The guitar is one finger per fret going up the neck. The mandolin is one finger every two frets.
When a guitarist plays a major scale, he skips fingers going up the scale. Index, third, etc. A mandolinner goes up a major scale using each finger consecutively. Index, middle, third, pinky, etc. Since each finger is responsible for two frets, the major scale naturally goes a finger at a time up the scale.
So the mandolin has smaller frets than a lot of instruments, but it is also fingered in a different way.
I know mandolinners who have this problem the other way. They get a mandola, or octave, or even mando-cello, and try to make the two fret stretch they used on the mandolin, and so something had to give. "My fingers don't easily go that far apart."
I hope that helps, and if it is irrelevant, well I hope it helps someone.
Bookmarks