First off, huge thanks to anyone who has posted about their guitar to octave mandolin/mandocello conversions in the past. I don't normally post on forums, but since your posts helped me out so much, I figured posting my experience would be a fitting way to say thanks.
So I've quite fallen in love with the concept of a mandocello ever since first finding out about it's existence. I don't have enough dinero lying around to purchase one. But I did have an old b-brand sg style electric guitar that I bought for one hundo a few years back with the explicit idea of modding it in mind. So after contemplating how to approach a conversion for a while, I decided on starting with the simplest way that I could.
All I did was drill two holes in the headstock, make four extra slits in the nut, and add two sawn off screws to the bridge. It is quick. It is dirty. It doesn't hold it's tune well. But it certainly works. And since I already had the extra tuners and screws lying around, the total cost of the conversion was that of two sets of D'Addario EXL148 electric guitar strings: 13.20 at my local guitar shop.
I'll probably be upgrading this gradually in the coming few months. Here's the order of what I'll be doing:
1. I'll replace the nut with something proper. I've found a mandolin nut for a cheap price, which I'll try. If that turns out to put the strings too close together I'll try working from a completely blank nut.
2. I'll slim down the neck with a file to a fitting width. I do hope this goes well, it would be an expensive replacement otherwise.
3. I'll fill up the holes in the headstock and then drill new ones to get rid of those ridiculous bunny ears. At this point I'll probably also buy new, matching tuners.
4. I'll have to fix the bridge and tail setup. This is something that I haven't figured out at all, and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
If you guys would like to see it, then I'll happily post pictures of my progress. Here are a few of what I've done so far.
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