At long last, Davey Stuart custom tenor
18 month wait, worth every minute.
This is the first truly irreplaceable instrument I have owned, not priceless, but priceless to me.
It is an 18" scale OM, it's basically his 18" flattop mandola design with a deeper body and lighter bracing so it can be strung as a tenor guitar in either GDAE or CGDA. The design allows for most of the short neck to clear the body while still getting the deeper tone of an OM.
The 18" scale is the magic golden length for me, as it's the longest scale I can play comfortably with mandolin fingerings of two fingers per fret. I am playing both grass and classical literature on it. I have to substitute chop chords with barre chords but everything else works really well and the speed is there. I always felt encumbered on the 20" scale OM, and put that instrument on the shelf as a result.
Also part of the comfort package are 15 lb strings for my aging hands, tall frets, and Grover 309 tuners, just in case I want to string it up with 8 very light strings.
I had to talk him into this build, he wasn't sure that short of a scale would sound good tuned GDAE, and by his very high standards he gave it a sound rating of just OK.
As for me, with the right strings and pick (15 lb set with Ultex .88 triangle), I get a wonderful sound out of it. I would characterize my desired sound as the classic Taylor guitar sound, and that's what it does, with a little more bass. I chose the brightest pick I could stand, since I like the shimmer of a Taylor steel-string for strumming vocal accompaniment.
It strums quite well as a rhythm machine too (using open and barre chords), and capoed at C it sounds like a decent CGDA tuned instrument. So this may have cured me of MAS for a while... :-)
So here it is, a custom made mandola/tenor guitar that chances are only a weirdo like me would want.
I love the mandolin world. :-)
Davey Stuart tenor guitar (based on his 18" mandola design).
Eastman MD-604SB with Grover 309 tuners.
Eastwood 4 string electric mandostang, 2x Airline e-mandola (4-string) one strung as an e-OM.
DSP's: Helix HX Stomp, various Zooms.
Amps: THR-10, Sony XB-20.
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