Early last year I acquired two mandolins, a Collings MT, brand new from TME, and a lightly used black topped MTO from a Cafe member. Both have 1 3/16” nuts. They are dimensionally identical, but sonically quite different. I thought it would be cool to play one for awhile until I felt like a change, then play the other one with no ergonomic adjustments necessary. So, I did that for over a. year. I tended to love the sound of either mandolin, except when I switched from the MTO (oval hole) to the MT (f-hole), the “feel” was like night and day. The MT felt marvelous in my hands, although I could never say quite why. I grew frustrated with the MTO, and seriously considered selling it and finding something I liked better, which wasn’t going to be easy since I live in NW Montana, a long way from any decent music store.
This story is probably longer than it needs to be, but I’m trying to describe how this issue crept up on me like it did. I made the assumption that Collings mandolins are pretty much perfect and that mine were identical—at least visually. Anyway, before I started the tedious and disheartening (I really wanted to love both these instruments) process of selling, I decided to take a more detailed look at them. I got out my machinist’s rule and started measuring everything having to do with my hands. Same, same, same...until I measured the string spacing—the space within the courses. Each pair of strings on the MTO were about 1mm wider apart than those in the MT. That doesn’t sound like much, but the actual spacing on the unwound strings was about 2mm on the MT and 3mm on the MTO. That’s a 33% difference! Eureka!
But, now I had to decide how to fix this problem. I’ll cut this short and say that the clouds parted and the angels sang when I discovered that Bruce Weber had recently moved to within 40 miles of me! I emailed, then called Bruce, arranged a date (yesterday) and drove on down to his new shop/orchard/estate on Flathead Lake. What a delightful afternoon! Bruce went right to work. He measured the MT, then made a new nut with that string spacing, sanded down and notched the saddle, tweaked the trussrod, put on new strings, and handed it back to me.
Today I feel like I have a new mandolin!!! It plays and sounds SO MUCH better! A delightful afternoon with Bruce (and his friend Todd who was wiring the temporary shop), cost me $50! Bruce wouldn’t even talk about accepting more.
So, another lesson about how little details can matter in a mandolin and the importance of a good setup. Then finally, I feel the immense satisfaction of living this close to a guy with the skill, the experience, the confidence, and the warmth of Mr. Bruce Weber. Almost made me forget this #$&@*% pandemic for a few hours!!!
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