I was just wondering if anyone has ever considered putting a shorter neck on a Gibson Mandola, say an H2, to produce a 14.5" scale length mandolin with the larger mandola body. Just wondering
I was just wondering if anyone has ever considered putting a shorter neck on a Gibson Mandola, say an H2, to produce a 14.5" scale length mandolin with the larger mandola body. Just wondering
I doubt it. Strings get really floppy and flubby tuned to lower pitches and short scale lengths. The lower the pitch the longer the scale length needed to accommodate the string, that's why mandolins have around 14" scale length, guitars around 25", electric bass around 34", and acoustic basses 42"+.
I think Northfield calls it a "Big Mon", it could probably be done if someone has a dola with a good body but no neck, but there are probably simpler paths, as in finding a larger body mandolin with a big voice.
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Big Muddy sells instruments with mandolin necks on mandola bodies.
How about a 10 string, wide neck Big Mon
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Gibson tried it with their large bodied A-1 and A-50 models made between 1937 and 1942: 11 1/4" body width, 14 1/2" scale.
They are f-hole models. They didn't make them in large numbers, but they turn up from time to time. I don't recall playing one.
If I remember right, Darol Anger had a Gilchrist that was a kind of a hybrid model. I think he sold it here on the classifieds.
I have a Gypsy Magic 10-string built by Walt Kuhlman, 13 3/4" scale length IIRC, which has a body shape similar to the Mid Missouri/Big Muddy mandola shape, but much deeper. It sounds great, and is deep and full even on just the top four courses.
The Northfield Big Mon and Big Muddy mandola bodies do have that depth of tone.
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Easy enough to get an A style mandola and put a capo on it. Capo? Ouch!
If it’s a heavily built instrument that might help.
It would probably get lost in a band, but for some Irish or cool Old Time with a small audience, it would be great.
I'm not seeing the advantage with that idea. From my perspective, the weakest part of a mandolin's voice is once you get up past the 7th fret on the E string. That's where the high quality instruments still have a voice and can play a strong note, but it's still nowhere near the power of those high notes on a fiddle or flute. It gets very "plinky" up there with the short sustain on even a very good mandolin.
A larger body isn't going to help with that, and may even be a detriment to the ability of the internal air mass reinforcing the high notes. There's a reason why instruments built to play in this range of notes like a violin aren't sized like a viola.
A quick way to try this out is to string a mandola with light gauge mandolin strings tuned to FCGD (terraces step down from mandolin) and then put a capo on the second fret.
If you want to do this, do the math with a string tension calculator to make sure you are not overloading the instrument. Mandola scale lengths are all over the place.
Here's a large body 1937 A-50 at Charles Johnson's shop: http://www.vintagemandolin.com/37gib...1993_f-21.html
Note the fatter than usual body shape.
And here's a large body long scale Gibson A-1, at Fred Oster's Vintage Instruments: http://www.vintage-instruments.com/s...mandolin-1939/
For some reason, they list the scale on this one as [quote] 14 ?", whatever they mean by that. All the large body A's that have come to my attention were 14 1/2".
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Last edited by rcc56; Oct-13-2022 at 1:48am.
Not withstanding the fact that there are larger bodied instruments out there, there's a good sound reason not to do this as such: the size of the soundhole and the volume of the chamber are carefully matched so ensure the instrument has good sound production across it's whole tonal range. The consequence is that stringing a 'dola as a mandolin will result in a tonal range where the main body resonance is too low to respond to the strings, you will still get a decent sound, but it will be direct radiation from the soundboard, not from the body resonance. What this means in practice is that playing exactly the same note on a mandolin (particularly those low woody notes on the G and D strings) or a 'dola or OM will sound completely different.
BTW larger bodied mandolins tend to have larger soundholes as well to keep the body resonances in the correct ballpark.
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