I am not sure whether it is good news or bad. I played my usual "Wednesday night with neighbors" jam and played the tenor far more than my mando and generally sounded better doing it.
A little while back I posted about the Emperador I was getting on eBay. I got it and it needed a bit more work than I had hoped. I knew the bridge was lifting; I popped it the rest of the way off and glued it down properly. There was also a little bottom seam separation at the tail that turned out to be more serious. It looks like the guitar was dropped or somehow took a pretty solid blow on the tail. The tailpiece block was slightly loose internally and there was a small crack in the top right at the tailpiece block in addition to the seam separation on the bottom. It lacked some structural integrity at the tail. After some agonizing over possible solutions, I took the easy way out. I mixed up a small batch of marine epoxy and used a paint brush through the sound hole to coat the tail block and the side next to it as well as the nearby seams top and bottom, then I clamped it holding the proper shape with masking tape on the bottom seam so epoxy would not drip out. It is rock solid now. I was worried it might affect the sound, but when I played blues with my neighbors tonight it sounded pretty good. My neighbors are better guitarists than me and they both played it to see what a tenor was like and played it well; it won't be holding me back.
I have it tuned Irish - GDAE an octve below mandolin. The LaBella heavy mandolin strings I got (the math on that set was nearly perfect on the tension calculator and I figured they would have enough extra to be long enough) did not completely work out - the D string is actually slightly too short even though the rest are fine. But I had some Vinci strings that had the same size D that was long enough, though it is 80/20 Bronze and the G from the LaBella set is PB. The intonation is slightly off with this tuning. Everything is slightly sharp at the 12th fret, but I only know that from using the tuner; it was fine jamming blues.
So I am a reasonably happy camper; this will be a good "intro" tenor for now and if I get a nicer one (hmmm - resonator?) someday it will be a good beach guitar. It will not replace my mando, but it will definitely be sharing time with it.
"First you master your instrument, then you master the music, then you forget about all that ... and just play"
Charlie "Bird" Parker
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