Electric Mandola |
September 21st, 2024 |
| mandolin, music, tech |
I think it's a RISA tenor uke, and initially it had a pretty bad hum. Testing with a multimeter, some of the components had pretty good ground connectivity:
But not the output jack:
I took off the pickguard plate to get at the electronics:
After resoldering the jack the noise level was not perfect but a lot better.
The next problem was strings: no one seems to sell ball-end mandola strings. After a bunch of looking I decided to order four sizes of individual strings from JustStrings:
I needed to slightly widen the nut for the G and C strings, but they work well! After tweaking the action a bunch, here's what it sounds like:
It's a lot of fun, but I'm not sure I like it enough to bring to gigs. The main problem is that it's a bit too low for inversions, which my mandolin style is very dependent on. They don't sound terrible, but they're a big muddier than I'd like. I'll keep playing with it; we'll see!
in prehistory i played many hundreds of dances on mandolin, octave mandolin, banjo mandolin, tenor banjo, etc. i've since gravitated to what could be called the Swedish hypermandolin, which has 5 courses, the top 4 same as an octave mandolin but the lowest theorbed down to the same low A as a double bass. don't worry, i'm getting to the point: it makes me Crazy when people ask to play the larger/lower instruments and then make no effort to adapt to what the instrument and physics want to do. maybe you Can play the Partita #2 in Dm on upright bass, but otoh you Could have the musical taste not to. it's more productive to adopt styles that exploit the advantages of differently-sized instruments in the family. or even different ranges within the same instrument: give yourself latitude to play it solely as a bass for a while, then for comping, and then again melody.
Also IMO the muddiness you mentioned in the video could be addressed with a preamp pedal (inc EQ) designed for electric guitar… lots of gear available to sharpen up that sound.
Edward I don't think it's mostly an EQ issue: inversions just stop sounding good below a certain pitch. Play a fourth on a keyboard pretty high and it works well interpreted as a fifth; do it lower and it does not. I think if I'm going to keep playing this instrument I will need to develop new techniques that exploit its strengths, as Bob says
Try a nice electric guitar preamp and see how it feels.
Jeff, if you’re in to this kind of thing, then Fanner Guitar Works can make you a lovely electric instrument. (I got a 23’’ scale tenor guitar and enjoying it very much. Spreading the love.) http://fannerelectricukulele.com