In a music shop here in Norwich (UK) I recently found a Gretsch New Yorker mandolin. I confess to being first seduced by the name, but the thing played very nicely in the shop, so I bought it. I've just settled down to change a set of strings, and have been appalled to find that the tailpiece is so badly designed that it has taken me over an hour to change six of the eight strings (I gave up before trying the last two). This is the kind of tailpiece where a loop on the end of the string fits over a little stub or 'hook'; you then feed the string under a sort of tailpiece cover and then up to the fingerboard. Those little hooks are awful – you can't keep the string on them, and time after time I found I was halfway through winding it at one end and it slipped off the other! I am now seriously thinking of getting a guitar technician to take the tailpiece off and replace it with another one; I've had cheaper mandolins with far better ones. Before I do so, has anyone had similar problems with this mandolin, and if so, how did you get round it?

Thanks.

Cappuccino, Norfolk UK.