dodgy mandolin

Subject: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 09:08 PM

I bought a mandolin the other day and it has a lovely sound, but seems to be off tuning wise. I think the frets might have been badly placed.    Is this a fixable and affordable ailment? Should I just take it back and go look for another one?

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Songster Bob
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 09:23 PM

Most mendolins have movable bridges, held in place by the strings. Check that the bridge is in the right place (starting at twice the distance from the nut to the 12th fret, then fudged to account for string stretch as you fret).

If you have an electronic tuner, check to see that the 12th fret note is one octave above the open note for the same string. Another check is to use the harmonic at the 12th fret, checked against the fretted note to see that it's the same note.

If the bridge is in the right place, and the notes are still out, then the frets are upgephrunzeled. If moving the bridge fixes the problem, well, then you've fixed the problem.



Songbob

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 09:42 PM

Thanks. I hadn't tried the 12th fret harmonic, I just noticed that the octave on the next string up didn't sound right and some other notes on the g string (teehee!). Yeah, seems to affect the g more than any others. Maybe the bridge is a bit skewiff or something? I'll take it back to the shop for them to look at it before I start fiddling around myself though I think. Don't want to go doing something drastic by accident.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Songster Bob
Date: 07 Mar 07 - 10:10 PM

If you don't slide the bridge enough to scuff the top, there's not much you could do that's "drastic."

Bob

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 02:14 AM

The bridge wants to be at a slight angle, with the side of the G string a bit closer to the tailpiece, because the G strings are so much thicker that the stiffness of the string makes it vibrate as if the pivot point at the bridge end was a bit closer to the nut than it actually is. It's called "end effect".

If the sound is good this is the sort of adjustment on a mandolin that is worth doing yourself.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Spot
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 02:46 AM

Bardan

         I have 3, from a Chinese rough and ready (but very effective) to a very high end American bluegrass jobby. They seem to need constant fine adjustment - one minute I love 'em, next minute NOT!! Maybe weather conditions have an effect. Persevere with it and if you can't fix it , I need another!! What make is yours, by the way?

                        Regards ...Spot

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 03:14 AM

Drop your silver in my dodgy mandolin.
Help a poor man fill his pretty dream.
Give me pennies I'll take anything,
Now listen while I play.
My dodgy mandolin.


Watch the jingle jangle start to shine.
Reflections of the music that is mine.
When you toss a coin you'll hear it sing.
Now listen while I play,
My dodgy mandolin.


Drop a dime before I walk away.
Any song you want I'll gladly play.
Money feeds my music machine.
Now listen while I play,
My dodgy mandolin.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 10:35 PM

It doesn't have any brand name label on it. (Before you go running off to conclusions about hand-crafted marvels, its a cheap job. I'm more of a fiddler really.) It's a fairly standard irish mandolin. Spruce top. Not sure what the back and sides are. Nice sustain, smells of freshly cut wood. Oh, the neck is either completely slathered with resiny stuff or its made out of tennis racket. Nice sound for the price range though, be a pity to lose it. A had a quick fiddle with the bridge this morning, and it was better but not perfect. I think it'll be ok so long as a take the time out to tinker and get me an electronic tuner to get it absolutely right. It's an endless task just keeping the strings in tune with each other anyway. I should just get one of those Russian jobbies with no courses. domras?

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: iancarterb
Date: 08 Mar 07 - 10:54 PM

"It's an endless task just keeping the strings in tune with each other anyway."
Maddening, isn't it? Someone asks you if you have a D you believe in, and one of them is probably believable. I recommend against outdoor playing, based on the experience of doing so daily on a ferry for close to 28 years. But it's a great commuter's instrument, small enough for a bicycle, quiet enough to get away with playing or practicing almost anywhere. But the tuning issue may only be soluble with tuners more expensive than a mandolin suitable for bicycle commuting.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 05:50 AM

I heard the other day that the very word "mandolin" is Italian for "cannot be tuned"! (mandolin player myself....beginning to see some truth in this statement)

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:06 AM

...Actually I think you'll find the word Mandolin comes from the Italian word for 'Almond' (from the shape of the roundback of the Neapolitan Mandolin)

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:14 AM

doh!

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Bernard
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:18 AM

I thought 'mandolin' was derived from 'mangled in'...!

At the last count I had four of the buggers... I think they're breeding.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:24 AM

for the record, "actually, i think you'll find", for some reason, just always makes me angry....mayhaps it's because I'm so often off the mark.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: nickp
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:31 AM

Only 4, Bernard...?

I have 9 and each one has its own foibles when it comes to tuning!

I think I'm a lost cause,

Nick

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,Bardan
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:42 AM

Oh, dear. It sounds like I just made the worst mistake of my life. I'll just end up sitting in a corner hunched over my mandolin. Obsessively twiddling and never quite getting it in tune. Probably muttering to myself. Oh well, almost normal behaviour by some folkie standards and at least I haven't taken up the harp. Now there's an instrument I'd hate to tune.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 07:57 AM

"Oh, dear. It sounds like I just made the worst mistake of my life. I'll just end up sitting in a corner hunched over my mandolin. Obsessively twiddling and never quite getting it in tune. Probably muttering to myself."

Now listen while I play,
My dodgy mandolin....

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,chris
Date: 09 Mar 07 - 09:28 AM

I bought a cheap one which was a bitch to tune. I bought a set of better quality machine heads. It didn't stop it being a bitch but it was easier to get it in tune with a bit less frustration
chris

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: nickp
Date: 10 Mar 07 - 06:12 AM

Persevere!! They're great instruments to play... oh, and I forgot a 10th one which has 12 tricks (4 x 3, octaves in the centre of the two bass courses) on a lovely violin style scrolled head (although with machine heads). Now that one can be played and tuned..... but barely and not really worth the effort! Looks good on the wall though.

Nick

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Gulliver
Date: 10 Mar 07 - 05:54 PM

My Suzuki round-back seems to be very sensitive to changes in temperature and often goes out of tune but with this little clip-on tuner (cost 29 Euros), which works on strings vibrations, that's no problem. I leave it on the mandolina and just check the tuning every so often between songs/tunes.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 07:43 AM

Lady, Play Your Mandolin!

Lady, Play Your Mandolin! was the first Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Rudolf Ising of Harman and Ising. It was originally released in September 1931.

The black and white cartoon features the short-lived Mickey Mouse-inspired character Foxy as a gaucho who decides to visit a local saloon. His horse soon finds himself drunk on tequila and begins to hallucinate wildly.

As was typically the case with the early entries in the Merry Melodies series, one purpose of the cartoon was to promote a Warner-owned popular song. The title theme, written by Oscar Levant with lyrics by Irving Caesar, was a 1930 #5 pop hit sung by Nick Lucas and released by Brunswick Records, which had been purchased by Warner Brothers the previous year (Another recording, by the Havana Novelty Orchestra was released the same year on RCA's Victor Records). In the short, it is sung by a female fox character who would later become Foxy's girlfriend, Roxy.

The short was animated by Rollin Hamilton and Norm Blackburn with a musical score and direction of the Brunswick Recording Orchestra by Frank Marsales.

The cartoon is available in a Cartoon Network-produced feature about "Lost Cartoons", which is included in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 1, Disc 3.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 08:11 PM

I had a tenor banjo with similar troubles. I found that using strings of just the right gauge helped immeasurably. To thin, and they went out of tune (do to stretchiness?), too thick, and they bent the neck as they were tighhtened (thereby sending the other strings out). Once I found the perfect set of gauges, it is highly managable.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Bernard
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 08:53 PM

Okay, Nick, perraps I can't match you for mandolin quantity, but that's because of the 16 guitars, 4 concertinas, 3 accordions, 5 melodeons... the list goes on and on and on...!

My most recent mandolin is a La Foley round back... lovely tone! Perfect for recording with.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: nickp
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:41 AM

OK Bernard, you win.... but I had forgotten a mandolinetto (guitar shaped body from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue about 1910) currently away having the fretboard angled to make it playable.

La Foleys are rather nice instruments and do sound good.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:01 AM

Leaving a tuner permanently clipped on like Gulliver makes sense - I've got a ukelele I tune like a mandolin (except it's single strings of course), and I leave the tuner on because it always needs the tuning adjusted every time I play it. Great fun to play for all that.

The other thing that can mess the tuning of course would be if the actions a bit too high so when you fret up the neck you are stretching the strings.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 10:23 AM

If I"d had a daughter, I would have called her Amanda-Lynne.

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:12 PM

Has anyone noted that the most commonly used kinds of mando bridges are seriously compensated? Looking down on the bridge, they're often/usually/sometimes a zig-zag shape, so that the string lengths are different even when the bridge is set square to the strings.

A few people I've seen use an "arched" bridge without the compensation.

Either style can benefit from squiggling it about a bit to get the separate strings as close as possible to where they play the harmonic (octave) of the open string at the 12th fret; but

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:35 PM

An accidental premature ... post. The submit button was really close to the start bar when I tried to bring up a different window.

Meant to say that lots of people don't bother with shaving the compensated bridges to get exact tuning of all the strings, although it can be done. The built-in amount of the offsets seems adequate, provided that you use "standard" string sets, although it may be a bit off if you mix and match individual strings from different sets.

If the "dodgy one" has something unusual for a bridge, it might take a bit of whittlin' to get things so that all the strings are exactly the right lengths - if you happen to be fussy about it.

John

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 11:49 PM

Aw John, you're being sensible again!

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 12:47 AM

A few years back the bridge on my favorite mando split down the middle, right at the beginning of a week-long campout festival. I whittled a new bridge out of a piece of a clothespin to last me until I could get back to town; but when I found out the price of a new "real bridge" I used the clothespin for another two years - until it split in about the same place as the original.

Surprisingly, with my talent for playing the mando, hardly anyone ever complains about it being out of tune.

John

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 04:29 AM

John,
you're a real wit...

Subject: RE: dodgy mandolin
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 13 Mar 07 - 05:03 AM

Tuning , tuning, tell me about it...for years I struggled with a cheap hammer dulcimer and then they invented 'lectronic tuners. At the same time I bought a far superior dulcimer. Why then do I spend most of my time hanging on to my Tea Chest Bass? 'Cos I love it, always nearly in tune but low enough not to be too critical. It's also somewhere to hang publicity posters.