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Ukulele Shoni
May-20-2004, 4:30am
Hello friends.
A semi-retired gentleman has opened a tiny music store in our little village and he has a mandolin for sale that he (primarily a guitar player) says he got for himself when he was a teenager (about 45 years ago), then hardly ever played. Strangely, it has a concave, rather than convex, top. He swears that's the way it was when he got it, and indeed it doesn't really look caved in so much as built that way--the bridge appears to be original and the action is just as you would want it to be. And the sound, to my untutored ear (I'm a ukulele player) also seems reasonably good. The back is slightly arched, and there is no name on it, nor any other identifying mark/logo/serial number that I could discern.

Have any of you out there ever heard of a concave-top mandolin? Or must it have been screwed up somewhere along the line? Thanks. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

Bob A
May-21-2004, 1:15pm
A French builder, Gelas, made mandolins with a very odd shape. They have a double top, and the thing is set up so that the strings actually pull up rather than push down on the top, The back has a bend to it also. If you're interested, go to the links section and pull up boetszkes snaarinstrumenten, and look at their mandolins. They had one for sale.