String source for 1922 italian mandola?

[Chris Burt]

I've a mandola by Enrico Ventura of Milan that came to me with guitar strings. Do any of you have enough experience with mandolas of this type to recommend a source for an appropriate string set? And a case, any ideas for a case:)? I'd love to see what early 20th century Milanese packed these around in.

I'm familiar with many types of bowl and flat-back mandolins and have even repaired several. I've not had the good fortune to run across similar mandolas. The pictured instrument, however, is very different from what I'd expect from a scaled up mandolin. The top has a very large induced arch, the back has a bit less of an induced arch. The top and back braces, thin and triangular in cross section, are over 2 cm high! And check out the flared-shield shape of heal of the neck. I'll bet the neck and neck block are one piece with the ribs let into saw cuts.

The workmanship is very professional, tho' not overly concerned with niceties. What's visible of the inside surfaces of the back and sides (some type of Rosewood) are straight off the toothed plane blade. A very interesting instrument with a sound I really like, but the intonation is off and I'd like to get it properly strung up before putting in the intonation tweaking work. Thank you for any input.
http://www.chrisburt.com/tmp/MandolaNeckRoot.jpghttp://www.chrisburt.com/tmp/MandolaTop.jpghttp://www.chrisburt.com/tmp/MandolaBack.jpg

[mandroid]

The neck joins the body like it grew out of it.
Quite the nice,novel design detail there.

Shorter scale length, but I have GHS octave-mando strings on my 40cm scale mandola.
CGDA
They are, relatively, quite light, if that is the direction you wish to go,
lowest pair is a .044", so not much thicker than a .041" BG mandolin set.
6 P-Bronze wound strings.
As labeled, suggests, intended for O-M with GDAE tuning and a longer scale.

Longer scale should work well with light gage strings, still make a warm tone.

whats on there now? slots and neck, if made wide, would suggest heavier gage setup was intended.

http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/coffee.gif

[Martin Jonas]

Note that this is an Italian mandola, not an American one, and therefore was probably intended for tenor mandola (octave mandolin) tuning, GDAE, despite the short scale. That means heavier gauges than normal mandola sets. The light Fisoma bronze mandola set is .019 .025 .038 .058, the medium is .020 .028 .040 .063. These are the sort of gauges you'll need on a tenor mandola of this scale length. I think the Fisoma or the Optima Goldin mandola sets will be great on this one. They can be ordered from Saitenkatalog.de (http://www.saitenkatalog.de). You could also try Dogal Calace strings, but I don't know who stocks them for tenor mandola.

Martin