Cheap mandolins.

[the world]

Now i got a cheap mandolin off of ebay, i play guitar and wanted a basic mandolin to start off. Ive heard expensive mandolins play and this one really doesnt sound bad.

But even when my mandolin is perfectly in tune, when i fret the notes the notes dont sound accurate but they sound a little off. Ill tune it perfectly with a tuner and it still sounds off when i fret some notes (mostly the bassy ones, the higher strings dont really do it). Im assuming its because its a cheap mandolin and maybe the frets arent made well, but maybe not. It has an adjustable bridge and i was think maybe the strings are too high off the fretboard, im not sure..

So can anyone help me out here?

Thanks in advance.

[jimini_pickit]

Being that it's a cheap mando, there may be only so much you can do (speaking as a buyer of cheap eBay mando's myself)....but you can at least try adjusting the 'floating' bridge, bass side vs treble side; Try chiming the 12th fret harmonic of any string pair, then fret the string pair on the 12th fret and compare the sounds. If the chime is higher in pitch than the fretted note, you need to lengthen the string, so move that part of the bridge further from the nut (i.e., bass part further from the nut, but leave the treble end of the bridge as is, since you said the treble strings hold their tuning better), etc etc

Depending on how 'cheaply' constructed the mando, there may also be fret issues, but at least you can try to get the bridge to behave. I had to do that on my Johnson cheapo and although the bridge now looks crooked, the mando keeps its tuning while fretted!

Happy pickin'
Jim

[the world]

Thanks so much for the tip,

I tried it, the 12th fret harmonic and the actucal 12th fret are so far off from eachother, no matter how much i move the bridge, http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif... i guess this is the best i can get



update: i did this technique on the two highest strings and got the pitch to match almost perfectly... but i still cant get the lower strings to match

[the world]

Although i broke an E string doing it, doing what you said eventually made a cheap mandolin sound perfect, thank you... heres the tutorial i used.

http://www.folkofthewood.com/page2450.htm

[duuuude]

Thought I'd pass on a trick for setting intonation, without breaking strings, that someone posted awhile back:

Leave your D & A strings fairly loose & tune the G only to F and the E only to D, this should leave the strings slack enough to enable you to slide the bridge easier to get the intonation correct, works pretty good. The D & A strings will be fine once you get the G & E to ring true at the 12th fret.