Can you get nylon mandolin strings?

[Dagger Gordon]

I've got an old banjo/mandolin which plays reasonably well, and I'm experimenting with strings to use on it.

Someone recently suggested I try nylon mandolin strings on it. I've never seen these. Do they exist, and do you think they might work on a banjo/mandolin?

[JEStanek]

Dagger,

This has come up fairly often and while I've never personnally used him, other have and recommend contacting Thin Man Music.com (http://www.thinmanmusic.com/) for getting a custom set of nylons for mandolin guages. Let us know if this pans out.

Jamie

[mandroid]

there are GDAE tunable string sets , to be sure, yup, another FAQ, taken up before,
but as the tension is lower and diameter larger, so, it would require a rather wide fingerboard
to use more than 4.

I have a Banjo Uke that I use nylon GDAE tuned strings , it works OK. mix of 3 Martin Bari Uke strings 2 are wound , silvered-copper, and Aluminum wire.

minus the 1st, .. and substitute the soprano smallest string ,
of which the sets for Sopranos have 2.

Also have un double coursed my steel strung mandolin banjo, too, and find I quite like it,
then learned that they were named Melody Banjos back in the day. mandolin scale 4 string.

Octave double a Irish Tenor Banjo that way, possibly ...

[Banjojon]

Hi Mandroid,
How do you secure nylon or gut to the standard tailpieces of those instruments? Or have you changed them?
Thanks, John.

[mandroid]

my 4 string banjo uke has the string tied either around a ball out of a regular guitar string and the ball stops between one of the 4 gaps between 5 pins of a NoKnot banjo tailpiece, or it's tied directly on a pin.

[Martin Jonas]

There have been a couple of threads about this lately, particularly about the new GDAE nylgut string set Aquila have recently brought out just for that purpose (well, actually for ukuleles tuned as mandolins, but that amounts to the same thing). Do a search for "Aquila" or "nylgut".

Martin

[Dagger Gordon]

Thanks for the replies.

I might try them. I am still wondering if anyone thinks they would work on a banjo/mandolin with double strings.

I'm not really that bothered about it and don't plan to go to a lot of trouble unless it seems a good idea.

[mandroid]

All depends on the width of the fingerboard you have to work with, Dag.

some comparison with difference in steel 6 string and a classical guitar neck widths may be worth a bit of analysis.

how tight can you pack courses and not have them interfere with each other, is a consideration.

8 string Ukes have been pictured , but no one has offered fingerboard width measurements.

<broad hint> :whistling:

:popcorn: