nylon strings

[Rex]

Had a day off and started fooling around with something I always wanted to try. I took the Dogals off my little home made celtic style beast and put nylon guitar strings on it.

http://www.geocities.com/beads_59/nylonstringmando.html

It actually plays ok. The tone is tremendously variable depending on the shape and thickness of the pick. Great sustain. Volume only ok, but this top was braced for 8 steel strings. Ok, I did put two screw holes in the end of my mando when I mounted those strap buttons. But this mando was an experiment when I made it ten years ago anyway. It was a wall hanger recently. Most of my playing is on classical guitar now. I always wanted to try nylon strings on a mandolin. Didn't the really old ones use gut? I guess that makes me retro. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
BTW, I rounded off the back edges of the top for comfort when I built this, the top is not that thick.

[Bob A]

I'm surprised you can drive the top with only 4 nylon strings.

Now it's time to consider actual gut strings - see if they're an improvement over nylon.

[Jim Garber]

I would imagine that you would need a pretty thin top which i think rex said his is. You might also need to experiment with the gauge of the strings.

hey ukes only have 4 strings but the best of them are pretty lightly braced.

Jim

[Rex]

The top is for sure too thick and too heavily braced for this setup. This was just an experiment. If I decide to leave it that way I will have to take the back off and do some trimming. Also a new bridge and nut will be in order. But that would be a project for this winter, I'm too busy now. I'll also have to redo the headstock with fewer tuners. I'll just plink on it for now and see if I like it. So far all I have to do is fill a couple of holes in the end if I want to go back. A friend has shown me how to make a nice looking loop in the end of a string so I won't have those ugly knots.

[Chris Baird]

Does anyone know where I could find a picture of Radim Zenkl's 4 string nylon strung mandolin?

[Eugene]

Don't know about Radim's, but most of the things listed in my first post here (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=6;t=17870) were built for gut strings. Check out in particular the Cremonese and Brescian instruments.