Mandola DAEB tuning for TIM?

[Cape Cod Struggler]

This past fall I purchased a Trinity College mandola which I hope to play at traditional Irish music sessions in addition to my mandolin. Currently I have it tuned as designed, CGDA. However, I have read and been told I might try placing a capo at the second fret and retuning it to DAEB for Irish music as it sounds and fits the music better. I have tried a capo and like the sound.

My question posed today is this. Would I be better off restringing the mandola with medium gauze mandolin strings and retuning to DAEB thus using the full scale length of the instrument? Or do most mandola players use a capo for this alternate tuning? What is best for the instrument? What is easier to convert over from a mandolin playing Irish music?

[Greg Ashton]

At the expense of a bit of work, I would try both. Some instruments are fine capo'd and some seem to lose something with the shorter scale and extra mass attached to the neck. Also, to confuse your situation further, have you tried CGCD (or DAEA)? To me, it sounds even better for trad music. FWIW, the guy in Dervish capo's and he's a pro.

[ptritz]

I have a couple mandolas that I use mostly for irish music, and have both tuned DAEB. It works well for most tunes, but there are a few tunes that go down below that low D. Usually it's pretty straightforward to just jump up an octave for a phrase or two.

On the Fylde, which has a scale length is just over 20", with the DAEB tuning there's another option. If you capo at the fifth fret, you have GDAE in the same octave as the mandolin and an effective scale length just a bit shorter than a standard mandolin, so you can play those tunes without having to do the workarounds.

The "capo on five" trick doesn't work well on the Weber mandola though. The Weber's scale length is 17", so the effective scale gets pretty short and tight if you capo at five. I'm not sure what the TC's scale is, so I don't know if that would be feasible on that instrument or not.

Pete

[Cape Cod Struggler]

The scale on the Trinity College is 17 inch. A capo at the 5th fret does make it tight. A capo at the second fret makes the TC very playable but I not crazy about using a capo. However, I do use one.

[JPL]

I almost set up my Big Muddy mandola for DAEB or DAEA, but I've realized that I actually need a better mandolin than what I've been using, so the Big Muddy with light mandolin strings is now tuned up to GDAE.

I figure if I get real comfy with that scale length, I can buy another one someday and experiment with DAEA and maybe even some octave strings.