Ceccherini photos

[Martin Jonas]

I've been working a bit on the new Ceccherini yesterday and today. I've repaired the bridge (one "tooth" was missing), lowered the action slightly (to 2.3mm on G and 1.7mm on E at 12th fret), lubricated the tuners, cleaned the top and put new Lenzners on. Intonation is just right with the bridge in its original position as set out by the marker buttons.

The Lenzners will need a day or two to settle in, but first impressions are that this is indeed a much brighter mandolin than my other Ceccherini, and that it is simultaneously loud and cultivated. Very promising. Not much of the velvety smoothness of the other one, but that may come when the strings have settled, or perhaps a bit later when the instrument wakes up.

The overall impression is still the same as when I first saw it: this strikes me as being a mandolin new from the luthier, not the seasoned vintage mandolin one would expect after a century or so.

I've put some photos (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=15;t=19658) up.

Martin

[Jim Garber]

I've repaired the bridge (one "tooth" was missing)
Just curious, Martin. How did you repair that bridge. It looked like the piece had broken off altogether.

Also: what is the wood that surrounds the top. it sort of looks reddish in the photos.

Do both your Ceccherinis have zero frets and brass saddles?

Jim

[guitharsis]

Such lovely instruments, Martin. How nice that you're able to do the repairs/adjustments yourself too. (Will have to wait another two weeks for my Stridente to be completed).

Enjoy your new mandolin!

Doreen

[Martin Jonas]

Just curious, Martin. How did you repair that bridge. It looked like the piece had broken off altogether.

Also: what is the wood that surrounds the top. it sort of looks reddish in the photos.

Do both your Ceccherinis have zero frets and brass saddles?
The bridge repair was a bit tricky, but I'm rather pleased how it worked out. #The tooth was indeed missing altogether, so I had to make a new one. #The easiest way would have been to use a sliver of ebony from somewhere else. #However, I had none, and also wanted to have an exact colour match. #What I did was to use the filings and dust that I had left over after lowering the action (taken from the top of the bridge underneath the metal saddle) and mix it with superglue. #That gave me a little nugget of reconstituted ebony, which can be sanded and filed into shape pretty finely. #The first new tooth I made broke in half when I tried to fit it, but luckily the nugget was large enough for two attempts and the second one worked fine. #Sanded it down until just oversize, then superglued it into the gap and used fine sand paper to match the surface with the original bridge. #I expected it to look a bit coarse, but in fact you have to look pretty hard to see the difference at all.

The binding is some sort of highly figured fruit wood. #If I remember right, Victor has in the past said it's cherrywood; the seller said tulipwood. #I wouldn't know the difference, but it's rather attractive and indeed a luminous reddish-brown.

The plainer Ceccherini has the nut and saddle out of brass or bronze and the new one out of an untarnished silvery metal: might be nickel or might actually be a silver alloy. #The nut is worked a bit differently between the two, but works in the same way: it's a single piece of metal which has teeth on the tuner side, acting as string spacers, and a smooth ledge on the bridge side, acting as zero fret. #There's a close-up of it among my previous photos I posted a while back.

Martin

[Eugene]

Also: what is the wood that surrounds the top. it sort of looks reddish in the photos.
I would wager on satinwood (Rutaceae). #It was a pretty popular binding material on Italian mandolins.

[Martin Jonas]

I've just got around to recording the sound of the double-top Ceccherini, with the result being here (http://mandolinproject.150m.com/westphalia.html) (click on the peghead next to "martinjonas1969"). This is Westphalia Waltz, with lead part played on the bowlback and a harmony part later overdubbed on an F5-clone (Washburn M3SW). The tremolo isn't as smooth as it could be, but I think the tone of the Ceccherini records fairly well. My pitch for introducing bowlbacks into bluegrass...

Martin

[Jim Garber]

Very nice, Martin. I do like the sound of the Ceccherini. Bell-like to my ears.

Jim

[John Zimm]

Very nice. You can't beat that bowlback sound.

-John.

[guitharsis]

Nice, Martin! It sounds as good as it looks.

Doreen