Latest 5 string electric design

Folks, I thought you might be interested in my latest 5 string electric design:

* Short 17 fret neck to push the pickup to where the 19th fret would be for a stronger/cleaner jazzier tone.
* Hollow body construction with spruce top and burr-walnut overlay.
* 36mm nut puts the strings at the same spacing as the bottom 5 courses of a guitar - coincidently, for the top 4 courses this is the same spacing you get if you take the centre point of the pairs of string on a typical 28mm mandolin nut. Seems to be about optimal for me anyway ;)
* Gotoh SG381 tuners - I think I'm in love with these, much better than your typical mandolin tuners IMO.
* Shielded "box within a box" cavity - traditionally hollow bodies are hard to shield, and this still doesn't completely entomb the electrics in copper as we want the top free to move, but the gaps are small compared to typical RF wavelengths - seems to do the job.

Attachment 155017Attachment 155018Attachment 155019Attachment 155020Attachment 155021Attachment 155022Attachment 155023Attachment 155024Attachment 155026

Here's the back open showing the shielding arrangement, there's enough overlap of copper for the shielding on the back panel to make contact with that on the inside of the cavity. There are still plenty of gaps in the shield since the back panel insert doesn't quite touch the top, but it seems to do the job OK:

Attachment 155027

And finally, the obligatory video demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de_3...ature=youtu.be

Gorgeous mando! And a great video of her. 17 frets to the body sounds sweet indeed.

Very nice design and craftsmanship. Very well thought out. Love that burl walnut overlay. Thank you for sharing this with us.

Outstanding! Beautiful design and craft, and lovely warm, jazzy, sound! The short fretboard is a winner here. Given the extra bridge space, did you consider a second pickup?

Very nice. What scale length is that and what amp have you found brings out the warmest jazz sound?

thanks for the nice explanation and demo.

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Originally Posted by Dave Greenspoon

Outstanding! Beautiful design and craft, and lovely warm, jazzy, sound! The short fretboard is a winner here. Given the extra bridge space, did you consider a second pickup?

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Yes definitely, and as you say there is room in there.

For me, the biggest thing a second pickup gives you is a brighter sound, and had the top end been weak on this one I would have chopped another hole in there and fitted a second pickup. However, for me, this one is very well balanced as is, and I didn't really see a huge need. Put the pickup in parallel mode and it's a bright and sparkly as you could want. That said, there is something to be said in favour of two pickups in parallel for that extra-fat sound.

BTW if anything, the biggest effect of the shorter neck is just a good clean well balanced output with none of the "weak-e-string-syndrome", that alone if worth having, and I'm very tempted to try the same design for my next 8 string.

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Originally Posted by Bill McCall

Very nice. What scale length is that and what amp have you found brings out the warmest jazz sound?

thanks for the nice explanation and demo.

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Standard mandolin 13 7/8" scale with a .056 bottom C. Action is 50thou on top e, to 60thou on the G and 70 on the C.

As for which amp... well I only really have one decent amp - a old cube 30. Personally I tend to go for the sound of the clean side, maybe roll the trebles off slightly for a darker sound (have to be careful not to end up muting the e string though... the treble-cut tone control on the instrument is voiced to start cutting above approx 800Hz where as most controls voiced for guitar will cut from approx 400Hz which will kill both the a and e strings if you're not careful - it's taken me a while to figure this out!). A bit of compression works well too - for me that meant activating the "Brit Combo" digital emulation on the amp - this is a whole different sound which I really liked in the room, but which IMO sounded a little harsh when recorded for some strange reason.

However, I suspect most good clean sounding amps would work well, remember that much comes from your choice of pick and how you play as much as the amp. If you haven't watched the pick comparison I posted in the companion thread to this one, give it a go: the differences are very far from subtle!