mandola strings on a mandolin?

[John Rosett]

i know that some of the western swing electric mandolinists tuned their instruments down to mandola tuning, usually with just 4 strings. has anyone tried mandola strings and tuning on a standard mandolin? did it work?

[Lee]

Don't use mandola strings.
Put your regular A-strings where the E's used to be.
Put your regular D-strings where the A's used to be.
Put your regular G-string's where the D's used to be.
Buy a couple .048" gauge stings and put them where the G's used to be.
Quite possibly you'll have trouble tuning becuase the nut slots are too narrow for the thicker strings.
Quite possibly the G-strings will sound thuddy.

[Paul Hostetter]

I'd go way heavier than .048" The C's I use on a 15" scale are .056" - and they still sound a little thuddy. In any case, it can't hurt to experiment. You'll find out in the process why they really make mandolas.

There *may* be a Thomastik string for this, like their octave violin strings, but if there is, I haven't encountered it yet.

[mandroid]

mandola set that was too heavy for the mandola, went on the 4 string electric, C tuning or
Bb tuning works fine, too, fwiw. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/blues.gif
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[Alex Fields]

I used a CG-GD-DA-AE tuning for a while on a 20s Gibson that worked pretty well, and then I put all mandola strings on it and it doesn't really work. Granted, not the best instrument to try it on, but still.