View Full Version : My Duncan Electric
My sweet new (to me) electric mandolin made by someone named H. Duncan in Kansas City, Missouri. It's made of one single piece of wood. It has a really fancy volume knob and no tone knob. The input jack appears to be made from a hex nut. I like the viola-like headstock scroll. The tone is incredible.
I don't feel like taking my own photographs, so these pictures are from the website of a guitar repair shop where it spent some time before I bought it.
Here's some more pictures.
Here's a closer look at the pickup...
Daniel Nestlerode
Feb-22-2010, 6:31pm
Link,
That is trippy. It'd be fun to get under the pickguard and see what that pickup looks like.
What is the pickguard made of? Looks like the white paint is flaking off.
Daniel
Lucky you! The shop also had a picture of the innards.
Jake Wildwood
Feb-22-2010, 6:49pm
Could that thing be any cooler? I LOVE it. Simple, functional, home-made, and super fun. I'm very tempted to do something similar to a hunk of walnut I have hanging out under my workbench. Sweeeet. :)
You're right, it is fun. The tone is the best I have ever heard from an emando. Granted, I've only ever hear this one and one other in person, but I like the sound even better than that professional recordings, even through my cheap amp.
Has anyone ever seen a similar scroll?
delsbrother
Feb-24-2010, 7:56pm
That looks very similar (both pickguard and pickup) to my '30s Audiovox steel guitar. Something tells me the builder had experience making steels and felt what the heck, let's try a mandolin!
It would be a very historic instrument if it was that old! Is there any way to date it?
mrmando
Feb-24-2010, 8:18pm
I'm guessing it can be dated roughly by someone familiar with the pickup and other parts (the tuners, for example). Looks like a precut mandolin fretboard. Wasn't there some inscription on the underside of the pickguard?
When I first saw it I thought someone might have taken the neck off a Brandt mandolin, but no ... this scroll is cruder than a Brandt. Along with the Lyon & Healy Style A, Brandts are the best-known mandos with violin-scroll headstocks.
I am guessing it's an early '50s DIY thingy. Western swing popularized the electric mandolin around this time, but if you couldn't find or afford a Gibson -- or one of the '30s instruments from Vega or National -- you were pretty much stuck making your own.
Well, for a DIY thing, it sounds GREAT; I can't stress that enough.
Jake Wildwood
Feb-24-2010, 8:24pm
...or brutalizing your acoustic mandolin with a pickup...
I am guessing it's an early '50s DIY thingy. Western swing popularized the electric mandolin around this time, but if you couldn't find or afford a Gibson -- or one of the '30s instruments from Vega or National -- you were pretty much stuck making your own.
Hang on, depending on what you mean by "early," couldn't that mean that it came out before the Gibson EM-200, thus predating as the first solid-body eight-string?
Oh, by the way, I encourage emando builders to start placing the amp jacks on the side; it's very comfortable.