View Full Version : Unknown mandolin, please help me identify!
Dusepo
May-21-2010, 12:32pm
Hi all,
I don't know much about this mandy. I think by the design it may have been made in the former USSR? The design reminds me of some USSR factory-made models.
It has a fret marker on the 2nd fret instead of the 3rd, which I have never seen before.
http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/2/8/9/1/7/8/webimg/332326109_o.jpghttp://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/2/8/9/1/7/8/webimg/332326132_o.jpg
http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/2/8/9/1/7/8/webimg/332326158_tp.jpghttp://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/2/8/9/1/7/8/webimg/332326183_tp.jpg
Jim Garber
May-21-2010, 2:03pm
Nice color combination with those electric blue tuners. I can see why you would say USSR.
MikeEdgerton
May-21-2010, 2:09pm
I think I'd run a geiger counter up next to the cobalt blue tuners myself. I think it's an Eastern Bloc instrument as well.
The balalaika appears to have that same 2nd fret dot.
Dusepo
May-24-2010, 3:02pm
The balalaika appears to have that same 2nd fret dot.
Aha! Thanks, I'd never noticed that. So very likely Russian, or at least Russian-designed.
When I get round to restoring this, one of the first things to replace will be those toy-like blue tuners lol.
Jim Garber
May-24-2010, 3:24pm
When I get round to restoring this, one of the first things to replace will be those toy-like blue tuners lol.
Hah!! That may be the very best thing about this mandolin.
MikeEdgerton
May-24-2010, 3:25pm
I'm thinking the same thing.
Dusepo
May-24-2010, 4:11pm
Oh dear. Is it really that bad?
Paul Hostetter
May-25-2010, 12:18pm
Keep the tuners! This instrument is at best, not much, but without the tuners, it's, well...
MikeEdgerton
May-25-2010, 12:42pm
The tuners really make that bad boy.
Those blue tuners ... pure radio-active cobalt? Beautiful but lethal? Nah! Leave 'em on there!
Steve Ostrander
May-25-2010, 3:18pm
Why are balalaikas flat on the bottom? So they stand up perfectly straight and you don't need a custom-made balalaika stand?
allenhopkins
May-25-2010, 3:27pm
Why are balalaikas flat on the bottom? So they stand up perfectly straight and you don't need a custom-made balalaika stand?
Here's Wikipedia's take on the question:
A popular notion is that the three sides and the strings of the balalaika are supposed to represent the Holy Trinity. This idea, while whimsical, is quite difficult to reconcile when one is confronted with the fact that at various times in Russian history, the playing of the balalaika was banned because of its use by the skomorokhi, who were generally highly irritating to both Church and State. Musical instruments are not allowed in Russian Orthodox liturgy. A likelier reason for the triangular shape is given by the writer and historian Nikolai Gogol in his unfinished novel Dead Souls. He states that a balalaika was made by peasants out of a pumpkin. If you quarter a pumpkin, you are left with a balalaika shape. Another theory is: Before Tsar Peter I, instruments were not allowed in Russia. When Peter allowed them, only the boat builders knew how to work with wood. The balalaika looks a little like the front of a boat, if held horizontally. Another theory comes from a Russian tale: during the Mongol invasion of Rus, a Russian man from Nizhny Novgorod was captured by Mongols, but the Mongol Khan liked him because of his musical talent, released him and gave him a guitar. When the Russian man returned home, he took three of the strings out of the guitar, so that he would be able to repair his guitar if he breaks one of the strings, and that way he was left with a three-string guitar.
Dusepo
May-26-2010, 5:49am
I have heard yet another story - the balalaika was originally built that way because it was the quickest way to build it, because the church and the state regularly destroyed such instruments in Tsarist Russia.
P. S. OK, OK! I'll leave the blue tuners on there lol.