How I Covered a Blemish on My New Mandolin

[Southern Strings]

Recently I purchased a blemished, brand new Morgan Monroe mms5 on ebay for 300 dollars. Being a dad with a daughter in college, well, a fella's gotta do with less sometimes as many on here know. They run for around 650 almost everywhere. It had a tree shaped dent on the top, about 2 and a half inches up from the bridge, on the G side. At first I was at odds on what to do, and after searching high and low, near and far, I finally came up with a solution. I bought a very thin black guitar pickguard with the self adhesive back and cut it into symmetrical pieces. I bought some Paua Abalone sheet from Inlay USA, then cut it using bluepainters tape on both sides so it wouldn't break. Very thin stuff I might add, as it is only about .008 thousands of an inch thick. A little krazy glue attached the shell to the pickguard, then 5 coats of spray on clear shellac and "voila". Here is a before and after view. I had to do something to both sides, as to make it look right.

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p200/walkquietshootstraight/BqoiMgB2kKGrHqUH-CEEumu4CURoBLwSjeV.jpg

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p200/walkquietshootstraight/IMG_01201.jpg

[papa willie]

Looks lke it was made that way. Good job!

[MiG-19]

It really looks great. The abalone compliments the beautiful inlay on the neck very well. Great job!

[Southern Strings]

Thanks for the comments fellas. The mandolin plays very well for what I paid for it.
It has a very low action and tons of volume. For me, it was an upgrade from a Kentucky 150 I was learning on for a year. I came from the guitar side of playing, as I always wanted to try a mando. Last year the mandolin "bug" bit me hard!! Once I started playing one, it was a done deal!!
Mikey

[Paul Statman]

A perfectly in keeping way to solve the problem! Well done, sir!

[Mark Walker]

Southern Strings -

Very cool 'camoflage' job!

One Silver Angel mandolin owner near me has a beautiful F5, and shortly after he got it, he accidently dropped the lid of the TKL case on the top. One of the latches put a nifty dent in the top. Being an artist, this guy painted a tiny little hummingbird - using the outline of the dent as part of the effort - and it's very tastefully done!

The only thing I think might have looked a bit better was a tiny little flying angel - which used to be Ken Ratcliff's logos on his earlier mandolins!

Your effort looks really great though! Good job!

[mandodan1960]

Looks very nice !! I'll look for it at the local Jams. I'm in Gainesville,Ga. Where do you Jam?

[Steve Ostrander]

I would've put more dents in it and called it a "distressed" model! :)

[NickAlberty]

That's a cool look. Might be a market there for selling instrument "art" or "tattoos". You know, temporary things like that to "dress up" an instrument, but easily removed.

Not sure, but it may affect the sound some, but I wouldn't think it would do it too much!

[Southern Strings]

Thanks for the nice comments ,
The "camo" job serves the purpose. Mark, I know your buddy was sick about the silver angel getting dented. That had to have hurt him bad!! Mandodan, I'm from Leesburg, Georgia, just north of Albany. Steve, believe it or not, I had thought about applying one of those bullet hole decals over the dent, then claiming the mando had actually saved my life one day!!! ( a little white lie never hurts) LOL!!!
Mikey

[Bertram Henze]

I would've put more dents in it and called it a "distressed" model! :)

That's what I would have done. Any kind of cover, especially if done fine and precious-looking like this, raises curiosity about what's under it :grin:
Dents are always good story generators, as in "Bill dropped it with surprise when we swapped instruments and I played Rawhide on his Gibson..." - there's white lies like January snow.

An alternative cover would have been a lefty mandolin's pickguard, you could always say you bought it from a lefty, restrung and turned it around, thus making your picking buddies' eyebrows crawl away over their heads. :mandosmiley: