roscoestring
May-29-2011, 8:52am
I had gotten really caught up in all of the instrument forums that I was frequenting. It was taking up too much of my time, so I took a little time off from several of them. However, the Telecaster guitar forum had a contest to build an instrument and I entered. I built an electric mandolin.
The details:
It has a spruce and poplar hollow body. The neck is made of oak. The bridge is mahogany. It was built on a budget of nearly nothing. I picked up parts from ebay (tuners, preamp, piezo, nut) and used a few parts that I had laying around. The finish is truoil and the black is spray paint from a rattle can.
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee210/roscoestring/0012-93-1.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee210/roscoestring/005-27-1.jpg
Basically the rules said that the body had to be in the shape of a Telecaster guitar. A two month time frame was allowed and the body and neck had to be built by the entrant from scratch. This was my first time to completely build the body and neck and my first scratch built bridge.
I learned a lot by building this mandolin. It has helped me to better understand and appreciate what it takes to do so. I do have issues that I'll address when I find time. The main issue is the nut. I got the strings spaced a little off. The battery attaches to the bottom of the preamp and it has to be unscrewed and removed to replace the battery. It's very annoying to have to disassemble just to replace the battery.
I broke the index finger on my left hand while building this. A mishap with a planer. (another lesson learned). But I did manage to pick out an original song on it for the required video. My son is playing guitar (also built by me). Here's a link to the youtube:
http://youtu.be/lKzV09HNDPM
The details:
It has a spruce and poplar hollow body. The neck is made of oak. The bridge is mahogany. It was built on a budget of nearly nothing. I picked up parts from ebay (tuners, preamp, piezo, nut) and used a few parts that I had laying around. The finish is truoil and the black is spray paint from a rattle can.
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee210/roscoestring/0012-93-1.jpg
http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee210/roscoestring/005-27-1.jpg
Basically the rules said that the body had to be in the shape of a Telecaster guitar. A two month time frame was allowed and the body and neck had to be built by the entrant from scratch. This was my first time to completely build the body and neck and my first scratch built bridge.
I learned a lot by building this mandolin. It has helped me to better understand and appreciate what it takes to do so. I do have issues that I'll address when I find time. The main issue is the nut. I got the strings spaced a little off. The battery attaches to the bottom of the preamp and it has to be unscrewed and removed to replace the battery. It's very annoying to have to disassemble just to replace the battery.
I broke the index finger on my left hand while building this. A mishap with a planer. (another lesson learned). But I did manage to pick out an original song on it for the required video. My son is playing guitar (also built by me). Here's a link to the youtube:
http://youtu.be/lKzV09HNDPM