New Double-neck Mandolin

[Connor]

Hello, folks. I've lurked around this forum off and on for years and finally decided to post info about my new double-neck mandolin. I had a luthier by the name of Richard Clark build it for me. I play a lot of Irish sessions and hate switching back and forth between my main mandolin and an octave mandolin. My initial plan was a utilitarian instrument, solely for session playing, but I ended up with a very, very nice instrument. Go to this website for a full story of the design and building of the instrument.

http://lee588.wix.com/mandoventure#!problem/mainPage

90255

Regards,
Connor

[Boge Quinn]

VERY cool! Great sound, too. Thanks for the link, the story, and the sound clips.

[billhay4]

Darn nice instrument. Richard flies under the radar, doesn't he? This sounds terrific and is a fine idea.
Bill

[JeffD]

That is cool. I can't get the website to open. Is ithat mandolin/mandola?

I like the look. It avoids the ugly birth defect look of many a two necked design.

[Connor]

The website requires flash, and doesn't seem to work on older IE browsers. Try using Chrome and see if it helps. It takes a while to load images the first time, too...

The instrument is a mandolin and a short scale octave mandolin – 19" to be exact.

[greg_tsam]

Wow. Why hasn't this been done before?

[Connor]

Wow. Why hasn't this been done before?

It has... but not often.

There are a few in the builder archives here at the cafe. http://www.mandolincafe.com/archives/builders/double.html

I found a few other examples out on the net, but nothing that completely fit my wishes.

[rico mando]

that is really nice and sounds just excellent but I am waiting for my geneticist to set me up with a second pair of arms

[Tavy]

that is really nice and sounds just excellent but I am waiting for my geneticist to set me up with a second pair of arms

:) :)

Great instrument!

[Connor]

Darn nice instrument. Richard flies under the radar, doesn't he? This sounds terrific and is a fine idea.
Bill

Richard has been a delight to work with on this project. His eye for detail is excellent, and this instrument turned out better than I ever imagined. It plays so smoothly that I'm afraid I'll always want to play this, rather than pick up my Eastman. Maybe I'll have to commission a mandolin and an octave mandolin separately. Hmmm... Will the wife go for that?

[Jim Garber]

Interesting bracing on this. What is the bridgeplate -- reinforcement under the bridges? Can you elaborate on the designer's intentions? I assume that this is a flattop but does it have an induced arch?

[Connor]

Interesting bracing on this. What is the bridgeplate -- reinforcement under the bridges? Can you elaborate on the designer's intentions? I assume that this is a flattop but does it have an induced arch?

Yes, it's a flattop with an induced arch. We talked about a true archtop instrument early in the design, but agreed that the geometry needed to handle two necks not on the apex of the arch was too much work. In the end, there's a slight arch to the top and back. Richard didn't tell me details about the bridgeplate, but I'm assuming it's to handle the pair of slightly offset bridges. He's been playing around with bracing of various sorts. I can ask him to weigh in on the thinking.

By the way, the pickups are JJBElectronics, and so far I think they do the trick quite well. We stuck them in the instrument just because it was easy to do during construction, not because I amplify my mandolin all that much. To my ear, though, they sound pretty nice.

[mandolinlee]

Did your recording use the pick-ups or was it acoustic? Really sounded nice.
Thank you.
Lee

[Connor]

Did your recording use the pick-ups or was it acoustic? Really sounded nice.
Thank you.
Lee

I used a Blue Snowball USB mic into Garage Band with no extra sound reinforcement... Just quick recordings at my computer. It captured the sound very nicely. Thanks.

Maybe I'll try to record something using the pickup sometime. Hadn't thought of that, yet.

[Verne Andru]

Very nice story and instrument.

[Connor]

A followup for Jim on the bracing question. I double-checked with the builder on my interpretation of the bracing and bridgeplate, and I was correct about it being to handle the pair of offset bridges. When we worked out the design, we tried to keep the bridges fairly close to each other so that the picking hand hand would stay at about the same orientation when switching between necks.

[Marcelyn]

What a great collaboration. The mandolin sounds wonderful.

[Jacqke]

I have admired the idea of two instruments combined like this. But I've always wondered, does one instrument get in the way of the other? Either way, it is a beautiful set.

[Connor]

While designing the instrument we played with the ergonomics of it by making a mockup. There's more about that in the web story (see the link below). It's easy to switch instruments other than having to switch gears mentally/physically to handle the different scale length, which is nothing different from changing actual instruments. The necks are situated such that they don't interfere with each other and are equally accessible to the left hand. The bridges are set in such a way that there's not a lot of right arm movement to switch from one to the other. The unintended consequence that is positive is that I can snag a drone g/d off of the octave neck while playing the mandolin neck, kind of like a harp guitar. There is also a gentle resonance from the unplayed strings, which is kind of a built-in chorus or reverb. I think I'm going to want to have a way to squelch it, though for some circumstances. A friend suggested using scrunchies slid behind the nut unless needed. With two necks it is not a balanced instrument. I intend to mostly play it sitting in Irish sessions, though, so it's not an issue. I also don't know how much a strap will help since I'm banned from using a strap for at least another month's worth of curing time for the finish. The only ergonomic problem I've encountered is that I keep trying to reach through the other neck to turn pages of music. That's just a matter of learning a new habit for reaching around instead of through.

[JeffD]

Some real beautiful stuff here!!!

http://www.fyldeguitars.com/custom_guitars/3-matched.html

[AaronVW]

Sweet!

[jesserules]

Wow. Why hasn't this been done before?

Because capos exist?

[Connor]

Jeff, thanks for finding the pic of the Fylde doubles. I'm glad to know there was someone else out there with similar ideas.

[Connor]

Jesserules, I tried a capo a few times, but at least for me, the physical cues were so wrong that it threw off my playing.

[JeffD]

I have thought about a double for a long time. And I remembered reading your website.

I have been interested in a mandolin-guitar, as there have been several times when the jam needed a guitar more than a mandolin. But as you say, switching back and forth is a real pain.

I have looked at lots of pictures and it would appear that there are some big aesthetic considerations. Many of the designs look to my eye like two instruments jammed together, or trying to get apart. Conjoined twins or something. But what I liked about your design, (and the ones I linked) is that the instrument looks like one intended instrument, not two connected. The design is aesthetically pleasing.

The other though that brought your thread to mind is that you had a mandolin-octave mandolin built, which I thought was kind of neat. Fylde has a mandolin-mandola (not sure if its a tenor-mandola, which is an octave).

The Fylde design, and others I have seen, have a separate sound hole for each neck. In your design there is a single sound hole. What was the thinking here? Was it a bracing issue, or to enforce some acoustic similarity? Or perhaps because it makes the electrics that much easier?

I hadn't thought through the problem of sympathetic vibration from the other neck. Very interesting. This can be an advantage or not, depending on what you are playing. Some creative thinking needs to go into solving that, to give you the option of damping the neck you are not using in a way that does not complicate switching back and forth. With an electric multi-neck its relatively straight forward, just turn off the other pickup.


What have you done for a case?

[Connor]

...
The Fylde design, and others I have seen, have a separate sound hole for each neck. In your design there is a single sound hole. What was the thinking here? Was it a bracing issue, or to enforce some acoustic similarity? Or perhaps because it makes the electrics that much easier?

I hadn't thought through the problem of sympathetic vibration from the other neck. Very interesting. This can be an advantage or not, depending on what you are playing. Some creative thinking needs to go into solving that, to give you the option of damping the neck you are not using in a way that does not complicate switching back and forth. With an electric multi-neck its relatively straight forward, just turn off the other pickup.

What have you done for a case?

I guess it never even occurred to me to use two sound holes. The main inspiration for the body shape was the French jazz guitar with the D soundhole, so that's what we started with in the design. Given that there are lots of asymmetric sound hole designs out there, I wasn't worried about it. Perhaps the single sound hole is part of what unifies the design?

About the sympathetic vibrations. I raided my wife's stash of hair management paraphernalia and came up with two black fuzzy scrunchies - one for each neck. I worked them onto the heads and leave them sitting behind the nut on each neck. If I want to dampen the resonance, I slip the scrunchie up over the nut on the unused neck - a little for a softening, farther up the neck to kill the sound. Frankly, though, most of the time I just let 'er rip. Playing in an Irish Session there's really no concern about a little extraneous noise. Actually the barista/bartender at the coffee shop I play at made it a point to come tell me how much he liked the extra resonance. I usually leave the second neck to "shimmer" all the time - even at home, playing mandolin/flute classical duets with my wife. You can hear the shimmer in the recordings I posted on the website.

The case. Well. I ended up making my own using a nylon canvas keyboard gig bag, slabs of pink foam insulation board and mutant teddy bear hide. It's pretty sturdy, very lightweight, and functional. I still might commission a real custom case some day, but I'm afraid it would be expensive and end up too heavy.

[GarY Nava]

Great to see a double-neck here; I must admit, I’ve always fancied building one myself, purely for the wood working challenge!
However, you’ve got to go a long way to top Andy Manson’s triple necks……..;)108225

You can see more of them here
http://www.andymanson.co.uk/the_john_paul_jones_collection/

Cheers Gary

PS why am I plugging another luthier?:)

[Ron McMillan]

PS why am I plugging another luthier?:)

Maybe because you don't see in your immediate future having a spare few hundred hours to devote to a multi-neck instrument? :)

[GarY Nava]

Maybe because you don't see in your immediate future having a spare few hundred hours to devote to a multi-neck instrument? :)
Good answer Ron!- the real one is my admiration for Andy’s work!