Given old, beautiful mandolin. Trying to identify it!

[willie8605]

Hello all. my grandmother-in-law recently gave my wife and I her old mandolin. She didn't know much about it except that her grandmother gave it to her. I have inspected it and have found very few (and minor) issues with it. There is no label. I have no idea how old this is, who made it, or really anything at all except that is sounds amazing. If anyone could help me get info on it, it would be much appreciated!

[MikeEdgerton]

American made, decent quality judging by the number of ribs, it really needs a real bridge. I'm sure that works to a point but it's not original. The easy guess is that it's a Lyon & Healy product but I'll leave it to Garber and friends to produce a catalog page.

[willie8605]

Cool, thanks! In the meantime, I'll start looking up some info on old Lyon and Healy mandolins to see if I can find anything :)

[JEStanek]

Use light guage classical strings on it. Those old American Made Bowl back mandolins are lightly constructed and can easily be damaged by medium and heavy guages (ie. no D'Addario J74s!)

Jamie

[JeffD]

Ditto what Jamie said. I use GHS ultra lights on bowlbacks.

[Jim Garber]

I think Mike is on the right track. It looks like in the range or ornamentation of an American Conservatory mandolin. It needs a real bridge to actually sound like anything. If it sounds amazing with that wire on a piece of pine, it should sound even better with a real hardwood bridge.

[willie8605]

What is a good type of bridge for one of these old mandolins?

[Jim Garber]

Whatever bridge blank you get, it has to be properly fitted to the instrument.

Elderly has a couple that would work:

Plain rosewood (http://elderly.com/accessories/items/MA4.htm)

Ebony with insert (http://elderly.com/accessories/items/MA5.htm)

Our friend Dave Hynds (http://www.mandolinluthier.com/mandolin-bridges.htm) over in France makes some nice repro bridges of various types and will even make a custom one.