Mandolin #1

[AaronVW]

I finished this about a month ago but never got around to posting a picture here. This is my first attempt at building a musical instrument. It was a bit of an experiment and turned out as good as I had hoped for. Looking forward to making another! Pictures of the whole build on my profile page, imperfections and all! Making a new nut today as I think I can improve on the string spacing for better playability.

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[Tomy Plunk#er]

Wow, Looks stunning. Thanks for the pics. How does it sound?

[AaronVW]

Thanks! I think it sounds pretty good. I have a couple videos on the SAW group using it and you will see that my playing, not the instrument is the limiting factor ;)

[Ron McMillan]

Well done, Aaron. Great piece of work that you should be very proud of.

ron

[robert.najlis]

great work. Congratulations!

[Pete Jenner]

Fantastic work Aaron. Congrats.

[Denny Gies]

Aaron, you should be very proud and satisfied. How does it sound?

[fatt-dad]

Totally cool. What'd it replace?

[Marty Jacobson]

Excellent, very clean work all around! That's astounding for a first instrument.
Just use some better wood next time. :-)

EDIT:
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[Steve Sorensen]

Nice craftsmanship! Impressive.
Steve

[Dobe]

Great job Aaron, I'm thinking we need to do a new luthiers meet a couple times a year ? So many new ones in the area. How many Murphy's before you settled on a bridge ?

[Skip Kelley]

Aaron, that is an incredible looking mandolin for a first!!!! Very nice work!!!!

[AaronVW]

I have made two Murphy's bridges so far, One 11 hole and another winged. I like the look and sound of the winged bridge, which I made from maple topped with walnut. I'm sure I will continue to experiment and make more but I may have to make another mandolin to test out the new bridges on...

[bernabe]

Nice, Aaron. I was wondering, though, why you used walnut on maple for the bridge as walnut and maple seem to have very similar charactoristics-i.e. density, Q, etc. Just curious.

[AaronVW]

Thanks, Bernabe. I had a piece of the neck leftover (maple with walnut) and used that for the bridge. So the real reason was that it was available and second, I thought it looked better than all maple.

[billhay4]

Nice first instrument.
Bill

[JGWoods]

Looks great , sounds great- a home run!

[amowry]

Very nice!

[rb3868]

It looks very "formal." not exactly sure what I mean by that, but I like the look. and the tone