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Your nut looks great. But looks/cosmetic refinement is the last step when adjusting a nut after everything else has been done. As a professional tech, I find that refining the adjustment of the nut...

Makes me feel better about some of the dumb mistakes I've made.

There is no standard scale length. It can be anything you want with infinite variation of total length between what ever you believe are your minimum and maximum ideas of functionality are. 21 to...

I'm working on a prototype for an instrument I intend to build as a series so I asked around the shop I work for, "who plays mandolin?". I need some feedback from a player. I got damn lucky and was...

Mando going out of tune? Unless its all of the strings, most of the time, the problem is either the nut or the bridge.
Always tune using a tuner. Never tune by ear as one string that sounds sharp...

In my experience Schaller makes a very high quality tuner. I googled your instrument and the Eastman website indicates some other tuners which I've never heard of. You really should look to the place...

Oh my... :)
Nylon core, let alone piezo pickups is not the direction I'm headed. I've gone there dipping my toe into the vast lake of possibilities with a couple unique instruments. I have a 24.5...

I guess mostly because they don't want to.
However, both on the face of the fretboard, and on the side of the neck, the slightest misalignment of the two dots totally stands out as a terrible glitch...

Depending on what you're looking for, a guitar conversion is an inexpensive way to go. I've been doing these for a few years. A conversion takes me about five or six hours. A 25.5"scale will tune to...

I see what Don sees -- a potential fracturing of a laminated top but it could be an unfortunate optical illusion thingy. I also see what could be interpreted as a sinking top referencing the...

I went looking because of the comments about naked... and didn't find them :( Good luck in your endeavors. EMandos are so cool.

Honest true... I once repaired a damaged gord on a sitar that was missing pieces by slicing a plain bagel into 1/4" thick bites and saturating them with superglue. Sanded them to shape and applied...

Its just like anything else that is stored for 15 years. It could go south, or not. A fair number of luthiers believe that playing an instrument imparts mojo and results in the development of...

Since the mandolin is built overseas and in multiple locations, its quite possible that even the parent company in SF won't be able to provide you an answer. Its fairly easy for any tech to...

Mr Breeze, You polishing cloths will work great. 600 grit is fairly safe to clean up file marks without easily changing the actual height of the fret. 1000 grit is a better finish than you get on...

I've done that process on a couple of old guitars. Sometimes you can get away with only pulling a few frets and if you're lucky, you can reuse the original frets. I have a soft spot for student level...

The day I first saw that video I went to my hardware store on purchased a double headed axe and basically did the same thing he did. It had better sustain -- not really. It sounded like an axe with...

Just adding a couple of comments. Although I don't use superglue to fill a nut slot, but as mentioned by someone else above, I have found that a full overnight curing of superglue seems to result in...

As I mentioned before, I'm new to mandolins. I'm also new to this forum as an active participant. I signed up back in '07 but that was only to have a few questions answered. I find this post very...

I'm new to this forum. Recently smitten by mandolins. Not everything I know about guitars applies to mandolins and I'm eager to learn from those who know "stuff". Fretwork is my forte. I just hope...

...breeze, First, I don't think that the radius of the concave surface is tight/narrow enough for most mandolin frets. But it'll certainly be an improvement over not using any crowning tool at all....

First make sure that the nut slot is actually cut too deep. Often debris from the nut file can remain in the slot and make the string misbehave. Sometimes its just a bit of lint from the polishing...

Agreed. Sometimes a little bit of polishing cloth gets stuck on the string and finds itself in the nut slot. Loosen and lift the strings out of the nut and use something like a sharpened toothpick to...

Looking forward to seeing more progress. I very much like the idea of a nylon strung tenor. I'm on the lookout for a perspective guitar to modify myself.

Puttin' on my bifocals, this type of post is the kind of post that I look forward to. The exploration of building something out of the ordinary, the nay-sayers who are sometimes grumpy too. Its great...