Welcome to the Mandolin Cafe!
Well there are many ways to do most things. Over a 4 year period have converted four guitars to mandocellos.
On the first two I did as you suggest and fiddled with making nuts to explore ways of spreading the 4 courses out over the relatively wide guitar neck/fret board.
But on the second two conversions I replace the guitar fret board with a new mandocello fret board (using a Gibson K-1 as guidance) and then slimmed the neck to match it.
These two newer mandocellos were
huge improvement in playability over the first two instruments. Especially significant I find that the narrower board facilitates making a various kinds of bar chords for example. Likewise the stretches are easier IMO.
As a result I went back and made new fret board for the fist two conversions and again noticed a big improvement in playability with the more compact fret board arrangement.
I think your are fight in suggesting that a player can adapt to almost any fret board but is isn't it better to have the ideal arrangement and be able to put your energy in to playing -- not matter how long you play the extra effort you have to put into the fingering the wider fret board is a drag on your ability I would think?
Question have you ever tried a mandocello with a guitar neck to one with a "proper" (as per the standard set by Gibson) fret board?
You certainly have an awesome web site -- lots of cool stuff and days or reading there!!
Love that "guitello" !! LOL sounds pretty good.
Bookmarks