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Thread: Ten String Mandolin

  1. #1
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    Does anyone have/play one? Here is a link to one. What's it like? How's it strung?
    Dave

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    "Why not just have them go up to 10 and make 10 louder?"

    "Well, these go to 11..."

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    Not having encountered one, I would guess Laurie intends his for stringing with an added low c course, spanning both mandolin and alto mandola tuning. Vega built such things decades ago.

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    The concept sounds kinds neat, I would like to hear a sound sample but not sure that I want to pay $8 just to hear what it sounds like.
    Just my cheap 2 cents worth.
    Kevin Vail

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    Café habitué Paul Hostetter's Avatar
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    I've played a number of them, including Lloyd Loar's very own, and have built several.

    They generally have perplexities though: to make the C really speak, the scale must be so long that the high E is extremely tight; otherwise the C is floppy and weak if the scale is more normal. That said, I have used 15" (National) scales fairly successfully. The E is an .010" and the low C is an .056".

    Loar’s scale was longer, around 16+" as I recall, but he didn’t tune it to either mandolin or mandola notes, rather to the black keys on the piano. His instrument was really an alto mandolin of some other sort altogether.

    Five-course violins work better because the intonation on the frets is not an issue, because there are no frets.

    A possible solution would be a Novax-style fan-fret board. Never tried it, but I bet it would be a good solution. Then you just have to find a way of keeping the C from darkening the E too much. In violins the ticket is to use a smaller violin-size body rather than a larger viola size.
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    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    Here's a non-$8 sound clip of my 1915 vega playing some tunes whilst I sat under it..

    (1.6Mb MP3)

    Some pictures in here too, several threads' worth recently on the cafe too if you brogle around for it a bit.

    link to pictures & whatnot

    to play.. it's kind of floppy on the C.. it's normal mandolin scale.. then again you get used to it fairly quickly and adjust your touch. I put a single C string on it to keep the pair from buzzing against each other.

    I used to play a 21" Sobell 10-string mandola tuned GDAEA. That worked very well.

    Roger Siminoff tells me the Loar mando-viola has no problems with balance or a weak top or bottom.. I'm hoping to find out for myself in the near future



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    Café habitué Paul Hostetter's Avatar
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    The Loar mandolinola sounded wonderful, but there's no way you could put any string on the top that could be pulled up to an E, and it wasn't his intention to ever do that. I restored that entire kit - including his solidbody electric viola, his saw, two bows and the case they were in before a dealer I was then working for tried to sell it to the Smithsonian. There are photos of it taken the next day which inexplicably include the plastic bags the just-rehaired bows were in. I think I would have taken the plastic bags out of the photo!
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    M@ñdº|¡ñ - M@ñdºce||º Keith Erickson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by (knockwood @ May 23 2005, 23:21)
    "Why not just have them go up to 10 and make 10 louder?"

    "Well, these go to 11..."
    Yeah, but this mandolin only has 10... LOL
    Keith Erickson
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    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    Paul- do you have any notes/measurements? I'm curious to know what the scale length and intended tuning is?
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    Formerly F5JOURNL Darryl Wolfe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by (Paul Hostetter @ May 24 2005, 02:28)
    Loar’s scale was longer, around 16+" as I recall, but he didn’t tune it to either mandolin or mandola notes, rather to the black keys on the piano. His instrument was really an alto mandolin of some other sort altogether.
    Hi Paul,

    I too have played the Loar 10-string at you-know-who's house a few years ago.

    I've been asked numerous times about how it was tuned. #When it was handed to me, it had all the tension off the strings. #I did the best I could to tune it to where it felt right. #It never did. #I got it close enough to where you could tell how it responded and sounded (definately Loar). #But in summary, I have to agree, the instrument must have been intended to be diferent than a mandola or a mandolin with an extra course.



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    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    I think I recall hearing Eb Bb F C F at some point..

    My personal experience with them is something like GDAEA or DAEBE or.. works best. my 21" sobell was GDAEA 52 on the bass 10.5 on the e if I recall correctly

    I could see it being DGDAE or CGDAE at 16". The F on the top sounds wrong too..
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    "A possible solution would be a Novax-style fan-fret board."

    Granted it's an electric, but this Ernest 5-string seems to have solved the scale length issue associated with 10-strings...
    It really cooks on all strings....

    I think an acoustic version might be worth the attempt...
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    Formerly F5JOURNL Darryl Wolfe's Avatar
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    WOW--What a cool concept. That would play heck on long G chord tho
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    That's analogous to the "Novax-style fan-fret" fingerboard mentioned above. While Novax patented this concept, such things have been applied way in the past, so copy at whim and cite older precedents for your inspiration. David Rubio built an 8-string classical guitar with fanned frets (i.e., the "Brahms" guitar played by Paul Galbraith). There was an obscure, late 19th-c. Swedish luthier named Klingberg who applied this to harp-guitar. English fingerpicked cittern kin (orpharion and bandora) have used the concept dating to at least as early as the 1600s.

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    Café habitué Paul Hostetter's Avatar
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    I restored a Knutsen harp guitar that had them too. I forgot Joel did this (the cool image Farwood Bruce posted above), I think he actually got the board from Ralph Novak, so it's beyond analogous. Fan fret boards are amazingly unvexing to play, you really don't even notice the difference in fret spacing from treble to bass. At least that's been my experience with a bunch of guitars. It certainly merits trying on an acoustic.

    I did write down the specs on the Loar. Its scale is 400mm, about 15.75". Body was 37cm long X 28cm wide X 5cm deep. Dan's tuning isn't in fifths, and I'm pretty sure Lloyd tuned it in fifths. Ab Eb Bb F C would make sense. Bb F C G D would work if the strings were light enough. I doubt they even made an .010" in Lloyd's day though! (His viola had gut strings.)

    I deal with an E on a 15" scale often and an .010" is already like a cheese slicer at max tension. I cannot imagine *any* string surviving a 15-3/4" or 16" scale tuned up to E, not even an .008". Dan, the E on your Sobell is tuned an octave lower than a mandolin. That pitch would be nearly impossible on a 15.75" scale, it would be incredibly floppy unless it was around an .028" wound, which would never work at the top of five courses tuned in fifths. Gauges have to work with pitches and scale lengths.



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  16. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by (Paul Hostetter @ May 24 2005, 15:28)
    I restored a Knutsen harp guitar that had them too.
    Wow. I wasn't aware that Knutsen had ever done this. Do you still know of the instrument's whereabouts? Can you get pictures?

  17. #17
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    I did it a very long time ago and I believe I did take a couple of really lame snapshots. They're in a shoebox here somewhere. I'll try and dig them out. Jeez, I was so proud of myself for having unearthed the specs on the Loar mandolinola. Now I gotta take more time off work???
    .
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    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    Thanks for those details Paul. 15.75" is bizzare! that seems like CGDAE is a close to a reasonable tuning even. Maybe DAEBE would work, that's a fun one. Or DGDAE. or DGDAD. thinking like a zook guy helps (all tunings I've used!)
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  19. #19
    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by (Paul Hostetter @ May 24 2005, 20:28)
    I did write down the specs on the Loar. Its scale is 400mm, about 15.75". Body was 37cm long X 28cm wide X 5cm deep. Dan's tuning isn't in fifths, and I'm pretty sure Lloyd tuned it in fifths. Ab Eb Bb F C would make sense. Bb F C G D would work if the strings were light enough. I doubt they even made an .010" in Lloyd's day though! (His viola had gut strings.)

    I deal with an E on a 15" scale often and an .010" is already like a cheese slicer at max tension. I cannot imagine *any* string surviving a 15-3/4" or 16" scale tuned up to E, not even an .008". Dan, the E on your Sobell is tuned an octave lower than a mandolin. That pitch would be nearly impossible on a 15.75" scale, it would be incredibly floppy unless it was around an .028" wound, which would never work at the top of five courses tuned in fifths. Gauges have to work with pitches and scale lengths.
    Fair enough Paul, I agree with you about tension and scale length. There *were* vegas that were mandola scale tuned to CGDAE though.. my mandolin from vega is standard scale, and the C is floppy. Still playable, just takes some getting used to. I often tune a mandolin to DDAD (drop the low g all the way to a D) and it flops like heck, but you can modify the touch on it to play "successfully" like the old appalachan DDAD fiddlers.

    That said, the ideal?? is an interesting question. 20 3/4" GDAEA (roughly octave mandolin + top A) is a very nice setup. A 16" though.. I wonder what would work. CGDAD maybe? I suppose Ab F Bb ... is not far off now that I think about it a bit more.

    I'd like to see a Gibson mandola body roughly with a 16-17" scale doing CGDAD.. a nice booming bass for backing. It's a rather nice setup to play Irish with when you have 5th/5th/5th/4th like that
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    I have a Monteleone 10 string tuned cgdae, and it's the only 10 string I've ever seen that feels right all over the fretboard on all of the strings. I have a few 5 string electrics, and I second the earlier posts, if they are going to have problems, the problems will be floppy C strings or really tight E strings. If you play electric, you might try this tuning: dgdae. This cures the floppy C string by tuning it up two half-steps, and makes the chord forms easier.
    My fingers have also been to the cheese grater on a long scale E string. You can try cgdad, which is a lot less convenient, but it beats the heck out of breaking strings every two minutes.
    If I had to choose a problem, I would choose a correct-feeling E string and a floppy C string every time. You can always experiment with thicker C strings until you find something that works, or tune it up to the D. You'll never get a tight E string to play right (when it's tuned to an E).
    If you ever get a chance to play a Stevens 5 string electric, it's one of the few that really feels good on all of the strings. (It better for what it costs!) The Earnest with the Novax fretboard feels pretty good too.
    Forget with the cowbell, already...

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    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    Mikemando, could you post some pictures? I'm curious about the tuning pegs too
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    Café habitué Paul Hostetter's Avatar
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    Dan wrote:
    > There *were* vegas that were mandola scale tuned to CGDAE though.

    What is "the" mandola scale they used? (It's in my book because I know I have replaced one of those boards once, save me some diving here please!) I don't think there's a standard.

    A tenor banjo with a 19" scale is tuned to the very same pitches as a Gibson mandola at 15.5".

    > That said, the ideal?? is an interesting question.

    I don't think there's going to be universal agreement on this!

    > 20 3/4" GDAEA (roughly octave mandolin + top A) is a very nice setup.

    Seen another way: tenor banjo (viola) with a G underneath.

    > A 16" though.. I wonder what would work. CGDAD maybe?

    What I said above works fine.

    The real issue for a lot of players is keeping it in fifths. I play laouto, which is the same as a mandocello with the bottom course tuned up from C to D. IOW: DGDA. It's a nuisance. But since the laouto usually plays chords and I'm more concerned about keeping all those socket wrench rhythms straight anyway, I live with it. But fifths are beautiful.

    Mike O'Mando wrote:
    > I have a Monteleone 10 string tuned cgdae, and it's the only 10
    > string I've ever seen that feels right all over the fretboard on all
    > of the strings.

    What's the scale?

    > you might try this tuning: dgdae. This cures the floppy C string by
    > tuning it up two half-steps, and makes the chord forms easier.

    See above. It's not ideal for people who love fifths.

    > If I had to choose a problem, I would choose a correct-feeling E
    > string and a floppy C string every time.

    That's fine as long as you don't care if you're in tune on the low course, but that's the rub with five-course instruments.

    Dan B again:
    > 15.75" is bizzare! that seems like CGDAE is a close to a reasonable tuning even.

    It's really not. There's no E that can take it at that scale. It's a reasonable tuning on 15", but even that barely works. Man, I have been around this block.
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    Café habitué Paul Hostetter's Avatar
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    Dan B:
    15.75" is bizzare! that seems like CGDAE is a close to a reasonable tuning even.

    It's really not. There's no E that can take it at that scale. It's a reasonable tuning on 15", but even that barely works. Man, I have been around this block.

    There *were* vegas that were mandola scale tuned to CGDAE though.

    What is "the" mandola scale they used? (It's in my book because I know I have replaced one of those boards once, save me some diving here please!) I don't think there's a standard.

    A tenor banjo with a 19" scale is tuned to the very same pitches as a Gibson mandola at 15.5".

    That said, the ideal?? is an interesting question.

    I don't think there's going to be universal agreement on this! And not just because different soundboxes are going to carry the sound of the strings differently.

    20-3/4" GDAEA (roughly octave mandolin + top A) is a very nice setup.

    Seen another way: tenor banjo (or viola) with a G underneath. This tuning would work on the Loar as well. I just remember a reference to some of his own writing where he specifically mentioned sharped notes.

    A 16" though.. I wonder what would work. CGDAD maybe?

    What I said above about the Loar works fine.

    The real issue for a lot of players is keeping it in fifths. I play laouto, which is the same as a mandocello with the bottom course tuned up from C to D. IOW: DGDA. It's a nuisance. But since the laouto usually plays chords and I'm more concerned about keeping all those socket wrench rhythms straight anyway, I live with it. But fifths are beautiful.

    Mike O'Mando wrote:
    I have a Monteleone 10 string tuned cgdae, and it's the only 10 string I've ever seen that feels right all over the fretboard on all of the strings.

    What's the scale? I’d love to see this!

    you might try this tuning: dgdae. This cures the floppy C string by tuning it up two half-steps, and makes the chord forms easier.

    See above. It's not ideal for people who love fifths, but I use something like it on the laouto.

    If I had to choose a problem, I would choose a correct-feeling E string and a floppy C string every time.

    I would too. And while that's fine as long as you don't care if you're very in tune on the low course, there are some scales that don’t involve such strong trade-offs. But that's the rub with five-course instruments.



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    Cafe Linux Mommy danb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by (Paul Hostetter @ May 24 2005, 21:57)
    There *were* vegas that were mandola scale tuned to CGDAE though.

    What is "the" mandola scale they used? (It's in my book because I know I have replaced one of those boards once, save me some diving here please!) I don't think there's a standard.
    15" according to one listed for sale at The Acoustic Music Co
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    wood butcher Spruce's Avatar
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    "I have a Monteleone 10 string..."

    Was that the one that was on ebay 3-4 years ago?

    Just curious how many of those John made...

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