Washburn Joey to Mandola conversion

[oinkstrings]

I thought some people might appreciate my latest conversion. I believe the Joey travel guitar was Washburns answer to the Tacoma Papoose. Both were made in the late 90's/early 2000's. Both had a 19" scale length, solid spruce top, and were meant to be tuned A to A.
Well, the Papooses sell for over a grand today. This Joey went for about $45. One of the main complaints about the Joey was poor intonation.
With its bolt on neck this turned out to be one of my easiest conversions to date. In the process I also shortened the scale to a more manageable 17". By chance this seams to have addressed the intonation problem as well. It is dead on all the way up the neck.
At a total cost of under $75 and fall settling in in these parts this will definately be my outside / campfire dola.

[NotMelloCello]

Cool. Now we need video.

[acousticphd]

With its bolt on neck this turned out to be one of my easiest conversions to date. In the process I also shortened the scale to a more manageable 17". By chance this seams to have addressed the intonation problem as well. It is dead on all the way up the neck.
At a total cost of under $75 and fall settling in in these parts this will definately be my outside / campfire dola.

I'd be interested in more details about how you did this. Assuming the original 12th fret is marked by the upper 2-dot inlay, you actually removed and shortened the FB, and relocated the zero fret to the original 2nd fret (?), and reinstalled?

[oinkstrings]

Yup, that's exactly what I did. I kind of cheated because I simply copied the scale length of a Wasburn M226 Mandola that I recently repaired. The scale length was actually 17.25" from the 2nd fret to the middle of the fixed bridge saddle. exactly the same as the M226. I've never used a zero fret but, this just worked out that way and I like the tone.
After measuring I removed the FB, cut it to length,cut it down width wise to 32mm at the 0 fret and 42mm at the new 12th fret. Next I removed a section from the bottom of the bolt on neck and reshaped and re glued it further up the neck in order to shorten it. Now it has four bolts instead of two but it's nice and stable and extremely easy to adjust neck angle.
After that there were a few holes to drill in the bridge, a new bone nut and saddle and string choice. I settled on Martin retro 14-41s mostly because they seem to be made for solid spruce flat tops.

[bbcee]

Good stuff!! I love these conversions. Just did a mini-electric to tenor conversion which I'll post once I dial in the action & do some sound samples.

Every time I see a mini guitar, the ol' cogs start turning in my brain ...