dust bunnies

[John Morton]

anybody ever see these inside a mandolin?

[pops1]

Mandolin, guitar, fiddle you name it, if it's hollow and old it's got 'em.

[KGreene]

Those appear to be more uniformed in shape than any "dust bunnies" I've seen... they look more like a cocoon of some sort... Spider maybe...??

JMTCW

[rudy44]

Mandolin, guitar, fiddle you name it, if it's hollow and old it's got 'em.

Ditto.

You can pour in a half pound of white rice and shake it around to clean up an instrument with dirt problems.

Shake it out carefully and you'll have a clean mandolin.

[HonketyHank]

I agree - cocoons. Some kind of moth, hard to tell how big without a coin or something for scale. Maybe a half inch each and 15 or 20 lumped together. One adult female could lay that many eggs in one place, say inside the mandolin. The problem comes when the hatchlings (larvae, or worms) start foraging for food. They could possibly go for glue or paste, but there really isn't much to eat inside a mandolin. Maybe some dust. They would have to survive and grow in order to make a decent cocoon (one per larva). I don't see any emergence holes, so it is possible that each of those lumps has a crispy dried up pupa inside. But I am not sure we would be able to see the emergence holes without closer inspection.

An entomologist could probably tell you the species of moth and provide more clues as to how the whole dang family got deposited inside a mandolin.

But no, I never saw this before. And I never saw rattlesnake rattles in a mandolin either. I'm still a newbie. I HAVE seen dust accumulation in a mandolin, though.

edit: and the rice trick does work nicely. I wouldn't eat the rice afterwards, though.

[Louise NM]

They are also called "tone balls." Here are some good pictures and some information about them. The vibrations from the instrument being played seem to help form them into a ball. When one of my violins once needed a neck reset, the luthier carefully set the dust ball aside and replaced it when the instrument went back together. They're pretty cool!

[HonketyHank]

n-a-a-a-a-a-h. I still go for "silky protective case for the pupal stage of lepidoptera", aka "cocoon", although I still have trouble figuring out how all those little caterpillers found enough to eat so they could pupate. Besides, I wouldn't touch "tone balls" with a 10 foot bow. Are you pulling my leg, Louise?

[Louise NM]

Google it, Henry, it's a real thing!

[Jess L.]

... When one of my violins once needed a neck reset, the luthier carefully set the dust ball aside and replaced it when the instrument went back together. ...

[Bertram Henze]

Google it, Henry, it's a real thing!

I did google that, but it does not look like dust bunnies

[MikeEdgerton]

Ditto.

You can pour in a half pound of white rice and shake it around to clean up an instrument with dirt problems.

Shake it out carefully and you'll have a clean mandolin.

I always like to add "uncooked" to the rice suggestion.

[MikeEdgerton]

anybody ever see these inside a mandolin?

+1 for some sort of insect activity. That isn't a dust ball. It's probably going to hatch something.

[RHDean]

That gives me the heebie geebies, imagine, in the middle of playing, and a thousand little multiple black leg critters crawling out and across your arm to feast...arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

burn it, and shake a 5 gallon bucket worth of rice in there, buy a pet praying mantis guard dog, throw him inside just in case

[RHDean]

I always like to add "uncooked" to the rice suggestion.

For those people who actually need the label on shampoo that says "not for human consumption" I can imagine someone throwing in a handful of Uncle Ben's cooked fried rice steeped in soy sauce and mixed vegetables

[Willie Poole]

Those look just like the "cocoons" that are stuck on the inside of the door on the shed where I keep my lawn mower...

Where do you store that mandolin?

Willie

[Jess L.]

Another vote for bug cocoons. They might be defunct and too old to hatch, but personally I wouldn't be wanting to take chances.

[bobby bill]

I am going with spider eggs. These look similar: https://www.google.com/search?q=iden...=1526656078851

Show us a picture after they hatch - a lot easier to identify then.

[Dale Ludewig]

I like Hank's use of the term "hatchling". It has kind of a Stephen King air about it.

[RHDean]

I like Hank's use of the term "hatchling". It has kind of a Stephen King air about it.

STOP IT, I won't touch any of guitars or Mando's

[Jess L.]

We haven't heard back from the OP. Just the one post, and then... nothing... OMG. You don't suppose they might have... hatched... and...

[RHDean]

https://media1.tenor.com/images/d5f8...itemid=5951680

[John Morton]

Tone balls! The first one I saw was about the size of a golf ball, and had that same compound structure. It reminded me of an image of a uranium atom from an old physics book. Awhile ago I heard a snippet from a Fretboard Journal podcast that had David Rawlings talking about his Epiphone Olympic. He said the guitar had lost much of its tone quality after 5+ yrs. of intense playing. His repair guy peeked inside and spotted a large ball, as well as a coating of "lint" over the whole lower bout surface. Rawlings compares this to an acoustic baffle, like putting a couch in the middle of a room, soaking up the sound. They fished out the ball and blew out the guitar, and it returned to its former state.

[AndyV]

I'd try planting one....

[DHopkins]

They are also called "tone balls." Here are some good pictures and some information about them. The vibrations from the instrument being played seem to help form them into a ball. When one of my violins once needed a neck reset, the luthier carefully set the dust ball aside and replaced it when the instrument went back together. They're pretty cool!

The fact that someone has categorized them and has a web page about them sort of creeps me out.

[sblock]

If these signs of arthropod activity don't inspire you to put your mandolin away inside a good case, I don't know what will.