Epiphone mandobird v. eastwood mandocaster

**Eddie Sheehy** · Jan-11-2008, 1:27pm

My Eastwood Mandocaster arrived yesterday. First thing I noticed was the bridge straight, and sure enough the G and D strings were "off". Armed with my trusty screwdriver and the marvelous advice from some Mandolincafe posts I set about adjusting the bridge. A few twists and nearly all the strings were ok. Lots of twists later - almost flattened the spring - the G strings were passable (a tad sharp still). Now fo rthe strange bit: The second fret of the G strings sounded horrible. The "A" note was sharp and a little drunk (not very technical). The strings were not good quality and I happened to have a Medium-Light set of Adamas around so I replaced them. This seems to help. The original G strings looked more like D strings anyway - but that could be just my lousy eyesight. The action is also a little high. There are two screws attaching the bridge to the body which look adjustable, but they have no screw-heads on the bridge, just some sort of rivet. I would appreciate any tips on setting up this instrument.

The Comparison:

Mandocaster - Hard to set up.
Action is higher than the Mandobird.
Looks nice.

Mandobird - Out of the box the intonation was pretty close - minor tweaks needed.
Weak E string when amplified.

**Eddie Sheehy** · Jan-11-2008, 1:34pm

Oops! I guess I hit the wrong key and posted early. Anyway, the Mandobird beats the Mandocaster hands down and is about $150 cheaper. Neither are good quality mandolins but you can have a lot of fun with them when apmlified using special effects - reverb, phlanger, suspended in a bucket etc.

Of course I may have a "lucky" Mandobird and an "unlucky" Mandocaster....c'est la vie.