2 days ago I strung a 1930s mandolin for the first time in probably at leaat 20 years. It's my first mandolin and I'm a complete beginner with trying to fix them.
I bought a set of light D'addario gauge strings, my thoughts being to not over stress the instrument after so long without the tension. Apart from one or two strings slipping on the pegs a little due to a hurried job when stringing, which I'll likely redo today, its now holding its tune reasonably well. The bridge is set to the correct intonation as far as my knowledge allows, with the 12th fret on each string being the octave above open.
The main issue I have is that whenever I try and strum even a basic G chord, the strings are extremely sensitive to pitch bending. Only an extremely light amount of pressure, to barely get the strings to touch the fret, keeps the fretted strings in pitch with the open strings to form the chord. Any excess pressure and the pitch bends very fast to make the chord out of tune. Even when all strings are in tune with one another when open
Have I missed a step in the setup of the mandolin to cause this? Or is it a common mandolin quirk that I'll have to adapt to? The action on the strings is high due to the design on the body and bridge height, but not excessively so in my opinion.
What do you think?
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