Pick Guards

[Trey Young]

I have an A-5 that I've been playing for about nine years now. The top has a fairly significant amount of wear around the treble f hole and the area along the edge of the body from my fingers dragging/hitting. Whil I'm obviously not concerned about the west at this point, I am considering putting a guard on the mandolin for a reason I haven't seen mentioned. I use a LR Baggs Radius pickup and the thumping of my fingers can be heard when I'm plugged in. I figured a floating guard should alleviate that. Any body else had this issue and solved it this way?

[Ivan Kelsall]

My Lebeda came with a plain,un-bound Ebony pickguard. I took it off because the original shape seemed like a fat a**. I re-shaped it & put it back on. However,having such an anonymous piece of wood attached to my mandolin detracted from it's looks (IMHO),& i took it off again. The edge bound pickguard on my Ellis looks fine,& i reckon that a nice,abbreviated faux. t/shell,edge bound pickguard would look lovely on my Weber,
Ivan

[journeybear]

My thoughts about pickguards over the years haven't added up to much, not enough to sort into pros and cons. My overriding attitude concerning a great many things is: Whatever works, works. (I do not necessarily want this on my tombstone, but it's on the short list. That is, I could live without it. Oh wait - that wouldn't work ... hmmm ... )

Fact is, I might never even have been aware of them if my first mandolin hadn't come with one. Since it was a teens Gibson A with an oval hole, the pickguard didn't affect the sound at all. But the bracket did come loose and rattled, and wouldn't tighten, so I took it off. And fortunately, I didn't toss it, but tucked it away somewhere. And I still have it, in deep storage, which is good, because mandolin is long one, and I now have two similar ones. So the next time I'm up that way, I may just have to dig it out and press it into service. One of my current ones - Molly, in fact - sustained some damage right where a pickguard used to have been. I believe this is one of the reason, if not the main one, that no one was bidding on her and I acquired her. It's just cosmetic damage, not structural nor acoustic, and when it comes to musical instruments and the folks who play them, looks ain't everything. (I'm living proof. ) Anyway, AFAIC, the classic pickguard is just fine with me, though not necessary. I think it dresses up an instrument a bit, though it will look just fine without it. You really shouldn't be playing so hard and even carelessly that you might damage the top, anyway.

Hope all that ambiguity helps.

My H-2 mandola has one, and the clamp is tight. It's staying.