Relic Silverangel

[kyken]

This one is off the scales in sound.

[Skip Kelley]

Ken, your mandolin looks great and I bet it sounds even better! It sure looks old!

[William Smith]

Ken, your mandolin looks great and I bet it sounds even better! It sure looks old!

I second that, Very kool looking. That baby has some sweet back going on!

[wildpikr]

Fine looking mandolin! Just curious, why is it called 'Relic'?

[Denny Gies]

Love the look.

[Jess L.]

... why is it called 'Relic'?

I guess because it looks older than it is.

When I was trying to find info on this, I discovered that there is now a new word in the English language: "relicing". It means taking a new or not-old item, and altering it to make it look older than it is.

For instance (if I can get this link to work right), the search phrase "relicing a guitar" turns up a bunch of results, such as GuitarRelicing.com.

Of course the new word "relicing" is based on the use of the word "relic" as a verb... hmm (cue the Grammar Police) no, wait a sec, we don't need the grammar police after all, because it turns out that turning nouns into verbs is not a new phenomenon, it's been going on for centuries with other words that are now considered standard usage. Gotta love a living language!

But about the spelling... huh... two options come to mind, "relicing" or "relicking". Hmm. Neither one looks quite right, because "relicing a mandolin" could be misinterpreted as "putting lice back into the mandolin" which would be worrisome for two reasons, how did the mandolin get lice in the first place and why would anyone want to reinstall them? The second spelling option, "relicking", nah that's no good either because it looks like it means "lick it again", as in licking an ice cream cone or something. So, what then, "reliccing"? no, that doesn't look right either...

There seems to be endless debate about how to spell relicing but the bottom line seems to be that the people who are actually using the new word the most -- in this case, musical instrument makers and musicians -- get to decide how it's spelled. Fair enough. And it seems that the vast majority of the websites I found today are using the spelling "relicing", when writing about the process of making an instrument look older than it actually is.

Anyway, back to the OP topic, great-looking instrument!

[Bill Kammerzell]

This one is off the scales in sound.

Does it sound as good as number 382? You got to hear that one with a Dawg pick!

[Jess L.]

... "relicing a mandolin" could be misinterpreted as "putting lice back into the mandolin" ...

Oops, that would have been more clear if for purposes of example I'd used the past tense "reliced" instead of the, um, the other thing with the -ing ending (whatever that's called, can't remember, been a long time since I had to diagram sentences in school). Anyway... very nice mandolin!

[Drew Streip]

Oops, that would have been more clear if for purposes of example I'd used the past tense "reliced" instead of the, um, the other thing with the -ing ending (whatever that's called, can't remember, been a long time since I had to diagram sentences in school). Anyway... very nice mandolin!

Of course, we could get instrument makers to agree on a word that's already in use and doesn't have these lice and lick issues: Antique / antiquing

But that's no good either, is it? Because you might just think of shopping for tchotchkes in a dusty old store that looks like your grandma's off-limits guest room

Ken, that's an awesome looking instrument! No matter what you call your process!

[Steve Ostrander]

A beautiful mandolin.

[Randi Gormley]

JL, I think you're looking for the word 'gerund.'

Well, there's precedent for using a 'k' when putting an 'ing' on the end of a word that ends with 'c' think of picknicking. ... and I've seen 'miking' someone instead of 'micing' them ... I agree, relicing just looks peculiar. and now I can't see it as anything other than re-lice-ing!

although that's a beautiful instrument, whatever you call it.

[JeffD]

Premature aging?