Strings for old octave mandolin

[dmcol]

Hi All,
Iam a newbie on here. Iam going from guitar to Octave mandolin. The OM I am buying is an old one with no truss rod. The scale length is 480mm. The guy I am buying it from said he put light gauge strings on E was a 10 because he didn't want to put too much tension on the neck. The neck is ok. He said he bought Martin strings but I've looked on the net and can't find any light gauge anywhere . Would a 12 E be ok? Or can anybody recommend a different make. Thanks in advance. Dave.

[multidon]

It is helpful in a case like this to spend a little time with an on line string tension calculator. I recommend the D’Addario String Tension Pro. It’s free and effective. Start with their J80 set, then change your scale length and see the tension results. Then you can adjust the gauges to see what that will do. On an octave mandolin, my target tension is 20 pounds per string, give or take, for sound and feel. But I understand you are wanting to keep tension low to protect the non truss rod neck. The J80 set is optimized for a 22.75 inch scale length. Your 480 mm scale is just shy of 19 inches, quite short in the octave mandolin world. This will decrease the tension on a given set. The J80 set has a .012 E course, and on your instrument that would be about 13 pounds of tension. I would not find that very playable personally and I would want to go up to .013 or .014, but I suppose .012 is doable. Your friend with his .010, his E strings would have only been 9 pounds of tension. Way too little in my opinion for sound or playability. The rest of the strings in that set would give between 15 to 17 pounds per string. That should be light enough, but to be really safe you might want to consider buying single strings to make up your own custom set. Instead of 20 pounds, you might want to shoot for 15 pounds per string, which would give you only 120 pounds of tension overall, rather than the typical 160 pounds. The set that would give you 15 pounds per string, give or take a fraction, would be .013-.020w-.030w-.046w.

By the way, Martin does not make strings for octave mandolin. He was perhaps using Martin guitar strings? Does your instrument take ball end or loop end strings?

[dmcol]

Hi Don many thanks for your prompt and detailed reply. The strings are loop end. He builds cigar box guitars and on the mandolin he upgraded the machine heads bridge and tail piece. Dave.

[August Watters]

Photos please? It's not clear from the description if this is similar to a modern octave mandolin, or if it could be a European-style GDAE mandola. It it's the latter, you'll need heavier strings like these. NFI of course.

Of course, start with the lighter ones first and see how they feel.

[dmcol]

Hi the OM is now my profile pic.