Campfire travel Mandolin

[Dave Fultz]

FWIW I am going camping for the next few days. It’s the 6th annual Ohio Ukulele Campout. About 75-100 Ukers camping and playing ukes. It’s a great time, I’m bringing a banjolele and a tenor uke. I’m also bringing a mandolin. It’s my Kentucky km172. I’ve cheaper, but I’ll be with musicians, or at least players, that tend to play in a pavilion or under a canopy. To a few attendees dismay, several of us are bringing “alternative” instrumentation for little jams that pop up.

[mandroid]

Bought a Martin Backpacker, very well made, fine neck shape, probably due to a good CNC router program,

long. full scale length , but not wide, and rugged.. had its gig bag in a back pack,
fell off the top of the car,

I used the forgotten coffee takeout, on the roof trick,

went back picked it up and it was still in tune..

Sold it to someone who said they were going to South America, maybe backpacking the Andes?

[Dschoenfeld]

I have a great solution for a travel/backpacking mandolin. I bought a light soprano Ukulele, a Maholo MK1TRD which weights only 10oz. I put special strings on it that allow it to be tuned like a mandolin. (JustStrings, Aquila Soprano fifths). The result sounds fairly nice, plays like mandolin, or at least like a tenor banjo, weights only 10 ounces, costs less than $30 and is small enough to put in a backpack. Note that if you don't get special strings then you can't tune a Ukulele like a mandolin because the E string breaks.

[Simon DS]

I have a great solution for a travel/backpacking mandolin. I bought a light soprano Ukulele, a Maholo MK1TRD which weights only 10oz. I put special strings on it that allow it to be tuned like a mandolin. (JustStrings, Aquila Soprano fifths). The result sounds fairly nice, plays like mandolin, or at least like a tenor banjo, weights only 10 ounces, costs less than $30 and is small enough to put in a backpack. Note that if you don't get special strings then you can't tune a Ukulele like a mandolin because the E string breaks.

Another option, a classical guitar has a scale span of 2 octaves whereas the mandolin is less, so it should be possible to just use an old set (or even new set) of nylon guitar strings, and use four of them on the ukulele? I imagine the issue would be to find nylon bass strings instead of the usual ones. Of course it wont be GDAe, but that maybe ok.

If it’s possible to tune it to CGDA then playing with Ukes would be fun because they often play in the key of C. You would then be playing as though you are playing a mando in the key of G. Fun!

[Minorkey]

Surely you can put regular uke strings on a uke tuned to GDAE simply by swapping two of the strings over. Uke is tuned GCEA, if you swap the E and A strings over and tune the C string down to D you have mandolin tuning.

[Mike Scott]

I do a bit of international travel so at this point anything with rosewood and potentially ebony and even certain mahogany are/could be an issue depending on the customs person you’re dealing with. My solution was to get a Big Muddy with spruce top, walnut b/s, maple fret board, maple bridge, hickory head stock overlay, bone nut and CITES compliant mahogany neck. No rosewood or ivory or even any controversial material in it. It’s also pretty small (12 frets to the body) and extremely light. I take a listing of the “build list” that includes CITES info. Problem solved-great sound/great travel mando!