Re: Tuning for 19th Century Mandolin
Good advice from all.
I've owned numerous Lanfranco mandolins and they typically have sounded fairly nice, though the fret spacing and intonation has been a bit sketchioso.
My hunch has long been that they were made in Catania and labeled in Napoli, but that is neither here nor there viz their relatively good MOR quality.
Your mandolin is suffering from a common problem plaguing these lightly built Italian bowlbacks. The light build helps account for their resonance and "shimmering sound" as Martin Jonas so nicely put it. There's no mistaking the sound from these compared to US bowls from the era. To my ear Vega, and Favilla bowls come the closest.
But as you can see from the side view, the mandolin top is prone to sinking ever so slightly under tension between the soundhole and the neck joint. This causes the neck to rotate up bit and throws the action out of whack. It doesn't take much with the short geometry of these mandolins.
Both L Embergher and CF Martin were savvy to this problem and reinforced the area between the top brace "north" of the soundhole and the neck block joint with a thin plate of spruce. Good design idea. It is a bit of preventive maintenance I've been doing to all my bowlbacks, actually.
You might be able to fiddle with the bridge to get this playable, but the inherent structural problem will remain. If you are handy with repairs, I would advise considering the Embergher / Martin approach and strengthen that area....even with the use of the extra light strings David recommends (09-32.) It won't compromise the sound and may help save the instrument.
A lot of folks sniff at these MOR bowls and (understandably) go for the bigger name Neapolitan and Roman builders. From my experience this (second? third?) tier of Italian bowls can be very lovely to play (if they are playable) and the intonation isn't too askew. Playing folk melodies in the first position (which these likely were designed for) naturally helps avoid that issue.
Good luck getting it up an running!
Mick
Ever tried, ever failed? No matter. Try again, fail again. Fail better.--Samuel Beckett
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