I recently walked into a local "string" shop and asked if they had any mandolins, other than the 2 unstrung ones hanging in the back. He went out back and brought out a Stradolin and said they had just reglued the neck, which looked like a quick yellow glue fix. I plucked a few strings and noticed that the G and D strings were out of tune when fretted. I then noticed that they had been strung incorrectly with both courses strung with matching heavy and light guage strings (a la 12 string guitar?) It then occurred to me that they had strung each course with the corresponding G and D strings, so when fretted, the lighter guage played sharper than the heavy guage string. Also, the action was pretty high and the plywood top was a little sunk under the bridge. They wanted $199, so I talked them down to $150 with an old case. When I got it home, I restrung it correctly and manufactured a low bridge (to help lower the action) using the murphy method (murphymethod.com/index.cfm?event=pages.content&contentId=122). Result...a nice sounding mando with those cool Stradolin f holes. I have no idea how old it is as there are no markings inside. The headstock has the block letter stencil lettering. 1950's maybe? Anyway, I'm pretty happy with my chance purchase.
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