Is it defective ?

**Skanda p** · Jan-18-2020, 11:48am

I recently brought a new mandolin. "Harley Benton 50 E VS". It costs about 120 dollars. Here in India there no mandolin dealers so I brought it ONLINE. I took it to music shop to adjust the bridge as the lower and upper octaves weren't matching. And he told me that the piece is defective and that there was a problem inside the mandolin. Here in India people don't know much about mandolin. So I decided to post it here. I did my best to take images of the inside. They are of different angles. Pls can anyone tell me if the mandolin is defective or not. It's tune is also not satisfactory.

**Charles E.** · Jan-18-2020, 11:57am

It looks the bridge is too far forward. Measure from the nut to the 12th fret, the distance from the 12th fret to the bridge saddle should be the same or slightly longer.
I don't see any thing amiss with the inside of the instrument.

**MikeEdgerton** · Jan-18-2020, 1:02pm

It appears that the top of your bridge may be reversed. Take a look at Gail Hester's picture in this thread. That will also mess up your intonation. I don't see anything wrong inside that mandolin either.

**Richard500** · Jan-18-2020, 2:03pm

Skanda, you obviously knew about bridge fore-and-aft placement, when you took it to the shop, and the person there probably did too. Maybe what they meant was that the bridge height also was too high and couldn’t be lowered, which might be interpreted as a fault in the body involving neck angle. You want to be about 1.5 mm or so on the G string at the midpoint, maybe less at the E. If the bridge height can’t be lowered enough, or is tilted left-right, this seems to be common on new, inexpensive instruments, and you can, yourself, trim some of the wood from the top of the lower half. It’s very unlikely that the fret placement is wrong, or that anything else affects the intonation. Enjoy!