Hi everyone,
I'm still giving away my ebook on how to set up a mandolin (to get your free copy email me at rob.meldrum@gmail.com and put Mandolin Setup in the subject line).
Every now and then I get a nice follow-up email from someone letting me know how their setup went. With his permission I am posting an email I got this weekend from Bruce Walsh.
Rob
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Hi Rob,
I bought my Eastman 505 about 6 months ago from a reputable store in Australia. They had checked it over and given it a “pro set up” before sending it to me…..I live out in the country, 4 hours drive from the nearest big city.
I am a long time Guitar and Ukulele player, and I felt the action was a bit high, and the phosphor bronze strings grabbed my finger tips….too much string pressure sliding into notes on the higher frets.
So I followed your eBook and gave her a good once over and a restring…..I have done some amateur luthier work, having built a couple of Ukuleles at the Australian Guitar Making School.
At the nut, the grooves were not all even, not the same depth, so I used your feeler gauge nut file to just clean them up. I left the string height at the first fret at 0.020 inch, so I could see if that would be ok, and avoid fret buzz.
The string height on all strings at the 12th fret was around 0.070 inch, and I dropped that to 0.053. Again, I would restring and see how it went.
I used Graphite on the slots at the nut and saddle.
So I slowly replaced the strings with Dadarrio Nickel Bronze 11 40, and after checking heights on E and G, starting checking intonation.
With the Fender chromatic tuning app on my iPhone it only took minutes to get E and G nearly perfect
I finished stringing, checked all my heights, and tuned up.
Now the Eastman sounded nice and played nice before, but this is like a different mandolin….it is so much nicer, and the sound is clearer/cleaner, less muddy.
My teacher plays a Gilchrist F series, and he loves how the Eastman has turned out……I might reduce some of those numbers next restring, but for now it is a soft action, no buzzing, beautiful musical instrument.
Thanks Rob,
Bruce Walsh
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