Plans were to show some mandolins at a stringed instrument festival in Tasmania next month, so the past couple of months has been getting a few mandolins and a couple of ukuleles ready for that. Of course, the festival has now been cancelled, but I have just strung up a couple of mandolins I was planning to take to show.
The A model is made from entirely Australian timbers. This has a bunya pine soundboard with streaky Tasmanian myrtle body and neck. The fingerboard is a hard casuarina of some kind with some gidgee as the head overlay. The bunya is an unattractive timber but rather good for soundboards. Maton and Cole-Clarke, our two largest guitar makers here use it extensively for steel string guitars, but this is the first time I have tried any on a mandolin. This is a very loud barking instrument with loads of punch.
The oval hole instrument is based on a Washburn Model G (or an E or F) from the 1920s and is made with a King Billy pine soundboard, a Huon pine body with an Australian red cedar neck. The fingerboard and head overlay are rosewood. A very different sounding mandolin to the bunya/myrtle A style.
Sound files to come.
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