Re: Mandocello Mystery of the Dead C Strings
Originally Posted by
mrmando
I have a vintage Gibson K2 mandocello that I thought was all set up and ready. I pull it out tonight and discover that something's wrong with the C course: suddenly both strings buzz a lot and have almost no volume. It was professionally set up when I bought it and definitely wasn't having this problem a few months ago.
What might have happened?
Having had a lot of experience in the past with pre-1921 Gibson K-1 (& K-2) mandocellos (think I have owned three of them in the past) I am going to say most likely you are starting to get top "sinkage" on the bass side of the top. This is very common on those mandocellos. Sometimes the sag does not happen immediately after you string it up but some times happens slowly and you find what appears to be a well set up mandocello one day is suddenly "thuddy" and lifeless a few weeks later. I had one 1936 K-1 that would experience severe top sag but then spring back to normal contour a few days after tension was removed and then sag again within 1 - 2 weeks after being brought back up to tension. The transverse brace on that one remained glued down the problem was that the brace and the top board combined were too weak to support the strings (I used D'Addario J-78s). Somewhere on the builders section there is a long string that explains how I did the Frank Ford fix on that K-1 by taking the back off and adding a second spruce transverse brace directly under the bridge. It worked perfectly -- no more top sag. Even better the mandocello --if anything - sounded better than before the fix. The second brace seemed to transfer the vibrations all across the top and it was a real boomer.
Bernie
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Due to current budgetary restrictions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off -- sorry about the inconvenience.
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