Nylon strings for 6yr old's tiny fingers?

[Phil O'Dendron]

I am about to help my friend's 6yr old daughter (who is besotted with his mandola and more so with my mandolin) start with the mandolin.
She has a 1970s MIJ copy of a Martin and I'm wondering if I can maybe string it with either 4 nylon strings or something else very light. She has very tiny thin fingers, can almost tremolo after 1/2 with the instrument but doesn't have the strength to depress the strings.

Suggestions anyone?

[Frankdolin]

Put a set of light guage strings on and she'll be fine.

[tmsweeney]

I did use nylon strings on a mandola when I injured my left ring finger, it help me to keep practicing ( the steel was painful) and it sounded very medieval but still worked, I will say tying those strings on a mando tail piece was challenging, but it is very practical idea yes , but as Frankdolin says very light steel should be ok.

010 or 9 on the E

12 on the A

22 on the D

32 on the G

[Jacob]

Two sets of Aquila Soprano Uke Mandolin Tuned (Fifths) Set, 30U might work. Haven't tried them on a mandolin tailpiece. They work very well for mandolin tuning on a soprano ukulele,

[Jon Hall]

I began teaching my daughter to play the mandolin when she was 5 or 6. I strung her instrument with single light gauge strings and not pairs. The mandolin had a comfortable action. She didn’t have in problem graduating to playing 8 strings after a few months of playing 4.

[tiltman]

Light strings and only one of each string might help.

Kirk

[Bob Clark]

Hi Phil,

To aid this young learner, there are a couple of routes you can go. You could go with a shorter-scale length instrument, but she already has a mandolin, so that is not your most economical solution. The main thing is to keep her from becoming frustrated now. Frustration at the start of learning to play can lead to a life-long aversion. Look at all the kids who were forced to take piano lessons using the old beater out of Aunt Mabel's garage and hated it in the end. Making music can be such a positive force in one's life that frustration must really be avoided.

So, to your question, let’s think about strings. In the past, I had a nylon-strung mandolin (it was built for nylon by Walt Kuhlman) and I played around with lots of different string combinations. That can become an obsession in and of itself. I also played around with nylon on my Crystal Forest A/N flat-top just for the fun of it. It was a lot of fun, too. I am contemplating building a mandolin designed for nylon, for myself at some point, but that's a story for another day.

Of the combinations I tried, here is what worked best:

G= D’Addario Classical Nylon Classical Guitar J2705 A=5th string (wound)
D= D’Addario Classical Nylon Classical Guitar J2704 D=5th string (wound)
A=D’Addario Pro-Arte’ Concert Ukulele J92 E string
E= D’Addario Pro-Arte’ Concert Ukulele J92 A or G string (they are the same gauge).

The Classical Guitar strings can be bought individually from Just Strings, and I bought the Uke strings from them in sets. Their prices and service are good. This way, it works out to be not all that expensive. You will find the nylon strings stretch and stretch, eventually stabilize, and then break. If you keep the knot on the tailpiece end as it ‘wants to hang’ (don’t keep pushing the knot to crowd it against the tailpiece), breakage will be greatly reduced. Depending on your tailpiece, you might need to be creative, but it can be done.

I have tried D’Addario Nyltech for the A and E, and also Cuerdas Medina Artigas nylon-wound-nylon. I didn’t like either of those as much as the set I described above. Also, have a look at the Aquila site. I beta-tested a new nylon string set they were considering five or six years ago and I liked them (the review is somewhere on the Cafe), but I am not sure they made it into production. Also at that time, on their site, they had a good set of directions for stringing up nylon to reduce breakage. It's probably still there. Breakage can be a problem with nylon, but I think that in this case, it may be worth the effort.

Feel free to PM me if I can be of further help. It is important that musicians help young learning players coming up. We need to keep this alive for future generations.

Best wishes,

Bob