electroCoustic mandolin, #2(S#080)

[Dave Wendler]

My second attempt at a mandolin....

Specs:

Body- Double carved western red cedar
Neck-mahogany under cocobolo, bone nut, double carbon fibre reinforcement, no adjustment.
Scale- 13.875" and 22 frets
Machines-Grover cast plate
Finish- neck tung oil, body satin waterborne polyurethane sprayed. Double carbon fibre reinforcement, no adjustment.
Scale- 13.875" and 22 frets
Pickup system- "MagPi", humcancelling dual coil neck pup with proprietary disc piezo imbedded in the quartersawn maple bridge. Volume and "bias" controls under the pickguard. Passive.

The idea here is to get the player acoustic response at high gain levels....easily competes in a full tilt electric situation.

It was raining when I took the photos....

[pklima]

Looks nice, but I'm very curious about the concave back... did you do that with a sonic or ergonomic goal in mind?

[Dave Wendler]

One of the big differences in tone between a solid body instrument and a purely acoustic instrument is the sustain/attack transient signature. The concave back, while reducing sustain just a touch, allows a much greater "blossom" of the attack transient/resonance.

[John Rosett]

dave-
as someone who has been fighting the tone vs. stage volume battle for years, i'm really interested. the guitars on your website are very reasonablly priced. what's a mando like that cost? how about a double neck 8-string mando and 6-string guitar?
thanks, john

[pklima]

That makes sense... removing mass and stiffness from the area under the bridge. I'm used to bowlback mandolins with backs that bulge outwards a LOT.

[ira]

goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorgeous!

[Scott Tichenor]

I played this mandolin today plugged in. Really nice! I'm not typically an electric player but I don't see how you can go wrong with this setup.

[Bandersnatch Reverb]

Looks great! My only question is that tailpiece. Ball end strings? Harder to find no?

[Dave Wendler]

My only question is that tailpiece. #Ball end strings? #Harder to find no?

Just nickel wound electric guitar strings in a "light" mandolin ga....10 14 24 36 I use Martin nickels....Ernie Balls are nickel wound too, in individual gauges.

[Ellie]

Very cool, Dave. Nice burst, too. Are you running an onboard preamp to mix the mag and the piezo?

[JGWoods]

Wow! I like everything I see. I couldn't get to your website by clicking the link on the message, but it was there when I put it in Explorer. I like the shapes of your instruments- they look ergonomically correct for my bod and very nice prices too. I'm saving up.
best of luck.
gw

[Dave Wendler]

Very cool, Dave. Nice burst, too. Are you running an onboard preamp to mix the mag and the piezo?

Ellie- That's one of the things that's VERY different about my "electroCoustic" series of instruments....it's a PASSIVE configuration.

One of the probelms with a piezo pickup is the high capacitance of the device. This causes a severe phase shift during the attack transient, allowing the highs to pass first...giving you the typical harsh high end of the transducer. Rather than just impedance buffering(active preamp)of the piezo, I use the high INDUCTANCE of the magnetic pickup to help realign the attack transient phase response. In otherwords, the magnetic pickup SLOWS down the response of the piezo, allowing a much more "natural" tonal response....

If you've ever used an impedance buffering preamp, then you know that EQ doesn't really fix the tonal problem...and that's because the phase response issue isn't resolve FIRST.

Conversely, most magnetic pickups have what is usually described as an "electric" tonality, which is really just an upper midband/lower treble hump in the frequency response....the usual solution to this in the electric guitar is to put a capacitor in parallel to ground with the magnetic pickup...and what the electrocoustic system does ( "MagPi") is use the high capacitance of the piezo to roll off the "electric" tonality of the magnetic. It's a win/win situation regarding tone, and a VERY simple circuit...a couple of pots, the two pickups, and the output jack.

The real design philosphy behind these instruments is simplicity....fewer gain stages...which allows much better touch response and sensitivity to the player than the typical piezo/preamp rig. #I'll let you be the judge of "tone" as that is so subjective anyway...

Try these downloads for a tone sample....this is the first one...the second mandolin hasn't been recorded yet...but to my ear sounds a bit more "acoustic"....

http://www.electrocoustic.com/audio/Iwill.mp3

http://www.electrocoustic.com/audio/...me%20Place.mp3