Well, Umberto C. arrived yesterday and I savored opening the box for a few hours. The mandolin was ensconced inside a very old rectangular case that had pretty much fallen apart. The mandolin was as depicted in the photos. A bit grimy, spruce top kind of dried out but to my novice eye looked in good shape. The strings had been on for at least a year and since I haven't received the Lenzner Consorts yet, I tuned it up and started to play. The strings sounded kind of tinny and without vibrancy - kind of dead. I hope the new strings will change that. The tuners work fine - that's good.
When I checked the octave at the 12th fret - all the courses except for one were fine. Oddly, one of the D strings at the 12th fret has no sound, it just plinks and doesn't register a pitch - that was too weird. The other D string is perfect at the 12th fret. Does anyone have any ideas on why this should happen? I'm going to bring it to a luthier next week to set it up....but, I must say it's the strangest thing to see and hear.
Ilene
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