Mandola strings

[Coelhao]

Greetings mandolin people,

I am building a mandola right now, I want it to have a scale length of about 25". My question is what kind of strings should I use? Will normal mandola strings break under the extra tension? If nothing else, I could just use bouzouki strings, but Im not looking for that sound.

Thanks for the help

[JEStanek]

Welcome to the mandolin Café. Most mandolas have a scale of 16-17 inches. Do you mean Octave mandolin or Zouk even? Builder Graham McDonald has a string tension calculator here.

Jamie

[Coelhao]

Thank you. Yeah I guess it would technically be an octave mandolin.

[Jim Garber]

Technically, it would be called an octave mandolin in North America. In Europe it would be a mandola.

[Coelhao]

Im going to tune it GDAE. It has a fiddle scroll so it will only have 4 strings; Im eventually going to have to call it something...

[mandroid]

Irish Zouk is long, about guitar scale like ~ 25" there is the octave pair option on the G&D strings on those ,
look up the gages common on those, or you are in a 19 fret tenor banjo scale length,
so Irish Tenor Banjo string sets are along those lines.
the latter a bit heavier than the former..

[fishtownmike]

removed by me.