New mandola by John Weisberg
I've had my anticipated new custom-built mandola, made for me by my young friend John Weisberg, for a couple days now. How exciting the whole process has been! Let me just say this: it's a keeper, for sure.
It's a 17" scale induced arch flat top and back mandola, made with very old redwood for the soundboard, Claro walnut back and sides, African mahogany neck (with a steel rod epoxied in), dyed black pearwood bindings with white purfling, radiused ebony fretboard with 22 frets, ebony headstock overlay and neck heel cap, ebony non-adjustable bridge with a bone saddle, Grover 309 tuners, a Keith Newell mandola tailpiece and Thomastik 164 strings. It's finished in French polished clear shellac.
It is a "one-off" mandola, and John has never built a mandolin family instrument up till now. But he made it completely from scratch, to the smallest detail. John is primarily interested in classical guitars, of which he's made quite a few, but has also built other stringed instruments, and has a lot of curiosity and interest in trying out new things - he joked that he'd like to make just one of everything! We talked a lot during the time when John played one of his own handmade classical guitars, accompanying a couple of arias in our recent opera production of Barber of Seville. I told him of my mandola hobby (read: fixation), and as things turned out, he wanted to make this mandola for me, just to gain the experience. Now that he has, he says his next project will be building a lute - for himself, as he wants to learn to play it. "That's one great thing about building - I can get all the instruments I want so much more cheaply just by making them myself," he remarked modestly.
John is extremely focused on the sound-creating properties of instruments, being an excellent and quite accomplished musician himself. Looks are a back-seat thing with him (although he realizes that they're important to many, if not most people who play). I was there Tuesday afternoon - John lives about 20 minutes from here - to string it up for the first time, and have him do the final tweaks. I said, "I hope it sounds as good as it looks!" and he replied that he hoped it sounded a lot better than it looked!
That is in part why he asked me to provide much of the visual input for what I wanted in a build. So I first picked out the wood (with consultation, and the ultimate blessing of his acoustic mind's perspective, of course). Then, throughout the build, he asked me questions via e-mail on how I wanted this shape to be, or that ornamentation to look, and so on.
I was fascinated to learn that John makes rosettes for his guitars from scratch, using mosaic logs, and when he explained how they were created (I always assumed they were painted on!), I tried my hand at designing one, which John then constructed and inlaid into my mandola, per my design. I also carved the semi-compensated bridge blank, and he made a bone saddle for it, fitted the bridge to the top, and subsequently fine-tuned it.
The results speak for themselves - and I simply can't put this instrument down! It feels so good in the hand and plays so nicely, and the sound is well balanced and clean, and sustains forever. And it's only been singing for two days! It even looks great, I think. And I almost forgot to mention, it exudes a lovely wood aroma, too...
bratsche
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