Howdy ho,
I've been sniffin around these pages for a while, and am finally posting this by way of an introduction
I'm an American living in Finland. I've been playing tenor banjo for a while, and thought that I would have a try at playing the mandolin as well. It's basically the same tuning so must be the same, right?
There was only one small problem: I'm a cheapskate.
Finland has a plentiful supply of these old Russian Mandolins from (I guess) the 70s, and you can get them on the net for about €40. So my cheapskate instincts were piqued when I spotted one going for €25! There was something about some damage to the neck, but it was all in Finnish so I just ignored it - I can read Finnish, but it I have to work at it, and the desire to translate correctly was drowned out by the noise coming from my cheapskate-instincts. To my delight I won the auction, and in a few days I had my amazing Russian mandolin:
And on the inside:
The details on the inside say
MANDOLINA
ARTIKYL 301
This means something lke Mandolin, model 301
Then "Preiskyrant no 077-01-1982/61". I am guessing that this is the serial number, and maybe the year of manufacture?
Then I realized that "damage to the neck" meant that it had broken entirely and been SCREWED BACK TOGETHER!
The mandolin is Russian made, but probably the damage to the neck and subsequent repair was done by a Finn. I suspect this because I live my life among Finns, and know there is a strong "make do and mend mentality" in Finnish society, one of the things I love about Finns.
So I put the Russian mandolin aside for a couple of weeks and I went back to my banjo.
Then one evening when I was all banjed out I took another look at my Russian Mandolin, and after picking at it for a bit realized that although there was a slightly rough repair job, the neck was straight and it was playable. The strings were ancient and untunable, but if you ignored that the tone was ok and it felt quite nice to hold and strum. So I got a set of new strings for it and tried it again.
While restringing, I discovered this awesome third fret detail
Sadly, after restringing it and tuning it up the string action was higher, and the scale length is all messed up - I guess the repair job wasn't so good, and the neck seems to be coming apart a little. The mandolin is basically not playable. Part of me thinks it would be fun to work on it some more and "restore it to it's former communist glory", but the sensible me says life's too short, so I found a Mandobird on sale in Germany for a good price and ordered it. V happy with that, and the old Russian mando is making a lovely ornament in my office right now.
In conclusion, if you ever see one of these Russian babies for sale, and assuming that it hasn't had the neck broken in two and bolted back together again, it's probably a nice, fun little insrument. Well worth 40 eurodollars :D
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