Posted on September 2, 2026September 2, 2026 by Dale Phillips Product Reviews: Mandolin tuners Product Reviews: Mandolin tuners by JAmes Condino Originally published in American Lutherie #93, 2008 About ten years ago, I was in the middle of a guitar lesson when my teacher suddenly put down his guitar and picked up a mandolin to describe a moment of musical universality. I was instantly hooked; the giant light bulb appeared above my head; I realized I could build a nice mandolin from my guitar off-cuts and scrap pile. I didn’t know anything about mandolin tuning machines, so I let a fellow at the local fiddle shop sell me a set that turned the gears in the reverse direction for every string. I thought they were a bit deco and fun. A few weeks later I found myself backstage at North Carolina’s Merlefest, new mandolin in hand, talking up a storm with one of the more popular (anonymous) mandolin players in the world who also can sing a great story while sawing on his fiddle. Quirky fellow that he is, he picked up my new mandolin and turned the first string a few cents out of tune in the wrong direction. After he adjusted the other seven strings, retuning the entire mandolin flat, he told me never to use those tuners again! That day I realized I needed a lot more information on what tuners were out there and how they worked. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on August 13, 2026August 13, 2026 by Dale Phillips American Mandobass History 101 American Mandobass History 101 by Paul Ruppa Originally published in American Lutherie #112, 2012 A fretted 4-string bass, tuned like a standard double bass, was developed in the early 1900s for use in American mandolin orchestras. Generally, instruments of this sort were about 5´ (153CM) long from the top of the headstock to the end of the body and close to 2´ (61CM) across at the lower bouts. The term mandobass was adopted to describe these instruments because they were created to provide a deep bass voice for the American mandolin family, sometimes called the “plectral choir.” In 1911, at the annual meeting of the American Guild of Banjoists, Mandolinists and Guitarists (the Guild), issues related to the mandobass were among the first discussed. Published minutes from that event included an entry about bass mandolins developed in Britain. A letter from English banjo maker Clifford Essex, relating to recently invented mandobasses, was read to Guild members. Essex explained that his country’s plectrum basses had either three or four courses and they were tuned in fifths. These instruments sounded two octaves lower than a mandolin at G D A (3-2-1) or G D A E (4-3-2-1) and were essentially contrabass mandolins. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 23, 2026July 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips The Mandolin Family: Traditional and Contemporary Perspectives The Mandolin Family: Traditional and Contemporary Perspectives by David Cohen, Don MacRostie, Lawrence Smart, and moderator Jeffrey Elliott from their 2011 GAL Convention panel discussion Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013 Jeff Elliott: I’d like to introduce our distinguished panelists. Dave Cohen built his first mandolin in 1974, and with his long-time interest in woodworking and his background teaching college chemistry, perhaps it’s no surprise that he has a science-based approach to mandolin building, and has focused on researching the physics of the mandolin family. You can read about his findings in several places, including our own American Lutherie journal, the publications of Northern Illinois University, and in a new book entitled The Science of String Instruments, edited by Thomas Rossing. Lawrence Smart is known for redesigning the mandolin to meet the demands of contemporary players, and for designing a mandolin quartet which works especially well together both tonally and aesthetically. You can read Lawrence’s comprehensive article on his building philosophy and design considerations in AL#56 (Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five). Don MacRostie wears two hats: as a product designer for Stewart-MacDonald and as the maker of his well-known Red Diamond mandolins. For many years he has studied traditional, historic mandolins, and more recently has focused on the iconic Gibson Lloyd Loar F model. Don has also taught mandolin making for many years, and a few years ago shared his method with the rest of us in a five-part series by Peggy Stuart in AL#75–AL#79. Now, by way of further introduction and to get things started, I’m going to ask the same fundamental question of each panelist: Gentlemen, what is the mandolin? Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 10, 2026July 13, 2026 by Dale Phillips Finding Waldo Finding Waldo The First Family of American f-Hole Mandolins, Mandolas, and Mandocellos by Paul Ruppa Originally published in American Lutherie #117, 2014 In 1973, I bought a Vega cylinder-back, two-point mandocello for $175. The seller was luthier David Colburn who ran the Vintage Fret Shop in Holderness, New Hampshire. A few years later, I started living with an unyielding interest in finding out about the history of mandocellos. It was not until I began reading through the Library of Congress’ microfilm reproduction of their The Cadenza magazine collection (1894–1924) that I thought I might have uncovered some answers. Yes, it was there that I found Waldo. The American tenor mandola and mandocello were first developed by employees of the Barrows Music Company in Saginaw, Michigan. The instruments were marketed under the Barrows’ brand, “Waldo.” No one knows when they were given the names tenor mandola and mandocello, who named them, or exactly when the first Waldo tenor mandola and mandocello were built. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 29, 2026June 29, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Field Guide to Mandolins A Field Guide to Mandolins by Graham McDonald Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 The aim of this article is to give you a broad overview of the diverse world of mandolins, and to some extent, what can go wrong with them. I will not spend a huge amount of time discussing Gibson and Gibson-style mandolins. They are the industry standard for mandolins in America, and there has been a lot written about them with lots of other information readily accessible out there on the web, some of which might even be correct. This will be more about other sorts of mandolins that a customer might bring to you. Instruments called mandolins (or in Italian, mandolino) appeared in Italy in the middle of the 17th century (Photo 1). They were small, in fact tiny, lutes. This photo of Italian builder Carlo Ceconni with one of his mandolins gives you a sense of just how little they were (Photo 2). These mandolins are very lightly built, with the soundboards a little over 1MM thick and string tension of around 3KG per string. Scale lengths were 11.5˝–13.5˝ (29CM–35CM), which was likely to have been determined by the pitch standard of where the builder lived. It came down to how high the gut top string could be tuned in any particular climate. They were tuned in fourths with four, five, or six double courses of gut strings. The 6-course tuning, low to high, was g b e´ a´ d˝ g˝. These are the instruments for which Vivaldi wrote his mandolin music, and I am told that the mandolin parts in those concertos falls much more naturally under the left hand with the tuning intervals mostly in fourths rather than fifths. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
