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.
Posted on April 24, 2026April 24, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: String Dampening It Worked for Me: String Dampening by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012 I noticed that Michael Cone uses a piece of foam to damp the strings on the guitar for testing (AL#102, p. 8). This is pretty much universal. If you don’t damp the strings, the body response is swamped by the string response. I’ve been testing guitars since the early ’90s and have spent way too much time cutting pieces of foam to put under strings. A little while ago, I thought to use disposable foam earplugs. They are cheap, universally available, and designed for high damping. Better still, they are just the right size to stuff between guitar strings. I have had the best luck with the yellow foam ear plugs made by EAR, but the cheap generic ones work well enough. You don’t even have to throw the earplugs away when you are done. ◆
Posted on April 23, 2026April 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Secure Classical Guitar Strings It Worked for Me: Secure Classical Guitar Strings by Michael Grossman Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012 There has to be a better way to secure your classical guitar strings, but nylon strings with ball ends are not commonly available. I’ve seen 6-, 12-, and 18-hole tieblocks, strings with beads or sticks tied on the ends. It occurred to me that with a single set of holes, vertically elongated, you can pass the strings through the hole, through a bead, and then back into the same hole. As the string is tightened, the bead is snugged against the tieblock (a small recess for it to settle into helps), trapping the short end of the string inside the hole. No unsightly ends sticking out, no knots, no strings wrapped around the block or around themselves. Photo by Michael Grossman. Two small caveats: make the tieblock (if that’s still the appropriate term) out of ebony or something equally strong, and enlarge the holes vertically, not horizontally. My first attempt, in bloodwood, ripped apart along the line of the holes. ◆
Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: George Wunderlich Meet the Maker: George Wunderlich by Nathan Stinnette Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 How did you start building minstrel banjos? I was a Civil War reenactor, and I was introduced to the work of a gentleman by the name of Joe Ayers, who’s done a lot of recordings of minstrel banjo music. I’d never heard it before, and I decided right then and there that I could play that kind of banjo music. I’d grown up in Missouri where most everything is bluegrass, and I knew I did not have the coordination for three-finger playing. But this was something I could do. It was a little more melodic, a little more interesting to me. I bought an 1880s-period banjo from a company called The Music Folk in St. Louis. It was the oldest banjo they had on the wall, so I thought, that must be Civil War. When I couldn’t get the right sound out of it, I called Joe on the phone and said, “What am I doing wrong?” He explained to me in very basic terms that my banjo was wrong. It needed to be fretless, it needed to be gut strung, it needed to have a deeper pot. With his direction, I built a banjo. This was in 1992. 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 1, 2024May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Questions: Single String That is Too Sharp Questions: Single String That is Too Sharp by Neil Kok Originally published in American Lutherie #102, 2010 Neil Kok from Finland adds his answer to the question in AL #100 about problems with a single string that is too sharp: I was interested in John Calkin’s answer about modifying the saddle to remedy a guitar string that is too sharp. I have an example from one of my own guitars that may complement John’s answer with another solution. If the nut is not made exactly correctly, the string may not rest on the front edge of the nut but farther back, or even on its back edge. If the gap between nut and string is small enough, this may cause a sitar-like clatter and call our attention to the nut. But if there’s no clatter we may not notice this at all, and wonder why the string is sharp. I just filed a bit at the groove for the B string, giving it the right form, and the guitar plays beautifully in tune now.
