4-string Electric Octave Mandolin
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Design
Based on an octave mandolin or a tenor guitar, these instruments use 4
or 5 strings, tuned in 5th. Just like a violin*, so your left
hand’s fingering is very familiar. The scale length is kept
shorter than tenor guitars: 20”. Because of the frets, you don’t
have excess stretching, and is perfectly good for the typical violinist
or violist. Check out the Comparison
page to see similarity and differences with other instruments.
So is 20" too short of a scale length? Not at all. If
you take a regular guitar and put a capo on at the third
fret to raise from the low E to the G, you would end up very close to a
20" scale length. As a result, for the GDAE tuning that I
prefer, I use similar string gauges as a regular guitar. I
personal preference is the combination: 0.12", 0.22", 0.32", and 0.48".
I’ve built both electric and acoustic instruments; but most people seem to prefer a solid electric guitar. I recently completed a flat top instrument, and you can see how it was put together here: http://home.earthlink.net/~thoxbui/flattop/
I use blade ('rail') pickup, so that the unusual number of strings (4
or 5 instead of 6) can be accommodated more effectively. The controls
are kept simple, one for tone, one for volume; and a switch to choose
the pickup. These are all passive pickups and do not require
pre-amplifying. I've used these instruments straight and through
effect boxes. Their tone is that of an electric guitar, a bit like a
typical Strat-copy. One day I may
build an instrument with high output humbuckers,
but the larger size of these pickups make it a bit awkward to fit into
the smaller bodies. The necks of the instruments
have graphite composite truss rods to maintain stability, playability,
but still retain proper balance
A poorly played but good representation of the sound is recorded into this MP3 file.
Recently, I built an instrument based on the same concept for cello players, an electric mandocello.*or a viola—but it will burn longer.
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