Eugene C. Braig IV
Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:45:24 -0700
At 12:01 PM 4/6/2008, Stuart Walsh wrote: >Eugene, did you see the photos of this mandolin? > >http://www.pluckedturkeys.co.uk/mandopics/ I have now. thanks for the reference. >Do you think this mando could be a de Meglio (or imitator)? This >particular mandolin didn't really strike me as a good quality instrument - >but I don't know anything about mandolins! Almost certainly either a very basic de Meglio made for export (possibly to be sold as some retailer's house brand) or from a more working-class shop very deliberately imitating the style. Without more evidence, and with that coarse bridge as possible original equipment, I'm a little more likely to suspect this to be of the latter breed. Not hugely fancy, but the basic pieces by de Meglio were solid, reliable "working class" mandolins. >Did many mandolins have side vents? I've never seen them before. That was very much a late-19th-c. Neapolitan phenomenon. There weren't a huge number of makers to do so, but shops like de Meglio's were relatively prolific in producing them. >And teh wooden frame thing behind the bridge 'set into the leading edge' >(do you mean the backward slope of the soundboard?). I was trying to describe that the edge of the bridge leading into the vibrating string length would have a brass rod set for a bridge "saddle." The crease in the soundboard to create the "backward slope" is called the cant. The cant/tailpiece side of the bridge proper is that that I was referring to as "trailing edge" of the bridge's wooden frame in being the opposite edge to the vibrating string length. It looks like the wooden portion of the bridge to space the a' course has been broken away. >Can you see the bridge itself in the photos, especially the fifth photo? >Looks odd to me. Is there something missing from the nut? It's hard to tell, but it looks like the brass saddle is in place. The only thing that appears to be missing from the bridge is the piece broken from between the strings of the a' course. That said, the bridge looks relatively coarsely shaped and certainly is not fit to the top very well. I can't tell from the photos if the bridge itself had originally been fit badly, if the bridge is a rather coarse replacement, if the bridge had been moved without concern for maintaining the best possible contact with soundboard, or if there is some distortion of bridge and/or soundboard from age (attics, especially those with huge fluctuations of humidity and temperature, tend to not be very friendly places for wooden instruments). The screwed-on wooden tensioner thingy to the cant side of the bridge was pretty common to a few makers in similar style (de Meglio, Ceccherini, etc.). I can't see much of the nut, but it does look to feature the common independent-nut and 0-fret arrangement. >I was asked to tune it but I looked at the neck-pegbox joint (photo 8) and >I suspect the pegbox has broken off some time. I wouldn't have dared >tuning it. Finally, are the plectra typical? It does look like that joint may have been sloppily repaired. If it seems solid, it can probably be safely tuned. You might want to have a luthier give it a quick look to be certain. In any case, I would certainly recommend light strings. I like "Calace" brand carbon steel by the Italian company Dogal; their light ("dolce") set is RW-92b. The two more teardrop-shaped plectra look pretty typical. The squarish one, much less so, but there was and is a huge diversity in plectral preferences. I favor a more "Neapolitan" shape, similar to the teradrop-shaped plectra pictured, especially the pointier one. Best, Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html