Identifying a Mandolin?

[Murkar]

Thats bizarre Frank, no idea what to say about that! Maybe I'll send the tech support an e-mail and ask...

Is there anyone else who can't see the pictures?

 

[Jusamies]

I see the pics just fine. Chrome and phone browser.

Might snap some photos of the mandolin in a while.

 

[FingerMullet]

Thanks! Those last photos you posted, I can see just fine. And I've tried viewing your thread on Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, with no luck on seeing the photos in your first post.


Frank

I didn't see them either, only after he posted thee new ones.

 

[nuance97]

Pics do come up for me on Firefox, but it takes for ever. Sometimes I have to reload the page once or twice to get them to all come up...

 

[Jusamies]

Edit: I hope cameraphone pictures will do.

I don't wanna derail the thread by putting too many of my own pictures here, so here's a link to the Imageshack album I made for this.

It's a Landola. According to the ones I got it from it's from the 70's. It used to belong to their grandfather who learned to play during the Winter war. I believe the top is spruce, as you guessed. The bridge had moved an awful lot and the intonation thus was horrific. The tuners were über-stiff so I lubricated them and now only one of them is. It's nothing special, but works fine for me! All I can play for now is "The Battle of Evermore". I don't have anything resembling proper recording equipment, so you'll be spared from my playing.

 

[pinefd]

Wow, ok, for the first time, the pics have all just loaded for me. Took a while, but they're finally visible. If you did anything to fix it, thanks! Cool project, BTW.


Frank

 

[Murkar]

Hey Frank - truly weird. I haven't changed anything so not sure what that's about. It may just be that they take forever to load? But I'm glad you're able to see them now

lol J that mandolin is awesome I can hardly play a thing on this one either lol...it's a different beast than the guitar but I plan to learn a few songs once this is finished to do a sound test before I send it back to the owner

 

[Spotcheck Billy]

Cheers Billy - ultimately I'm sure it can be fixed! No matter how bad something looks there's pretty much always a way to repair damage. With this mandolin I will probably never be able to hide the top cracks, but they're stabilzied so they won't spread.

If this one didn't have sentimental value for the owner, though, I would have replaced the whole top. A new spruce top is not a huge job - if your guitar soundbaord has huge cracks (as large as these), that's one option probably if the soundboard can't be fixed. It's invasive but I'd much rather that than having a vintage Gibson LG-0 that can't be played! You could remove the original bridge, pickguard, and braces and put them on the new soundboard

I will seriously consider wood replacement. This particular guitar is a low-end student model so I don't think I'll will be altering history too much. It is just an old guitar that happened to be made by Gibson. I guess I could try the repair first and resort to wood replacement if that fails...or just cut to the chase and bypass the chance that the repair would fail and avoid the wasted effort. Decisions, decisions.

 

[Jusamies]

...I plan to learn a few songs once this is finished to do a sound test before I send it back to the owner

You do realise what this means? Sound clips/video once finished, k?

 

[Murkar]

This thing is almost done

Found an example of the soundhole stamp online. I am assuming this thing is a Regal mandolin - could be a Kleartone, but I couldnt' find any info on the Kleartone soundhole stamp (if there was one).

This will not be perfect - but I'm not aiming for perfection, this thing was ready for the bin when I got a hold of it. I found the Regal crown logo online and drew up a soundhole stamp in Photoshop to match the one I found online.

Tea, anyone?

After drying, the soundhole stamp is perfectly relic'd

Glued in, it looks even better

I also finally got a replacement tailpiece (from StewMac) which would be close to the original.