The Bloodhound was specifically designed for Jazz music. Here's a demo video Adam made recently
Showing posts with label mando mo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mando mo. Show all posts
What's New?
One of my favorite topics is the subject of musical instruments. As some of you know, my father is a luthier. He has built over a dozen cellos, four violins and several violas. I am not a luthier, but I have spent many a happy hour in his shop watching him work. I attended the Violin School at UNH in 2000 and learned how bows are rehaired and repaired. I have been to just about every violin shop in the United States and Quebec, Canada selling horse tail hair. If you'd like to learn more about that experience, I wrote a blog post about it. You can use the search feature on the sidebar to locate it. If I remember, I might link to it here. In addition to violin shops, I've been to every shop that sells mandolins and know many of the mandolin makers by name. There's nothing I like better than sitting down in a mandolin or violin shop with a newly constructed instrument and chatting with the maker about it. I will be making my annual "pilgrimage" to see some customers in the spring. I'll head up north first to Vermont, Montreal, Maine, then down to the Boston area (there aren't many violin shops and no mandolin shops in New Hampshire - go figure). From there, I'll head south through CT to New York. Lots to see in the Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley area. I'll do the Island first, then head into the city. New Jersey, then south to Maryland with shops in Baltimore, Virginia. Lots of Bluegrass in that area! I'll catch PA and northern NY on my return trip. Next it's Tennessee with a few days stop in Nashville of course. If you've got a shop in the North East and would like to see any of the products listed on my Shop page, please let me know and I'll make an effort to swing by.
Mando Mo Strings
A few years ago, one of my students, a gentleman named Al*, mentioned to me that he had been making mandolins. One thing led to another, and soon I found myself checking out all of the instruments he made. There's the Bull Dog, a gorgeous F5 style "bluegrass" mandolin with a traditional Tobacco finish (here's a video), the Tortoise, another F5 style mandolin with beautiful tortoise-shell binding (video), the Terrier, a beautiful natural-finish F5 mandolin and one of my personal favorites (video) and the Red Fox, a lovely Celtic-style mandolin in mahogany and spruce (video). There's also the Doberman, an A-style Bluegrass mando (video), the Golden Eagle and the Blood Hound (video). He also makes a couple different flat-back teardrop Celtic mandolins he calls "the Pup" (video), a couple ukes and a couple guitars. He asked me and I agreed to help him get these instruments to market. I set up a website for him and a Facebook page and made the videos you see above. In return for my efforts, he has made me the exclusive dealer of his products! I am honored, to say the least. I will list everything he has for sale with full descriptions, pictures and pricing on my Shop page, so you can check out the line there. PLEASE NOTE: the prices mentioned in the videos are subject to change and do not include shipping, handling, setup or taxes.
Bow Hair
In the meantime, I just received a new batch of fresh triple-drawn visually sorted unbleached white horse tail hair. It goes by the 1/2 kilo (1.1 pound) and costs $330 a bundle plus shipping and tax. I take PayPal or cash in person at my house in Granby. You can contact me to let me know how much you want to order. Each bundle is about 32" in length. I also have black and coarse. Please ask.
*Here's a video I made when Al came by to visit me in the summer of '18
*Here's a video I made when Al came by to visit me in the summer of '18
Resonance Requires Air-Dried Tonewood
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| The Terrier by Mando Mo air-dried 3-5 years |
“You look for woods that have a good tap tone to them, that resonate when you tap them,” says Bob Cefalu, owner of RC Tonewoods & Sons in Kenmore, N.Y. “Most of the rosewoods fall into that category. I don’t know if there is really such a thing as a bad tonewood, because probably 90 percent of the sound comes from the top or the soundboard. A good, stiff soundboard in Sitka [spruce], Engelman [spruce], or any of the European spruces; they all make good soundboards.”
Mandolin tops are selected from billets, which are cut into book-matched boards about 3/8" thick in the rough. In final form, they are sanded down to widths as small as 1/10" (.12"). Some believe a flexibility test will help determine if a set will make a good top as a tonewood.
“You’re looking for sound transmission, so you’re looking for lightweight wood, which is crispy,” says Marc Culbertson, who runs the musical instrument operation at Gilmer Wood Co. in Portland, Ore. “If it is lightweight, you will have more amplitude of sound, more energy to carry through. Heavy wood dampens the tone. The crispy thing is about the quality of the tone. If you have a piece of wood that is fuzzy like leather in your hand, then that’s the quality of tone you are going to get. It’s going to sound airy and fuzzy. If you want your tone to be crispy, have some detail to it, then you’re looking for that in the wood.”
“There are certain woods that have proven over the centuries that they make good tonewoods,” says Shiraz Balolia, an avid guitar maker and founder and president of Grizzly Industrial of Bellingham, Wash. “Spruce is one, cedar is another; they’re both very good examples. One of the things that I look for is if I get a stack of Sitka spruce for example, I’ll pick each board up — they’re usually cut to 1/4" size and are bookmatched —and I’ll give it a tap tone. I can feel what will have a really good sound once it is built.”
Tonewoods
As critical as the top is to the mandolin's sound, the choice for the back and sides doesn’t have to be as highly selective.
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| The Tortoise by Mando Mo air-dried maple back and sides 3-5 years |
Some makers are using mixed species of hardwoods for the backs and sides, essentially for aesthetics.
“I like quilted maple because of the figure, but it is not the best tonewood; it’s a good tonewood, but it’s not the best,” Balolia says. “So I try and complement that with something like koa or something else. I built a two-tone guitar with koa sides and a curly maple bottom, and then the Sitka spruce top. It turned out really nice, the tone was spectacular. For me, it was an experiment, and you don’t know until it is done. And that’s when it is too late if it has a bad sound.”
The drying process for tonewoods is also an important element of how a top will eventually sound. The average air-drying time for the best tonewoods is around three years, with some drying times as much as five years.
“We deal with a company in the Alps which has been doing tonewoods for eight generations,” says Rick Hearne, owner of Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford, Pa., who uses European red spruce for acoustic guitar tops and European maple for classical instruments. “A quality of the tone of those [classical] woods comes from sunning the maple. They actually have racks all over their property where they take the rived matched billets of maple and they’re getting sunned. They air-dry them for about three years.
“Everybody is in the game of selling tonewoods; it’s big business,” Talcove says. “For me, if I can pick the wood, I’ll buy top wood and I have it here. To my knowledge, here in Southern California, I’m the only place you can actually walk in and buy tonewoods. Most of the people who are manufacturers like Taylor, Martin and people of that caliber, they go direct to the source.”
The price of a book-matched mandolin top varies greatly. Although most are Sitka spruce or some other spruce, they start at about $40 a set and run much higher. Sides and backs are priced on an individual basis. The type of species and amount of figure will greatly influence the cost.
Here are some Tonewood companies that carry 3-5 year air-dried materials:
"The Pup" by Mando Mo Strings
The Pup deluxe - travel mandolin by Mando Mo Strings
$425.00 instrument $475.00 w/hard shell case $500.00 w/shipping
I take PayPal. Simply send the amount to sweetmusic@protonmail.com make sure your SHIPPING address is included (not your billing address) so I send it to the right place. I ship via FedEx Ground. You can also pick one up at my studio in Granby, MA. Use the Contact form on the sidebar to let me know what you'd like to do.
The Pup has a big, brassy sound for a puppy-sized instrument. Slightly smaller body makes this infinitely portable, standard-length neck and fretboard with wide and extra-wide widths mean the Pup is infinitely playable by any size hand (from children up to adults with big hands).
Adam plays one in Mandolin New England. Check the events schedule to see when he's playing next so you can try it out!
The Pup Deluxe comes with:
Adam plays one in Mandolin New England. Check the events schedule to see when he's playing next so you can try it out!
The Pup Deluxe comes with:
- Neck Material: Maple
- Fingerboard: Ebony
- Hardware Color: Silver
- Nut: Bone 1 1/8" (Standard Neck)
- Bridge: Mando Mo Style Ebony with Bone Saddle
- Scale Length:13 7/8"
- Body Style: Tear Drop
- Body Dimensions: 23 7/8" x 9.5" x 1 15/16"
- Body Top: Solid Sitka Spruce 1A (Air Dried 3-5 Years)
- Body Back/Sides: Solid Flamed Maple 1A (Air Dried 3-5 Years)
- Truss Rod: Single Acting
- Binding: Back and Fingerboard, White
- Binding: Top, White w/Black Stripes
- Sound Hole: Oval
- Logo: Abalone Headstock Mando Mo Bulldog
- Inlay: Abalone Dots
- Rosette: Abalone
- Side Dot Color: Black
- Body Finish: Natural Satin or Gloss Nitro
Here's a video of Adam Sweet introducing The Pup:
And another:
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