Grateful Dead Music Forum

Here's a Tiger inspired electric mandolin I recently built. I put three Dimarzio Super Distortion S pickups in it, with coil tap switches. UGB and OBEL installed. Master volume and two tone pots.

Wow that is awesome.

VERY impressive! Beautiful- but how does it sound? I'm into building dulcimers, and I've seen guys try to build them using the techniques of Martin guitar building. The consensus is that a dulcimer built like a guitar is not necessarily a good thing.

So why didn't you go for the full 8 strings?

Thanks guys. An important question...how does it sound? I decided to go with three pickups and Rosebud style wiring to test some tonal possibilities with an electric mandolin. I thought three pickups may be overkill, but I'm real happy with the results.

On the 4 vs 8 string, I decided to go with 4 strings to get a more deliberate sound with each note. I'd like to do a 5, 8, and 10 string down the line...

Here's a video. I was using mostly the middle or neck pickup. I couldn't resist using some effects at times. At 3:40 you can hear the middle pickup with the coil tapped.

EDIT: I can't figure out how to embed a video! What's the secret? I put the URL between the youtube brackets...
Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUKEO0H3rM4

Cool idea and beautiful outcome. Congrats!

I'd say: success! Sounds as cool as it looks. A mando with a ton of tonal options. Well done.

So I'm imagining the guys handing that to Jerry when he came out of his coma- just to f^ck with his head a bit...

That is a beauty! Sounds great too!

For the vid, you only need the portion of the URL after the = sign. You use the youtube brackets. Not the URL brackets.

Thanks for the youtube posting info Jim.

Does Hornsby know about this?

Sooo..... here we go- solid? Chambered? Hollow?

I can't play a thing on a mando & I want one.

Beautiful!

Beautiful work. So many talented folks building ambitiously out of love and these days. Are those actually coil-splitters?! I dunno nothing about electrical mandolin pup's...
is it common to use either/both single coil and humbuckers or are humbuckers usually chosen? Even a Wald buffer, the Real McCoy as prohibition era bootleggers would say.

TI4-1009 wrote:I'd say: success! Sounds as cool as it looks. A mando with a ton of tonal options. Well done.

So I'm imagining the guys handing that to Jerry when he came out of his coma- just to f^ck with his head a bit...

TI4-1009 wrote:Does Hornsby know about this?

Sooo..... here we go- solid? Chambered? Hollow?

Here's the template...Oh yeah, chambered all the way!

tatittle wrote:Beautiful work. So many talented folks building ambitiously out of love and these days. Are those actually coil-splitters?! I dunno nothing about electrical mandolin pup's...
is it common to use either/both single coil and humbuckers or are humbuckers usually chosen? Even a Wald buffer, the Real McCoy as prohibition era bootleggers would say.

There aren't too many options out there for mandolin specific pickups. I've found a couple but I was kind of drawn to the Super Distortion S for this build. These pickups were designed for guitar. Dimarzio makes several humbucker pickups made to fit in a single coil space, and that's what I used here. I installed coil split switches so you can get single coil sounds. What sounds best is subjective but I'm liking the split middle or humbucking neck sounds the best (which are favorites settings on guitar as well). The buffer definitely gives it that distinctive clarity. This was also somewhat of an experiment to see how these wood choices, pickups and placement, buffer, etc would play in to the tone of a mandolin. I learned a lot on this build about these interactions.

Do you still build these?