A collection of information on the subject of mandolin making that I have gleaned from the web, been told by people or found out on my own.

Tone

Gilchrist mandolin tone
Gilchrist builds different styles of mandolins depending on the woods he uses. This is what he said himself
"at one extreme is Red Spruce and Rock Maple, at the other extreme is Engelmann Spruce or European Spruce and a soft Maple such as European Maple. Red Spruce and Rock Maple makes a bright clear sounding mandolin with a very strong attack, characteristics the bluegrass players like.
Engelmann and a Soft Maple have a mellow, bassier sound that the classical players prefer (Gilchrist C style). Gilchrist also changes the resonant frequency of the soundbox to make a warmer or a brighter sounding instrument. Reducing the resonant frequency either by increasing the volume or reducing the surface area of the soundholes will produce a warmer tonal quality.

Ray Dearstone tunes the front plate 1 full tone lower than the back. He normally tunes the front to C and the back to D. When using harder wood he has used C# fro the front and D# for the back. This interval produces uniformaly good instruments.

Higher arching produces a brighter sound. My first F5 copy has its arching 2mm higher than normal (16mm from memory) this instrument is quite bright.


  • bending the ribs.
  • Thicknessing the sides some pictures of my new method (well new to me) for simplifying this task
  • The contour method of arching measurement This is the way I was taught to do the arching on a violin and the method is just as applicable to the mandolin.
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