MIMF

Started as one of those awful little 19" scale useless guitars and now its an electric mandola. The modifications are only the headstock, the neck width, the nut, and the bridge. About four hours of work and its now fun and a delight to play. Tuning is C/C (split octave .016P/.036W), G/G (split octave .010P/.024W), D/D (unison .016/.016) A/A (unison .009/.009). The pole pieces of the pickups not being aligned to the strings is irrelevant. String output balance is fine.

The neck has been narrowed at the nut by about 1/4" total and I did this on my belt sander with an 80 grit belt - frets and all. I didn't do any fret leveling afterwards. The only fretwork was beveling the fret ends to the fretboard and progressive sanding of the fretboard edge. Playability is excellent with no observable need to do any leveling.

The bridge saddles were replaced by a single saddle made from 1/4 X 3/8 solid brass stock. I drilled and tapped the height adjustment and intonation holes, radiused the top, rough shaped it on my belt sander and then performed the finer detail of the shape and offsets with files. Intonation, even with the split octave strings is very good. Four of the string-through anchors are used and the other four strings use the now available intonation screw holes. It works.

I think the pictures clarify the rest of the processes.

Very cool! i could play that.

The best I can do is noodle around but I've been noodling a lot on this and my octave mando recently. Its such a change from the tonal pallet of a guitar and there are these unanticipated wonderful harmonics that just happen.

Great idea, Mark. I've got one of those little toy Fenders that I rescued from someone's trash. I cleaned it up and it plays OK, but this makes me think about other options for the trashcaster.

Nice, cool project.