Mandolin Surgery, Samhain 2017

This history was written to accompany the instrument when it was donated for the youths prize table at an event the following week.

I got this mandolin in around 1990 from Cedric's wife Lara and played it a great deal. I'm not that great, but it was always fun to pick out some trad tunes on something so small. It says 'Phantom' on the headstock. Sometime when Seanit was really young (early 2000s) she stepped on it and the neck separated from the body. After talking to Aonghus about what to do, I decided to remove the neck entirely, sand lightly and woodglue it back together. I couldn't find a proper 'strap clamp' at Ace hardware so I'm using my canoe strap. The metal clamp is only very lightly tightened to keep the high part of the fretboard pressed against the body.

The old mandolin in one piece again

The glue work seems to be holding! I got a new bridge on ebay and a set of D'Addario J74 bronze wound strings and tuned it up. Wierd that I had to move the bridge so far to get the intonation right, you can see where the old bridge used to be. I wonder if I ever even checked the intonation back then ;) It's a POS, but it's back in service and it cost something like $28 (for wood glue, strings and a new bridge).

Replacing old tuning knobs

Its been quite a while since I've played this instrument. A couple of the tuning knobs had broken such that the plastic knob would just spin on the tuning rod - I used a pliers to tune it for a while and then gave up on it. After playing a friend's mandolin recently I decided to get this one working again. I ordered a set of Grover Mandolin tuners from Amazon (only $30!) and set to replace the old crappy ones.

One side done

The Grover Tuning Knobs fit perfectly in place of the old set, and they came with new metal bushings which look so much better than the old plastic ones. It seems these tuning knobs are fairly standard things (23 mm on center apart)

Back in service (again)

The new tuning knobs look great, and I strung it with D'Addario EJ74 Phosphor Bronze, Medium, 11s. The strings sound great - but believe it or not one of the G strings broke right at the loop! I've never had the heavy strings break. I think there may have been some kind of manufacturing defect - I'm going to write to D'Addario and see what they say, but for $6 there's not much to complain about. I had gotten two sets so I was able to get going by stealing one from the other pack.

New banjo bridge

The actual mandolin bridge I bought was horrible - the action was way too high and there really wasn't any way to salvage it. I decided a banjo bridge (which is lower) might work. I had to sand it down to create a curve (banjos are flat!) to fit on the arched mandolin but the D string doesn't buzz anymore even if the action is still a tad too high.

• Phantom Guitars was a brand name owned by Island Musical Supplies (Staten Island, New York) in the 1980s. Phantom instruments were made in Korea and included a complete range of electric, acoustic and bass guitars as well as mandolins and banjos.
• Source: Phantom Guitars catalogs (1985 - 1987)
• Island Musical Supply 399 Lake Avenue Staten Island, NY 10303