Doing Things Wrong

Audiovox Mandolin (1/5)

This body is maple plywood over a hollow pine core, double-bound. It came out very lightweight, too light to balance even a guitar neck. This was originally going to be the 12-string, but I realized that it would never balance. So I shuffled parts and bodies between some other projects - a planned six-string got canceled and became the twelver. That left this body free. I thought about it a while and decided it would make a good mandolin.

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The mandolin on the right is a 17" scale, with double courses of strings tuned EADG one octave up from a guitar. The bridge is a Bronco modified with threaded brass rod saddles. There is a single pickup in the sound hole. The fretboard is oak. The strings are all from the junk box.

Both of these short necks have fixed steel truss rods, although they probably don't need them. Both are finished in polyurethane, with masonite pickguards.

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Black Polyurethane body. This is during the polishing process, you can see it is not even clean. The front came out like black glass. I smoothed the orange-peel with 1500 grit wet, then 2000 and 3000. Then I switched to the random orbital with a red sponge cutting pad and Turtle Wax rubbing compound that claims to remove 1200 scratches. Shouldn't be any 1200 scratches, since I started with 1500. That came out shiny, but with swirl marks in the light. Then I switched to another red cutting pad with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, and finally a softer yellow pad with the same Meguiar's. At that point, it was pretty much a factory finish. I didn't work as hard on the back, it is nice, but will soon enough encounter a zipper or belt buckle, so the effort would be wasted.

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