Mandolinists always need more volume. Our instrument is not a loud one, and trying to keep up with banjos, fiddles, and guitars can be like tapdancing in a buffalo stampede. The tone-gard is a simple aftermarket way of increasing your volume. It clips onto the back of the instrument, pushing it away from the body and allowing the back of the instrument to vibrate freely. David Grisman, Ricky Skaggs, and Roland White are using them, which is as good a recommendation as any.

Many old mandolins, especially my old Gibson A-50, put as much sound out of the back of the instrument as they do the top. When recording my Gibson ‘A’, I sometimes have the engineer put a microphone behind the instrument as well as in front of it. My F-2 behaves similarly — it’s noticeably louder and fuller sounding if I let the sound come out of the back as well as the top of the instrument.

With that in mind, I’ve ordered a tone-gard for my F-2 from Tony Pires, and should have it in a few days. If it works well, I’ll likely use it when we record our next record. We prefer to track almost all the instrumental tracks live, and I’d much prefer to use my sweet-sounding F-2 rather than anything else.

I’m testing out some new mandolin strings made by a Canadian company called Fire Wire. I strung up my resonator mandolin with them for a two-set show tonight.

The wound strings are a little darker than the nickel strings I’m presently using. The gauges run from .010 to .036. I sometimes like to use a slightly gauges on the wound strings (.026 and .038), but that’s not that big a deal.

The strings settled in very quickly. Like DR’s, the Fire Wire strings are ‘pre-stretched’, so they stay in tune well right out of the package. They have a reputation for long life, though I won’t be able to verify that immediately, obviously.

So far, I’ve had none of the freaky problems I was having with Ernie Ball strings.

I still haven’t done anything to replace the tailpiece on my mandolin. My initial impression of it is that it was designed by sadists. After using the mando for the better part of eight months, and restringing it many times, I’ve found nothing to contradict that. It’s a brutal design. See my earlier post for more info. I’ve been using a cheap paperclip to hold the loop end on while I bring the string to tension, and that’s helped somewhat. I think the ideal solution is to buy a large quantity of cheap rubber washers with a very small inner hole and slide those over each of the pegs.

More mandoblog posts:
The Mandoblog

At the moment, it’s 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity in Chicago. Nevertheless, fall is coming, and when the heat comes on, it’s time to humidify your instruments.

Geoff Benge is our favorite repair person in Chicago, and he’s written this handy, two paragraph guide to humidifying your instrument:

Humidifying

More goodness from Frank Ford’s Frets.com site. He shows two ways that a person can make a loop-end string in a pinch. The gizmo at right is a simple winder one can use to fashion custom strings from any gauge of wire. One could purchase a 200 foot spool of music wire for around 15 bucks and make nearly 100 strings from it.

He also demonstrates how one can safely remove the ball from a ball-end string, leaving only the loop.

In desperate times, we’ve done the opposite — used loop-end banjo or mandolin strings on the guitar. You can loop them around the bridge pin and use them just like a conventional string. Once the pin is in, it’s hard to tell the difference.

Previous posts:
Secret serial numbers on vintage Gibson mandolins

I stumbled across this very interesting article from Frank Ford today. He describes a process he uses to recover a serial number from an old Gibson F-4 mandolin that has faded away. This is a fairly common occurrence. The factory order number on my F-2 is visible, but the serial number has long since disappeared.

I’m not sure I’m gung-ho to go through this process, but it is an interesting bit of sleuthing with some cool mando porn.

Courtesy of Frets.com

I wrote earlier about how impressed I was with Keith Cary’s Commodium, a resonator mandolin made from a stainless steel bedpan and other recycled materials. I’ve put in an order to buy one. As one might expect, Keith has a backlog of requests for his instruments. At present, I’m fifth in line for the commode, as it were.

The instrument will likely use the neck profile from my old F-2, as that’s my favorite mandolin neck. The scale length will be slightly longer, closer to my A50. I look forward to playing it.

For more information on Keith and his instruments, visit his web site.

Here’s a fun way to practice and learn some new tunes, courtesy of the BBC:

The Virtual Session

It’s a flash-based learning tool, with musical accompaniment from some top-notch players. Choose a set of jigs, reels, or hornpipes. The music will start, accompanied by a transcription of the tune. When the tune changes, the music changes. Nicely done.

The tunes include such old standbys as:

• The Teetotaler’s Reel
• The Salmanaca
• St. Anne’s Reel
• The Rakes of Mallow
• Soldier’s Joy

Sound on Sound magazine has an excellent article on live sound, which includes some good illustrations of different monitor placements for different types of microphones.

This information is especially important for acoustic bands, as they are likely to have a large number of highly sensitive microphones onstage, and may have a mix of cardioid, hypercardioid, and supercardioid mics in their setup:

Monitors should always be placed as close as possible to facing the ‘dead zone’ of the mic, which in the case of a normal cardioid mic means the foldback speaker should be aimed directly at the back of it. Note, however, that hypercardioid mics have their least sensitive zones around 30 degrees away from their rear-facing axis, and so the foldback speakers should be positioned accordingly.

Read the full article at SoundOnSound.com.

Previous live sound articles:
Handy article on speaker placement
Know Your Mic, Part III
Know your mic, part II
Know your mic, part I
Plugging in