This is a prototype we built for a local musician, Tony O'Neill.
His current mando is a Gilchrist and he didn't want to take it on a tour of Europe once he found out how much the insurance was going to be.
So he asked us to build him a mando that looked like an archtop jazz guitar but with F-holes similar to a Rickenbacher.He's not strictly a bluegrass player but also plays some Celtic music so he was after an instrument with plenty of sustain, particularly in the lower strings.
It was delivered today and he was very happy with his first impressions of it.
He's got three gigs on over the weekend so I'll get some feedback early next week.
In a couple of months we'll try and take some of the better aspects of this one and refine them.
It sounds surprisingly like an F-model mando. Most of the measurements were taken from my Ray Black mando (Ray is based here in Geelong) which is an F.
It's a Sitka top, Blackwood back and sides, Mahogany neck, Cumberland Acoustics Bridge and a Randy Allen tailpiece with a K & K pickup installed.
Thanks for looking
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