Cohiba Mandolin

Nice, does the cat play?

Sophie can't play but she L-O-V-E-S guitar strings. Thanks all for your kind comments. I will post a video of this on youtube hopefully tomorrow. I need to do the same for the 3 string guitar that I posted about earlier.  The mandolin is much brighter and clearer than the 3 string guitar. Its almost as loud as my Rogue mandolin.  So I'm pretty happy with the results.  The tail piece is a brass hinge and it is severely deformed due to string pressure (and its only 2 days old!).  I will change that out for a steel one probably this weekend.  For the record: No Cohiba cigars were harmed in the construction of this mandolin.

I used my cell phone to record this so of course it over modulated a bit.  I'm a rookie at the recording thing but here's my attempt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7uegu7wEs

I had to change out the brass tail piece. The string pressure was ripping it apart.  I changed it for a steel one and shot monel rivets through it to use the rivet bucktails as string retainers.  It's stable and stays in tune better.

Thanks Pete.  With the first tail piece, I had looped the sting ends through the loop at the end of the mandolin strings.  This, coupled with the brass bridge, caused major tuning problems.  The new tailpiece, which is much more solid, seems to have solved the tuning issues. It really is fun to play but the sharp squared corners of the box will dig into your forearm a bit.  I've got another Cohiba box with rounded corners that will someday become a much more comfortable mandolin to play.

Matt