|
Noel's archtop mandolin. Noel plays Irish music often in noisy venues and many years ago I made him a flat top mandolin in walnut. The flat top instrument is more commonly used in these situations as it tends to have more 'bark' and projection than the archtop version. Improvements in amplification have meant that the smoother tone of the archtop can now compete so Noel asked me to build him a special archtop. The back and sides are birdseye maple as is the neck (with a rosewood lamination). Top is sitka. Noel does not like metal parts, where possible, so he wanted a rosewood tail to match the scratchplate and the headstock veneer. To further deepen the tone he wanted the body to be extra deep (60mm /2.4")which lowered the resonant frequency of the instrument. To give maximum flexibility for amplification I fitted a Highlander into the bridge (and the Highlander preamp floating from the endpin so that it did not affect the acoustic performance) and got a magnetic pickup made to fit on the end of the fingerboard. Holly at Highlander supplied me with a specially modified outlet that can send out both signals to a mixing desk if a stereo jack and split lead is used or, by default, the Highlander signal only with a mono jack. The Highlander preamp needs a battery and so I modified the tail block to fit a PP3 type so as to not impact on the acoustic sound. The battery cover is birdseye maple and sunbursted to match the back. In the end this manolin does everything Noel and I wanted and looks so good that it warrants three pictures!
For more about the archtop mandolins go to the Mandolin Page There is not much difference in the work time, materials or methods involved in the making of an archtop mandolin and making an archtop jazz guitar. For this reason handmade archtop mandos tend to be quite expensive relative to size. |
