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I finally got around to setting up the guitar-body octave I posted a while back. It sounds worthy of a finish. I'm thinking of doing a kind of coffee-burst sort a thing.

It may be a while in coming,

M

Really nice!

Really looking forward to seeing and hearing that one!

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Thumbs up from here!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Let's make it happen!

Nice.

Yep - a burst would suit that very nicely!

Michael
That looks like a guitar body - is it a traditional thing? By the way it is am "octave mando in the black-and-white"

Ed

From what I've read guitar body ovtaves have been around since the mid-20s. And you are absolutely correct, in the black and white...

That is very cool Michael. Did you go by a plan? ...maybe starting with an octave mando plan and "transferring" to guitar shaped body? It kinda looks like an archtop body shape...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

A luthier buddy and I hired a CAD wiz-kid to model a Gibson L-5 for us. Once we had the drawings of the plates it took only a minute to rescale them to what ever size we wanted. All of my instruments are drawn using a 2-D CAD program. With the exception of the L-5 plates, all of my designs are my own.

Obviously a good portion of my work is done on my CNC.

Best, M

We still have the templates from the two guitar-shaped octave mandolins built here back in 2012 or so - the top profiles from the Benedetto planes were reduced via reduction photo-copy to fit a 00-sized body, and a full-sized layout was done to set the neck angle and ensure 'under-the-extension' adjustment of the Martin-sourced 2-way truss rod.

The octave is nice in that it makes a great accompaniment instrument for voice, with the G2-E4 standard tuning having close to guitar range, and the guitar body providing improved sustain and power versus the more traditional body. Always an option to string with octave pairs as Sarah Jarosz and Tim O'Brien have done.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

"Always an option to string with octave pairs as Sarah Jarosz and Tim O'Brien have done."

When I string a guitar bodied instrument in octave pairs I call it a "double strung tenor guitar", but I guess that is just quibbling over semantics.

That is a fine looking octave mandolin. What scale length did you use, Michael?

Thanks

20-3/4"

I did an A-style octave with a 22-3/4" scale which was way too long! My fingers just aren't that long...

This is fantastic.
I've seen Sarah Jarosz plays an octave mandolin similar to this.. (ah looks like someone has already commented)

For those who haven't heard of her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWXAJzZVIik

Mr. Fletcher Brock built Ms. Jarosz's octave mandolin, and we've had one other in the shop - lovely instruments.

Good point on instrument nomenclature. We see both Greek and Irish bouzoukis with guitar-shaped bodies, as well as tenor guitars and guitar-shaped octave mandolins, so I suppose just about any tetrachord could be re-purposed with a string gauge change, retuning and some adjustment of the side or fretboard position markers. Some would argue that our recent oud conversion is simply a short-scaled 7 string, very narrow-necked guitar, but I think the owner might disagree.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

"We see both Greek and Irish bouzoukis with guitar-shaped bodies, as well as tenor guitars and guitar-shaped octave mandolins."

I differentiated between the Greek and Irish bouzouki by their body shape. Since they are "breeding" with their Spanish cousins and losing their ethnic purity I suppose I will have to use some other criteria. At one point in time a flat backed mandolin would have been more easily recognised as a cittern, and then of course there is the lute guitar, so I suppose organological nomenclature has always been on a slippery slope.