a fine addition to the family.

On Friday I picked up the mandolin from Gryphon Strings, and wow, it's a peach of an instrument. They did a bunch of stuff that good luthiers can do:

• Add buttons for a shoulder strap.
• Lower the string height ("action"), at both the nut and the bridge.
• File down the edges of the frets so they're smooth with the side of the neck/fingerboard.
• Fix the intonation--essentially the ability to play in tune along the entire length of the string--by not only moving the bridge (and marking its place so I can put it back myself), but also by doing some fancy filing of the saddle grooves in the bridge.
• (In a regular mandolin, this function is handled by a "compensated" saddle, like the zig-zag below.)

Instead of a mandolin's standard G-D-A-E tuning, I have it in G-D-A-D, a common tuning for both the octave mandolin and its longer sibling, the Irish bouzouki. I'm finding it's more fun to play that way, and enables the kind of sound and feel that drew me in the first place to this family of "paired strings, but neither a regular mandolin nor a 12-string guitar" instruments.

When I emailed the maker (Stan Pope) to tell him it had made its way to me, and to ask about some pricing not on his website, he wrote back:

Chris - That is a "blast from the past" 

The main changes I have made, are Truss rods in all steel string
instruments, Cross Bracing top and back, brass tailpiece that accepts
ball end strings.

My assessment of my mandolin, which the Gryphon guys agreed with, was that it was an early piece by someone who could go on to do truly great things. Evidently Stan thinks so too.

(In addition to design and mechanics, he's clearly put in the time mastering ornamentation and wood finish.)

Particularly in the harmonic-rich G-D-A-D tuning, it just...sings. Like it wants to help you make music, even if you don't know how. Pretty much the opposite of a good violin, which will help you make music, but only if you know how to play, and it can't be bothered with you otherwise.

Stan's instruments appear to be wildly under-priced. We'll see how much I play the one I have, whether it makes any sense to have him build me one, and if that happens before he retires. Those are problems for another day. Just now, I have to go practice.