We are all coping in our respective ways. Improbably or not, mine involves putting energy and effort into musical instruments that I mostly haven't in the past, especially--get this--practicing. There's the ongoing battle of wills with the violin, but there's the octave mandolin, and the regular mandolin, and I've even been picking up the guitar a bit more, although it's awkward because it's not tuned in fifths, and one of the reasons I decided to jump on the mandolin as well as the violin is that my left fingers have never liked spanning the long distances of the guitar.
I had an electric guitar for a long time, a lovely Fender Stratocaster that might now be worth more than I paid for it (it had a rosewood fingerboard, now a premium feature due to conservation issues). I never really learned to play it, though. The electric guitar has six strings and the same tuning, but that's about where the similarities end: it's a radically different instrument.
Luckily for me, people have been making electric mandolins for a long time. Not a lot of electric mandolins, mind you. You're not going to just walk into Guitar Center (or anywhere else) and pick one up. There's only ever been a double handful of "mass"-production models, and only about a handful now. The extremely-niche website emando.com can help you find a used one, or a willing/experienced luthier (anyone who's built a solid-body guitar could build you a solid-body mandolin, if they want to, but they have to earn a living and might not want the bother).
I decided to start small, with the only solid-body mandolin kit on the market. I used to fantasize about building an electric guitar from parts, and this seems like a low-friction, low-cost path to the mandolin equivalent. If it sticks, maybe I'll get a nicer one, or just upgrade the kit.
Fender and Gibson both made electric mandolins, and Fender re-issued theirs a while back:
I bet it'll be fun.
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