Nevin Fahs's Mandocello: Joe Brent's Mandolin Reviews

The back is padauk and maple, glued up as a slab and then carved to final shape. I was trying to evoke the look of a bowlback, but also let it be its own beautiful thing as well. The top is Sitka spruce frrom my supplier in Alaska, who harvests reclaimed logs that have been buried or fallen long ago, he lets them air dry for years and then he selects and saws only the parts best suited to musical instruments. The purfling is purpleheart and maple, that I made up in my shop in a 3 step process. I glue up a stack of alternating woods, then rip strips out of the dried stack. those strips are then cut into short pieces that are arranged and glued side by side onto another strip of scrap wood. When that’s dry, I rip off 1/8” wide strips of the finished purfling. I’m eventually going to document that process with pictures. It’s more time consuming than ordering purfling from a catalog, but I feel it’s a more personal and unique result this way. The neck and scroll are mahogany and padauk, the fingerboard is padauk, which I slotted in a 26 3/8 scale using a 5 string banjo scale template. Making it as long as is comfortable (and I know it is probably close to max in that regard for a mandolin player!) allows a slightly slacker string tension to tune to pitch, which results in more resonance in the top. I wrote on my blog a bit about the inspiration, namely having seen a Larson Bros in similar shape and with a similar top, and realizing the advantages of that time proven folded top design. I’ve since made an OM of similar design, and with similar results, and am finishing up a mandolin as well, that shows promise in the way it sounds when tapped.

— Joseph Brent