NUD delayed, mahogany mandolele.

Some of you may have seen my Marketplace listing of a my custom mahogany mandolele made by Bruce Wei Arts in Vietnam. After weeks of no success listing there and a couple of other classifieds, I decided to spruce it up and keep it. Since I never posted an NUD thread when it arrived a couple months ago, I figured I would do that now. The original photos are below.

Here it is with the gold parts I added; tailpiece, tuners, strap buttons and Ko'olau Gold strings, which are more yellow than gold. I may not keep them because even with a compensated saddle, the balance and intonation are a little off, and the high A string is quieter than the rest. It's solid wood all the way around so it still needs to open up. I'll save a sound sample for another time. It was made to fit a pickup under the saddle, but for now I'm not going to install one or preamp like I've done on most of my other ukes.



Original configuration:

I have to say the gold does give it a "classier" look. Nice job with the additions

Looks much better Mike

Thanks guys. I went this way sort of as an opposite of the glossy black mandolele that I had Bruce make when I realized that's the way I should have had the mahogany made, but it was done and shipped by the time I made the decision. So now I have fraternal twin mandoleles (I'm actually an identical twin).

That's a beautiful instrument. So, mandolele, standard uke tuning? I play mando and uke, just curious.

Yep, ukulele high G re-entrant tuning. When I start getting proficient at finger picking and lead playing, I'll make one of my ukes low G.