Once the nut was lowered, I noticed the bridge was still higher than I prefer. If you don’t have files, you may need to improvise something to do this step. Once this was done, the playability was noticeably better. I happen to have some files for lowering string grooves, so it only took a few minutes to get the nut how I liked it. So no unexpected issues and all I needed to do was lower the action down. I laces a strip of leather through the strings and the buzz stopped. There was a slight buzz where the G strings were touching the tailpiece. My pickguard was rattling, until I noticed the screw was loose. For now, I played it as is because I was excited and couldn’t wait! The tuning machines are stiff and not exactly smooth, but they seem to be holding tuning just fine so I am not worried about that. The string height at the nut needed to be lowered. PlayabilityĪfter getting the bridge where I wanted it and all the strings tuned up, I noticed the action was still higher than I like. I expected it to need fretwork, but no problems there either. Sighting down the neck, everything looks nice and straight. The body is nicely bound and I don’t see any signs of weak seems or other potential issues. Looking at the label, China of course! But I bet you guessed that already. Other than that, everything matches up with the description. It is a standard gloss sunburst and doesn’t really look like the images shown. Much better than the photos I had seen online.
Opening the second box resulted in a sigh of relief. With fingers crossed, I opened up the box to find the mandolin in a second triangular box. I had heard some reports of these arriving damaged.