My first encounter with mandocellos was when I was in an Irish music duo in Chicago in 1979. My musical partner was a mandolin guy, and he picked up a 1916 Gibson mandocello in excellent playing condition at an instrument swapfest for $600! We both played it on several songs in our act, and it had a great sound, filling in the low end in a really fat way.
Eventually he and I went our separate ways, and naturally he took the mandocello with him.
Flash forward to several decades later. One of the things I did along the way was pick up an acoustic baritone guitar, which I played (and play) a lot.
A few years after that Weber started making mandocellos, and there was a guy here in Anchorage named Joe Heersink dealing them out of his house. He told me he’d sell me a mandocello for cost, so I couldn’t pass that up. (Joe has since passed away, which is the only reason I shared his name. Don’t try to look him up to get as good a deal!)
I got the mandocello and used it for a few years, but what I discovered was that the fifth interval tuning made for a lot of racing around the fretboard. Anything I could play on mandocello I could play three times more easily on baritone guitar with its fourth interval tuning.
So when I wanted to play in a lower register I gradually played the mandocello less and less. Then someone wanted to buy it from me, and off it went to a mandolin orchestra in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
So that’s my experience with the mandocello, for what it’s worth.
Hope that makes sense.
Wade Hampton Miller
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