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#1
04-05-2018, 05:14 PM
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Octave tuning on a madola and mandolin
I got a mandolin back from a friend of mine. It was a not-very-good one I'd built some years back, and when I decided to change the strings, I did what I did with a mandola I also had: The G and D strings, instead of being tuned in unison, are strung so that the strings in each course are an octave apart, like they would be in the lower strings of a 12-string guitar. I used a .014 for the higher G and a .00095 for the higher D.
It certainly gave the mandolin a different sound without seriously affecting its playability. The bass response did suffer, understandably, but now it has some of the resonance of a 12-string. I thought the experiment was well worth doing, for those who are looking for a distinctive sound, and I thought I'd pass it on to you all.
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Yamaha FG-411-12 String Oscar Teller 7119 classical (built in 1967) and a bunch of guitars and mandolins I've made ... OM, OO, acoustic bass, cittern, octave mandolin, mandola, etc. ... some of which I've kept. 
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#3
04-06-2018, 12:19 PM
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Many of the old jug band/blues players used this tuning and I decided to give it a try on one of my mandolins about a decade ago. I have since sold the mandolin, but it was a useful tool for the jug band I play in. I would not use this for bluegrass or Irish trad mandolin however.
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