From the Mind of MandoRon

As I mentioned Sunday, I broke not one, but three strings during church.  When you’re playing a 4-string electric mandolin, it’s not a good thing.

I did break a string back in December, but the magnitude of this is really unprecedented.  I’ve got to figure out how to prevent it because I’m playing the emando again next Sunday.  As you can imagine, I’m more than a little concerned.  A little root cause analysis is in order.

Here are the knowns:

• Broke three strings - D, A, and E - in that order, interestingly… (Wound D-string is pictured above.)
• I’ve got a telecaster-style bridge.  All strings broke in about the same spot, near the saddles.
• The strings were about 6 weeks old, and had been used quite a bit.
• I switched to a slightly beefier pick (Fender California Clear, medium) this summer.
• I’m fairly certain that I had light gauge strings on there.  I buy them from emando.com.
• I played two other Sundays in August with the same strings/pick combination.  In fact, they were literally the same strings…

Potential corrective actions:

• Change the strings more often…
• Check for damage to the saddles that could be causing wear on the strings.
• Switch to normal gauge strings, and keep using the same picks.
• Switch to a lighter pick and accept the increased wear and tear on the picks.  Either go back to the Fender 351, medium, which wear very quickly or maybe switch to a California Clear, light.
• Buy another electric mandolin to have as a backup.

Conclusions:

I really need a another electric mandolin.  I’ve been wanting a 5-string.  But that’s not in the budget right now…

The strings were probably getting pretty old and corroded (I have very corrosive oil/sweat).  But the combination of beefier pick, light gauge strings, and old strings is probably what did me in.

I think I’m going to go buy some thin California Clears this week, just in case.  The material seems to wear better than the standard Fender picks or the Dunlop tortex picks.

[Edit: After pondering this a bit more, I figure that I should also talk to my string supplier, Martin Stillion of emando.com, and get his advice.]

Any other ideas?

This should allow me to learn to play again, and learn to play so free.  And when you hear the mando sing, the book of love will open up and let us in…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 5:50 am and is filed under Mandolin, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.