Fitting a Headway mandolin transducer

This week I completed the installation of the Headway transducer into a Breedlove mandolin. Here’s the pre-amp; you can judge its size compared to the tailpiece. 

 The real tricky part of installing a pick-up like this is that everything is fitted from the inside and it’s virtually impossible to work through such a small sound hole. I find that a piece gardening wire is very helpful for pulling components through.

After, who knows how many frustrating attempts, you can’t belief how satisfying it is to poke a wire through a hole!!

Here you can see how it’s routed through the new bridge.

 And the finished job- who’d know that anything had been done? There’s no doubt that these Headways produce a very good amplified sound and they are my pick-ups of choice.

More mandolin news!

 Here’s a bit of an update on the two mandolins in the last post, now that they have arrived safely in their new homes.

First the videos;

And here are a couple of threads on Mandolin Café

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?90039-Another-Nava-twin-point-more-Cocobolo!

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?89967-New-Nava-with-that-wenge-neck

I thought that you might also like to see these pictures of John’s twin-point, I‘ve just completed the purfling and bindings and it’s looking rather good!

I’ve also been doing this customising job on a Breedlove mandolin; it’s quite a cute little instrument. I’ve re- dressed the frets, Breedlove uses large frets so there’s plenty of room to re-dress them before a re-fret is needed.

 It’s owner wants a Headway under saddle transducer fitted, so I’ve made a bridge similar to the ones that I use on my own mandolins although it has to be a little wider to accommodate a 2.5 mm wire being threaded through it. With bridge in place, I file the bone saddle to get the action and the intonation spot on. I know that there are millions of mandolins out there with that typical staggered wooden bridge, but it’s beyond me how you can get the intonation spot on with one of those. The mandolin is now strung up and I’ll let it settle down for a few days to ensure that the bridge doesn’t move and I’ll fit the pick-up next week……

Two new Nava mandolins

This week has mainly been about getting Sean’s twin-point and James’ Standard Plus completed and ready to ship. And I must admit that I am very pleased with them both.

 So here is Sean’s; I’ll let the photo’s speak for themselves.

And here is the first Standard Plus that goes off to James.

Hope that you like them!