PB+J wrote:
Twice the opportunity to be out of tune!
Seems like a cool experiment. I was going to say the same thing--neck angle is all wrong, bracing pattern is unlikely to be the same, what about a soundpost, but it looks like your mandolin was braced more like a violin from the start.
One thing I learned recently is that neck angles have changed considerably since the 18th century. Baroque era violins had nearly straight necks & wedge shaped fingerboards; newer violins have rather angled necks and flatter fingerboards.
A recent Ebay find, interestingly enough, is a home made violin from the 1960s with an almost horizontal neck and wedge shaped fingerboard!
As far as bracing goes, violins aren't braced at all! They have a bass bar, but no cross bracing. I have heard of violins braced like this, though.
As for sound post, it's just a matter of either trial & error or sorting out a way to measure the post height. Then, once put together, insert the post!
Katharine wrote:
Is the point of it just to get a violin with double strings? Or a violin with frets? Is there something about it that would be different from the sound of a violin if bowed or a mandolin if plucked?
Also, is my hearing off? On
one of his videos someone asks in the comments how it is tuned, and the reply is that it is just double-strung and not octave-strung, but I hear octaves that don't appear (from watching his hands) to be played as traditional octave double-stops? Am I just hearing overtones (or, hearing things in general...)?
Your hearing is fine! I believe it's tuned Gg-Dd-Aa-ee, with only the e strings in unison. Don't know if I saw that in the clip comments or in comments in another clip.
To answer your question, the point(s) are a) to mess around with double strings and b) to challenge myself with this sort of project. It's not my first go round!
A fiddle with frets (a fretting fiddle?) -- I'd just look into a used gamba.
Or tie some frets on a regular violin. . .hmm, there's an idea!