Mowry Stringed Instruments

A shop full of student cellos this week.

Here's one more new Mowry octave mandolin for today!

Here's a new Mowry octave mandolin, with a 14" body, 20" scale, birch sides and back, mahogany neck, and Waverly tuners. The body size is based on Gibson mandocellos, but works better as an octave, IMHO 🙂. Gibson illustrated this in 1904 with their one-off octave in the same size.

Thanks so much to Mandolin Cafe for including me in its series on the history of the octave mandolin. As a builder who has largely specialized in this instrument, It's a bit surreal to look back at its evolution from niche to mainstream over the least 20 years!

Bridges for upcoming octave mandolins.

Some final sanding on this octave mandolin. This is the second one like this that I’ve built. It’s based roughly on the one-off 1904 Gibson octave mandolin, but with some optimizations to the arching, body depth, scale length, and bridge position.

Elliptical rosettes—always fun and challenging!

Fine-tuning an octave mandolin dovetail.