Make a unique homemade instrument by following Wayne Erbsen’s homemade mandolin (or “hamdolin”) instructions using a ham can and inexpensive building materials. Before I explain the ...

The tension on those strings creates the brightness that makes a mandolin so lovely. This instrument was made before the era of the metal truss rod, so the neck was short and thick, in order to ...

while “Fiddleobia”-with its roller-coaster patterns scurrying up and down the mandolin neck-drew bubbly, Jesse McReynolds-style crosspicking from the mandolinist. Burns’ famous chord/melody ...