Guild of American Luthiers 2011 Conference.
Panel of expert mandolin builders is asked "What is a mandolin?" The first panelist to respond, David Cohen, presented this slide, providing some very helpful details which are not set in stone, but are an excellent guide to mandolin family instruments. Keep in mind, this was only the start of David's answer. He showed slides of a few of his stunningly-crafted instruments and they were far more striking than this chart. However, the chart is what I keep coming back to.
I like mandolins, but I am more drawn to the members of the family which are similar to a guitar in terms of their scale length and fretboard width. I find the fingerboard on a mezzo mandolin "squinchy." That's my own word for frets that feel too close together. Soprano ukes are squinchy too. But give me a mandola or an octave mandolin or a baritone uke and I'm a happy guy. I guess that's the biggest appeal of this chart - I no longer have to guess what an appropriate scale length for a particular range of notes should be, or what guage of strings I should use for that scale length. As charts go, this is an especially good one. One man's opinion....
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