Soviet Mandolin Review

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My Soviet mandolin after a bit of TLC.

Over Christmas, I was browsing eBay for mandolins and came across this beauty and my better senses did not prevail–so I bought it for €45. It’s a flat-top mandolin that was made in Leningrad in the mid 1980s.

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The label of the mandolin shows that it is the 316r model. Unfortunately the timestamp isn't completely legible but it seems to read 21st October 198x.

Despite being around 40 years old, I don’t reckon this instrument had ever been played. The strings were so far off the fretboard they might’ve well been in outer space! This of course made the instrument completely unplayable. In order to fix this, I sanded down the floating bridge significantly, which was easy enough as it has a flat bottom. However, this didn’t help the fret height on the low frets, so I needed to score out the routing for the strings over the nut–which I of course overdid, butchered it and then needed to fill and try again! Then it was time to sand off the decades of corrosion left on the frets and it was as good as new.

I also needed to find the correct position for the floating bridge along the strings, as its original position had terrible intonation. This is pretty easy to do with a tuner app or by ear. Now that this is all done, I’ve been learning some irish jigs and rags on it and can report that it’s not a bad instrument by any means; it is also surprisingly loud and not even that tinny!