My bud's family got him a mandolin for his birthday yesterday, we both immediately looked at each other and knew what had to be done, so I went out after work today and picked up Seagull Guitar's new instrument, the
Merlin. It's basically a funny offshoot of a stick dulcimer, tuned to open D with diatonic fret spacing. You've got four strings tuned DADD but the highest two are doubled for a sort of mandolin like lead tone. The things sell for only $129 and while they certainly do feel light and fragile, they're remarkably well built for the price, not to mention how crazy loud they are for the size.
Anyway, I've been messing around with it for a few hours, made a short little medieval track:
Playing Caligula by EPOCH6 - picosong
Can't wait to get the mandolin in there, and maybe some bass.
