Gold Tone F-6 Manditar

About the Gold Tone F-6 Manditar

The Manditar solves a specific problem: mandolins are tuned in fifths (like a violin) with four courses of paired strings, which means a guitarist's chord and scale knowledge doesn't transfer. The F-6 instead uses six single strings tuned EADGBE, identical to a guitar, just pitched an octave up - so any guitar chord shape produces the same chord, only voiced in the mandolin's characteristic register. The body follows F-style proportions with a spruce top and maple body and neck, at a longer 15-inch scale (versus roughly 13.9 inches on a standard mandolin) needed to keep string tension playable at that tuning.

The rosewood fingerboard carries 21 frets with a wide 1 3/4-inch bone nut - much closer to a classical guitar's nut width than a mandolin's - and a two-way adjustable truss rod. An onboard piezo pickup is included as standard, aimed at players who want to plug into a PA rather than mic the instrument, with an adjustable walnut bridge and trapeze tailpiece.

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Source: https://reverb.com/item/93173025-gold-tone-f-6-mando-gitarre

Sound character of the Gold Tone F-6 Manditar

Six single strings (instead of a mandolin's four paired courses) tuned an octave above guitar pitch give a thinner, more chime-like, less chorused voice than a true mandolin - the doubled unison strings on a real mandolin are what create its shimmering, slightly detuned "chorus" character, which the Manditar's single strings don't reproduce even in the same register.

Technical data for the Gold Tone F-6 Manditar

The history of the Gold Tone F-6 Manditar

Gold Tone, a Florida-based maker known for hybrid and crossover fretted instruments, built the Manditar specifically to let guitarists add a mandolin-register voice to their playing without the learning curve of relearning fingerings on an actual mandolin.