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1965 San Remo Electric Mandolin

Year: 1965
Brand: San Remo
Model: Electric Mandolin
Class: Mandolin
Scale:
Owner: Jeff Hewitt
Status: In Studio.

Another rough candidate, what can I say I'm a sucker for a lost cause. It's a san remo electric mandolin made at the Morales / Guyatone factory. Supposedly there were only around 50 or so made around 1965.

Where to begin....... I decided to start by stripping the mandolin down and soaking all of the rusted parts in CLR, easier said than done. I removed all of the screws I could, but most were so rusted the head instantly stripped out. I went to work drilling out all of the pick guard screws and half of the ones for the tuning machines.

The CLR does wonders on rust I was unsure about the tuners, but they came out far better than anticipated.

The ply on the body was beginning to separate so I went ahead and injected glue and clamped it up. I love the cream color and the checking, so refinishing was out of the question.

The neck was the big issue. While it was straight, the frets were a mess. Luckily Byrd man had the tools and the know how! We pulled the frets, installed new ones, and leveled it off. It's probably better than new. Once the neck was done the rest was easy, really just a little elbow grease and polish. The stock bridge was missing, but looking at photos on the internet it seemed pretty easy. I made a bridge from a scrap of rosewood Byrd had, and an old bone nut he had.

Last but not least the electronics. The pickup was dead, but I was able to rewind it to 4.5k. I Salvaged the 250k tone control and the input jack, I replaced the volume pot with a 500k. I finished it off with a new set of aluminum knobs as the originals were long gone.

The end result, it sounds fantastic and plays great!