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The Thunderbird Series is our upper echelon "built to order" ukulele line. This tier offers exotic woods, ornate craftsmanship, expanded electronics, and more advanced features. These are USA made, professional quality steel string ukuleles built with premium quality materials. Experience the highest level of ukulele quality with the Sparrow Thunderbird series!
DESCRIPTION
This Thunderbird Series mandolin is "built to order" and will ship 14 days after your order. Click here for more information on the Sparrow Thunderbird Series.
We are now offering a 5-string electric solid body mandolin! It’s tough to find an affordable 5-string electric mando, but your search has ended! Now the sound and feel of a Sparrow ukulele can be enjoyed by the mandolin lovers of the world.
Why a 5-string mandolin? Great question! The extended-range (offered by the low C string) is like having a mandolin and a mandola in one instrument. The added low C string allows you to play more complex chord voicings and your solo expeditions can take on more range and complexity. It also extends the low frequency response giving a beautiful richness to the overall tone. The scale length is just slightly longer than a standard mandolin (15″) which helps to get a workable tension on the low C string without losing the familiar feel of a standard mandolin.
This model has a Walnut body, Maple neck, and Richlite fingerboard. The pickup bobbins are Walnut and the pickups have Alnico V magnets. The custom humbucker pickup is hand wound in house to achieve thick, rich and bright clean tones as well as searing distorted sounds. The sound of the Sparrow 5-string Mandolin is extremely versatile.
The action is low and light and the feel is smooth and ergonomic. The controls are standard volume and tone, with the addition of the coil split function. When the coil split is engaged, our custom wiring scheme will drop the 500k pot value to 290K (more suitable for a single coil tone) which prevents the single coil mode from being overly bright or thin in tone. You won’t find features like this anywhere else!
The individually adjustable bridge saddles provide flawless intonation and perfect string height. This model comes with a fully adjustable modern 2 way truss rod to guarantee proper neck relief in any climate or season.
We are proud to welcome the 5-string mandolin to the Sparrow family!
All Sparrow instruments are proudly designed and handmade in Richmond, Virginia, USA!
DETAILS
Woods: Walnut body, Maple neck, Richlite fingerboard, Maple inlay, Walnut Bobbins.
Strings: Custom Gauge set made by GHS (0.050, 0.034, 0.026, 0.015, 0.010)
Electronics: The controls are standard volume and tone. The Alnico 5 magnet hand wound, custom designed pickup has 6500 turns (per coil) of 42 gauge copper wire and has a resistance of about 7 ohms. This gives the pickup a warm, organic tone that reacts nicely to picking nuance. All the bridge saddles are properly grounded to provide the quietest operation possible.
This pickup is wired for “coil splitting”. To access this feature, simply pull out on the tone knob and it will engage a switch that deactivates half of the pickup providing a much more “single coil” tone.
Bridge: We use individual string saddles to allow for optimum string spacing for the best feel and performance. The bridge saddles have individually adjustable intonation screws as well as standard height adjustment.
Nut: The nut is hand carved out of bone.
Tuners: 15:1 ratio geared tuners with low backlash
This model comes with 2 strap buttons installed and is ready to rock!