Circa 1939 D’Angelico 12-string Mandolin

I had to look at this one a couple of times to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Yep, that is a 12-string mandolin. And what’s more, it was built by the legendary luthier John D’Angelico. 12-string mandolins are uncommon but they are not as rare as you might think. I’ve seen quite a few over the years but all of them were bowl-backs and all of them were older than this one, which looks to have been made around 1939. (Here are some good photos of a bowl-back Oscar Schmidt 12-string mandolin from around 1915.) There are two basic ways to tune them. In Mexico 12-string mandolins are called tricordios and they are strung in four courses of three strings that are tuned in unison. (Here’s a clip of someone playing tricordio.)There is also a European version that is called the mandriola, which is also strung in four courses of three strings each, but usually with one or two high octave strings in the two lower courses. (Here’s a nice mandriola clip.)

Sadly, nothing seems to be known about the musician that ordered this mandolin. It’s a fairly plain instrument, with a blonde top and dark stained sides and back. It looks sort of like a Gibson Style A, which was one of Gibson’s less expensive models. It’s in very good shape, which shows the instrument was cared for. It has been refretted, so we know it did get a lot of use. It’s also strung up with all three strings in each course tuned in unison. Did the person who ordered this mandolin play a traditional style of Mexican or European 12-string mandolin or did they just think having four extra strings would be cool? We’ll never know. What we do know is that this is the only one John D’Angelico which makes its price of $8245 seem almost cheap. If you’d you like to be the only person in our solar system to have a 12-string D’Angelico mandolin the good people at Mandolin Brothers would be happy to fulfill your dreams. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for a video clip of Andy Statman playing this mandolin.)