very advanced guitar player moving into violin
i heard a mandolin is a good place to start to learn the smaller neck & playing in 5ths

is the neck the same size as the violin
is it ok to get a cheap ass mandolin, one of these junky $50 just to practice technique

Might as well get a `cheap-ass` violin

I`d say that depends on how serious you are about the mandolin itself. The mandolin has been my main instrument these past 20 years and I love it. I have a decent, intermediate quality instrument that`s a pleasure to play.

The fingering, for picking, is identical to that of the violin and neck sizes are similar, but I don`t think quite identical. But for your purposes I shouldn`t think it matters.

If you play guitar, you might quite enjoy chording on the mandolin as well. However, you`ll find the tighter finger positions a challenge - it`s sometimes very hard to squeeze your fingers into position and get a clear tone. It takes a fair amount of practice, unless you`re a natural.


I`d stay away from a really inexpensive instrument, unless you`re not interested in the sound quality at all.

I`m a guitarist moving onto the fiddle and have bought a cheap mandolin. Since the mandolin is tuned like a violin, I have found that I can start off my fingering on the mandolin, where I don`t have the distraction of bowing, before trying it out on the fiddle.

I played mandolin for a couple of years while swapping from guitar to fiddle.

I had a very cheap (£70) mandolin that was good for nothing except hanging on a wall, and a nicer one for £130 that was good enough for me but very quiet. When playing with others I couldn`t hear myself at all, and gave up.

I`ve since discovered that you can get mandolins that can make themselves heard in a crowd, and a mandolin when everyone else is playing fiddle is a welcome bit of variety.

Just stay away from the round backed models...they were NOT designed for modern music.

I luv my mandolin.