h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice one Gnomon; well done!

I can't pretend to understand most of the technicalities; we've talked before about my total ineptitude on the mandolin; nonetheless, I love it dearly & at least these days I only murder its potential in private!

In fact, at present it is "en vacence" as I seem to have lured someone else into experimenting with its

I did try & bouzouki, but suspect it was very much an "el cheapo" copy, very pretty but very "thin" sounding compared to mandy.

has a banjolin; do you know anything about these?

Terri.

What's a banjolin? I used to have a tenor banjo, which is one with four strings tuned the same as a mandolin but an octave lower. I could never get used to the volume of it - it was impossible to play it quietly, so I sold it.

I'm not totally sure myself; it seemed like a cross between a banjo (but smaller) & the sound of a mandolin, but impossible to get strings that seemed right for it.

U208634 would know, but since the daft bugger wiped his page, it may have to wait till I can ask him in person.

zdt

A Banjolin is an 8-string banjo - strung and tuned like a mandolin.
You can also find banjo versions of other instruments. (Guitar and Ukelele being most common)

Of course there are other 8-string instruments that are at least supercicially like a Bazouki... The Mandola (which can be either a Tenor Mandola or an Octave Mandola - the difference is probably just in the tuning, but I'm not entirely sure...) It's somewhere between the size of a Mandolin and a Bazouki.

Then there's the Cittern - which often has ten strings these days, but older versions only have eight.