another modding question

a neighbors husband died recently and I was helping her clean out the workshop , garage. the man, a hobby guitar builder and he often bought cheaper guitars and modded them. The woman gave me 200 dollars plus 4 brand new, still in the package squire minis. the 99 dollar ones. I told her that I could not play but that I wanted to learn now that I am retired, but mostly I am interested in 3 string cbg guitars, tenor and 4 string banjo. My question to you competent builders is...can these 6 strings be modded to accept 4 strings like a tenor or can they be strung like a 3 string but in octaves since they are 6 strings?


Mark

I don't see why not? if you change the nut and cut to fit 4 strings and tinker with the bridge to match string seperation?..should work?

For the doubled-three-string idea, I imaging you'd have a problem at the bridge. You can install a new nut that arranges the strings in three close-set pairs, but I think you'll have trouble at the bridge--which will want to spread the strings out evenly. There may be something you can do to fix that. I have some ideas.

As for a four-stringer, my friend plays mandolins, octave mandolins, mandolas and mandocellos (these all have different scale lengths). He loves to take traditional electric guitars and puts four strings on them (leaving off the 1st and 6th strings, so you've got some room on either side of your strings). Then he capos them to octave mandolin scale (3rd fret, I think, about 20 inches) and tunes up to GDAE. Bingo! Electric mandolin that you can capo up AND down!

Good luck!