Found a 5 string custom built tele mandolin any e mando players

Snap it up. I play a 4-string JBobier ELS, and it's honestly my favourite instrument. They're great for Wstern Swing, obviously, but they're a jazz machine too. And Rock. etc.

Listen to Back To Back, Jethro Burns and Tiny Moore.

For more contemporary stuff listen to Sam Bush, Laps in Seven

It looks grat, and you'll always be able to move it on if it doesn't work.

 

I've been a mandolin player most of my life. Was fortunate enough to snag a '62 fender electric mandolin before they got crazy high. I've since got one of the newer fender five string electrics. They're lots of fun to play. Yeah, Tiny and Jethro are the right guys to listen to. Maybe some Johnny Gimble too. If you're interested at all, there's a lot of fun to be had for $500.

 

I play acoustic and acoustic-electric mandolin. I've never warmed to mandos that didn't have a double course for the strings but I've heard others that that make them sound good. There's a local guy who plays with Halden Wofford and the Hi*Beams who has a double neck with a six string guitar and five string mandolin on it. He does some cool stuff.

For $500? Grab it!

 

I'm a big tenor guitar fan and I have a five string electric tenor, basically tuned like a five string mandolin but a fifth lower. I find it much more versatile than the four string, opening up a load of new chord options and extending the range. They're a good creative tool - anything that helps you think out of the box is a good thing to have in the arsenal.

 

...sorry, late to the party. Not exactly mandolin, but it's larger cousin, the mandola. Mini-humbucker version.

My hands are pretty average, but always felt sort of cramped, playing the little mandolins...or maybe I was just too lazy to put in the time to get used to it, pick yer own version of how I feel.

Eastwood Guitars, the Canadians who offer brand new retro styled stuff, including guitars designed by our colleague @John Backlund, also offer this mandola, under the flag of their "Airline" guitars and other things.

The mini-humbucker is very sweet, 18.5" scale, so not so cramped (IMO) and comes set up as a combo of thru-string and top-load bridge (see photo). With the combo bridge, the thing rings like a bell, very lively.

Very useful for providing a little contrast for 2 or 3-set shows. I ain't no Marty Stuart, but I get by. I tune it like some folks tune an octave mandolin C-G-C-G, just because I can.



the bridge:

 

I had a 4-string Mandobird, didn't like it. The voicing of chords is characteristic for a mandolin but sounds like an electric guitar otherwise. Sounds like crap through distortion as well, with no low end to get rocking.

I've seen videos of guys playing idiomatic country licks on an electric 4-string so then at that point you're trying to sound like a guitar player IMO. Just use a guitar! If you only play mandolin then I guess it's a different story. If you are really into Tiny Moore and want to cop some of those licks then that could be a different story. I think he developed more of a mando centric lick vocabulary.

Now I have an 8-string Eastwood. Personally, never having played a 5 string I would probably get confused when making chords, and if what you are after is an extended low end, again, just play the guitar!

Am I making my biases clear enough?

 

I get it, thanks for the clarification. For some reason this triggered the memory of a YouTube video of a guy playing an electric mandolin and trying to do all sorts of Tele-style oblique bends in the context of a country tune and it just looked uncomfortable. Bending those short strings isn't all that easy. I appreciate the need for an overhead bin kind of instrument. I have an electric uke (Eleuke) for those rare situations.