Cremonese/Bresciano mandolin

The Cremonese or Brescian mandolin became popular from the second half of the 18th century until the first decades of the 19th century, and its definition is due to Bortolazzi, author of the first German-language mandolin method, published at the beginning of the 19th century (Anweisung die Mandoline, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1805).

The research on the original instruments that survived until today show that they had vibrating lengths around 30-33 cm, and four single strings tuned in fifths (like the Neapolitan mandolin or the Violin; i.e. e, a, G, D), with 9 to 10 frets on the fingerboard.

There are two setups available.
The first is a historical reconstruction, based on the results of our research on the documentation of the time, and uses three gut strings and a silk core wound string with silver-plated copper wire for the 4th G string (code ref. 4M).
The second is a “modern” version that seeks the same kind of sound as the historical one but using modern synthetic materials. It uses two synthetic New Nylgut strings and two copper wound strings on a synthetic multifilament core (code ref. 5M).