From Alabama

So I've gone and bought myself a new instrument to learn to play. I was given a ukulele for Christmas, which has had me happily learning a few basic chords, and then spotted this on eBay...

It was listed as a ukulele, and it's the same size as one, but closer inspection showed that there were double courses for the strings and there were eight tuning pegs, despite the fact that it only had four strings at the time. Yup, this was a form of mandolin-banjo: looks like a banjo, but strung like a mandolin. What the hell, I thought, so I put in a bid — and won.

So yesterday I fitted some new strings (a full set of mandolin strings) to the little beastie, tuned up, worked out the fingering, and a few hours later I was playing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and a couple of other very simple tunes. Very slowly.

The woodwork is poorly varnished and the banjo head bit is damaged and needs replacing, but it doesn't sound too bad, and seems to hold its tuning pretty well. It's another fun toy which I should be able to learn the basics of over the coming months, and looks wonderfully "distressed", which seems appropriate for a folkie instrument. And, of course, it's another instrument that nobody takes seriously (though it's a very short step from that to a number of other instruments, like the tenor banjo or octave mandolin).