Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

Jack Campin · 24-06-2009, 12:39 AM

If you're in Aberdour, look into the Cedar Inn. They have an open mike on the first Tuesday of each month, and keep instruments hanging round the walls - workable ones, unlike any other pub I know of. A mandolin, two guitars, an acoustic bass guitar, a 5-string banjo - and something I can't quite classify.

It has the scale length of a mandola but a body smaller than any mandolin I've seen. It originally had four courses; the highest is missing but the lower three are tuned in fifths (I didn't think to work out the absolute pitch, but probably CGD). And it's *accurately* in tune, a good enough instrument to hold its tune stably. The wooden rosette is carved out in a thin open tracery representing a flower. It's fairly quiet as you'd expect from something which such a small body, but as far as I can tell (not doing instruments tuned in fifths) it was perfectly playable. Imagine a mandola with a sound verging on that of an Appalachian dulcimer.

It's not been well looked after (it's been fitted with a strap pin which is just a bit of wire screwed in so it's split the wood, and it's just balanced in a corner unlike the other instruments). Maybe somebody should make the pub an offer for it and rescue it.

JAJ · 24-06-2009, 08:07 AM

"open mike"

I believe there was a pub which had a tune session in Aberdour on Thursdays (Some of the, at least). Do you know if this is the same one? I presume the Tuesday night is a little different from this...

Jack Campin · 24-06-2009, 09:08 AM

(24-06-2009 08:07 AM)JAJ Wrote: "I believe there was a pub which had a tune session in Aberdour on Thursdays (Some of the, at least). Do you know if this is the same one? I presume the Tuesday night is a little different from this...

It does seem to be different - I haven't been to either. Google says of Aberdour Folk Club:

"Meets first Thursday of the month in the Woodside Hotel, Aberdour.
Contact: Jean Watt on (01383 860540 or Ian Richard on 01383 735023"

and also says it meets on the first and third Thursdays. I haven't been to either but I think they both really happen. I know people in Aberdour so I might well go sometime.