Octave Mandolin Converted Taylor Big Baby Guitar

Here's a beautiful octave mandolin that I just converted from a used Big Baby Taylor BBT solid top travel guitar. Depending on the strings, tuning and musical style this can also be played as a bouzouki, mandola, double-strung tenor or plectrum guitar, double-strung steel string baritone ukulele, mandocello, or even just a regular six-string.

Currently set up as an octave mandolin in GDAE with the bass strings octaved, it sounds absolutely fantastic, with a big booming voice thanks to the full scale length and 7/8 dreadnought body. This instrument would also we well suited to set up as a mandocello, and I am happy to change the setup after purchase on request.

The underlying guitar is an excellent quality instrument with a solid spruce top. Perfect action, and of course the easily-adjustable neck to keep it that way. Lots of room on the new bone saddle, working truss rod. Upgraded ebony pins, and Grover tuners for the additions complete a premium setup. Also very nice cosmetically with only a few dings and scratches, the most notable of which are pictured. Comes with its excellent Taylor gig bag.

The conversion process entailed, among other steps, fitting two additional tuners, adapting the nut, fitting a new bone saddle, adding and slotting four bridge pin holes in the correct positions, and exploring various setups to optimize the instrument in this eight-string configuration. The original bridge pin holes and nut slots are retained, so this instrument can be returned to a six-string configuration with ease.

Ships fast, well protected, and fully insured.

By the way, I'm happy to do a similar conversion on your instrument, either something you already own or a model you buy new for the purpose. Not all acoustic guitars can easily accommodate the extra pins and tuners, but many can. Shoot me a message or visit wisterialutherie.com/conversions if you're interested!