The bridge is compensated for 2-wound, 2-plain strings (and I looked back in my L&H Washburn book to see the original catalog drawings which also show that compensation - usually mandolas are compensated for 3-wound, 1-plain), so that's what I strung it with - 40w, 26w, 16, 11 gauges - like a heavier mandolin set. Work included fixing that brace, installing a rosewood "helper block cleat" over the cracked-up area near the endblock, giving it a fret level/dress, and setting it up. Ended up bringing a small bowl back mandolin with it, from the same mystery owner. Ouch! Fortunately that was the worst of it aside from a couple interior glue drips and a detached main brace. ARCHIVED TOPIC: Lyon & Healy Mystic Banjo. It looked ding-dang clean, too, until I saw the severe punched-in area under the tailpiece. I was truly surprised to see this pop out of it. This one came waltzing in with a local customer, who carried it in a beat-up old tenor banjo case. This make and model was only produced and sold from 1920 to 1923 as a 'premium' banjo. It was advertised as 'The Aristocrat of Banjos'. The original price back in 1920 was listed as 112.50.
The high-grade L&H mandolins are rare enough (though the cheaper Washburn-branded, Regal-made ones are not too rare), but mandolas like this one are even harder to find. The only information I was able to find out about it is that its a 1920 'own make' Lyon & Healy model number 475. The back and sides are all heavily-flamed maple instead of birch, too, and the whole instrument exudes "high class violin." The fancy scrolled headstock with its top-mounted tuners is just icing on that cake. How does it sound? - like a good Gibson mandola that's even better. How is this carved and braced? - almost the same as a Gibson mandola from the same time - but thinner and lighter and with a little more nuance. However, by 1880, Lyon and Healy broke away from Ditson there weren’t enough instruments available from.
Because vintage instruments are each so unique, we want to have a. The Lyon & Healy firm grew out of an effort by Oliver Ditson beginning in 1864 to expand his wholesale musical instrument business into the US Midwest, with a facility in Chicago run by George Washburn Lyon and Patrick J. The Lyon & Healy carved-top mandolin family strikes me as being composed of super-refined versions of the Gibson oval-hole A-style mold. Lyon & Healy made this banjo model in celebration of the Columbian Exposition of 1893.