Description of Morgan Lewis All Solid Octave Mandola Sapeli

The lewis Sapele Back & Sides Octave Mandolin boasts all the same pedigree and high material specifications as it smaller cousin Lewis Sapele Mandolin.

Designed by master luthier, Martyn Banks of renowned musical instrument builder "Oakwood instruments" in Leeds UK and hand crafted by carefully selected, highly skilled luthiers in the far east these fine Octave Mandolins represent the absolute best in high quality and value.

As well as being superbly hand crafted Lewis Sapele Octave Mandolin benefits from unique, tried and tested design features developed by Oakwood instruments over several decades.

The Spruce top and Sapele back and sides are carefully selected from high grade timber stock.

Sapele has a warm tone which makes the Lewis Sapele Octave Mandolin ideal but by no means restricted to rhythm playing.
When pushed just a little however this instrument has the necessary volume to punch through as a clear lead melody instrument with great results

The satin finished body of the Lewis Sapele Octave Mandolin is double bound in maple and Rosewood and the oval sound hole is adorned with a single abalone ring.

The rosewood bridge is "static" which means it is glued to the X braced spruce top.
This type of bridge configuration is well known to aid tuning stability and even more importantly more consistent intonation than the "floating" bridge.
The bridge saddle is finely carved bone and neatly set in the bridges compensated slot.

Another advantage of the static bridge is that the strings used are ball ended and fastened with wooden pins as would be the case with an acoustic guitar.
This makes customising your string gauges a breeze as ball end single strings are more readily available than their loop end cousins.

The comfortable half round profile Mahogany neck has an unique ergonomically carved volute where it meets the head stock. The neck heel is also capped with rosewood.

The neck bares a rosewood fret board which is bound in rosewood and inlaid down either side with a strip of Maple whilst the position markers are genuine Mother of Pearl.
The fret board its self is precisely fretted with high quality slender nickel silver frets.
The nut like the bridge saddle is carved bone.

The headstock has a 2mm thick rosewood veneer inlaid with the distinctive Morgan Lewis logo again in Mother of pearl.

Tuning is taken care of with a set of 8 fully sealed die-cast machine heads which are not only smooth an accurate are of extremely robust quality. the robust nature of the tuners however in no way affects the balance of the instrument.