![lyon and healy banjo neck lyon and healy banjo neck](https://www.pickerssupply.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/DSC_0764-3.jpg)
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. Ouch! Fortunately that was the worst of it aside from a couple interior glue drips and a detached main brace. 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. Whatever the provenance, these L&H-sold instruments from the late. Rumor has it (via the 'Regal Musical Instruments 1895-1955' book) that Regal (then in Indiana) made these for L&H while fancier 'Washburn' L&H products were made in-house by L&H in Chicago. 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. This is a Lyon & Healy 5-stringer made around 1895. It is made of blond maple and is an elegant old banjo shell. A year or two earlier I had bought a Lyon and Healy (the parent of Washburn) banjo shell from Campbell Coes Campus Music Shop in Berkeley. It was a 17-fret tenor, and even the dowel stick was missing. 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. Around 1972 I bought the broken neck from a local violin maker without any other parts. 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, the wood screw just above the hardware is not original. Two wooden wedges is a common strategy seen for neck to pot connections in all types of banjos. The metal hardware is correct and original, the two wood wedges appear to be replacements. The Lyon & Healy carved-top mandolin family strikes me as being composed of super-refined versions of the Gibson oval-hole A-style mold. Re: Lyon and Healy Mandolin Banjo Repair Advice.