So, I had kind of a mishap a few weeks ago: the original bridge of my Vihuela de Mano ripped clean off when I tried to bring the strings to tension. Might be that the glue surface was too cold or the natural oil in the rosewood prevented a proper bond. Or the glue surface was simply too small for 42kg of string tension.
After some consideration, I decided to redesign the bridge to be more of a lute style (with 3x the glue surface of the original bridge), while trying to preserve the original look. It’s now made of cherry, with ebony and ivory inlays.
Good looking axe! What is the tuning?
The tuning is the same as a 7-course renaissance lute, except the chantarelle (the highest course) is a double course instead of just one single string:
g4/g4, d4/d4, a3/a3, f3/f3, c3/c4, G2/g3, F2/f3
Sounds like it’ll make for fun chord shapes. I’d leave it fretless for a while if it were mine.