A mandolin has eight strings, arranged as four pairs and tuned G–D–A–E — the same four pitches as a violin, low to high. Each pair is one course, and both strings in a course are tuned to exactly the same note and fretted and picked together. So a mandolin has eight strings but only four notes of open tuning, and a player thinks in four, not eight.
Eight strings, in four doubled courses, tuned G–D–A–E
That covers effectively every mandolin sold today, from a $100 laminate to a hand-carved bluegrass instrument. The pairs are tuned in unison rather than in octaves, which is what separates a mandolin from a 12-string guitar. Everything else on this page — the four-string electrics, the six-string Milanese, the twelve-string tricordia — is either historical or a specialist instrument, and none of it is what a shop means by “a mandolin”.
Every string count a mandolin has ever had
| Strings | Arrangement | Instrument | Tuning | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 4 courses of 2 | The standard mandolin | G–D–A–E | Everywhere. This is the answer. |
| 4 | 4 single | Brescian and Cremonese mandolins; most solid-body electrics | G–D–A–E | Museums, and plugged-in players |
| 5 | 5 single | Five-string electric mandolin | C–G–D–A–E | Jazz and Western swing |
| 6 | 6 single | Milanese, or Lombard, mandolin | g–b–e′–a′–d″–g″ | 18th and 19th century Italy |
| 10 | 5 courses of 2 | Extended-range mandolin | C–G–D–A–E | A handful of modern builds |
| 12 | 4 courses of 3 | Tricordia, or mandriola | G–D–A–E | Mexican folk music |
| 12 | 6 courses of 2 | Genoese mandolin | e–a–d′–g′–b–e″ | Historic Italian, effectively extinct |
Two things fall out of that table. The instruments with fewer strings are not simplified mandolins — a four-string Brescian is tuned G–D–A–E exactly like the modern one, it just has one string per note instead of two. And the six-string Milanese is not a mandolin with three pairs. It is six single strings tuned in fourths, closer to a small guitar than to anything with a G–D–A–E neck.
Why Does a Mandolin Have 8 Strings?
Because a plucked steel string dies fast, and the mandolin had to be heard in a room with no amplification in it.
Strike a note on a mandolin and it is most of the way to silence in about a second. That is the instrument’s whole character — the reason it chops and jangles instead of ringing like a bowed violin. Doubling each string is the fix that was available in the 1700s: two strings put roughly twice the energy into the top, so the note is louder before it starts decaying.
The second effect is the one you actually hear. No two strings are ever in perfect agreement — they land a few cents apart and drift as they warm — so a doubled course beats gently against itself. That shimmer is the mandolin sound. Take one string out of each pair and the instrument still plays every note, but it goes thin and dry.
It also explains tremolo. A mandolin holds a long note by picking it many times a second across a doubled course, and eight strings give that technique something to work with that four would not.
The bill for all this arrives at tuning time. Eight strings is eight tuning pegs, and a pair that is three cents out sounds sour in a way that is hard to locate by ear — you hear that something is wrong without hearing which string is wrong. That is the honest downside of the design, and it is why almost every mandolin player owns a clip-on tuner.
Four strings and five: the single-strung mandolins
Two separate traditions land on four strings, three centuries apart.
The historical one is the Brescian and Cremonese mandolin, which carried four single gut strings tuned in fifths — the same G–D–A–E as today, without the doubling. It was a quieter, softer instrument than the Neapolitan that replaced it, which is precisely why the Neapolitan replaced it.
The modern one is electric. Once a pickup is doing the work of being loud, the doubled courses stop earning their keep and start costing you: they are harder to bend, harder to intonate and muddier through an amp. So solid-body mandolins are commonly built with four single strings in the same G–D–A–E. Fender’s Mandocaster ran from 1956 to 1976 on that pattern; Kentucky’s KM-300E is a current one, four single strings on a 13.87-inch scale, which is mandolin length exactly.
Five single strings is the same idea with a low C added below the G, giving C–G–D–A–E and covering the mandolin’s range plus the mandola’s in one neck. Paul Bigsby built one for Tiny Moore in 1952 and it became the Western swing sound.
Neither is a beginner instrument, and neither takes a standard string set. A four-string electric needs four singles rather than a set of eight, and a five-string needs a low C that no mandolin set contains.
Six strings: the Milanese mandolin
The Milanese mandolin — also called the Lombard, and descended fairly directly from the mandore — has six single strings, not three pairs. Three are wire trebles, three are gut or wire-wrapped silk basses, and they are tuned in fourths rather than fifths: g–b–e′–a′–d″–g″, which is a guitar’s intervals rather than a mandolin’s.
That tuning is the point. Everything you learn on a modern mandolin neck transfers to a mandola, an octave mandolin or a mandocello, because they are all in fifths. None of it transfers to a Milanese. It is a different instrument with a similar body, it belongs to a repertoire that ended in the nineteenth century, and Pietro Armanini wrote a whole method book for it that nobody now uses.
If you have inherited a bowlback with six tuners and no pairs, that is probably what you have, and it is not going to take a standard mandolin string set.
Ten strings: five courses and a low C
Add a fifth doubled course below the G and you get ten strings tuned C–G–D–A–E. Gold Tone’s F-10 is the best-known example, on a mandola-sized body so the low C has enough air behind it to speak.
The idea is to get a mandolin and a mandola out of one instrument, and it half works. You do get the range. What you also get is a wider neck, ten strings to keep in tune, no string sets made for it, and a low C that on anything smaller than a mandola body sounds tubby rather than deep. It is a second or third instrument for someone who already knows what they want from it, not a smarter way to buy your first mandolin.
Twelve strings, arrived at two different ways
The tricordia keeps the mandolin’s four courses and puts three strings in each. It is Mexican, it is built for the fuller, thicker tremolo that folk ensemble playing wants, and it comes in two flavours: Mexican tricordias are almost always tuned in unison, while the European mandriola usually has the lowest string of each course dropped an octave. That octave version is much closer to a 12-string guitar in effect.
The Genoese mandolin got to twelve from the other direction — six courses of two, tuned e–a–d′–g′–b–e″, which is guitar tuning an octave up. It is the same idea as the Milanese with the strings doubled, and like the Milanese it is essentially extinct outside collections.
So “twelve-string mandolin” does not identify an instrument on its own. Four courses of three and six courses of two are different instruments, in different tunings, from different countries.
Where the count stops
Twelve is the top. There is no eight-course mandolin, historical or modern, and nothing in the family goes past four courses of three or six courses of two.
The instrument that beats it is the Mexican bandolón, which has eighteen strings in six courses of three, tuned in fourths across roughly a guitar’s range. It looks like an oversized flatback mandolin and it sat at the centre of the orquesta típica from the 1880s, but it is a bandolón — different tuning, different range, different music. Counting it as a mandolin is how the number keeps creeping upward.
Eight strings does not tell you which instrument it is
Every full-sized member of the mandolin family has eight strings in four courses. What separates them is scale length and where those four courses sit.
| Instrument | Strings | Tuning | Scale length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mandolin | 8 | G3–D4–A4–E5 | 13⅞–14″ |
| Mandola | 8 | C3–G3–D4–A4 | 15½–17″ |
| Octave mandolin | 8 | G2–D3–A3–E4 | 19–24″ |
| Mandocello | 8 | C2–G2–D3–A3 | 24¾–27″ |
| Mandobass | 4, single | E1–A1–D2–G2 | ~42″ |
The mandobass is the exception that proves the rule: at that length and tension, doubling the strings would be unplayable, so it does not. It is also the one member of the family you will almost certainly never see. The full breakdown of the family and the body shapes covers the rest.
What eight strings means when you buy strings
This is where the string count stops being trivia. A mandolin set contains eight strings — two identical E, two identical A, two wound D, two wound G — and you replace all eight together. Putting one fresh string next to a played-in one inside the same course is what makes a pair beat audibly instead of shimmering, and no amount of tuning will fix it.
Three things to know before you order:
- Gauge is named for the E string. Light sets run 10–38, mediums 11–40. Mediums are the standard for bluegrass and give the chop its bite; lights are easier under the fingers and kinder to an older or lightly built instrument.
- Mandolin strings are loop end. The tailpiece has hooks, not pin holes, so a guitar-style ball end is no use. Every set sold as a mandolin set is loop end.
- Both strings of a course are the same gauge. That is what makes it a unison course rather than an octave one — an important difference if you ever find yourself buying singles for a ten-string or a tricordia, neither of which has a set made for it.
D’Addario EJ74 Phosphor Bronze, Medium
- 8 strings
- 11–40 medium
- Loop end
- Phosphor bronze
- ~$10
The set most mandolins leave the shop with and most players come back to. Phosphor bronze on the wound D and G, plain steel on the A and E, with enough tension to drive a top properly without making the instrument hard work. If your mandolin is old, lightly built, or you simply find mediums stiff, the EJ73 is the same set in 10–38.
- The reference set — almost every setup guide assumes it
- Warm on the wound courses, bright on top
- Cheap enough to change on schedule rather than when they die
- Mediums are a lot of tension for a light vintage bowlback
- Phosphor bronze dulls faster than coated strings on sweaty hands
Eight strings, four pitches
Tuning a mandolin is four decisions made twice. You bring both strings of a course to the same pitch, and the accuracy that matters is not the note being right — it is the two strings agreeing with each other. A pair a few cents apart still reads as “G” on a tuner needle and still sounds wrong in the room.
Which is why a clip-on chromatic tuner is close to mandatory here in a way it is not on a guitar. It reads the vibration through the headstock rather than the sound, so it works one string at a time in a noisy room, and a display fine enough to show cents is what lets you close a pair properly. The full tuning walkthrough is here.
D’Addario NS Micro clip-on tuner
- Chromatic
- Piezo, not microphone
- 410–480Hz
- Tri-colour display
- ~$20
Small enough to live behind the headstock permanently and stay there with the mandolin in its case, which matters more than it sounds — the tuner you own but left at home is worth nothing. It reads vibration through the clamp rather than picking up sound, so a second instrument playing nearby does not confuse it, and the screen goes red, yellow and green as you close in.
D’Addario build the NS Micro in several variants, and the names are not obvious: the Clip-On is the headstock clamp described here, and it is the one you want on a mandolin.
- Fine enough resolution to match the two strings of a course
- Ignores ambient noise entirely
- Stays on the instrument in the case
- The display is genuinely small
- CR2032 battery rather than rechargeable
The eight-string to buy if you are starting
Nothing on this page changes the recommendation: buy a standard eight-string A-style. Every teacher, every tab book, every string set and every piece of advice on this site assumes four courses of two in G–D–A–E, and stepping outside that at the start means solving problems nobody else in the room has.
Ibanez M510
- 8 strings, 4 courses
- A-style
- Laminated spruce over sapele
- Purpleheart board, 13.78″ scale
- ~$200
Around $200 is where a mandolin stops feeling like a toy. The M510’s fretwork and neck are a clear step above the sub-$150 field, and the tone is bright and defined enough to hold its own against other instruments rather than disappearing behind them. Laminated spruce over sapele, purpleheart board and bridge, twenty frets on a 13.78-inch scale — an entirely ordinary specification, executed properly.
It ships with light factory strings, which flatters the action and undersells the top. A set of mediums is the first upgrade and it costs ten dollars.
- Fretwork well ahead of the budget field
- Bright and articulate in an ensemble
- Standard scale, so every tab and method book fits
- Nothing in the box — no case, no tuner, no picks
- Laminated throughout, so it will not open up with age
Below that there are decent laminates around $100 — the beginner picks are here — and above it the money goes into a carved solid top, which is a real difference rather than a cosmetic one. What each budget actually buys is worth reading before you commit, and if you are choosing between shapes, A-style versus F-style settles that in one page.
FAQs
How many strings does a mandolin have?
Eight, arranged as four pairs called courses and tuned G–D–A–E. Both strings in a pair are tuned to the same pitch and played as one, so the instrument has eight strings but only four notes.
Are all mandolins 8-stringed instruments?
Effectively every mandolin sold today has eight. The exceptions are historical types — the four-string Brescian, the six-string Milanese, the twelve-string Genoese — plus the Mexican tricordia with twelve, rare ten-string builds, and solid-body electrics, which are often single-strung with four or five.
Why are mandolin strings in pairs?
Volume and shimmer. A plucked steel note decays in about a second, and two strings put roughly twice the energy into the top before that decay starts. Because the two are never in perfect agreement, the pair also beats gently against itself, which is the characteristic mandolin ring.
What is the tuning for a mandolin?
G3–D4–A4–E5, low to high, in fifths — the same pitches as a violin. Each pair is tuned in unison, not in octaves.
Is a mandolin the same as a 12-string guitar with doubled strings?
No. A 12-string guitar doubles its lower four courses at the octave, which is where its jangle comes from. A mandolin doubles all four courses in unison, on a 14-inch scale, tuned in fifths rather than fourths.
What is the difference between a mandolin and a mandola?
Both have eight strings in four courses. The mandola is tuned C–G–D–A, a fifth below the mandolin, on a 15½ to 17 inch scale rather than about 14. The fingering patterns are identical, so the notes simply move.
Can you play a mandolin with a broken string?
Yes — every note is still there, because the missing string has a twin. The instrument goes noticeably thinner and quieter on that course, and the surviving string will pull the bridge slightly out of balance, so it is a way to finish a gig rather than a way to carry on.
How often should I change mandolin strings?
It depends entirely on playing time and hand chemistry, not on the calendar. The tell is the wound G and D going dull and refusing to intonate cleanly up the neck. An hour a day usually means every couple of months; playing out several nights a week means far more often. Always change all eight together.