The Idea​

What if I found a double-necked mandolin? The rock world has multiple  examples of double necked instruments for the same reason I want one. Jimmy Page's double neck guitar is shown here, but my aspirations are not so grand.

I looked for existing instruments, but what I found wasn't what I wanted. The only commercially available double-necked mandolin appears to be an inexpensive Chinese-made instrument with two similar-sized necks, which wouldn't give me the octave voice I wanted (pictured at right). During the search I found several pictures of custom-made double-necked mandolins similar to what I wanted, so I knew that people were building them. I decided to find someone to build me a double-necked instrument to my specifications.
 

Richard Vance Clark is a luthier in Boone. I heard about him from a friend and ended up on his email list. Periodically Richard sends out emails with pictures of instruments he has finished. Along with many other instruments he has built a tiple and a sort of octave mandolin instrument that was out of the ordinary. This told me that Richard was willing and interested in trying to build odd instruments. I contacted him and we agreed to meet.