Electric mandolin 4-string version. A related instrument, the Bahian guitar, was developed in Brazil beginning in the 1940s. Bahian guitars typically have a solid body and 4 or 5 single-course strings tuned in fifths, but are considered to be electric versions of the cavaquinho rather than the mandolin. Both four string single course and eight string double course solid body mandolins have been produced by several makers, as well as five string single course models. From 1956 to 1976, Fender produced a four string version which they simply called the "Fender Electric Mandolin". Its body shape was based on a smaller version
Mandolin called a cylinder-back mandolin manufactured by the Vega Company between 1913 and roughly 1927), which had a similar longitudinal bulge but on the back rather than the front of the instrument. The mandolin was given a banjo body in an 1882 patent by Benjamin Bradbury of Brooklyn and given the name "banjolin" by John Farris in 1885. Today "banjolin" describes an instrument with four strings, while the version with the four courses of double strings is called a "mandolin-banjo". A resonator mandolin or "resophonic mandolin" is a mandolin whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones (resonators) instead