Electric mandolin

Most common is a carved-top eight-string instrument fitted with an electric pickup in similar fashion to many archtop semi-acoustic guitars.

In the United States, luthier/inventor Paul Bigsby began building solid-body electric mandolins (technically, they consisted of a solid wood core housing the electronics, with hollow wings forming the body) in 1949.

Virtuoso mandolin player Armandinho (Armando Macedo), son of Osmar, one of the inventors of the "trio eletrico," the moving stage that gave an identity to Carnival in Bahia, Brazil, added the fifth string to the Bahian Guitar and named it so.

They recently produced a solid-body mandolin known as the Mandobird, based on the Gibson Firebird body and sold under the Epiphone label, in both four- and eight-string versions.

Eastwood Guitars manufactures a solid-body eight-string electric mandolin as the "Mandocaster" with a Telecaster-style body and two single-coil pickups, as well as a four-string Mandostang as part of their line of Warren Ellis-endorsed instruments.