And the tiny frets!

Though I suppose you could tune it to guitar format

I'm more comfortable with bass than guitar. Bass has the same 4ths layout so it's just a matter of thinking up a 3rd.

Mandolin tablature appears way different than guitar so it's going to take a bit of getting used to.

But if you're more used to runs, I found switching from bass (my first stringed instrument) to mandolin (my second) showed me exactly how lazy I was being with my hand positions. Do learn the lrighteft hand positions correctly and make yourself do them, if you want my advice, otherwise you'll pay for it down the road.

I was playing songs on it within a few minutes.
Compared to the months it took as a teenager learning guitar.
I say go for it!

I'm finding it easy to learn, hard to master.

Tuned like a violin, fretted like a guitar (only much tighter). Just work on your tremolo - those strings don't ring very long! From a trumpeter / pianist / guitarist / drummer / singer / and now (since Christmas!) a mandolinist.

The electric's pickups hummed badly and another model wouldn't tune properly.

Chording is somewhat, which is why so many mandolin parts involve drone strings. That way you're not trying to fret all four sets of strings.

I've got an Ovation mandolin. Really good looking and sounds great. I don't play it a lot, just once in a while.

Truth be told, i bought it because i had a space on the wall of my rec room that was too narrow for a guiar. Since i've got 12 of my 15 guitars handing on the wall, that empty space was bugging me.

So, basically bought it as an objet d'art, but ended up liking to play it.

Mine even has the built in piezo so i can plug it in. Pretty fun.
GAC

If you've spent time on the fiddle you're already there. And the bonus is a mandolin has frets. I don't see why you can't be up to speed in a few months for the most part.

The fun part will be finding an instrument that's worth a darn. I strongly recommend you look at Eastman mandolins. Until you get into serious money for an instrument they are as good as it gets.

Which is something a fiddle doesn't have: you can basically do all the stuff people do with a ukelele as well as play fiddle tunes.

I love that the violin has the same tuning, so fiddle tunes work very well. Unfortunately most of the music online is in tablature form, which I have pedagogical objections to.

It's the basic melodies in standard notation as well as guitar tab. I can't stand playing tab since I can't see where I'm going musically. That makes me a bit of an oddball in bluegrass circles because most of the really good flat pickers I know don't read a lick. They can do some pretty amazing things and know the fretboard inside-out, but put sheet music in front of them and they freeze like a deer in a spotlight.

If so, it didn't show up!

but here's a brilliant young bluegrass mandolin player:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDTyr_pK-D0-8&v=Tyr_pK-D0-8