So far all of my Mandos have had Flame Maple back, sides and necks, Ebony Fingerboards and Peg overlay, Mother of Pearl inlay and Adirondack Spruce tops. I tune the top and back plates, then tune the tone bars then and finally tune the instrument as a coupled unit. This is all wood tuning and has nothing to do with tuning the strings.
I bet that is an interesting instrument.
I have about 350 hours in a mando
I have also built fiddles, guitars and dulcimers.