Just a quick word about the mandolin. I originally dusted off my mandolin tuned it and played around a bit.
Not being overly happy I put it away and picked up the guitar.
I then played around withe my Line 6 Variax.
Whilst it does not have a mandolin emulation it does have a good 12 string guitar.
I then loaded a Gibson mandolin impulse response on top of the 12 string (don't ask me how these work) and tuned it like a mandolin. Sounded pretty much like my mandolin - I did however cheat and re-tuned it as a guitar (I know my way around a guitar tuning better -although I mainly played tremolo on one string).\

No miking required.

Peter