It was also, however, several thousand quid more expensive! Current UK price £4,650.00!! Well, you get what you pay for!īottom line/? I would go for an A or F-type with parallel bracing depending on your own style taste. I was as happy as a pig in the proverbial! And then a buddy came over from Australia with a Weber Fern (another F-type) which may not have had the quality of workmanship but, by God, it’s tone and projection blew everything else out of the water. Then I got an Eastman 915, an F-type clone which has top-class, hand-carved workmanship, fantastic tone and fabulous projection. Then I got an arch-top A-type clone - a Breedlove OF, with f-holes and parallel bracing. Magnificent in a quiet session of around four musicians but in anything larger it just disappeared. The sweetest little mando imaginable - great workmanship and beautiful tone. The people at Mandolincafe can advise on that. Once you reach Collings prices you also have the option of a handmade mando from a small shop. Kentucky KM-505, Kentucky KM-900, Gibson Jam Master A5, Kentucky KM-1000, Collings MT. Good mandolins that don’t break the bank - in ascending order of price:
Simon Mayor plays an f-hole Vanden, and has no trouble pulling a nice sweet tone out of it.Īndy Irvine plays ovals, but then he’s not a session animal and he’s usually amplified. Not always evident to the player, but pretty obvious across the room. They’re nice to record too.į-holes give you a little more punch and projection. Oval holes are great for slightly quieter performance situations, or amplified or played into a mic. Often a very nice, and appropriate tone with sweetness, decent mids and bass but they simply don’t seem to cut through particularly well. The oval hole flat tops look the part, as do carved oval hole mandos, but they tend to be a bit too civilised for a busy session. I’ve played arched and flat tops, oval and f holes. The Collings that Triplet mentions would be great. If you want to play in sessions I’d go for an A5 or F5 kind of instrument.
In this economic climate, it’s a buyer’s market: musicians tend to want to own nice instruments, and they sell them when they need $$. My experience with instrument buying is that the one you want will "speak" to you- you’ll know it when you play it. It’s important to choose based on how good the instrument feels not just on sound- the nicest mando in the world will nt give you pleasure if it doesn’t "fit" you or feel right. There are loads of things like neck width, radius/non radius, body thickness, board and wood materials, etc etc, that can radically change how the instrument feels. again, I would WAY rather own a Heiden F ($12,000 new) than pay $15,000 for the Gibson F-5 equivalent.Īlso REALLY important but nobody has mentioned it: fit and feel. Especially at the high end, you generally get better work for the $$. (c) Try to get something that’s made by a builder and not a company. you can buy a used Heiden A style for $5000…it will sound better than the original for $2000 less. As opposed ot buying a new one, where you can expect to lose 20% right off the top. (2) a well-cared-for used instrument is 1/2 to 2/3 as much as its new equivalent, with generally better sound, and if you don’t like it, you can sell/trade at no loss. (1) the sound won’t really settle for a few years and I play with a Gibson F-9 which punches through sonic pub-clutter, but I’d wnat to record with something softer.ī) Buy the highest-end possible used mando you can get. Although as Skreech points out wood etc diffs are enormous. A styles generally have a softer tone Fs are punchier but harsher.
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