Quote:
Originally Posted by norseman
Good food for thought. Thanks for sharing your perspective. I'm very much in an exploratory mode at this point.
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If you're open to small one man shops I can heartily recommend
Tom "TJ" Jessen. I have commissioned two custom builds from him over the years, one is a 10 string mandocello. I paid $3000 for it (included shipping and custom cedar case). An equivalent Weber or Gibson would have been over $10 k at the time. I have 3 other instruments he's built, one of which is a 10 string mandola.
Another great builder is
Joe Mendel. He's been building a long time, is well respected and a real nice guy too. Like TJ he also flies under the radar of the factory instrument buying masses.
Two fellow northwesterners,
Austin Clark and
Andrew Mowry are two amazing builders who take things to a higher level. You'll pay more for their work but worth every penny. I've spent many hours playing their exquisitely built mandolins, mandolas and guitar-bodied octave mandos when I see them both every year at Wintergrass.
You are wading into deep waters though. Once you spend some time with quality hand built instruments you may not be content with the lower end factory-built Asian imports anymore.