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  #31  
Old 06-24-2009, 08:01 PM
fatt-dad fatt-dad is offline
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for 2 grand you can likely have a builder make you an a-style f-hole mandolin with the nut width you want. Send Larry Muth an email and see what his wait time is running (google him and check out his web page).

I love my '84 Flatiron, love the Collings (I think it's the MT), which comes in a wide nut version, and think the Gibson A9s are great too. The A9 on the secondary market can often be found for under 1 1/2 large.

Had a Breedlove KO (oval hole), but didn't like the projection.

YMMV

f-d
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  #32  
Old 06-25-2009, 11:31 AM
Joe Mendel Joe Mendel is offline
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There are a lot of choices for two grand, Collings, Breedlove, Weber, Summit. Especially if you find a used one. Play a bunch of them & keep in mind that a good set up is critical for a mandolin to sound & play it's best.
Joe
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  #33  
Old 06-25-2009, 03:45 PM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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One of the great advantages of this modern Internet age is the wealth of information that's almost instantly available at your fingertips. But one of the great DIS-advantages of this modern Internet age is ALSO that same wealth of information.

Daryl, ordering a custom-made mandolin at this stage, in order to get a wider fingerboard or for any other reason, would be a bad move for you to make. That's something that you should wait to do until you've been playing four or five years, if then.

I've ordered plenty of custom guitars and custom mountain dulcimers, but only one custom mandolin. It was from Collings, which makes the most consistently great-sounding mandolins on the market.

Well, when it finally arrived, it was the only mediocre-sounding Collings mandolin I've ever encountered. I experimented with setup, changed out the tailpiece, tried different brands and alloys of strings, and in the end had to accept that it wasn't going to work out for me.

With a custom instrument you can't pick it out and try it before money changes hands, like you can with an instrument in a music store.

Regarding mandolin neck width, I find complaints come mainly from two groups of people: the truly huge among us who have fingers the size of kielbasas, and from guitarplayers who pick up and dink around on mandolin a little bit but who couldn't be called serious players.

The really big Paul Bunyan-sized guys have a legitimate complaint, but most of the casual players I've met who've griped about the width of mandolin fretboards have never learned much proper mandolin technique. There are correct and incorrect ways to hold the mandolin neck in your left hand, and they directly affect how mobile and agile your fingers will be on the fretboard.

Ideally, your left thumb should be supporting the neck, leaving your fingers free to dash up and down the frets. (Which is why so many mandolinists love those old V-shaped Gibson mandolin necks, since they're ideal for this.)

If your left thumb is fully visible and the mandolin neck is nestled in the hollow of your palm between the meat at the base of your thumb and the beginnings of the knuckles of your fingers, you've effectively crippled yourself in terms of manual dexterity on the instrument.

In other words, the fingers of the left hand need to be arched above the fretboard to a greater degree than they need to be on a guitar. If you use a guitar approach, you'll limit yourself fairly severely.

More to the point, unless less you have unusually thick fingers, the width at the nut of most mandolins is just fine for most people when they've got their fingers arched correctly.

So my original advice to you stands: you've found a new mandolin that sounds good to your ears and which you can afford, so start with that one. Then as you become more accomplished as a mandolinplayer, you can start discovering what your preferences for the instrument might be.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller
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  #34  
Old 06-25-2009, 05:42 PM
darylcrisp darylcrisp is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wade Hampton View Post
One of the great advantages of this modern Internet age is the wealth of information that's almost instantly available at your fingertips. But one of the great DIS-advantages of this modern Internet age is ALSO that same wealth of information.

Daryl, ordering a custom-made mandolin at this stage, in order to get a wider fingerboard or for any other reason, would be a bad move for you to make. That's something that you should wait to do until you've been playing four or five years, if then.

I've ordered plenty of custom guitars and custom mountain dulcimers, but only one custom mandolin. It was from Collings, which makes the most consistently great-sounding mandolins on the market.

Well, when it finally arrived, it was the only mediocre-sounding Collings mandolin I've ever encountered. I experimented with setup, changed out the tailpiece, tried different brands and alloys of strings, and in the end had to accept that it wasn't going to work out for me.

With a custom instrument you can't pick it out and try it before money changes hands, like you can with an instrument in a music store.

Regarding mandolin neck width, I find complaints come mainly from two groups of people: the truly huge among us who have fingers the size of kielbasas, and from guitarplayers who pick up and dink around on mandolin a little bit but who couldn't be called serious players.

The really big Paul Bunyan-sized guys have a legitimate complaint, but most of the casual players I've met who've griped about the width of mandolin fretboards have never learned much proper mandolin technique. There are correct and incorrect ways to hold the mandolin neck in your left hand, and they directly affect how mobile and agile your fingers will be on the fretboard.

Ideally, your left thumb should be supporting the neck, leaving your fingers free to dash up and down the frets. (Which is why so many mandolinists love those old V-shaped Gibson mandolin necks, since they're ideal for this.)

If your left thumb is fully visible and the mandolin neck is nestled in the hollow of your palm between the meat at the base of your thumb and the beginnings of the knuckles of your fingers, you've effectively crippled yourself in terms of manual dexterity on the instrument.

In other words, the fingers of the left hand need to be arched above the fretboard to a greater degree than they need to be on a guitar. If you use a guitar approach, you'll limit yourself fairly severely.

More to the point, unless less you have unusually thick fingers, the width at the nut of most mandolins is just fine for most people when they've got their fingers arched correctly.

So my original advice to you stands: you've found a new mandolin that sounds good to your ears and which you can afford, so start with that one. Then as you become more accomplished as a mandolinplayer, you can start discovering what your preferences for the instrument might be.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

Yep Wade
All that makes perfect sense, thanks for sticking it here for me to see and read. I see exactly what you are talking about.

Daryl
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