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Tom Middleton at Local Music 801-539-1439

My apologies if I ramble somewhat, but my experience comes from 50+ years experience of playing guitars and some extremely high end ones.

I was fortunate in having a very successful career which...

There's a Contact link on the bottom of every page on this entire site. Plus, you can PM the Mandolin Cafe account through the forum.

Those resources have always been separate and are not related in any fashion other than they appear under the same domain name. They do not share databases, passwords, permission to use, etc. and...

didn't see this posted yet, good stuff


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHBmiOJ_pPs

My apologies if someone has already mentioned this on the board somewhere but I wanted to post a link as I just discovered it last night. Super excited to see this one. For those of you who have...

Rarely are tuning machines the culprit if your instrument goes out of tune. In my experience, the biggest factor is environment: Relative humidity, and temperature.

Also, as a matter of physics, mandolin strings have a relatively short vibrating length. Thus relatively small changes in temperature, top deflection, etc, have bigger effect compared to a banjo.

Ya, what everyone else said, but...

It doesn't "need" tuning, it's not like "how often should I change my car's motor oil?" :)

When you pick it up in the morning after a cold night, it will...

Here's a helpful image I found from a 7 year old thread:
https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=143222&d=1454259948

I confess that up to a few minutes ago, I wouldn't have...

I own Elkhorn A5 #55 which I bought here on the classifieds about two months ago and can tell you the build quality is very high. As you point out it comes down to the feel and the sound and that's...

The 2 point Smart for a few more $$ is quite sweet.

The rolling curl in the one-piece back of that Smart mandolin would swing it for me!

My 2 cents: That Lawrence Smart A5 is likely to be fantastic and the price is absurdly good. In my experience with Greg Proulx, he only ever has very nice instruments and he's a great guy to deal...

I don't think you can go wrong with any of the wonderful mandolins you mentioned.

If it were me, my first move would be to get more pictures and a sound file of the Smart.

If you can't get a chance to play before you buy, a used MT or MT2 from a shop that does setup work, or used from a player on the ad boards here, has two major advantages. Collings is super...

All the mandolins you mentioned are high quality instruments. There are more Collings and Pavas in circulation and those names draw immediate approval. But, both Elkhorn and Smart have excellent...

Having owned a Collings and a Pava, I can tell you that I’m skeptical that there is better build quality out there. They were both pretty flawlessly constructed mandolins. That said, there are...