Stop Me Before I 'Dola 'Gain!

I've been playing mandola since I first bought my Flatiron 1SH mandola new back in the '80s.

Since then, I've picked up various mandolin-family instruments over the years. None of the other non-mandola instruments has lasted more than 10 years in the herd, although I did buy a mandolin recently (a Mix carbon fiber oval hole with a scroll) which has convinced me to sell off quite a few mandolins, once I got the fretwork and action sorted. Additionally, I got to play a Flatiron-style pancake OM in the last few months which has me thinkijg of selling off the adequate OMs in the herd as well.

My focus, though, has always been mandola.

I recently realized that all the mandolas in the "sell" corral are non-Flatirons.

And, with my having recently finished cleaning up and doing some seam work on an early '81 Flatiron mandola I picked up cheap a while ago, and dialing in its action at the bridge, I put it in the keep section... and saw that I have the one Mix mandolin...

...and five different Flatiron mandolas.

Five.

And I still periodically search to see if any are currently on the market.

I love how they play, and how they sound, but really?

Granted, they work very well for acoustic rock, jazz chord-melody, and boss's nova. They're all from different years and in different styles (although I also notice that none have binding or soundhole rosette, so clearly my tastes run to plainness). Additionally, one of them is currently strung as an OM, which works surprisingly well and staves off the purchase of that Flatiron-style OM.

Still, five Flatiron mandolas is a lot... right?

Dude. You still don't have every day of the week covered, and you have one doing double duty - that means you have room for 3 more, right? You could start a Mandola of the Day social group. Also, if you're really serious about pancakes, you don't want to be stuck with just a short stack, eh? :)

Explorer, if you are looking for folks to "stop" or caution you about obtaining yet another mandola, you are in entirely the wrong place.

I just realized I have 4 mandolas myself...have to catch up!

Mandola Fever! beats the hell out of Corona...

Well, you need a carved-top mandola with f-holes, and you need a bowl-back. I love "pancakes" too, but I don't wanta buy an IHOP... Five Flatties seems sufficient.

I have 'way too many instruments, but one of the rationalizations I lean on, is that they're almost all different. I do have a couple quite similar acoustic steel-string guitars, and a couple resonator "bluegrass style" banjos, but otherwise my accumulation is heterogenous. Recently I've actually weeded out some of the "redundant," trading one of two Martin D guitars, and one of two Martin soprano ukuleles, on instruments for which I had no equivalents (like a Stahl mando-bass).

So my mandola lineup now is one Sobell "long scale," one Stahl made by the Larsons, and one Washburn bowl-back, pre-1900. Also a 5-course fanned-fret mandolin/dola hybrid, made by a local luthier. I traded my Eastman MDA-615 'cause I seldom had it out of its case.

We all like what we like, so assembling the world's largest collection of Flatiron mandolas, may not be my ambition, but then again, why not?