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Weber's a much superior instrument, hand-carved, top-notch US manufacture. MK's are passable Asian-made mandolins, emphasizing attractive ornamentation over hand-work. The use of mahogany rather...

Try the Civil War version:

"Let us pause our game of poker, take our tin cups in our hand,
While we all stand around the cook-tent door --
Where dried mummies of hard crackers are handed to each...

Lots of vintage instruction books are labeled as the "XXX Method for the Mandolin." Usually refers to the musician/teacher who had them printed.

Me too. Mine needed a headstock repair, and a neck re-set. I had a carbon fiber bar installed in the neck, which had warped enough to make the action super-high. When the tech pulled the fretboard...

From the catalog pic of the Style C in Longworth's Martin book, they came with "cloud" tailpiece covers, engraved. Can't make out the engraving pattern from the small pic. Reproduction "cloud"...

Museum of the Mountain Dulcimer in Hindman is now "Museum of Soggy Splintered Wood," or nearly, I'm told.

Well, perhaps I should be careful; 'tis not my Cafe role to give etiquette tips (that's the moderators' job). However, I sometimes wonder if we get a little carried away by our own expertise, and...

Crack's still visible, but to me that's "instrument history," not a defect, once repaired. Absolutely beautiful instrument! If you can dig up one of those "cloud" tailpiece covers (or if Jake'll...

We have a tendency to get a bit facetious in responding to what I'm sure is a serious inquiry from someone who doesn't know a lot about mandolins, but has heard of Bill Monroe and Gibson and thinks...

Quick glance at current ads shows a range from $1,850 for a used black-top at Guitar Center, to $6,300 for a snake-head on Reverb. Most of the paddle-heads, like yours are within shouting distance...

J R, get back to us and tell us where on the string the breaks occur: at the tuning peg, at the nut, at the bridge, at the tailpiece, or all over the place.

Then we can respond more intelligently...

Not on a fiddle. Proper question: "Is there any additional money in second position?"

And yet we all are familiar with Monroe's Mule Spinner Blues, right?

Or did I get that wrong...?

Again consulting Longworth's book, he shows 39 Model 6a mandolins made between 1903 and 1920. Here's what Longworth wrote about these instruments:

There were quite a few style 6a mandolins made. ...

I'm guessing Supertone, like this one Jake Wildwood shows. Supertone was a label used by Sears Roebuck for catalog sales of instruments, often made by the major Chicago makers like Regal.

Just a...

Well, I've had good experience with Bernie Lehmann at Lehmann Stringed Instruments here in Rochester. Basically, he builds guitars, but he's done quite a bit of work on mandolins (built my...

I have a Holdrio Piccolo "pocket" mandolin. Price was right: my great-aunt gave it to me. Top's scuffed up, but has some fun quasi-Ethiopian marquetry on it.

Mine's German-made, but US-labeled,...

Wonder where the Handel tuners went? The seller says they replaced "50-year old" ones, but the Handels would have been closer to 100 years old. Maybe the guy who did the F-5 conversion kept 'em.

On the "Larson sound" question: my Stahl mandola, pretty clearly Larson-made, has a real bass emphasis. Hard to ID the body wood, due to the very dark finish, but I'm guessing "curly mahogany" for...

These guitar-shaped mandolins are often called "mandolinettos." The prison-labor attribution is believable, but the inmate would have had to obtain the tuners and tailpiece commercially; since I...

Eight-string ukuleles are often called "taropatches." The 12-string mandolin, or "mandriola," is often found in this country made by Oscar Schmidt in NJ; check that inlay to see if it's not "O S." ...

There could be some relation to the "Platonic form" of an object, that somehow exists apart from the physical manifestation, but which the physical object "participates in" to some extent, allowing...

You have a real rarity; per Longworth's book, only 106 Style 6 mandolins were made over 25 years, 1896-1921. I think you should contact a vintage instrument dealer, and talk about what kind of deal...

Here's a fairly old thread on Vega Style K's.

Style K was a basic-level Vega instrument, no tone ring. It's not a "banjolele," if it's set up for eight strings; it's a mandolin banjo. On the...

Yeah, yeah, but when is an instrument, originally made by Gibson, no longer eligible to be advertised as such??

There are thousands of "Gibson" 5-string banjos, that started out as tenors, or...