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It was a great, if quite hot, day, and it was great to remember Bill. It was also great to meet you, Jim, and sorry about introducing you to the Ellis. If you know Steve Smith long enough, it'll...

I play a 23" scale length Herb Taylor bouzouki (specifically this one) tuned GDAD with all unison strings in trad sessions all the time. Works great! As for not having a 'traditional bouzouki sound'...

Hello to all in CBOM world! I also posted this over in the workshops/camps topic, but I thought I'd mention it here too: Zoukology (not to be confused with Zoukfest), the informal, large end of the...

Hi, everybody! Zoukology (not to be confused with Zoukfest), the informal, large end of the mandolin-family themed camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is going ahead for 2022. We'll be getting together...

I've had similar experiences going from the EXPs, which were my standard for years, to XTs. I had stocked up enough on EXPs back when I was gigging all the time (before the XTs were even announced)...

Awesome! Those two are the most similar anyway, so well done!

I recently realized that I had a significant number of mandolins in the house, what with the addition of my new Ellis, and I thought it'd be fun to do a sort-of blind 'taste-test' or shootout, so I...

So a mandobass is the historical instrument built by Gibson in the 19-teens (i think I’m recalling that correctly?) as the bass member for mandolin orchestras, tuned like an actual double bass....

Ah, this is great! We put together an arrangement of this in my trio for mandolin, mandola, and bass-mandolin (different from a mandobass). So much fun to play!

Here's a very quick and dirty recording, but I think it's enough to show how great this thing is.
https://soundcloud.com/plamadude30k/ellis524

The tone is so clean and smooth, and I can hear (and...

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She's a beauty, that's for sure. Recording coming.

What I've been told is that sometimes, under the right (or is that wrong?) circumstances, you can crack/spiderweb the finish if there's too quick a thermal change. I'm hoping this will be my mandolin...

I'm about to go into a zoom meeting until at least 4:30. The case is sitting out on my desk taunting me.

Tom, remember when I told you at Steve's camp that I'd be ordering from you? I didn't expect it to happen so soon! Steve says I ought to wait. It's ok, I've got lots of work to do, it'll be a great...

My fiancee will be taking over the Old Wave, so it'll get plenty of play still. It's a big upgrade over her old army-navy style Flatiron with some separation at the seams.

EDIT: It just arrived....

After 16 years long years of hard playing on my beloved Old Wave A5, I'm finally upgrading to my dream mandolin-an Ellis Twin-Point Special. UPS tracking says it's on the truck RIGHT NOW, and I...

Love these two. Their album is fantastic, and Kinnaris is mind-blowing.

I'm saving right now for essentially that, but it's going to take a while. There's two reasons:
1. My primary instrument is aging-the top is sinking and I'm worried about its long-term stability....

Hey everybody out there in CBOM-land! Since the demise of Zoukfest, there has been a dearth of gathering points and focused instructional time for the larger members of the mandolin family,...

I don't know anything about the second, but the first looks something like Herb Taylor's experimental low-tension bridge. He's put together a few of those instruments-at least three to my knowledge,...

We're aiming to be somewhat smaller in size and scope and a little more causal and intimate than ZoukFest was, at least in our first year. If it seems to be more popular, we might be able to expand...

I don't see why not. Several of us play the mandola too.

Hah! Good catch, thanks! It is, indeed, scheduled for 2019. Though I suppose we don't want to rule out the time traveling demographic :).

Hey there, everybody in ZoukWorld! For the whimsical Zoukophile or the moderately serious Zoukologist, we are planning a somewhat informal extended weekend of fun, frivolity (& learning if we get...

The first thing that comes to mind is a bluetooth page turner for my ipad. I can't even begin to express how frustrating it was trying to turn pages by hand while in the middle of a set

The next...