New Duff

[Brian Ray]

Also, I have a bunch of recordings of my old Duff on my youtube channel. It's also the only mando I used on my CD, Mrs Maxwell.

Here's the old Duff in action with some of them wacky Blue Grass Boys... you'll need to skip over Hembree's intro (though it's always funny) to about 1:20.

[Mark Seale]

Nice one Brian. Although I'm disappointed to see I missed you. From the looks of it, that was at Central Market on Lamar, about a mile from my house!

[grassrootphilosopher]

Hey Olaf,

Paul retooled in late 2006... after taking calipers to Mike Compton's Gil, which is one hell of a mando. He then brought one of the new ones over to the States and had a bunch of folks fighting to buy it I had been looking for a new mando and Compton told me about the new Duff. I got on Paul's list on his recommendation.

Your X-braced sounds nice! It certainly does have a bit of "tub" to it. Interestingly different than mine.

Both of my Duffs are tone bars and really sound pretty similar. The old one might have a bit more crackle in the highs, and again, has some great age on it. The new one has more woof. To me, they both have the "Duff sound". His mandos have more "jangle" in the highs, that really respond well to feathery touch and hard trem. Whereas my Kimble's highs are hard and sharp and more "papery". I love 'em both.

Hope that makes some sense...

Brian

Hi Brian,

what you wrote makes a lot of sense.

Especially that Duff mandos have more "jangle". Mine sure does. Mine sounds really nice. Comparing it back to back with a reifinished Loar you wouldn´t hear an aproximately 90 k difference. Indeed it is not the Lloyd Loar sound. That would probably be on the "papery" side. I wouldn´t say that my mando sounds a bitt tubby. Tubbyness as going into the oval hole direction or pronounced X-braced direction to me sounds different. Of course you don´t hear a fraction of the instrument from that little youtube clip (the other instruments are a Beard resonator guitar, a no name 60ies German plywood bass and a ´73 Martin D-28 with somewhat reworked braces). I played really softly to not override the rest of the gang.

I´d love to play an A-5 or a newer F-5 (tone-bar) though. Thinking about modern makes I am quite taken by Adrian Minarovic´s HoGo mandolins. The one I played sounded really nice. I find Gils probably too dark, too bassy ... though I loved the allready mentioned ex-Compton #500 and the #502.