I first heard of Ben Wilcox in the early 2000's while browsing the Cafe' and was always impressed with his work, especially with how young he was at the time. I was particularly fond of his humility, a trait that I find lacking in a lot of people these days, myself included. Like many young builders that get a reputation for quality and value early on, he became swamped with orders and all that can go right and wrong when that happens. Ben is a long standing member of the Cafe' community, but you will rarely find him hawking pics of his work in progress or even finished work. If you like, you can even check back to a particularly nasty incident involving some people that used to frequent here a lot but I have not heard from in some time. There was some warranty issue involving what looked like water damage to me, to be honest I don't really remember the whole story, but Ben took the high road and ended up replacing the mandolin (an F5) at no cost and quietly took care of the problem. There was no drama on his end posted on this message board and he handled the situation with amazing grace, dignity and humility IMO. I never forgot that and when I thought about a new build, I decided to look into what was going on with Ben and mandolins currently. Some 10 odd years later, I find he is quietly still plugging away in his shop located in Delaware, OH making mandolins with the aid of some modern machinery and coming up with some innovative improvements as well.
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