Loar signed A5's

[f5loar]

Hummmmm................. I have played the same Loar A5 twice.............. does that count as two?

[f5loar]

For an interesting story about this mystic Loar A5, here is a video done 6 years ago. It shows the A5 in it's original F5 case and being shown and played by several guys. Worth 8 mins. of your time to see it.

[DataNick]

So was the Griffith A5 "stolen" and kept by the thief for years? I thought that Tut Taylor acquired it from the sister of Mr. Griffith?

I'm confused by the story in the video, unless Griffith's sister was the wife of the thief?...somebody help me out on this...LOL!

[Jeff Mando]

I was confused by the video, also. As far as the historical timeline, that is. I enjoyed the video, itself.

[sgarrity]

The video is a fictional story. Classic Tutbro.

[Glassweb]

There was also a mando-viola (10 string) with an A style body. That may be where some of the confusion comes from. I think it's part of someones personal Loar collection.

i think Hank Risan has that one...

[f5loar]

I do know the Loar A5 shown in this video was for sale about the time this video was made. It was the 2nd time I had played the same Loar A5. The price I heard made me stutter and shake in disbelief. I was told to "go find another one" if I didn't like the price at which point I just passed out as if it were all a dream. One of the guys playing the Loar in the video is this same guy, also a well known fiddler. He toured with Charlie Louvin playing mandolin and singing tenor. Here is another video about the old man in the old, old house:

[Spruce]

The price I heard made me stutter and shake in disbelief.

I remember seeing an ad for #74003 in Mandolin World News in the 70's--for 10K.
This is when Loar F5s were going for around 7.5K....

[TEvans]

Whoever is playing it now, do they have any recordings they have used it on? I would love to hear more of it! All I know is a few videos, and the John Hartford albums it was recorded on.

[Ken Waltham]

I know Tom.. probably at the same time period it was offered to me as well. After I picked myself up, I passed.
One thing about it.. to me.. I wished it had been better taken care of. The pickguard should have never been taken off, and that would have kept a lot of marks off of it. The whole " be like Bill" thing damaged a lot of fine Loars, IMHO.

[Glassweb]

My friend Adam was offered the A5 from Tut himself in the early 70's for $2,500... true story!

[sgarrity]

Here's a few more for you. I seem to remember the advertised number somewhere around $345,000. I've longed for years to get to see this one up close and play it. Crossing my fingers I run across it out here some day....

[Jeff Mando]

My friend Adam was offered the A5 from Tut himself in the early 70's for $2,500... true story!

People forget what an unbelievable amount of money $2500 was in the early 70's..........

$50 bought you a running car......$100 bought you a nice car.

My late father told the story many times of having a cashiers check to buy our house in his suit pocket in the early 70's....BUT he had to cross the street from our bank to another bank to pay for the house and he was worried he would be robbed or hit by a car or lose the check or faint! before he made those few steps (with the cashiers check)!

[Spruce]

I remember seeing an ad for #74003 in Mandolin World News in the 70's--for 10K.
This is when Loar F5s were going for around 7.5K....

Do I have this right?
I just looked through all my issues of MWN, and can't find the ad...
I do know it was there, but am just curious as to whether or not I have the price correct?
If anyone runs across it, I'd sure love to see a scan....

[Josh Levine]

Wow what power and tone. Thanks for posting those videos.

[Jeff Mando]

Do I have this right?
I just looked through all my issues of MWN, and can't find the ad...
I do know it was there, but am just curious as to whether or not I have the price correct?
If anyone runs across it, I'd sure love to see a scan....

I've got some of those old ads, also, from other publications. I'll see if I can find one. Seems $2500 would have been right for a Loar in the early 70's, probably closer to $5-7K by the end of the 70's. David Grisman told me his first Loar cost $5K, I'm not sure what year that was. I believe Ricky Skaggs first Loar was bought in the mid 70's for around $2500, and it had "issues". Also, a 1959 Les Paul "Burst" was selling for $3K in the late 70's, early 80's, for comparison.

[sblock]

People forget what an unbelievable amount of money $2500 was in the early 70's..........

$50 bought you a running car......$100 bought you a nice car.

My late father told the story many times of having a cashiers check to buy our house in his suit pocket in the early 70's....BUT he had to cross the street from our bank to another bank to pay for the house and he was worried he would be robbed or hit by a car or lose the check or faint! before he made those few steps (with the cashiers check)!

I understand your point, but I think you exaggerate quite a bit. According to the CPI inflation calculator, $100 spent in 1970 corresponds to $619 today, in constant dollars -- a factor of 6.2 more. So $2,500 in 1970 would be $15,479 today. And $100 in 1970 would not tend to get you a very "nice" car, and certainly not a new one. But $2,5000 would buy you a very nice mandolin indeed, something like a new Ellis, or perhaps (but only if you got a great deal) a used Nugget, Dudenbostel, Monteleone, or Gilchrist -- but they did not exist then, of course. But it would not come even CLOSE to buying a Gibson Loar! The market for Loar-signed F5s is being driven by collectors, more so than players. By 1980, you could get a Loar of something around $8,000. It took off in the decade after that, I think.

[Glassweb]

People forget what an unbelievable amount of money $2500 was in the early 70's..........

shoot... even for me $2,500 wasn't that much money back in the 70's... maybe in the 1920's...

[j. condino]

I think that is the essence of the whole Loar foolishness these days. Expensive back then but still only approximating the price of a decent car, not a nice house in the suburbs like today. Heck, as a kid in the 70s, I could come close to making that amount of money working hard mowing lawns during the summer break. One of my friends did just that and bought a '59 Les Paul sunburst for around half that amount (the one he chopped up with a router to install a Floyd Rose around 1982!!!); as soon as I saved up $750 and bought a blonde dot neck 1959 es335 I took the rest of the summer off.

From the outside, now it seems like every old geezer who sold their camaro in 1978 for a Loar acts like anybody who works hard can get one but those days are long gone for the 99% of us....it drives me nuts that as a 50 year old I can't afford the cars and instruments I owned as a 16 year old!

[Billy Packard]

Roger Siminoff sold the 10 sting to Hank Risan who lives in Santa Cruz CA.

[f5loar]

$345,000 for a mandolin that ain't even got one of those fancy curly strap holders on it? What's this world coming too? And don't let those videos of my friend Patrick fool you on awesome tone from that A5. He could pull the same tone from a KM900 with a dead set of strings on it.

[Glassweb]

$345,000 for a mandolin that ain't even got one of those fancy curly strap holders on it? What's this world coming too? And don't let those videos of my friend Patrick fool you on awesome tone from that A5. He could pull the same tone from a KM900 with a dead set of strings on it.

heck Tom, don't be knocking those upper end Kentucky models... one of my students got a KM 1000 last year that was killer!

PS - Tom actually thinks pretty highly of the Kentucky line...

[sgarrity]

I get to hear Patrick play all the time. Have you heard him on his Vessel F5 Loar copy? Impressive!

[DataNick]

Wow what power and tone. Thanks for posting those videos.

As golfer Lee Trevino said to a golf geek admiring his clubs, etc...."it ain't the arrow, it's the Indian!"

Patrick Sauber sounds fantastic on just about anything he picks up in his hands...the A5 sounds mighty different in Tut Taylor's hands playing "Rough & Ready" on the Hartford album...just sayin...

[Jeff Mando]

From the outside, now it seems like every old geezer who sold their camaro in 1978 for a Loar acts like anybody who works hard can get one but those days are long gone for the 99% of us....it drives me nuts that as a 50 year old I can't afford the cars and instruments I owned as a 16 year old!

I feel the same way, not sure what the reasons are. At 16 I lived at home and had no rent or food costs, for one. Today my overhead is much higher. Overhead defined as the money I have to waste on other things before I can spend any on mandolins with a clear conscience! Good point about the summer job, one summer in the 70's I made about $2K and spent it all on a fancy schmancy stereo and I must say it was very impressive equipment at the time. I'm not sure if my father would have let me spend that kind of money on a used mandolin, even if it was the kind that Bill Monroe played. I don't think the term "vintage" had yet been coined. Translated and extrapolated to today's dollars -- even as an adult with years of work experience, there is no summer job that I know of that pays enough to buy a Loar ($150-175K). If there is let me know about it and I'll quit my job as a brain surgeon!!!!

Back to cars and guitars....in 1978 I owned a 66 Ford Mustang, 66 Bonneville, 60 Coupe de Ville, and a 68 de Ville convertible. None were "show" cars, but they were nice and were in the price range of what a college student who worked part-time at a record store could afford. (I think I paid $500 for the 60 Caddy) I also had a 50's Gibson ES-175 that cost me $250, a 60's Gibson Country Western acoustic that cost me $200 and a 1964 Ventures Mosrite that was $100. Maybe I was slightly ahead of the "vintage" thing or maybe I was just a shrewd shopper who checked the paper daily and went to pawn shops a lot. No amount of "shrewdness" will let you buy things today at those prices.....

My friend who owned a vintage guitar store says the difference between then and now is that there was plenty of "low hanging fruit" that everyone who was interested in had easy access to. Now, it is a business. He explained that a lot of what goes on in the vintage guitar world is exactly the same as in any other business -- people are looking to make a percentage on the "investment". You have X number of guitars you bought for this price and you sold them for this price and the difference is how you make your living....but for me that takes the love of guitars out of the equation, you might as well be talking tube socks or any other product at that point.....In other words, you buy a $3500 guitar and sell it for $4K and after expenses you make $350 or 10 percent on your money, you do that times however many guitars you sell in a month and hopefully you make a living. Back then, nobody was trying to make a living at it, just trying to find good instruments to play was enough of a goal......like about everything else in life, somewhere the rules got changed and nobody informed me of the change (or the rationale for doing so.....)

oops, that went a little long, didn't it?