Ricky Skaggs' mandolin(s) right before The New South 1975

[DataNick]

Cafe cognoscenti!

I'm curious as to what mandolin(s) Ricky Skaggs was playing in the Ralph Stanley/Country Gentlemen era right before he joined the New South in Nov 1975. The pictures below will confirm that he played some brand of F5 before he got his Loar shortly after joining the New South, but I wonder what brand(s) they were and what happened to them?

Ricky himself has stated that he had to "borrow" some local guy's F4 when he joined JD because at the time he didn't own a mandolin. Interested in this bit of history.

Thanks in advance for replying!

[Jeff Mando]

I clicked on the first picture 3 times to enlarge it and studied it with a magnifier, and the name is pretty clear, but I can't make all of it out. You might try. It looks like C. A. Brantice or E. A. Brantice -- ring any bells? Or could be Brantley or Blantley?

[RichieK]

Interesting question, but your date is off. I first saw him playing with JD, Tony and Bobby in early June, 1975 in a rinky dink bar in New Jersey. Flux had just joined them as the complete band. When they kicked off 'You Can Have Her' it just blew us away. We had seen Crowe since about 1971 and followed Ricky with Ralph and then The CG, but couldn't imagine how well they all meshed. Pretty sure he had the Loar with the exposed truss rod that week. A few of us followed them to a festival in Corinth, NY and he was looking to buy another mandolin that weekend too. Donny Eldreth's, maybe? Maybe my memory is off too.

[DataNick]

You're right Richie K...it was Nov 74' when he started with JD...Thanks Brotha!

Must have been quite a time...June 75' I was playing BBball with my varsity team in a summer league for High School BBall in Philly and musically Bluegrass might have well been on Pluto...LOL!

[DataNick]

I clicked on the first picture 3 times to enlarge it and studied it with a magnifier, and the name is pretty clear, but I can't make all of it out. You might try. It looks like C. A. Brantice or E. A. Brantice -- ring any bells? Or could be Brantley or Blantley?

Dunno, I was thinking C.A. Ward maybe, but it's not. Thanks for the reply Jeff!

[Ivan Kelsall]

I copied the pic.,rotated it ant-clockwise,enlarged it & made a 'snip' of the logo - see what you can make of it. Any larger & it becomes a tad unreadable - it's very like 'C.A Ward' - it''s almost certainly C.A 'something',
Ivan

[Mandoplumb]

Looks like too many letters to be ward. I wonder if other people are as obsessed with instruments as are mandolin players. I wait with baited breath to get the answer to questions like this, when I know it really doesn't matter except mandolin players got to know.

[Jim Hudson]

I know that Ricky bought one of the early Ellis mandolins, before Tom became "famous". When I was introduced to Tom I was told Ricky owned one of his mandos, but that was likely in the mid 80's. Clearly the mando in the pic is not an Ellis. I'm with ya Nick, Mandolins weren't even a blip on my radar in the mid 70's. So glad I finally saw the light. What's interesting is that Ricky Skaggs could blister the mandolin that way when he didn't even own one!

[Willie Poole]

Like a lot of us mandolin pickers I usually like to know what others are playing when I go to a show, it irks me to see a mandolin picker with the clip on tuner covering up the name on the peghead, or even those that have gouged the brand name out because they were angry with the company for not honoring the warranty, but of course I knew what he (Monroe) was playing... I have had quite a few people meet me back stage and want to see what I had in my hands while on stage...Maybe they just didn`t want to make a mistake and buy the same brand, I don`t know...

Willie

[Ivan Kelsall]

An intriguing thought - we know that there have been many wellk nown Czech. mandolin builders Furch / Lebeda / Kristufek etc.
Jeff Mando mentions ''C A Brantice'' as a possible name :- ''Brantice'' is a village in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic.'' Maybe a bit hard to image a Czech.mandolin in that era - but............... !,
Ivan

[Mandoplumb]

Willie I do the same thing. Public TV in my area has a program "Song of the Mountain" that features bluegrass and related music, you should see me trying different angles of looking at the TV to see the name on a mandolin that sounds good. In my previous post I wasn't pointing a finger at anyone else, I was commenting on how into mandolins we all are. At one point we had two mandolin players in our band that switched back and forth from guitars but were really mandolin players While traveling to a show the rest of the band, in their own words, would learn " more than they ever needed to know about mandolin" from our constant talk of mandolins.

[CES]

No guesses to add on the mando's origin, but agree with our obsession. I recently had the pleasure of visiting a local store that had a nice collection of Collings, Eastman, and a few Kentucky/Loar mandos, Huber, Deering, and Gold Tone banjos, and Collings, H and D, and Bourgois guitars. The MT2 I went there to check out had sold, and the MTs they had were very good mandos, but didn't offer me a significant upgrade from my Silverangel Econo, which I mentioned. This guy knew his stock very well, and let me play everything in the store, but had never heard of Silverangel, Kelly, or Kimble (the latter of which I'm hoping to check out in the next week or two at another location). Turns out he's primarily a banjo picker, lol...

[Willie Poole]

Mandoplumb....I get that same show every week and it always seemed to me that the cameraman didn`t like to show the peghead of the mandolins.....I do video tape the show so I can pause it when they do show the names.....I could never read the name on the mandolin being played by Doc Mercer on the Cumberland Highlanders Show so I e mailed him, he told me it was a Stiver, a good sounding one also...

Sorry to get off of the subject of what Rickey played in days gone by, I think Ivan nailed it though....

Willie

[f5loar]

One thing for sure from that blow up of the headstock is this ain't no foreign factory made F5 copy. It looks rather crude to me. For sure not a CE Ward of that era. Heck it may even be a mandolin someone handed Ricky backstage and he played it that one time so I doubt even Ricky remembers it. I've sure had my share of "one off" builders who wanted me to play their new creation on stage. Skaggs is one those that knows how to get tone on most any mandolin but once he got his first Loar, he seems to be happy with Loar era F5s. Currently he seems to be clinging to that restored "Pee Wee" 1922 Loar F5 and I will say it was one of the finest Loar's I've ever played (before it was restored).