Please talk about your experience with the Mandola.

[GeoMandoAlex]

Excellent...very well done.

[George Henry]

I saw an as new Eastman MDA-815 sitting on a wall at GC. I had never tried playing a mandola, but knew I could take it back if we didn't bond. I didn't take it back. After two years it has become a useful member of my axe arsenal, sharing equal time with my old Gibson A. I have found the dola to be more useful than an octave because it fits my hand and I can actually play like I want. It offers more sustain than the mando and more projection than an octave.
I have not attempted to learn the dola thoroughly. I simply use it as a musical tool where it fits. And it is useful.
I did rid myself of my beautiful Weber Gallatin octave because I had difficulty with hand reach. In contrast, the dola feels perfectly comfortable.

[RBMB]

You can hear me play Mandola on The Rocky Road to Dublin. (See my post.) It is the first instrument played and continues throughout the video.

I purchased my Mandola years ago and struggled to play it because of the lack of an E string. I also found it awkward on many mandolin tunes in D without using a capo on the 2nd fret.

I posted on the Cafe a few months ago and asked for help. A few people suggested using the A string for the high A on the treble clef. In other words, the A string would be played for the note you normally play at the 5th fret of the high E string on a guitar or mandolin. This made a huge difference for my ability to play. I set up Musicscore to tab out tunes using this method and it is very helpful.

[mando-bob]

I bought my first mandola in the nineties, pretty soon after starting to play mandolin. I upgraded over the years from Gibson H2, Lebeda H4, Flatbush A5 style to a very nice L. Smart H5. It's a beautiful instrument with an awesome sound. But to be true, it does not get used very much. I use it on recordings where I think it fits - that's all. Play mandolin every day but mandola five times a year. What a shame.

Here are two vids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpV2kP8UFqE




https://youtu.be/iMacJNn3IOk

[tmsweeney]

Robert that Smart mandola sounds fantastic, nice playing too!

[mando-bob]

Hey, thank you very much. Yes, it's an awesome instrument. Lawrence Smart is a highly reguarded luthier. And I was lucky years ago to find it at Elderly at a reasonable price.

[pheffernan]

Hey, thank you very much. Yes, it's an awesome instrument. Lawrence Smart is a highly reguarded luthier. And I was lucky years ago to find it at Elderly at a reasonable price.

Those years seem to have passed. Lawrence has a used A-style mandola in the classifieds for $5500:

https://www.mandolincafe.com/ads/156111#156111

And when I asked him a year ago about an F-style mandola, the figure I heard was $12K.