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Thread: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

  1. #51
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    I've noticed the word 'fancy' has cropped up quite a bit here.

    I dislike most things that are fancy. I am a man of plainer taste, but I admire good craftsmanship and artistry. Depends what you think 'great' looking means, I guess.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dagger Gordon View Post
    ...I dislike most things that are fancy. I am a man of plainer taste, but I admire good craftsmanship and artistry. Depends what you think 'great' looking means, I guess.
    I might agree with you if I understand what you are saying.
    I'm not much of a fan of ornamentation and tend to like things that are designed with a "form follows function" aesthetic. Great lines and shapes can be obscured when overly decorated with ornamentation. If that's what "fancy" means to you I agree. On the other hand, figured wood can be very attractive when used in building. Figured wood is fancy by definition (according to "wood people"), and I appreciate it as a design feature.

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    No ornamentation but I like a beautifully figured wood mandolin ! But, if it doesn't great I would get rid of it ! Has to sound good also !

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    My A9 is as plain as they come- but it sounds bloody good!
    Also, I love a minimalist looking instrument.

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  9. #55

    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Had 3 different Gibson F9s. Each had its own characteristics. My favorite mandolin is all beat up but plays and sounds fantastic. They are all pretty individual, maybe with the exception of Collings.

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  11. #56
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    No, they don't have to sound better. Better than what? The exact same build without the bling? I'm not really sure that most builders know what exactly they have made until they string it up, tune it up and start to play it up. I'm guessing that there might be a time or two where even though the best woods and craftsmanship were used that maybe it just didn't result in a great instrument. And vice versa. A simple build might produce the better sounding instrument. My Mid-Mo is about as plain (as far as ornamentation goes) but sounds great for Irish and Old Time.
    I was at a festival a few years back and a guy came over and we picked a few tunes. He offered to switch instruments so I said sure. Played a few and then realized I was now playing a 20K plus instrument. After i looked at the headstock. It was a very nice instrument!!! (Won't mention the builder). But was it worth ten times the cost of my instrument that he was now playing? I can't really say. Beauty is in the EAR of the beholder.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by sunburst View Post
    I might agree with you if I understand what you are saying.
    I'm not much of a fan of ornamentation and tend to like things that are designed with a "form follows function" aesthetic. Great lines and shapes can be obscured when overly decorated with ornamentation. If that's what "fancy" means to you I agree. On the other hand, figured wood can be very attractive when used in building. Figured wood is fancy by definition (according to "wood people"), and I appreciate it as a design feature.
    Beautiful naturally figured wood is indeed lovely. If that is defined as 'fancy' by wood people, then I certainly accept that, but I like it because it is natural. I'm in no doubt that wood can be beautiful.

    Fancy, to my mind (and perhaps being Scottish my understanding might be different from yours) suggests possibly over-ornamentation, gaudiness, flashiness, bling, etc, and I definitely dislike that in an instrument - indeed in anything.

    On the other hand the use of nicely figured wood in an instrument can look exceptionally good, in itself. Getting back to the original question, that may not necessarily sound better than plainer wood, but if it does then clearly you have a real winner.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    This is a picture of a mandola Jody Stecher won in an Ebay auction. He talks about it in his fine interview for MC in 2010.
    https://www.mandolincafe.com/news/uploads/jody-dola.jpg

    Jody's notes: "the mandola is something I won on an eBay auction. It was made in Vietnam and is quite big. It has a scale length of 18.5 inches so I can't use standard mandola strings, I have to go a bit lighter. It's gaudy as all get-out but has a beautiful tone and is louder than most mandolas."

    Jody is certainly not a character I would think of as 'fancy' at all. He describes this mandola as 'gaudy as all get-out', but it sounded great! A classic example of an instrument the owner didn't seem to like the look of much , but worth playing for the sound.

    Here's the full interview.

    https://www.mandolincafe.com/news/pu...s_001242.shtml
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    I had four H5 mandolas made in China a few years ago. Two with normal maple and two with flamed maple. There was no soubt whatsover that the flamed maple ones sounded better. Clearer.

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dagger Gordon View Post
    Fancy, to my mind (and perhaps being Scottish my understanding might be different from yours) suggests possibly over-ornamentation, gaudiness, flashiness, bling, etc, and I definitely dislike that in an instrument - indeed in anything.
    Ah yes - which brings us to another question: whether having an obviously expensive mandolin makes people think 'Let's see if he can play it?'. Like Dagger, I'm from Scotland, where understatement is king. I left a long time ago, but then the greatest of praise for a musician (or anything else) might be "He's no' bad", or "It'll Do". Sometimes this was followed by ".... but he'll never be as good as his faither" (Ugh!). "Awesome" isn't a word you hear a lot in Scotland, and turning up with an awesome looking mandolin might create some expectations What do you think?

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Being made of Wood, Identical looking mandolins can sound different.

    An observation of a friend, who sampled a lot of Eastman F's, in the Importer's warehouse..
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Obviously they don’t have to but many folks prefer pretty.

    I like Audey Ratliff’s approach, all are built the same sonically, bling is extra. I have 2 CountryBoys, A and F. Can’t hear the bling.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    If you take a look at Marla Fibish's grandfather's A Gibson, then it's a no. For my Eastman 514, it is pretty good looking with a beautiful flamed back but it took some trial and error with several sets of strings from different manufacturers to get it where I was satisfied with the sound. I did bite the bullet and put the TI 153 mittels on it and will never again use anything else.


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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by Davsay View Post
    For my Eastman 514...I did bite the bullet and put the TI 153 mittels on it and will never again use anything else.
    That's an interesting choice of string. I used to use the fiddle equivalent - steel core, chrome tape wound. The violin string is very bright and powerful but not excelling in subtlety, and they usually last till either the string rusts, or the chrome tape winding tears. What are the mandolin strings like?

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dagger Gordon View Post
    This is a picture of a mandola Jody Stecher won in an Ebay auction. He talks about it in his fine interview for MC in 2010.
    https://www.mandolincafe.com/news/uploads/jody-dola.jpg
    yeah, that's an Antoniotsai or Bruce Wei instrument, I forget which. I believe Jody is the only player I know of using one of those Vietnam-built bling machines in a professional context. Of course, to my eyes those things aren't appealing at all, despite all the fancy inlays.

    Bill Monroe, Marty Stuart and Andy Statman, I think, all proved that a mandolin doesn't have to look good to sound good. And part of the point of Dawg's Tone Poems projects was to demonstrate that a skillful player can get good tone out of even a cheap mandolin.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by mrmando View Post
    .......And part of the point of Dawg's Tone Poems projects was to demonstrate that a skillful player can get good tone out of even a cheap mandolin.
    Per the track listing, I don’t see a cheap mandolin on Tone Poems. Except maybe in comparison to the 2 Loars and a ‘25 Fern.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill McCall View Post
    Per the track listing, I don’t see a cheap mandolin on Tone Poems. Except maybe in comparison to the 2 Loars and a ‘25 Fern.
    The mandolins Dawg played on Tone Poems include an S.S. Stewart Snow Queen and a Hofner 545, neither of which will go down in history as expensive or highly sought after.

    Admittedly, I'd love to see a Tone Poems IV made exclusively with Regals and Kays and Recording Kings and Washburns and Harmonys and MidMos and so forth ... maybe a $500 limit on each individual instrument. Michael Daves has certainly proven there's a place in acoustic music for cheap instruments.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    I can make any mandolin sound bad.

    what makes a mandolin sound good is a combination of several things. The kind of woods used, structural integrity of the woods, the build (plate carving or pressing) and construction and finish application, the set up, and the skill of the player.

    If an mandolin is aesthetically pleasing to your eye may alter your perception of it's tone, very plain to very figured woods, instruments have sound ranges from great to bad. It's kind of like saying attractive people sing better than less attractive people. The two may be correlated but not caused.

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by maxr View Post
    Err - yes, but have you seen their Single Malt mandolin made from whisky casks

    https://www.fyldeguitars.com/sm-mandolin.html
    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    yes, that's a rather singular phenomenon, and they were never claiming better sound, rather more mojo, if you will.
    Plus, casks were not prominently used - the tops are made from washbacks (larch being better tonewood than oak, apparently).
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by maxr View Post
    Ah yes - which brings us to another question: whether having an obviously expensive mandolin makes people think 'Let's see if he can play it?'.
    After a degree of personal soul searching I have concluded that it is the person taking the expensive instrument out of its case that experiences the performance anxiety, due to the perceived expectations of the audience and/or other musicians. Those expectations, I have come to believe, don't amount to much.

    In a performance, you would be hard put to find anyone who knew which instrument was the mandolin, much less recognizing level of quality.

    A jam session may get some ooohs and aaahs, but not likely.

    In the normal course of things a recognizably expensive instrument is justly associated with some playing experience, by the simple fact that not many are willing to commit much money before knowing if they are going to really love it. And in many cases it takes some experience to appreciate and take advantage of the increment of tone and playability of the higher end instrument.

    The exception might be bluegrass, and really, those to whom it matters are more interested in brand names than evidence of a high cost. You pull out a Gibson mandolin, a Martin guitar, a Gibson banjo, and your fellow bluegrassers, some of them, will think: OK what's this player got?" Sort of like pearl handled six shooters in the old west I suppose. Or two sailboats on a lake. But I am willing to bet this is more or less limited to the bluegrass culture, and even there it is not everyone, but maybe a few here and there.

    I have played in some mandolin orchestras and I don't see much brand envy. There are performance expectations just by showing up, because the orchestra is so collaborative, everyone depending on everyone else holding up their end, I don't think it magnified by instrument quality. And the performance anxiety, reciprocally, is driven by not wanting to let the orchestra down.
    Last edited by JeffD; Jan-26-2021 at 11:07am.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    So two significant incidents related to a performance expectation I have had:

    In one it was a folk jam, popular folks songs and cowboy songs, and only two mandolins in the jam. I was playing my Big Muddy M-11, a very understated wonderful sounding flat top, and the other mandolin was an F-5 style. I think there might have been a little surprise when I held my own backing and taking a break on a few songs, because I think a bit more was expected of the other mandolinner.

    Another time at a kind of orthodox old time jam, and again two mandolins: me on the Big Muddy, and another fellow on a Gibson F-9. And it was kind of the reverse of the above experiences. As yet unheard I was accepted readily enough, while there was perceptible (but ultimately unfounded) concern that the F-9 was planning to bluegrass all over them.

    So it is hard to tell. And ultimately not a big factor, and confined to initial impressions, because once you are well known in a particular musical community, your playing and your personality will determine your acceptance a lot more than your instrument brand or quality.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    I have discovered that anyone who takes their playing seriously does a lot of practicing. For me, during normal times it is likely something like three, maybe sometimes four or five to one time spent practicing to time spent jamming or performing. Higher of course during this pestilence.

    So that means the overwhelming majority of times the fancy dancy instrument is out of its case it is only seen by me. And if I enjoy seeing it my hands, it was the right purchase.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    So here's something I just thought of - has mandolin development largely been driven by bluegrass and country players?

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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by maxr View Post
    So here's something I just thought of - has mandolin development largely been driven by bluegrass and country players?
    Recently, I'd say "largely," although there have also been innovations in mandolin amplification that may have been designed to meet the needs of rock musicians as well. The dominance of the carved (or pressed) top, f-hole mandolin is largely a response to musicians who want the "bluegrass sound" -- percussive "chop," strong attack with quicker decay, extended fretboard length. Not that these characteristics aren't sought by other types of pickers, but the pervasiveness of F-5 and A-50 clones on the market speaks to bluegrass/country orientation, IMHO.

    Classical mandolinists seem generally content with basically the same bowl-back designs as were made in the late 19th century; probably musicians playing Italian and other Mediterranean ethnic music as well. Those playing British Isles music seem to prefer oval-hole instruments, whether carved- or flat-top, and Gibson, Martin and others were building instruments of that style a century ago.

    One area where a particular style of music, Irish/Scottish/general "Celtic," has influenced mandolin family development is in the design and increased prevalence of larger instruments, "Irish bouzoukis" and other variants on the octave mandolin or mandola. I would say that this has occurred almost entirely in the last half century, though there are precursors dating back before that.

    The fact that Asian factories are producing thousands of mandolins based on the Gibson F-5, points to the recent identification of the mandolin with country and bluegrass music. Apparently, that's where the market is, and we can expect mandolin developers and builders to try to satisfy market demands.
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    Default Re: Do great looking mandolins have to sound better?

    Quote Originally Posted by maxr View Post
    So here's something I just thought of - has mandolin development largely been driven by bluegrass and country players?
    Certainly not country players. Country music has featured very little mandolin, especially compared to guitar, piano, pedal steel, and all the other Nashville ensemble in recent years. Mostly guitar before the whole Nashville thing came along.

    Bluegrass has always been much more mando-centric, almost entirely because of Bill Monroe, who played an instrument that was developed for classical mandolin players and for the mandolin ensembles of the day; an F5. The basic form of the F5; carved arched top and back with f-holes; has not changed significantly since and has become the dominant form in the marketplace. So as I see it, country and Bluegrass music have had virtually nothing to do with mandolin development, though Bluegrass has certainly been important to the mandolin's resurgence in popularity after falling into relative obscurity after the end of the 'mandolin boom' brought on my mandolin clubs, orchestras and so forth in the 19-teens.

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