My new Harley Benton electro mandolin is in the van - Wow!

[maxr]

Thomann (EU's biggest music retailer) have just topped the personalised sales experience by sending me my very own email to say my new Harley Benton electric mandolin is on it's way! I won't say I've been waiting a long time for it, but when I ordered it was listed at 95 Euros+shipping, and at shipping date it cost me 92 Euros+ - GBPEUR went my way for a change.

You can tell this will be a quality item. Just imagine the slightly damp and oaty smell of the cardboard delivery box, the inscrutable (to me) Cantonese figures stencilled on it, the squeak of the foam packing inserts, the light patina of rust on the genuine metal strings after weeks and weeks of sea voyage in a highly sought-after shipping container. And once I unbox it - Oh, the feel of genuine wood from a real tree, with some sort of lacquer on it, probably.

Buy I won't just rip the box open impatiently - no, I'll gently let it warm up in the house for a day before carefully slitting the vinyl tape and opening the box to the gentle breezes for another day, before exposing this treasure to the elements. But I won't play it just yet - no, the cricket season's not that far away, and I can't find my practise bat...

[Ray(T)]

Personally, in the UK’s climate, I’ve never seen any point in delaying opening a freshly delivered parcel but it’s up to you.

It would be interesting to hear a blow by blow account of your, shortly to come, trials and tribulations in paying the VAT/commission etc. I orderd a pedal just after brexit, received a delivery date and a notice to pay, paid immediately (well before the date), received a new delivery date, received another later date and the goods were delivered before the final date. A thoroughly unsatisfactory experience. To borrow a term oft used by an ex coleague, “Trying to get any sense out of the delivery firms is like talking to a bag of sprouts.”

[maxr]

Hi Ray: err, obviously my irony about unboxing stories isn't heavy enough

Maybe I've been lucky, but in the last few months I've had no problems or customs bills buying stuff from USA or Thomann. That stuff hasn't been of high value on each occasion (a $90 mando tailpiece, two Tone-Rites in separate consignments, music books etc from Elderly). Maybe i'm just lucky with my local Customs office. Thomann does so much business with UK that they might even declare the sale here so they charge Brits UK VAT rather than import duties - I know there is a Thomann UK entity. Perhaps a $5,000 mandolin from USA/mainland Europe would be different - I'm just lucky that I don't have $5,000 to spare, then...

[Ray(T)]

Hi Max. I’ve only bought a couple of things since brexit - a couple of Tonegards just prior to Tony stopping selling to the UK direct; purely because of changes in UK legislation, and a pedal from Thoman. Both of these attracted the attention of UK customs who leave the delivery firms to do their dirty work.

My complaint is that you simply get an email telling you how much you need to pay. In neither case was there any form of explanation as to how the sum they were asking for was calculated nor is there ever any way to contact them to ask.

Fortunately I bought my $5000 mandolins some years ago!

[maxr]

My gripe was also that some of the carriers (ParcelForce?) charged £8 to collect say a £4 customs duty. I've been lucky perhaps not to experience that recently. A few bigger Ebay sellers also seem to quote 'out of territory delivery' rates including all taxes and duties, so you can see the total end cost at the Shipping calculation stage. If the media is to be trusted (!), the current UK customs hassle is people being charged variable and sometimes apparently arbitrary rates of duty to get either gifts or their own property back from France. There appear to be two separate issues there - French customs duty and the VAT rules after Brexit. Until recently, UKGov proposed in some circumsrtances to charge yacht owners the VAT originally paid on their yacht a second time, if they brought it back from the EU within certain time periods - that was a Brexit mess, currently being resolved by the look of it. I'll just have to leave my yacht where it is in Cannes, then

[Ray(T)]

I only know two people with yachts. The first, a musician friend of mine (I think I can call him a musician - his main instrument used to be the banjo!) keeps it near Felixtowe and, from what he says, it seems to be something of a money pit; considering the use he gets out of it. The second, his son, runs a yacht chartering business although where and to who he pays his taxes to is anbody’s guess. He had to have his boat shipped back to Southampton from Figi at the beginning of the plague. He sold that one and bought a bigger one somewhere in Turkey. The last I heard, it was parked somewhere in the Canaries. I’ll stick with the motorhome. C’est la vie.

[maxr]

Yes - not for nothing is owning a yacht characterised as 'like standing under a cold shower tearing up £20 notes'. I love sailing, but my cunning plan (not yet realised in full) is to do it one someone else's boat.

[urobouros]

The two happiest days of boat ownership are the day you buy it & the day you sell it! Hopefully the mandolin is a little easier to enjoy

[maxr]

The two happiest days of boat ownership are the day you buy it & the day you sell it! Hopefully the mandolin is a little easier to enjoy

This Forum suggests that the happiest days of mandolin ownerhip are when you buy it, and each tme you buy the next one

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hey, Max -

Has the beagle landed yet? We're living and dying to see it.

[maxr]

Well, it's due to land tomorrow, about 2 hours after I leave here for 10 days. Jnr. is here to take delivery, so it should be well played in after a few days connected to his Marshall JTM and a 4 x12 cab

[Charlie Bernstein]

Well, it's due to land tomorrow, about 2 hours after I leave here for 10 days. Jnr. is here to take delivery, so it should be well played in after a few days connected to his Marshall JTM and a 4 x12 cab

With a mando he needs a stack.

[maxr]

Shhh! He has 3 x 4 x 12 cabs, 2 x Marshall heads and a vintage Laney guitar 100 head - oh, and I forgot the Twin Reverb, the Ampeg bass combo, and the Leslie amp and cabinet he bought for no good reason I can see. There's usually a black '76 Les Paul Custom on the other end of the lead, but he doesn't play a lot of bluegrass. I've gone the other way, with a Roland Cube 15 (cheap, used, and bulletproof), a bass Micro Cube, and a Crate 120 watt acoustic combo that's almost unused 'cos it's too damn heavy - one of those amps with a transformer made of concrete or something. My current idea is instrument in one hand, amp in the other

[Ray(T)]

So, no problems with Customs and Excise then?

Ah, the days of big, heavy, gear! The sound hire outfit I used to work with occasionally had a pair of bass bins with 18” drivers. Trouble was, from the front, they were six feet square. Fortunately, they had wheels on the back and you could pile them high with horns and other gear and push them out of the venue. I’ll never forget the early hours of one windy night when I parked one on a verandah next to the van and was going back for the other when the wind took it and the whole pile ended up in a flower bed.

[maxr]

Well, 'the boy' (20s, 6'2") tells me that the psychedelic metal he plays (School of early Hawkwind etc) is a part of the metal 'retro' market, where late 60s/early 70s gear and a Les Paul Custom is required for stage credibility. He says you're not allowed to fake it and have empty Marshall cabs with a Mesa Boogie combo behind the end one - that's acceptable for mainstream metal bands, but the purists don't 'cheat' Enthusiasts are apparently also into lowfi recording, e.g. they'll happily buy cassette recordings (eh?). One of the bands he knows recorded an album using vintage amps and running a 70s mixing desk into the digital state of the art studio desk. They spent a week trying to fix blown up gear, those of us who were there wouldn't be surprised...

[maxr]

Sorry to start a thread and leave it hanging, but this mando was a long time coming, and I was away when it came. So...what sort of solid electric mandolin do you get for 93 Euros? I've owned a bunch of solid guitars, and I have to say this thing is great value at that price - if it cost 200 Euros (as some very similar instruments do) it would still be a good deal. Finish and fit is standard 2000's Chinese 'budget to medium price' quality, which is to say absolutely fine - very few rough edges, everything fits and works. The maple style neck is quite chunky but not beyond 'chunky average' for a mandolin, and it has a nice non sticky matt finish. The electrics are a bit cheap cheerful and noisy, I have a pair of £7 (!) 4 wire dual blade humbucker Strat style pickups to replace those with. Tuners are mini closed back guitar style which work OK, as they do on most budget to medium price Chinese guitars. The body is bound neatly (more so than most basic model 2000s Gibson Les Pauls I've seen), and despite the big headstock it's well balanced, because the body is one heavy piece of treewood. The Sunburst is unsubtle but well sprayed, what do you want for 93 Euros Be prepared to fight the out-of-the-box action - but being a solid electric with a chunky 4 saddle bridge/tailpiece, that's no problem - whiz the saddles down to the same height as my acoustic mandos with the Allen key provided. The saddles look like they're a bit at an angle, but the strings line up with the fingerboard edges, so who cares. Each pair of strings terminates at the ball end into one hole in the bridge - well, if it works...You could of course string this as a 4 by leaving half the strings off. So, off we go - very playable, long sustain, the nut is too high (we can fix that).The fingerboard feels flat, fret edges sit on top of the binding and you can feel them, strings claim to be GHS, feel OK, and don't rattle with the action down even out the box (Allen key provided for the truss rod). As a relative mando beginner I pick between the pickups, that's my fault 'cos I haven't yet learned to pick shallower so as not to hit them. The body's too wide to fit in one mando gig bag I have, but it's a perfect fit in a redundant Eastman 305 bag (got a hard case) that's getting dusty in the cupboard.

Conclusion - a steal at 93 Euros, great for almost silent (or headphone) practice once you've adjusted the action. Negatives - a bit heavy, but it's well balanced. Bridge saddle height screws may catch your wrist, but you could grind the protruding tops down. I hope changing the pickups to humbucking will improve the electric sound (more later once it's done).