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Thread: Q Mandolins

  1. #1
    ************** Caleb's Avatar
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    Default Q Mandolins

    https://www.qguitars.com/mandolins

    ^^^ A couple weeks ago I went out to the big Dallas Guitar Show and stopped by this fellow's booth. I didn't play any of his instruments, but everything he had there looked great. I found his designs to be original and unique.

    Anyway, just a heads up if you're looking for something different from an indie builder.
    ...

  2. #2
    Registered User withfoam's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    Interesting approach to the neck with no truss rod and inlaying carbon fiber rods.

  3. #3
    Administrator Mandolin Cafe's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    Interesting.

    Appears to be a disciple of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. From the web site of the builder:

    "CNC machines can go suck it when it comes to acoustic instruments. If the intent is to put out 1000 disposable pens per hour then fine. Push the button and buy your yacht Mr. Moneybags. To me, musical instruments are not soulless commodities to be sold for the purpose of making the a corporate entity millions of dollars. Music has this primal power to emotionally realign human behavior. It can change your emotions, enhance your emotions, make you feel closer to another person, so on and so forth. In the acoustic world, a lot of care must be taken to ensure the instrument is up to that task. A luthier must listen to the wood with his/her ears, feel it with in his/her hands, and make constructive decisions based on his gut instincts. There is a poetry in this relationship between man and tree that I try to preserve by hand crafting each instrument. Basically, I don’t want to sell anyone a product with my name on it if it just flew out of a robot’s ass end. Every instrument that comes out of my garage is hand made and painstakingly tailored to have a full and soulful sound."

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  5. #4
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    Quote Originally Posted by withfoam View Post
    Interesting approach to the neck with no truss rod and inlaying carbon fiber rods.
    Also interesting approach to the scroll. He's turned a mandolin with a scroll into a two pointer.

  6. #5
    ************** Caleb's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    Quote Originally Posted by Mandolin Cafe View Post
    Interesting.

    Appears to be a disciple of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. From the web site of the builder:

    "CNC machines can go suck it when it comes to acoustic instruments. If the intent is to put out 1000 disposable pens per hour then fine. Push the button and buy your yacht Mr. Moneybags. To me, musical instruments are not soulless commodities to be sold for the purpose of making the a corporate entity millions of dollars. Music has this primal power to emotionally realign human behavior. It can change your emotions, enhance your emotions, make you feel closer to another person, so on and so forth. In the acoustic world, a lot of care must be taken to ensure the instrument is up to that task. A luthier must listen to the wood with his/her ears, feel it with in his/her hands, and make constructive decisions based on his gut instincts. There is a poetry in this relationship between man and tree that I try to preserve by hand crafting each instrument. Basically, I don’t want to sell anyone a product with my name on it if it just flew out of a robot’s ass end. Every instrument that comes out of my garage is hand made and painstakingly tailored to have a full and soulful sound."
    I saw that too. I think the choice of wording on the site is unfortunate and maybe it's an example of his personality not translating well into written form. I talked to the guy at length at the guitar show and he was nice and pretty funny. At any rate, very cool instruments IMO.
    ...

  7. #6
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    I thought the humor came across fine in that passage and actually made me more interested in his mandolins. I looks fwd to one of you folks (not me!) reporting back after commissioning one. Or is there an MCer who already plays one of these?
    Jim

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  8. #7
    Moderator JEStanek's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    If they use any power tools at all whatsoever, that paragraph seems disingenuous to me. Tools are tools. Handwork is certainly important as is care, experience, and a developed vision of what your instruments do and how they look. I find the all or nothing philosophy to be a bit heavy handed. Even if it is funny. I like their take on the scroll.

    Jamie
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  9. #8
    Adrian Minarovic
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    One more guy who doesn't understand a slightest bit of CNC. Or he is living in future where robots produce the whole thing....
    Just rides on the hoax spread by some envious makers.
    (I still build all by hand, even binding ledge all around, but would never tell a bad thing about guys who are smart enough to use the modern technology to get better results, more power to them or at least their machines :-) )
    Adrian

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  11. #9
    Registered User lowtone2's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    I can't imagine an instrument less interesting than that.

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  13. #10
    🎶 Play Pretty 🎶 Greg Connor's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    Quote Originally Posted by HoGo View Post
    One more guy who doesn't understand a slightest bit of CNC. Or he is living in future where robots produce the whole thing....
    Just rides on the hoax spread by some envious makers.
    (I still build all by hand, even binding ledge all around, but would never tell a bad thing about guys who are smart enough to use the modern technology to get better results, more power to them or at least their machines :-) )
    I like the idea of “hand made” but technology is definitely knocking at the door. I bought a mandolin, “hand made”, by this guy who went on to perfect CNC.

    Take a look: http://waddleviolins.com/index.php?contentID=86

  14. #11

    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    For the non builders out there, CNC is just another way of getting to the fine tuning stages. Before, it was duplicarver panagraphs. Gibson used to use the old chairseat carvers from the furniture industry to rough things out. You still have to be able to read the wood- measure, flex, tap, listen, etc and adjust for the differences in stiffness and density.

  15. #12
    Moderator JEStanek's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    The more you have to use your hands to hog out and do the rough early work, the more wear and tear on your body. One of the reasons several builders who made really top shelf instruments (and these builders were regular participants on the boards) stopped making mandolins is the hand work became too much.

    At the end of the day, what I want for any of our builders if for them to be successful and earn appropriate money for what their mandolins produce. There are many paths to making a career in building. It takes, knowledge, skill, and vision, and even good marketing/word of mouth. Good luck to you all.

    There is likely more builders of top shelf instruments than there are buyers who need them. I've had two custom built instruments and still have one. Both were way beyond what I was going to pull out of them. I'm thankful for both experiences. How they market themselves, along with the overall quality of their output will determine their success or not with making sales to the likes of us hobby players or weekend warrior players with the cash on hand to support the craft.

    Jamie
    There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. Logan Pearsall Smith, 1865 - 1946

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  16. #13
    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    Ya know, I've had a lot of fun with various "soulless commodities" that I've played over the years, low-to-mid-priced instruments that were churned out -- in pre-CNC days -- by a bunch of guys sitting in a big shop, each working on a part of the final product, going for weeks without ever seeing the finished instruments that went out the door. Stradivarius had apprentices working in his shop, who probably got to do most of the preliminaries before the "master" supplied the final touches. Lloyd Loar signed hundreds of instruments he didn't build.

    There's a real special quality to an instrument that's built from scratch by a single person, who picks out the wood, does all the work with hand tools, strings it up and plays a few tunes on it before selling it to you. I've had a unique five-course, fanned-fret mando built for me by a respected local luthier, and I'll never have a better instrument. I also have a couple built a near-century ago, by two Swedish brothers in a Chicago shop, whose work now commands top dollar on the vintage market. But I've also played the tar out of a mandolin built in an unidentified New Jersey factory, and sold for a song through catalog distributors to ordinary folks who couldn't afford to have a master luthier create unique instruments for them.

    So, I'll stick up for honest factory instruments, affordable and accessible to us of modest means, whether from an early-20th-century Chicago sweatshop, or a minimum-wage Asian mega-plant. If there were no Regal or Strad-O-Lin., I wouldn't have some of my most-used gigging instruments. So, good luck to Mr. McDannald; I hope he makes a success building his uniquely-styled instruments. But there's room for a Rogue or a Rover in our range of choices, as well.
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  17. #14

    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    I am pretty sure that since Jim Olson started using CNC to build his guitars he hasn't been able to sell a one of them.

  18. #15
    Registered User lowtone2's Avatar
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    Default Re: Q Mandolins

    I understand that his name is Quincy, but that is truly unfortunate mandolin nomenclature.

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