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Thread: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

  1. #51

    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Well, I hope to eventually…got the Collings summer 2020 after everything came crashing down. It’s different with a mando than with a nice guitar-it’s not like the drunks are going to ask if they can borrow it to play (fill in the blank). And if you want to encase your mando between sets, it’s easy enough.
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    Mandoline or Mandolin: Similar to the lute, but much less artistically valuable....for people who wish to play simple music without much trouble —The Oxford Companion to Music

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  3. #52
    Registered User f5loar's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    not a pro, but know quite a few and can say most that have the good ones do go out with them. But then their 2nd or 3rd ringers are not shabby either. You do your gigs with the one you love the most. It's why you love it the most. Think, Monroe, Osborne, Bush, Taylor, Stuart, Marshall, McLaughlin, etc....... those guys are known for their No. 1 mandolin of choice and they go out and played them for all to see and hear.

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  5. #53
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Quote Originally Posted by f5loar View Post
    . Think, Monroe, Osborne, Bush, Taylor, Stuart, Marshall, McLaughlin, etc....... those guys are known for their No. 1 mandolin of choice and they go out and played them for all to see and hear.
    Exactly. Also you can probably do things on a top instrument which are harder on a lesser one. That's partly why you would have it in the first place. It's not just the sound.
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  7. #54
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bren View Post
    i use my best one, not just for gigs but for pub sessions where all sorts of mayhem can happen.
    It's not my most expensive, it was only a few hundred quid, but it's irreplaceable, so is most valuable.
    Back in the early 70s I played in pub bands in Glasgow (in Scotland guys, not Kentucky). I remember a guy stumbling into a 4 x 12 PA column. It descended 3 feet onto the table in front of the band - where my fiddle had been lying 5 minutes before. Another night, the guitarist in the band was playing a solo gig on a stage in an OK pub, when a John Wayne style bar brawl started with no warning. He stopped in astonishment as a chair flew through the air at head level - and a gravelly voice level with his right knee said "Never mind that - jist keep playin' Jimmy" (Jimmy is the universal pronoun for men in Glasgow).

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  9. #55
    Professional Dreamer journeybear's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Gives one pause ...

    I'm impressed, even astonished, by the number of respondents who advocate bringing their best to a gig. I agree in principle, if not practice. I do bring my best sounding mandolin, though not my best quality mandolin - if one judges this consideration by model number and cost. I would love to bring the F-4, believe me. I bought it because I've always wanted one, as it combines the sound I like with the stylish shape. I do want to show it off. But it doesn't sound as good as my plain A, though it just might after my luthier puts a little time into setup and tweaking. I'd still be hesitant bringing it out to gigs in this drinking-oriented town, and that might not change that much in others, either. Also, I still haven't been able to talk myself into having a pickup installed, and I haven't found a non-invasive pickup system to my liking yet. Yet. We'll see.

    Of course, it may well be many players don't have the resources (or interest) to own more than one high-quality instrument. Not that I do, mind you, but every time I have a little extra, I look into buying another mandolin. (I think I'm finally done, but who knows?) Not everyone does this, nor feels a need to. So by all means, bring your best. Just be careful out there!
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  11. #56
    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    I’m of the opposite tack, JB … I opened this thread just to confirm my suspicion that of course most people will take their best - their favorite - instrument to play gigs and/or jam sessions. I confess that I skimmed through and wasn’t surprised at what I read though not interested in reading every word here. At present, I have only two mandolins, neither particularly valuable, and the no. 2 one hasn’t left its case in a year or so.
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  13. #57

    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    No pro, but I used to gig regularly, pre covid.
    Absolutely. Take my best.
    But, i never let it out of my sight. Ever.

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  15. #58
    Registered User Charlie Bernstein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    I take my best and my worst. It's the same mandolin.
    Gibson A-Junior snakehead (Keep on pluckin'!)

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  17. #59
    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Only mandolin I've ever had damaged during a gig was when a drunken "fan" attacked our band in a coffeehouse (!) in Brockport NY, probably 1973. I was knocked down by a punch in the face, and the headstock on my F-2 was broken across. I got it repaired (cost $75 then, things were cheaper). and the cost was paid for by the drunk's girlfriend. I called him up to threaten him with legal action (the cops had talked me out of charging him with assault); he in turn said he'd "cut my throat." His girlfriend called me about ten minutes later and said she'd send me the repair price, which she did. He was an English guy here on a student visa; wonder what ever happened to him...?

    At that point, I didn't have a lesser quality mandolin to take to a gig, and I probably wouldn't have, anyway; we were a young bluegrass band, and having and playing a Gibson F-model was a status symbol.

    By the way, the pretext for the brawl was that we were playing the New Deal String Band's version of the Stones' No Expectations, and the drunk thought we were playing it "too fast." Lotsa critics out there, though few become violent.
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  19. #60
    Registered User lowtone2's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    This question was asked on talkbass either today or yesterday. I don’t play mandolin well enough to gig on the instrument, but I see all my instruments as tools. I don’t think I would buy anything too valuable to use anywhere, personally, but i can see how others might think of their instruments as art works that have value beyond their utility.

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  21. #61
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    An added concern is travel mode; if I am driving, I take my great little Stiver F5 and my 1912 GibsomK4 mandocello. But if I am getting on an airplane, I take my "travel mandocello," an inexpensive but very nice Thomann. I have been given advice on taking the vintage piece, but it all comes down to one TSA agent or flight attendant who might not listen to the arguments or recognize the paperwork. At CMSA conventions, and at the Bruchsal Germany Zupffest there has always been a friendly local who lends me their extra.
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  23. #62

    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Quote Originally Posted by lowtone2 View Post
    This question was asked on talkbass either today or yesterday. I don’t play mandolin well enough to gig on the instrument, but I see all my instruments as tools. I don’t think I would buy anything too valuable to use anywhere, personally, but i can see how others might think of their instruments as art works that have value beyond their utility.
    On reading this, i guess ill qualify my ‘absolutely’ response. I do have a rigel a which i use if i am gigging in an area where i think i might get jumped after a late gig.

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  25. #63
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    I guess I'm going to amend my first response to this discussion. I'll bring the instrument that I feel most comfortable with depending on conditions and safety.
    We used to have a gig where we played at a maple farm during their annual maple festival. Maple boiling is around mid March in upstate NY. Temps in the 30s. One year we were outside under A pop up with a single propane heater to keep us "warm". Of course everybody else crammed in too so we literally had people banging into us as we played. Next year they put us in a loft above the boil room and it had to be 90 degrees up there. So my best instruments (my Ratliff and my Capek) always stayed home for this gig.
    My Washburn is a respectable instrument and it worked out just fine.
    And by the way we got paid with a quart of pure maple syrup each which made it well worth while.

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  27. #64
    Dave Sheets
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    No, the best instruments just don't go to dive bars, and I used to play dive bars, alternative music clubs. Loud, a bit rough, but a lot of fun. I have inexpensive but serviceable instruments that go to those places. If I'm constantly worried about keeping my instruments safe, it just isn't fun, and fun is the point. I have my gear worked out to deliver reasonable sound in those conditions, where it is usually a really loud rock or alt-country band and nobody is going to hear a lot of nuance in the mandolin tone anyway.

    Jams, coffeehouses, calmer bars, yeah, the good instruments go.
    -Dave
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  29. #65
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    Quote Originally Posted by allenhopkins View Post
    By the way, the pretext for the brawl was that we were playing the New Deal String Band's version of the Stones' No Expectations, and the drunk thought we were playing it "too fast."
    Well, that brings to new light to the phrase 'musical differences'. The night Elvis died, I was watching an English New Wave comedy band (their name shall remain in the darkness) in a pub called The Swan, in the then heavily Irish neighborhood of Hammersmith, London. Elvis was greatly revered in the Irish community, and their front man unwisely started off with what he imagined was a topical gag on their usual opening song, that ran "Here's a song dedicated to Elvis - it's called 'I'm Dead'". A diminutive and fairly drunk Irishman went and stood under the singer's nose, showing every sign of readiness to comit violence upon him as soon as he got to the end of the chorus. The singer arrived at that point, called a sax solo, and retreated behind the drum kit. Your man in front of the stage contained his agitation, apparently out of respect for the integrity of the sax solo, and the sax player played on for more than 10 minutes before the potential assailant lost patience and stormed out. I've often wondered whether the Grateful Dead had similar problems before solos.

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  31. #66
    Barn Cat Mandolins Bob Clark's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do you take your best or most valuable mandolin to gigs?

    I have a few mandolins, and none of them are junk instruments, just different, one from another. I take whatever instrument is right for the gig. Sometimes it's my Phoenix Neoclassical, sometimes it's one of the flat-tops I build. Usually my Weber OM also goes along. I wouldn't keep a junk instrument as there's no point in doing so. And I wouldn't have an instrument that's 'too good' to play out. It's a musical instrument; go make music on it.
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