NMD: 2022 Hinde Heritage F-5
It's absolutely amazing to see how gracious the people in the mandolin community are. It's also amazing how dangerous gear acquisition syndrome (GAS) and access to the internet can be. This is a story of both.
I'm extremely new to mandolin, and have been bitten by the mando bug pretty hard. I'm a long time guitar player, went to college for music and worked in music stores until I realized going back to school for economics and accounting would let me do crazy things, like afford food and a place to live. Since picking up the mandolin, I've been able and fortunate to acquire two very nice mandolins, a Lafferty built by Audey Ratliff and purchased from the Mandolin Store, and a Sumi built '89 KM-DAWG from Fiddler's Green. Dennis and Jake at the Mandolin Store and Ben at Fiddler's Green were amazing to work with.
I started to get the bug for another mando when I was looking for someone local that could do good mandolin work. I happened across Tyler White in Bloomington, IN. Yet another absolutely great and gracious person. The only downside is Tyler's website...chock full of his personally built mandolin porn that should require age verification to view. To be specific, that age verification number should be whatever age I am +1, so that I'm instead sent to Disney's website instead. His mandolins are both beautiful and sound wonderful, but are on a two year backorder. I'll definitely be having him work on my current instruments.
During this period I had a custom truss rod cover for the Lafferty on order from Bruce Weber. While working with Bruce, I saw on his website that he currently has an David Harvey F-5 in stock. Now the GAS starts to kick in. Damn you, internet!
So, I begin thinking about what I really want in an instrument. As I'm looking through different possibilities, Steve Hinde's instruments keep popping up. Research the specs, the standard appointments, and the price, I keep coming back to them as incredible bargains...but didn't really have any first had information about them. On a whim I messaged Nick Dumas, who answered be almost immediately, and was incredibly gracious with his time and information.
As I'm about to start looking at new instruments, MF-53 is listed in the Mandolin Cafe classifieds. Yet again, the Internet is mocking me with another option. I figured I would email Steve Hinde and get information about that instrument. He emailed me early Saturday morning after I sent and email late Friday night. He provided a wealth of information about not only MF-53, but his instruments that are currently available from different retailers. Again, great guy, and happy to share information that was extremely helpful to me.
I contacted the owner of MF-53, Chaston Carroll...another great and gracious guy. I didn't end up purchasing his instrument, but someone here needs to. The only reason I didn't is that I had struck a deal on a new instrument prior to hearing back from Chaston. Otherwise...I'd probably have gone to meet Chaston personally, played the instrument, and be the owner of MF-53. For those of you looking, here's a link to his ad (https://www.mandolincafe.com/ads/195487#195487). If you search Facebook, you can find videos of Chaston playing it.
I ended up dealing with the folks at Penny Lane Music Emporium in Florida. I dealt with Armando, who again was gracious and knowledgeable. After discussing the instruments in stock, and his providing information about the Hinde Heritage model he owns, I'm the proud owner of MF-71. Pics to come, but here's a link to the instrument from Penny Lane's site: https://pennylaneemporium.com/produc...tage-mandolin/.
With any luck, I should have it Wednesday, and a lot of fun doing nothing but playing it over a 4 day weekend.
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Originally Posted by Trader Todd
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