Road Trip V - Northern Lights Music
Today I took a road trip to Northern Lights Music in Littleton, NH. Nestled in the heart of New Hampshire's White Mountains, this store is literally a "hidden gem." A dealer of Bourgeois, Santa Cruz, Collings, and Klos products, there are many delights to be had.
What had me getting in my car and driving for hours was a Bourgeois M5-A, f-hole A-body mandolin. One look at the beautiful antique blond finish on their web site, and I knew I just had to play that mandolin. With a torrefied Adirondack spruce top & torrefied maple back & sides, I wanted to hear if it sounded as good in real life as it seemed in my head that it should.
I have only every played one other torrefied acoustic instrument before, an Eastman E-20 OM, rosewood back & sides and torrefied Adirondack spruce top. While it had a beautiful sound that I remember thinking was "chimelike" when I played it, I ended up going with a different guitar, my much beloved Eastman AC422CE, rosewood back & sides and regular Sitka spruce top. But I wanted to hear the torrefied Adirondack spruce Bourgeois M5-A.
Arriving at the store, I saw that there were several guitars & mandolins out in the general area for customers to pick up and try. The Bourgeois, however, was kept in the back room with the "good guitars," each affixed with a "Please Request Assistance" tag under the strings. An employee quickly came by to take it down and let me try.
Having never played a wide nut mandolin before, I started off fingering several open & movable chord forms that I normally finger by fretting two courses with one finger. This was something that, when I first picked up the mandolin after playing guitar for a good long while, I simply assumed would be forever impossible. But it seems that a while ago something just "clicked," and ever since I take every opportunity to fret two courses with a single finger, just like God and Bill Monroe intended.
The 1 5/32" nut on the Bourgeois M5-A was not an impediment to fretting two courses with one finger, but I was most definitely fretting the two inside strings and muting the two outside strings. But aside from that it was no impediment to chords, scale runs, double stop runs, or single note melody.
The volume & projection were exactly what you would expect from an F hole mandolin. As was the tone. Very clear and bright. Exactly what you would expect. Exactly. It sounded "like a mandolin."
Usually after playing an instrument in a store like this, I'll slyly quip to the employees "Yeah, I guess I don't play a $2000 mandolin any better than I play my $200 mandolin." But in this case I was playing things I had been practicing with my mandolin teacher for a couple of months. Sitting back in the Good Guitar Room, I kept asking myself "Does this sound two, four, or ten times better than the mandolins I have at home?" As much as I wanted for it to be so, I couldn't make myself say "yes." This left me wondering about the upcoming Bourgeois M5-F, the f-body mandolin from Bourgeois that's due to hit the streets sometime this summer. And for a full thousand dollars more that the twenty-something hundred dollar a-body M5-A.
I returned the mandolin to the store employee. Before I left, I asked for any news about the Klos carbon fiber mandolin, but they hadn't heard anything other then "coming soon." He did offer to let me try a Klos carbon fiber ukulele, though. I smiled and excused myself. I proceeded to my car, and headed south, back toward civilization and home. But as my car reached Concord NH, I found myself turning off the highway for Strings & Things Music in Concord.
Strings & Things usually has at least one Eastman 500 series mandolin on their wall. I wanted to play an Eastman 500 series mandolin while the memory of the Bourgeois M5-A was still fresh in my ears.
I headed to the acoustic room, but before I could ask to play an Eastman I was brought up short by a used Tacoma M-1 flat top mandolin. I had to take it down and give it a go. I'd played this mandolin several times already on previous visits to Strings & Things. With a wide nut, the mandolin played and sounded very nice. Not in the same league as the Bourgeois M5-A I had just played, but at less than a quarter the price it definitely was "punching above its weight." In good condition, and with good feel & tone, this mandolin was going to be a real treat for whoever ended up with it.
I put the Tacoma back, found an employee, asked him yet again to please sell the Tacoma to someone before I bought it, and asked to try one of the Eastman mandolins hanging on the back wall.
Not a 500 series, but an Eastman 615-GD, f-hole, f-body, Sitka spruce top, maple back & sides, and factory installed pickup. They offered to let me try it plugged in, but I wanted to compare the acoustic sound. There was definitely a difference to the feel, probably the neck profile. And a slight difference in tone. I don't know if I could attribute the difference to simply Adirondack spruce vs Sitka spruce, or torrefied vs non-torrefied, but it was there. And without actually playing them side by side I really, honestly couldn't say which one was "better."
One small, tiny difference that was playing a LARGE amount of havoc with my brain was the large, rectangular fret markers on the 615-GD. Stupid as it might seem, I found them really distracting.
Any mandolin players who finds themselves vacationing in the New Hampshire lakes or white Mountains regions, you owe it to yourself to stop by Northern Lights Music in Littleton, NH or Strings & Things Music in Concord, NH. Sooner would be better if you want to have a go on the Bourgeois M5-A or the Tacoma M-1.
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Originally Posted by Dan in NH
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