Hi all,
Just thought I'd share a recent experience. I've owned and played several really nice mandolins in the past. I'm also very familiar with the "pac-rim" mandolins of today where every manufacturer uses the same mandolin and just puts their name on it. However, the local guitar shop in town had a used Eastman 515 hanging on the wall. I grabbed it down and played a few licks on it. You know what, I just had to have it. It sounded as good as many of the high end instruments coming out these days (not a Gilchrist, Gibson MM, or Nugget of course) but good. Played amazingly well too. So I bought it. Compared it with some other instruments and found it to be a really great little mandolin for $600. I definitely don't have any financial interest in saying this, but I just wanted to pass this info along to the fellow cafe members, I definitely know what it's like to play mando on a budget and have owned a couple of those mass produced "pac-rim" F-Styles before and never was really pleased with them. But these Eastmans are really built using close to standard construction as many of the higher end instruments and very much so surpass many of their competitors such as Fender, Morgan Monroe, MK, etc... The only thing I didn't like about it (as said many times here) was the logo. So I put band-aid over it, problem sovled... Take care...
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