I was at my local, independent, brick-and-mortar music store last night to drop off an instrument to have a pick-up installed in it, and I noticed they had one of these hanging on the wall.
I got it down to see how bad it was...
First off, it was almost perfectly in tune (
even though the assistant manager of the store assured me it had been sitting there un-played for weeks).
Secondly, after it tuned it up, I was frankly shocked by two developments:
1. Though clearly tonally deficient in many ways, this thing did not sound bad! It was clearly
"mandolin sounding", and it did not have any of that horrible excessive
tinniness that so many low-end, laminated wood mandolins have. It did have a somewhat muted voice (like many less expensive instruments do), but that actually made it really fun for honky-tonk numbers and 12 Bar Blues stuff. (I was drawing an appreciative crowd in the store as I played...I was shocked!).
2. This mandolin had, without question, the best set-up of an off the rack, low-end instrument I have ever encountered! Though the strings were very light gauge and the volume marginal, the action was remarkably low, and the fretboard very fast and quite! Intonation was spot on, and the tuners held throughout my playing session (30+ minutes).
If the fretboard hadn't been flat, I would have purchased this baby for sure. For $149 this thing is a steal.
Maybe the one I played was an exceptional example, but I was very impressed! NFI
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