This past Spring I finally found 'The One', it's Stanley #63. Since finding true love I've sold off everything I owned. At some point I decided having a second mandolin would be a good idea so I called Chris Stanley for another one. For the second go round I thought it would be a good idea to have something that is a change of pace to my V5. I thought about what would be a good change of pace and something that would be truly useful to me. So I decided to go with an A, it's not an F so that's a start plus I like the budget friendly nature of the A style. I also wanted something that had a jazz vibe as I intend to put flat wounds on it and use it for more jazz playing.
When thinking about wood choices I just could't take a risk. Chris Stanley makes an unbelievable sounding mandolin and he (to the best of my knowledge) always uses red spruce and red maple. Chris just knows how to get THE sound out of that wood combination so far be it for me to mess with success. I did want to go with a radius fingerboard and larger fret wire since I tend to play differently when I play an easier set-up, I'm more fluid or slippery, not better just different. Chris offered a compound radius so I thought so much the better. That left just aesthetic choices and tuner so I wanted Waverlys of course and went a little different of the overall look. That look for me is going to be block inlays, tortoise binding and red burst finish. Other fun stuff is one piece back and I asked Chris to come up with something less traditional for the headstock shape and fingerboard extension. It's turning out very nicely as Chris sent these progress picture over the last few days. Enjoy...
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