Re: Loar LM600VS Tone - Help
The first thing I'd say is that after you have been playing one instrument for a long time, your mind and ears kind of 'adjust' and get used to that tone. Even from a cheapie. A totally different instrument can come as a bit of a shock. Now, the LM-600 is an F-style tone-bar mandolin. It is not going to sound as "sweet" or "warm" as you may be used to. They are quite mid-rangy. That can be part of it.....
Setup is also critical. I have to say I have found the 'factory' setup on 'The Loar' range to be very bad indeed. They really do need a good "going over" by someone who knows mandolins - more so than some other similarly priced brands I can think of. The hardware quality, especially the bridge, is also (in my experience) well below par (though the tuners are good). I have worked on around 20 of them now, and in only a few did I find the bridge acceptable. In some it was diabolical - to the point of filler being used in the feet and even cracked saddles that had been roughly re-glued. The actual fit of the bridges were generally awful. A properly fit, decent quality bridge certainly helps. The best are things like the CA bridges... but you not necessarily have to go that far to get an improvement. I've fitted "Golden Gate" and Stew-Mac bridges and they are considerably superior to what is usually on there.
A change of strings can also help. For an F-style, these are still a low-priced instrument, however, and while decent value (when set up) the law of "you get what you pay for" does apply. As you will read time and again on here, you get more A-style bang for buck than you do with F-styles, generally.
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'39 & '45 D-18's, 1950 D-28.
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