Tony williamson Loar contest

Live from MerlFest - a 9 yr old girl who does play the mandolin is the winner of the Loar identification contest from Tony Williamson and Mandolin Central

Jeez.... did she win a Loar??? I won a 'The Loar' ball cap once.......

She won a $1000 downpayment towards the Loar of her choice or any other merchandise that is sold through Mandolincentral.com.
Still not a bad deal just for getting 8 songs right. By the way no one got it 100% correct including Tony. This was given away at the end of the mini-LoarFest East in which Tony showed to any MerleFest ticket goer 8 signed Loars including an H5 mandola. That's right MerleFest featured a LoarFest this year. I didn't find out about it until I got there Thursday that it was to held Friday afternoon. Tony first played them in the auditorium without the sound system to show how each one sounded different aulnatural, playing the same song on each one. Then he played them through the PA different mandolin songs from classical to bluegrass with some Jethro and Apollon thrown in. For the Monroe number he played a pretty awesome version of "Dusty Miller" on a July 9th Loar from the same batch as Monroes only it was in pristine near mint condition. To me sitting in the front row I could not hear a dog in the hunt on this LoarFest. There was no mention of prices or if any of these Loars were for sale. For those of you wanting to go to a LoarFest open to the public I guess you missed it. You could not find a better demonstrator of Loars than Tony Williamson.

Yes,it was pretty amazing to see all those Loars on one stage! I thought they all sounded great and though I'm no expert, I was most impressed by the qualities all these fine instruments seem to share in terms of how the sound filled the room, the clarity of tone and strong mid range punch. It is a sound that seems to have been born during a unique period of history and it will be interesting to hear mandolins of our era in 90 years from now to see how they compare.

I got confused on the winners right answers. She only got 3 right and Tony only got 2! Which made the contest that much more challenging of a feat to more or less guess the right answer. I heard several that day that did sound pretty darn close while others so different.