Another great visit to Carter Vintage - opinions on some mandolin
First I want to thank walter and all the staff for providing an amazing place to play a bunch of mandolins and to graciously offer to let us play them. It's like the mandolincafe of stores. It was truly amazing, well-worth the 9 hour round trip, and educational to say the least. I went to gruhn's first but only spent about an hour there, then about 4-5 in Carter's with a break for coffee next door.
I want to preface that I was on a mission to identify a few potential purchases around $4-$5k so i focused on everything in the 0-$6,500 range. Also, all of this is my opinion and my subjective interpretation of tone and playability. I played pretty much everything (well over 100 mandolins) except the loars in the case at Carters. So I wasn't taking notes (mental or otherwise) on the Gils, etc. because I knew I wasn't going to buy one. I also didn't buy anything, mostly b/c it's cheaper to ship than pay TN sales tax and to buy myself some processing time. You can look on the websites for more info and prices.
At Gruhn: Brentrups had the highest playability factor and were very bright. Duff F4 was very tinny and weak (surprisingly), the Capeks were excellent bluegrassers with a decent feel, the Summit and Cole were similar with very fat necks and gibsony voices. The Cross F5s (one at carter also) were very good for the price point, had great set up, but were very heavy. The Tope F5 was bright and woody. Silver angel, as always, had crazy deep tone but felt funny in my hands. My favorites were the Randy Wood and R.L. Givens by a long shot. Only two that really held my interest. Nothing made me want to stay or go back.
At Carter. Mandos in two rooms basically separated by the $5k mark. Of the <$5ks I liked the Poe, BRWs, Horner, Voight, Kimble (one had just sold), silver angel, and the old CE Ward A beat up Gibson copy. All of these were varying degrees of good to really good. most suffered from lack of 'feel', either having big necks or just missing something. I didn't realize this until I went to the other room, however. I would have probably been ok with any one of them but I suspect I would eventually be dissatisfied with whatever I felt was 'missing' or 'off'. I can't quantify or identify it, but once I went upstairs it was obvious.
Biggest difference, in my opinion, between the sub and over $5ks was the range of apparent quality of tone. In the sub $5k range there was a HUGE variety of sound and playability. Some were just bad, some just felt bad, some almost had it, and some were very good. Huge range. Upstairs everything was a 10 or near so. the differences in the over $5k mandolins was mostly the 'type' of great tone and the fact that they all felt incredible - in interestingly similar ways. Great neck feel, fretting, intonation, weight, etc. A few (mostly the gibsons, to me) were 10s partly because of appearance, woods, etc. and lacked a bit in the tone category. Stand-outs in my price range were the new Duff A5 (almost identical to the new Duff F5 for those who think A's and F's are different) and the Newson F5. Not quite as good as the Gils, Altman, etc. but instruments I could be happy with for a while and afford. The Heiden was very green and actually didn't blow me away. The Red Diamond A5 was a monster but out of my price range.
To me, the difference in the $2500-$4000 and >$5k was pretty huge. The differences beyond that were much smaller. The differences below the $3500 mark were very broad, with some of them (the older, beat up, or unknown builders) being very solid buys to someone. Just not me, I could hear limitations in those that I feel would bug me later. I don't know if it was a coincidence that the instruments were separated by price like they were, or if it affected me (I don't think it did). There were a few (kimble, Voight, BRW, Poe) that were almost ready for the big room but not quite.
While I was there a guy brought in another Loar to consign which brought the total to 7, I think, with one mandola.
I'm still on the hunt but I compiled a ton of helpful information to guide my choice. Not sure if it is the DPT vaccine I got Monday or the mental strain of trying to assess all those mandolins, but I am #######' exhausted.
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Originally Posted by Jeff Mando
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