Hutto Mandolin

[Bill Francis]

I purchased a mandolin made by John Hutto this past weekend.
Purchase was made on Sunday - came to this site to see if I could find out more about it and imagine my surprise to find that this gentleman had passed away Saturday.
Does anyone know the history of Hutto mandolins?
What I am told is that he used to live in Salem,Va. and at one point some of his mandolins (mine being one) carried the Gibson name on the mast.
Any information would be greatly appreciated as well as a tribute to fine builder.

[Darryl Wolfe]

I can only add that he did live in Augusta, GA until a few years ago. I became familiar with a few Hutto's in the early '80's and had not heard of them prior. The ones I saw had "The Hutto" on them, were quite good and were by no means his first mandolins. His finish at that time was fairly dark in color with a monotone brown sunburst

[sunburst]

From what I hear from some of my older pickin' buddies from around the Roanoke/Salem area, Johnny Hutto was one of the first people to start building coppies of Loar F5s. Coppies including replica labels, Gibson headstock, and Virzi.
For a long time he was considered one of the best F5 builders, along with Randy Wood.