Best mandolin, any style, used, under $1000

[JeffD]

I might add that I'm seriously considering an oval hole. Any thoughts? We don't really have a jam anywhere close so it's usually me and maybe two guitars so not much to cut through.

An oval hole will cut through most anything.

[Danny Clark]

a Ky KM-1000 or Km-900 would be my choice if you can't find a Gibson A-9

[JeffD]

IMHO....What you can get for what you are willing to invest is only a marginal improvement over what you already have two of. Save your money until you have between two and three thousand dollars to spend. The instruments you have are good mid quality instruments. Spend a little money on the one you prefer on a quality setup and bridge. MAS never goes away.......

That is hard to argue with.

I mean if you want a new mandolin, you want what you want. But do you need a new mandolin?... not really. The two you have can do everything you want and bring you transcendent joy the rest of your life. In fact either one of them can. And if its only MAS talking, then you should know that getting the new mandolin will not cure it. What will it feel like in six months to a year? About the way it does now.

[mandobassman]

Check out the Morris in the classifieds right now. Morris has a great reputation for excellent quality at a great price. You probably can't do much better for this money. Lots of folks here in the Forum rave about Morris.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/cgi-bin/...uery=retrieval

[Markus]

That advice to save up to the $2k range is a good one, IMO.

For $1k, you may get an improvement from what you have, but perhaps not a giant one. Once you start getting above $1500 used, or $2k+ new then you start getting some remarkable instruments [Collings MT for one] that stand out from the under 1k instruments.

If you're looking for more out of a mandolin, perhaps you need to step to another price range. Else ... IMO you're looking for a `ringer' and there's only one way to find that one, to try that one on the shop wall. In that case, it could be of a number of brands ...

[CES]

Congrats on your Eastman purchase! Brent Hutto posted a vid of his recently, and I was quite impressed with its tone (he played it nicely, also)...had never really considered one of those until seeing that video, but I think you'll have a keeper, especially with Steve's rep for set-up work...

Let us know what you think when you get her in hand!

[djc227]

That is hard to argue with.

I mean if you want a new mandolin, you want what you want. But do you need a new mandolin?... not really. The two you have can do everything you want and bring you transcendent joy the rest of your life. In fact either one of them can. And if its only MAS talking, then you should know that getting the new mandolin will not cure it. What will it feel like in six months to a year? About the way it does now.

Yeah, I know I'm better at buying them than I am at playing anyway! But when we were at Winfield in September I really tried to listen to a bunch of mandolins to see if anything stood out. I really liked the oval hole sound a lot better. Maybe because one of the only oval holes I listened to was a The Weber F4 style beauty at the Carp Camp, but that type of sound was amazing. I know that MAS is incurable, and I get it every September after Winfield, but I sold the Kentucky for what I bought the Eastman for, so now I at least have two styles to play depending on my mood. Maybe it will at least keep the MAS at bay for a while!

[Brent Hutto]

Too bad you didn't run into old Mike Black and one of his oval-hole beauties. If I had "real money" to spend instead of "Eastman money" he'd be the first person I'd call.

I'm very pleased with having my MD504 as a oval-hole option. For a while I had a second ff-hole mandolin (an excellent Gibson A-5G) but with two very similar instruments you just end up deciding one or the other is "The One" and that's what gets all the playing time.

Speaking of being better at buying than playing...

In this clip my Mike Black A-5 (ff-holes) is the one in the left channel with the MD504 (oval hole) in the right channel. You can hardly have more difference in the sound unless one or the other wasn't a mandolin.

[Steve Ostrander]

The best mandolin I've bought for under $1000 is my km900. My MT cost 3x as much and that km900 can hang with it all day long.