1974 Gibson F5 - what's top of the market?

[Bernie Daniel]

Well, for one thing there weren't any Ibanez or Kentucky or The Loar mandolins around for comparison/competition.

Not too sure about that. I recall a guy coming in to the (now defunct) Columbus Folk Music Center around 1973 or so with an Ibanez F-5 style mandolin. At the time we were all pretty impressed with it. I owned a 1919 F-2 at the time and the Ibanez was at least comparable with it.

Regarding my earlier post (#20) above -- yes I agree the '50's were not "officially" part of the Gibson "dark years I mentioned it because the 1950 F-12 just happened to be in the same room as all the imports and it compared so poorly with them. And yes for sure it had the fret board on the top like an F-4 -- I think the next year they elevated it?

But I also had a 1952 F-12 that I sent to Randy Wood to be re-graduated (top, back and tone bars) he improved the mandolin a lot. But even with the fix that F-12 really did not compare favorably to a 2002 F-5 Fern I had at the same time.