View Full Version : Bill Monroe's Epiphone Strand
I saw the ad in the classifieds for Bill Monroe's Epi (http://www.mandolincafe.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi?search_and_display_db_button=on&db_id=18828&query=retrieval) and sent in a couple of questions, but never heard back from the seller. Does anyone know any info about this mandolin? I'm sure I couldn't meet the price, but I'd like to know the story behind it, or at least the year or serial number.
-JL
f5loar
May-23-2006, 10:50am
I heard the documentation that it is indeed Monroe's Epi is very vague. Probably the last person to know what happened to the Monroe Epi died last year. I doubt Earl was around nor speaking to Monroe when it was sold. I'd be interested to know if his F7 is still out there and whereabouts known.
Slim Pickins
May-23-2006, 12:25pm
My friend in Northern Wisconsin has an old Epi. It was made in New York. He plays it all the time. Great condition.I will get the serial number when I go up to open my cottage in the north woods.
Slim Pickins
May-23-2006, 12:28pm
added info on the Epi. It is the Strand.
Slim Pickins
May-23-2006, 12:53pm
Epi Strand. serial number 69502 Epiphone Inc Strand. Ny, Ny
Wow, Mando_Dude, that's a late one! This vintage guitar site (http://www.provide.net/~cfh/epiphone.html) says the last known New York Epi serial was 69633 (they put the year as '56). That might be the last mandolin the Stathopoulo Epiphone company ever made. Does the headstock have the script 'Epiphone' logo or the metal badge logo?
Darryl Wolfe
May-23-2006, 2:36pm
I do not know if this owner and mandolin are the same, but when this subject came up a few years ago, that documentation was very very iffy as to the connection to Monroe.
Jim Garber
May-23-2006, 2:50pm
Here is one from 1944. By the fifties they reverted, for some odd reason, to oval holes.
Jim
That '44 looks like the one in the Monroe pictures, with the shorter neck and the center-dip headstock (as opposed to this 1937 Strand (http://www.mandozine.com/index.php/instruments/instrumentinfo/epiphone_strand_1937/) played on the Tone Poems CD).