Bruce wei mandolin info [Archive]

Docmarc

Jul-25-2007, 12:03pm

Another thread mentioned mandolins built in the far East by Bruce Wei...on a lark, I clicked on on one of his highly decorated mandolins that had an "Make an Offer" button...this mando was listed at something over $350 if I recall correctly - I offered $200 and Mr. Wei took it...

It arrived by US Mail well packaged in a 'soft' hardshell case with, unfortunately, one broken tuner peg...I've emailed Mr. Wei for replacements...

First, the inlay work is surprisingly good on the body and headstock...pickguard is kind of funky though...

It's 'bulky'...notably heavier than my Sam Bush...

Neck is thick but not so different than a Michael Kelly I had around for alternate tuning...

Tuned up, it's got a surprisingly decent tone...fairly woody without the hollow sound that many budget priced mandos seem to have...I have doubts about this thing 'opening up' very much...it's going to have to fight a lot of lacquer to get there...

I've some some photos for reference...the scroll is thick compared to the Gibson next to it...I have no clue why the builder would vary so much from what I'm sure is a familiar template...

Finish is heavy - but without a single streak or bubble...

There's a triangular chunk of wood glued to the top under the pickguard that serves as a support for the guard...I'm sure it would easily hold up my truck...

It needs some set up and more usable tailpiece - but all-in-all, it's a heck of a mando for the price...

...not sure how to post the photos...

weymann1

Jul-26-2007, 6:47pm

That's what I thought. I got one good mando and then I ordered several more from Bruce, Antonio, and some one else in Taiwan. Several had really bad frets and after time, they all started to crack. Good Luck. (they are still playable after the back cracks)

Paul Hostetter

Aug-07-2007, 2:39pm

I've set up several dozen of these things for various folks. They're all dodgy in varying degrees, and all need major setup work (new bridge, fret and clean-up, good strings, etc.) to be playable. But for the money they're at least interesting, and not a bad value. My favorite is this model:

http://www.lutherie.net/mandolin.viet.jpg

I personally like the wide neck, and the side soundholes. Big, bright sound, not like any American mandolin. It's the one I bought to keep.

I haven't seen them crack much. I bought one about four years ago and have played the daylights out it, no problem with it yet. I saw the top on one sag a bit too much, but I made a wider bridge for it and it seems to be holding OK after a year.

The aesthetic themes can be really goofy sometimes. I saw one of a bunny holding a cricket bat (probably a rice paste pounder) I thought was hilarious. Another was supposed to be a rose or a peony, but really looked like a big cabbage. Chickens are favored items too. Some are just pretty.

The business end of working with Bruce Wei and Antonio has been uniformly positive for the folks I know who have bought these Vietnamese mandolins. Not much experience or thought about #3, Sam.

Who buys all the inlaid left-handed mandolin pickguards? They've sold more of them than there are left-handed mandolins in the world. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

cbarry

Aug-16-2007, 8:10pm

It's good to hear some fairly favorable reviews, after listening to folks slam them all the time. I'd love to have the one with the bunny and cricket bat!

Chuck

Paul Hostetter

Aug-16-2007, 8:30pm

Keep your eye on eBay! Isn't this lovely?

delsbrother

Aug-16-2007, 11:02pm

Paul, do I want to know what that bunny is doing?

Keith Newell

Aug-16-2007, 11:24pm

He's loading his muzzle-loading butter churn for another shot at the moon. You can see his first shot missed and is falling back to earth :/
Keith

Paul Hostetter

Aug-16-2007, 11:49pm

This is entirely about Asian myth and a particular celebration, specifically the Mid-Autumn Festival which is coming right up. It falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar—usually around mid-September, sometimes into October, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, the skies are commonly clear and cloudless, and the nights crisp and sharp. In these night sky conditions, the moon appears to be the brightest and the stars shine. Time for a celebration. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are innumerable varieties all over Asia.

The hare is an almost universal figure in mythology worldwide. In Asian imagery and myth, the hare and the moon are virtually synonymous. Another symbol is one of a rabbit pounding rice into flour. The Japanese word mochi means both rice flour and full moon. (The hare is also seen as pounding medicines, like an apothecary, but that’s not pertinent here.)

In this Vietnamese iteration, the moon-bunny is pounding rice flour for making the moon cakes, under a clear sky with stars. His cricket bat is the rice-pounding pestle. Even the direction of his ears is correct. How this belongs on a guitar to be sold on eBay is a real question. The imagery in its cultural context makes total sense however.

JeffD

Aug-17-2007, 8:57am

I was gonnna say that.

http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

Docmarc

Aug-17-2007, 10:01am

...re: the broken tuner noted in the opening thread...Mr. Wei sent a new set via airmail...his communication with me has been excellent...

Docmarc

Aug-17-2007, 10:04am

...here's a comparison shot with a Sam Bush...

Docmarc

Aug-17-2007, 10:05am

...and another showing the difference in the scroll dimensions...

williebruce

Aug-19-2007, 3:04pm

I got one of these a while back, early last year. Being as objective as possible, I have to say, they are really an amazingly flashy instrument.

I bought mine with the intention of tweaking it into a real mandolin. Seemed like a reasonable project at the time. I wanted to change the tuners, nut, bridge and tailpiece and see if I couldn't work some sound out of it. A few months later, I got my hands on a Gibson F-5G, and the rest is history. I didn't have any desire to fool with the other mandolin anymore because there is simply no comparison. But ofcourse, thats the difference between a $350 mandolin and a $3000 mandolin.

It seems like a great deal considering youre getting a solid wood mandolin alot cheaper than you can get one elsewhere, and they sure are pretty. The downside is that big block that holds up the pickguard and is locked tight to the finish with glue they hold airplanes together with. The bone nut mine came with looked as if it were carved up by a weed eater and the sound wasnt anything to brag about. Oh, and be careful about changing out the fingerboard if you desire. Mine tuned up and played true, however, the scale length was not common at all.

They sure make a good conversation piece, and if I ran across an amazing deal on another one, I would definetly buy it for a nice mantle centerpiece.

Gutbucket

Aug-19-2007, 4:08pm

I'll bet Liberace had one of these mandolins hanging in his love nest in Vegas. They're so tacky, they're cool. In a manly way of course.

Docmarc

Aug-19-2007, 8:32pm

...for what it's worth...a luthier friend of mine re-did the nut, re-fit the bridge, installed a traditional tailpiece we bought from Elderly...I removed the pickguard and cut off the fingerboard extension...the bone top on the bridge is interesting in that it has a small, roughly .25 x .25" block of ebony(?) glued to the bottom of it that we assume is to give the bridge top strength - like an extra brace to prevent it from sagging...??

I've tuned this thing up to Dm for Monroe's 'Last Days' and it's a surprisingly nice sounding mandolin...

Docmarc

Aug-19-2007, 8:37pm

Gutbucket...I'll bet Liberace had one of these mandolins hanging in his love nest in Vegas. They're so tacky, they're cool. In a manly way of course.[I]

I originally bid on this thing just because it was so 'out there'...I planned to hang it on the wall of my office..second thoughts now that it's a half decent mando...it's little like riding a Vespa scooter - a lot of fun until your friends see you...

John Rosett

Aug-19-2007, 10:08pm

If Porter Wagoner had played mandolin...

rosenmando

Sep-04-2007, 3:44am

i don't know how i missed this thread *before* i bid one one of these. i justified getting it by hoping it would at least be a nice wallhanger. i must admit to being entranced by the inlay, but seeing a photo someone submitted, i'd say i was somehow hypnotized and enchanted by an asian temptress. i hope it sounds at least okay.

allenhopkins

Sep-04-2007, 3:22pm

All the Wei and Tsai mandolins I've seen, have been in repair shops where someone was doggedly trying to whip them into playing shape. Recurrent themes have been too-thick finish, inaccurate fretting, giant braces that reduce top vibrations to a vague murmur, brass tailpieces etc. cracking and distorting, and those lovely, intricate inlays falling out.

You have to wonder how someone can build, inlay and finish a solid-wood F-style mandolin, and ship it halfway around the world, for one-tenth of what an American builder would charge for a "plain Jane," and one-third of what a lowest common denominator, laminated Asian factory instrument would cost. On other threads, I read concern about labor practices in the People's Republic of China, and how those affect our attitudes toward buying certain imported instruments. What must the Vietnamese workers who crank out these "Liberace specials" be paid?

rosenmando

Sep-04-2007, 4:06pm

>>>Recurrent themes have been too-thick finish, inaccurate fretting, giant braces e >>>>mandolin, and ship it halfway around the world, for one-tenth of what an American # On other threads, I read concern about labor <<<<<<

all really good points. as in my last post, for lots of reasons, regret buying it already. i'm afraid i fall into the catagory of someone who will never be able to afford a nugget or any really high quality instrument, ever, so was suckered by shiny objects on ebay. i have hopes that it will at least be playable. #had i joined mandocafe one day earlier and read this thread i wouldn't have bought it.

as to cheap labor....i am greatly concerned about it and really conflicted. look at most things in the average persons house (i'm average, meaning low end of lower middle class) and you will find them made in china or vietnam or bangladesh. i have watched a lot of documentries lately about the subject, and pay and conditions are bad. #but(and this doesn't justify buying the junk) what if we were to boycott all third world goods? women who are sent away from their families in rural china because they can't be fed or schooled and they are not "productive" males, get factory jobs in the big cities. if there were no market for these cheap goods, if wal-mart dropped all their china trade, women would be abused further and victims of fetacide even more than they are now. i don't mean to even start a thread about this at all, just that the issue seems clear cut until you look at their big picture. and once again, i don't want to open the can of worms, but just stating how conflicted it makes me.
maybe my wei mandolin (or chunk of pretty decorated wood) will a be a monument to keep thinking about the subject.

Paul Hostetter

Sep-04-2007, 6:25pm

The recurrent themes always seem to come from people who have little or no hands-on experience with them. And the uncontrollable urge to diss them is so often propped up by some PC hearsay about working conditions and/or wages they really don't understand and certainly haven't experienced. Muy tedioso.

These instruments are made in Vietnam, not China. If you must pontificate about Chinese labor practices, maybe you should go there and see what they do and how it works. I have, and I quickly had to concede that pretty much everything I'd been led to believe was not true, or at least so distorted as to be meaningless. The economy of China is not perfect, but look at poverty and unemployment in the US and you'll have to realize it's not really much different here.

The neighborhood in Saigon these mandolins come from is not unlike Paracho - it's been there as a center of instrument making for a very long time, and supports lots of little workshops with assorted specialties. People there are making a living as best they can. Vietnam is its own kettle of fish, you don't need to invoke China unless you fecklessly believe these eBay vendors in Taiwan are somehow responsible for making them. They're not, they just sell them. If you think it's junk, why then, don't buy it.

I've worked on a lot of these things now and I'm uncomfortable defending them, for I certainly know the art of lutherie has much higher peaks elsewhere. It just doesn't help anyone understand anything to spew this kind of uninformed negativity in such a thoughtless, kneejerk way. I think certain people can do better here.

allenhopkins

Sep-04-2007, 10:44pm

Paul, I usually tend to agree with you, but here I think you're being a bit harsh. I just wondered how anyone could produce an instrument with the degree of handwork that one of the Tsai or Wei instruments includes, ship it from Vietnam to Taiwan to the US, for a price less than what one normally pays for a laminated beginner level factory instrument, also from Asia.

There have been several threads about Eastman and other Chinese brands, in which working conditions, political climate etc. have been brought up as matters of concern. I agree with you that these concerns are generally beside the point. While labor costs in China are (obviously) lower than in the US, no one with any direct experience has reported sweatshop conditions, "slave labor" etc. in any of the several Chinese factories that produce mandolins.

The question I tried to raise, and to which rosenmando responded, seems legitimate to me. Whether the Wei or Tsai instruments are good, bad or indifferent, they clearly contain many hours of hand labor. Yet they are sold at unbelievably low prices. I have to assume that "inlaidartist" and "bruceweiart" are making a profit on these transactions. We all know that spruce, maple, rosewood, ebony etc. have certain costs. Abalone and MOP evidently do as well. The Vietnamese luthiers may be skilled or amateurish, but they still obviously devote hours of work to building, inlaying and finishing these very elaborate instruments. Some part of the equation is missing, from my point of view. How can one of these gaudy creations be available for less than a Rogue or a Rover?

Paul, your experience in mandolin construction exceeds by light-years any scraps of knowledge I've picked up along the way; I can change strings and put the bridge back in the right place -- that's about it. But I don't think, as a proud Eastman owner, I can be accused of "China bashing." My limited experience with the Vietnamese instruments is that they look fancy but aren't real strong musically. I have read a variety of posts, and discussed with luthiers like Bernie Lehmann, regarding the characteristics of Vietnamese mandolins and mandolas purchased through eBay. What I heard is pretty much summed up in my earlier post. I was just overcome with curiosity as to how such elaborately hand-worked instruments could be sold so cheaply.

Jim MacDaniel

Sep-05-2007, 10:47am

I was just overcome with curiosity as to how such elaborately hand-worked instruments could be sold so cheaply.
The simple answer is that the cost of doing business in developed nations is much more expensive than in developing nations. (For a more definitive, comprehensive, and complex answer, you should ask an economist. #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif )

allenhopkins

Sep-05-2007, 3:23pm

Spent half an hour composing an elaborate response to Paul's detailed refutation.* Finally trashed it -- not worth prolonging the debate.

Paul, I think you misunderstood the intent of my question. I don't have any agenda against Asian culture, business practices, social structure, or anything else. I honestly couldn't understand how a solid-wood instrument as elaborately detailed as one of the Wei or Tsai mandolins, could be produced, marketed, and shipped at as low a price as these Vietnamese instruments are.

I was not looking for anything nefarious. If I have questions about the musical quality of these instruments, they're based on my own limited experience in playing a handful of them, my talks with people here who either own them or have worked on them, and the large number of evaluations posted in other threads. You yourself have said that most of them "need correction," and other posters have reported design and execution problems. But the musical quality of the instruments was not my issue.

I could go on, but I've done that already. I respect your viewpoint, and your experience in construction and repair, which much exceeds mine. I am sorry that my sincere request for additional information was misunderstood, but stuff happens.

'Nuff said.

*Later - I gather that post's been deleted. Hope he and I are still "friends" in this weird, distant-yet-intimate cyber-universe. And thanx to those who contacted me off-line and said that I got a bit of a bum rap.

Docmarc

Sep-06-2007, 10:24am

allenhopkins

Sep-06-2007, 7:35pm

thank you Allen for a better definition of arrogance...

...geez...
You're welcome (I think)...

cooper4205

Sep-06-2007, 7:46pm

...hmmm...I was just trying to let some folks see an alternative to the most popular, and overpriced, Pacrim instruments...I'm stunned that it would turn to politics...thank you Allen for a better definition of arrogance...

...geez...
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

Jim MacDaniel

Sep-21-2007, 5:42pm

Here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=330165992772&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=014) and here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=330167293952&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=014) are a couple auctions for an interesting body shape from fellow inlay artist (bling artist?) Antonio Tsai. The inlay is still excessive IMHO, but less so than on other offerings from he and Wei (perhaps because there is no pickguard to put inlay all over?) #

I find its body shape and proportions appealing, and the wide neck is a plus, but the tailpiece and bridge will have to go. The back and sides are lacewood, which LMII describes as yielding a tone comparable to aged mahogany -- anyone have any eperience with this tonewood?

Paul Hostetter

Sep-21-2007, 6:25pm

Yep, a couple have passed through my shop. I'm pretty sure it's the harder, more maple-like lacewood from Australia. Nice-looking, though what's "aged mahogany" supposed to connote? The pointy bird tailpiece is particularly dangerous. Gibsons tailpieces look really dumb on these mandolins, like mag wheels on a Model A. Maybe he'll substitute a different one, he sells lots of others. It can't hurt to ask him.

jerchap

Dec-12-2007, 2:30pm

I bought three Bruce Wei mandos. One was fine with minimal set-up, and still is. The second one needed a lot of work, including fret, nut, and fingerboard work. The third one needed some nut, bridge, and set-up, seemed OK for a month or two, then, even in proper humidity conditions, the back split and cracked. I personally know two other people who bought a guitar and mandola, who had theirs crack as well. The quality is exceedingly variable, and it appears some of the builders are using wood that is not fully cured. Also, on the one of mine that cracked, it appears the inlay on the back is paper thin, and actually part of a veneer that was glued on the back... I would not buy another one, but I have been very happy with my Eastman 514.

Jim MacDaniel

Dec-12-2007, 4:58pm

Forget the guitar-shaped mandolin I posted above -- instead, Martin Edwards' Mandonaught is a far more interesting alternative to my eyes: recent Mandonaught thread (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=44090;st=0).

billkilpatrick

Dec-12-2007, 5:10pm

Forget the guitar-shaped mandolin I posted above -- instead, Martin Edwards' Mandonaught is a far more intresting alternative to my eyes: recent Mandonaught thread (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=44090;st=0).
both are lovely. #as a charango player, i'm attracted to the figure "8" shape. #i once saw a guitar-like mandolin on offer on ebay uk with a cloverleaf-shaped sound hole - celtic theme... perhaps? #wish i'd bought it.

as one in total awe of any luthier of any instrument ... does anyone know how inlay is applied to wood?

way too ornate for me but i do marvel at the precision in which bruce lei (and others) place the mother-of-pearl inlay.

Paul Hostetter

Dec-12-2007, 5:39pm

Jim MacDaniel

Dec-12-2007, 5:42pm

...as a charango player, i'm attracted to the figure "8" shape. #i once saw a guitar-like mandolin on offer on ebay uk with a cloverleaf-shaped sound hole - celtic theme... perhaps? #wish i'd bought it.
Do you mean this K.Lee mandolin? Besides the shape, I love its inside joke on the headstock. (say "K.Lee" out loud ;)

BTW, this was sold by GuitarSuperstore.com (http://www.GuitarSuperstore.com) in the UK, and apparently was handmade in the UK as well. It looks like thier web site is currently under construction, but you might still be able to get one, or at least get a referal to the builder, if you contact them via email. (Hmmmm, come to think of it, Martin is in Northen Ireland, so I wonder if K.Lee is his alter ego. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif )

billkilpatrick

Dec-12-2007, 5:55pm

Keith Erickson

Dec-12-2007, 6:26pm

...hmmm...I was just trying to let some folks see an alternative to the most popular, and overpriced, Pacrim instruments...I'm stunned that it would turn to politics...thank you Allen for a better definition of arrogance...

...geez...
....and you didn't spend 6K-9K on your mandolin. #

The nerve of some people #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

brunello97

Dec-12-2007, 8:50pm

Interesting posts on an interesting topic. Plenty of heat, not a lot of light.

I've been to the People's Republic on a couple building projects back in the 90s. Hard to make many generalizations from what I saw one way or the other in a country about the size of the US with, what, one billion people.

Albeit, a building construction site is pretty different from a mandolin 'factory' as I suppose it is from a steel mill, from a textile shop, chemical plant etc. (be it in Vietnam, China or North Carolina) Hard to extrapolate from one to the other (in one way or another pos or neg) although we seem to be trying that here--either to critique or defend our Chinese friends/foes. My Chinese hosts were super nice to me and us but I did see plenty of crazy S going down there. My older brother and I worked in the plastics industry on the Houston ship channel for years. (I wised up faster than him...) He was in western C in the same business for 3 or 4 years in the early 00s. Body parts per million in your consumer plastic products as he tells it. Who knows for sure? But they weren't making mandolins, it's a fact. (Maybe bindings and tuner knobs....)

Paul's Paracho connection might be the most illustrative for me. Also given my 3-5 year exile up here in Michigandia it is striking to have learned some things about industrialization, labor costs etc. during our own economic run up. (I'm an architect, not an economist, so what do I really know?) Henry Ford turned a particular corner though, when he hit on the idea of paying his employees a wage that enabled them to actually afford the products they were making. Okay, he was serving a large internal market-made larger by such wages- not an export market, which makes it a different thing, and in many ways sharpens the indictment of our 'outsourcing' of cheap Chinese/whomever labor geared for a huge export market. Profits vs wages take on a whole different logic under such conditions, which may be why some broad brush China bashing takes place. And not without some justification. That this should then be applied to Chinese luthiery is another matter all together, and perhaps why some are urging caution here.

Which is also why the Paracho reference has bearing for me--an actual longstanding craft tradition (of varying quality). I do own a Paracho mandolin-purchased not just because Michoacan and Michigan both have the same abbreviation. Shift some adjectives around and it might be an example subject of this thread (it has been in other threads.) With a proper set up and strings it plays quite well. Very well actually. It did only cost me $65, which is insanely low for its quality. (It was a factory second nonetheless.)

Like I said, an interesting topic, however roughly we bat it around. Not likely to die down soon.

Mick

Keith Erickson

Dec-13-2007, 10:27am

It's amazing to see the same old off-shore bashing threads that keep churning out the same old rot-gut.

I worked in Mexico for over 10 years in the outsourcing business and it was a great shot in the arm for my career.

Where am I now? #I'm working state side, lovin' it and growing a business. #I'm more successful now than I was 2 years ago.

US industry is not going away folks. #Work is still available and the economy is doing great despite all of the rot-gut you're hearing daily. #

My advice to all is to go out and buy more mandolins and spread the good word about this little 8 Stringed beauty to the farthest reaches of our globe #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

billkilpatrick

Dec-13-2007, 11:29am

I've worked on lots and lots of the Vietnamese instruments. The inlays are never set into a veneer, they are inlaid in the usual fashion of cutting a recess for the pearl in solid wood, gluing it in, and leveling.
do they use a computer for this? #insets and recesses appear to fit together absolutely perfectly. #i've seen various mop inlays for sale on the bruce wei ebay page - i assume these are punched out first and the recesses in the wood are made accordingly (rather than the other way round ... )

sorry - the mystery and skills of luthery are always a wonder.

- bill

Paul Hostetter

Dec-13-2007, 12:27pm

Nope, they just do it, going blind and breathing the dust and CA fumes. Practice makes perfect, but to be quite frank, the Viet inlay work is slam-bang compared to some of the Chinese stuff I've seen. In the case of straight-ahead pearl inlay, it's customary to cut the pearl first, then trace around it and cut the recess to receive it. Maybe a bit of tweakage along the way on some of those chickens and cabbages they load into the backs of the mandolins.

I continue to marvel at the thousands of left-handed mandolin pickguards sold on eBay, all with fancy, unidentical inlay motifs. Where do they all go? There just aren't that many left-handed mandolins on the planet. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

Bill Snyder

Dec-13-2007, 1:58pm

...do they use a computer for this? #insets and recesses appear to fit together absolutely perfectly. #i've seen various mop inlays for sale on the bruce wei ebay page - i assume these are punched out first and the recesses in the wood are made accordingly (rather than the other way round ... )

sorry - the mystery and skills of luthery are always a wonder.

- bill
Bill I purchased an inlaid peghead veneer from Bruce Wei and it looks pretty good, but it is NO WHERE NEAR perfect.
In the picture on ebay you could not tell it, but there is a fair amount of filler around the inlay itself.
I have not used it, but I think with finish on it the filler will not be noticed by anyone unless they study it a bit.

billkilpatrick

Dec-13-2007, 2:20pm

thanks to you both - i'm far to spartan in my tastes to ever want an instrument trimmed in abalone or mop ... troppo lurido ... but i am interested to know what the basic instrument sounds like, without the gee-gaws and doo-dads.

just remembered ... docmarco posted a video of his bruce wei instrument:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEMVXf7XlDU

Jim MacDaniel

Dec-13-2007, 3:35pm

...The Japanese word mochi means both rice flour and full moon...
Coincidentally, at Trader Joe's it translates roughly to "delicious Japanese ice-cream delight, encased in moon-shaped rice-flour pastry"

Paul Hostetter

Dec-13-2007, 6:35pm

Mochi ice cream. Yeah, I've tried it. Interesting. I think I'm more into daifuku.

Bill, there's no way to quantify how the Viet mandolins (or ukes or guitars or whatever) sound because the designs are so varied. And they never come plain, only gaudy. Here's the only model of mandolin that I like.

http://www.lutherie.net/mandolin.viet.jpg

It's somewhat reminiscent of a resonator mandolin, but it really doesn't sound like anything else. A friend of mine, and a superb mandolinist, the first time he played one, said "Wow! It comes with its own bathroom!"

Docmarc

Dec-13-2007, 9:28pm

Paul...is it your experience that the folks over there are doing all this inlay work without benefit of machinery? (routers, Dremels, etc.)...on looking over the Wei I started this thread about, I doubt very much that I could duplicate any of this even with the benefit of good tools and a lot of time...it's genuinely gaudy - but still leaves me impressed with the effort that went into it...

Bill Snyder

Dec-13-2007, 10:55pm

Take a look at Andy Depaule's sight sometime. He is a supplier of cut inlay and his artists refused to use the equipment he wanted to supply them with. They prefer to do it with just the most basic of tools.

martinedwards

Dec-14-2007, 2:28pm

(Hmmmm, come to think of it, Martin is in Northen Ireland, so I wonder if K.Lee is his alter ego. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif )

Not guilty!!!

At least I don't remember........

Thanks for the mention BTW!!

I've bought parts from the 3 far eastern sellers mentioned above and keep going back to Sam in Taiwan for unusual length trussrods as he does them for free (virtually) at no extra charge for mandola etc lengths.

I've given up buying other makers instruments as it's easier fo me to hurl together a Les Paul with 3 singlecoils (for example) than find someone else that makes them!!

billkilpatrick

Dec-17-2007, 6:38pm

BTW, this was sold by GuitarSuperstore.com (http://www.GuitarSuperstore.com) in the UK, and apparently was handmade in the UK as well. It looks like thier web site is currently under construction, but you might still be able to get one, or at least get a referal to the builder, if you contact them via email. (Hmmmm, come to think of it, Martin is in Northen Ireland, so I wonder if K.Lee is his alter ego. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif )
just got an email from them saying k. lee mandolins are no longer available - which is a pity.