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Mandy87
Sep-23-2004, 1:11pm
I'm in the process of buying my first mandolin. A friend recommend the site Music123.com, where I found this mandolin- Aria AM200. It only costs $169.99. Is this a good mandolin at a good price or a junk mandonin thats not worth buying? Your advice is helpful!!!! Thanks. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Hondo
Sep-23-2004, 2:54pm
Well, the top is plywood, it'll arrive without any sort of set up, which means that the bridge won't be in place, the strings may or may not be decent, and who knows about the nut and tuners? No case or gig bag, either. And of course you won't be able to try it out before buying it. I'd check out the classifieds here before attempting to buy something through one of the large online sellers. There are often Mid-mos for sale (search for various threads for more info), and FattDadd has good prices on his offerings, and they'd be set up.

fatt-dad
Sep-23-2004, 3:25pm
Check out my web page for mandolins for sale. They are also listed in the mandolincafe classifides.

www.fatt-dad.com

There is an Aria that I have for sale that is not laminated, comes in a real nice hard shell case and priced a little over $170.00, but not that much.

Email me if you are interested and I will also donate 5% of the total sale to the Plucked String Foundation.

fatt-dad

Martin Jonas
Sep-28-2004, 6:01am
There's always the question of where you draw the line between "affordable" and "too expensive", of course, but at $169.99 you are already out of the region of ultra-cheapos and could start looking at solid wood pacrims. The cheapest new mandolin that I personally would consider worth playing is the Kentucky KM250s (http://www.elderly.com/new_instruments/items/KM250S.htm), which sells at $250 at Elderly (including free shipping). Other new and reputable mandolins in that price range are the Crafters. I haven't played one, but I know lots of people who have and think that they are very playable, well-made and have a tone much better than their price would suggest. A lot of professionals in the UK play these. However, their Ovation-style guitar bodies are anathema in bluegrass and some folk circles and I understand the tone is fairly guitar-like (i.e. mandolin-unlike), which may not be what you want. You can get these on ebay for $179 (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=10179&item=3749470543&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW). Either of these should be a better bet than that Aria.

Martin

Don
Sep-28-2004, 8:10am
There's an F style Epiphone on the classifieds for $350 +. This looks like it may be from the 1970s-80s and if it is I would think it a good buy at that price.It would almost certainly be all solid wood.No financial interest,yada,yada.