? about how the mandolin brands differ in sound

[darylcrisp]

new to this side of the world due to my 9 year old daughter and wife(two weber family). I'm messing around with the wifes each nite before Christmas(she doesn't know). Fun and interesting instruments. I am a diehard guitar man, fingerstyle exclusively. So i'm getting to mess around with a hand full of picks now too-and its fun! really!!

so in the guitar world, the different brands get a "type" based on usually sound. whats the general consensus of how each mandolin brand differs-sound wise?

the brands i'm referring to would be weber/gibson/collings/breedlove. i don't know anything about mandolins other than the two webers under my roof. i find these 2 webers well built, easy to play(well, if you can call what i'm doing on them playing) and easy to make accurate adjustments on. i have no idea what the other brands sound like. i'm not even going into the luthier built ones as the only name i remember is a "hutto", and that may not be right. a young mandolinista named scott napier was with a group at carter fold a few months ago and he was playing stuff on his mandolin that was not typical sounding bluegrass-it was more like modern fingerstyle guitar on a mandolin-i was hugely impressed. at break time we took the daughter to see him and he handed her his hutto and showed her some stuff and impressed her the idea of alternate picking early on-a real nice young man there-great player too.

so help this very naive person along and explain the sounds or what makes them what they are-of the above brands.

i've played a couple of soundclips on "the mandolin store" and find them interesting.

thanks folks-
daryl

[Ivan Kelsall]

Daryl - Your question is one version of possibly the most asked question on this website - "which Mandolin sounds best or how does Mandolin 'a' differ from Mandolin 'b' etc. ? ". You really can take 2 or more Mandolins from the same maker & find them all to differ in one respect or another. It gets more complex when you add other makers into the equation,because the same thing happens with those instruments as well,they too differ one from another.
Others on here,far more knowlegeable than myself,might shed some light on the answer as to whether a particular 'make' of Mandolin has a 'family sound' ie.,what does a 'typical' Gibson or Ellis or Heiden sound like. I'm not sure that there is a definitive answer.
You say that you have 2 Webers ?. As a Weber owner for 4 years this month,i can honestly say that you've chosen well. That's not to say that there aren't instruments that you'd like more,but you would have to play them to find that out for yourself. Whatever we say,is purely our opinion on things,your opinion will differ,
Ivan

[Brent Hutto]

I went through three mandolins in my first months few to find the one that suits me. In reading opinions and listening to sound clips I had a pretty fair idea of what a Collings MT or MF would sound like and of the brands you mentioned it was the only one that even entered into the possibilities I was considering. That's not what I ended up settling on but could well have been if things hadn't worked out right for me to end up with my Mike Black A5.

Last weekend I finally got a chance to play and hear someone else play a Collings mandolin, right in my own music room as it turns out! Two takeaways from that experience. First, I liked the sound of it a lot. If I'd ended up with one I would not have been disappointed. Second, it did not remotely sound like the preconception I had formed from listening to recordings, sound clips, etc. Not even in the ballpark. I was shocked but it was somewhat surprising.

[Randi Gormley]

Can't comment on the differences between the brand names, but IIR correctly, there are more obvious differences between the types of mandolins than the brands. So an oval hole would sound one way, f-hole mandolins another, bowl-backs and bandolims have different characteristics and sounds. There is a lot of debate about, say, the Gibson sound (or the older Gibson sound vs the new Gibson sound) and which of the brands are more bluegrassy or more celtic, but much of that is personal preference.

[EdHanrahan]

Tell folks where you live and you're sure to get recommendations for music stores that specialize in new or (better yet!) vintage mandolins. Never hurts to try a bunch back-to-back!

Just off the top of my head: Gruhn in Nashville, Mandolin Bros. in NYC (Staten Island), Elderly in Michigan, Gryphon in Calif., ANY of the Cafe sponsors. They're the top of the heap, but there are several dozen others worth the visit. Surprisingly good near me, in northern NJ, is Lark St. Music.