The Voice !

[yankees1]

If you are familiar with the singing competition program, "The Voice", you would know that the judges evaluate each singer by voice alone and cannot see the contestant. I was thinking that wouldn't it be interesting to be able to play a dozen or more mandolins blindfolded or where you could not see the mandolin and judge each on sound alone not knowing who made each one ? I just wonder how much our ears/brain are influenced if we can see the mandolin or knew who made it. Some could be amazed that they prefer the sound of a far less expensive mandolin over a more expensive one . Or a Northfield over a Gilchrist ! :) Who knows!

[Barry Wilson]

Almierastrings did something similar with 4 mandolins a short while ago and I found for myself that I did actually pick the sound of lesser costing instruments to sound better in a couple examples. mind you I also picked the most expensive one on one example hehe

[Ed Goist]

Here's a fairly long but interesting video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkTuCEeFi3s) of this exact thing done with four different parlor guitars.
Pretty cool. (Oh, and no financial interest on my part)

[djc227]

I thought about making a video with different picks like you describe. I was just thinking about that today! In my quest for the perfect pick I acquired quite a collection of higher end picks of different brands.

I also think it would be fun to play "pick the import" AB'd without clear video pairing US made models vs popular imports. I have a Michael Kelly that is the best mandolin I have owned, and so i have retained ownership of that one while several others were sold.

[Ivan Kelsall]

There are players on here who seen & played more instruments than i could ever imagine playing & who have there own preferences,but,i think that there would be some surprises in a blind listening test carried out with say, a dozen different makes of Mandolin. Even the relatively less expensive pac-rim Mandolins are delivering up some awesome sounds - consider the Northfields & take a peek at the current thread on the Kentucky KM-900. I think that ultimately,the very experienced players might get it right most times (maybe !),but for some of us,it would be amazingly hard to tell which was which,such is the quality of currently available instruments,
Ivan:disbelief:

[Bernie Daniel]

There have been blind tests where a classical violinist plays the same piece, in succession, on a series of violins. The violins ranged from the old Italian violins standards to some of the best modern violins. The violinist is in a dimmed room with the judges sitting behind a thin veil so no visual clues can be obtained. One of these was fairly recently -- with in the last several years and it was reported in the traditional media (maybe New York Times?). I am sure it was discussed here a couple of years ago with the usual heated controversies welling forth. Anyway the judges were classical music authorities, i.e., players, conductors, and critics. It was totally blind in that neither the listeners nor the player knew what violin being played. The experts failed pretty miserably in picking out the Stradivarius from the modern violins as I recall it.

[Wolfboy]

From Conversations with Casals, a book of interviews with the great cellist Pablo Casals:

"My friend Auguste Mangeot, the Director of the Monde Musical in Paris and the founder of the Ecole Normale de Musique, had often discussed with me the difficulty for students and young musicians of acquiring old Italian instruments, and the quite unjustified contempt people have for new instruments. We decided to "have a trial." It was about 1910. We organized a competition which took place at the Salle des Agriculteurs in Paris. There were forty cellos, some of them by Stradivarius and other well-known makers. I played them all. We had given a number to each instrument and a list to each listener. While I played the hall was kept in darkness, and when the lights were put on the listeners wrote down their impression of the last number. Do you know which instrument got the highest praise? A cello made by Paul Klee from Nantes [a then-contemporary French maker]."

[Bertram Henze]

Here's a fairly long but interesting video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkTuCEeFi3s) of this exact thing done with four different parlor guitars.
Pretty cool. (Oh, and no financial interest on my part)

I am puzzled how different intonation was rated on the same instrument by different players (I mean, you can actually measure intonation) - that casts some doubt on the whole process.
Needless to mention that 3 guitars and 4 players can hardly yield statistically significant evidence, but here I mentioned it anyway, oh well.

All that is proved there is that you might spend more money for an instrument you like less, and let's face it - we knew that, didn't we?

[Bernie Daniel]

I am puzzled how different intonation was rated on the same instrument by different players (I mean, you can actually measure intonation) - that casts some doubt on the whole process.
Needless to mention that 3 guitars and 4 players can hardly yield statistically significant evidence, but here I mentioned it anyway, oh well.

All that is proved there is that you might spend more money for an instrument you like less, and let's face it - we knew that, didn't we?

But each of the players tested the intonation on each guitar so, granted while it is subjective, but they could still have an opinion on it couldn't they? I suppose its really more a measure of set up then the guitar construction per se? Maybe that was your point? But certainly the Hohner proved to be competitive at least? I'd like to see something like this done with mandolins! :)

[Bertram Henze]

But each of the players tested the intonation on each guitar so, granted while it is subjective, but they could still have an opinion on it couldn't they? I suppose its really more a measure of set up then the guitar construction per se?

The parameters evaluated are not as independent as that "matrix" suggests - if the intonation is not perfect, everything else can't sound good either to some, while it doesn't matter at all to others. What is really compared?
- construction of instrument (most competent builder), or
- setup of instrument (most competent dealer), or
- detection of faults (most competent player) ?

I think it is an entangled mixture of all of these no buying decision can be based on. These players can have opinions, of course, but these do not save you from trying instruments yourself, and you can do that without watching a video first.

The video is a commercial by nature. They can't afford scientific accuracy, because it would cost too much and prospective customers wouldn't understand it. So they do something that just sounds scientific and feel free to do apples/oranges.
All they say is that the Hohner is worth a try, and that is not much to show for the effort put into the video. It reminds me a bit of a Mythbusters episode, suggesting that Hohner has a bad cheapo image that must be broken. But you do not convince customers by saying "hey I am not as bad as you think". I wonder if other European guitar builders like Fylde or Lowden would take resort to such measures.

[Bill Snyder]

Another thing about that video is that none of the guitars are highend guitars. The most expensive one used sells for about $500.