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I am in love. And this is no fly-by-night/easy-come-easy-go kind of love. I know there are many folks out there who profess to love and then find something new in short order. But you will not see this beauty in the Mandolin Café classifieds unless my hands cease to function and my heart is turned against stringed instruments.

The object of my affection is an improved Fender FM-988, a sonic blue 8 string “mandocaster.”

In the early part of this decade, Fender ...

For many years (over 20 now) I have been improving the sound of my own stringed instruments with mechanical attachments. The latest one is a major breakthrough for mandolins, guitars and fiddles because the volume and sound quality improvements are no less than stunning! My provisional patent arrived at the patent office mail room only yesterday and I am waiting for them to log it in. When they do I'll put an ad with pictures and an explanation about how it works in the Cafe classifieds, probably ...

I have always seen this music as a subset of Old Time, what a number of folks would call Northern Old Time, as it has so much New England and French Canadian, and Irish/Scottish influence as Appalacian. If it is its own category of music, well thats great, I would not argue.

It is a body of tunes. I recently checked out a contra-dance web site in an entirely different part of the country from where I live, a place I have never been, and I found their set list was entirely familiar ...

I am thinking a stripped down approach is a good one for this installment. So much went on during this long weekend that writing it all down here in prose is impractical and will make for less than riveting reading. With that in mind I’ve decided to share the Studio Log I created. But to add some interest I have included notations where and when interesting parts occurred or insights were gained.

➢ Personnel
o Tim Lechuga, AKA Señor: Bandleader, producer, acoustic guitar, ...

Doyle Lawson was recently quoted saying, "I'm hearing Bill Monroe's name mentioned less and less these days, and I don't want to see that happen. He's the reason I play bluegrass and I wanted to do something to put Bill's name back out front."

The quote came in regard to a marvelous cut entitled Monroe's Mandolin from Lawson's new Lonely Street recording, and a fine cut it is.

Is Bill Monroe fading from our collective memories?

We hope not, so as we approach ...

A lot of useful features found on the Cafe's message board are simple never used.

How can well tell? Because many of these features share a common web address, and what each user sees is dependent upon their member login. We simply search the usage of those web addresses and we quickly see those that are rarely accessed. To be fair though, a lot of people may have no use for these, but unless they know, they certainly will never make use of them.

We thought it would ...

Went into the studio for most of the day on October 9. In retrospect it feels like a waste of $150.00. But Things improved a little more than a week later...

I arrived at the studio on Friday hopeful of getting at least two songs in the can under the watchful eye of a professional engineer using some good mics. But I ended up with two lousy tracks I don't feel I can use.

The problems stemmed from lack of preparation and equipment failure. I figured I could walk ...

A friend recently visited Italy for a day as part of a 12 countries in 14 days tour and said he saw all that was worth seeing. No need to return.

A common bistro meal in France consists of onglet (hanger steak). It's fabulous, affordable, and an absolutely wonderful meal in the hands of a competent cook. In the U.S., it's mixed in with stew meats or ground up for hamburger.

Feijoada is a remarkable dish made of throw-away cuts of smoked meats (think hoof and face meat, ...

I read JEStanek's blog about his mandolins, so I thought it was a good idea and now I am blogging about the mandolins I've owned. Like Jaime, I've had a list of mandolins that have progressively led to higher quality instruments, and now I finally have one mandolin that I am very, very happy with.

I started playing the mandolin when I was about 23. I played guitar up until that that point, and was busy relishing my Martin HD28 when my good friend Eli Heferly played a bootleg of Doc ...