Mandolin Cafe

Some exciting happenings in 2018 as we hurl along in our 22nd year of operation. Are we going to slow down? Hell no, we're stepping on the gas pedal.

In the first 3-4 months expect to see two premium giveaways of mandolins from two of the most prominent names in the building community. Sorry, not giving out the names of those builders but these models will have you drooling. Only thing we can really tell is the plan right now they'll both be A models in the $3K range.

We're really excited about these builder names because both have some very new, promising things going on with them.

We're also working on the next generation of the Mandolin Cafe forum. The new release of the software we use has been out awhile and we feel it has entered its most stable phase. It was important it get to that state before we were willing to use it. The look and feel and much of the functionality will remain the very same as well as all of the features but the underlying engine/software will be much improved and have a few extra features. We know because we installed it when it first came out but decided against it because it dropped some key features which have now been added back in by demand.

Users never like change, but in order to maintain this resource for the future down the road it's critical we stay up to date! In other words, if we're still running this 20 years from now, and that's the plan, we want the software to be capable.

More news we an only hint at. A major U.S. stringed instrument dealer is picking up roots and moving to a new location. For any store to engage in such a move is a very major event in our mind and we have one of our ace reporters ready to cover that story when the time comes. Right now this is looking mid-year but stay tuned.

As the mandolin community moves forward there are some exciting new young faces blazing the trail ahead. Look for some full-length feature interviews with a few of those and a couple of old favorites thrown in.

That's all we can tell you right now without giving away too much, but there's always more.

Exciting times!