I've had my Eastman MD615 for about 5 months. There are several spots on the neck where the finish has chipped off from the edge of my thumbnail occasionally catching it while sliding up and down the neck. It tends to happen when I've really been working on something with a lot of closed chords. I figure I will eventually take the finish off the neck completely, (and yes, I've trimmed my nail) but I wondered if anyone else is having this problem?
Had a few chips on mine, scraped the finish off, boiled linseed oiled it and it's great. I would recommend it!
Took mine down to the bare wood on the back of the neck; no regrets here (505). I also took all the gloss off with green Scotchbrite, which not only made it look amazing, but also opened up the tone/volume. I ended up rubbing on lemon oil on the back of the neck, since that's all I had around the house; seems to have worked ok. These are great mandolins, and not just "for the money" either, but just plain great on their own.
The finish is Nitro Cellulose and fragile. I already marked mine with my Barcus Berry transducer. Got to be carefull!
The neck still looks good, bit there is a shiny spot below the strings where my little finger brushes against the body of the mandolin.
