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Just need a way to locate a nearby shop to play some side by side. Sylvan in Santa Cruz is another local shop with a bunch of mandos but I'm not seeing any flat tops. I'll keep looking around as...

Thanks for the offer, I am somewhat of a cheapskate on instrument purchases and I play electric guitar most of the time any more. I did try the MD-504 at Gryphon and my impression without even...

I'm quite reluctant to get an instrument without playing one first. Anyone sell Big Muddy near San Jose CA USA? I didn't see any reference to "where to buy one" on their web site.

Ah I see finally that the lowest end MD-304 has "quality geared tuners" while all other seem to sport "Tuners:Pingwell RM-1583N-26A".

Ok next question, anyone have one? I thought the one I tried...

I've been playing mandolin off and on for 35+ years. I'm not great but I think "I should have a decent mandolin to play". My existing model is an old Kentucky teardrop with F-holes but as I play...

I put Almuse pickups in my Eastwood 8-string. Took it from being useless for melody playing right back to being a real instrument. Yeah I complained about it here at the time because it was a fair...

Beautiful sound! But I put them back on the rack.

1) Not going to spend that kind of money on another instrument, although $450 for that Eastman oval hole mandolin looks enticing.

2) Too darn...

Final analysis on the Almuse kit, just summarizing for anyone thinking about going down this path...

Pickups are GREAT and made this instrument usable for melody playing. It was already "OK" for...

That's interesting, I'd also been looking at the A8 prior to getting my Eastwood solid body but I feel a little nervous about instruments with a battery in them. Mostly because I have so many...

Just did! Vast improvement (as they say). :)

Clearly a case of live and learn right? Considering my tools were a rat-tail file, utility knife, and a drill press, it's amazing I didn't murder its pristine CNC outline more than I did. And like...

I'm in the US. It's not my intention to burn this guy a hole where he didn't used to have one. It was my experience and I understand many people have not had that same experience. It's simply a...

No doubt. I'm thinking (for the vendor's sake) how he might avoid this, and supplying a life size outline as a PDF one could download and print might have helped. Or at least critical measurements...

Thanks for the sympathy. You may have picked up that saving time is important to me. I read a lot of these music forums and it seems like many DIY guys really like doing stuff in the shop and so an...

I just joined this group a week or two back to complain about the bad string balance on this electric mandolin. I got a bunch of advice pointing towards the Almuse pickups.

I decided that SINCE I...

I tried a dab of Elmer's glue there and let it sit for an hour before tightening the strings. Didn't help. I finally got it tuned up but had to go one string at a time and adjusted the nut...

I was taking the strings off my new Eastwood Mandocaster to change the pickups (which will be another thread). Once I got some of the strings loose, the nut jerked to the side as it broke free of...

This is the first tune I ever tried to play on the mandolin. That was many years ago. I'll get it one of these days! Looks like Grisman is playing a mandola and Mike Marshall gets the honors on...

I did play a Greek Bouzouki at NAMM in January. It was tuned like the top (highest) 4 strings of a guitar and actually played and sounded great! Just not sure I could deal with holding that...

First mandocello I ever heard was David Grisman playing "Opus 38" and you wouldn't have guessed that it was any more difficult to play than the regular one. What a sound!

Years later I realized...

OK you guys, I realize you're trying to help me out by assuaging my fear of excessively large mando things, but I think we will all be better off if I just stick with what I have and try to do that...

Thanks, I did check out a few of those threads and I think I reached the proper conclusion. They sound so great strumming some first position chords though! Having just bought an electric mandolin...

Way back when, I think I had a Flatiron Octave Mandolin, but it had been sold to me with a set of Mandola strings, and being stupid I didn't know any better. Wound up with way too much tension and...

Thanks, I just bit the bullet on the full upgrade from Almuse. Sometimes I think "ah I can solder that myself", which I can, but failing eyesight and a tendency to drink too much coffee has made...

I learned how to play the easy guitar chords when I was about 12 but never had a guitar until much later.

I started playing mandolin after hearing David Grisman and seeing his band play many times...