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I love it! :-) Lately I've been messing with alternative tunings on it, a carryover from my guitar playing background, and it's surprising what a range of tones you can get from it by changing the...

Breedlove doesn't sell the Premier anymore, they are all Crossovers, http://breedlovemusic.com/mandolins/browse You might find a new one, still, but it's from last year or earlier. I think in early...

String gauge and action both affect intonation, so it's a coupled problem. Pick your strings, set your action, then tweak the intonation as needed. This is true on all stringed fretted instruments.

I think your picking hand holds most of the skills, and that plus your finger calluses and ability to finger notes, carries right over to guitar and back. There are plenty of differences, string and...

50, last year. But I played guitar pretty seriously from age 13 to 30 or so, less seriously for another 5 years before life and other interests sent my guitars into the closet. Mandolin re-sparked...

I think musical instruments are challenging because there are different kinds of learning involved. It's a lot more complex than trying to push how many numbers you can hear and repeat.

There are...

I've experimented with different shapes and sizes, but have converged on medium Fender 346 triangular picks. Thin enough for some strumming attack, but thick enough for hybrid fingerpicking that I...

Glad to see they're still at it, Elderly was just across town for me when I was in college in the early 80's, and a friend worked there in sales. I bought my first acoustic guitar there, and spent a...

I've been playing around with different picks lately, and it really makes an audible difference what I use. I can get a wide variety of tones, particularly the initial attack parts of the tones, by...

Speaking of alternative tunings, I was messing around earlier with my mandolin, intending to tune the whole thing down a half step to see how it sounded. I got halfway through, F#/C#/A/E, and...

I agree, the number is useful just as a ballpark for getting beginning musicians grounded in the reality of how much practice time it will take to really become proficient. At 2 hours a day (a lot...

The cool thing about electronic (purely digitally synthesized) music is, the possibilities are infinite. You can nearly reproduce the sound of any instrument, and you can create the sounds of...

I dunno, I enjoy playing my mandolin all by itself. Then tomorrow I'll enjoy playing my 12-string acoustic guitar all by itself. Then maybe the next day I'll plug my Stratocaster into my Marshall,...

Interesting, I find that playing guitar I tend to look away most of the time - but not always, if I'm messing around trying to invent something I'll look at my left hand. Playing mandolin, or bass,...

What I've found is, I keep better control over a thicker pick. Maybe it's because that's what I'm used to from guitar, but it does force me to keep the pick from digging too deep into the strings,...

Agree, it does help develop your ear. I'm starting to think my next stringed instrument might be harp guitar, if I can find a nice one for a reasonable price, which is a challenge. They are quite...

There are many alternative guitar tunings that some of the best players use, open chords and modal and more, and it's great fun and inspiration to experiment with them. Lately my 12-string is tuned...

I find guitar much easier and I'm much better at it, but I started playing guitar at 13 and didn't pick up mandolin until age 50. That said, I do think mandolin is probably fundamentally easier...

Case for my nice mando. If I want a conversation piece, I can leave my Rogue out on a stand or hang it from a wall - though I've semi-permanently loaned it out to a friend who wants to learn to...

I love my premier OF, which apparently is now discontinued along with the rest of their USA-made mandos. Lovely sound, plays in tune and only needed a tiny intonation adjustment out of the case,...

I played trombone for years as a kid up through high school, in symphonies and jazz bands and marching bands, and it was all about reading music and faithfully expressing the composer's vision of...

I was just playing around with my Rogue this evening, using some nut files to cut the grooves down in the hopes of making it tunable before loaning/giving it to a guy at work who wants to learn...

Ironic thread, I popped an E string on my electric guitar just last night, setting intonation after doing some nut filing and resetting the action. If they pop, they pop at the machine head capstan,...

The E strings pop easily after loosening and tightening, and once I popped both during an intonation adjustment! The motions are tiny too, because of the short scale compared with a guitar and...

Oh, and another thought, just to shore up my opinion on there being no rules. I've gotten really into harp guitar music lately, love it - a well-played harp guitar is a little symphony, and you can...