Originally Posted by
allenhopkins
Well, the carved-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard, long-scale F- (or A-) model is sure not the "traditional shape" of the mandolin; the lute-derived bowl-back instrument went back centuries before Orville Gibson decided that the mandolin should be built like the violin, and Lloyd Loar added the f-holes and the raised fingerboard -- around a century ago.
And it's only "what the mandolin looks like now" because that's what the manufacturers are building. It's not what the mandolin looks like around the Mediterranean, where you still find the bowl-back, the "Portuguese" style, and other oval-hole, flat- or canted-top instruments, with varying body shapes.
.......- the mandolin itself, as it's being manufactured now, is designed around the iconic bluegrass instrument. Yeah, Lloyd Loar thought that the F-5 was a wonderful instrument for composed classical-derived music, and look at the variety of ethnic music Dave Apollon got out of it, but we see it in the hands of Bill Monroe -- and Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, Frank Wakefield, John Duffey, and all the bluegrass mandolinists we've heard over the years.
So, as I said back up the line, the mandolins that are being made today, in largest part, are the type of instruments that came into general prominence playing bluegrass, or its derivatives: arched-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard, longer-scale A- and F-models. That, to me, is undeniable.
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