Culling the herd...again

[red7flag]

I guess the corollary to the title it that the culling came after two new purchases, the Nyberg Sobell style mandola and a Martin Style C. I am a true believer that there is no great tragedy than an instrument not played. This was a particularly difficult culling as I didn't really want to lose any of my current instruments. I found that I cannot justify a second mandola. So I reluctantly placed the Girouard up for sale. This was not an instrument that I wanted to sell. It has great tone, well made and easy to play. all the qualities of a keeper and it is. Had I never received the Nyberg, the Girouard would still be mine, The Nyberg just touches something in my soul. I just love to sit in the living room and noodle with it. So the Girouard is gone, but not forgotten.

[Br1ck]

So, buying two and selling one is culling the herd?

[Jerusalem Ridge]

Look on the bright side, you still have the Ellis

[red7flag]

So, buying two and selling one is culling the herd?

When I first thought about starting this thread, I was just going to focus on culling, but realized, as you did Br1ck, that that would not be honest. Although the buying and culling is related, I did not decide to sell the Girouard until I realized that it would not be played. While the Nyberg and Girouard are way different to look at, they seem to approach music in similar manner. So one had to go.

[lflngpicker]

I get this red7flag. Sometimes one has to sell two to buy one. Other times, the funds for the purchase could be there, but you just don't want to have too many nice instruments not being played. After retirement, and moving from a house to a townhome, space is also an issue. An M.C. friend of mine has helped me see that instruments owned and later sold, are a part of my education. It is tuition, if you will.

[CES]

Yeah, I need to cull a few as well. I've reached a point where I'd like to move towards fewer but nicer instruments. The problem is, I LIKE all of my current instruments, some of them a lot. I've got the space presently, so haven't moved any yet. Well, I did turn my MT into a Weber 'Cello, but that hardly counts . I'll have both kids through college in a few years, and if we decide to downsize, that'll probably be the tipping point for me.

(I chose to move the MT because I found myself playing my Silverangel more than the MT, and the MT deserves to be played, as it's a very good mandolin, so I get your logic).

[Ron McMillan]

I live a very long way from the regular market, but that hasn't stopped me acquiring four instruments. One custom made in the US, a 97-year-old Gibson A2 (bought seriously flood-damaged from Colorado and repaired here in Thailand for a ridiculously small sum), a mandocaster bought online in Germany and hand-carried out from the UK - and a no-name 1970s F5 posted to me from Italy that I had reconditioned here and plays beautifully. Since there is nobody around to trade with, I don't see me culling my little herd anytime soon.

[Br1ck]

I'm certainly not the guy to throw stones. I have a 12 string guitar that I rarely play, but just knowing that I can is enough and I don't have much money in it, and it is one of a matched pair along with a six string. I'd want to sell them that way. Who has a 12 parlor, much less a twin in a six string.

Pono guitars, as well as ukes are fabulous. Wonder if they'd make me an octave mandolin to match?

[MontanaMatt]

When do you consider a backup mando a neglected mando needing another player? My Ratliff has superseded my Weber...My Weber was customized and inscribed for me, and I'm torn about having a case queen tucked away hoping my two year old some will want to play a nice mando later in life...If player wear didn't happen so radically with some players, I would consider a loan to a friend, but wouldn't you need a care, feeding and repair contract to preserve the friendship?

[NewKid]

Well, I'm at two mandos right now and love both. On my future list is a Sorensen AX, Phoenix Neoclassical, Ellis A5 and Collings MT2-O, but I'm giving myself 10 years to complete this collection. I collected and sold a lot of custom ukuleles before discovering the mandolin two years ago and don't plan to repeat those mistakes with the mandolin.

[Jess L.]

... If player wear didn't happen so radically with some players, I would consider a loan to a friend, but wouldn't you need a care, feeding and repair contract to preserve the friendship?

Ha yeah sometimes maybe.

Short version of story: It can sometimes be stressful either way, for both loan-ee and loan-er.

Long version of story:
A few years ago when I was just getting back into music, a friend in another region loaned me his Soviet Russian mandolin. (He'd bought it new in the 1970s for $25.)

So I was busily plunking away on the cute little mandolin, trying to remember how to flatpick and trying to remember some of the old tunes I used to play.

I was also being extra careful to not scratch the mandolin (fingernails, belt buckle, all sorts of potential hazards), nor knock it over, nor spill tea on it, nor any number of other unfortunate things that can happen to musical instruments. You know how it is, you're always much more careful with someone else's belongings than with your own - mostly out of common courtesy & consideration, and also partly to keep one's 'credit' good so they'll loan you more stuff in the future if they're so inclined. So...

All was well & good, until I noticed after a month or two that the action (string height) kept gradually changing. It would just not stabilize. At first I was like, Huh?



Then I figured it out. Uh-oh...

Where I lived was a much more humid/damp climate than what the mandolin had been accustomed to for the previous 30+ years. At my friend's house in a different region, the relative humidity (air moisture content) was always quite low, it was a different climate, so the mandolin's wood was pretty dry. (He had always kept the mandolin hanging on the wall in a heated room of his house, no humidification, no case.) Whereas at my house, the relative humidity was always quite high. Especially since I had his mandolin sitting in the corner of my unheated living room, which makes the effective relative humidity even higher (nearly saturated air, most of the time there).

I worried that if I kept it for a few more months as planned, it would completely 'adapt' to its new damp environment and stabilize, but - looking forward to when I would eventually return it to its owner in the dry environment, I figured it would be at *that* point that the instrument would go through a rapid-dryout phase (being back in its original dry environment, it would begin to dry out and lose all the excess moisture it would have absorbed at my place had I kept it longer), and then *that's* when one would expect to see problems develop (cracks, glue joint issues, whatever the usual stuff that happens with drying out too much or too fast).

Yeah it was laminated which is more stable than solid wood, but still it was obviously continuing to change shape because the action kept changing and always in the same direction. And the mandolin's tone was starting to become tubby - it wasn't like that to start with - just like a damp banjo head (the old hide heads, not the modern plastic ones). And I would surmise that even a laminated instrument would possibly (maybe) be subject to finish-checking (is that the right word?) as a result of going from one extreme to another over a period of time.

Once I realized all that, I was like, "I gotta get this mandolin back to my friend and I gotta do it NOW."

He seemed to think I was worrying unnecessarily and I couldn't make him understand that I had *not* developed a sudden dislike of his instrument but rather that I was worried about its longterm dimensional stability. I've seen instrument damage before when wood gets damp for months/years at a time and then dries out, and I didn't want that happening to his mandolin. So I got his mandolin back to him but he had his nose out of joint for a while because, in his view, it was like I'd refused his generosity or something. It was almost like, "well whatsa matter, you don't like my instrument? Why don't you want to play my instrument?"

So even when a friend loans an instrument and there's *no* damage, it can still turn out to be stressful because there can still be little misunderstandings that need ironed out.

Although I suppose some people are easier to deal with than others. Everyone has their quirks.

[red7flag]

I'm certainly not the guy to throw stones!

Was said in a joking manner and did not take it that way. But, beneath most good humor is truth and such was the case here. Unless one is a pack rat and I know a few, aquisition usually result in culling and as Ifingpicker said above part of our “tuition”.