Just bought a new Kentucky KM900 from The Mandolin Store

[Jesse Kinman]

Just bought it tonight for $999.99
Looking forward to getting it this coming week!
My plan is to have a custom mandolin built by Tyler White within the next year, and this will tie me over till then and become my backup!

[mandolin tony]

congratulations, great mandolin I hope you enjoy it.

[Erok]

Happy new mandolin day!

[Willie Poole]

Those Kentucky 900 series mandolins are great mandolins and you might find it to be your #1 mandolin and not a back up, I see that the prices on them have increased a bit in the last few years which is a sign that they are good mandolins...The 900`s have smallish frets and the later models, the 950 and 956 have larger frets and a radius fret board

Enjoy it....

Willie

[Glassweb]

Skaggs... I believe you'll be impressed with your KM900. I recently scored a 2010 KM900 in perfect shape and it is an amazingly great sounding mandolin! I've played mandolins for $$$$$ that don't have the volume or tone of this mandolin.

Enjoy!

[Phil Goodson]

Those Kentucky 900 series mandolins are great mandolins and you might find it to be your #1 mandolin and not a back up, I see that the prices on them have increased a bit in the last few years which is a sign that they are good mandolins...The 900`s have smallish frets and the later models, the 950 and 956 have larger frets and a radius fret board

Enjoy it....

Willie

Willie,
What's a KM 956? Haven't found any other reference to that.

[Glassweb]

he probably is referring to the KM950... ???

[Jerusalem Ridge]

The 956 I believe is a discontinued model, it had the same specs as the 950 only it had a darker “wine burst” they called it.
I think that there was also a 906, which had the same specs as the 900.

[Willie Poole]

J.R. Is correct, same as a 950 except for a darker finish...it also has a scalloped fingerboard extension and I am not sure if the 950 has that also...I didn`t know the 956 was discontinued...Oh Well...

Willie

[Jesse Kinman]

Thanks guys! I’ll try to post pictures when I get it, and maybe a video when I get the time to make one. I’m really excited about it, I am hoping it will knock the socks off of my KM630S!

[Ivan Kelsall]

As mentioned many times on here,the KM900 was modeled after the only Loar "A" style mandolin known - ''The Griffith Loar'',& by all accounts they are superb sounding mandolins by any standard, & will stand comparison to mandolins costing many times more.

Cafe member A5loar owns one (?) & rates it very highly & he's a gent who's more than familiar with Lloyd Loar mandolins in general. Maybe you shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to order a custom build ?,
Ivan

[Jesse Kinman]

I got it last night, haven’t played it much except for a couple minutes. The frets were smaller than I thought they would be, so I will have to get used to that some. I believe my frets on my KM630S are banjo frets (.080)
I will need to adjust it some, it’s a little too low, and buzzing, but so far it sounds good for being brand new, I already like it more than my previous 630, but it doesn’t blow it away. I’m sure it will open up and sound better soon tho.
I wil play it for a few weeks and post a video of it!

[Jon Hall]

I don't think the 956 is discontinued. My local Kentucky dealer ordered me one in September. It is a great bluegrass instrument! It has the dark, reddish brown color(no sunburst), the scooped fb extension, radius-ed fb, large frets and most important (my opinion) a very thin finish. It has great tone and volume. The color is darker than the Sheraton brown on my Gibson A2. I had a local luthier make and install an ebony pick guard. I'll try to post a pix.

[Jon Hall]

It's been so long since I've posted a photo, I've forgotten how it's done. That wasn't so hard after all

[Jesse Kinman]

Here’s some pictures of my new mandolin, I edited the pictures for color so they are close to the actual color. The last picture of both my Kentucky’s has not been edited, but with both together my phone happened to get the color right!
I really like the color of the new one, especially compared to the old one!






And believe it or not, 3 of my favorite parts of this mandolin are the ebony pieces.
So much character in this fretboard, I love it!

Attention to detail is very good, so much better than my KM630S

[Swimbob]

Hi Skaggs,

I found a KM630 here in a pawn shop and was able to get it for $300 and love it. I lowered the bridge to get it a little more playable but haven't done much more than that to it.

Did you have to do anything to yours in the way of set up? I'm wondering if I need to shave the nut just a little so I can get cleaner tones on the first fret or do I just need to man up and push harder?

Your new 900 is a beaut!

[Jon Hall]

Hey Skaggs, your 900 looks great!

[Jesse Kinman]

Hi Skaggs,

I found a KM630 here in a pawn shop and was able to get it for $300 and love it. I lowered the bridge to get it a little more playable but haven't done much more than that to it.

Did you have to do anything to yours in the way of set up? I'm wondering if I need to shave the nut just a little so I can get cleaner tones on the first fret or do I just need to man up and push harder?

Your new 900 is a beaut!

Yes I did, unfortunately. I bought mine new from Musicians Friend back in 2003, and played with it for a year or two, but the fretboard had a warp to it that would never come out with any adjustment, so I ended up removing the frets and leveling the fretboard and I installed banjo frets from Stew-Mac, and it played so much better after that. It also had a plastic nut originally, and before I refretted it I had installed a fossilized walrus ivory nut that improved the tone a lot, but after the refret it was obviously too short to still use, but I didn’t want to waste such an expensive nut so I put a piece of walnut veneer under the nut to raise it up and it worked perfectly! I think the original plastic nut was too high on mine, so yeah, you might benefit from lowering it. That was my reasoning for leveling the fretboard too, cause I couldn’t lower the bridge enough to where it was playable on the 1st-12th frets without it buzzing on multiple frets higher up.

[Willie Poole]

I owned a KM-900 about three years ago and found that the so called buzzing was because the mandolin had small frets and on the first three frets I couldn`t press the strings down to where they noted clean, the KM-956 that I have now has larger frets and also has a pearl nut, I can`t say if pearl helps it any but when a luthier looked it he said to never even think about changing it....Both the 900 and the 956 sounds great a little different but not any better or worse, just a little different...At first I didn`t like the darker finish on the KM-956 but the more I play it the more I like it, when I had a custom made F-5 made for me in 1981 the one thing I asked for was a darker finish with a slight sunburst, I did like the finish on the original KM-900 as shown in the photo that Ivan posted above, the 950`s look more like the Loar A-5, a slight sunburst, dark around the edges...

Enjoy the mandolin because in my opinion there isn`t a mandolin that sounds any better for the price the KM-900 series sells for...I have played many. many mandolins in my time and these Ky`s are as good as any of them sound wise and they have a good fit and finish also...

Willie

[colorado_al]

In my experience, all mandolins from the Saga/Kentucky brand need basic setup work done to them, even the master level 900 series and above. The construction of those instruments is great, but the factory setup is usually poor. That can lead to buzzing and difficulty playing from high action, etc. The nut should be MOP, not plastic on the KM900, but it will still need work to bring it to the correct string height. I have seen some that could use a fret leveling, and some that did not need it.
I agree with Willie in my preference for the KM950 vs KM900, for larger frets and radiused fretboard, but it is a matter of personal taste. Others prefer the more traditional frets and flat board.