Specific mandolins for old-time music?

[allenhopkins]

If there are fretted instruments that usually means it's in the 1900's. In the rural areas most instruments were hand made and frets were not used...

The exception was the Appalachian dulcimer, which almost always was fretted, although in a diatonic rather than chromatic scale.

On the overall subject of string band instrumentation, many of the rural bands were assembled out of musicians who happened to know each other and play together informally, on whatever instruments they owned. You could often get some "non-standard" instruments: harmonica was fairly common (Red Fox Chasers), Autoharp showed up in several bands, the banjo-ukulele was not unheard of. Jack Grant played mandolin-banjo as well as mandolin with the Tenneva Ramblers, who served as Jimmie Rodgers' back-up band for a while. I've heard hammered dulcimer and tuba (Henry Ford's Old-Time Dance Orchestra), mandola (Prairie Ramblers), tenor banjo (Allen Brothers), piano (Charlie Poole's Allegheny Highlanders), cello (Judge Sturdy's Orchestra), ukulele (Canebrake Rattlers), and miscellaneous other.

So, we may be more "standardized" now, in terms of instrumental line-ups, than the earlier fiddle and old-timey bands were.