Anyone stop playing guitar for Mandolin?

[magictwanger]

Just curious if the "Mandolin Bug" had gotten to the point where anyone here gave up the guitar to dedicate themselves exclusively to Mandolin?.....Thanks

[OneChordTrick]

Sort of, but I was never a great guitar player. Played a bit a school, then gave up for 35 years, bought another one and then. A mandolin. My mandolin playing is probably better than my guitar, but that’s not saying much!

[MikeZito]

I have 4 mandolins, but I have over 30 guitars . . . so, stopping is not an option.

[onassis]

At this point, I only pick up the guitar when playing with one certain friend. Essentially all of my music time is spent on the mandolin. This after 30 years of guitar.

[Roger Moss]

I've played guitar the greater part of my life (since 1970), but mostly on occasion for pleasure. When I found mandolin, I played it mostly but also for pleasure. I like the sound of mando more and it's just easier to play on the couch than a dreadnought. Gradually I played guitar less and less, and now I don't think I have touched it for several months.

[Frankdolin]

I jump between the two depending on which way the winds blow'n. But my heart and soul is always with the mandolin...

[Eric Platt]

Nope. Too much of the local old-time community sees me as a guitar player who dabbles in mandolin. The local Scandinavian music community is more open to my playing different instruments. All my practice time these days is on mandolin. But I've got many years to go before I even rise up to mediocre.

[CES]

Not completely. There are still things I can do on guitar that I can’t quite pull off on mandolin, and, sometimes the lower register is needed with vocal accompaniment.

But, I’ve been playing mandolin or mandocello 98% of the time of late, and only pull out the guitar when it’s needed for my band setting. I lead the youth praise band at church, and sometimes will have 2 or 3 guitar players, sometimes none depending on who can come. More like herding stray cats, actually...

[pheffernan]

"Stop" is such a strong word -- I still have a Guild M20 and Rickenbacker 360, have even added a Newton Size 2 tenor -- but after 25 years of guitar, I'd now identify the mandolin as my primary instrument.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I've almost quit playing banjo. The last time mine was out of it's case was back in Dec.'17. After close to 50 years going it alone,it gets a bit tiresome - still so much new to learn on mandolin,but i'm getting there,
Ivan

[Demetrius]

I haven’t quite guitar but man has it taken practice time from the guitar. I go through phases though...

[Willie Poole]

I played both guitar and mandolin for many years and then I fell down a flight of steps and broke my left hand and now I cannot make the C chord on the guitar so I sold my Martin and have taught myself some different ways of making chords on the mandolin so that I still get a pretty good chop...I really loved playing the guitar though but mandolin is easier to carry so I just show up with the small mandolin and play...It`s hard to believe but when I need a fill in guitar player for my band if the regular one gets ill or can`t make a show I have a hard time finding a guitar player, at least one that is half decent...Now when I meet a new guitar player that can play decent I always get his phone number to keep on hand just in case...

Willie

[foldedpath]

I haven't stopped completely, but the guitar has receded into the background over the last 10 years or so, after falling down the rabbit hole of Irish and Scottish traditional music. Guitar just isn't a central, defining instrument in this music, like it was in the Blues and Jazz stuff I used to play.

All the electric guitars have been sold off, and I'm down to just one custom Santa Cruz acoustic steel string guitar, and one custom Steve Holst nylon string guitar. Those will stay. I play a few fingerstyle arrangements of slower trad melodies on the nylon string, and occasionally back my fiddler S.O. at home on the steel string. But the mandolin is more suitable for the fast dance tunes, and for playing with others in sessions. So that gets the most attention these days.

[George R. Lane]

I too was never a decent guitar player and now I am an ok mandolin player. Many years ago I had to sell my dads Gibson archtop (two kids, no money). I didn't pick up and play guitar for close to twenty years. I bought a Taylor 510 and never clicked with it, body was way to big. I sold it bought a Taylor 814, a real nice guitar but again guitar wasn't for me. I worked as a photographer for my local paper and saw that Bruce Weber was building archtop guitars and did a story about them. While at the Logan shop he had a Big Sky mandolin on his desk and let play it and that was it, I was hooked. Sold the 814 and bought a Gallatin, then a Vintage A and finally sold both of them to get my Yellowstone. This has turned into a 12 year friendship with Bruce and Mary and I thank them for introducing me to the mandolin.

[Jack Roberts]

I was never great shakes at guitar, but I enjoyed playing. I stopped completely when I started playing mandolin years back, but now I have to play guitar regularly in public because our band's guitar player left town. A little band like ours can do without a mandolin, but not without a guitar. I'm trying to convince Mrs. Roberts to take on the guitar part, but she says she just wants to sing.... I think the truth is that she's afraid if I stop playing guitar I'll be tempted to bring my fiddle to gigs instead of the mandolin.

[MikeEdgerton]

I play them both. I was a guitar player for many decades before I took up the mandolin.

[Caleb]

I stopped guitar almost entirely for several years and focused on mandolin. I recently fell back in love with playing guitar and singing songs. After not playing mandolin for several weeks, I recently got it out of the case. I was amazed at how nice it sounded and how much fun it was after not playing it for a good while.

[Jill McAuley]

I played guitar for 20+ years, and have had a lot of nice electrics/acoustics come and go over those years, but once I got into irish trad music/tenor banjo/mandolin I pretty much didn't touch a guitar for 10 years. That all changed about a month ago due to a thread here on the cafe where someone was wondering about selling their guitar to focus on mandolin. It got me thinking about what a waste it would be to lose all my guitar playing abilities after all the years of playing. Another thing that influenced the decision to get a guitar again was that I'd been watching lots of flat picking technique videos on YouTube - I'd been incorporating some flat picking economy of motion exercises into my tenor banjo practice as warm up exercises, and of course you can't look up flat picking on YouTube without coming across some pretty amazing Molly Tuttle videos - what a fantastic player! Ended up buying a 2009 Breedlove Revival series OM and can't put it down, so now it's in the regular daily rotation between the tenor banjo, mandolin and tenor guitar. I'm really delighted with the guitar itself - I remember seeing some of the Revival series guitars at Gryphon back in about 2009-2010 and liking their simple Pre-War vibe as compared to Breedlove's usual designs. Of course now I have to contend with fending off the urge to get into something like a Huss & Dalton, Santa Cruz, Preston Thompson etc....

[dan in va]

Yep. An index trigger finger helped me decide between the two. There are plenty of guitar players out there, so no loss to the music world. But somehow i can't seem to think about parting with a cannon of a D18 tho.

[Russ Donahue]

I jump between the two depending on which way the winds blow'n. But my heart and soul is always with the mandolin...

I'm with Frank....

[MontanaMatt]

I'm just now learning guitar after a lifetime on fiddle and 20 yrs on mandolin...every time I work on the guitar I think of how much better I sound on mando and my mind drifts off to mando land. My guitar progress is not inspiring me like the mandolin.

I have mostly stopped gigging on fiddle and just play mando in my band, so mando is killing my fiddle career

[Jim Parriott]

Drifting toward retirement, I decided to upgrade my guitar - which I really hadn't played that much in the last 30 years. Bought a beautiful, new, HD-28... and realized that my old folk song fingerpicking needed to stretch creatively and that I knew crap about music theory. I was also listening to a great deal of bluegrass/newgrass, and reading a lot about the mandolin. Tuned in fifths, repeating shapes, etc. And lap sized, instead of a honking dreadnaught body. So, two years ago, I bought a $100 beginner mandolin... and promptly fell in love with it. Just got my fourth one. The guitar sits in its case. I'm guilty as can be. But I'm getting pretty decent on the mando and figure that, if I have 15-20 years left, I should concentrate on one instrument and get really decent. I think the Martin's getting sold soon, and I'll buy a smaller, cheaper house guitar for my kids to play when they visit (they're great players), and use the remaining cash (plus some) to buy a nice octave. I am hooked on the mandolin.

[Simon DS]

I bought a Sigma 12 string guitar at a garage sale in '93 in Palo Alto. Played it for years, I liked barr chords and singing. Then I played it as a 6 string with heavy strings tuned down a fourth. I guess I was looking for that kind of sound and feeing.

Then came the mandolin and I stopped playing the guitar... in the same style as I used to. Now I play it with a lot more precision and with more use of triads, slides, riffs, embelishments, silence and tapping rhythms than ever before. It's as though I'm more aware of what I can do and so make the most of it, thanks to the mandolin.

[Mark Gunter]

I've been playing guitar many years, since I was a kid. Not a virtuoso and never much of a lead player, but I've always been able to hold my own as a rhythm guitarist since picking it up. When the mandolin bug hit, I really began to neglect guitar playing. The practice meter went to zero, and after a couple years, skills atrophied. I still played guitar in public, but at home I tried to learn mandolin exclusively.

To each his own, but for me, I'm glad to be considered a rhythm guitarist. I'm glad I never thought of getting rid of guitars in order to become a mandolinist. I still suck at a lot of things on mandolin, still very green in most respects, and after a few years I'm finally motivated again to pick up "guitar studies" again. Whatever instrument, or instruments, you're interested in - it's good to be stretching forward.

I found it easy to neglect guitar for a few years because (1) mandolin is cool, (2) mandolin is new, (3) mandolin is great for melody, (4) mandolins are small and easy to keep with you everywhere ... and on and on. Mandolins are really, really, cool.

I have a couple mandolins now that I play and practice regularly, and over a dozen guitars, with another guitar on the way now and a mandola coming next year. It's all good.

[Bob A]

Gradually gravitated to mostly mandolining.