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Thread: Why is the Kentucky KM900 being discontinued?

  1. #51

    Default Re: Why is the Kentucky KM900 being discontinued?

    Quote Originally Posted by colorado_al View Post
    Seems like Kentucky is pricing themselves out of the affordable market on their high end. I'm not sure that many will buy a KM-950 for $1650.
    Very true. That's immaculate used Flatiron, Weber A territory. Might as well buy an American mandolin.

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  3. #52
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    Default Re: Why is the Kentucky KM900 being discontinued?

    Quote Originally Posted by doublestoptremolo View Post
    Very true. That's immaculate used Flatiron, Weber A territory. Might as well buy an American mandolin.
    Agreed. I would take a used A9 / MT / Pava over a Kentucky any day. Esp. if they are the same price.

    But then again, maybe we are seeing the mandolin market moving up the price ladder again. The market has been down since the end of the last decade, and with the tremendous economic and market growth we are seeing, there's no reason for instrument makers to not want to capitalize on that. So expect the rest of the new/used market to move up as well.

  4. #53
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    Default Re: Why is the Kentucky KM900 being discontinued?

    Quote Originally Posted by Folkmusician.com View Post
    Had a long talk yesterday with one of the top guys with Kentucky. What he told me coincides with what I have heard from the other makers. Sales are not the issue. Sales are doing well, too well in fact. Many imports have been having an ongoing issue keeping mandolins in stock. This has been off and on for years now. Every once in a while, everything is caught up for a month or two, then back to waiting months to get mandolins. I still have orders in from late 2017 that I haven't received. Having so many models surely isn't helping.

    Why can't they simply ramp up production if everything is selling? Well, that is another story and there are many factors at play. It isn't necessarily the reasons that seem obvious. Cities for instance. It is still causing problems. There are others....


    For the record, there are no CITES restricted materials in the Kentucky KM-500, 800, 900, or 1000 series mandolins.

    However, series 100, 200, 600, and 700 were using rosewood for fingerboards and bridges. But let us remember that most rosewoods were not CITES restricted until last year.

    CITES is only a manufacturer's problem for instruments containing rosewood. The rest of the industry is adapting.

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  6. #54
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    Default Re: Why is the Kentucky KM900 being discontinued?

    Quote Originally Posted by rcc56 View Post
    For the record, there are no CITES restricted materials in the Kentucky KM-500, 800, 900, or 1000 series mandolins.

    However, series 100, 200, 600, and 700 were using rosewood for fingerboards and bridges. But let us remember that most rosewoods were not CITES restricted until last year.

    CITES is only a manufacturer's problem for instruments containing rosewood. The rest of the industry is adapting.
    Saga now lists the wood used for the fretboard and bridge in the lower models (100, 200, 600, 700) as Santos Rosewood (also known as Bolivian rosewood) which is not actually a Rosewood. It is Pau Ferro (Machaerium) and is actually harder than most Rosewood (Dalbergia). This allows them to still list the woods in their literature as Santos Rosewood, which most will take as rosewood, though it is not a wood subject to CITES. The 500 series and the 850 and above have Ebony.

    Fender has also changed from Rosewood to Pau Ferro:
    https://www.fender.com/articles/tech...t-is-pau-ferro
    Last edited by colorado_al; Aug-09-2018 at 11:36pm.

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  8. #55

    Default Re: Why is the Kentucky KM900 being discontinued?

    CITES is only a manufacturer's problem for instruments containing rosewood. The rest of the industry is adapting.
    I don't know the specific reason, but many imports that were not speced with rosewood were/are affected.

    It might be a case of providing paperwork (which wasn't available) proving all the woods were exempt. There was an across the board problem with all the makers I deal with. It might not have been every model, but there was some problem with many models that did not have rosewood fingerboard/bridges.

    There are other things in play.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/chin...7-10?r=UK&IR=T
    Robert Fear
    http://www.folkmusician.com

    "Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
    " - Pete Seeger

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