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Thread: Famous players using flat fretboards

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    Registered User BillyEllison's Avatar
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    Default Famous players using flat fretboards

    I am sure this has been asked but I can't seem to find it. All I see is a lot of post about what one is better. I myself am wondering if there are any famous players that use a flat fretboard. We all know that Thile and Marshall and Hull and people like that use a radius but are there any famous people that use flat fretboards? Thanks in advance.

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    Moderator MikeEdgerton's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Anybody playing an original Lloyd Loar signed Gibson mandolin.
    "It's comparable to playing a cheese slicer."
    --M. Stillion

    "Bargain instruments are no bargains if you can't play them"
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    Registered User BillyEllison's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    I am not sure how accurate that is. I only say this because Chris Thile had his Loar fretboard taken off and preserved then replaced it with a radius. So now his Loar has a brand new radius fretboard.

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    My Florida is scooped pheffernan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Quote Originally Posted by BillyEllison View Post
    I am not sure how accurate that is. I only say this because Chris Thile had his Loar fretboard taken off and preserved then replaced it with a radius. So now his Loar has a brand new radius fretboard.
    That's why Mike included the word "original."
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    Registered User BillyEllison's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    So is that it then? The only well known famous people playing flat fretboards are the ones playing original Loars? I guess I could look up a list of well known Loar players. I find it hard to believe that the Loars are the only ones being played by the pros that have flat fretboards. Is the reason for that because all the new pro level mandolins all have radius?

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    Purveyor of Sunshine sgarrity's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Monroe played a flat board. Compton prefers them. Plenty of modern Gibsons are flat. Most of them actually. Gilchrist has done a lot of flat boards. I prefer flat yet both of mine have a radius, one more so than the other.

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    Registered User BillyEllison's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Thank you. I myself prefer a flat also. I just feel like radius are really popular right now and I thought maybe it was a phase. I thought if all the pros play them then it was for a reason. I just don't like the radius myself. Monroe and Compton are amazing so if they like them they says something. Again thank you for the reply.

    I also really admire Jethro Burns and I am pretty sure he uses a flat as well.

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    Registered User mtucker's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Quote Originally Posted by sgarrity View Post
    Gilchrist has done a lot of flat boards.
    My two F5's from Steve are flat with small frets, that's the way I like them.

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    Moderator MikeEdgerton's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    You asked about famous players. If infamous players are included I play one.
    "It's comparable to playing a cheese slicer."
    --M. Stillion

    "Bargain instruments are no bargains if you can't play them"
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Radiused boards on mandolins have only become common over the last decade or two. Most of us old fogies played flat boards for most of our lives. Some of us old fogies still prefer flat boards.

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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    I'm not famous, but I have one with and one without. I honestly can't feel the difference.

    Maybe a famous person can feel the difference.
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    Registered User Hendrik Ahrend's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Grisman's '22 Loar (or at least had one for a many years of his ownership), Tom Rozum's '22, Herschel Sizemore's (3 Loars), David McLaughlin's, Ronnie McCoury's (both Gil and Loar) have flat finger boards. Famous? Bluegrass is a small world.

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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Red Rector. Norman Blake. Nancy Blake. Ira Louvin. Also, I'm pretty sure you can add Jesse McReynolds, Roland White, Jethro Burns, and a whole lot more to the list.

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    Registered User Hendrik Ahrend's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Quote Originally Posted by rcc56 View Post
    Red Rector. Norman Blake. Nancy Blake. Ira Louvin. Also, I'm pretty sure you can add Jesse McReynolds, Roland White, Jethro Burns, and a whole lot more to the list.
    Using present tense, I believe the OP meant living mandolin players. Red Rector left us in 1990. Of course, 50 years ago curved fingerboards were almost unheard of.

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    Registered User William Smith's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    They had factory radius boards on some Loar F-5's for a fact! Ronnie McCoury's Loar has one. John Duffey used flat boards, Uncle Gene Johnson used flat board-his Loar, and Gibson 95 F-5 that's for sale at Carters, not sure but I think his Rigel is a radius.

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    Registered User BillyEllison's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    I guess I shouldn't have used the word famous. I just meant someone that is easily identifiable. In other words some one that I would have heard of before. Either way thank you all for replying. In the future I will be more careful with my word choices and also I will read the replies more carefully.

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    NY Naturalist BradKlein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Quote Originally Posted by bluegrasser78 View Post
    They had factory radius boards on some Loar F-5's for a fact! Ronnie McCoury's Loar has one. ...
    The existence of radiused boards on original '20s Gibsons was discussed way back when in the Loar Picture of the Day thread. Here's Charlie Derrington's opinion from 2005. For newer Cafe members, Charlie was a luthier at Gibson who probably examined as many Loar signed mandolins as anyone else before or since. Not EVERY one, but I think it's fair to say, most of the surviving Loar signed instruments. Perhaps new information has come to light since then...

    Nov-07-2005, 8:08pm #1551
    Well, Dan... I've got to side with Darryl on this one. I've never seen a radiused board (even slightly) on an original Loar. They sometimes even look like they are cupped instead of radiused. (An optical illusion, or the board lifting slightly on the edges)

    That's not to say that one couldn't exist, but I sort of doubt it. Probably caused by a plane and refret at some point in it's history.

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    String-Bending Heretic mandocrucian's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    What some "famous" player does should be pretty much irrelevant to YOU. Flat vs. radius? - it may be mostly what you are (or somene else, famous or not, is) used to. I can see fiddle players or electric guitarists being more partial toward radiused, because they are used to it. (As I prefer to play viola over violin because it pretty much has the same scale length as a Gibson mandolin. And...it is lower and richer soundwise too, imo.)

    All my mando instruments: mandolins, mandolas, OM, cittern (and tenor banjos, acoustic bass guitar) are flat fretboards. My Fender electric, mini E-guitar to octave 5-string conversion, electric guitar, electric bass all have the standard radius, which really isn't very extreme (as opposed to the violin/viola...which is a necessity because of the bow).

    Flat vs. radius, is in the same category as:
    • neck width,
    • action,
    • string spacing,
    • string gauges/bronze vs. nickel-steel,
    • free-hand or braced, scale length
    • pick size/shape/thickness
    • arm guards, tone guards
    • which shoulder your strap hangs over, strap height

    (actually, I think neck width is a more impactful issue than flat/radiused)

    Not nearly as much an issue as: oval vs. F-hole or Gibson oval vs Sobell vs bowlback. etc. etc which is much more (instrument itself) determinative of baseline sound/volume than those previous factors which are much more related to the individual player's hands and technique/touch. Flat is fine with me, I'm used to them, but a mild radius probably wouldn't be much of an adaption or issue.

    So what "famous guy" likes probably does not have any correlation to you, unless you have similar hand/finger size, or some similar medical issue (predisposition to tendonitis, carpal tunnel...) If memory serves correct, the radiused mando fretboard thing seemed to really start with Grisman and his Monteleones because he was having some LH hand issue and the radius helped relieve it.

    Niles H

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    Registered User Hendrik Ahrend's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Quote Originally Posted by bluegrasser78 View Post
    They had factory radius boards on some Loar F-5's for a fact! Ronnie McCoury's Loar has one.
    Billy, that is an interesting subject, which has been discussed here before. Darryl Wolfe doesn't remember curved fingerboards on Loars, if my memory serves me right. However, a friend of mine restores banjos and swears to have observed at least one original Gibson banjo (from the late '20s) with an ever so slightly curved fb of, if I remember correctly, 32 inches radius - hard to see without a straight edge. (I let him do that radius on my old F5 BTW.)
    After all, in woodworking, flat surfaces are traditionally the hardest to make. So an original curved fb on a Loar is likely. Are (or were) the binding nubs at the fret ends on Ronnie's Loar preserved?

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    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    Why?

    I'm not an expert on any of this, but I've played for many years (like so many others here), just new to mandolin, and here is what I've heard, read and otherwise been taught over those years. I'm sure if this is wrong, someone will correct me.

    Bowed instruments have radiused fingerboards out of necessity - as this allows the bowing of single strings when desired. Very few archaic bowed instruments had flat boards, and we can imagine that they were problematic and the curved board was developed early for them.

    Fretted instruments function equally well whether flat or radiused, but some players find a radiused board more comfortable to use. This would probably be more noticeable on wider boards, since the fingers of the fretting hand are of different lengths and easily form an arc pattern across the fingertips. Over the past few decades, guitar fingerboards have evolved to having mostly radiused boards now.

    I think mandolins have followed suit behind guitars, with radiused boards becoming more and more popular recently. Since the radius boards do not solve any technical problem on mandolins (like they do in bowed instruments), and since the mandolin fretboard is such a narrow board anyway due to its size, there is no reason for any player, famous or otherwise, to prefer curved over flat except for personal comfort and preference for a certain feel.

    If you ever decide to contact and ask a bunch of famous players about this topic, please post the results here for us.
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    David Harvey who is a great player/luthier, and head Mandolin man at Gibson told me that Ronnie Mc's Loar does indeed have a factory radius, I know David and he is VERY honest, I'm sure I heard him right when we were talking about this, I'm sure he said it was original, it did come from Mexico right? I'll ask him when I talk with him again.

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    Registered User Timbofood's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    21 posts and, no one has said the esteemed Dave Appolon!
    Gee guys!
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    Registered User BillyEllison's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    I wasn't really looking for any one in particular. To be honest they don't even need to be famous. What I was looking for and why I said famous is because I was looking for someone that I could look up. I would like to see a video of someone using a flat fretboard that plays as gracefully as Chris Thile and Mike Marshall. So I figured if I said famous then they would be easier to find a video of. Honestly the amount of fame they have is irrelevant. I myself like the flat fretboards but Thile and Marshall are on a level that I aspire to be on. So if they are using radius then I find myself wondering if I need to make that switch in order to someday be half as good as they are. (of course with hours and hours of practice) That being said if there is a flat fretboard player out there that is on their level I would like to check them out. Who knows maybe they will become my new favorite player.

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    Registered User Timbofood's Avatar
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    I stand by my post!
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    Default Re: Famous players using flat fretboards

    If a radius board makes a wide fingerboard easier, why should a mandolin need one? Why does a dreadnaught Martin have a slight radius and a classical guitar have a flat board. I had played bluegrass 40 years before I saw a mandolin or banjo with a radius board. I personally think it's a fad and will get more and more popular until something else comes along.

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