Budget A-style Octave: Is there such a thing?

[Caleb]

I had a TC octave for a while. Well made but not much volume. When other instruments joined in it pretty much disappeared. YMMV.

[rcc56]

I've sometimes considered taking a Trinity College, stripping off the poly finish, and applying a lacquer or varnish finish. It might wake the instrument up. I would also remove the peghead ornament.

But then I think that for the time and trouble it would take to redo one, it would be better to just build one from scratch. A flat top octave mando is probably about as simple a build as there is, especially if you use a pre-slotted fingerboard and a bolt-on neck.

If you can find an old Regal Octophone in good shape, it might suit your purposes. They can be found pretty cheap.

[Martin Jonas]

Big Muddy/Mid Missouri also has made some octave mandolins. One was recently on Reverb in your price range. That might also be worth checking out.

I have a Mid-Mo octave, a scaled-up version of the all-mahogany M-11. That was a custom order rather than a regular model, but Mike gave it the one-off model number "M-111". I got it here in the classifieds from a UK seller for about half your budget, so bargains are out there.

I have only played the Ashbury models at festival stalls, when you can't really assess the tone. However, they look to be really nicely made and are very reasonably-priced. The Phil Davidson designed and Vietnam-made Style E model is the most appealing one, I think. You may also want to consider its big brother, the Style E cittern, which sells for exactly the same price as the OM. Slightly longer scale and an extra fifth course. The attraction for me would be to set it up in CGDAE tuning (mandocello and OM combined), but I don't know how well it would take to that.

Ashbury also have cheaper Vietnam-made OMs, such as the Rathlin which sells for half the price of the Style E.

Martin

[Dan Adams]

I had the same question about 12 years ago. Ended up with a Johnson MA-550 that was really affordable. Cutaway body, abalone fret marker inlays, rosette, and trim. Short scale so easy to play. Still play it, especially for Irish music. Is really throaty through a mic, so I always had to be careful on stage to prevent feedback. I say one recently on one of the online sites for $750.00.