Just back from a day at the show and some pretty exciting new things coming along in the mandolin world.
My last meeting of the day was with Eastman. The big surprise there is a new short scale octave mandolin they said literally came in the day before they left. It's A shaped with really nice smaller F holes and it looked great in a natural stained finish and comes in (don't quote me) somewhere in the $850-875 range. No estimated date when these come to market but I think some of the retailers are going to flip over this one. It sounded *great,* and I was really impressed with it.
Also new from Eastman was a few mandolins finished in an antique varnish, so sort of a distressed look, very nicely done. Submitting this on a laptop and my pictures are on my iPhone and aren't great but I may post later. Always hard to take photos at the show due to the strange lighting. Both of these items are brand new and just shown at the show this weekend. I had a promise from them that they'd be submitting detailed news releases in the future for these with some photos that are better than I can take with an iPhone and what you can get in the lighting at the show.
Had a nice meeting with Sami, my contact at Weber and Breedlove. She's great, and showed me the 20th anniversary models that are a limited edition that will be coming out sometime this year. I don't have that exact date. Lots of nice instruments on display, in particular, an F with oval hole mandocello that sort of made your teeth rattle when you played it. I plan to visit with her more on Friday.
Talked to Wayne at Gold Tone about their new mandocello that's getting discussed quite a bit of late. One of the snags is related to a new CITES ruling that came out sometime between the completion of a shipment and the enforcement date, so he said there is literally a huge batch that is in limbo at the moment out of the county that they are unable to get to the U.S. He did say that they are committed to doing a giveaway some time this year on the Cafe so stay tuned for that. I know some of you are going to be tempted to ask me a ton of questions about the cello. Might as well save it because I didn't really delve into too much else, other than to meet with them. They're following what's going on here.
Other surprise for me was just how nice the new Kentucky F line mandolins are and how good they sound. In particular, the sort of plain brown finish model was really a beauty up close. They sound strikingly good, even in the noise of the show. Believe most of the retailers on the Cafe are carrying these now and have for some time. It's pretty clear these are going to sell well.
What else? Lunch with Amy and Kali of Straight Up Strings. We always get together for a meal and coffee whenever we can and they're great company. Roger Siminoff is apparently at the show but is not with them as they run the SUS business now.
Headed off to hang out with Adrian of Northfield in a bit and try some of his instruments in his hotel room. He has a couple of folks over from China. We're grabbing street tacos at a joint several miles away from the little white Disney, Barbie-like princess dining joints that abound this area across the street from Disneyland.
Superb work and workmanship from the Collings both, no surprise there, but nothing new to announce that I saw. Plan to visit them more on Friday.
There was one other prominent mandolin supplier I met with today at the show but I have a general rule that if I don't have anything positive to say about someone I just keep my mouth shut. So in a roundabout way maybe I actually did.
I know a picture is word a thousand words but most of the ones I took are worth maybe 100 so may or may not post but anyone else here is welcome to.
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