The history of carbon fiber mandolins is littered with valiant attempts and followed by inevitable withdrawals. Here is a thread (among others) that mentions some of the CF warriors. It is not that it can’t be accomplished just that, for some reason, as a viable business model in a relatively small niche market, it seem to be a Sisyphean feat.
The latest entry is KLOS (https://klosguitars.com/ who has quite a collection of CF guitars and ukuleles. They have a Coming Soon page on their site with many suggestions including mandolin. So I sent them a note and received the following email.
Pretty impressive that they can produce a working prototype in 2-3 months and a full-blown (maybe) production mandolin in 4-5 months. I will be impressed if it happens even in double that time for each.You're receiving this email because you signed up to hear about the KLOS Mandolin. We have good news, the design is well under way, and we're hoping to launch the instrument in 4-5 months.
If you are still interested in the mandolin, please fill out this short form indicating that you're interested! There is some additional information about the instrument there. Your indicated interest helps us plan ordering materials and parts and allows us to bring our product to life faster, so it's very important.
We will have a lot more information about the design in about 2-3 months when we unveil our prototype. For now, I can tell you that:
- it will be launched in our full carbon series (not hybrid series)
- it will be a one-piece construction
Please let us know if you have any questions. We're very excited!
I guess we will see what they come up with. From what I understand, the bodies of the current instruments are manufactured in China and assembled and set up in the US.
I just clicked on the “interested” link and got this information which is even more interesting to me:
I wonder if they can pull it off at those prices and continue to make these. I have a feeling that if they can swing it, there would be quite a few of us who would be interested in them.The mandolin will be launched in our full carbon series (100% carbon fiber), one-piece construction, and will be discounted for early buyers to about $999-$1249 in price (compared to $1799+ when it will be publicly live).
I remember that Canadian company which seemed to vanish after a while, no longer even making guitars from what I can tell. And it turned out also that the Z-mandolins was only a limited attempt to produce 25 instruments and then stop production. At least that was the last attempt at a larger scale production of these.
Bookmarks