My first mandolin has arrived...
…and I really like it. It’s an Eastman MD805V:
Pics from The Mandolin Store:
I’m very pleased with the service received from Dennis and Brian at The Mandolin Store. I have to concur with the very positive reputation they have on this forum.
I do regret that I was unable to buy locally, though. We have two excellent shops in Austin (Hill Country Guitars and Fiddler’s Green) that carry a large stock of quality mandolins, but they have little or no stock between the pretty decent sub-$1000 instruments and the $2000+ Collings, Webers and Pavas. I tried Eastman 505s at both stores, and I found them ok, but no more than that. When I saw the 805V on Dennis’ website, I really liked the look and called Dennis, and he played it over the phone along with a couple of other similarly priced instruments. The 805V's sound stood out despite the cell phone audio. Given the minimal risk associated with TMS's 48-hour approval policy I decided to go for it.
I’m very glad I did. The 805V is a huge upgrade over the 505 in both appearance and sound, at least to my eyes and ears. It’s unfortunate that these higher-level Eastmans seem to be so scarce.
Now, I just have to learn to play it!
— Steve
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