In other posts over at the vintage, they were discussing the sound of the F4 over the F5. I've always wondered why did Jimmy Martin, the undisputed "King of Bluegrass" prefer the sound of the F4 in his style of bluegrass over the F5. Was it because the F4 was all he could afford at the time and just found a used teens F4 cheap and that's what ended up with the majority of his mandolin pickers? Or was it because he wanted a different mandolin sound in his style since he knew what the F5 had done with Monroe's sound? It's strange in that Jimmy fought some of the mandolin pickers over the decades to keep that F4 sound in the live shows, while a few didn't go that route preferring the F5 sound. Jimmy even later bought a Gibson 50's F12 for band members to use. You have the ultimate Martin mandolin man, Paul Williams and he sure wore out that F4 during his time with Jimmy. Paul plays an F5 today. Then you have some real F5 guys like Vernon Derrick, Herschel Sizemore and Ronnie Prevette who liked the F5. If I remember right, Vernon always used Jimmy's F12, Hershel played his F5 and Ronnie would use the F4. Jimmy's gone now, so we can't ask this question to him. There may be some interviews published where he discusses it but I don't recall the real reason as to why he liked the F4 sound. So I open up this thread to discuss the mandolin sound of Jimmy Martin's style of Bluegrass. Maybe some of you guys have heard first hand from some of Jimmy's many mandolin guys about the use of the F4.
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