Hello everyone,
I have been meaning to get this posted for several days now but it's just been hectic.
Last Thursday I made the trip east a couple of hours to visit Kevin at www.mandomutt.com and purchased a Jan. 2016 Skip Kelley Vintage F-5. It's #54 for Skip.
This mandolin really has amazing tone to it I think. I'm not great with the subjective adjectives to describe the tone. Kevin said: "Big, wide open, dynamic sound, Dry, woody tone. Extremely powerful mandolin."
I will try to get a video up soon so you guys can hear how it sounds. I absolutely love my Flatbush V4 and it had great volume, bark and tone as well but I do feel like the Kelley has a different tone that I really like a lot. I have never played a Loar so I won't go there with the comment, but I know Skip used some specs from an April '23. It has great bark on the chop, especially up at B. Playability is very good. I believe it is a 1-1/8" nut, which is narrower than what I am used to, but has not been a problem so far. The spacing at the bridge between the sets is actually a little wider than the Flatbush.
Here's a link to the Mando Mutt page with some more detail.
Thank you Skip for building such a great mandolin! I can't wait to get it out of the house some. In addition to how great it is on it's own, it is also pretty cool to play an instrument made in my home state.
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