My bass player and went for our weekend Kau Kau lunch and then headed over to Dusty Strings to see what was new since we'd hit Emerald City before lunch...
Saw a mandolin by a Japanese Luthier I'd never heard of, Iwamoto. It was drop dead gorgeous so I gave it a little test drive. Played a couple warm up drills to get the feel of the neck and then dropped into a fast reel to see what the little lady had in her. Holy smokes! The staff stopped talking to customers, the dude at the other end of the store stopped flat picking the D-18, the woman checking out the classical guitars stared, and even the guy who was setting up an old L-5 came out from the back to hear that mandolin. I've never seen a music store stop like that before. This little mandolin was sweeter than your first girlfriend and sang better'n Angels on Sunday morning. It was quite literally the prettiest sounding mandolin I've ever played. I was blown away by the instrument. And it's only a few months old at this point. Apparently the luthier was at wintergrass and dropped by the shop to put it on consignment before he went back to Japan. Fit and finish are perfect, it just feels right in the hands. I played it for about 40 minutes and it was reeeaaaallly hard to put it back on the wall. Bass dude was "that's an amazing sound, are you thinking about taking it home?" He really has no idea what mandolins go for and was thinking it was appx 1500 or so. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah NO. Asking price is 5k, and worth every stinking penny. I'm going to stop back over tomorrow AM before the shop opens to knock out a sound clip for 'em. This is the first mandolin I've played that made me think "this mandolin really wants to sound like Thile's #1". I got home and played all my mandolins and was just a little unsatisfied.
Anyways, enough of the rambling: has anyone heard anything about this luthier Iwamoto? I've been digging a bit but really haven't found aything useful yet.
One of you guys go buy this instrument before I lose my self control...
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