A few years ago I snagged an F style mandola from the guy in Houston that sold on eBay as Houston Brass and on Reverb (still does) as GL-Music Store. Gary is an interesting seller in that he gets some really weird stuff. He had fiberglass mandolin cases for F, A, and bowlback mandolins for a white that were pretty funky. he had some $100.00 mandocellos if I recall for a while. He gets different quality mandolins in from time to time. He sells a lot of crap as well. He has a lot of strange guitars.
I was looking for the cheapest carved top mandola I could find when I bumped into these. Others here already knew about them. I bought this one because of the flame and it looked good. It's surprisingly well made. Gary says it was made by his cousin in Korea. I have no idea if the maker was his cousin.
Bernie Daniels bought one of the others. The finish on both is different. I suspect that these were made as some sort of a sample for a manufacturer or importer. No labels but well made. All carved, all appears to be solid. The tuners were not a known maker although All Parts seems to sell them now and the tailpiece was a simple well made nickle plated tailpiece.
I suspect they may have made these from something like Siminoff's kit but I don't know. I made sure to get it with the case. It cost me around $600.00. I had it set up and I've enjoyed messing with it but I wanted to change the tuners (they were worm over). I went through a few years of looking at and accumulating every brand of worm over tuner I could until I finally found a set Waverly worm over (Stewmac made them years ago and doesn't admit to it).
Last weekend I switched out the tuners and the tailpiece to a James. For a while I considered putting Not Gibson in script on the headstock but I've decided not to. I may just inlay something that looks like blue tape on the headstock.
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