I lucked out very early in my mandolinning. My first mandolin a Terada, was destroyed in a locked car in the summer heat. I played a Flatiron Mandola for a while, but then purchased a Gibson 1923 A2 snakehead SN# 73934 FON# 11865. From the Music Emporium in Boston.
This was in the way back, over 35 years ago, and I seem to remember it cost $1000, which was a lot. I walked around the block four times before I purchased that beauty. I didn't know what I was buying except I knew it better be good for what I was paying.
I have come to cherish it. Before I could even play it well there were many folks who tried it and liked it. I have gotten more than a few offers to purchase it, not for exceptional money, and then one great offer from a professional I met in a work shop at a festival, in whose judgement the instrument was exceptional.
Once a few years ago I was traveling through Nashville for work, and stopped at Gibson, across from the Grand Ole Opry. I played a bunch of mandolins ranging in cost up to five figures. I was good and didn't buy anything. When I got home, however, I took out my A2 and the sound was as good or better, and definitely of the same family. (I agree that comparing a sound you hear with a sound you remember is dicey, but that is how I remember it.)
I play it with a ToneGard, and I upgraded the case from the original, to better protect it. I changed the tuning machines a couple of years ago, but that is the only repair or modification. It holds it tuning real well, and if you change strings one at a time the set up stays the way it was.
I love the instrument and play the potatoes out of it. I am not anywhere near getting as much out of the instrument as there is. This is more instrument than I "deserve" now and certainly insanely more than I deserved umpty ump years ago when I first took it home.
My only complaint is a goofy one. There are times when I really don't want a Gibson sound. It is so much the iconic Gibson sound, all warm and creamy with every note a bing (not a ding, all bings), so because of how Gibson's are so closely associated with very specific kinds of music, this mandolin is not a first choice when I am not playing that kind of music.
Something to think about, and another justification for MAS.
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