About a year ago I was in Washington for a ski-athon fundraiser at Crystal Mountain. I built in some extra time to hang out in Seattle and eat at Piroshky Piroshky and to go play instruments at Dusty Strings.
I always love visiting Dusty Strings. A great shop with fantastic staff and wonderful instruments.
I had a few hours there and played every mandolin on the wall. The standout to me, better than all of the Collings and Northfields and everything else was an F5 that said "The Iwamoto" on the headstock. I'd never heard of that maker before but the mandolin was so beautifully built and sounded so good that I was tempted to buy it right there. I didn't really have the money for it however. I decided that I'd try to sell some instruments when I got home in order to buy it.
When I called Dusty Strings a few weeks later to ask about it, they told me it had been sold. It turns out, it was sold to a Cafe member. Here's a thread about it:
https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/t...43866-Iwamoto?
Since it was gone, I figured that maybe that was for the best since it was still out of my budget.
A few months ago, I came across an Iwamoto listed on Reverb. It was about $500 more than the one I'd seen in Seattle. I decided to research The Iwamoto to see what I could find and to decide if I should buy it.
I found out that Takeshi Iwamoto has been building mandolins, guitars, dobros, banjos and violins in Tokyo since 1978. He's regarded as one of the finest luthiers in the country. And he's a great bluegrass mandolin player who hosts a jam at a local bar every month.
According to Scott aka "Desert Rose" who worked at Kentucky in Japan with renowned builder Sumi,
Iwamoto is "THE builder of choice for the high end Tokyo market of bluegrass pickers"
https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/t...l=1#post242411
I also found Iwamoto's web page and decided to contact him to ask about the mandolin I'd seen for sale.
His main brand is called Acoustic World.
http://www.acousticworld.com/mandolin.html
He got back to me very quickly and over the course of our emails we agreed that I would commission him to build a mandolin for me.
Today I received some pictures of the build in progress and I'm super excited about them.
So here are some photos of Iwamoto #118 in progress
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