Re: A question for luthiers - from a non-luthier
Well, I'm not a luthier but I notice a beautiful dilemma behind the question - you have exquisite mandolins to compare!
Rolfe designed Phoenix mandolins to be easy to play. I had one and it was remarkable in that way. More than that, the Neo-Classical is the intentionally easiest to play of all the Phoenix models, so responsive and light in weight with composite spruce and carbon-fibre braces designed for those exact strings. It takes little input to get beautiful tone and good volume from a Neo-Classical. Rolfe invested tremendous love and expertise into that model and it shows even just in picking one of them up out of the case. The ease of touch and playability of that model is a high bar to hold just about any other mandolin up to.
Having said that, John's suggestions above obviously tell a more complete story of the differences between any two mandolins we might encounter with similar setups. I'm woefully ill-qualified to add to or comment on his list except to say I've bookmarked this thread so I can refer back to it!
Perhaps I'm not adding much to this conversation but I just think it's likely to be hard for almost anything else to be as easy in the hands as a Neo-Classical. A Lyon and Healey is a lovely instrument but we can't blame even something as special as that for having a hard time trying to match the Phoenix for ease of playing.
Enjoy!
Last edited by Aaron Bohnen; Jul-11-2020 at 3:01am.
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