In Praise of Today’s “Beginner’s Mandolin

[JiminRussia]

I’ll try to keep this short. About 20 or so years ago I was an avid bluegrasser, mandolin player, wannabe guitar player and recovering banjo player. Life sort of got in the way and I just stopped playing music at all. I mean I didn’t touch a string for all that time. In any respect, when this pandemic hit us, I recognized right away that I was in for a long, loooong house arrest. I was 73 years old with a compromised immune system, so I was virtually under house arrest for the duration. I bought a guitar to keep me from going stir crazy. It didn’t work. I realize now that I was already nuts. But, I digress. A month or so ago I decided to add a mandolin to my stable. Remember that my last interaction with any stringed instrument was 25 years ago. The several guitars and lone mandolin that I acquired have amazed me. They are so much better in every way than the entry level instruments that I learned on many years ago. Yes I did own some really great instruments, a Martin D-28 Standard guitar, a Gibson F-5L mandolin and a Gibson RB-800 banjo, so I do know the difference. I’ll concentrate on the mandolin here, but what I am saying applies to all of the instruments that I have bought over the last two years and to some that I only wish that I can buy. The quality of the instruments available today is at least an order of magnitude higher than the equivalent that was available 20 or 25 years ago in every respect. I only hope that the beginners here, and once again I must count myself in that class, understand that what is available today will radically improve your learning curve in a positive direction over what was available “back in the day”. If you really want to know what a decent “intro level” mandolin would cost back then, it was about $250. Today that mandolin would cost you about $375. The big difference is that to have gotten the quality of today’s $350 mandolin you would have had to have spent well over $500 or $600 dollars which would be much more than that in todays dollars. Understand that I am not just rooting tje horn on my Ibanez, I’m shouting out about the incredible improvement in the quality of instruments available today, so count your blessings.

[rdeitz]

I completely agree! I just bought an electric guitar after a 25 year hiatus (a Gretsch). I feel like I have a professional level instrument for under $1,000.

[CES]

Agree. There's still some undesirable stuff out there, for sure, but, especially in the guitar world, you can get stage worthy instruments for under $1000 without even trying hard. Are they as good as a top of the line Martin custom shop or some of the more boutique boxes out there? Generally, no, but they get the job done, especially if you're plugging in (in which case they're going to sound like what you're plugging into anyway). And, Eastman and Kentucky are producing good to very good instruments with much better consistency than when I joined the mando mania back in 2004. And, there's so much more set-up info out there now that there was back then that even the less desirable instruments are easier to get playable.

I've played a couple of Seagull guitars and one Ibanez Artcore in particular locally that were < $600 but sounded like guitars costing 1500-2500. Of course, everything is more expensive now, but still...

[JeffD]

We are in a golden age. With respect to sound quality, build quality, diversity of models, availability of instruments, and with respect to access to information about instruments, their materials, their construction, their playing, and with respect to lessons and instruction at all levels to just about everyone. Guitars and mandolins alike.

I think we may bicker over names like "beginner's" or "starter mandolin" or "intermediate level" and "professional level" or "stage worthy". We may bicker over where the lines between these are drawn, and perhaps disagree on the characteristics that distinguish these categories. But I think we can all agree that things are really great now, and better than it used to be for sure.

Get yer instrument and play the potatoes out of it, I say.

[Mando Mort]

I just watched a video this morning of George Gruhn talking about the quality of inexpensive beginner level guitars. One of his points is that beginner guitars 50+ years ago were not good or easy to play because the quality was poor and now with CNC technology, lower end instruments can be made with a much higher level of quality.