Small Budget, Big Sound

[mythicfish]

Last night I had the pleasure of playing with a well-known side man and
sessions player whose main ax is an old Strad-O-Lin. It sounded great
and I asked him if he had regraduated the top. Indeed he had ... In the late '50s he did the job with a disk sander and an electric drill. Some swirls were still visable on the top; and the sound compared favorably
with any A-style currently made by Collings, Weber, Breedlove, Rigel ...
you get the point. So, cosmetics and vanity aside, why are we spending the big bucks?
Curt

[Ken Sager]

It's the American way?

Having more than we need, wanting more than we have, needing to maintain an appearance of wealth... It doesn't get any better than this! or does it?!

Besides, when it comes to mandolins this condition has a name: Mandolin Acquisition Syndrome. There are a few of us who have the full-blown disease, we won't name names...

I'd love to find an old mandolin and feel gutsy enough to tweak it into sounding fantastic. Maybe that's my resolution for this year.

You heard it here first.

Big love to all,
Ken

[chuck.naill]

Have you seen Rich DelGrosso mandolins?

http://www.mandolinblues.com/

[johnM]

Ken Sager said it. UGGG MAS is brutal but it lives in me and I'm sure in most of us one time or another. I've found though that once I've found an instrument that I like I tend to keep it (weird huh?) i'm in the process of selling some stuff to pay for ANOTHER mandolin in order to make the spouse happy and hopefully this will quite the MAS bug for a while.

OR will it???