Went to IBMA and checked out the Northfield mandos at the Elderly booth........I was very impressed!!! Anyone that has gotten one, please post some pictures and your opinion on these.
Went to IBMA and checked out the Northfield mandos at the Elderly booth........I was very impressed!!! Anyone that has gotten one, please post some pictures and your opinion on these.
Article on them in the current (quarterly) Mandolin magazine. Haven't read it yet, but they seemed to be highly impressed.
- Ed
"Then one day we weren't as young as before
Our mistakes weren't quite so easy to undo
But by all those roads, my friend, we've travelled down
I'm a better man for just the knowin' of you."
- Ian Tyson
I got to check out the one that Stan Werbin brought to NAMM earlier this year...
Just "wow"...
One of the greatest bargains in the mando world, IMHO...
There were about 15 of us that had gathered to play mandos (including the Northfield), and one gentleman--after playing it well for 15 minutes or so--put it down and said (after seeing just the "N" of the inlay) "those Nuggets are just amazing"...
That mando just kicked, and I think it was going for 2K....
Here's some guy taking a pic of it...
Orcas Island Tonewoods
Free downloads of my mandolin CDs:
"Mandolin Graffiti"
"Mangler Of Bluegrass"
"Overhead At Darrington"
"Electric Mandolin Graffiti"
Surely there is someone that has bought a Northfield recently that can comment and put some photos on here
There's one on eBay right now (NFI), so at least you could see some pretty good pictures.
http://cgi.ebay.com/NORTHFIELD-F5-MA...item3f0425c5e1
NoNickel
Duff F5 #196/15
Plays the "Irv Pearman" Signature Set
All misspellings intentional. Even thsi one.
They're sold by Eldery (www.elderly.com). They have lots of good pictures.
Surprised to read that Northfield only offers a five year warranty!
Made in China, yes? Does anyone know how they would compare to Eastman?
NoNickel
Duff F5 #196/15
Plays the "Irv Pearman" Signature Set
All misspellings intentional. Even thsi one.
From what I have read about Northfield, they are consistent in sound/quality from one instrument to another, but Eastman may not be consistent from one model to another. An Eastman 505 may sound better than their top end 915 and there can be a wide difference in quality between instruments of same model number. I found this true with Eastmans but have never seen or played a Northfield.
yankees1 is correct about the Eastmans. I have a 505 that I've put up against a 615 that sounded thin in comparison. I've also put it up against a 515 that made it sound like a toy. In my mind, the numbers on the varying Eastmans are meaningless when it comes to judging which will sound better. They are their own individual instruments with their own individual character when it comes to tone. That's obvious. My main point is to not let the model numbers fool you with Eastmans.
On topic: The Northfields look great.
...
[QUOTE=Caleb;851294]yankees1 is correct about the Eastmans. I have a 505 that I've put up against a 615 that sounded thin in comparison. I've also put it up against a 515 that made it sound like a toy. In my mind, the numbers on the varying Eastmans are meaningless when it comes to judging which will sound better. They are their own individual instruments with their own individual character when it comes to tone. That's obvious. My main point is to not let the model numbers fool you with Eastmans.
Same for Gibson As, Flatiron.....
On topic: The Northfields sound great: not top of the heap (Gil, Nug) but far from bottom of the heap (insert your own lackluster perception).
Bill
Any comments about Northfield mandolins, not Eastman! Anyone have a Northfield and can post some pics of theirs?
No pics, but I played one at Elderly a while back and I was impressed. I had never heard of them, and I played it and it was like, "Whoa...what is this?"
Living’ in the Mitten
Orcas Island Tonewoods
Free downloads of my mandolin CDs:
"Mandolin Graffiti"
"Mangler Of Bluegrass"
"Overhead At Darrington"
"Electric Mandolin Graffiti"
The sound clips are VERY impressive. I'd like to get hte chance to play one for awhile.
Shaun Garrity
http://www.youtube.com/user/spgokc78
We were all sitting around our Appaloosa trade show booth at the IBMA World of Bluegrass, and Chris Warner (good friend, banjo icon and builder of the famous ‘signatures’ mandolin that Marty Stuart has played for most of his career) came over and asked me if I had a chance to check out the new Northfield mandolins over at the Elderly booth. I told him I hadn’t been over there yet…..he said to me….’man, if I had the money on me, I’d pick one of those up today…..they are incredible mandos for the price’. So with that, I went over to check them out, and I was certainly amazed, as it is uncanny to see and hear mandolins of that quality and attention to detail, available for that kind of price range. Killer mandolins that are definitely affordable.
Well... Emory Lester just endorsed them...
I was going to say that I played the one previously for sale on ebay about 2 years ago. It was still at Elderly and I compared it with several others. I thought it was a comparable mandolin to the Collings MF. It's best features were the vintage feeling neck, excellent setup and fretwork and vintage(gibson) tone. Don't get me wrong, the tone was quite different than the Collings, but fit,finish,volume and playbility were all in the same ballpark.
Hi All. Just wanted to jump in and say I appreciate all the nice comments regarding our mandolins. We've been working very hard lately as demand increases, paying a lot of attention to the finer details and improving steadily. We're confident that our instruments are very consistent and that we're getting better with each batch. I've been working on an archive of sorts with pictures of mandolins by serial number that we've made in the last 12 months. I'll try to post a few pics of instruments we're working on now as soon as I can upload them and then direct people that are interested in seeing more pics as soon as I can get them added to our website. If you haven't had a chance to check out our site please take a look, it's been upgraded recently.
I'm also happy to answer any questions regarding our mandolins so please feel free to contact us directly. Thanks again to everyone for all of the encouragement. We aim to make the best mandolins we can and we've got our sights set pretty high. It'll be an ongoing journey and we look forward to working closely with all of you to continue to make them better and better.
All the best,
Adrian Bagale
www.northfieldmandolins.com
Hi Yankees1. Good Question. Unlike Eastman and several of the other companies people have been talking about, we're a small 5 person team, not a big company with lots of resources and production in the thousands. I say that because many of the larger factories often replace the instrument rather than repairing it, and that's not a real option for us. On one side, it's easier to control quality and maintain your production when you're such a small outfit. Having come from the background of higher turnover and large production facilities I can assure everyone that we know without a doubt that our building practices and approach could warrant extended coverage. Plainly put: We're confident that our mandolins are going to be around for a long, long time--we wouldn't build them otherwise. However, on the other side it's also much harder to predict the future with a small outfit like ours. The true definition of "Lifetime" gets harder to pin down when you're set-up like a workshop, almost like an individual builder. And then there's the warranty registration, etc which we have found to be lacking real good/solid information.
I can tell you that right now we're thinking about a way to offer a Lifetime warranty to the original owner, yet we wouldn't be doing our best homework if we didn't know the exact terms and could lay them out clearly for everyone. At any rate, we'll have more information about that soon as it's right at the top of our list of important developments to come.
We'll be standing behind any instrument that comes out of our shop. We're always just a phone call or email away and we're happy to help solve problems or recondition instruments if need be. We've picked Elderly Instruments as our only dealer right now because of our close association (I worked there for a long time) and confidence in their abilities to help us inspect and service any instrument needing additional care. This way we'll be able to maintain relationships with owners of our instruments and quickly resolve issues if they come up.
I hope all of this helps.
I don't know what the exact numbers are but there's an awful lot of instruments that aren't kept for a "lifetime" by the original owner. If the instrument is built well a warranty isn't all that important.
Shaun Garrity
http://www.youtube.com/user/spgokc78
I just received my Northfield MF-5 two days ago and can't seem to be able to put it down. Great tone and playability. For the cost, I don't think you can beat it.
Bookmarks