Hondo were the first really affordable F5 style mandolins that I ever saw, in the late 70s or early 80s. At that time you HAD to have a scroll on your mandolin to be considered a bluegrass player and these looked right. They were not a quality mandolin at that time and if you looked closely, you could see that the scroll was a bit wrong, a bit opener than the Gibson. It just didn't quite look right.