The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #78045 Message #1398444
Posted By: Grab
03-Feb-05 - 08:15 PM
Thread Name: Buying a mandola in the UK
Subject: Buying a mandola in the UK
I've finally decided my ultra-cheapo £60 tenor mandola has outlived its usefulness. I still like the sound of it, but the playability is totally screwed.
So, I'm in the market for a new mandola. Has anyone got any recommendations for good makes, and more importantly, does anyone know of places to go (in the UK) that'll have several different ones to try out? I know of Hobgoblin, but since I got my cheapo one from there (and since other people have told me of problems dealing with Hobgoblin) I'm reluctant to put more business their way. And they only have three or four in their catalogue anyway.
Whatever I get, it needs to be tuned an octave down. I don't really like mandolins (too tinny), and the CDGA tuning of a standard tenor mandola screws up playing tunes with other people. Another tenor mandola would be fine - I'll just restring with bigger strings. I'm wondering about a proper octave mandola (aka "octave mandolin"), but the scale length on the tenor mandola is already slightly longer than is comfortable for playing fiddle tunes cleanly, so I suspect an octave mandola will be worse.
My main worry is just finding somewhere that has enough of a range of instruments to try a few different ones. Whilst I can play tolerably well now, I don't know enough about what's available to make a good decision sight unseen, so I don't just want to buy something off a website - it's essential that I can play it before I buy. The problem is that while the world is full of guitars and mandolins, there are very few mandolas around, so you never hear what someone else's instrument sounds like because you've usually got the only one for miles! And hearing them at performances (Show of Hands, etc) is all very well but you never get to find out what the things sound acoustically. So any advice anyone's got about good makes, and about good places to go shopping for one, would be priceless. Oh, and on "priceless", I can't really afford more than £500 ($800) - and kiss goodbye to last year's bonus at that! :-/