I work at Stars Guitars in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and we are now the Iowa dealer for Eastman Guitars. We've been selling their mandolins and fiddles for several years and just acquired the guitars too. The archtop jazz guitars are very nice indeed. I haven't played one of the flattops yet but once the archtops are properly set up with the right strings and action, they are wonderful. They are available with or without electronics, some with floating neck position pickups only and some with dual humbuckers a la Gibson 335.

You can check out the various models at the Eastman Guitar website.

I've been playing my Eastman 815 mandolin for over a year now and it's really become a great bluegrass instrument. I'm thinking of taking it to Steve Perry to see if his process helps it even more. I'm not saying the era of the $12,000 mandolin is over but for most players the extra ten grand is going to weigh heavily on the side of Eastman.

      - Mark