Jon Freeman, funny you should mention Barney McKenna. I first heard Barney and John Sheehan of the Dubliners play Róisín Dubh and the Cúilin on twin bowl-back mandolins, and I said to myself "Self, that's the instrument for you." So my late Dad and I hunted high and low for a used bowl back, which he purchased for me, and away I went. Then I got an urge to copy Barney on the tenor banjo, and we repeated the process. I took up the guitar (my main instrument these days) by a different route. My sister wanted a guitar for Christmas one year, (she had just heard the singing nun, and wanted to be the next one); my parents could not afford one, but she wailed and moaned, and finally they scraped enough together to get one for her - a little Italian-made EKO - which she tried once, complained that the string hurt her fingers, and never played again. I took it up, so it wasn't wasted. All the best. Seamus