When my vintage Epiphone (a Gibson in every way but the name on the headstock) mandolin broke last December, I spent a fair amount of time looking for a replacement. I chose a wonderful but very expensive one, but that one is that is too valuable to use for bar gigs. So I also bought a second one, a solid body specifically for that purpose. It arrived yesterday.

This is the worst piece of junk I've ever seen. The frets are not parallel, and some of the upper frets are further apart than lower ones, the nut is about 3/16ths of an inch high, and the fretboard seems to be made out of balsa wood.

I expected this to be a low end instrument that needed a lot of tweaking before it could be made playable, but this goes beyond my worst expectations. This thing cannot even be called a real instrument. It falls into the catagory of a fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting people thinking they are buying something that can be used to make music.

I am appalled and angry that anybody would even make something like this. It is in the same league as the "batbox" psuedo-guitars of the 50s and 60s.

I still need a solid body electric for bar gigs, so I'm going to get a new neck from Stewart-Macdonald and graft it in place, but I can't stress enough how shocked and bitterly disappointed I am at the quality of this piece of garbage.

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My new mandolin is a real piece of....

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I'm so confused.

Way back in about 1968, my friend Dave Elson (Mike, you probably remember him from Ash Grove days) took some Social Security money he got after his dad died and bought instruments for a couple of us so we could become a rock band (we were playing Bluegrass back then). He bought me an electric, solid-body mandolin. I wonder whether it was better, worse or equal to yours. 1st, the scale was too long, so I couldn't reach the 7th fret with my pinky. It didn't even come close to fretting true, either.

BTW, I have been playing mandolin again for the last 2-3 years, and I purchased a new Loar copy from a local builder, who died a few months ago, Cliff Sargent. I love it! At first I was very reluctant to spend $7K, but my brother Erik told me to look on it as an investment. When I did that, my reluctance disappeared

(ducks..)

My good mandolin is a Rigel A+ deluxe. This is an exquisite instrument. Better than the one that broke. Mine is a blue sunburst. Here are some links.

http://www.rigelmandolin.com/

http://www.rigelmandolin.com/A+Deluxe.html

This link is to a fellow holding a different model, but the same color as mine.

How about this link to a picture of you holding your mandolin... It's posted on Rigel's website. http://www.rigelmandolin.com/images/perlowin.jpg

Nice looking mando! Sorry to hear about the troubles with your cheapo.

There's a much better picture of me on the MSA web site.

http://msapedalsteels.com/html/m__perlowin.html

[This message was edited by Mike Perlowin on 27 March 2005 at 05:54 PM.]

Brad

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Any opinions from you mandolin guys on the Michael Kelly stuff?

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Our fellow forumite Michael Johnstone has one. Perhaps you ought to ask him what he thinks about it.

[This message was edited by Mike Perlowin on 27 March 2005 at 09:56 PM.]

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Livin' in the Past and Future with a 12 string Mooney Universal tuning.

There is a Guitar Center on my way home here in Atlanta. I stop in about once a week and look through all the cheap Chinese junk with Fender on the headstock. I am amazed at the wide variation of playability/quality between guitars of the same make. Some have horrible neck/body wood and some have the nicest tight grain woods and just sound fine.

You roll the dice when you buy sight unseen/unplayed.

Send it back.

[This message was edited by Bill Hatcher on 28 March 2005 at 08:52 AM.]

db

[This message was edited by Dave Burr on 28 March 2005 at 12:48 PM.]

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Mike, Are you wanting a 4, 5 or 8 string solid body?

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Both the Wendler mandolin and guitar are on my fantasy "if I win the lottery" list of things I'd buy, along with a new Millenium, a Legend and a Promat P-P (just for something different.)

I think that my best option at this point is to get a new neck and fretboard from Stu-Mac and graft it on to the one I have. As far as I can tell, the body itself is OK, and I saved the grover tuning pegs and custom made Seymour Duncan stacked humbucking pickup for mandolin from the one that broke.

BTW, the store that sold me this piece of garbage is called Music Pals. I wrote to them and told them I was dissatisfied and wanted to return the instrument, (I use the term loosely) and they refused, and in fact were quite nasty about it.

It seems to me that any reputable dealer would not sell crap like this in the first place, and would honor the request of a dissatisfied customer for a refund.

Dave is fine, living in Santa Clara. In November, he came out to Woodland, where Erik and I live, for the Bluegrass Festival. We picked for a couple of hours here at my house, then for about six hours at the festival. (We only watched a couple of bands.) Afterwards, we went to a bar and drank beer and talked until about 1AM.

Dave is playing only guitar now, his old J-200 and a couple of electrics. He gave up fiddle and banjo years ago. I always thought he would be a great steel player, considering his banjo skill and his ear for music, but he has never played one.

"This guitar is hypersensitive to any motion or movement as it will go out of tune. I find this helps to predict earthquakes. PLEASE ADVISE: AFTER TUNING, DO NOT PLAY. With the gap between the neck and the strings, I'm thinking of hanging myself----but the guitar would fall apart before I reached that point. I put vice grips on this thing as a capo. If Estefrauds head was in front of me I'd put vice grips on that too."

"sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks.....was the video over an hour, or did it just seem that long? Can't even use the video to tape stuff over because that's junk too. The gig bag is a body bag for this junk. End of story. Segovia taught this loser? I bet he's rolling in his grave right now. The only billboard charts this guy is on is for the hearing impaired."

"There was no set up. Probably made buy a cardboard box company. Three of the frets were sticking out enough to tear off a knuckle.The fretboard is covered with some kind of goo. I tried to play the thing for a couple of minutes and the ends of my fingers were black from this stuff. One of the tuning pegs had this same sticky goo all over it. When I tried to remove it I noticed that it had melted part of the plastic peg. The finish looks like flooring varnish."

I should mention that the amount of money involved is only a hundred bucks, but there's a proinciple involved. People should not sell merchandise that does not do what it's supposed to, and cannot be made to work properly.

When I was a teenager and gave guitar lessons, I occasionaly ran into a guitar of this quality, and when I did I refused to attempt to teach the student or charge for my time. We've probably all seen, and been appalled by, these unplayable objects that look like instruments but in fact are fit only for firewood.

Their web site is under...

eastmanstrings.com

BTW the E-ddress for Music Pals is Musicpals2004@aol.com

Electric....I was reading your thread at work, and well, to be honest, played a gig last night and got into it a little.....I just might have drank away my ability to read.

Anyways.... yep, Eastman makes good acoustic mandos..

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According to the title of your post you play one filthy instrument??

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Several.