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Joined:
May 2010
Posts: 27
Location: Arizona | I'm thinking of picking up a mandolin to fool around with. I'm a mediocre guitar player but enjoy it. Any wisdom on whether a mandolin is easy or hard for a guitar player to have a little fun with? There are some really cheap ones available, like Rogue for 50 bucks, are they likely to be junk or OK for starters? Are any of the string pairs ever tuned in octaves or are they always unison? |
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Joined:
May 2010
Posts: 27
Location: Arizona | I'm sorry about the extra "g" in the topic, my fingers let me down sometimes on the computer as well as the guitar. |
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Joined:
August 2002
Posts: 8307
Location: Tennessee | I believe the act of playing mandolin should indeed be referred to as mandoling ... so you get a free pass on that one.
I have a cheap Fender FM-52E that was a couple of hundred bucks. It works fine and had withstood several years of less-than-mediocre playing. Don't know about the Rogue, but if it's too crappy and you're starting to get decent at mandoling, then you're gonna buy a better one anyway. Several folks here have the Celebrity Mandolins ... they can comment on their experiences. |
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Joined:
March 2008
Posts: 2683
Location: Hot Springs, S.D. | I find that playing mandolin hurts my arthritic knuckles. The neck is so tiny you have to really bend those knuckles to play. But if you don't have arthritis, go for it. I do NOT recommend the Rogues though. They are pretty crummy instruments. Indiana make a nice starter mando that you can pick up for under $100, and the quality is MUCH better. And as Bobbo said, the Fender mandos are pretty good starters too. |
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January 2009
Posts: 4536
Location: Flahdaw | I'll bet you can find a GREAT mando on ebay from someone that has given up trying to learn to play it. |
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Joined:
May 2006
Posts: 4238
Location: Steeler Nation, Hudson Valley Contingent | Originally posted by jswinf:
...whether a mandolin is easy or hard for a guitar player to have a little fun with? Easy or hard, you can still have plenty of fun with one. ;)
I started with a Celeb mando. Used ones do not cost much and they can be set up very nicely, unlike some of the cheaper ones out there.
I've never seen one tuned in octaves myself.
The chords for mandos are often mirror-images to guitar chords which can help or hurt depending upon your mindset. However, the short scale length allows for a wide variety of four-finger chords (often coupled with four-letter verbage when trying to learn them all) in addition to the base chordings. This adds a great deal of texture to playing the instrument IMHO.
Buy a decent used mando at a good price. Play it long enough to decide whether you like it or not. If not, sell it and you won't be out much money at all, if any. If you like it...well...watch out for MAS. It's similar to GAS, only smaller (but just as expensive). :p |
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April 2003
Posts: 608
Location: Caribou, ME | I've made a couple from scratch. I never play the cursed things though. I had bought a cheap Chinese one, I don't even recall the name. It was actually pretty good sounding but I could see disaster coming in the form of the neck shifting and twisting (no adjustable truss rod).
The first one I built had no truss rod but it hasn't moved. This one has a piece of carbon fiber rod in the neck. Still not adjustable but supposedly it won't move.
The top is cedar, the back and sides black ash, the neck mahogany, the board rosewood.
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Joined:
May 2010
Posts: 27
Location: Arizona | ksdaddy, that is a beautiful thing. Makes me want to make one, only I couldn't do it in a hundred years, maybe something with an oatmeal box and a broomstick...
Thanks for the helpful replies. I'll probably lurk some on the 'bay, but I always feel like 90% of the listings are dealers selling the same cheapie stuff and the individual selling that used decent instrument is rare. I know there are some, though. Mandolin brand names seem pretty diverse. Celebrity and Fender and Indiana have been mentioned here, any other brand suggestions? |
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Joined:
April 2003
Posts: 608
Location: Caribou, ME | The cheap Chinese one I had was a Santa Rosa. I think it sold in the stores for $75 or less. It was a basic A style and is probably sold under a hundred names. It was an awful red to black sunburst. It was not a legacy mandolin; as stated, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The goo dnews is that it was cheap and with a little setup (mainly on the nut and dressing rough fret ends) it was a happy little instrument. I used it for several months and then peddled it on ebay. It gave me the Mandolin Bug and made me want something better. There was an Ibanez F style in the local store and I saw it as a giant leap forward. I never did buy it but I was impressed. Mandolin purists turned their noses up but I'm not a purist nor am I a cork sniffer. I built the first mandolin in 8 days from rough lumber to tuning it up. It's not fancy; it's like an old Flatiron. The second one is much better but I just lost the bug altogether so it doesn't matter.
The cheap one can be viewed as a $50 experiment to see if you want to pursue mandolin, with the foregone conclusion that if it doesn't pan out you will sell it next year's yard sale for $20.
There is a mandolin company that used to be called the Mid Missouri Mandolin Co and now it's called the Big Muddy (mandolin co). Or maybe the other way around, I don't know. I've read many very positive things about them. It's basically one guy, maybe a couple employees also, who make austere plain-jane but very nice mandolins in the US. They show up on ebay sometimes and I think he will sell direct as well. They seem to run in the $400-$600 range, which is cheap. It's a bigger initial investment but the potential for recouping your money if you don't follow through is better, and if you DO like it, you'll have a better instrument from Day One. |
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Joined:
December 2008
Posts: 1456
Location: Texas | jswinf,
Like you, I just wanted to give mando playing a shot for grins, so I didn't want to invest in an expensive one right off the bat either. However, I didn't want a piece of junk. So, I bought an Ovation Celeb mando from Al last summer when he had a bargain price on them… I don't know if he still has them, but it might be worth emailing him?
It's perfect for me. Unplugged it sounds just ok, (the sound is what I expected from a Celebrity,) but the nice thing is that it's an A/E, and it's really fun plugged in…
I enjoy playing it, and yes, it took a while to get used to those tiny frets and string spacings, but it's not impossible. Standard mando tuning is easy to find your way around, it's four doubled courses of perfect fifths.
A quick way for a guitar player to jump into it is to download or purchase a mando chord chart for reference and have at it…
Then, if you really get into it, you can upgrade to something like THIS ONE. ;)
that's my 2¢… |
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Joined:
September 2008
Posts: 1281
Location: Ohio | I have an Epiphone that I bought new for 200.00 and is a solid top instrument. Check the Bay and Craigs list. They can be had for 100-150.
And yes, they can be fun! |
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mandoling advice?
