Steve L’s two hundred and thirty-four comments

I think you’d do well to check out the mandolincafe.com website, especially the forum. Here’s a section specifically for Celtic (What can you do?)/World folk styles with lots of info. You will find many fine players doing exactly what you want to do. more…

They’re definitely worth it. I don’t think he’s building them anymore and used ones turn up, but not often. You might investigate Nigel Forster’s work. He worked in Sobell’s shop for some time and is a great builder in his own right. more…

I started really playing this music as a result of a tune class led by Tony Cuffe at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Ma. Some folks didn’t get it, but it changed a lot of lives including mine. more…

Is complexity a pro or a con? more…

Who cares? more…

I would see if you can turn up the Mad For Trad CD Rom tutorial for Irish bouzouki by Gerry McKee, which has lots of examples for accompanying tunes in GDAE tuning. more…

Just so you know, the Mad For Trad discs are not DVDs but CDROMs. There are lots of chord charts and notation and brief video clips of the artists playing the examples once through…sometimes in closeup, sometimes not. more…

He’s not, but he still but he still builds a few on spec, and his used stuff is well worth looking at. more…

Octave mandolins by nature are not really loud relative to fiddles, box players, pipes etc. more…

If it was strung in unisons, you can pretty much assume it’s not set up for octaves. more…