![]() ![]() We sharred the bill with three other Irish bands who all have similar tales to tell. It's when the crowd is on your same physical level in the same physical space that bad things happen.Īnd it wasn't just us. We've had much rowdier crowds in places that had raised stages with no problem. This is the theme restaurant of a Marriot hotel. Now make no mistake, this is not some squalid, backwater, hillbilly dive. A 15" wood cab speaker from six feet up can do some damage, let me tell you. They'll knock over your mics (I took a nasty blow from a mic to my front teeth more than once), even though you play with one foot on the base of the mic stand. In those tight quarters the crowd presses in. There was no real 'stage', just a space cleared between a couple of tables. Specifically, two of the mandolins were damaged in a place called the Old Shebeen, and Irish theme pub that we played once or twice a week for six years. The easiest way to imagine it is to picture yourself playing in the place with the chicken wire. No case - not even a Calton - could have saved them. Well, aside from gear damaged in accidents and floods, which (God forbid) can happen to anyone, the mandolins themselves were damaged on stage. Never thought of one of those Mix mandolins. And lots of folks would say that Ovations and MKs aren't even that. ![]() When something breaks or gets wrecked I just say "Oh well, it's just a mandolin". I am a Yankee after all, and come from stoic, Pilgrim stock. I really figured folks would say 'Gee, that's too bad, but congrats on the new Ovation'. As for the rest of the stuff, everybody knows those cheap $20 mic stands just don't hold up, and then I lost some gear in a car wreck and a major rain storm, but those things happen, right? I figured wrecking three mandolins in 15 years was doing pretty good, considering what I do. Heck, this is nowhere near the response I thought I'd get. I must be saying something the wrong way. They can take a lot of punishment! :grin: I think you should invest in a Mix carbon fiber mando. #Vintage gibson es 175 average weight forum cracked#But then later on you say it is just a cracked top or a drop. You give the visual image of routinely smashing instruments and it is no big deal. Tim the way you describe it is what is causing the confusion! LOL! :)) With a minimum of care (avoiding the extreme of humidity and temperature, hardshell case, etc.) even a cheapy mandolin will last longer than you will. You luthiers chime in here, but it seems to me that normal wear and tear on a mandolin is fret wear, pick scratches and pinky marks, skuffs and chaffes, perhaps some binding separation, nothing like is being desribed by the OP. It had spent perhaps 30 or 40 of those years unstrung lying around an attic and even (shudder) used as a planter before I got it, so I am surprized it lasted the 6 or 7 years I played it up to pitch with medium guage strings.Įvery other mandolin I have ever purchased is in the best shape I can keep it in and is played regularly. Another was a bowlback that separated at the neck in its 65th year. I lost one mandolin through stupidity - left in a hot car for a day and it pulled itself apart. The I have been playing for a while, a long while. Why does it keep happening to me? I dunno, maybe it's a karma thing, but you guys must smash a mandolin from time to time, don't you? Hope you're charging enough to cover it comfortably! But it does seem to me that $500 annually apiece in loss and damage is, well, pretty significant. I bet you and your partner put on a really good show, and I applaud the perseverance that keeps you putting out the music for 15+ years. So the coffeehouses, concerts, farm markets and libraries that make up a lot of my itinerary today, don't offer many dangers to me or my eqiuipment. performance schedule, with a 9-to-5 day job. On the other hand, I gave up playing bars quite a while ago, since I couldn't reconcile a 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Oddly enough, I still have most of the instruments I started with - those that haven't left through trade-ins - and while I've broken or lost some mic stands, guitar stands, cables etc., I've only had one instrument damaged: a Gibson F-2 that got a broken headstock when a drunk punched me out in a Brockport NY coffeehouse in 1973. In 40+ years of playing out, I doubt I've had one-tenth of the "normal wear and tear" you're listing. Are you an Irish duo that plays a bunch of rowdy Irish bars? Yeah, it sounds like quite a bit to me, Tim. ![]()
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