Features:

  • Solid German spruce top gives you clean articulation and a crisp, bright tone
  • Solid Alpine maple back and sides for extra punch
  • Slim Alpine maple neck for comfortable, easy action
  • Choice tonewood fingerboard ensures silky smooth playability
  • High-gloss sunburst finish creates traditional beauty and luster
I'm no Grisman, but I like this mandolin.

Nice mandolin for the money. I'm using it to take weekly lessons and I really love it! It doesn't sound quite as nice as my teacher's Mando, but hers is worth thousands. I initially had a cheap-o $50 mandolin, but it sounded so bad it was discouraging. I'm very happy with it. It holds a tune well and once I got the string height dialed in, it has pretty decent action. Thanks!

Nice mandolin, sounds great but needs setup

This is a nice mandolin, and overall I'm really satisfied with my purchase. I'm having a blast playing it now that I've made a few tweaks. My experience, with Amazon as the seller for my purchase, is that this was not really set up prior to shipment by someone who is a mandolin player. The mandolin seemed to go out of tune quite easily, the action was really high, and the intonation was not great. I dialed it in myself, lowering the bridge and also adjusting the bridge for intonation on the 12th fret. With these adjustments, I'm really happy with how it plays. If I was more adventurous I'd file the nut down a little bit, and the next time I change the strings I'm going to lubricate the channels with a #2 pencil. The finish of the instrument is good, but there are a few very minor blemishes. You can tell the finish was applied after the fret board was in place, because the smooth finish does not extend fully under the fret board. Maybe I am expecting too much out of mandolin that costs under $300, but these minor finish blemishes do bother me a little bit. Another thing that bothered me was, as I was detuning the mandolin to make some adjustments, one of the E strings broke by the tuning peg. Maybe the peg has a sharp spot, or maybe the string was just stressed, but I would not expect a new string to break while lowering the tension on it. I bought it with the "Deluxe Case", which is a case by Carrion. I thought the vulture logo was a little bit cheesy, but it is a fine locking case. There isn't a channel for the neck to sit in, nor is there a strap to strap the neck down firmly, so the mandolin would definitely rattle around a bit. Fine for my purposes of general protection and transportation. The million dollar question -- would I be just as happy with a much less expensive mandolin? We'll never know (unless you send me one!)

Great begginer mandolin for the money

Great mandolin, especially for beginners. I was blown away by how good the tone and volume was for one with such a low price. Worth every penny.

Five Stars

best mandolin a man who has no idea how to play mandolin could buy

Worth the money

***edited to include valid links to the videos*** A little background: I'm a long time musician. I've been playing 35+ years. I play primarily guitar and bass, with the occasional stint on keys. I grew up in a bluegrass/old time music family. I met my wife one night in 1984 while playing the banjo. She agreed to marry me if I sold the banjo. Recently while listening to some music she suggested I get another banjo. I thought about it but thought a Mandolin might be more fun. I looked at all of the mandolins on the music sites. I read reviews of all of the different brands. I haunted the mandolin discussion boards and came to a conclusion: A lot of folks don't think you can get a worthwhile instrument for less than $2000. I think they are wrong. I have several Fender guitars and considered the Fender mandolins, but everyone I have talked to said that their build quality was sketchy at best. I looked at the washburn mandolins, and the Epiphones. Several people had a discussion going around these instruments at mandolincafe.com and the overwhelming majority agreed that I would be happier with the KM-150 than the others, so I bought one. Several reviewers have given this instrument very low marks, but I think they are missing the bigger picture: 1. The instruments are made in China: Yep, Most of the entry level instruments are made in China, but that's not a deal breaker as much as it used to be. Some very good stuff comes out of China. Doesn't Apple have a manufacturing operation in China? 2. The bridge is not attached: There is a very good reason for this. In order to keep the costs down, manufacturer's mass produce mandolins, and mass produce bridges. The best way to do it would be to hand fit the bridge and saddle to the instrument, but that would drive up the cost to the point many of us would be out of the market. Expect to have the bridge/Saddle setup on any mail order instrument. You can do it yourself in an afternoon, or you can drop $50 and have a local music shop do it. Many of the folks reviewing the instrument are not the end users, and have no commitment to the instrument. If you are interested in playing Mandolin, and are committed enough to spend a little time on your instrument, I think you will like this mandolin. I have included a couple of videos showing what you get out of the box, and what you get after a little adjusting/sanding. How she was out of the box: http://youtu.be/wojn6cyapJs How she is now: http://youtu.be/b_KZzCvuCnw This mandolin is definitely worth a look.

Nice sound, easy setup

I am just beginning to play the mandolin and my first instrument was an acoustic/electric that I was not happy with. A lot of buzzing and overly shrill sounds. I'm a violin player so the high pitched E is familiar to me, but this was crazy shrill and I broke two E strings trying to make adjustments. I could not get the bridge to a height that made it easy to play or got rid of the buzzing. So I returned it and got this one. My first impression was that the sound was so much mellower, easier to listen to, and it's easier to play. I actually didn't have to do much with the bridge, it was almost perfect on delivery. Tuning was easy and no broken strings. I am not sure of the quality of the strings, they sound good to me for now. But also, how easy it is to play! I thought I should be able to pluck out a handful of tunes and on the other instrument I could not. With this one, it's so much easier to play that I could just pluck out tunes by ear (with my violin knowledge helping). I am very, very happy with this. It was well packaged, came when expected. Now it's just waiting for the strings to settle in (they go flat at first, just like violin strings) before I can play to my heart's content.

This is a very nice mandolin.

Beautiful sound, beautiful to look at. Never owned a mandolin although, I have owned over a dozen guitars these past 50 years. I'm not a professional musician because nobody would ever pay to hear me sing. It keeps my wife happy though and she enjoys it. So my opinion about this mandolin? I've plucked a lot of other mandolins in the past 50 years and finally decided to get one for myself. I read a lot of reviews and finally decided on this one, in large part based upon the previous review. It is everything that fella said, and is prettier than I expected. Here is my own 2-cents; It is spruce and maple, and that much wood still makes the best sound. I have a laminate Baby Martin guitar which is very good, and although solid wood will always sound better, the new laminates sound very good. A lot of lower priced mandolins are now at least partially composite laminates, but don't call them plywood. The modern "engineered woods" are more stable and stronger than equally thin slices of the solid woods. Do they sound exactly the same? Of course not, but they do sound great and have very fine resonance. The sustain on my new mandolin is excellent compared to an equally priced solid wood example from 50 years ago. Its all subjective anyway. For my money I'm glad I spent less money on this one. I just can't justify $1200 for my first mandolin. The finish is glossy and the grain is beautiful. Action is light and the bridge was easy to adjust. It took me a couple of hours to set the bridge and adjust the string height, but after that the tuning fell right into place. It may help some people to know that, the distance from the nut to the 12th fret must be equal to the distance from the 12th fret to the middle of the bridge. After reading many reviews, it seems that this may not be obvious to some. When you are done the bridge will be in the same spot as shown in the picture above (Hope they haven't changed it!) Get a plastic ruler and measure from the middle of each. Also, the left-right position of the bridge, and the squaring of the bridge can be measured from the sides and bottom of the body. It's really easy.

Outstanding mandolin

Sounds excellent. 10/10 would recommend. high quality instrument for the price. putting on the bridge was easy if you are familiar with mandolins. I am thoroughly impressed by the tone of this fine instrument.

Perfect

Great product for an even better price. I know nothing about mandolins but wanted to learn how to play. I took it to a classical music shop when it first arrived to get it tuned and the tech who worked on it asked me how much I paid and he was really impressed at the quality for the price. It sounds great too!

After a few months of practicing via Youtube lessons (a great resource these days)

I've had my KM-150 for about six months. Learning the mando was on my bucket list for years, and I did a lot of research before making the purchase for a beginner model. Initially I had a bias against Kentucky as a low end model, but then I started finding a lot of positive reviews from experienced pickers. Add to that the description of "solid" AND "carved", with the latter being the give-away that it was not a laminate, and I started taking a hard look at this one. I paid $210 during a promotion and also bought a soft case, strap, some heavy picks, and several boxes of strings. Yes, I had to fiddle with the bridge to get decent action and intonation, but I didn't have to touch the neck. It must have come with J74's because I was blown away by the sound right out of the box. There is a very wide mid-range where you get that woody Gibson bluegrass sound, especially with the tremolo's. I found the E string range to sound a bit tinny, but that could be my rough playing as well. After a few months of practicing via Youtube lessons (a great resource these days), I changed the strings to bronze Elixers and found them way to metallic sounding - they lasted a week before I put another set of J74's back on. Anyway, I played in public with a guitarist and singer for the first time last week using a basic condenser mic, and received several positive comments about the sound of this little beginner mando. I think it has "opened up" in the last two weeks, and that sweet spot mid-range is even wider now. My plan was to trade up to an F model at several times the cost, but now I'm thinking that may not happen so fast. This is a great sounding instrument and by far the best value out there.

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