What do mandolins and tube amps have in common? Not much, though it isn't out of the question to plug mandolin armed with a pure K and K pickup into a Fender Champ!
No, my reason for the title is that I have had a four year excursion into the mandolin, which detracted a bit from my time to play my electric guitars while plugged into my tube amps.
What I gained from the mandolin is a whole new set of skills with an entirely differently tuned instrument, which chord shapes and scales that required a new spatial memory. Very good for me as a guitarist, and also a guy with a Parkinsonian disorder. I will always be a mandolin player and have added a couple of mandolins to my arsenal of instruments. Here is one of them (Gibson A5G '96):
I am enjoying playing and singing for the nursing home community a few times each month, and I do throw in some blues along with our folk rock and country songs.
I have had a resurgence of my interest in the electric blues, though it never stopped. I spent so many hours practicing the mandolin and I do enjoy the mandolin blues, such as played by Yank Rachell.
Of late, I have been selling a number of instruments in order to get back into the electric guitar. I still have my Deluxe Lonestar Stratocaster and I am in the process of acquiring a used American Series Strat to play through my new (used) Peavey Classic 30 (1996).
| 2006 Lonestar Strat |
| 2001 American Series |
