SteveZ - Posted - 10/29/2014:  12:38:53

Usually I'm leery lending instruments, but a fellow I know who is a very good guitarist wanted to try mandolin.  Ironically, I had listed my Fender 101 (it wasn't getting much use) on a local for-sale board, the listing lasted only 30 days. He saw it the last day, didn't recognize my phone number, meant to answer the ad, and then the ad vanished.  

Our spouses and us went to an Eagles tribute concert the other day.  While there he mentioned he saw an ad for a Fender 101, but the ad was gone when he was ready to call on it.  We both got a laugh over the fact that it was my mandolin. 

Anyway, I told him he was welcome to borrow the mandolin for as long as he liked, put a fresh set of strings on it and tossed in the Mandolin For Dummies book.  He's had it for a week now and it seems to be a good match.  I had decided that I was going to keep the Fender, but now it looks like it may have found a new home.

Ben Venuti - Posted - 10/29/2014:  14:46:59

Had a band mate once that was weirdly and obsessively fussy about all his stuff. Thing was everything of mine he ever touched he either messed up, screwed up or straight up lost without a thought of an apology let alone any attempt to make it right..



I had a mandolin that I had picked up for traveling because I was planning to do a little traveling. It was an old L & H Washburn Style "E" I chose it because it weighed next to nothing and you could hear it across a field. Took a cheap cardboard case and glassed it --also because of weight, and began my trip around the world. I crossed the Pacific in sailboats and banana boats. I climbed over under around and through the Southern Alps crossed the deserts of Australia. Traveled the jungles and rivers of Borneo and Malasia in dugout canoes (powered by small block chevy engines with twenty foot drive shafts). Crossed the Himalaya by foot --braved Indian 3rd class trains, survived the war in Afghanistan (the one the Russians were waging). Managed to get across the old CCCP without a visit to the Gulag and the whole thing took about 5 years before I made it back to the US leaving from Amsterdam in the middle of the aircraft controllers strike --not bad for starting out with about $2500 in my pocket and no one to call if I had trouble. All of that with hardly a scratch on the mandolin. It sat here for years after that rarely getting played because I had other mandolins. There was a young man that was interested in mandolin so I lent it to him --it took him two weeks before he managed to break the neck on that thing!.-----

If you lend people stuff it would be nice if they treated it well. I have endless amounts of tools but I make my living from tools and I won't lend them, I need them to be able to eat ----except possibly to someone that I know takes care of their own stuff and also maybe has something that I might have need to borrow sometime.



Good luck with your lending experiences!.

Edited by - Ben Venuti on 10/29/2014 14:51:23

SteveZ - Posted - 10/29/2014:  16:50:51

This is one of the better experiences. The fellow is as fussy with his instruments as I am with mine, and he's a decent player who doesn't abuse stuff.  

Susan H - Posted - 10/30/2014:  03:59:05

Sorry, I'd never lend out any of my instruments, unless I was right there to watch over it. Like at a jam session or orchestra session. Heard too many horror stories to even venture in that direction.

Donnie - Posted - 10/30/2014:  12:26:34

I'm with you Susan. I know Collinings make my model of mandolin often, but "Bertha" has really opened up after 3 years of playing the day lights out of her. If something was to happen to her, WOW, I don't want to think about that. When the Trio I'm in travels to gigs, she even rides next to me. I own another mandolin too, but really, I've just worked too hard and waited too long for the quality instruments I've aquired to trust someone else with them. That's me and Berth on my picture/ID.

Rob Beck - Posted - 10/31/2014:  02:27:31

No one I know has the slightest interest in wanting to learn the mandolin or consequently borrowing mine, clearly they need more exposure! 

Edited by - Rob Beck on 10/31/2014 02:28:50

SteveZ - Posted - 10/31/2014:  13:10:19

Well, a lot has to do with what's being borrowed.  Lending an under-$200 A-style that's getting very little playing time anymore is a lot different than lending one's "finest" instrument. 

Edited by - SteveZ on 10/31/2014 13:11:40