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While workers at the C F Martin Guitar Company in Nazareth, PA were toiling away at their benches producing good quality A-style mandolins in the 1950s, the folks at Favilla in New York City sat back and unabashedly copied the Martin oval soundhole, flat back, “bent” top style nearly verbatim. We have never seen so close an imitation of the basic Martin mandolin as you see here. It is amazing. Brazilian rosewood headplate, a Brazilian rosewood unbound fingerboard displaying 7 small ivoroid dots in 5 positions. Unlike a Martin, this is a slightly longer neck, joining the body at the 11th fret, and a 13 ½” scale (the Martin scale is 13”). It has the Martin Style -18 features including the four ply bordered top in black-white-black-white purfling, with a maching soundhole rosette except that the rosette is 5 ply.
This mandolin features a lovely Dalmatian-flavor tortoise shell celluloid pickguard – mostly in yellows but with bold tawny red and brown highlights; it has an ebony bridge with a bone saddle, and a 6-scalloped standard slide-down tailpiece cover. The sides are bordered in black celluloid; there is no back stripe;
This mandolin was obviously owned by a player because it sports many of the battle scars that you would expect to see on one's favorite instrument. In no particular order... there are a number of repaired cracks on the back. They are all old repairs and are holding steady. There are numerous scratches and dings in the finish across most of the instrument. These are typical of the wear displayed by well played instruments. Most importantly, it plays easily, sounds huge for its size, and has a greater utility value than most of this design because of the 11 frets to the body and longer scale, comes with modern padded bag. We like this, you’ll like it also.
