MA-500 VS Bluegrass Series : Not bad for the money

This was purchased as an alternative to an acoustic mandolin for some smaller shows where it wasn't practical to get a condenser mic in front of the mandolin.

In terms of quality it is hard to fault, decent wood and hardware and certainly feels like a study instrument that would be capable of handling the rigours of the road.

Playability was good although it certainly has more of an electric guitar feel rather than a traditional mandolin but I think it's fair to say that this is to be expected!

One thing to note is that, like an electric guitar, this thing really needs to be fed into an amplifier of some sort rather than via a DI straight into the desk - the guitar style pickups rely on the amp to add 'warmth' etc to the signal - without going through an amp you are left with a rather thin sound but again this isn't a problem with the product, just something to be aware of.

Eventually I ended up buying a dedicated pickup for my acoustic mandolin as it yielded a more traditional sound for the material I was playing but if I was after a less traditional tone I wouldn't be worried about playing this into a decent guitar amp.