Congratulations Jim! Good choice, Collings makes great mandolins.
Unlike a new flute, the mandolin requires no break-in time, though your fingertips might cry uncle after a couple of hours.
I’d suggest when you go pick it up that you buy a bunch of different picks in various gauges and experiment with them – they can have a significant effect on tone, projection, etc.
Have fun! and be nice to your wife, she’s a champ.
Will do.
MAS, eh? God help me.
Yes, a champ indeed! She boxes, you know.
She da man!
All the best, Jim
Congratulations Jim! Pick long and prosper!
And do experiment with picks as rh suggests, and in a while you can start having fun experimenting with strings as well. Also be sure to discuss its care and feeding with your friend at the shop. Conditions vary all over, but your shop will know what to do for humidification and such. The advantage of the local store you know.
Congrats again. You’re going to have a blast!
Thank you.
I have a Tim O’Brien mandolin/ Bouzouki instruction
DVD. He recommends using the top end of the pick
(the round end opposite the pointy end) to pick
the strings. In effect, you hold the pick upside down.
I’ve been doing this on the Big Muddy.
Seems to improve the sound.
He uses these multi-colored ‘clown barf’ picks, however he doesn’t
say what grade of heaviness he uses.
I have a number of ‘heavy’ picks they gave
me when I bought the Big Muddy. These
seem quite good, however I haven’t used
any of them upside down yet.
Anybody have any experience?
What strings do you’all like?
Picking your brains, ya know…
those IIRC were the old version of the Golden Gate picks, the newer incarnation of which can be found here.
on f-hole instruments i usually use the Pro-plec; i also like the Wegen M150 mandolin picks but they cost $5 each and i always manage to lose them. They do seem to boost volume a bit though, and the bevel is nice.
For strings, the D’Addario J74s are very popular. I also like the GHS Silk and Bronze, but i think the J74s (or J75s, a little chunkier) will give you more volume.
Disclaimer: i don’t play in sessions and i tend to play ITM on flattops with light strings and .73mm Ultex rounded triangle picks.
Excellent.
Anybody hold the pick upside down?
Is this widespread or what?
the ones i use are symmetrical, so for me upside down doesn’t matter.
i do sometimes take some sandpaper and bevel one edge so i can go from playing rhythm (thicker chunkier tone) to playing lead (thinner, cleaner tone) with the same pick.
For picks I recommend you check out the Ultex, Wegen, and Tortis. I like the large rounded triangle (style C). The Wegans run $5 each, but the Tortis style C’s are $30 a click. You definitely don’t want to lose them! R.H. would have a fit with those! 
The Golden Gates are a bit small for me, but very nice. If you haven’t tried them, PM me and I’ll shoot you one over.
Playing upside down never worked for me. Tried it, know guys who do it, I just can’t.
As for strings: I use J74’s on two other mandos, but I’ve just started working with Thomastik Infeld starks on my F5 clone. They’re flat wounds that I’ve fallen in love with. But it’s hard to beat J74’s and J75’s. They’re pretty much the standard mando string.
To answer your question more directly, upside down picks are an old mandolinist’s trick. Don’t know anybody who hasn’t tried it sometime. If you like it, do it. Don’t waste your effort trying to ‘develop the skill’ though. Not worth it. Too many pick options to work with today.
P.S. RH is right that mandos don’t have a real breaking in period, but they do experience what we call ‘opening up’. It might happen in a week, or maybe in two years, but you’ll hear her sing once she opens. You’ll think “Is this MY mandolin?! Where the heck did THAT sound come from?” Once a Collings opens up, you’ll drown out the fiddles.
There seem to be two stages to mando growth. The first, sort of like breaking in, is the opening up that Tim mentions. This is where regular playing and changes of environmental factors affect the wood and change the sound of the mando. Then the is the more volatile “waking up” which is a short term thing. When an opened up mando hasn’t been played for a while the tone may “go to sleep”: when it is played again for a while the tone “wakes up”.
These processes are widely accepted among violin players too, but opinion varies as to the objective reality of the effect, and some regard such reports as entirely apocryphal. Personally, from experience I am a believer in both opening up and waking up of mandolins.
Picks… for good volume and round tone I, like many others, have found that a heavy pick works best. It can take quite a while to get used to a huge slab between your fingers instead of a slim, flexible pick. With a heavy pick the flexibility comes from a practiced grip.
I use picks between 1.5mm and 2mm. I like Dunlop 2mm teardrops (dark grey with the gator pic on), the larger Dunlop Jazztones also in 2mm and white Clayton 1.9mm teardrops.
As they come, NO picks work for me straight out of the pack. I sand a faux wear-bevel on all my picks, and on picks that are the standard guitar teardrop shape I round the point as well.
Many players play with the rounded "shoulder of the pick. For me that’a a little too large a radius, but Sam Bush does it all the time.
I also punch or bore a paper-punch sized hole in the middle of the pick as an aid to grip when my hands get slick.
Grip of a mandolin pick is different to guitar grip. Some ITM players used guitar grip, but a serious bluegrasser won’t. I use the bluegrass grip for ITM as well as bg. If you have a thick pick it is the most secure and flexible way to hold it.
Check out http://www.celticmusic.com/dan/technique.html for a description and pick of mandolin pick grip.
Oh yeh, strings.
D’Addario J74. There’s a reason they’re so popular - they are just great strings for a standard scale f-hole mandolin. And as they are pretty much the standard, you can get 'em everywhere and they aren’t expensive.
J75s, which I expected to give me more volume and fuller tone due to the heavier gauges, just didn’t work on my Gloucester. Sounded dead and disappointing, despite my taking ages tweaking the setup for them.
Went back to J74s and stayed with them. 
if i pay >$1 for a pick, i’m guaranteed to lose it. dunno why.
yeah, i meant in relation to a flute – if you play your new timber flute for three hours the first day, you’re taking a chance on ruining it, where that’s not the case with a mandolin. flutes sound better after they’re played in too.
I’ll chime in here on the Collings. I have played vintage Gibson A’s in Irish sessions for years and love the sound of them. I think a snakehead A-2Z is the holy grail of IRTRAD mandolins. I just love them, but I don’t really like the narrow fingerboards, so I don’t own one. When the session gets going fast however, it is difficult to play the ornaments and play hard (loud) too, so a louder mandolin makes it easier to play fast plecteral ornaments (triplets, etc).
If I was ever to stray away from my trusty 1917 A-2, it would be to a Collings A-5 style mando. I love them. Even the lowly MT1. I’ve AB’ed a lot of them and find them very consistently good. To me, they sound like a cross between a nice A and a good A-5 (like a Givens). With a set of J74’s and the right pick, it could be a great set-up. (And it would stay in tune better than an old A)
(speaking of picks - they make SUCH a difference on tone). So does a good bridge. I’ve heard so-so mandolins come to life with a different bridge. (but don’t buy a crummy mandolin thinking you can fix it with a different bridge - Murphys law will over-ride you. : ) )
Good luck with your choice. At the end of the day, it’s mostly about you and the tunes. There’s no such thing as a perfect instrument - just play what ya got and enjoy. Gear lust can be such a distraction - I know - I’ve suffered from that disease for years. : )
One other thing - for a good example of mando in Irish music, check out Michael Kerry’s CD “The Rocky Road”. Not loud, but really nice stuff.
Darting in for a quick aside…
In several years of sessioning my life away in Ireland, I don’t believe I ever saw anyone playing a Gibson mandolin. Flat-tops are the rule, and many players pooh-pooh the Gibson sound for trad.
Now, you may say that no one in Ireland plays a Gibson because there aren’t any over there (not strictly true), but the other side of that coin would be to say that we play them here because of their ubiquity. Neither is a good reason to choose a particular style of instrument. My pet theory is that most Gibsons sound best when played with a heavy pick, and the Irish style uses a lighter pick.
In case you’re wondering, I play a Gibson myself (for all the right reasons of course), when I’m not playing the Gibson-based mando prototype I built. Both happen to respond to a light touch. Cheers,
Rob
A note to thank all for the tips about picks and
strings. i’m playing a good deal, up to jigs
and reels. Feel like i’m 19. Thanks again, Jim
Glad you’re having fun, Jim.
I so wish I’d discovered mandolin 35 years ago! Guitar was ok, but this thing just feels so right, so comfortable.
Back for a bit more advice, are most, of not all, kentucky mandolins arctop ?
The two kentucky mandolins im looking at are
Kentucky KM-172 amber
and
Kentucky KM-340s
Any opinions on these mando’s ?
As far as I know, all current Kentucky models are arch tops. I will conceed to those more in the know.
Kentucky mandolins have enjoyed a reputation as very well made, value-priced mandolins for many years. They get very few bad reviews. In their price range, they are reliable investments generally.
The gospel on all things mando can be found at the mandolin cafe (www.mandolincafe.com). Ask your question there.