Morgan Monroe MMT-1E Electric T Style Mandolin, Vintage Cherry

The idea of having an electric mandolin that sounds like a guitar is intriguing. Easy to use our familiar stomp boxes and tone shaping tools to get a decidedly non-acoustic result. Do a little browsing on Youtube using mandocaster as a search term and you will get the idea.Finish on this instrument is decent. Good at first sight, but the back will mark and scratch very easily. Build quality is better than many other Chinese instruments. Just needed a tuning out of the box and was playable within a few minutes without any major intervention. Too many first experiences are ruined by instruments that are shipped from the factory badly-adjusted. They instantly garner a mediocre reputation, but the initial set-up on this one was fine for the casual player.On the positive side, the tuners are the ever familiar grover-clones with a screw tab at 5 or 7 o'clock that will be easy to replace or upgrade. Individual tension can be changed by playing with the philips screw holding the keywind. The instrument holds its tune fairly well and the neck is straight. Rare features in an entry-level mandolin are an adjustable truss rod and individual saddles adjustable for intonation and height. The neck is bolt-on, so it should be really easy to change the neck angle if that's what you want. The pickups are single coil and can be noisy if you have certain electronic equipment in the room, such as light dimmers, that create a high-frequency buzz.That having been said, the saddles are a touch too wide making the strings almost fall off the fingerboard on the highest frets. Overall span of strings at the bridge is about 1/8 inch wider than standard. It's going to be relatively simple to file the sides down a bit, but no doubt that will void the warranty, and I would expect better in this price range. All-in-all, I will put in about an hour of work and get the width right, then the height an intonation exactly to my liking, which is not always possible in a mandolin.The volume and tone controls work well, but the volume is almost free-floating while the tone has a lot of drag in it. Cheapens the feel of the whole instrument needlessly over two or three dollars worth of pots.

Prior to buying this, I had already purchased another Morgan Monroe mandolin. i was so happy with the quality of that one that i felt comfortable with making this purchase. I am completely satisfied with this purchase as well. Morgan Monroe makes some good stuff. I did have to make some minor adjustments on the intonation. I only needed a Philips head screwdriver to do it. After that, it was perfect. it played nice and had no buzz before or after my adjustments.I ran this through my guitar effects processor and it sounded great. i was wailing some lead guitar sounding riffs on it and it was cool. it is a very solid piece of equipment too. Also, the finish was very nice.Strings for this are a bit harder to find because this requires steel strings with a ball end. Most mandolin strings are loop end. So pay attention to that when you want to buy replacement stings for it.I give this a 5 even though I had to adjust the intonation. you have to do that sometimes when you buy an instrument. It is easy to do on this as well as most electric guitars. A mandolin player should learn how to make some adjustments in intonation anyway because most mandolins have moveable bridges.

Absolute junk at an outrageous price. Returned it.

I bought a Fender Frontman 10G Electric Guitar Amplifier (also from amazon) a couple weeks after purchasing this mandolin.I had another amp, but it wasn't designed for amplifying musical instruments. It still worked, but let's just say you wouldn't bring it to a gig. Anyways, when I turned the volume up, on both the instrument and the Amp, I heard a constant buzzing. Tried everything I could to get rid of it.I figured it was an issue with the amp, seeing this particular amp, like I said, wasn't designed specifically for instrumental augmentation. So I bought the before-hand mentioned Fender Guitar Amp. As I could not find an amp specific for mandolins. I see no problem here. Got the amp, hooked up my (this) mandolin and again, I heard the buzzing. Did some diagnosing, none of the controls on the Amp itself would get rid of the buzz or even significantly change it (except for volume) so I concluded it was the mandolin's electronics.Sure enough, I played around with the volume control on my mandolin and that seemed to be the root cause, for when I tampered with the knob, I had the greatest change in buzzing.Everything else about the instrument is great as far as I can tell. Would appreciate any musicians smarter than me to tell me what might be wrong with it.

This has to be the best purchase i have ever made simply stated. Action is lovely after you adjust the intonation, and the tobacco sunburst is a sight to behold ! If you ever have a second thought just imagine what it's like to hold a Kola to ur bossom :) Thanks M.M.!

"Hack job" said my local luthier who has 40 years full-time experience. He spent 8 hours removing and straightening the neck, doing some fret work, and some work on the pickups and wiring. He have me a break and charged me only $100 bucks for his day's work. It's acting ok now. But I'm an acoustic guy. I could never love this thing. I purchased it to use with headphones while practicing so I won't disturb my neighbors in the apartment building.

This is a nice electric mandolin that sounds great and plays great. Had to lower the bridge to my liking and other than that tune up and play. Sweet deal that cant be beat.

great product, thank you morgan monroe and amazon