1985 Flatiron / Gibson F5

Having bought the first two flatiron mandolins, Steve Carlson made back in 1978, while proprietors of Intermountain guitar and banjo, I known the history of the company quite a while.I visited up in Bozeman in 1984 when there was just a couple of guys hand making the pre-Gibson carved mandolins between 83 and 85. Having owned lots of Gilchrists and Loarsand stuff like that, I feel confident in my belief that these early Carlson’s are quite special mandolins. This one is a transitional model that I’ve never seen another of, unlike the batch made before Gibson acquired his company, which eventually led to Gibson establishing a presence in Bozeman, This has a slimmer Gibson style neck as opposed to the huge neck of the early ones that did not have a truss rod. So this one has the hand carved hand stained body of the early ones with the more modern neck of the Gibson design, has the warm sound that has made these rare early F5 so desirable. This particular mandolin plays extremely well, the two issues are replaced tuners and tailpiece cover, and the little piece on the peg head that’s missing, all of which has been taken into consideration in pricing. This came out of an estate in Las Vegas and comes with a bunch of random stuff.