A man walks into a barbershop. It’s 1946, right after WWII. He sees an old mandolin, out of production for decades, obsolete and insignificant. The man plays old-time, string-band Appalachian music—music that survives in local pockets, but which has been subsumed nationally by the dominance of jazz and swing.

He tries the instrument. It’s louder, sharper, and more directional than anything he’s ever played. He buys it for $150.

The man is Bill Monroe; the instrument is the Lloyd Loar F5 mandolin for Gibson. The Loar F5 rewards decisiveness and punishes indecision—what you play is exactly what is heard, sharply, and then it’s gone. There’s nowhere to hide, no vibrato or sustained bloom of sound. Monroe pushes his playing style, hitting the strings harder, faster, whipping the instrument “like a mule,” he says, achieving a percussive, driving attack that’s the birth of what will be called bluegrass.

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In the 1920s, Lloyd Loar was a sound physicist and musician who revolutionized fretted instruments by borrowing from violin traditions: introducing f-holes, lengthening necks, elevating fingerboards. But his most profound contribution was "tap tuning"—structuring every component to accommodate “partials”—in-between notes—producing a sound of remarkable complexity and nuance. His process was painstaking, with carving measured in thousandths of an inch, each mandolin hand-tuned until it rang at the perfect frequency.

Loar’s mandolins were only made from 1922 to 1924, and about 300 of them are still known to exist. We know their design logic; they should be replicable. But they are not.

Special thanks to Perrin Shelton for suggesting the Loar F5.

Links:

• Lloyd Loar biography by Siminoff

  
  

• Video: "These 100-year-old Mandolins Changed EVERYTHING" by David Benedict

  
  

• “Bill Monroe's 1923 Gibson F-5 Mandolin: A Century of Bluegrass Brilliance,” The Acoustic Shoppe, July 5, 2023

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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