I love my MF5 and we are great friends. Now that it's varnished brothers are over one year old how do they A/B with the early batchs of the MF5?

Hopefully Dale and some others who own "V" mandolins will chime in.

I got to play Dale's MF5V this weekend, just a few short hours after Tim O'Brien played it. It was stunning to say the least. I think the difference is that the high notes come out fuller and less strident.

While on the factory tour, we asked Bill what his thoughts were on varnish now that they've been using it for a while. He said (paraphrasing) that he was not willing to call lacquer a bad option for guitars, just different, but that he was almost to the point where he felt lacquer was a bad choice for mandolins.

I would argue that there are many, many fine lacquer mandolins, but those are Bill's thoughts straight from the horse's mouth.

I have an MT2 varnish, it's a fantastic mandolin, and just keeps getting better with more playing time.

Seth