| A few words about this list |
| Minstrel Octave mandolin |
| Celtic style octave mandola. Various choices of wood. Although it's very similar in design to "the generic brand Korean-made 'Irish' octave mandola", this is a Canadian hand-built instrument in a slightly higher price/quality range. |
| Minstrel Short scale octave mandolin |
 | Short scale (20") Celtic style octave mandola. Various choices of wood. Although it's very similar in design to "the generic brand Korean-made 'Irish' octave mandola" it offers much better better craftmanship and higher quality wood. This very attractive looking mando has a lovely sweet and mellow tone and a slim, playable neck. |
| Freshwater Octave mandola |
| Scottish luthier David Freshwater makes some really good mandos. His instruments are sturdy and rugged with a big headstock, a rather thick neck and perhaps a bit small tone. They're definitely not for everybody's taste, but even so they are very decent handcrafted instruments in a price range well beyond other British makers like Moon and Fylde. Freshwater may also be the only luthier who considers the octave mandola and octave mandolin to be so different he offers them both - his octave madola has a 542 mm and the
octave mandolin a 610 mm scale length. |
| Freshwater Octave mandolin |
| Same as the
Freshwater octave mandola but with a longer neck. |
| Sherwood Style S Octave mandola |
 | Mahogany body, spruce top, herringbone binding, adjustable truss rod. Made in UK. |
| Mid Missouri M 70 octave mandolin |
| US handmade long scale octave mandolin. |
| David Hodson Djangolin Octave Mandolin |
| Hodson mainly makes replicas of the old Selmer/Maccaferri made famous by Django Reinhardt. This one's really unusual in that it applies the basics of Maccaferri's guitars in an octave mandolin. There's a lot of sense to that. The guitar shape does have a lot of advatages to an instrument of this size, and Maccaferri's unique design should give it a crisp and loud tone many octave mandolin players ought to love. |
| Petersen Level 1 Octave mandolin |
| The cheapest model from luthier Bill Peterson. A rather plain and simple design, but a soundwise it's not that different from his more elaborate models. |