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       July 26 - 31, 2015

I hope the summer weather has been favorable to you. Seems like Mother Nature is playing some feast or fury tricks on us with both excessive heat spells, and nasty storms. By all means keep you and your family safe first, but if they are all well, do consider how your instruments, wood, and work in progress are stored through this very hot and dry for some, and wet and humid weather for others conditions.
Roger

P.S. We've posted some new videos on our YouTube channel, be sure to check 'em out!

In 1959, when I began to build conversion banjo necks, I prepared a brochure to let people know what I did and how to contact me. The effort was really "marketing 101" because the only way I could distribute the brochures was by hand, on a one-on-one basis. There were no "lists" available for banjo players for me to mail to, the worldwide web didn't exist, and there was really no place to advertise (Peter Kuykendall created Bluegrass Unlimited in 1966, Hub Nitchie [1929-1992] began Banjo Newsletter in 1973, and I founded Pickin' Magazine in 1974). My marketing universe was the New York metropolitan area, and my marketing community was the handful of pickers I knew, plus those banjo pickers who were friends of friends somewhere else.

I owned a graphics and printing company at the time, so preparing and printing a brochure was a rather effortless task. When Siminoff Banjo and Mandolin Parts became an official entity in 1962, I was plagued with the same inability to connect with the market at large and my services were relegated to the growing community of banjo and mandolin pickers I knew on the East Coast.

When Pickin' Magazine was launched in 1974 - an outgrowth of my avocation of bluegrass music and my vocation of graphics and printing - I took advantage of the magazine as an advertising vehicle and ran ads regularly to promote my banjo and mandolin parts business.

Our first official catalog was produced in 1974. It was an 18-page palm-size catalog that heralded about 20 products. It was followed in 1978 by another palm-size catalog that featured about 30 products. Catalogs were sent in response to our ad in Pickin' but still, my marketing universe was comparatively small.

Fast forwarding to 1998, when the worldwide web was no longer a fantasy, our business grew exponentially as we began to reach customers on a global basis. This included all of the United States, of course, but also Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, England, Norway, Brazil, Spain, and more. The worldwide web kept its promise and we were literally marketing "world wide."

In 2005, my daughter, Kali knew a web "guru" who she felt could change the paradigm of how our website looked, worked, and felt (the previous version, which I developed, really needed help). Russ created a beautiful new look and a real online store for us, and re-worked our whole site (which, by the way, he and Amy just re-worked it again to be more powerful, and to be iPhone, iPad, and similar device-friendly).

Coming out of the publishing business - my "day job" for many years - I always believed in the virtues of a printed catalog. Not that I don't believe in computers - I do - but putting on my publishing hat, I've learned the difference in a reader's experience and "dwell time" when looking at a printed piece vs a web page. I've studied the differences in "push" and "pull" marketing (push is where something is stuck in your hands to read, and pull is where you have to dig for it, such as doing a Google search), as well as other demographic and psychographic issues related just how people research, shop for, and buy things.

Amy is a strong marketing person, and she and I have many deep discussions on how people shop online compared to how they shop from catalogs, and just how that experience is different and how it is the same. After a few years of back and forth on the subject, she said to me "Let's do a catalog of our key products and services. It will let our customers see us in a different light (literally and figuratively) and give them another way to think about what we have to offer." With that comment, we set out to create a meaningful and information-packed 32-page full-color catalog, and I am excited to let you know that such a catalog now exists.
Kali is popping them in every order, so expect to get one the next time you get a package from us. Can't wait? Well, email your mailing address directly to Amy and she will get one out in the mail to you.

We hope you find the information in our new catalog to be helpful and informative.

Check our YouTube channel for a library of instructional videos.

Q: Seems obvious to me that having two strings for each note on a mandolin makes it louder. But tuning can be a hassle. Is there any reason that you couldn't make a four-string mandolin?

A: Yes, the mandolin could certainly be made as a four string instrument (and some electric mandolins are made this way), but the two strings per course serve a greater purpose than just loudness. Mandolin strings are very short compared to guitar and banjo strings - in fact, the scale length of the mandolin is basically half that of the guitar and banjo. Short strings vibrate with less amplitude than longer strings. This relates to how loud they are as well as to the actual width of their path of vibration. Because of this, the shorter strings don't sustain as long as longer strings do. By having two strings per note, each of the strings helps to energize the neighboring string (as long as the neighboring string is tuned to the same pitch) through two phenomena: 1) a "restoring force" where energy from one vibrating object is transmitted to another object that can vibrate and helps the other object vibrate, and 2) "sympathetic vibrations" where an object that is sensitive to a particular frequency can be set in motion by another object generating the same frequency. So, to answer your question, the two strings need each other to product not only a louder sound, but an enduring one, as well.
Have a question? Be sure to send it in and we'll answer it in an upcoming issue. We won't post your name, and chances are, if you have a question, someone else probably needs the same answer!