1974 to 2007 Oldtown Musical Instruments are no longer in production
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	Review of Oldtown EM-5 By Stephen Potter, Plymouth, England Thirty years ago I first heard Horslips, the granddaddy of all the Celtic-rock bands since. Their mandolin and fiddle player Charles O'Connor used a solid body electric mandolin which had a sound I'd never heard, and wanted to make immediately! Very different to a semi-acoustic mandolin with a pickup and very, very different to an amplified acoustic mandolin. Many years later I finally got around to getting that sound. Not with a Florentine, which were in their final year of production when I firs heard one, but with one of Oldtown Mandolins' contemporary versions. And what a version. The instrument will be around a lot longer than me. Beautifully made, beautiful to play and look at and simply a class act. Build, quality, and finish are excellent, the action is so easy the thing plays itself, superbly balanced but when you plug it in ... then the fun starts!  Mine has an EMG Select pickup that delivers a pure ringing sustain which can be cutting or mellow or any shade in between with use of the extremely effective tone control, the most genuinely musical one I've ever used in terms of creating a different sound. The volume control, too, delivers real punch—be careful! My instrument is in Antique Sunburst and looks like it's been around
	for years. Not because it looks old, but because it looks good, like it came from a time when quality wasn't just a slogan. And that quality does come at a price.  Frankly, an astoundingly low one, considering the level of build and finish involved. This mandolin feels like I've always had it and always will because I can't think of a reason to change it. Unless I order a solid black lacquer finish octave mandolin. Now there's a thought.... Rating: by www.Emando.com From Martin Stillion at eMando.com Cheap acoustic/electric: Godin. Mid-priced to expensive acoustic/electric: Rigel. Solid: The best EM200 knockoff is Doug O'Dell's Oldtown electric. I like my Yanuziello, although the scale's a tad longer at 14.5". There was a good-looking Ryder 8-string in the Classifieds not long ago. If you wanna go cheap you can get a RichTone or Elloree, but I don't know how they'd compare to an EM200 in terms of playability. Might be a few of the Rickenbacker reissues kicking around, but I know they're a step down from a Gibson. Hubert Angaiak – Betchel Alaska   From Mandolin Café forum Oldtown Mandolins offers just this sort of thing on their web site: an 8-string Florentine solid-body with a piezo. NO... if I had a EM-200, I wouldn't dare butcher it. Actually I have an OldTown EM-10, which is an excellent electric mando...has the passive EMG pickup. Doug started building with piezo with a tuned sound board after he got done with mine, the EM-12 Dual source. The picture he uses on his website is the one he built for me. I guess the best track would be to have him install the piezo for me. It does feel like an acoustic A, except for the weight. The trouble of sending it to him would be the wait. He builds each mando as if he was making one for himself. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <O> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~