The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek
Price: 346 EUR – 455 EUR
Price history
Availability: 2/10 (Very rare)
A budget-conscious take on the 1920s F-5 archetype: hand-carved solid spruce top over maple back and sides, a thin V-profile neck, and vintage-inspired appointments named after Gibson engineer Lloyd Loar.
About the The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek
The LM-310F reproduces the F-style silhouette Lloyd Loar established at Gibson in the 1920s at a fraction of a vintage F-5's cost: a hand-carved solid spruce top over solid maple back and sides, rather than the laminated tops common at this price from other brands. The neck uses a thin V profile - a shape associated with pre-war Gibson mandolins and preferred by many bluegrass players for fast fretting-hand movement - with a Padauk fingerboard rather than the ebony used on costlier mandolins, at a 13 29/32-inch scale and 20 frets, with the fingerboard extension beyond the 20th fret removed rather than floating.
Hardware includes nickel-plated tuning machines, an adjustable ebony bridge, and a two-way adjustable truss rod - a more capable adjustment mechanism than the single-acting rods common on some competitors at this price. Ivoroid binding runs around the top, and the "Honey Creek" name refers to the brownburst/vintage-brown finish options the model is most commonly found in.
Where to buy
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Reverb 355 EUR Best price View details
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Reverb 455 EUR View details
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Source: https://reverb.com/item/87185685-lm-310f-brb-honey-creek-f-style-mandolin-vintage-brown
Sound character of the The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek
The solid spruce top over maple back/sides gives the same basic bright, resonant F-style bluegrass voice as the Eastman range, but the Padauk fingerboard - a denser, warmer-sounding substitute for ebony used to hit this price point - softens attack transients slightly compared to an ebony-board mandolin, trading a touch of top-end snap for warmth.
Technical data for the The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek
| Top | Solid spruce, hand-carved |
|---|---|
| Back/Sides | Maple |
| Neck | Thin V profile |
| Fretboard | Padauk |
| Frets | 20 |
| Scale length | 13 29/32" |
| Truss rod | Two-way adjustable |
| Bridge | Adjustable ebony |
Price history for the The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek
Cheapest seen: 346 EUR · Most expensive seen: 455 EUR
The history of the The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek
The Loar takes its brand name directly from Lloyd Loar, the Gibson acoustic engineer whose 1920s F-5 design remains the reference point nearly every F-style mandolin still follows; the brand builds affordable instruments referencing that vintage-era design language rather than Gibson's own historic instruments.
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