THE STORY OF ISOLA MANDOLINS
Superb craftsmanship, master grade tone woods, professional grade mandolins
My luthiery journey began in 1976 while I lived in a small logging town in Northern California. We were 3 friends on very tight budgets with a desire to build our own mandolins. Each of us played bluegrass music and Appalachian fiddle tunes. We bought the construction manual for bluegrass mandolin. Fortunately, we had access to wood suppliers that sold first rate sitka and engelman spruce, and highly figured western curly big leaf maple. The first mandolins sounded great.
Isola mandolins is a one person small shop builder that started out as Knighton Mandolins then a decade or more as Opus Mandolins. I now live on beautiful Camano Island and I adopted the Italian word for island, Isola, to name my mandolins. . From 1985 to 1994 I accumulated a supply of tone woods that are used on many of the mandolins on this site. My goal is to build the highest quality handcrafted instrument to enable you to take your playing to the next level. Browse my site and enjoy the mandolins.