Rod Neep
- Type: People Who Play
Update: Rod recently received his new Bridger A Octave Mandolin, and says, "My new Bridger Octave arrived this morning. Wow! I am speechless!! “Thank you” just isn’t a big enough statement to express how I feel, and how lovely this instrument is!
A little about me:
I started playing guitar in the late 1950s. Mainly folk music and with a little blues thrown in. By 1969 I bought my first Martin guitar (pretty rare animals those days here in England), and shortly afterwards I turned professional, playing in folk clubs and concerts, and with a little radio and TV. Basically I would describe myself as a singer songwriter and learned to play fingerstyle accompaniment rather than lead guitar. Over the next ten years I made five albums ( large round plastic things in those days). Nowadays I just play for myself, and occasionally in our church.
In December 2008 I attended a gathering of musicians in Wales for a weekend and I was smitten by the mandolins that were there. I immediately ordered my first two Weber mandolins, a Bridger, to use for English folk music, and a custom Yellowstone on which to learn some bluegrass stuff. I was really a total beginner on the mandolin, but I started to learn fast. I am a believer in having really great instruments on which to learn, rather than trying it out with a lesser instrument to see if I would take to it. I just knew that I was going to enjoy playing mandolin. Failure wasn’t an option, and therefore after a lot of research I settled on Weber instruments. Here in England its hard to get to play a selection of good mandolins, and I was going to have to buy sight unseen and unheard. So I chose based on reputation and what I learned about the ethos of the company from the Sound to Earth web site. I wasn’t disappointed! The Weber mandolins are exactly what I expected, and I really love them. Superb in every respect. (You can see my first reactions on the Yellowstone on my video).