Thanks for the Q! It's going well, I've been tryingto get an hour or so a day in on it and starting to feel more comfortable with it. Naturally, the tuning & fingering differences are the biggest challenge. You're right, the guitar now feels like a elephant, so I make sure to play abit every day to stay acclimated. Being an electric blues player at heart, the fun &nchallenging part is that virtually NONE of my licks transfer over to mandolin very well, so I'm forced to think up new stuff. Te little Weber is a real canaon, however and rings like a bell. One thing that I'm a bit concerned with on it, it's settled quite a bit. I had to bring the action down a lot and have had to (as I would expect with a brand new instrument) adj the truss rod. I can;t figure out quiyte why it's moved so much, I keep it humidified and so it's not due to drying out. I tried some Gibson "Sam Bush" strings this week, which are quite good. Anyway, everyone who comes over weants to pick on it and I think I may have sold a few mandolins to other guitar players looking for a challenge.

Thanks again for your interest, this has been is one fun experience so far! FWIW, when I was a kid growing up in Northwest Indiana, Homer Haynes and Jethro Burns used to hang at a music store not far away, just across the state line in Illinois. We used to try & get over there on Saturdays, because they'd often be there just jazz jamming with local musicians, one of who was one of Homer's student, Bruce Bolen. Briuce went on to eventually become President of Gibson, and now is a artist relations rep with Fender in Nashville. Jethro was simply astonishing, and it's too bad the guy is mostly remembered for his comedy stuff, he could tear apart virtually anything you put in front of him.