Q. What sort of wood is Tilia, I've never heard of it.

A. Tilia is also known as Limewood, Basswood or Linden. Tilia is a large tree that grows in Europe and North America and it's wood often used for making musical instruments, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Q. Is Tilia better than spruce?

A. No. Solid spruce is the best material for mandolin's top deck. But the truth is that most instrument makers use spruce plywood, not the solid spruce for budget and mid-range instruments to keep the cost down.

Q. OK, you don't use spruce plywood in your SF models, but you use "Composite" stuff. What does that mean?

A. We use Tilia blockboard for top decks in SF models. It is a composite man made wood, specially designed for musical instruments. It resonates well and to our mind our decks are better than spruce plywood ones. We use solid Sitka spruce for SFB models.

Q. How do your mandos sound like?

A. They sound very well. We compared our SF mandos with leading brand instruments in under a $1000 price range and the result is our mandos are clearly better. Our SFB range of mandos would compare to luthier's $3000-$4000 price range instruments.

Q. What kind of hardware do you use? Do you use leading brands like Schaller and the like?

A. Well, we can make the instrument to client's specifications, using expensive tuners, fancy tailpieces and pickguards, but generally, we use generic hardware of high quality to keep the cost down. Expensive brands may make the owner feel better, but they do not change the way mandolin sounds. And this is what it comes to in the end of the day.

Q. How do you manage to keep your prices low?

A. Cutting the middlemen. We get our mandos straight from the workshop.

Q. Are your mandolins made in Australia?

A. No, they made in Asia exclusively for us, under our brand and according to our specifications.