Ortega RMFE100AVO

15

Mandolin

  • F-Style
  • Solid spruce top
  • Back and sides: Solid maple (flamed)
  • 50 mm Body depth
  • Maple neck (flamed)
  • 2-way truss rod
  • 345 mm scale
  • Ebony fretboard
  • 24 Frets
  • Ortega Double Bow fretboard inlay in the 12th fret
  • Ebony bridge
  • Schaller machine heads
  • Ortega S1T pickup & preamp
  • Colour: Antique Violin Oiled (silk-matte)
  • Incl. gig bag
Available since October 2013
Item number 315780
Sales Unit 1 piece(s)
Shape F Mandoline
Colour Natural
Body Maple
Top Spruce
Neck Maple
Pickup System Yes
Incl. Case No
Incl. Gigbag Yes
Scale 345
11.490 kr
Free shipping incl. VAT
In stock within 3-4 weeks
In stock within 3-4 weeks

This product is expected back in stock soon and can then be shipped immediately.

Standard Delivery Times
1

15 Customer ratings

4.1 / 5

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13 Reviews

P
Requires a lot of work
PerH 28.01.2018
It is not only that the factory setup is horrible, but certain parts on this mandolin do not fit together properly. The instrument looks good and the sound from the pickup-system is very good, but those are the only positives as is comes out of the box. The first one I received from Thomann was too badly assembled to make it worth an effort to try to fix it. The replacement was a little better.

Normally I would expect setup of a new mandolin to include nut sanding/filing, adjust the bridge-height with level wheels, a fresh set of strings and intonation. This one require a lot more. I spent some 20-25 hours modifying and setting it up. Expect a trained/professional luthier with a proper workshop/toolchest to charge for 4-6 hours of work:

1. Had to sand off a lot of wood from the base of the bridge to make the bridge low enough to be able to obtain the desired action height. About 3mm of wood was removed from the bridge-base on the treble-side and 2mm on the bass-side, as the bridge in its factory-configuration was a little tilted to one side. The sanding was done on a surface with the same curvature as the mandolins arched top. In addition to lowering the bridge this also increased the bridge's contact-surface against the spruce-top which gave the instrument more acoustic volume and sustain. The bridge is sanded down so much that it is less than 1mm left of the air-gap between the centre of the bridge and the body-top. Now the instrument tends towards slight fret buzz with the bridge in the lowest position and my setup has the level-wheels on the bridge raised about 1mm on each side.

2. The tailpiece was placed a little too much towards the bass side, and would with the strings under tension pull the bridge off its correct position. The first mandolin I received would have required the tailpiece to be moved about 3cm, but on this latest one I managed to get the bridge stable by moving the tailpiece only about 3mm. This means that the old factory-drilled holes for the tailpiece are not visible beside the tailpiece when the job is done. The original screw-holes were filled in with maple+glue and new ones drilled.

3. The pickup-system was not grounded to the tailpiece/strings resulting in a loud hum when the instrument is used in a configuration where it is not isolated from the amplification-system with a wireless link or a DI-box. I solved this problem by soldering a thin wire between the sleeve of the output-jack and the underside of the tailpiece. The instrument is built from what looks like aged wood, and there was a tiny wormhole in the spruce-top hidden under the tailpiece that i pulled this wire through after soldering it to the underside of the tailpiece. With no wormhole one would have to drill a hole for the wire.

4. Five of the frets were not seated properly. I knocked all frets into their correct position, then straightened the neck with the truss-rod and did some minor fret-levelling with a fret-levelling-file. Then the frets were re-dressed where required.

5. A couple nuts were added to the arm/bolt holding the pick-guard to prevent the pick-guard from falling off. These nuts must simply have been omitted at the factory.

6. Several screw-holes had been stripped and have had some fibres of wood added to make the wood-screws stay in place. My guess is that the factory has used a little too wide a drill-bit for the job. The preamp-box was almost falling out on its own when I first unpacked the mandolin. A small drop of liquid wax in each hole before putting the screws in does also help form better "threads" in the wood.

With all this, and a normal setup, the instrument plays well and sounds very good. These things would be done in minutes if the issues had been sorted in manufacturing where the workers should have much better facilities and tools available than most consumers. Just 10-15 more minutes per mandolin at the factory would have made a wold of difference. Ortega need to step up their QC.
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L
Dreadful instrument for the price!
Lovegrove 04.08.2020
After reading the wildly differing reviews of this instrument here, I decided to take a chance and order one knowing that Thomann usually honour their return policy if you have good reason to be unhappy with the product. In reality this instrument was everything I feared it might be .... cheap gun metal fittings, non grover tuning pegs, uneven binding and joinery with a cheap wooden support for the scratch plate. The photo's look great but the reality on inspection is really poor and amateurish in construction. After reading the glowing reports about it's pickup system I plugged it in and was unsurprisingly by now completely disappointed. Uneven string volumes with very low volume output.. what a joke! Take my advice and avoid this instrument like the plague!
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A
Very Positive Experience
Anonymous 28.06.2016
This is a beautiful instrument.
Aesthetically it is just fantastic, I have been gigging it now for six months and people go out of their way consistently to comment on how awesome it looks.

Sound-wise, plugged in it sounds amazing. Many sound engineers have commented on it since I bought as they are so un-used to hearing a mandolin DI-ed with such a high quality sound.
Acoustically it sounds very good but being an f hole mando it lacks some of the warmth and richness of an A hole. I have heard other mandolins that sound better acoustically. Plugged in, have never heard another mandolin that even comes close to this one.

The tuner is the handiest addition ever. Mandolins really are tricky little devils to keep in tune in general, and honestly I don't know how anyone could consistently gig a mandolin plugged in without a tuner.

Hardware is all gold and beautiful.. Gorgeous tuners..

To finish, I LOVE this instrument. Thank you Ortega, Thank you Thomann.
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E
Beautiful sounding mandolin after a good setup
Edael 30.08.2017
I bought this mandolin for playing with a country-bluegrass band. It really sounds great: loud, bright and resonant. The pickup and tuner do their job perfectly. Mine needed a good setup when I received though, there was an annoying metallic tail to the sound of the A string. I brought it for a professional setup and had the truss rod and bridge height adjusted. I also changed the strings to a .10 gauge which feels much better to me.
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