Ibanez M522 F-style Mandolin: Best Volume and Tone.Ibanez M510 A-style Mandolin: Best Quality.Rogue RM-100A A-style Mandolin: Best Budget Friendly.Kentucky KM-150 A-style Mandolin: Best Overall.Not always so, if the mandolin is shipped up to you.If you are a mandolin player and you’re in the market for a quality mandolin that’s going to be worth every penny, you’ve come to the right article! Mandolins are instruments that aren’t very common to find in today’s music scene, but they are a great way to incorporate a unique sound to your music. So if you are buying within Canada, the warranty will normally be handled in Canada. This could be $100 each way! The Distributors usually make deals to handle warranty in Canada themselves.
This means that you would be responsible for sending the mandolin back to the USA for warranty work. Mandolin warranties in Canada.Īs mentioned, most of the companies do not have a presence in Canada, and most do not directly handle the warranty there. If you are ordering from the USA, ask the dealer how they are shipping your new mandolin.
Shipping via Postal, costs more than the other carries, but the brokerage fee savings more than make up for it. They have a deal with Canada Post to charge a small flat rate brokerage fee. The way around this is to use USPS (US Postal Service). The fee is based on value and can be quite high. Sometimes, sellers are not aware of this either, since it is charged to the recipient upon delivery. If you have ordered many things from the USA, you have probably been surprised by the brokerage fee charge by UPS and FedEx. Generally, this combined with the shipping is no more than you would pay for an instrument locally. You will pay your local sales tax and a duty fee. That aside, it is fairly easy to purchase a mandolin in the USA and have it shipped up. This is only a problem if the mandolin has Rosewood. In addition to the problems and fees with the forms and permits, there are also lengthly delays in getting it approved. This requires permits on a per instrument basis, and to make matters worse, the permit has to be filled out “after” the instrument is sold. This changed in 2017 with the CITES Regulations that require documentation for Rosewood species. Up until recently, most dealers were willing to ship a mandolin from the USA to Canada. Of course everyone (almost) loves the F-style! For this reason, it is our top pick for mandolins in Canada. This is an all solid instrument with good quality tuners and construction. Here we go! The Loar LM-520-VS has become the most recommended mandolin in the price range and for good reason. We will touch on this later in the article. Do yourself a favor, and don’t, unless you are open to importing one yourself. A good way to depress yourself is to start browsing US based sites and comparing the prices to what you have to pay. As you are well aware, this does increase costs and the prices reflect this. There simply isn’t enough volume to import directly to Canada, so they are sent up from the US distributors. Unfortunately, nearly all mandolins make it to Canada via the USA. Despite the limited selection, there are still some stand out mandolin deals to be had. Between the scarcity, and the higher prices, it can be very difficult to find a good mandolin at a reasonable price.
Canada has it difficult when it comes to buying mandolins.