The Loar LM-310F is the cheapest F-style mandolin you can buy with a top that was carved and graduated by hand rather than pressed into shape, and that one line on the spec sheet decides everything else about it. It is why a $400 instrument produces a real bluegrass chop instead of a polite thump, and it is why the rest of the parts list is so plain.
Three things settle the purchase and none of them appear in the specs. It wants a setup before it plays the way it should. Nothing comes in the box with it. And the same build in the A-style body costs the same money, which is unusual enough to be worth a moment’s thought before the scroll wins the argument.
Buy it, and put another $60 to $125 aside for a setup
Nothing else at $400 gives you a hand-graduated solid spruce top, a bone nut and an adjustable ebony bridge in an F-style body. Those three parts are the ones that make sound. The padauk fingerboard, the unbranded tuners and the flat satin finish are where the money came off, and every one of them is the right corner to cut. What the factory could not afford at this price is labor, so the last hour of the build is yours to pay for.
The specification, from The Loar
| Model | LM-310F-BRB, Honey Creek series |
| Body | F-style, f-holes |
| Top | Hand-carved solid spruce, graduated |
| Bracing | Longitudinal tone bars |
| Back & sides | Maple |
| Neck | Maple, thin “V” profile |
| Fingerboard | Padauk, 20 frets |
| Nut | Bone, 1-1/8″ |
| Bridge | Compensated adjustable ebony |
| Tuners | Nickel with pearl buttons |
| Truss rod | Two-way adjustable |
| Scale length | 13-29/32″ |
| Body / total length | 12-3/4″ / 27-1/4″ |
| Finish | Satin brownburst |
| Made in | China |
| Case | Sold separately |
One entry there is worth pinning down, because the published specifications disagree about it. The fingerboard is described in some places as radiused rosewood, and older spec sheets called it Revebond, a composite. The Loar’s own current sheet says padauk, and padauk is the answer — a hard, open-pored African hardwood used across the budget end of the industry as a rosewood substitute. It plays fine. It is not ebony, and nobody claimed it was.
Carved and graduated is not the same as solid
A mandolin top can be solid wood and still be dead. Most inexpensive ones are pressed: a flat solid plate is heated and forced into an arch of even thickness. It is fast, it is cheap, and the resulting plate is stiff in all the wrong places.
Carving means the arch is cut out of a thick block, so the wood keeps its own grain running through the curve instead of being bent across it. Graduating means the thickness is then varied deliberately — heavier in the middle under the bridge, thinner out toward the recurve where the plate needs to flex. That distribution is what lets the top move quickly enough to give a chop its bark and its abrupt stop.
The LM-310F gets both. It is the entire argument for the instrument, and it is the reason a mandolin at this money can sit in a jam and be heard.
Where the $400 went, and where it did not
The parts that touch the string are good. The nut is bone rather than molded plastic, so the strings sit in cut slots and stay in tune through a bend. The bridge is ebony, compensated and adjustable, which means the intonation can be corrected and the action set without shimming anything. On a great many mandolins under $300 both of those are plastic, and both are why those instruments never quite play in tune above the fifth fret.
The parts that only have to look right are ordinary. The tuners are unbranded nickel with pearl buttons — several sources still say Grover, and The Loar’s own sheet does not. They hold pitch and turn stiffly. The satin finish is thin and plain, which is honestly a small acoustic advantage over a thick gloss, but it will never gleam under a stage light.
The back and sides are the place to be careful. The Loar’s own sheet says simply “maple”, without the word solid, while the LM-520 above it in the same line is specified as all-solid. Treat the carved top as the specification you are buying and the rest of the body as where the price came down. It matters less than it sounds: on a mandolin the top does most of the work.
It arrives needing a setup, and that is part of the price
A mandolin bridge is not glued down. It stands on the top held there by string tension alone, and where the factory left it is where it stays until somebody moves it. If it is even a few millimeters out of position the instrument plays sharp or flat up the neck no matter how carefully it is tuned, and owners of this model have reported finding it well over a centimeter forward of where it belongs.
The rest of the list is the usual one: truss rod tightened to a sensible relief, action dropped at the twelfth fret, fret ends dressed, nut slots checked for depth. A luthier does the whole job for somewhere around $60 to $125, and on this instrument the difference is not subtle.
This is not a fault peculiar to The Loar. Every carved-top mandolin under roughly $700 arrives this way, because the labor to finish one properly costs more than the margin on it. The only real choice is whether to pay a shop for that hour or spend it yourself. Budget it in and the LM-310F is a $475 instrument that plays like one costing considerably more; skip it and it is a $400 instrument that feels stiff and sounds vague, and a fair number of the disappointed reviews of mandolins in this class are describing exactly that.
Nothing comes with it
No case, no bag, no tuner, no picks. The strings on it are D’Addario and perfectly serviceable, but they have been under tension in a warehouse for a while and a fresh set is the cheapest improvement available to the instrument.
The case is the one that catches people out. A case is cut to the outline of the body, so an F-style will not close inside an A-style case and will not sit still in one — the scroll and the two points need their own shape. Anything advertised for a mandolin without saying which, assume A.
| What to add | Why | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| A hard case | Cut to the F outline, scroll and points included. Worth it if the instrument ever leaves the house | ~$60 |
| Or a padded gig bag | Enough for carrying it between rooms and to a lesson. Cut wide enough to take either body shape | ~$23 |
| A fresh set of strings | D’Addario EJ74 mediums are the default for chop. Lights are kinder to new fingers and quieter | ~$10 |
| A clip-on tuner | Eight strings in four pairs drift constantly, and a course that is out with itself sounds worse than one that is flat | ~$22 |
| A setup | A local luthier, not a purchase — see above | $60–125 |
Who should buy something else
Three cases where the money is better spent elsewhere. The first is the one most people reading a review of this instrument have not considered.
The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek
- A-style
- Hand-carved solid spruce top
- Padauk board, bone nut, ebony bridge
- ~$400
The same carved top, the same woods, the same hardware and the same price in the plain body — braced with an X rather than tone bars, which rounds the note off a little. That parity is unusual. Almost everywhere else in the market the scroll is a surcharge, and paying it means accepting a lesser instrument underneath.
The A-style is lighter, and it sits flat on the thigh instead of levering the neck up on a point. If the F outline is not something you actively want, this is the more comfortable way to own the same carved top.
- Same carved top and same maple body, for the same money
- Lighter and easier to hold sitting down
- Cases and bags for it are cheaper and easier to find
- Needs a strap button fitted, or a tie behind the nut
- Sells on more slowly in bluegrass circles
Ibanez M510
- A-style
- Spruce laminate top
- Gloss finish
- ~$200
Half the money, and the best-made of the genuinely cheap mandolins. The top is laminate, so it will not open up with playing and it will sound the same in ten years as it does now — but Ibanez builds consistently, and a well-made laminate beats a badly made solid top every time.
Spending $400 to discover you do not enjoy the instrument is an expensive way to find out. Spending $200 is not.
- Consistent build quality at a price where that is rare
- Half the outlay while you decide
- Stable laminate that shrugs off humidity swings
- Laminate top — no chop, and no improvement over time
- Ships with the action high; wants the same setup
Kentucky KM-150
- A-style
- Hand-graduated solid German spruce top
- Solid alpine maple back & sides
- ~$595
All solid wood rather than a carved top over a laminated body, and the instrument experienced players name when a beginner says they are certain. Two hundred dollars more than the Loar, and the difference is in how the whole box responds rather than just the top.
It also holds its value, which the budget F-styles do not. If the LM-310F is going to be replaced within two years anyway, buying this instead is the cheaper route.
- All-solid construction at well under $600
- Hand-graduated top, not pressed
- Resells at roughly two-thirds of new
- Two hundred dollars more, and plainer to look at
- A-style — no scroll at this price from Kentucky
The Loar changed hands
Worth knowing if you go looking for support. The Music Link, which built and distributed The Loar for years, shut down in July 2025. St. Louis Music — the company behind Alvarez, among others — has been the brand’s exclusive global distributor since that August, and the LM-310F-BRB is still a current model in a line of six mandolins.
The practical consequence is that the old theloar.com address, including its warranty page and the [email protected] contact still returned by search engines, is a dead domain. The brand’s site is now theloar.co, described there as a temporary home pending a new one later this year, and warranty questions go through St. Louis Music. Keep the receipt.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Loar LM-310F good for a beginner?
Yes, if the beginner is fairly sure they will stick with it. It is more instrument than a first mandolin strictly needs, and the reward for that is not having to replace it in a year. Someone testing whether they like the mandolin at all is better served spending a third as much and losing less if the answer is no.
Is the top really solid?
Yes — solid spruce, carved and graduated rather than pressed. The back and sides are the part not described as solid.
What is the difference between the LM-310F and the LM-110?
The body shape and the bracing. The LM-110 is the A-style version of the same Honey Creek build — same carved spruce top, same maple, same neck, same bone nut and ebony bridge — and it costs the same. It sits flatter on the thigh. The scroll on the LM-310F is solid wood outside the sound chamber, so it changes the look and adds an ounce or two rather than changing the tone. What does change the tone is underneath: The Loar braces this one with longitudinal tone bars and the LM-110 with an X, so the F-style chops harder and stops sooner while the A-style rings rounder and longer. There is more on that in A-style vs F-style.
What does spending more actually get you?
The next real step is a solid, carved back and sides rather than a carved top over a laminated body, and it lands somewhere around $550 to $600. It changes how the whole instrument responds rather than just the top. It is worth paying for if you are keeping the mandolin, and not worth stretching for if it means skipping the setup. Best mandolins for the money lays out where each jump in price stops buying anything.
Is the fingerboard rosewood?
No. It is padauk, whatever some retailer listings say. It is harder than rosewood and more open-grained, and it darkens with age and handling.
Does it come with a case?
No. Some dealers put together a bundle with one, and the case has to be F-shaped.
Who makes The Loar mandolins?
They are built in China to The Loar’s designs. The brand is named for Lloyd Loar, the Gibson acoustic engineer whose 1922–24 F-5 mandolins are the instruments every F-style since has been measured against. Distribution has been St. Louis Music’s since August 2025.
The verdict
The LM-310F does one thing that nothing else at the price does, and it does it well. A hand-carved, graduated spruce top in an F-style body for $400 is the cheapest honest route to a bluegrass chop, and The Loar spent the money in the places that make sound rather than the places that catch the light.
Buy it with the setup and the case counted into the price, not as afterthoughts — call it around $600 all in, and it is still the best-sounding thing available for that. Buy it without them and you have a stiff, vague instrument in a cardboard box, which is a fair description of most of the disappointed reviews this class of mandolin attracts.
And look at the LM-110 once before you commit. It is the same carved top for the same money in a body that is easier to hold; the scroll and the tone bars under the top are what you would be giving up. If you want the scroll, that is a perfectly good reason — it just helps to know that this is the one place in the market where wanting it costs nothing.
Next: A-style vs F-style on what the scroll is worth further up the range, how to tune a mandolin once it arrives, and best mandolin for bluegrass if the chop is the whole point.