Is there a bluegrass mandolin picker out who hasn’t heard of Lloyd Loar? He was a legendary acoustic engineer and instrument designer and builder for the Gibson instrument company, then of Kalamazoo, Mich. That was back in the 1920s, but Loar’s mark stands strong and tall today….

Wow! Not one, but two Lloyd Loar Gibson F-model mandolins have turned up for sale on the Mandolin Cafe Web site.

One is being advertised as owned by a Kansas family for more than 60 years. It’s advertised as a “1924 Loar Signed Gibson F5 Master Model 76782.” It can be viewed on the Mandolin Cafe classified ad pages or at http://www.electrocoustic.com/F5.htm. Information on inspection and purchase requirements is posted on the latter site.

Nashville, Tenn. — After more than a year of lengthy negotiations with Robert Waldschmidt, the Trustee for the Robert W. McLean Bankruptcy Estate, the Country Music Foundation, the not-for-profit 501(c)(3)educational organization that operates the Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum, has reached a $750,000 settlement with the McLean estate.

Editor’s note: We’ve met and visited with a lot of wonderful people in the bluegrass world in the past couple years. We asked a handful of some of those memorable people we’ve visited with over the past year and invited them to share a favorite bluegrass Christmas memory. Larry Stephenson kicks off the holiday season here on BluegrassJournal.com with his favorite Christmas memory.

“All of my Christmases were great as a child, but the one that’s the best was in 1974.

There’s still a couple days left to enter the Gift Basket Giveaway from The Grascals & Mayberry’s finest. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. on November 20, 2008 and 3 winners will be drawn at random on November 21, 2008.

Danny Roberts, The Grascals‘ mandolin player, finally owns a Lloyd Loar Gibson F5 mandolin. It was an instrument he had pursued for quite a while before becoming its owner. But this isn’t the only Loar Roberts has chased. Or, at least, he thought he was chasing a Loar at the time.