Bulas Blonde A-Style Oval Hole Mandolin #4169

The Bulas Blonde carries the same master-grade Carpathian spruce top and curly maple body as the fully appointed Artemis, then strips the cosmetics back to almost nothing: no bound fretboard, no bound peghead, no back binding. What remains is the part that makes the sound. A hand-carved spruce top over figured curly maple, finished in a warm blonde amber that leaves the flame in the wood fully visible.

The oval soundhole drives the character here. Where an f-hole mandolin pushes a tight, percussive chop, the oval hole opens up the bass and low mids, trading some of that cut for warmth, sustain, and a thicker layer of overtones. It rewards melodic playing the most: Celtic tunes, fiddle-tune melody lines, and songwriting behind a vocal all sit naturally in this voice. The African ebony fingerboard runs a consistent 12-inch radius, and the 354 mm scale with a 29 mm nut keeps string spacing in familiar territory.

Appointments stop at a three-layer maple binding on the top, white mother-of-pearl dot markers, and a pearl logo on the headstock, all under high-gloss nitrocellulose. Schaller tuners with ebony buttons and a cast Bulas tailpiece round out the hardware in nickel, and a Gator GL-Mandolin light case comes with it. For a player who wants oval-hole tone from a hand-built European shop and would rather put the money into the wood than the trim, the Blonde is the most direct route in the Bulas catalog.