John McHugh
John McHugh, an Illinois luthier/guitarist, apprenticed under John Montgomery at Advent Instruments in the early 1980s, where they built custom instruments for Gibson, Hamer, and others. They also built Montgomery's famous ASR Minieball electric mandolins, which haven't been available since the early 1980s.
     John Montgomery died in 1990, and in the early '90s, John McHugh built 12 McHugh mandolins, which are based on Montgomery's ASR design. The one depicted, #0017, is the last of those, built in 1994. It's completely handmade, with a chambered mahogany body, walnut top, two-piece set mahogany neck with thin maple strip in the center, rosewood fingerboard, rosewood truss rod cover, and rosewood pickup cover and surround. Handmade rosewood bridge, volume and tone controls with a two-way tone switch, Schaller tuning machines. Black binding around the top, thin lacquer finish. The pickup was handmade from remains of an old Fender pickup. The retail price new was $950–$1,200. Scale length is 14 inches, and nut width is approximately 1¼ inches.
     These days John is a performing guitarist as well as a luthier, although he reports that he is still building electric mandolins. You can reach him by if you'd like him to build one for you.
     Here's a review of the above instrument by its onetime owner, Marc Sallows.