Mandolin Brothers, Ltd. of Staten Island, NY has been memorialized
in music by Joni Mitchell, written about in prestigious industry and consumer publications, praised by Sir Paul McCartney of Beatles’ fame and frequented by the who’s who in the international music industry.

As a globally renowned retailer of fine new, used and vintage guitars, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, and electric and acoustic bass fretted instruments, it was only natural the company would look to another distinguished company, Panasonic Security Systems, to replace their
25-year old video surveillance system. According to Stan Jay, President/Owner of Mandolin Brothers, Ltd., the original video surveillance system was a makeshift combination of components which provided coverage of the main showroom, comprised of five rooms. Four black and white cameras were connected to a hand-wired, four-view sequential splitter box, and from there to a VCR for recording and a consumer television for monitoring.

One day, Frank DeFina, President of Panasonic System Solutions Company, and an avid collector of vintage musical instruments, was visiting Mandolin Brothers to have one of his guitars serviced and noticed the archaic video surveillance system. Mr. DeFina suggested to Stan Jay that perhaps it was time to consider installing a new video surveillance system to protect the valued collection of instruments at the facility, and to provide customers with the assurance that they were leaving their prized instruments in a secure location. After a
brief discussion as to the merits that new video surveillance technologies could provide, Mr. Jay agreed to revamp his system.

“Expanding our showroom by six more rooms required that we extend the system into the new area,”
said Mr. Jay. “The old system was simply too outdated and outmoded and we concurred with Panasonic’s proposal to start anew.”

As it turned out, the customer had placed the sunglasses in an open guitar case which somebody had subsequently closed. “We helped a customer retrieve their glasses using the Panasonic video surveillance system, which turned out to offer the unexpected benefit of improving our customer service capabilities,” explained Mr. Jay. “This became a perfect example of ‘case closed’.” Other advantages of the Panasonic system cited by Mr. Jay are the
ease of use and reliability.

“There are fewer steps in setting it up and the procedures are far less
confusing than with the old system. Anybody on staff can use the new system while the old one needed to be re-started each morning by a person who had experience doing it. In many instances even experienced staff members threw up their hands and walked away,” he continued. “ The old system was also beset by sporadic intermittencies which we have not encountered with the Panasonic system only solid, continuous reliability.”

The Panasonic video surveillance system installed at Mandolin Brothers, Ltd. includes high performance color CCD surveillance cameras that are digitally multiplexed and recorded. The system provides Mandolin Brothers with the ability to view any combination of cameras throughout the facility while recording full motion video from all camera inputs on Panasonic’s highly acclaimed and award winning WJ-HD316A Digital Video Recorder.

Now in its second generation, the Panasonic’s WJ-HD300A DVR Series features dual compression recording to deliver over 500 lines of horizontal resolution. In addition to improved recording performance, the WJ-HD300A DVR Series offer a base disk capacity of 250GB – expandable to 7.5 Terabytes – and built-in networking and switching capabilities with individual camera profiling. Additionally, Mandolin Brothers’ facility is protected by an advanced intrusion alarm system and interior motion sensors with a redundant back-up.

The need for intense security at Mandolin Brothers becomes quite apparent based on the extreme value
of their merchandise and instruments in for repair. One of the most compelling examples of this revolves
around Sir Paul McCartney’s prized Hofner Violin Bass, now commonly known as a Beatle Bass.
Throughout all the Beatles recording years, and later with Wings and as a soloist

	The Panasonic video surveillance system includes high performance color CCD surveillance cameras.

McCartney had a problem with his legendary bass. After interviewing five international repair shops, Mandolin Brothers was selected as the shop best suited to repair the multi-million dollar instrument. McCartney’s head equipment technician brought the bass to New York in its own seat on the Concorde, and stayed with it in the shop, eight hours a day, during the time it was in the shop’s care. McCartney is later quoted as saying, “They (Mandolin Brothers) put it in tune for the first time in its life.”

When asked to compare the quality of the Panasonic video surveillance system to the standard for which his company has become known, Mr. Jay replied enthusiastically. “We would rate Panasonic a solid 10.

All components are of professional specification, and it would not surprise us if they remained, unlike ourselves, in continuous use for another 25 years.”