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Who among us knows where to find this MandoBass.....?!?
- Thread starter Jacob Freedman
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With all due respect to the other poster's wife, the more I look, the faker it seems. The overall lighting in the photo seems to suggest an overcast sky, yet there are two glaring highlights on the scroll, as if it was well-lit from a forward-facing light source. And notice that the scroll seems thicker than the outer edge of the body, especially as you move down around the 4 o'clock position. The big 'blob' in the back seems to be a neck heel, but a huge one leading to a very thin neck. The fact it's got four strings and not eight doesn't mean anything; take four strings off a mandolin, photograph it, and paste it into the photo. Boom. I don't see how it would be difficult to airbrush a bit of green onto the tailpiece, either.
I wasted more time that I should have last night trying to find the original photo; I strongly suspect the woman was photographed playing something like an upright bass, or a bass banjo, and the mandolin was swapped in, over the original instrument. But it's darn difficult to search for. I tried "woman upright bass", "female upright bass", "woman acoustic bass", "woman bass banjo", and other variants. The photo is also just muddy enough to make it difficult to tell if the grass under the instrument is painted or cut & pasted, as well as the bit of wall behind it. But a single photo, with no obvious provenance, smells fishy to me. It just looks too much like a standard-size mando to convince me it's what it claims to be.
I agree. I went poking around a bit, and there is nothing on the internet but this one picture that I've been able to find - and this picture, never in a context identifying anything about it, just on Pinterest and forums. The mandolin archive had a list of Gibson mandobasses in existence and they're all J-style. The Mandolin Archive: Mandobasses . If the pic is real, of course it need not have been a Gibson, but if Gibson never put an F-style scroll on a mandobass, that probably means something.
But how are they going to fake an F-style scroll with four cloverleaf tuners? Sure, an F-style body can photoshopped, but what about the part above the nut? Where is the original for that? FWIW, woman mandobass F5 also harvests only the same image, over and over, with no provenance. But I was finding that image in MandolinCafe threads as far back as 2004, and some of those, if clicked on, gave a jpg date of 1970. No photoshop around then.
But to me it's all rather moot. There are more interesting, and factual, mandobasses around.
http://mandolin.co.uk/blogs/Mando-Bass_History_101.pdf
But to me it's all rather moot. There are more interesting, and factual, mandobasses around.
http://mandolin.co.uk/blogs/Mando-Bass_History_101.pdf
Yup. Not my problem. Unlike OP, I never much cared for the F body style. Always preferred the A bodies.
Just joined this group, after a Google search for Mandobass.
I have seen this picture before of the mandobass woman on Pinterest with a caption 'woman with very silly bass' or something like that.
I am no expert but the picture doesn't look right to me.
But I was also intruiged to follow the link given by Gretchwretch, with the history of the American Mando-bass.
The one on page 3 is the one I own, complete with scratch on the back (No it's not Photoshopped!)
The scale length is the same as the Robin Greenwood one, (I've seen Hilary James play it - well worth looking out for!)
2 of the tuners on mine are damaged, so it is currently 4 string, EADG, but was originally 8, but I gather the E string pair used to buzz a bit. Might try getting it back to 8 string - one day. Photo shows it with my acoustic bass for comparison.
Will be interested to follow the thread about the other large mandobass... if it exists.
I have seen this picture before of the mandobass woman on Pinterest with a caption 'woman with very silly bass' or something like that.
I am no expert but the picture doesn't look right to me.
But I was also intruiged to follow the link given by Gretchwretch, with the history of the American Mando-bass.
The one on page 3 is the one I own, complete with scratch on the back (No it's not Photoshopped!)
The scale length is the same as the Robin Greenwood one, (I've seen Hilary James play it - well worth looking out for!)
2 of the tuners on mine are damaged, so it is currently 4 string, EADG, but was originally 8, but I gather the E string pair used to buzz a bit. Might try getting it back to 8 string - one day. Photo shows it with my acoustic bass for comparison.
Will be interested to follow the thread about the other large mandobass... if it exists.
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Good catch, but this gets us only halfway there. What about the cloverleaf tuners? And could a photoshop ob like this have been done in 2004? or 1970?
2004, sure. As for 1970, one can claim the pic dates from 1970, but that doesn't make it true. It doesn't look much like a 1970 pic to me, in terms of the woman's hair and clothing and the overall aesthetics.
I did look closely, and I did notice. But the image was too small for me to decide one way or the other, and I could not enlarge it. If Getty had not forced Google to abandon "View Image" and "Search by Image" we could have backwalked from what we had to (probably) the first appearance of that image on the web and from there, hopefully, to some information on provenance. But no longer having Search by Image robs us of that option, and without the original url Wayback Machine is no good to us either.
Some articles on Google suggest workarounds to get those lost search strategies back, but the buttons they say push are not showing up on my computer.
Anything can be faked. I just took a photo, and it says it was taken in 1970 on my iPhone 4s.
You're right - no Photoshop in 1970.
You might want to note that there weren't any jpgs in 1970, either
Okay, now narrow and lengthen the neck (the octave on the original is above the upper bout), raise and reposition the bridge (notice the original is higher and not in a mandolin placement), and remove the octave strings. Also notice how the woman sweater folds around the body. Someone spent a lot of tome on this photoshop, if it is photoshop.
Very true. As to whether or not it's a 'Shop or not, I'll side with the professional Photoshop user, and not just because she's my wife. (I've been known to disagree with her from time to time, even at my own peril!
)Ultimately though, it doesn't matter that much. If it's an extremely cunning fake, then a big, double-thumbs-up to the editor. Maybe for an encore they can weave their magic in front of Penn & Teller and get a spot on their Las Vegas stage show.
On the other hand, if it's not a fake, that'd be pretty cool, too! I'd like to think someone out there with that much skill created something truly unique and that it might be out there, waiting to be found and played for the World to enjoy.
But what if you shorten the endpin and first position still is way out of reach?
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I honestly didn't think it was that good of a fake...
perhaps your wife is the one who made it?? Let's see a pic of her!!
If she matches the gal in the pic...
perhaps your wife is the one who made it?? Let's see a pic of her!!
If she matches the gal in the pic...
I honestly didn't think it was that good of a fake...
perhaps your wife is the one who made it?? Let's see a pic of her!!
If she matches the gal in the pic...
Oh, it's definitely not her…not unless she unleashed the full fury of her mad Photoshop skillz to wreak such a transformation. However, this topic does bring one, crucial question to mind…
How many people weighing in on this topic actually know their way around Adobe Photoshop, and I mean beyond simple cropping and resizing? I'm talking "filters", "levels", "brushes", "selection tools" and the like.
I'm not saying who's right and who's wrong. I'm simply applying the same skeptical/critical thinking any one of us would use when, say, a six-string player tries to tell us what's-what about basses when it's quite possible their total hands-on experience amounts to declaring, "Damn! These things are really heavy!!".
