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Who among us knows where to find this MandoBass.....?!?

#61
Malak the Mad said:
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. :eyebrow:

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!!". ;)
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I use it all the time, mostly to clean up wrinkles, red eye, and other things folks don't want to see ;)
Really wish it was real, but there's simply no such mando-bass out there.
I'd play it if I could find one :D
 
#62
I'm gonna say this is 100% real. there's a crudeness in the carving of the headstock that would be unnecessary. there are film artifacts that are too natural. the strings have cloth windings on the ends - something you'd never, ever find on a mandolin. also, the ends aren't clipped. the bridge has no thumbwheels - something very uncommon on mandolins. but mainly, WHY would someone photoshop this? it's not particularly funny or shocking.

my theory? two things: one, this woman is probably like five feet tall. it looks slightly less ridiculous if you picture a grown man standing next to it, and that explains the endpin. two, who's to say it wasn't a one-off? some enterprising luthier up in the blue mountains slapped it together, did some gigs at the local bar with it, then it was lost to history. things have gone missing before. where's Jamerson's funk machine? where's Jimmy Hoffa? WHERE IS THE DAMN REMOTE FOR MY A/C? I have to get out of bed to turn it on like some kind of pleeb. it sucks.

but yeah. I think we're overthinking how difficult this would be to make. if anything, super-sizing it would make some aspects easier, especially if you're not trying to make a Loar. a giant scroll is a heck of a lot easier to carve than a tiny one. soundposts aren't delicately tuned dowels, they're chunks of lumber. you don't chisel - you hack. hell, here's a guy who made an a-style in Invalid Link Removed.

I think we need to accept that this probably existed, does not appear to have made an impact, and in all likelihood doesn't exist in any reasonable form anymore.

(and before anyone says anything, I've been using photoshop/others for 15+ years, have taken courses on it, and am just generally damn good at this poopie.)
 
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#63
Apolicious said:
I'm gonna say this is 100% real. there's a crudeness in the carving of the headstock that would be unnecessary. there are film artifacts that are too natural. the strings have cloth windings on the ends - something you'd never, ever find on a mandolin. also, the ends aren't clipped. the bridge has no thumbwheels - something very uncommon on mandolins. but mainly, WHY would someone photoshop this? it's not particularly funny or shocking.

my theory? two things: one, this woman is probably like five feet tall. it looks slightly less ridiculous if you picture a grown man standing next to it, and that explains the endpin. two, who's to say it wasn't a one-off? some enterprising luthier up in the blue mountains slapped it together, did some gigs at the local bar with it, then it was lost to history. things have gone missing before. where's Jamerson's funk machine? where's Jimmy Hoffa? WHERE IS THE DAMN REMOTE FOR MY A/C? I have to get out of bed to turn it on like some kind of pleeb. it sucks.

but yeah. I think we're overthinking how difficult this would be to make. if anything, super-sizing it would make some aspects easier, especially if you're not trying to make a Loar. a giant scroll is a heck of a lot easier to carve than a tiny one. soundposts aren't delicately tuned dowels, they're chunks of lumber. you don't chisel - you hack. hell, here's a guy who made an a-style in Invalid Link Removed.

I think we need to accept that this probably existed, does not appear to have made an impact, and in all likelihood doesn't exist in any reasonable form anymore.

(and before anyone says anything, I've been using photoshop/others for 15+ years, have taken courses on it, and am just generally damn good at this poopie.)
Click to expand...

I'm going to second this and say that for me personally, the jury is still out. Thanks to legal tyranny from Getty Images, Google deleted their Search by Image function, thereby largely destroying Google Image's usefulness as an educational tool. We no longer can walk back images to the original link, which costs us any text accompanying the original image. I did walk back this, years ago, and the (now lost) text did reveal provenance. But I cannot remember it.
 
#64
fullsizeoutput_dab.jpeg
fullsizeoutput_da8.jpeg

If you compare this mandobasss to a mandolin, it is easy to see the mandobass is simply not a dropped-in mandolin. The neck, strings, tuners, bridges, string retainers, nut, body depth are simply not in scale.

But that barn in the background, thats been photoshopped in, that’s for sure. ;)
 
#65
Reverse image search with tineye.com shows the photo was once at Link Removed with filename Link Removed. The site itself was quite old as it says the original maintainer passed away in 2006.

Those links are dead but the Internet Archive has archived the page at Dbass. The image itself is not archived by the Internet Archive, but the page says:

Barry Ford - Fretted F5 Bass 5,Woodwell Cottages,Twywell, Kettering, Northants, England NN14 3AN Tel: 01832 734 796
Email Barry for info.

Since the photo was named "fordbass.jpg" and the mandobass is in the style of an F5 mandolin, this is obviously the instrument in question. A google search of "barry ford mandolin" reveals Barry Ford which says
"Barry Ford
This tasty little 8-string number was concocted out of quilted ash by UK luthier Ford, perhaps better known in mandolin circles for his F-style acoustic mandobass. " and gives the same contact information.

Further sleuthing might give more information about Barry Ford, but I think this is fairly definitive.
 
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#67
Further searching for Barry Ford, returns Invalid Link Removed which says "More pics of Barry Ford's F-style mandobass, including construction Webshots - Tonquin Valley, Jasper National Park, Alberta ". The page helpfully tells you how to find within the page in Netscape or Internet Explorer, so it's pretty old.

That webshots page is long gone. It is in the Internet Archive at Webshots Community - Barry Ford - F5 Mando Bass - the pictures were not archived, but there were about 20 pictures and the first one is titled "BassAndAnnie," so I'm guessing Annie is the woman in the surviving photo that we have.

Barry Ford modded guitars for this guy Straining to be heard: Old guitars revisited in 1974 and 2012, so there's a good chance he's still around - someone phone him up and ask about the Mandobass. For all we know he's responsible for the Mothman too.
 
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#69
reddesert said:
Reverse image search with tineye.com shows the photo was once at Link Removed with filename Link Removed. The site itself was quite old as it says the original maintainer passed away in 2006.

Those links are dead but the Internet Archive has archived the page at Dbass. The image itself is not archived by the Internet Archive, but the page says:

Barry Ford - Fretted F5 Bass 5,Woodwell Cottages,Twywell, Kettering, Northants, England NN14 3AN Tel: 01832 734 796
Email Barry for info.

Since the photo was named "fordbass.jpg" and the mandobass is in the style of an F5 mandolin, this is obviously the instrument in question. A google search of "barry ford mandolin" reveals Barry Ford which says
"Barry Ford
This tasty little 8-string number was concocted out of quilted ash by UK luthier Ford, perhaps better known in mandolin circles for his F-style acoustic mandobass. " and gives the same contact information.

Further sleuthing might give more information about Barry Ford, but I think this is fairly definitive.
Click to expand...

Wow! This is great. I'm impressed! Search skills on display here that I need to master for my job.
 
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#72
yodedude2 said:
Barry Ford (maker/repairer) 01832 734796 (Northants). Excellent carved mandolins, also violins and many other instruments.
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I just phoned the number and spoke to Barry's wife.

Barry did make the mandobass and it is now in Germany, owned by a retired doctor and musician.

As far as she can rememeber it was made in the 90's.
 
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#76
Apolicious said:
wait, I'm confused. is reverse GIS not working for some of you? because I just right-clicked on the picture, selected "search google for this image," and bam. not the best results, but certainly satisfactory.
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This probably was me. Used to be, in Google Images, once you had isolated the image you had the options of Visit Page, View Image, or Search by Image -- all left clicks. Since February only the first two options are visible. Didn't know about the right click, so thanks for that.
 
#77
If you go straight to the Google Images page (google.com, then click Images), the search box has a little icon of a camera. Click on that to search by image - either upload an image or paste a URL.

The problem, in this case, is that the google images search results aren't very helpful. Mostly you get secondary results - pinterest, and a couple of mandolincafe threads where people are arguing about this image and whether it's photoshopped. Once something has been repeated often enough, its origins are obscured, like trying to figure out the beginnings of an urban legend (Who put the spider eggs in the BubbleYum?)
 
#79
THANK YOU. IT'S CLEARLY NOT PHOTOSHOPPED. I also work in photoshop and can tell the difference, I mean sure, there are expert special fx people that could pull it off but given all of your evidence I feel that my claim is supported. The worst part, is that while a debate goes on about it's authenticity, I am no closer to actually FINDING THIS THING....
 
#80
GretschWretch said:
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?
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Former graphic artist with a couple decades of professional Photoshop experience here. If that was my work I would have pasted an F-style body over the original body, leaving the original neck and headstock intact. Much less masking and touching up that way.

I don't know whether the original picture is edited or not, and I've got no stake in the argument. If somebody needs proof they can hire a forensic expert. Personally I think it's a composite image because the curl of a standard mandolin makes no sense on an upright bass. Somebody has made a mandobass with Invalid Link Removed, which makes more sense.
 
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