Any id on this e-mando?

[Martin Jonas]

I've just come across this nifty clip on Youtube, showing some blues jamming between an archtop guitar and a peculiar e-mando -- the guitar is more-or-less naturalistic and the mando is screamingly distorted. Works pretty well, but what I'm curious about is that mandolin, as I haven't seen anything like it. It's a four-string, but clearly styled to look like a bowlback, complete with a very Vinaccia-esque scratchplate. There's even a cant in the top! There's an actual bowlback (and a violin) sitting on a stand in the background, so I presume they play acoustic, too. Any idea what make that e-mando is? As they are a French act, I suspect it's a French luthier.

Interesting remark by the mando-player in the comments to the clip: he's getting a string-bending effect by pressing on the strings between bridge and tailpiece. I can see how that may work, but haven't come across anybody else doing that. Is that a technique anyone here has tried?

Here is another clip by those guys, and this one shows the mando a bit better -- maybe it's semi-hollow (is that a soapbar pickup across a soundhole?).

Update: I'm watching their other clips as I'm typing this, and there's another one here, and finally the clearest view of them all in this one -- it's indeed a hollow-body flatback, of a style quite common in France, with a soapbar across the soundhole. The peculiar features are that it's only four strings (customised from an 8-string?), and that he get's such a solid-body-like tone out of it.

Martin

[Christian McKee]

I'll bend a string any way I can, including neck bends. But I do bend strings behind the bridge and behind the nut. Pleasingly, both techniques can be used to bend a harmonic pitch, which can add wonderful color when correctly placed. I didn't stumble upon that, but saw Charlie Hunter do it a few times in one night, and thought "there's one I can steal!" I've also used bends behind the bridge to bend four or five note chords more or less in unison, but I'm trying to get away from that and produce the same effect with more traditional left hand vibrato applied across the whole fingerboard.

Christian

[crazymandolinist]

Yeah I've tried it, but I like pressing on the strings at the headstock more.

[mandoisland]

mahjun hompage (mainly in french), parts in english too

He says, that he found a mandolin one day in a store and that he electrified it.

You can find some photos too on this homepage.