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Thread: Ugliest F-4 ever?

  1. #1
    Registered User Willi Bahrenberg's Avatar
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    Default Ugliest F-4 ever?

    I just had to share this!

    Found this today on a german classifieds website. Everything seems off. It almost looks molten, or as if the builder used a first grader's drawing attemps as a template.

    The onepiece birdseye maple back would be really nice on a well made mandolin though
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  2. #2
    Scroll Lock Austin Bob's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    All I can say is WOW! Someone went to a lot of trouble to make that. But why?
    A quarter tone flat and a half a beat behind.

  3. #3
    Expert on my own opinion Bogle's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Nice looking Givson.

  4. #4
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Mandolin from Bizarro World!

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    Strangely enough the fretboard actually looks professionally done and radiused. Maybe they bought that instead of made it? There is the remote possibility that this mandolin may even play well and sound good. It does show signs that it was played. Maybe you should buy it if not too expensive?
    Jim

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  5. #5
    Registered User TheMandoKit's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    I dunno, I kind of like it in a weird, Dali-esque, reverse Craviola sort of way. Maybe if the scroll were real and all the way through. Although the lower point seems like an afterthought.
    Kit
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  7. #6
    Registered User Frankdolin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    It is crazy! But it's looks like it's been been played a lot, judging from the fret wear. I like to hear it!

  8. #7
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    I have a fondness for weird "stuff" like that. The term that always comes to mind is "It is so bad...... that it is good!".

  9. #8
    Registered User John Bertotti's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Ah but how does it sound?
    My avatar is of my OldWave Oval A

    Creativity is just doing something wierd and finding out others like it.

  10. #9
    Registered User MarkusSpiel's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Ok, who buys it?
    Gibson F2 1916
    Hartmann A Oval 2017
    Hartmann Two Pointer 2018
    Kimble J 2020

  11. #10
    Registered User Willi Bahrenberg's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Guys, you crack me up!
    It's settled then. I got to have it! I need it! Gonna contact them first thing tomorrow morning. I'll keep you updated.

    On a slighty different note: Do u think, if it turns out to be total unplayable trash, the back could be salvaged and made into something like a freakish cutaway a-style by askilled luthier? It looks so bulky, kinda like there's more mando than there should be, so maybe there might be enogh wood to work with?

    Cause I really like this piece of maple (optically at least)!

  12. #11
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Looking at the back....the birdseye looks nice. But when you look close at some of the scratches and the areas around the sides where the finish is gone something doesn't look right. Might well be birdseye but still....make sure.

    Good luck!

  13. #12
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    I am a big fan of odd-looking instruments especially if they sound good. I guess that also reflects my own image of myself: odd-looking but (hopefully) sounds good.
    Jim

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  14. #13
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    You got my vote.

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    Registered User Mike Buesseler's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Makes you think maybe the builder was blind. Some decent woodworking skills, but a total lack of awareness of visual design.

  16. #15
    Registered User Willi Bahrenberg's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Oh no, it's already gone Stuff like that usually sits in the classifieds forever! Especially if the seller explicitly rules out shipping, which was the case here.
    Guess someone else was attracted by the unconventional lure of this piece of art.

    What a bummer. And I was having the sweetest fantasies of us picking out sweet melodies in the sunset, turning heads.

    But then again it might be one of thoses curios you buy in a hidden antique shop and later back home you accidentally get it wet or feed it after midnight and next thing you know, they are procreating like rabbits and starting an anarchist revolution from your living room...

  17. #16
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    The headstock looks like flop-eared Batman with a port-wine stain. And the body shows symptoms of a miscarriage in the making...
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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  19. #17

    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Don't be so scornful! It was probably made by some Ossi who dreamed of owning an F-4 and this was his best shot. There was one guy who built a hot air balloon to escape from East Germany, and maybe this guy's "escape" was to make his version of an old Gibson!

  20. #18
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Quote Originally Posted by NickR View Post
    ...and maybe this guy's "escape" was to make his version of an old Gibson!
    Can't rule that out. They had their "version" of the '56 Ford Thunderbird, after all. But a sense of aesthetic beauty does not cost money, and whoever did this could have done better with the means at hand. They made better-looking mandolins in Markneukirchen (and one of them was my first mandolin).
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Wow, I had not realised that the Trabant was modelled on the Thunderbird!

  22. #20
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    The headstock looks like flop-eared Batman with a port-wine stain. And the body shows symptoms of a miscarriage in the making...
    I thought that the headstock had a celluloid TS overlay which may account for the port wine stain. Whoever made it put some though into it just not enough.
    Jim

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  23. #21
    Registered User Willi Bahrenberg's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Garber View Post
    I thought that the headstock had a celluloid TS overlay which may account for the port wine stain. Whoever made it put some though into it just not enough.
    Yeah, he was like "Now let's make that headstock just like on those american mandolins" and half way through he decided: "Screw that, gonna order some chinese and get stoned"

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  25. #22

    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    The esthetics experiment is to find someone who has never seen that now-holy design called an F. (From the people I meet who seemingly have never noticed any mandolins, a likely prospect). Show them one and ask for reactions.
    Just cull from the data anyone who’s in engineering: we know about our bias:
    On the Venus de Milo, an engineer discoursed/ Why the damn thing’s only concrete and should be reinforced!

  26. #23
    Registered User jim simpson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    I'll give the maker points for the rosette!
    Old Hometown, Cabin Fever String Band

  27. #24
    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    I've been resisting posting here but I keep thinking about this so...
    No criticism intended toward anyone, no finger-pointing, just an observation and a rhetorical question.

    I clicked the thread title expecting to see an F-4, perhaps damaged, perhaps modified, somehow made "ugly". To me, an F-4 is a mandolin made by the Gibson corporation back in the 19-teens and '20s. They also made F-2 mandolins with carved tops and backs, points, scrolls and oval sound holes. (Not to mention earlier "F" mandolins made by Orville Gibson.)

    What makes this one an F-4? Has F-4 come to mean any mandolin with a carved top and back, oval hole, points and scrolls? Is F-4 just a convenient designation to indicate the general style of mandolin? Why not 'F-oval' or something that is less specific than F-4?

    No responses necessary because there really is no answer. As I said, just a rhetorical question from a restless mind I suppose.

  28. #25
    Registered User Charles E.'s Avatar
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    Default Re: Ugliest F-4 ever?

    Collings uses F-O or MF-O, works for me....
    Charley

    A bunch of stuff with four strings

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