No. 3 Charmed... Or Not

They say third times a charm.

And spurred on by success in with “Thunderbird” my first electric ukulele and with always a drive to make it better I started No.3…

What was good about Thunderbird?

• It worked.
• It sounded good.
• Good setup for “action” i.e. the strings are the right height above the frets.
• The mahogany wood was a dream to work with and finished very well.

What could I improve?

• Tight spacing for my fingers. Go from soprano size to concert size.
• The neck is too thick so it is hard to finger the notes.
• Try a different peg head style to see if it could be more simple.
• Try a different wood and paint it.

Did it work?

"No.3 is not quite right yet."

No. 3 - Before Strings

No.3 is getting closer but was kind of a two steps forward and 1 step back. My ukulele building and DIY approach was getting more mature but No.3 is not quite right yet.

The bad:

• The action is too high but I think I can correct this.
• The peg head was more difficult then the one on Thunderbird. Both difficult to cut ut and also more difficult to get perfectly installed friction tuners.
• The poplar wood was easy to work with but difficult to get a good finish and the paint showed every little scratch.

The good:

• The concert scale is a little better, this means a little more room for my fingers.
• Tapered thickness in the neck makes it easier to get my fingers around the neck.
• The friction tuners were easy to use and made the peg head side of the instrument lighter. I had no problems using the friction tuners and worked just fine to hold tuning.
• I like the over all look and also the rocket bridge was very cool.

Here is how my "ideal" DIY ukulele would start to look like:

• Simple shapes to cut out.
• Concert scale for a little extra finger room..
• Passive piezo pick-up (this has worked well on both uke's I have built).
• I still want to try using a different hard wood.
• I have to admit, I have not played No.3 much. It is nice to look at but until I lower the action it is harder to play than my other ukuleles.

If you have been reading this blog you already know I am thinking f the next ukulele that I can build. In fact yesterday I started to look at some pieces of wood. and also read a tip to use dye to add color but still let the grain show. I may experiment with this too. More to come...

Thunderbird (A Ukulele Superhero)

With a banjolele and Baloo my concert ukulele my UAS / UBS stoked fever was raging. My delirium was driving me to see how small of ukulele I could build and play? Time to buy a soprano uke and also try to build another even smaller ukulele.

"My delirium was driving me..."

Strumming Baloo

The least expensive, yet playable, soprano ukulele I could find on Amazon was a little yellow Mahalo for about $25. Done! So cute. I named it "Doug" after a good buddy that always leaves me smiling.

I also bought some mahogany and started cutting. With what I learned building the banjolele I knew I could make this new uke a little better. I also researched more and learned that in order to make a smaller uke I needed to make it electric. So it begins... sketching, cutting, ordering fret board, ordering tuning pegs, ordering string and, and, and.

Thunderbird Drawing and Parts.

The result was a very cute little instrument with a big name, "Thunderbird*". The mystery during the whole building process was will it play? A real questions since I was doing something I had never done and I was putting parts together from my own hand. I will also confess I purchased other parts based on cost and the lower the better. But, you can see in the picture that I successfully fulfilled my main mission. Thunderbird is indeed smaller than a soprano ukulele, but... Will it play?

Doug and Thunderbird

"The mystery...  ...will it play?"

Thunderbird is an electric ukulele so I also had to have an amplifier. I got a Honeytone because it was cute and cheap. The day of reckoning was soon at hand.

• String - check.
• Tuned - check.
• Battery - check.
• Amp on - check.

After one strum, I was grinning from ear to ear. Just let me say, it is very satisfying to ear sweet music coming from a ukulele. It is even better hearing the music come from a uke that you built yourself. It is small and beautiful and it even sounds good. It is quite nice to play. I will write more in another post about some of the details that went into making THUNDERBIRD!

You may have already guessed it though... before this one was done I was already thinking of improvements and the next one. That will also be another post. So long.

*Special thanks to Iain from the Midlands in England for naming this bad boy. Little-bitty instrument, great big sound!

On contracting a disease...

In my last blog I shared how I happened upon the playing of ukuleles. Now I very quickly was "hooked" and without even knowing it started to have symptoms of a new disease. I later learned that it it has a name... UAS or Ukulele Acquiring Syndrome. This also triggered something else more insidious, read on and I will explain.

I started to dream of getting a banjolele. This is an instrument that sounds like a banjo, but plays like a ukulele. I am not sure why I wanted one, but it seemed unique and interesting. After searching for one and seeing the price (gulp), I figured I could build one. How hard can that be right. Ignorance is bliss.

"This led to weeks of crazy behavior."

In the process of building a banjolele.

This led to weeks of research, drawing, trial and error, and other crazy behavior. I only have a few hand tools so the biggest challenge was to figure out how to make something I have never made before with the equivalent of "stone knives and bear skins".

Now I will jump to the end of the story. I did build a banjolele. It did play (and sounds like a banjo). It does not cure UAS but actually makes it worse.  It stoked my insatiable, irrational desire to have more ukes AND drove me to want to build another ukulele. Maybe this a viral strain of UAS like UBS (Ukulele Building Syndrome), UBS creates and insane thought like "What am I going to build next?" BTW, it felt pretty good to start from scratch and have a playable instrument. It wasn't perfect, but still quite nice. Also, more building did come but that will be another post.

"What am I going to build next?"

The finished playable banjolele.