Tag: ukulele

Concert Box Ukulele

A recent creation influenced by Sam Kamaka Jr’s 1940’s cigar box ukulele.

Built from merbau side/neck/fretboard/bridge and pine braced marine laminate front and back, this is a concert scale length uke. Fretboard has a 9.25” radius, something I don’t usually add to my ukuleles.

Finishing in linseed oil and beeswax gave the uke a nice dark aged look.

It’s reasonably thin bodied, but rings out nice as the strings settle in.

It’s been a while since I posted a project here. An alternative (if here for projects not photos) is to check out my YouTube channel as I have a bunch of historic and up coming project builds there also: https://m.youtube.com/c/MikeHawkey/videos

0

Three Garden Shots

_DSC8792 copy

Giving my camera a quick check over,and taking a shot of the Violele, I took a few shots of the neglected lawn and garden now Spring is here. Nice and green!

_DSC8790 copy _DSC8791 copy

2

Frankenstein’s Uke mark1.5

20140702-180707-65227396.jpg

I featured this creation a while back and have since made one big adjustment – a new home built neck. The old one certainly had a look about it, but was too wide at the top, making it hard to play. This new neck (along with quality strings) has made a world of difference. Crafted out of seconds pine planks, it’s kept the build cost low. Next…practice!

1

Frankenstein’s Ukulele

Frankenstein's Uke‘Just for fun’ I threw together a home designed and built Ukulele over the last few weekends. Influenced by cigar box uke’s and guitars, I took their essential design, but worked from scratch.

The straight angled body and sound holes give it enough lack of beauty that its been named Frankenstein’s Ukulele – although to be fair to old Frank, I didnt reuse any old body parts…perhaps its actually Pinocchio’s – but his would be more crafted and carved.

How does it play? Well, with me behind the strings, it doesn’t play any worse than anything else. Thats to say one would recoil at my playing before the sound quality. Its not bad. Strings are just fresh on today, so still bedding in. Tone is nice, but not as long standing as my purchased units.

Perhaps its Frankenstein 1.0

 

3

Learning the Jumping Flea

UkeThe Ukulele. We always had one in the house when I grew up. I never learnt to play it. I did learn other instruments, but the little Uke never tickled my fancy.

More recently a few people from work expressed the desire to start up a social ukulele group. It sounded like a fun enough work related thing to do, so I jumped online and purchased this little number pictured today.

Ive learnt four chords, but ain’t no singing cowboy yet…The cat dosen’t run away if I feed her first, so thats a start!

 

 

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑