I’m going to build this bloody electric ukulele if it kills me! I’m serious about this! And if you didn’t believe me, here’s the proof… I’ve just bought a router. I opted for a budget Draper 1200W Router Kit. I know nothing about routers, so this is a real journey of discovery for me. There’s a video at the bottom of me unboxing my new toy and here are a load of pictures of me checking it out and putting it together.
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| Draper 1200W Router Kit Stock number 90088; Part number PT1201VK |
Earlier this year I made the decision to build an electric ukulele. Little by little I’ve been moving the project along. One pretty major problem I’ve faced is finding the space for a workshop. With summer just around the corner, I’ve cleared a corner of my garage and I’m now ready to Rock and Roll!
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| Don’t Open… Man Cave! |
So what do I need in my Man Cave?
Let’s talk about the tools that I’m going to need to build an electric ukulele.
Have you ever heard the phrase about knowing just enough to be dangerous? That’s me that is!
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| “Kung Fuke!” |
Last month I made the decision to make myself an electric ukulele. It’s not something I’ve ever done before but I thought that it might be fun to give it a go.
Ever since then I’ve been fretting over the ukulele neck part of the build. Whilst I know that I could easily buy one, I’d really like to make my own. And being a long-time guitarist I kind of know just enough about guitar necks to realise that there may be more to this than meets the eye.
Not too far back I fitted a piezo pickup to one of my ukuleles. It was a cheap and fairly painless exercise. Today I’m going to talk about some of the mechanics of amping the instrument.
First let’s get some technical stuff out of the way:
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| “Piezoelectric fields result predominantly
from atomic layer displacements along the nanowire axis within both the core and shell materials.” – American Chemical Society |
I’m on the cusp of something brilliant… I can feel it!
The more observant amongst you may have realised that this blog is called the Ukulele Blog. That’s not by accident. I love ukuleles. Actually, I love musical instruments of all descriptions. I always have. I started teaching myself to play guitar some 28 years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. I guess it’s in my blood.
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| The Ukulele Furies! |
You may also have noticed that I’ve recently started getting excited about Electric Ukulele. It’s a fairly new obsession. Check out my post on fitting a piezo pickup to one of my acoustic ukuleles to see me dipping my toes in the water. A piezo pickup is all well and good, but wouldn’t it be cool if I had an actual electric ukulele with metal strings and a real pickup! And wouldn’t it be even cooler if I made it myself!
That’s exactly what I was thinking!
King Uke has also fitted a piezo pickup to his £11 Stagg US-10 Ukulele.
My inspiration was a series of posts stuck up by Electric Ukulele Land on the Electric Ukulele Land website. After some words of encouragement and a few pointers from Julian Davies I got onto ebay and ordered the pickup: a UK-2000… from Hong Kong.
It arrived this morning!
We are proud to announce that the invitation we sent out to a friend of ours, King Uke, has been accepted and he has now become our newest staff writer. Welcome aboard, King Uke. In his first article (originally blogged over on his own King Uke’s blog , King Uke talks about a discussion we had, uke tunings and the uke’s relationship with guitar.
I got into an interesting discussion earlier this week with Julian Davies of Electric Ukulele Land. The subject was ukuleles and it wasn’t long until we were chewing the fat over the various uke models, tunings and chords. I learnt some great stuff! Here are some highlights… with illustrations…
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| King Uke – Aloha! |