In my last post I talked about how I designed and created a pattern for my electric ukulele build. Today I talk about making the body.
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| From wood to wood in 167 simple steps – King Uke shows you how! |
I haven’t finished it, but I’ve done enough to give you a run down of what I’ve been up to. Tighten your seatbelts, this might just get a little hairy!
Oh yeah… my build has been christened “the Kingcaster”. I kind of like the sound of that!
First you can start by designing your own ukulele using sketchup , for demonstration purposes I used this design instead of a ukulele ( I am using google sketchup pro 8 )
(Some info on the pictures can be helpfull , click them to see them better)
Once you got your ukulele you, look at the top of your screen and try to find “camera” and click it , once you have done that you will see a V next to “perspective” you would have to change that to “parallel mode”
Once you have done that, return to “camera” and click ”standard views” and choose the view you would like to have printed ( top view, side view, bottom view….)
Next go to ”file” also on the top of the screen and click print .. this should appear.
Now look for the section “printing format” and you will see that “made to fit page” is on, and turn that off and on the right you see a “scales” section and you want to set “in sketchup” and “in print” both on 1 this way you will get a 1:1 scale
Then all there is left for is to hit ok and you will end up with something looking like this …… with this method you can get pretty accurate ukulele body and neck templates .
The body is made of ash. The neck was made with three pieces of maple. The headstock was scarf jointed to the neck and the fretboard was glued to the top. I got the specialized tuners and nut from https://www.largesound.com/buy/. They provide replacement parts for Ashbory Basses. The bridge is a knockoff “Hipshot A Style” bridge. This type of bridge allows for the mounting of the thick “Road Toad” strings.
I sealed and primed the body. I drilled a larger hole by the the bridge to allow a rod piezo pickup to be mounted by the back of the bridge.
With a drill and a chisel, I hollowed out a cavity for a 9V battery holder. This bass ukulele will have an active pre-amp to boost the low output of the piezo rod.
The neck was given a nitrocellulose lacquer finish after side markers were installed.
Next, the body will be given a beautiful orange finish. Once the color and clear coats have cured, it’ll get a good buffing and polish. Finally, my favorite steps will arrive. That is assembling and playing the instrument. There is something almost magical about the first tune on a brand new instrument.
After waiting for the clear coat to cure, the time came to wet sand, apply the polishing compound, and polish the body. I used 1000 grit sandpaper to wet sand the body. I then used a rag to apply “fine” and then “swirl remover” polishing compound to the finish. “Meguiar’s Mirror Glaze #7” is what I used to give the body a final polish. It’s a car glaze, but I’ve seen it mentioned on a lot of guitar forums as a guitar polish. It’s worked well so far.
I used this wiring diagram as a base: One pickup, one volume, one tone.
I tweaked a few things to adjust for the higher frequencies of a electric ukulele. 250K ohm potentiometers were used instead of the 500K ones. A 0.020 microfarad capacitor was used instead of the .047 microfarad one. In addition, a 0.001 microfarad capactor was added between the center and right lugs. (Okay, so I “tweaked” everything.)
Now, the Telecaster Ukulele is ready to assemble and then play! In this video, I give a demonstration of the uke in action, and show it being assembled in real time (I work fast).
It’s been fun making this ukulele and sharing the details. It was a lot of work, but now I have a custom instrument that plays beautifully and looks great.
I’m building an Electric Ukulele and I promised to keep you up-to-date with progress. Today’s post covers the work I’ve done to create a pattern for my build.
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| A first-stab at an electric ukulele pattern |
Sometimes the desire to ROCK is tempered by a lack of tools. To make a regular solid body electric ukulele, you need a scroll saw (or a band saw) and a router along with some other basic tools. However, a hollow enclosure can be used for the body, which eliminates the need to cut and rout a wooden body.
For my ukulele, I used an ammo box that I purchased at an army surplus store. This same kind of thing could be done with any type of sturdy wood, metal, or plastic box.
The neck was made with two pieces of mahogany scarf jointed together. Less expensive and more readily available wood could also be used. In fact, other types of wood would probably be more congruent with the “DIY spirit”.
In keeping with the ammunition theme, many of the hardware appointments were made with spent bullet shells. One the most difficult parts of this build was cutting a hole in the thick metal box for the single coil pickup. I used a hacksaw blade and a file to do this. A jig saw would have been much easier.
The bridge was made with a 30.06 shell. A shotgun shell top serves as the volume knob.
The wiring schematic is pretty basic: One pickup, One volume schematic
Spent .22 shells serve as fret markers.
Here is a demo of it in action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJwUR12x1Ig
I want a bass ukulele. After building a few dozen instruments, the thought of simply buying one from store seems very boring. I will therefore expend the time and money to make a custom bass ukulele that will fulfill my desire.
Before I build, I make a paper mock-up of the instrument. (I included a concert sized acoustic ukulele for scale)
Here are the elements that I want to have:
The combination of orange, black, and maple should make for an interesting looking instrument. I hope that I don’t live to regret making a bright orange ukulele. Hopefully, a funky color will look good on a funky ukulele.
I got an email in from my friend Ayumi just recently with news on the documentary they are working on. She tells me how she has got together with her film partner Maria to work on a film about the street punks in Jakarta and their ukulele antics. They have launched their promo on a site for creative projects called kickstarter to try and raise funding for their 5-year-long documentary into a film “Jakarta Punk – The Marjinal Story.”
In the promo, they show a lot of photos of kids playing ukulele, and they describe the work that Marjinal do and the activities the get involved in to help others understand more about them.
You can visit the fundraising site here :- “Jakarta Punk – The Marjinal Story”
The term U-Bass is a relatively new one, owned by Kala. It is there trade name for their 4-string full range bass ukelele. It has a half-scale neck that measures 21″ that uses special polyurethane strings reproduce the sounds of a full size upright bass. The ‘u’ part of the name stems from the fact that it is built around either a solid or an acoustic baritone ukelele body. It can be bought either as a 16 frets (with the neck meeting the body at the 12th fret), fretted or fretless model.
On Sunday evening I was lucky enough to meet Paris from The Pukes and she let me have a look at her solid body u-bass. We suspect that it might be the only solid body u-bass in the U.K. at the moment, but if you know of any others, we would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below.
Paris reckons it plays really well and the short chance I got to play, it felt nice in my hands. The strings didn’t feel at all sticky, (see the Ashbory below for more on that) but I didn’t get a chance to plug it in.
Paris was also kind enough to flip the u-bass over and let us take a little look inside the preamp cavity. You can see in here a small CR-2032 battery, the same kind that is inside the pre-amp of my Kala Tenor uke. In the years I have owned that uke, I have only ever had to change the battery once or twice and they are available all over the place now. Our local 99p shop sells 5 for a pound 😉
So Paris has the only solid body we know of, but we did see this acoustic version down at John T’s Shopand we were very impressed with that. It is smaller than a guitar, but has a warm acoustic sound like a upright bass.
I had played a Ashbory DeArmnd short scale bass a few years ago. Like the u-bass, this half scale unit was a light weight, poly-stringed bass and I guess in many ways it inspired the newer u-bass. When I played this, the strings were a little sticky, but it was perfectly playable. The company Ashbory is now owned by Fender.
It also has a little pre-ap built into it’s cavity which you can find pictures of below.
You can download the schematic for the Ashbory’s preamp from largesound. I think this could be a very useful schematic for any nylon string uke pre-amp you might be building.
I applied a nitrocellulose primer to the sealed wood body. 2-3 coats were needed. Any slight bumps were sanded flat with 1000 grit sandpaper.
The “Midnight Wine” color coat went over the primer. This color started to worry me. I said to myself, “I don’t want a plum colored electric ukulele”. I pressed on, knowing that if I hated the color, I could always repaint. I did about two coats, then noticed that my overzealous painting had cause a couple of sags on the back. After letting it dry for a day, I used some 320 grit and then some 1000 grit sandpaper to reflatten the surface. I sanded just enough to correct the sags, but not enough to sand through all of the color coats. Once I was pleased with the surface, I did two more color coats.
Next came about 6 or 7 clear coats. Clear gloss nitrocellulose lacquer was used. After the clear coats were applied, I noticed that the color had changed slightly. It had become much closer to the dark, rich “Midnight Wine” color that I was expecting. This pleased me exceedingly.
Filling the grain, sealing the wood, applying the color coats, and then putting on the clear coats, makes for a nice finish. Even if you are using spray cans (like I do), you can get great results. I follow the Stewart-MacDonald Nitrocellulose Finishing Schedule.
The next step is the most agonizing for me. Waiting. It is recommended that you allow 10-14 days for the finish to cure before wet sanding and buffing the finish. I’m planning on waiting two full weeks before touching the body again. It will be hard, but I will be strong. Hopefully my patience will yield a beautiful, glossy finish.