AWOL the ukulele noob

It is with great joy that we are able to introduce AWOL to our team. He will be bringing us ukulele news from far and wide to keep us up to date with everything ukulele! 4 strung is for warned :-


So before I bring a new perspective to Ukeland, perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m AWOL, yes as in not being where I should have been. That long story however is not about ukes and therefore probably of no interest to you.

My fascination with this wonderful little stringed instrument came from my wife. Who after hearing my life regret of never learning to play music insisted I get an instrument and learn (the ‘it’s never too late’ speech). With a gleeful new outlook I ran to the first place I figured I could get a guitar, craigslist. Nothing fit my meager budget. BUT… there was a 30$ ukulele. Humm I knew that it seemed too good to be true, even figured there was a mistake. Called the dealer and arranged to drop in. Turned out it was a new but slightly flawed ukulele that he couldn’t sell to an outlet and this was why it was so cheap. I snapped it up and was beaming. It didn’t take long to notice people with guitars on the trains and buses and how cumbersome it looked compared with my new little bundle of sound. How if I were to travel I could have mine as carry on vs stowed away. Oh the reasons for why my choice was so perfect were really stacking up. A few cheap lessons and I knew some chords and was playing a few songs.

Now I’m the guy behind ukulele army as well as a few other ukulele adventures. Soon I’ll even be taking on some of my own electric ukulele builds and sharing the experiences with the readers here.

I’m looking forward to sharing more ukulele adventures soon…

Kingcaster uke build : part 09 – How to paint the body – part 1

I’m back with another installment in my story about what it takes to build an electric ukulele. Pretty much all the fiddly stuff is done. In my last update I talked about wiring up the electrics. Daniel Hulbert has suggested that I check that it works before I go too much further. Thanks Daniel… I will do that soon… I promise! Not before I’ve painted the body though! Ha ha! Catch me if you can!

In search of inspiration…

 

I wasn’t looking forwards to the wiring, and I haven’t been looking forwards to the painting. I’ve done a bit of this before and the results were poor. Granted some of this was simply down to a lack of patience but I knew this time that I needed help. I hit Google+ hard and before I knew it the advice was flowing in thick and fast. Many thanks specifically to Gavin Scully and Jonathan Martin for your words of wisdom. I couldn’t have done this without you guys! But before we start high-fiving let me reveal that this hasn’t all gone according to plan. Let me explain…

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