Couple more tenors

[Stray Feathers]

Just to tie up some loose ends, these two ukuleles are now finished. I was trying to get them done for a big local art-on-the-street show in late August. As I mentioned in a recent thread in the "Repairs" section, I had issues with lacquer chipping when I pressed in the tuner bushings. Short on time, in the end I used some Gotoh guitar tuners with threaded nuts, the washers being large enough to cover all the lacquer chips. (A tricky job aligning the drill press to drill 10 mm holes where there were 1/4" holes reamed out to 8.64 mm). They are almost twice the price per instrument, but they effected the rescue, and they work better too. I also had a third uke at the show and one of the three is now sold, but the purchaser is still not sure which one he wants. The Western Redcedar and Ovangkol uke has a less tapered headstock than I usually do, because of an - issue - but it will work. Ditto the ebony trim on the end of the fretboard, because the saw cut the fretboard too short. It has not got the guitar tuners yet; I have removed the Grover uke tuners and am repairing the lacquer before fitting the new tuners in case the customer decides on that one.

An interesting aside for me in this process has been learning about ukulele strings. The cedar top uke has a low-G set of Aquila Nylgut and sounds rich and mellow. The Sitka and Sweet Cherry uke has D'addario fluorocarbon strings and sounds almost brash. The third uke, Blackwood and Engelmann (pictures earlier in the thread) has Nylgut with a high G and sounds somewhere in between. It just adds more confusion when trying to assess what the different woods are doing to the sound, and my purchaser was confused too. But they all sound good, and look good apart from my less-than-glassy lacquer and buffing job (ongoing learning curve). Bruce W.