Blueprinting Smiley!

Inksplosive AL

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Smiley is my 3rd ukulele in as many weeks. I watch as many videos on YouTube I could to see how they sound and everyone sounded decent. Of course I expect they were all setup and tweaked with new strings. Of course mine buzzed very bad on the first and second fret of the G and C string due to a very high third fret.

blueprinting-smiley.jpg

Blueprinting my new smiley ukulele, he came pretty bad even for a $38 instrument. Imagine buying this for your kid and just giving it to them. I can see this little buzzing yellow guy collecting dust if the kid has any ear for music. As is I went a little crazy on the tape job on the fret board but figured it was good practice.

3rd-fret.jpg

If it were a more expensive instrument I most likely wouldn't be playing luthier and paying for ones services instead. Seeing as it was only $38 and would still look cool as s** as a wall decoration I figured I have rebuilt car engines and worked on motorcycles, I tattoo and pierce human skin why not try a bit of backyard instrument repair.

2nd-3rd-4th-fret.jpg

After watching a few YouTube videos I am at now at this point with my third fret looking very flat. The bad part is a straight edge will still rock slightly so the call is stop and round it off hoping the string tension will pull the neck forward slightly or take off a little more ever so slightly. The edges of the frets are very sharp on the bottom as well so I will be addressing this before moving onto the action. I have a set of D'Addario t2 titanium soprano strings waiting.

You don't want to see what I'm going to use for a nut file. :drool:

Wish me luck and send good joo-joo my way!

~Al
 
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Good luck! I have a Smiley and it's just so darn cute. But not very playable. I'm not up to attempting a setup even on a cheap uke like this.
 
I have built professional tattoo machines and worked with metal and files before. Every video I watched on ukulele setup they were using 400 and 600 grit paper I chose to use 800. More work but harder to screw up.

Well I sanded it a slight bit more and rounded the flattened frets by hand. I put on the new strings and tuned them up and after sitting overnight the buzz seems to be gone. I haven't yet touched the saddle or nut and haven't played with the intonation yet. she sounds good running through a few simple chords progressions like in five foot two.

I'm much happier that it plays at all now.

More pictures to come.

~AL~
 
I promised pictures!
hand-crowning2.jpg

frets-closeup.jpg

I rounded and polished the frets as much as I could take last night and strung her up. The frets could have been done a bit more hell who knows maybe I'll fine tune it one day but for now it works.

I tried taking a picture of this but ended up spending way too much time on it. The picture I did get I ended up pushing on the string and ruined the shot. The action at the 12th fret measures out at 3-3.5 32nds. This gives me 0.23814 to 0.27783 mm if my calculations are correct. In other words not perfect but not really bad either I think it can come down a just a smidge or at least be evened out.

at-the-nut.jpg

The action at the nut when fretting the second fret looks a tiny bit high but I planned on attacking the nut with a file soon. I'm having fun and already looking into new pegs and maybe replacing the plastic nut and saddle with bone. Thoughts? I know its only a smiley!

In other news my Bruce Wei tenor is doing something funky! a felt bump in the back seems to be turning into a crack against the grain.

I'm going to start taking photos of any progression and will post photos here for reference/ thoughts. Guess it got jealous already.
 
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Sounds like you did everything right. Way to go!. I usually use 320 grit stuck to a carpenter's level to flatten all the frets at once, then file them round, then polish with 400 and 600 and maybe even buff them on a wheel. But I've been watching the fret meister at H&D chase down individual frets with a little straight edge. It takes longer to sort them all out, but in the end there is less filing and polishing to do. I'll have to give that a try.
 
Update

Smiley sits on my counter at my shop hes strung with Aquila's now as the titanium's never seemed to settle. In hindsight he still has a very slight buzz from the 3rd fret but overall its very playable and what I judge other ukuleles to as far as ease of bar chords in the first couple frets.

Hes out in the open where anyone can grab him for fun. The look of amazement when someone picks it up and realizes its in tune and playable is well worth the effort.

Since imageshack is likely on its way to following others into the obsolete and deleted all free picture storage I had to again edit this thread to add the pictures back. There were two I hadn't added that I'll place here.

Two show the nut and what can be achieved with very cheap files from China and a steady hand.

filing-the-nut.jpg 3-down.jpg

One is an overall view of the polished frets.

polished.jpg

~peace~
 
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Smiley update 2016

Smiley still sits at my shop and is exposed to large temperature variations and humidity changes with zero protection. I turn the heat down to 50 at night.

The bottom of the bridge curls up in the winter to the point it has broken away from the paint. It seems to be securely fastened and not going anywhere. He buzzes slightly on the 3d fret again and could likely benefit from a slight tweak.

After playing Aquila reds on my other sopranos the white Aquilas feel so weird yet smiley is still very easy to play with great action. He stays in tune needing very little adjustments here and there. The curled bridge (I know pictures AL) has uncurled a bit and stopped moving as far as I can tell.

Still making people smile even if they dont pick it up.

I continue to maintain this thread so others can see its not that hard to properly setup your own instrument. Maybe someone will gain wisdom insight or confidence to attempt their own.

~peace~
 
Cheers and kudos to you all for making the humble Smiley more playable and hopefully maybe inspiring folks in your shop to play, as well as demonstrating how some simple setup work is achievable for us non-luthiers with simple tools.

Hopefully some folks can learn from your example here.

Thanks for sharing! :)
 
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