advice for a ukulele maker

Hey, I've been making my own instruments for a while, mostly slide guitars and diddly bows because I love playing slide. Anyway, I also like playing ukes so I had the idea of building a fretless slide baritone ukulele. Turned out really cool, I'll post some pictures below (it's tuned dgbe and has a built in pickup. the back of the neck is whittled to give it a nice curve too).

So my question is, would a slide ukulele be something the ukulele world needs? or is it just me who wants one? Because if there was some interest in it, I would consider making some more to sell. Thanks for the input.

Hey, that's pretty cool. There are a few folks on here that mess around with slide ukulele... I like the way you did yours, I'd like to hear it- you got any vids on youtube? I'm working on a fretless uke now that will have a baritone scale and the body is made out of an 1859 stradivarius, for strumming though not slide play. I've been wondering about fretless ukes for a while now, buit I can't seem to find much evidence that they've been done a lot before. Have you made any fretless ukes for standard play? Also, what did you use for pick-ups?

ukulelebadass said:

Hey, that's pretty cool. There are a few folks on here that mess around with slide ukulele... I like the way you did yours, I'd like to hear it- you got any vids on youtube? I'm working on a fretless uke now that will have a baritone scale and the body is made out of an 1859 stradivarius, for strumming though not slide play. I've been wondering about fretless ukes for a while now, buit I can't seem to find much evidence that they've been done a lot before. Have you made any fretless ukes for standard play? Also, what did you use for pick-ups?

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I haven't tried making a standard uke before. This is the 7th instrument that I've made and the first ukulele. The rest have been 3-string "cigar box guitar style" slide guitars, diddly bows, and stick basses.

The pickup is a piezo mounted on the inside below the bridge. It actually works quite well, I can even overdrive it and rock out.

I did make a video of it right after I made it, I haven't really learned how to play it yet so this is just a little improv to show how it sounds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-tMtwcJPTE

Oh I saw those eight little metal dot's on the top and it looked like you had a couple of coil pickups mounted under the soundboard. You're nut is a bolt huh- far out. I checked your vid- they sound pretty decent.