violin-uke?

CulpRJ

CulpRJ

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A question to all luthiers. I like the look of the Hofner violin bass and it got me thinking, "How about a violin-shaped uke?" Has it been done? I have an archtop uke, so I know that much is possible. Here's what I'm thinking: If I buy a cheap violin from a surplus store, remove the neck, replace it with a uke neck from a Grizzly kit or something, could I make it playable? I'd probably have to rework the tailpiece and bridge, but I'm not afraid of a little sawdust. Any and all thoughts are appreciated.

Cheers,
N
 
Go for it!

I have a violin and a grizzly neck, I check it out later today and see if they can be made to match up.

(No, I'm not taking apart my violin :) )
 
violin ukulele

Our fiddle had a break in the neck that couldn't be repaired, so we decided to take the neck off and make a uke out of it.

We're still working on it... We have refinished the body, designed and constructed a new neck, made a new bridge and a (shorter and flatter) tailpiece... So everything is ready to put together, but we're busy with recordings and other work at the moment.

If anyone is interested in pictures let me know and I'll post some links - if that's allowed.

:music: Erich
 
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Thanks for the links, nic. I had no idea Mahalo (of all companies) made one. Looks like this might be do-able.
 
I just made my wife nervous, she saw me looking at my violin and the grizzly uke neck. She thought I was going to swap necks.

Anyway, yes I believe with a little cutting, carving and trimming you can match these two together.
 
CulpRJ said:
I'd love to see some pictures.
Click to expand...


I forgot to mention that the seam on the back was split open, but we were able to fix that with good old hide glue.

The body was varnished in dark red, which was common for a long time and still is practiced today - unfortunately. So when we got the finish off we were amazed that the maple on the back really looked quite nice. We left a little of the red in the nicks and corners - in keeping with our "recycled" approach.

Here are a few pics of our finishing work on the body.

If ppl are interested I can post more as the work progresses.

Enjoy,
Erich

==

ukuline348.jpg

Cleaning

ukuline351.jpg

The top after the first polish

ukuline357.jpg

Polishing

ukuline363.jpg

Voilà - The back after the first polish
 
So I am guessing that you need to make a neck the correct length so that the bridge is placed in a good position for resonance in the soundboard?
 
CulpRJ said:
I like the look of the Hofner violin bass and it got me thinking, "How about a violin-shaped uke?"
Click to expand...

A uke patterned more after Macca's Hofner than an actual violin would be sweeeeeeeeeet!
 
Wow, that looks great, Erich!
I could never even put a CBU together, nevermind something as crazy as that!
Your polishing job really spruced it up, keep posting photos as you make progress with it. :)
 
Thanks for the link Ahnko Honu. Do you think the $500 he's asking for the Tangi is a good deal? I'll admit, I'm not familiar with the company, but it sounds pretty sweet. It includes pickup and hard case.

I borrowed my Dad's violin and laid my ukes next to them. A soprano neck might work, but I think it would work better with a concert neck. Proportions would be a little nicer and the fretboard would extend at little further.

One more thing. That Mahalo "Violele" in the links above doesn't seem to be available anywhere. Is it just a prototype or a full production model?

Cheers
 
RevWill, I like the way you think, so I Photoshopped (okay MS Paint'd) a tenor neck on a violin. It looks pretty good (not the photo, the concept I mean. The photo is crud).
GEDC0551a.jpg

That's my Dad's $60 violin (it's not really that red in real life) with my Crosby tenor neck. Hmmm..
 
nic579 said:
So I am guessing that you need to make a neck the correct length so that the bridge is placed in a good position for resonance in the soundboard?
Click to expand...

Yep, we sat down with rulers, calculators, photoshop, etc and went through different options to see what we thought would look good. And also figured in our Helmholtz caculations, tests with induced frequencies on the corpus, and simply what Robin (the guy in the pics) wanted.

After going through the wood we have in stock we decided to use tigerwood for the neck, especially because the honey color matches the body color so well and the darker streaks not only go well with the "vintage" look of the body but also add a good bit of pizazz.

Unfortunately we made a mistake cutting the first neck, so we're using that on a pretty little cigar box (always recycle what you can). Actually the box is not that small but I think it is very pretty.

We haven't cut the new neck yet because we wanted to notch up our skills (with the tigerwood) on the CBU first. What I can say is that the tigerwood is one of the hardest and definitely the fastest wood I have ever worked with. Even unfinished, just fine-sanded and buffed, it already feels like there is a perfect finish on it. Amazing stuff.

More soon,
Erich
 
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