Harpuke finished

I wish it were an innovation but it's not! The Larson brothers and Knutsun were making these in the ealry part of the 20th century - admitted they were guitars and some mandolins but nevertheless, nothing new. What is mind blowing is the quality and clarity of the sound. I've just spent 3 hours revising the design and making it more 'Larson bros' like... and another hour familiarising myself with the string spacing, trying out tunings. This wouldn't be my main uke but boy, has it got potential for the right kind of player!
 
Beautiful!

Did you build it on a work board?

Do you have a case for it? :)
 
Wow, really nice Pete. Thanks for building and sharing. Those open strings are handy.
–Lori
 
It was built on a skeleton form - winged it most of the way. A case? Are you kiddin? :)))
 
That is an awesome looking and sounding uke. Two questions: Is it top heavy? and what strings did you use for the harp section?
 
That thing is going to become the new must have. Looks and sounds great. I have enough trouble managing 4 strings, you play it pretty well, too.
 
I have a pile of wound low Gs from Aquila. It is suprisingly well balanced. I'll see if I can publish the new design drawings with just 3 sub-bass strings since after spending a long time playing it last night I am not convinced once you have the root, third, fifth then relative minor, what more you'd need - 4th string through to 8th with uke tuned low G. I suspect, most players of this instrument would do the guitar player's thing and regularly retune and fiddle with the tuning of the sub-bass section. What I have learnt from playing is that the sub-bass strings are really 'accent' choices...
 
Here is an image of the revised plans to give you an idea of the construction. I now have a CAD package and will be offering detailed plans for sale, hence the copyright warning. Please respect this - if you want to copy my designs from anything I publish you are welcome to do so; however, please ask first. Dimensioned drawings which will not be published will be for sale in the future including pineapple and tenor plans. These will not be copies of classic instruments but the designs I use for my instruments.

Harpguitarplan.jpg
 
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Wonderful looking and sounding instrument! I'm saving up! :)
 
Beautiful sound. The instrument demands a fingerstyle approach as you mentioned.
I'm not good enough to exploit such a nice axe, so I won't be signing up for one - but, wow, that is nice!
 
Nice creation, Peter. Might change the name to Ukeharp. The current name can be interpreted in other ways....
 
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