So today I was messing around with my new eleuke trying to play some mean guitar licks on the ukulele. I was bending the strings pretty far, the worth strings are of pretty low tension, but they would constantly go out of tune after I would come out of the bend.
My question is this:
has there been any ukulele made that someone has seen with some sort of locking nut mechanism like in a Floyd Rose?
Alternatively, has anyone ever seen someone put a whammy bar or the like onto a uke? crazy rocking possibilities out there if they have.
Thanks
I think with nylon strings, you'd be stretching them enough that they would detune even with a locking nut or locking tuners. It's not so mauch an issue of the string slipping as it that the nylon or floruocarbon or whatever is stretching and it takes it awhile to remember it's regular tension. With steel strings you shouldn't have that problem if you simply have a locking tuners - that's the cheapest option I know of - but locking tuners are heavy so would unbalance most ukes.
You might want to try a Risa electic uke that uses steeel strings - the one's that shaped like a kidney bean and has lipstick singl coil or humbucker pickups - they look like a mini electricl guitar. See if bending these strings still gives you a detuning problem. If so, replace the exisiting tuners with locking ones (they cost around $50 or so from musicians friend), and see if that works.
As to a whammy bar, you might be able to replace the bridge on the same Risa electric with a guitar bridge that has a whammy attachment - these bridges aren't attached all to the body - one end of the bridge actually lifts up and that's what cause the detuning, so you're not actually bending the string - you're doing the opposite. I doubt this would would work on most ukes, but maybe you could modify an eleuke. You'd have two extra slots for the other two strings of the guitar, which might cause rattling or buzzing though - but it would solve the problem of stretching out the nylon or flourocarbon strings... The string spacing would also aprobably be closer together than on your original bridge, which may or may not be a problem...
Now if you're talking about a so-called floating whammy, like a Floyd Rose bridge (as opposed ot the locking nut) which goes both way - closer to and farther away from the nut,, then you'd need the locking nut or locking tuners - plus you'd still have the problem of stretched out nylon or flourocarbon strings - so really only an option for steel strings...
You could check to see if the approproiate hardware is available for electric mandos, like the Firebird. If so, you might be able to adapt that for your ueses (electric mandos usually have only 4 strings instead of 8, but the string spcaing is MUCH closer together, which can mess up uke players...).
Have fun!