Some Meranti Ukes

Just to set the scene, where I live in Alice Springs is 2000 km's of desert Nth & Sth of any major city.
(And by the way, there's no spring here - it was just a puddle )

Although there is plenty of desert hardwood around it's all only in fingerboard size trunks.
Building material for this town of around 35000 is shipped, trucked & trained in from SE Asia.
And it's all meranti.

So,
Two all meranti concerts (including the figured stuff) with EIR fingerboard/bridge and EIR or Blackwood binding.
One meranti & spruce concert with Mulga fingerboard/rosette/bridge/headstock overlay.



Oh, and I know I said in another thread that they were all going to be spruce topped and have classical tie bridges.....well....I changed my mind

Beautiful Ukes. Love to hear some sound bytes.

Well done - beautiful work.

So now you have comparable ukes with different topwoods - what difference in tone do you hear between spruce topped and meranti topped?

Nice!

In spite of its plain looks, meranti is a really good sounding wood for ukes - I have two meranti sopranos in progress right now.

Very occasionally you do turn up a more attractive piece - this one has some light curl and prominent speckle pattern:

Thanks guys, I also feel they look better as ukes than they would as cupboard doors.

Your right, I can compare the two tops. The difference in sound is subtle but there. Even though I was confident that the meranti tops would perform, I am still kinda surprised how well they stack up against the spruce top. I'll try and upload a sound file once the strings settle (and I've learnt a worthwhile tune!)

Your also right about there being some nice figured meranti if you hunt for it.
These pieces were destined to be installed in a house and painted over. They're now the rosettes & headstock overlays for both meranti topped ukes.

Meranti might as well be Honduran mahogany. Early on, Jeff Huss went to a bluegrass jam in a garage. Looking up, he noticed some beautiful curly boards in the rafters overhead. Meranti, of course, and he talked the owner out of them. We made some stunning H&D guitars out of the wood. They sounded wonderful, and we sold out quickly. So much for Philippine mahogany not being a good tone wood. I wish I had a truckload of the stuff, as long as it was figured.