Silk Purse from a Sow's Ear?

PhilUSAFRet

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Ok, I believe in buying decent ukes, but for the same reason I buy lottery tickets, I'm always looking for an opportunity to find a "diamond in the rough" so to speak....a uke that is well undervalued and in need of some repair, upgrades, etc. etc. in the hope of ending up with a pretty decent sounding uke.....or......a major "bargain" considering what I invested. I can't be the only one who gets a kick out of this.

Describe one of your favorite "Sow's Ears"

What work did you do on it?

Describe the "silk purse" you ended up with.

Pics/no pics, whatever.
 
nothing special here Phil, but I had a cheapo mahalo laminate that had shocking intonation, high action and just sounded awful with the stock strings. So I did a fun lil' project on it as a first time experiment...figured I had nothing to lose, so...

I filed back the saddle a touch, sanded back the top and handpainted it, then put a gloss finish on it and put on a new set of worth clears. I also sanded back the head and replaced the geared tuners with a set of friction tuners, and voila, it was a totally different and better sounding uke. Don't have any pics of the original condition, but it finished up looking like this (these pics before the gloss applied or new tuners attached).

DSCF0723.jpgDSCF0722.jpg

still sounds like a cheap uke, but something that I'm happy to play, and do play often, and it was a confidence builder in that I showed myself I could do something like that which I'd doubted until then.
 
Geee Phil, for some reason I never pictured you as the purse-carrying kind of guy... :)

John
 
Just today a friend brought his ordinary Makala soprano along to our Sat morning gig to join in.
When he got it - awful intonation, difficult action, shitty strings etc. A local luthier had a mess with it - compensated saddle, lowered the nut and did something mysterious to the frets. It is a VERY nice little ukulele to play and sounds just fine.
 
My brother in law gave me a Sunlite baritone he picked up for $10 at a yard sale, and although it wasn't to bad to look at it wasn't much of a player. It had cheap friction tuners ( the only Bari I've ever seen with them!) that wouldn't hold tune no matter how you tightened the screw, and strings I still haven't been able to identify. The sound was so muffled, and couldn't keep it in tune so I just put it on my bench for a couple of months. I had some guitar tuners laying around and they fit the thickness of the headstock nicely, dropped the saddle and nut to get the action lower and put a set of Aquila GCEA strings with a single low g from MGM and its become my favorite slack key uke. It has a deep resonant sound and is well suited to slack key, I bought a bone nut and saddle blank to replace the cheap plastic it came with but havent gotten around to fitting them and I'm sure that will improve its sound too, and want to try some Southcoast strings.
 
I have a circa 1918 or so Ukulele Mfg. Co. of Honolulu soprano that has a Hawaiian neck and heel, and which looks like it's flamey koa. One piece front and an arched back, nickel silver frets, very thinly and lightly built. I cleaned it up and have some shellac flakes to refresh the original finish when I can remember to do it.

My other one in perpetual state of progress is a Favilla named Buster.
 

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I don't know yet if mine will turn out to be a silk purse. Since I was a teenager in the '70s I've been drawing cartoon armadillos, and around 1990 I found a homemade mandolin made out of an armadillo shell in a pawn shop. (No, it wasn't a charango, though I assume the luthier had found some roadkill and was inspired by the charango.) I only put on four strings and tuned it like a uke. It had a surprisingly nice sound. Eventually the soundboard cracked, and it's been unused now for a decade.

A local hobbyist luthier is willing to try converting it to a ukulele for me. It looks like it would be concert scale. He's going to put on a new spruce soundboard, replace the fretboard, cut the headstock down so it's not so top-heavy, and give me a bridge that's not floating. He may even be able to insert my cartoon armadillo as an inlay (like my avatar, but without the Groucho Marx get-up). The project got delayed for several months, so I don't know yet how it will turn out.

armadillolele2.JPG armdillolele3.jpg
 

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