Looking for Detail Plan of Resophonic Ukulele

Hello all,

We've been busy this week working on several drawings. We have had several customers ask us about Banjo Ukulele necks and Resophonic necks. For us to make these with the cnc we have to basically draw a complete 3d plan of the instrument. I'm attaching a Concert Banjo Uke for you guy's to see what we do first.

I'm in need of a good detailed plan of a Resophonic Ukulele instrument if anyone has one they would share. ( otherwise we start from scratch and use the Resophonic guitars we have as basic building blocks while trying to adapt to the parts that are available in the market place ...... not opposed to doing this but it takes longer ).

God Bless.

Kevin

Kevin

The neck drawings really look good and you can count on me as first in line to pick one up.

Sorry, I can't find reso-uke plans anywhere. I'm going to check things like Google Patents.

Kevin B

Reso ukes have been around for many years but I don't think there is one plan that is the standard. Different ideas on pot size, cone sizes and depths are unique to each builder. IMO you should design your reso uke around the cones and hardware available, unless you want make all the parts yourself. Good luck.

Thank you guys for the response. I have located a source for the metal parts and I have purchased an old 1930's instrument to reverse engineer.

The popularity of both the banjo ukulele and the resophonic instrument would probably increase if there where a better source of information and availability of plans, parts and pieces. While doing the banjo ukulele design (the one's we recently drew) we discovered there wasn't a basic universal plan.

Part of the fun of building for me, is experimenting but if you have a standard from which to work where you know given certain characteristics the instrument will sound fairly close to what one might expect. We personally find it easier to deviate from the original design and see no reason to reinvent the entire wheel. Hopefully we can offer some standard directions where we can offer parts and plans to match both style instruments.

This may take several months to put all this into place but at the present time that is our plan and direction. Any suggestions to try and rules not to break would be helpful, we know some of you guys have built several of these instruments. We've built several banjo's and know that tweaking even small things can make a fairly large change sometimes in the sound. We haven't built any resophonic instruments although we have drawn several detailed plans and carry a few parts... so this is much newer ground.

Thank you again, Blessings,

Kevin

Make the body of the reso out of ply - it has to be acoustically inert. You don't need dowel stick technology.

Pete,

If I understand what your saying is simply?

This is what we have on the guitars... but if I'm understanding, your saying I don't need all this?

Kevin

No - that is far too overbuilt and complicated... I'm making some more soon so will probably fi,m the process.

Just a follow-up.

Didn't have anyone respond with a lot of information, so we purchased and old commercial instrument found on eBay and began reverse engineering. The difficult part for the design is the neck and the extension bar/rod in the body we have now conquered this and will move on to the rest of the instrument. Thought we'd share our progress.

Blessings,

Kevin

An entirely redundant design feature that over complicates an otherwise fairly straight forward design.

Liam,

I appreciate the feed back but can you tell me my this complicates things? ( not trying to be smart just want to learn )

This is a 2 part process where the neck and interior brace line up and mate but are two separate parts. It allows the neck a connection point and a means by which to attach it to the body which you have to do somehow regardless of the design. It takes according to the computer about 20-25 to cut this entire setup from solid stock ( haven't cut one yet but computer estimate is usually fairly accurate ). The other thing is that I have now looked at 3 different vintage instruments and all three had similar designs. The inside brace serves as a fret board under brace and the rear serves as a reinforcement for the strings attachment and the post underneath.

Please elaborate? (I'm all about making it as simple as possible but I would like the instrument to last 25- 50 years and beyond if possible.)

Blessings,

Kevin

Dowel stick is not needed. Bolt on neck joint will work just as well.

Dowel stick is not needed. Any regular neck joint works fine. I use a spanish heel.

The Dowel stick is redundant. By definition, adding it in over complicates things.