Custom 6 string baritone uke

PhilUSAFRet

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That's just a short scale guitar.
eBay. *sigh*

That was my first thought...in fact I figured Phil was having a bit of fun with us. But, look at the bridge pins...it was obviously designed to have the first and third strings as double-courses.

John
 
"No returns, all sales are final" on an $800 instrument of unknown provenance from a seller with two prior transactions? Are there any risk takers out there? ;)
 
It looks to me like it may have been a short scale guitar at one time, but that the (probably not original) nut and what appears to be added bridge pins allow it to be configured as a baritone six-string ukulele. And that doesn't look like koa. It would be fun to play it to see how it sounds, but I wouldn't pay $800 without test driving it first.

Not to hijack the thread, but six-string baritones are the bomb. I have one from Mya-Moe (Gordon says they're underappreciated) and it rocks. Here's Aaron playing mine.

 
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I definitely wouldn't be willing to risk 800 clams on this - I think it's exactly what the seller says it is (other than having what looks like a cedar top) but just because it's what the seller says it is doesn't make it necessarily worth anything.

It was clearly built as a ukulele, though unless someone went to the trouble not only to add two bridge pins but to remove all evidence of holes from where those pins would have been on a guitar. In fact, they would have had to fabricate a whole new bridge, basically, because six pins on a guitar would almost certainly have been installed in a straight line in the wider part of the bridge closest to the saddle. Also, they would have had to fill the 9th fret marker and put in a 10th fret marker.

It does, however, look very much like a ukulele built by someone who made guitars, and quite possibly using their guitar molds/jigs/what have you with little modification (note the width of the bridge, the width of the sound hole, angling of the bridge saddle,m etc.). It was someone, however, who knew enough about ukulele to know about marking the 10th instead of 9th fret...

John
 
John - I had never known that guitars and ukes mark different frets. What is the reason for this? (If there is one...)
 
Hi friends,

I had actually corresponded with the seller, who only remembers it as a gift but that the builder was from pearl city.
 
John - I had never known that guitars and ukes mark different frets. What is the reason for this? (If there is one...)

I don't really know the background - it might just be a tradition thing. It might, however, have resulted from differences in the "western" music and scales typically played on guitars and the Polynesian-flavored music and scales traditionally played on the uke. That's purely a 100% snatched-from-thin-air guess, though. :)

John
 
It doesn't half p*ss me off though!
 
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