The heaviest saprano ever?

Hello everyone,
My name is Paul and this is my first post. I’ve been lurking in the background mining this great resource for a few years and the time has come to offer something back. When I thought of scratch building my first uke a couple of years ago there was a thread attracting a bit of attention about how much effect the density of the side and back timber has on the sound of soprano. I was surprised at the diversity of expert opinion and this got me wondering, so my original plan was to build two identical bodies of very different timbers, both with spruce soundboards and find out for myself. This evolved into a plan to build 3 ukes which I finished last week as shown in the photos. As to the title of this thread, at 512grams (17.9 ounces) the mulga uke (dark red/brown) must go down as the heaviest soprano around. The very dark (almost black) one is Wenge and the pale one is English cherry. All three are built close to the Grellier plans which detail the Martin O size (I think) soprano.
Specifications:
• Sound board: Sitka spruce on mulga/wenge ukes, the cherry uke is all cherry, all 1.5mm thick. All one piece. Radiused to 25’
• Sides: all 1.6mm thick
• Backs: all 1.5mm thick book matched. Radiused to 15’.
• Necks: all same as side/back timber. Headstock- scarf joint. Neck / Body joint dowelled (those wonderful dovetails were a bridge too far for me at this stage)
• Fingerboard: Black mulga, frets pretty gold stuff from LMI.
• Tuners: Gotoh
• Bridge: Curly mulga
• Strings: worth browns
• Binding: Tortoise shell celluloid from ebay (China). The mulga uke got blinged up with paua purfling front and back. All have a thin black/white fibre line (LMI) inside and below the tortoise shell.
• Rosette: African Blackwood, English Sycamore, Paua ring.
• Finish: sprayed nitro
• Weight: Mulga 512g 17.9oz, Wenge 447g 15.7oz, Cherry 383g 13.5oz.

A word on the timbers, mulga is a desert acacia here in Australia which is massively heavy, very fine grained and beautifully red/ brown often with tight curl, usually only used for fret boards and bridges. Wenge is an African legume (go figure), heavy, black and brown striped and very open grained. There has been a bit chat about his timber on the forum lately and I didn’t have any problems with toxicity but the splinters are spiteful. I found a lump in a salvage yard that looked like it come from a crate. What it was doing in Australia I don’t know. English cherry, all I can say is that I bought a couple of big slabs at an auction 20 years ago that had been imported into Aus and this is the first time I have used it. As to the choice of these three timbers: it was stuff I had laying around.

To put the densities (kg/m3) of these timbers into perspective I plucked these figures off the web. The first number is air dried, the second one is basic density which I guess means totally dry.

Mulga 1200 / 1025 (Yes ,I think this means it sinks in water even when bone dry)
Ebony 1150 / 890
Wenge 870 / 720
Hard maple 710 / 560
English (European) Cherry 620 / 480

The ukes are heavy but I don’t see it as a problem and it is kind of nice to have a bit of inertia to push against. They definitely don’t feel like a butterfly just waiting to fly out of your lap when you are playing.
So, for those of you that have waded through my waffle the answer to the question about the influence of the body timber density..............................not much, at least to my untrained ears. The cherry is a little bit warmer, surprised it wasn’t more because the cherry soundboard was like rubber compared to the stiff spruce of the other two. The mulga is my favourite, good sustain, balance between high and low notes but very loud. Wenge, a bit twangy with some weird harmonic thing going on (that only I can hear apparently, other people who have played it don’t know what I’m on about). But the differences are slight.

I do have a history in decorative woodcraft (making boxes) but these are the first musical instruments that I have made apart from a stewmac kit soprano which I would recommend as a great place to start. I couldn’t have built these without all those who generously share their knowledge through the UU luthier’s forum. So what to next, I was thinking of making a pair of identical sopranos, one out of Koa and the other out of Tasmanian Blackwood to see if there is any difference to the ear but from what I have learnt from this project I don’t expect much if any.
If you are anywhere in the world and fancy playing with some mulga or anywhere in Australia and want help with luthier timber try Tim Spittle at http://www.australiantonewoods.com/ He’s a good guy to know and very helpful and generous with his time. Thanks for reading my post
Cheers
Paul
PS I see that I can only attach 5 pictures per post so I'll drop a few more in a separate post

a few more pictures

a few more pictures

I'm not a fan of wenge on small objects. That huge grain just doesn't do it for me. The mulga looks lovely and that cherry is just stunning. Would love to hear some sound clips sometime. Very nice work - and welcome to UU. It's always fun seeing what variations luthiers come up with (and even educational at times).

Beautiful work. I think you did an amazing job. Your conclusions just go to show that the sweat and care of the builder has a lot more to do with the sound of the instrument than one wood over another. Very interesting post, thank you...
Bill

and finally............

and finally a couple pictures. If you are thinking of making your first uke, stop putting it off and make a start. You will find the time and learn the skills. The process is totally engrossing. Just don't start with a dead line because that just leads to stress. This project took me about 18 months and I might have spent about 100 hours on each uke but I might have invested 1000 hours making some probably over the top jigs and tools.

cheers

Paul

Lovely. I don't really care about weight as much as looks, tone, and playability. I'm not really a soprano person, but wouldn't mind owning any one of those three. Nice job and thanks for sharing the results of your research and the pics.

A few UWC back I help a cast iron soprano. 20 lb I think. SO that would be the heaviest soprano in the world

Absolutely stunning for the first three ukes from any builder! In the third pic of the first post there seems to be a slight bellying of the top, judging by the reflection of the strings. Is that so, or is the camera playing tricks? The bridge is a bit higher than I would use on a soprano, but again: stout work! Your attention to detail is above and beyond mine.

Best / Sven

Hi Paul! Your ukes are absolutely STUNNING!!!!!!! I love the beautiful decorative rosettes and love you choice of dynamic beautifully grained woods! I would love to hear a sound clip too!
My first uke build is also a Stew Mac kit, I went a little wild on the decorative elements but that suits my taste well! (It turned out to be a nice playable instrument and I grown very fond of it!)
Keep up the amazing work and if you have a website of a Facebook page let me know!
All the best to you!
Nancy

They look fantastic. I would think you could lower the weight considerably on all three by using something like Spanish Cedar for the necks. My cherry ukes with cherry necks are by far the heaviest of all my builds. They also have the longest sustain, though, so if you're into that, well, there you go.

They all look so nice. Who cares what they weigh....sound trumps all

Hi Sven,
thanks for the kind words, this is all very encouraging and I want to rush back to my workshop and start some more.---- Earth to Paul, Earth to Paul--- you have lots of jobs to do around the house first. Good pick up with the weird string reflection, not sure what caused that because the sound boards are all slightly domed in the correct direction. For those wondering what a 25' radius equates to on a soprano soundboard it is about 1 mm in the centre. I was thinking that the fret boards at 3.5mm looked proportionally a bit thick and because there seems to be plenty of timber under the fret tang I had a mental note to look at 3 mm next time which would make for a thinner bridge. I think the bridges ended up about 7.5mm thick. How thick do you make yours Sven? I suppose the other way is to thin the bridge and make the saddle a bit taller.

cheers

Paul

On my latest soprano I have a fretboard of 2.9 mm (aimed for 3, I think) and the saddle is 6 mm. I dome my tops around the same as you and the saddle is between 10 and 11 mm above the top. It's slanted backwards by 15 degrees.

And when I measured this morning, of course the top had relaxed a bit so it's flatter above the bridge! On some sopranos I've put a short bar at the centerline, sitting across the bridge patch. Maybe that's something I should do on more tops, so far I've used it on the ones that weren't especially stiff.

Oh well, you live and learn and unlearn dontcha.

The Scott Antes drawing..gives the fret board thickness at 2.3mm (.090" )and the bridge hight at 6.4mm (.250") ... the lower the bridge/saddle the less the strain will be on the top.

Wonderful builds PAul. Glad to see Australian woods in action! Keep 'em coming!

Hi bil,

thanks for the kind words and support. Very encouraging. I might do one out of mineritchi or lace sheoak one day but koa and blackwood next.

cheers

Paul