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It has been well established in the lutherie world that what a builder does with the wood is far more important than the wood itself. Hence pallet guitars, archtops from construction grade pine etc. I have used all kinds of wood for fretboards and necks and never noticed any appreciable...

I have been thinking about making a 5 string bari, tuned ADGBE. The bari body would handle the low A much better than a guitalele. Brad

I use the Peterson IStroboSoft app on my iPhone

The body resonance I refer to is the frequency of the note you get when you tap the top of a ukulele (without the strings). If you want to change this note, you have several choices. Thinning the top or back will lower the note. Enlarging the sound hole will raise the note. And enlarging the...

The cubic volume of the box is one of many variables that contribute to the overall timbre of the instrument. Generally speaking a larger box will have a lower body resonance frequency (darker sound) and a smaller box will have a higher frequency body resonance (brighter sound). Keep in mind...

Aloha Bob, I have the book and read it many years ago. His methods are built around having a Peterson strobe tuner. So if you have such a tuner, I would recommend getting the book, if not, I would not bother. I have talked to Roger at a couple of the GAL conventions and I like the idea of...

Stand by, after I get the design fully tweaked, a baritone will be in the works

Thanks very much everyone for your interest and encouragement. And a big mahalo nui loa to EDW for the link and to hands-on-Ianzon for their thoughtful comments. That kind of feedback is invaluable to me and greatly appreciated. In that vane, a very common option on archtop instruments is a...

It is a 17” tenor scale.

I regret selling the first archtop ukulele I made. It was the first ukulele of that style I had attempted and it was a killer sounding ukulele. I sold it to a manager of a music store in Astoria, who loved it and was a terrific player. I just figured I would make another one. Wrong! Six archtops...

For anyone interested, I see that Dusty Strings website has my archtop ukulele posted. Their pictures are much better than mine, with a nice description of the instrument. To view, go to Dusty Strings, menu/store / ukulele. Brad

Most archtop instruments have tone bars, but they are there to shape the sound and are not structurally necessary. The most common patterns are either X or parallel. Brad

The strings are for D tuning, popular in the twenties. The tension is the amount of pull of a given string when brought up to the proper pitch, useful when comparing string sets.

Years ago a mandolin customer of mine paid me to experiment with different saddle materials. I made saddles out of ebony, rosewood, maple, bone, ivory, brass and aluminum. To be sure, the nut and saddle material will have an effect on the timbre of the instrument. In this case, the best sounding...

Saddle compensation can increase the accuracy of the intonation if done correctly and for a given set of strings. That said, many so called compensated saddles are totally for looks. As for ease of fretting, there are many variables that effect that, such as size of frets, fretboard relief...

Many years ago, when I was still making guitars, I would help the owner of the store that sold my instruments set up guitars when he received a shipment. I took some time to carefully measure the neck profiles of various models. I was surprised by the differences between the necks of identical...

Sorry for the jargon, I mean hot hide glue. It is the best, but not the easiest to use.

As I am on Kauai, I have made a number of instruments entirely out of koa. The nice thing about koa is its natural variability. You can pick very heavy, dense koa for the sides, back and fretboard and lighter less dense for the soundboard and neck. Do keep in mind that building with entirely...

Use Titebond 1 (red cap) or HHG for repairs. Titebond 3 has more creep, does not dry as hard and the fact that it is waterproof only makes future repairs difficult. Brad

I have to admit that I am a little confused with this conversation. In my experience, amplitude and sustain are on opposite ends of the spectrum. There is only so much energy available for sound production with a plucked string. You can have a string vibrate for a longer period of time at a...