My first build.

M

MountainUker

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Waterval Boven South Africa
So I'm overwintering on a small rock in the middle of the South Atlantic and had a go at building something. A bad knee has stranded me on base so cabin fever has to be dealt with. Concert scale electric slide ukulele, tone and volume control, open C tuning. Electronics are an old humbucker pickup and pots from my 90's Epiphone SG left over from a refit a while back. Didn't have an input jack and can't really get anything here so the cable is wired into the pots. Wood is a section of pine roof beam that was sanded and waxed with beeswax(bootwax). Other bits mostly sourced from the rubbish pile in the workshop. Crude and rude but it stays in tune and the bridge is floating so intonation can be adjusted and is good. It is not fancy but I had a good time building it and I am making a lot of noise with it.:Dm_IMG_1518.jpg
 
You sure don't see that everyday. :cheers: Any chance of a sound sample? How does the pine contribute to the tone? :p
 
I love it. You have it all. Anything else would just be fluff... And you can turn it over and use it for a cutting board. Good job.
 
Kudos to you for making the most of the items on hand to create something new and useful!

Also, what are you using for the tuning pegs? Can we get a closeup photo of that part? Looks interesting :)
 
Here are 2 more pics, one "in progress and the other the tuning pegs. These had me scratching my head a little but in the end I went for a simple and maybe not so elegant solution. Ground down the heads of 6mm bolts and tapped some wiring lugs onto them . You wrap the string around the bolt a few times and then take it end through the hole in the lug and tension them up, friction does the rest. In retrospect a smaller diameter bolt would have been better as the tuning is very sensitive but it does stay in tune. Sound clips to follow soon. m_IMG_1554.jpgm_P1120141.jpg
 
The action looks really high with the height of your right-angle-bracket-nut. How difficult is it to play? I'll go one step beyond sound clips - I'd like to see video! :)
 
Well with a slide it's easy to play, chose to build a slide to avoid having to make frets which is way beyond my skill level. Will try to post something soon but have a really slow satellite uplink.
 
After a fair bit of faffing and trying to upload soundclips I gave up and made a short video. Had to downsize a fair bit to get it to go through our connection but here it is, all the way from Gough Island.

 
"This Video is Private" is the message I get when trying to play it.
-------------------Edit----------------------------------------
Working fine now. I Like it!
 
Last edited:
Love it. That's a great sound, and looks like it was a fun "cook with what you've got in the kitchen" kind of project.
-- se
 
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