Uke with a Compass?

Jerryc41

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Del Rey performed at the Funky Frets Uke Fest over the weekend, and she mentioned something about a uke with a compass design or logo. I'm not sure if she meant on the headstock or the sound hole. Any idea what that might be?

She played a nice thin little travel uke of some kind.
 
It may have been one of the older Kala pocket ukes, or soprano travel ukes. I think some of them actually had a working compass built into the head stock.
 
Compass Rose is my guess. I got these off of Reverb from an old Mim's listing. Mim used to carry his work, but she doesn't have them on her site anymore. This is just one variant of his compass theme.

Compass Rose1.jpgCompass Rose2.jpg

They always get excellent reviews.
 
Compass Rose is my guess. I got these off of Reverb from an old Mim's listing. Mim used to carry his work, but she doesn't have them on her site anymore. This is just one variant of his compass theme.

View attachment 112637View attachment 112638

They always get excellent reviews.

You're probably correct on that, Kenn, as Jerry's reference (now that I look more closely!) was apparently to a compass design or logo, rather than the "functioning" built-in compass I had in mind!
 
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Is this what Del's backpacker looked like? (this is a Fred Shields, photo from his FB page)

backpacker.jpg
 
I have one of the first soprano travel uses & it HAS a compass imbedded in head
I only have one question.. why? Did not know this is a thing.. off all the things..
also only pegheads would work else wouldn’t the metal interfere?
 
I only have one question.. why? Did not know this is a thing.. off all the things..
also only pegheads would work else wouldn’t the metal interfere?

As to why; well, to my mind at least, adding a compass to a travel Uke kind of underlines the purpose of that Uke and differentiates it from other or ordinary Ukes. I have a well worn Uke that’s for outdoor use and traveling, I’ve a mind to add a compass to it.

I looked at your comment about compasses reading incorrectly next to metal and thought it correct, but as ever things ain’t that simple. (Edit. Steel is a form of metal but so is brass and it’s not magnetic. The term metal and steel are often incorrectly interchanged and I slipped into that error too. Steel and Iron are magnetic but some other metals, like brass and aluminium are not)

Taking a button compass (mine’s 20 mm in diameter) I found magnetic north and then placed the compass next to my steel music stand, as expected the compass found the stand more attracting than magnetic north and hence gave a false reading :-( . I then placed the same compass on my Soprano’s headstock, centrally between all the tuners, the lower amount of metal (Edit. ‘metal’ should read ‘steel’) in the tuners (compared to the stand) gave minimal if any distortion of the compass reading: as I horizontally rotated the headstock the compass dial rotated to point towards magnetic north. That’s just what I found, but YMMV.

Edit. If you want to see difflection of a compass then place it next to your computer, I was surprised when I placed one next to a small battery powered laptop.
 
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I'd like to see someone develop a compass that pointed to geographical north. That would require GPS, though, and that would make the compass pretty large.

Not true. Many compasses have an adjustment for local magnetic declination, which is easy enough to look up (e.g., https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/declination.shtml)

I use one of these all the time: https://www.brunton.com/products/conventional-pocket-transit-compass-quad?variant=36245973458
It was designed in the 1890's and has remained basically unchanged. The one I use is over 50 years old.
 
As to why; well, to my mind at least, adding a compass to a travel Uke kind of underlines the purpose of that Uke and differentiates it from other or ordinary Ukes. I have a well worn Uke that’s for outdoor use and traveling, I’ve a mind to add a compass to it.

I looked at your comment about compasses reading incorrectly next to metal and thought it correct, but as ever things ain’t that simple. Taking a button compass (mine’s 20 mm in diameter) I found magnetic north and then placed the compass next to my steel music, as expected the compass found the stand more attracting than magnetic north and hence gave a false reading :-( . I then placed the same compass on my Soprano’s headstock, centrally between all the tuners, the lower amount of metal in the tuners (compared to the stand) gave minimal if any distortion of the compass reading: as I horizontally rotated the headstock the compass dial rotated to point towards magnetic north. That’s just what I found, but YMMV.

Metal won't throw the compass off unless it's iron bearing.
 
Metal won't throw the compass off unless it's iron bearing.

I’ve will alter my post to correct my inadvertent and incorrect interchangeable use of the terms steel and metal. Some stainless steels are not magnetic either, but basically if it’s made from iron ore (so cast iron and steel) it’s 99% likely to be magnetic (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/magnetic. Capable of being attracted by or acquiring the properties of a magnet, ‘steel is magnetic’).

Edit. In case anyone would like a photo of a Kala Travel Uke with built in Compass here’s an old Amazon listing for them: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kala-Thinline-Compass-Soprano-Ukulele/dp/B00F35RQW2. They did Concert and Tenor versions too and they are also listed by Amazon.
 
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