Hello again,
thanks for the kind and supportive comments.
This is the first time I have made concerts or done a cutaway or a slotted headstock. Happy with how all these things turned out. I got a friend to play all four ukes at me yesterday and I was surprised by the variety of sound. The Mahog has a heap of sustain and the typical warm mid, the spruce is as to be expected brash and loud, the Aus cedar is nicely in the middle but probably my favourite is the blackwood one which has that bell like ring you hear in Koa ukes. All of my favourite ukes have had hardwood tops (Koa, blackwood, maple) because I like that that brittleness in the sound. Just my personal preference, each to there own.
Re: Australian red cedar, correct Robyn I believe it is Toona Cilata. It comes from northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland which is diagonally across Aus from where I live in Perth so I don't know much about it other than it was almost harvested to extinction and is now protected. This stuff must have come from sustainable harvest of storm damage. I used it for the first time last year on a pair of weissendorn and dulcimer soundboards and loved it. The colour is a lot more interesting than Western Red Cedar and this glows under a finish. The surface is a bit harder than WRC so it is more forgiving to work with. Lovely sound in the middle of the spectrum I guess.
Re: Nut spacing, hi GF2, the nut is 36.2mm wide and the string spacing is 10.3mm which makes the outer strings 31mm apart . This puts the outer stings 2.6mm from the edge of the fretboard which having played these for a few weeks is actually a bit small.
Re: Sales. Ive made 49 instruments ( almost all ukes) over 8 years and so far haven't sold any of them. I give them to friends and musicians and host a charity raffle once a year. I've been lucky to have a well paying job so I can do this but an impending redundancy has made me revaluate this. So a couple of these might be available for sale to the local market just so that my hobby starts to cover its own costs.
If any of you happen to be in Western Australia I will be exhibiting these ukes and some of the other instruments that I have made at a string instrument festival (strings attached festival) in Margaret River over the weekend of the Oct 8/9/10. I will also be giving a talk about uke making and demonstrating fox bending. Although the music events are ticketed the exhibition is free so stop by and say hello.
If you want some more info about my instruments or techniques I started a blog a few years ago
https://jarrahdalestringinstrumentcompany.wordpress.com/ Its a bit of a mess but every step I use to build my instruments is there somewhere, use the search box
cheers
Paul
