Year: 2014

Well, I tried the changes I talked about in the last post - plus a few others. I made a new nut and floating bridge to space the strings out a little further, lowered the action a bit, and crowned the bridge a lot more sharply. Those changes definitely made the difference! It sounds much better now. Surprisingly loud for such a small instrument, too. All the strings ring nice and clear now. I've got another 'travel size' ukulele coming together in the workshop as we speak - a wooden one this time. It remains to be seen which will be better suited to traveling with me. I may be taking a work-related trip in the near future, so I will bring one of them along with me as a test.

This project was an attempt to build a 'travel-sized' (soprano) banjolele that I could take with me when I go backpacking or when I travel for work. it takes the same aluminum cake pan approach as the larger banjolele I made last year, only this time I painted the pans black. The neck is made of walnut. On the back of the resonator I painted a sort of octopus/kraken thing - it's got ten legs, so if I call it an octopus someone is going to call me out on it (heh). It still needs a few tweaks - I'm getting a few buzzes on a couple of strings, and I think I need to crown my saddle a little more sharply to get the strings to ring clean. But with a few adjustments it should be good to go!