Uke bass

[Shovel]

So where did you order tuners from? Are there any other options besides ashbory tuners as they seem to be hard to come by.

 

[mrbell321]

I ordered them straight from road toad. Almost 3x the cost of the ashborys, but 3 things:
Very nice quality
Supporting a small business
Actually available

 

[aquamentus]

Now I want to do this.

 

[mrbell321]

By far the hardest part up to now was finding tuners... got that sorted thought.
The next most irritating thing is how thin and inconsistent the top ply was. If you don't sand, it's not a problem.
I'm doing a couple more coats of tung oil and then it's basically just assembly.
I'm nearly done and I'll post pics when I can.

 

[mrbell321]

I'll post some pics when I get a chance, but I'm nearly finished. I had it playable yesterday, but had to pull the strings off to finish a few things.
Before anyone else dives in, here's what I've learned:
1) The headstock on the rogue is too thick for the Road Toad tuners. I should have sanded more. I think it will be OK, but I have probably 1 turn of thread actually engaged
2) The top-ply of the Rogue is WAY thin. I've got a relic'd look going because just to get the color and some glue residue off took my through.
3) Not entirely sure the neck will stand up to the string tension. I was getting a bit of bowing and really high action, but that was before I filed the nut and bridge down.
4) Think about pickups early. I'm was going to use an under-string piezo pickup, but that does not fit well. It's about .5mm shorter than the slot. That's not enough to put a bridge piece on top of, nor will it work w/o one. I will probably end up w/ slivers of wood underneath to make it functional.
5) Plan for how to attach the strings. I had to get my wife w/ small hands to feed the strings though the soundboard. I know u-basses have an access panel on the back, but I don't have a good way to do that. She had to wedge her hand through the soundhole and almost got stuck.
6) Silver Rumblers are sticky(compared to Chromes,anyway). Might get used to that.

EDIT: I said Thunderguts originally... they're Silver Rumblers... and they're not very silver either, but I wasn't expecting them to be.

 

[mrbell321]

Small update, no pics again, tho.
Last night I did everything but the final mounting of the preamp. I was expirementing with under-string vs soundboard pickups. I went w/ under-string. The soundboard had a nice round sound, but was too undefined and muddy compared to the understring.
Somewhat annoyingly, the slot for the bridge(where the pickup goes) is directly over the soundbar. So when drilling through the soundboard for the pickup wire, I had to oversize the hole quite a bit to get through the 1" thickness of the soundbar. I hope that makes some sense.
And as I mentioned, the slot isn't deep enough or is too deep for the pickup. I put a toothpick under the piezo to space it up. Bit of a hack, I guess, but it seems to work well. I'll try to get pictures and soundclips this weekend.

 

[Remyd]

Is there a difference between the brands of those rubber strings?

 

[mrbell321]

Thunderguts and Silver Rumblers are both made by Aquilla. I've never used Thunderguts. I've played, in the store, a standard Kala Ubass w/ those strings(Pahoehoe?) and they didn't seem as sticky. Supposedly the Silver Rumblers settle in quicker and have a clearer tone. But i don't have first has experience.

 

[JonathanF]

I don't have any process pics of the making of my bass uke, but i thought I'd share my results here with you anyways.

I used a 1/2 sized classical guitar, mahogany body and neck, spruce top and rosewood fingerboard for my conversion. I have also installed a piezo pickup under the bridge saddle and equipped it with a 4-band EQ.

As you can see it now features the aquila thunderguts which I didn't find as sticky as most people say:

I have used the original classical guitar tuners:

And a string-thru body with a rear string feeding mechanism:

It has a cheapo piezo pickup with a generic preamp, which I think all in all is well installed and sounds pretty great:

If I were to build another one I think I'd go again in the 1/2-sized classical rather than a baritone uke as I think quality instruments for rather cheap would be much easier to find. I'm pretty happy with my results and it's actually quite louder than I expected and can be hard when played acoustically against a classical guitar.

 

[mrbell321]

That looks pretty nice. I would have thought the rear hole(huh-huh) would be problematic... tho now, I can't really say why. Acoustic volume? Maybe, if I ever decide to restring, I'll go ahead w/ that.