Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Glyph is finished!

Well, almost three and a half years after placing an order for the Glyph ukulele on April 4th, 2007, it is finally completed. Dave has sent me the final set of construction pictures and it is set to ship to me at the end of the week. Woohoo!

When I placed that order in 2007, it was only about 2 months after I played a ukulele for the very first time. I was already well on my way to an out of control UAS wild ride that has seen over 20 (maybe even 30) ukuleles pass through my hands to this day. At the time, I recognized that a custom Glyph was quite a bargain and I figured that by the time the ukulele is complete, I'd be somewhat proficient at playing the instrument to justify a nice uke. Now that I think about it, it was quite a big leap of faith. I mean, I was only 2 months into playing the instrument and ordering the Glyph was basically an instant 3 year commitment to playing it. It turned out that sticking with playing the ukulele was never an issue for me, but I could have easily lost interest during the time between order placement and now. Luckily for me, here we are, I'm still addicted to playing the ukulele, and I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of this "mini-Jake" ukulele!

Here are the final set of construction pics:

Leveling the frets


Checking the frets with precision straightedges of different lengths


Dressing the fret ends


Gluing on the bridge


Front of the ukulele after stringing up (Notice the wave shaped bridge to go with the wave at the end of the fretboard)


Back of the ukulele after stringing up

2 comments:

Jon said...

Congrats on the completed uke George! How many does that make now? And what new hobbies have you been pouring your money into now, since you haven't been buying ukes. Watches?

GX9901 said...

Thanks Jon. Yeah, that's the dirty little secret. I have indeed been into watches. However, I already have more than enough ukes to keep me happy (obviously) so it's really kept UAS at bay. Perhaps it will make a comeback, but for now, I'm done with new ukes.

That makes 15 ukes in the collection.:P I'll need to get rid of a couple, I think.

Which uke should I bring on my next trip to Oahu???

What's the maximum you'd spend on a ukulele case for your best uke?

If you could steal one of my ukes, which one would it be???

How curly do you like your koa? (preferably on a uke)

What's the maximum number of ukes a perfectly sane person should have???

Poll: How often do you play the ukulele???

Poll: Which guitar company's approach to ukes do you prefer???

Poll: What's your favorite type of headstock???

Poll: The new basic Collings concert uke (UC-1) sells for about $1k, your reaction is: