Home stretch for Glyph!

I just got an update from Dave Means last night about my Glyph mezzo-soprano. It sounds like we're a couple of weeks from completion. Things are looking pretty good for my "mini-Jake" ukulele. It's been a while since I've bought a uke, and I can honestly say I haven't felt any UAS for quite a while now, but I'm getting a little excited to finally get my hands on this one. After all, it is three and a half years in the making. I guess I got to get going on getting proficient on a new song so I can post a halfway decent video with it once it arrives.

Anyway, onto the pics:

Fine tuning the fit of the neck to the body


Pressing in the frets


The fretted board


Gluing on the fretboard


Gluing on the headstock overlay


Drilling the holes for the tuner shafts


Cleaning up the headstock slots


Ramping the headstock slots


Test-fitting the neck


The uke after fitting the neck


Close-up of the headstock (the tuners are not screwed in yet)

Glyph Update!

It's been a while since I've been able to post the progress of my Glyph, but today I received another set of pictures from Dave Means, so I can finally make another post.

Looking at this set of pictures, it dawned on my just how custom this one is going to be. It has the Chinese character of my last name in two places (headstock & tail graft) and my initial on the fretboard. It's safe to say that even if I wanted to sell it someday (which is, of course, not an option!) , I most likely won't be able to. But that's OK, because this ukulele is meant to be a family heirloom anyway.

Dave mentioned that he is starting work on slotted headstock. Once that's done, I think all the parts of the ukulele will be complete. Then it will be onto finishing. Since Dave uses French polish for the finish on his ukes, it will take quite some time before it is done. I guess I'll be lucky to see this uke by the fall. But I'm nothing if not patient. Besides, I've waited over 3 years for this uke, what's another few months?

Anyway, without further ado, here are the pics:

Preparing to rout the binding/purfling ledges


Inlaying the abalone purfling


Spraying the ebony binding with water in preparation for bending


The bindings coming out of the bender


Installing the top bindings


The body after sanding and wiping with one coat of shellac to reveal spots requiring more sanding



Slotting the fretboard


Thicknessing the fretboard


Cutting out the Glyph inlay with a jeweler’s saw


Cutting out the custom inlay for the headstock


Experimenting with positioning the inlays on the ebony headstock overlay


Binding the fretboard


The fretboard after binding


Experimenting with the position of the monogram inlay (I must say, Dave did a great job with this inlay design. I wanted something similar to Jake Shimabukuro's "JS" logo on the fretboard but with my initials and I had no idea what it should look like. I really like what Dave came up with here)


Routing the inlay cavity


Radiusing the fretboard


The fretboard after inlaying the position markers and sanding them flush


Well, that's it for this round of Glyph progress pictures. Looks like my mini-Jake Shimabukuro homage ukulele is now coming along nicely. It will be cool when it is finally completed. When the next round of progress pics show up, I'll be sure to post it right away. Stay tuned! I know I am!

Yeah Baby!

Well, my son was born a day after I made the last post, so I've been busy with the new addition to the family. His name is Logan and in his 3 weeks of existence he's already been to Vegas!

Anyway he's been a pretty good baby, pretty easy to care for. I've tried to play the ukulele for him a few times, but I guess it is too early to have an effect on him. Maybe he'll grow up to like it (or he might think daddy is too noisy with his little guitar). After having two girls it's a fairly new experience with a boy. It's been fun so far and hopefully when he grows up we can have more father-son type of fun (playing ball, ukulele, passing down my "guy" stuff to him, etc...)

Little babies grow fast and as you can see from the picture, he's about to outgrow the size of my DaSilva. Haha! I hope you guys enjoy the quick picture.

In other ukulele happenings, I think I've figured out how to play Jake's "Trapped". Pretty simple tune really. When I get a chance I'll try to post a video or something.

Thanks for reading!

Checking in

I didn't really realize that I have not posted in almost a month and a half. I guess part of it was that the copyright infringement thing left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. But as it usually goes when the weather heats up, I tend to spend less time on this blog. I also don't really have much to post about at the moment. I have not had UAS for a while, and my Glyph is not done yet. I'm not sure when I will have new pictures of the Glyph but it may be a while as Dave Means ran into some health issues. I hope he is doing better now. I can wait as long as it takes for that uke. I mean, it's already been three years right?

I will also have a new baby boy any time now, so that will mean even less time to post in the near future. We did get a new HD camera not too long ago so maybe I'll try posting some video sometime down the road. So it will be slow going around the Ghetto for a while. It does appear that there are people checking out the contents of this blog though, so that's cool. Hopefully some of the info here is still helpful to people who just found this blog.

I'm still playing my ukes on a daily basis. I'm a uker for life baby! I just figured out one of the songs from Bruce Shimabukuro's album called "On My Way", so that's pretty cool. I have not been learning new songs at a good clip, so hopefully I can get that going a little more. But perhaps that will be a little difficult with a new baby...

Anyway, keep having fun strumming the ukulele. I know I am!

Hey, I received a copyright infringement notice on Youtube!

Well, I guess the video I posted on Youtube playing an instrumental of Desperado is deemed copyright infringing and I have received a warning. So I must take it down (or maybe it has been deleted already). Apparently Cass County Music is cracking down on covers of their music. I have no idea how many of the covers I've posted are copyright infringing, and to be honest I don't really give a crap. So if one day all of my uploaded videos are gone it's probably because Youtube shut me down for more copyright infringement. Since pretty much everything I've posted are covers, the possibility of that happening is actually kind of high. I've always found this type of crackdowns puzzling because in my opinion these types of covers do more to help the stupid record companies than hurt them. I mean, there are music that I only went out to buy after seeing them covered on Youtube and/or other places online. But I guess there are stupid people running record companies out there so what can I do?

Anyway, hopefully my Youtube account doesn't get shut down in the future, but if it does, you know what happened.

Lineup update. Finally!

It's been quite some time since I last posted a lineup update. I finally found some time to take some pictures. Let's see, since the last update, I've shipped out the Honu concert, the Uklectic, the Fender Koa Nohea, the Kanile'a super tenor, and the LoPrinzi mahogany tenor. Additions since then are the Mainland slotted headstock concert and Ko'olau CE-1. Hmmmm, as you can see, I actually managed to keep the UAS rate in the negative! Woohoo! OK, so no one cares....

Anyway, there's a Glyph mezzo soprano still being built, but I don't anticipate adding any more ukes in the short term. In fact, a couple more will surely find their way out of my collection before I add any more.

Below are some group shots and back shots for your viewing pleasure.

Group back shot.


Sopranos. These are likely going to be the only 2 sopranos I have for quite a while.


Back of the sopranos.


Tenors.


Back of the tenors.


Concerts.


Back of the concerts.

Cognito Town

While I was in Oahu at the beginning of March, I took a ukulele lesson with Bruce Shimabukuro. He taught me a song called Cognito Town. He went over the main picking parts and the chords with me during the lesson. I thought it was a pretty easy song to learn and picked it up within the one hour lesson. Later during that trip I decided to buy Bruce's album called Incognito that had this song. When I heard it from his actual album, I realized that he taught me the song at about a quarter of the speed he played it on the CD. It also had some drums and bass parts too. I decided to try and learn it at the speed it was played on the CD and also the few extra parts Bruce didn't cover during the lesson. The end result is what you see below.

For this video, I played the chords on the Ko'olau CE-1 and recorded it using Audacity. I then played it back on the laptop speaker during the video and played the picking parts over those chords. To be honest the sound quality coming out of the speakers was pretty crappy and while I picked the melody, I thought it didn't sound too hot. But I think after it's picked up by the camera's microphone combined with the picking, it actually sounded like an OK approximation of the song on the video. I think. But hey, you don't get to learn a song from the guy who wrote it very often right?

Anyway, I think Bruce's CD is pretty good, and if you want to check out Cognito Town with the full ensemble with bass and drums, be sure to track down a copy of Incognito.

Glyph update II

Dave Means has sent me another batch of build pictures for my Glyph mezzo soprano. Looks like it's coming along pretty good now. I have no idea when it will be completed, but I guess it's done when it's done. Onto the pics!

The finished back.


Roughing out the Spanish cedar neck.


Cutting slot for carbon fiber reinforcement rod.

Gluing the carbon fiber rod and neck attachment barrel nut.


Cutting out the tail graft inlay with a jeweler's saw.

Inlaying the character onto a piece of ebony.

Test fitting the tail graft.

Gluing the back linings.

Roughing out the neck on a band saw.

Sanding the sides and linings on a 12"-radius dish to match the dome of the back.

Routing the rosette channel.

Cutting out the soundhole.

Inlaying the rosette.

Sanding the arch in the bottom of the soundboard braces.

Gluing the soundboard braces & rosewood bridge patch.

Notching the back linings to received the ends of the back braces.

Gluing on the back.

The neck after carving and rough sanding. (note: this will be a slotted headstock)

Profiling the soundboard braces with a finger plane.

Ramping the brace ends with a paring chisel.

The finished soundboard.

Gluing in the top linings.

So that's it for now. Looks like most of the parts are complete or nearing completion. The fretboard will have a Jake Shimabukuro style inlay of my initials and the rough design by Dave looked great to me. This should end up being a pretty cool little uke.

Stay tuned!