I started some serious spring cleaning yesterday and found myself making one of three decisions. Keep, burn or sell. while sorting thru a stack of stuff I found two electric body blanks from years ago. I had forgotten about them, they were weights on some spruce stock, keeping it from warping in the changing weather. They are 1.75 thick Basswood with flame maple tops. After a short look, I decided to throw them into the burn pile… about a half hour later I had an idea picked the bodies out of the scrapp pile and asked myself
“I wonder if I could lay out a concert body in there somewhere?”
I laid the concert template on the blank and sure enough we have electric ukulele body blanks. not wanting to completely abandon my first decision, traced my profile, cut out the body shape and threw what was left over back in the burn pile.
so now what to do… I’ve had plenty of experience with electric guitars, but there really is not an Electric Ukulele version of electric guitar hardware… like bridges and pickups. And no! you can not, nor should you use an electric guitar pickup on a uke, it just does not look right.
so I made a phone call to the Grosh Guitar company in Colorado. Last century Don and I worked together at Valley Arts USA. A small electric guitar company. he makes awesome sounding pickups for his guitars, and I figured he was my best shot at having something specific made. I ended up having a conversation with the guy that would eventually take my place at Valley Arts after leaving to go to work at the factory in San Diego.
for 20 minutes, we talked about tone, size and the feasibility of this project. it’s embryonic, but growing… and it will be… Tonally Awesome.
