A quick uke build!

Have just built another cigar box uke in 2 weeks, even though it's plainer I think it's turned out a little nicer than the first one, I built it to sell it but am happy to play it until some one hands me the cash!

Table Guitars?

I won’t go into too much detail or or indeed rant on about how we feel about our American company closing our highly profitable UK factory down and taking it all over to Delaware you can work that out for your selves! But it does mean I have only two weeks of work left before I'm made redundant and have STILL no new job to go too:( I say work, we stopped production a few weeks back and have been taking apart every thing we have built up bolt by bolt. OK enough negativity. One of the surplus items I have my name on is an old table that our printer stands on, I never noticed till yesterday that it has solid mahogany legs! Enough seasoned timber for four guitar or uke necks! :) That coupled with cigar boxes I have left and the large pine dinning room table top I was given a little while back and despite not having any spare cash a few new instruments are being planned! Watch this space!

My own tune on my home made plywood dulcimer and balsa wood boat.

My ideas get even weirder!

Ok I've gone mad! My new project is......The Dulcisizer! Well it maybe called something else bcz that sound like some kind of home keep fit equipment! The idea is an electric dulcimer controlling a simple monophonic synth so it's melody lines can be mixed in with the electric pickups...Wow the hilly billy's have finaly got electricity!
I'm using the string to fret contact idea and it will be far easier the splitting all the frets into 6 and feed the wires down a guitar neck as I only need to spit them in half and wire to each side (The low D string isn't going to be a controller) I already have the oscilator thanks to my reissue Stylophione stylus organ which is now sporting a 37 way D connector so I can remotly switch the notes. It has the advantage over the old ones of not using resistance to control the pitch and is spot on in tune though it does behave a little oddly when you try to play two notes together! My work mate has GIVEN me a five channel mixer module that he made for his giant modular synth and hasn't used. I now need to make a VCF , ADSR and VCA to make the Stylophones output sound more pleasing, I am currently picking his brains while I have the chance as I am looking for a new job before I am made redundant at the end of August.

All At Sea

The reason why things have been a little quiet on the music front for the last six months.

I helped my church youth group scratch build these radio control yachts. We had great fun making them and are planning to launch them on Wednesday evening on a pool by the beach, it's supposed to be nice a breezy should be fun! See more photos and read more about them here: http://fleetoffootys.blogspot.com/

Short mando guitar demo video.

I've just recorded a short video of my newly refurbished mando guitar played through my Vox ADC 30.I'm very happy with the sound so I think I'll stick with these pickups.I wonder what it would sound like though the rotary speaker?
BTW I'm using my new flip camera! Surprisingly good sound quality don't you think?

Ten down to Nine!

If you've read my review you'd know that even though both of my mando guitars were working after a fashion I certainy wasn't satisfied with them as they stood.
This evening I took the plunge and removed all the strings from both mando guitars, ( all 24 of them!) removed the home made bridge and screwed the nice fully adjustable Gotoh bridge back on to number one mando and once restrung with the original strings (amazingly no breakages!) with very little adjusting it returned back to it’s original chimey sparkly self. It now has a super low action and no buzz, a delight to play! I only had it for a year before I stripped it down so five years later it feels like I’ve got a new instrument! So why didn’t I do this a few years ago? I guess after all that work I didn’t want to admit defeat. I might yet swap the pickups as I seem to have lost that glassy Strat like sound in favour of more emphasis in the mid range but I ‘ll give it some time (but NOT 5 years!) and have yet to try it though my Vox amp. Belive it or not the single coil pickups in my good mando are an old Demarzio super distion humbucker which I split in half, I stuck tiny magnets to the bottom of each pole peice to replace the shared bar magnet! Sounds good so far but I need to try it out on other amps and DI it. It used to sound great through an over driven amp! So what to do with Bluey!? At the very least I have two spare pick ups and 12 mini tuners! I might sort out the neck and use it to make a cigar box mando. Maybe if I made a longer scale “through” neck and slotted it through a routed a channel in the body it would bypass the lack of resonance that body has. I’m thinking it might make a nice lap steel guitar or some kind of electric dulcimer anyway no hurry!