Chad's Red Cedar and Malaysian Blackwood
Tenor
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Click on pictures to enlarge.
This ukulele has a Western Red Cedar top and Malaysian Blackwood back and sides with curly Koa binding.
This piece of cedar sounded like a bell when you tapped it. I knew it would make a great uke.
The Malaysian Blackwood is actually a type of ebony (as opposed to African Blackwood which is a rosewood). Because of the stiffness and the weight of the wood, I made it quite a bit thinner than my normal back and sides.
The koa binding is actually very curly and looks great as a border between the cedar and the Blackwood. (I need to work on my photography skills)
The Blackwood on the back and sides polished up so shiny that it was actually difficult to take pictures without getting my mirror image in the picture.
The accents are a mallee burl that has a little more orange in it than some of my burls. It went nicely with the koa binding.
The rosette, fretboard and bridge are all Malaysian Blackwood.
If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can see the medullary rays (grain that runs horizontally), which is common in spruce, but a little unusual in cedar.
The strings are a Pepe Romero wound low G string with custom fluorocarbon strings. The new owner likes a little more thickness in the A string than my normal string combo, so I used my normal high G for the A string and it worked out great.
You would expect an instrument with an ebony body and a cedar top to be quite loud and this uke does not disappoint. The nice thing about it is that even when played loudly, the tone and articulation stay true and don't get muddy at all.
Still trying to get a shot of the curly koa without success.
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Since this uke is going to be used by a performer, we installed a L.R. Braggs 5.0 pickup after the build (and the pictures).
