Doing Things Wrong

Audiovox Uke Bass (1/2)

This bass is a 21" scale, with a piezo saddle mounted in an adjustable bridge. The soundhole is just for looks. The strings are metal-wound Kalas. The fretboard is cut out of the ugliest piece of wood I ever received. For such a small neck, I managed to cut around most of the ugly, and the result isn't half bad.

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These two bodies are maple plywood over a hollow pine core, double-bound. They came out very lightweight, too light to balance even a guitar neck. The short uke bass was always planned. I shuffled parts and bodies between some other projects, and that left the second body free. I thought about it for a while and decided it would make a good mandolin.

Both of these short necks have fixed steel truss rods, although they probably don't need them. Both are finished in polyurethane, with masonite pickguards.

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This is a real Danelectro Silvertone 1452 from the 1960s. When I got it, it was a sad box of parts. Some hillbilly had stripped it, by rubbing it on the sidewalk, I think. The fretboard had delaminated, and the old repair had simply made the problem permanent. I repaired the neck and fixed all the other issues, replaced the lipstick tubes, which had split, and clear-coated the whole thing in modern poly. I was not able to fully repair the neck, there's just not enough wood left, so I don't keep it under tension. The pickguard is stained dark for contrast. I cleaned tarnish off the old metal bits with oven cleaner, and replaced all the corroded fasteners with shiny new stainless ones.