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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Black Polyurethane body. This is during the polishing process, you can see it is not even clean. The front came out like black glass. I smoothed the orange-peel with 1500 grit wet, then 2000 and 3000. Then I switched to the random orbital with a red sponge cutting pad and Turtle Wax rubbing compound that claims to remove 1200 scratches. Shouldn't be any 1200 scratches, since I started with 1500. That came out shiny, but with swirl marks in the light. Then I switched to another red cutting pad with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, and finally a softer yellow pad with the same Meguiar's. At that point, it was pretty much a factory finish. I didn't work as hard on the back, it is nice, but will soon enough encounter a zipper or belt buckle, so the effort would be wasted.