Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Guys,

I appreciate your patience with my uke posts on the guitar building forum...seems I'm doing more uke work than guitar work right now.
I want to build a bass uke, for a bass guitarist here in Tucson. The one that I have seen on YouTube was a Kala bass. I know it has a baritone body, 20"scale length and 16 frets. I could see that it has bass tuners and the player said it had polyurethane strings (?)...I'm not so sure about the strings, maybe I misunderstood.
Anyway, I haven't been successful searching for specific bass plans on line, and didn't find any threads about u basses on the OLF, so thought I would ask opinions about it.
Do you think the bracing should be different (I typically have used fan bracing on my ukes so far) for bass? Do bass strings produce enough tension to require a rod (either carbon or a truss rod)?
Is there a particular fretwire that is better for bass?

Guess that's it for now. As always, I appreciate any input you can give. Beth

Beth,

I have no answers for you but instead have two links. Maybe these can provide more information for you.

http://www.roadtoadmusic.com/main.html

http://www.bassuke.com/Main.html

Regards,

Philip

_________________
aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

I tried to Email Owen Holt (of Road Toad) recently and got no replies.

As the Kala Ubass has had some success you can get the polyurethane strings from several places including Elderly Intruments
http://elderly.com/accessories/items/RT-UBASS.htm

These strings need special tuners which you can normally get from Road Toad (you'll find them on the website) if you can get an answer from him. If not, try getting them from Hipshot directly, although they don't show them on their website.

The Ubass uses a Shadow pickup
http://www.thomann.de/fr/shadow_sh064.htm

Owen uses K&K on his.

You shouldn't need a truss rod; the Pahoehoe strings are pretty low tension. One or two CF stiffeners wouldn't do any harm.

The Kala Ubass I had a look at had a rather rough-and-ready looking X-brace but I wasn't able to take any measurements.

Hope this helps.

Great info Phillip and Dave! That all really helps.

Beth:
You might email Ukulele Pua Pua or Hawaiian music Supply about strings and possibly tuners.
Playing those things is like playing on strands of spagetti.

Bob

I have a idea that I have tried yet but plan to. How about a bass uke that is built very much like a classical guitar but four strings. Tune it like a baritone only one octave lower. Do some cosmetic things to make it look more uke like. It will be a little like an acoustic picalo bass.