One of my really good friends suffered a stroke while he was in his first few years of learning the ukulele. I used to love hearing about his progress. He’d take it with him to the trade shows, and jam on heady tunes from the good ol’ days while waiting for people to stop by his table and check out his wares. He got the ukulele from a similar event, if I recall correctly I believe he got it in a trade and found out later it was somewhat of a valuable antique.
Unfortunately, after moving I found out that the stroke had impaired his ability to continue playing…and shortly after that this beautiful instrument showed up at my doorstep. That was a week ago now, and I’ve been anxiously awaiting my chance to play it, but havent been able to get the old strings to tune up.
So this weekend I bought a new set of strings, learned how to knot the ends, and attempted to get this baby firing on all cylinders…but I still couldn’t get it sounding the way I wanted! The uke has 1:1 tuning heads; theyre just straight bars with a hole on one end and a thumb screw on the other, with a set screw at the far bottom. So if it’s tight it wants to stay where it is, and if it’s loose you can’t put enough tension. I tightened them all to where they could withstand the tension, but then the force required to overcome ststic friction was enough to jump a few whole steps with only the smallest tweak.
It was in this moment that I decided to make all thr purists out there cringe. I decided to replace the original hardware with modern geared heads…so i bought the cheapest ones I could find because I suck. 🤗 …I think the set cost like $7.00.
Here are the original tuning heads. They just pass straight through, sort of like a violin I guess, but they have these rear ser screws to help lock them in place.
At this point, one original has been pulled, and thisnis where I found that the holes for the old heads were about 1/3 of the size that I would need to install the new heads. This means if I’m wrong about these or change my mind, there will be no going back…now I’m really going to get the purists out there worked up I guess, but I’m a man of function over all else.
So I worked my way up to a 25/64” bit, which feels like a pretty good fit…
…but also marks the undeniable point of no return.
The first one dropped in nicely though, so I see no reason to stop here.
I was making pretty good progress honestly, but then i flipped it over and realized my blunder…I had mistakenly assumed they were all the same, but this was not the case, and unfortunately the one I had already screwed in completely was the one that needed to move.
The correct tuning head doesnt quite cover up the hole, but I’ll have to live with it…now when people notice it I can tell them the story of how I rushed through this project on my lunch break and screwed up 😅
Finally, I added all the reat of the hardware and got the strings back on. Unfortunately, it looks like the luthiers knot I learned from Youtube was also not done quite right (or I’m over tightening the strings), so I may find myself redoing that before I can get this thing all the way show-ready.
…does anyone know what frequency the strings should be tuned to? They were made for gCEA tuning on a baritone ukulele, and so far they either feel too low and dont sound good, or they get so tight I get too scared to bring them all the way up…so yeah, any tips are welcome.
Thanks!
Thanks for checking out some more of my work! As always, I hope you enjoyed witnessing as much as I enjoyed creating!
© Photos and words by @albuslucimus, except where otherwise indicated.
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