|
Ah yes, the electric ukulele. I conceived this twisted idea in
1992 and built it in eighth-grade shop class after school. Actually,
my teacher Mr. (Rich) Allen did most of the work on the two-piece
walnut body, which has a few places of curly walnut on the back. He did an exceptional job; all the routs are clean as a pin and the end grains match so well it’s really frightening.
The original neck was a homemade thing made out of curly maple with four strings and,
as I recall, it was a real pain to work
with. My fret work was terrible. It also warped immediately
because there was no truss rod. Casey Simmons made me a new six-string
octave-up neck out of Honduran mahogany with a Bois de Rose fingerboard
in late 2005 so I could pretend like I’m Joe Maphis (yeah,
right). It originally had a huge headstock with a black limba
overlay (a leftover scrap from the Trifonic), but I made Casey
saw it down in early ’09 and make a new overlay out of Bois
de Rose. Originally a single-pickup instrument, I had Casey install
two alnico-magnet G&L Legacy pickups and, later, two regular
ASAT MFD’s. The bridge is an ancient solid-brass thing and I later installed the three-barrel Tele-style
compensated saddle set.
|
In my kitchen, November 2009; smoking jacket
courtesy of Dawn Cooksey.
Image ©2009 Stephanie Layne Management
|
The scale length of this thing is quite a bit longer than normal; otherwise, the frets would've been too close together, but as a result the strings are at ridiculously high tension, even with
.009’s, and the high-E string will break on tune-up if you
don’t take it really easy (I went through at least three
trying to record a 30-second part on the “Electric Ukulele
Rag” from the Sweatin’ Bullets Over You EP).
In fact, I tuned it down a step-and-a-half for “Remington
Rock” on The King of Nerd-A-Billy. But the tone of this
instrument is really special; perhaps because
of the ultra-high tension and super hi-fi pickups, it eerily resembles
the sped-up Les Paul guitar sound. |