This Tenor Ukulele is a themed instrument loosely embracing my love of watching the moonlight over Kailua Bay and the laughter from watching Bugs Bunny & Marvin the Martian in my younger years. There will be numerous design elements including the moon (naturally), space flight, and the moon aliens!
The design includes a number of inlays from both black and white Mother-of-Pearl, Sea Snail shell, and recon stone. The tenor body will highlight a Monterrey Cyprus soundboard with Koa backs and sides and features a “Marvin’s Moon” sound port. The Spanish Cedar neck is accented with Lace wood and Padauk. Ebony is used for the headstock and fretboard.
Given the complexity of the inlays and the up coming holidays, I expect this ukulele to take a number of months to complete.
Build Blog
A Bridge Too Far?
How can this ukulele have a plain bridge, right? On my "Under the Palm Tree" ukulele, I get quite a few positive comments for a set of burned-in Honu (Hawaiian turtles) on the bridge. I [...]
Heel End Cap Quickie
Decided to add one final inlay, something for the heel end cap. The End Cap is a decorative piece that sits atop the necks' heel stack to meet the back of the ukulele. It's [...]
The Moon Fretboard
The fretboard contributes to the overall theme of the instrument with the fret markers representing the phases of the moon. I went with sea snail shell for the moon and black mother-of-pearl (MOP) for [...]
Boxing Day
Lots of internal mechanics have been completed. My "Boxing Day" (with apologies to, well, Great Britain) consists of adding and shaping the soundboard and back bracing, adding a label, glueing on the top and [...]
Headstock Inlay
Time to move on from aliens! The ukulele's main inlay is a stylized "Man in the Moon" on the headstock plate. The moon is made up of 5 pieces of shell plus an ebony [...]
Bracing Day
11-20 Soundboard Bracing Today I completed the soundboard bracing, tone bars, bridge patch and soundhole patch. There's not a lot to bracing with the exception of the soundhole patch (a thin piece of material [...]
Soundboard Inlay
I did a bit of soul searching to decide to use a set of intensely figured Koa for this ukulele. I've been saving this set for years waiting for the right ukulele. This set [...]
End Patch
I created the End Patch inlay today (an End Patch is on the bottom of the ukulele covering the seam). It was a difficult and rewarding job. Five different passes of the CNC machine [...]
Take Off!
Our first step towards our moon landing is deciding how to get there. I created this rocket ship sound port for our blast off. Sound ports provide full tonal response to the player and [...]
Design Work
As a themed instrument, the design phase took almost a month to complete. First, it took many days just to narrow the scope and refine the concept. Then deciding what all the design elements [...]