mahogany ubass

[Ray Ussery]

Ray - you will have to trust me on this: I've never seen a picture of you, did not know if you wore a hat down low, did not know you ever played behind chicken wire, was not even thinking of you when I wrote that post! I was just having fun - That's the facts, brother! There was no offense meant AT ALL.
So I hope we're cool Ray!
Dave

NOW you've gone and done it....don't you dare ruin my image...but I'll tell you one thing...it's HARD typin' with your thumbs hung in your front pockets...but I DO take my boots off afore I enter the house after cleanin' out thet corral...I forgot it once in 45 years and Ma burned 'em in the farplace and I had to hop around in them danged cukkleburs barefooted fer a month...never did THAT again!

Did I ever tell you you worry too much?...you'll ruin yer health with them ulcers someday! :>)

Smile...I love good natured ribbing and having fun...this is a great forum full of great people...and as far as I'm concerned your one of them...we are just fine!

BUT...Tony worries me sometimes....I think he's gone around the bend...or He's at least a half a sandwich short a picnic...:>)

Ray :>)

[Kyle Barbour]

Almost done!

[Kyle Barbour]

Except for some set up and a new nut, it's pretty much done. My tuner is in need of batteries before I check intonation. I hear intonation can be a real pain with these. I also need to make another nut. The one I have on it now is too low to allow a deep enough slot to hold the strings in place. I wasn't thinking about how thick the strings are when I was making it. I'm pretty happy with the sound. The E string is a little on the quiet side, but I kind of expected that. Seems to be the nature of these instruments/strings. Really looking forward to putting a pickup in it. That will probably happen in the next couple of weeks, once I'm recovered from an unexpected auto repair.

[Kyle Barbour]

http://youtu.be/GzA2abfcfmM
I finally was able to get the bass uke into the hands of someone who could play. Hope the link works. It's not a great recording, used my iPad. This was a backyard get together of some of my dads friends. Hope the rest of the band didn't drown out too much of the bass, but you'll get the idea of it. Was just cool hearing it played.

[Dave Bagwill]

COOL!

[Herman]

Great project Kyle, Nice outcome!

Strange thing happened to me last night. On a party I ran into a bassplayer who I only met once before.
He did see some of my guitars last year, and now he asked me if I want to make for him a UBass. Didn't see that coming.

First I was a bit backing up, since I made 3 basses before and concluded that acoustics is more my area of interest.

But the Ubass is a acoustic design and looking at your built it gets more appealing to me.
The only issue that is difficult more or less, is the accesspanel on the back. When a pickup is needed you cannot get access through the soundhole. So this needs some thinking. I'll get the job done somehow.

In time we will see an acoustic Ubass chapter on this site.

Herman

[Kyle Barbour]

Thanks. Herman the back access panel was not too difficult. I treated it much like you would a sound port in the side of a guitar with a cross grain reinforcement on the inside. Only I left a small ledge for the panel to rest on. To hold the panel in place I used some small 1/16" round magnets inlaid into the panel with some small metal inlays opposite them on the access ledge. I can show you a picture of this if you need a better visual explanation. The one thing that you'll have to keep in mind is the tuners. Because the strings are so wide regular bass tuners cannot be used without modification. I didn't care for the idea of mods to tuners so I bought tuners from Owen at road toad music. Owen developed the ubass and worked with Hipshot to develop tuners for the Ubass. He sells them and the strings at Roadtoadmusic.com. Any questions let me know.