Cigar Box Electric Baritone Ukulele

[upside downer]

Fancied one of these but they ain't half pricey so I've put this together over the last few days.

 

 

All done for not much expense. Box and pickup £15 from ebay, bridge saddle and knobs under a tenner, neck from a cheapo quarter guitar (Elevation, 19½ inch scale) at the auction for about the same price.

 

 

Bolt-on neck. Braced the inner box with offcuts from laminate flooring.

 

 

It's a little rough and scuffed but it sounds good, no major problems with setting it up. May have to add a shim and will probably put a better set of tuning pegs on it eventually but, for pottering about with and having fun, it does the trick. Strings are currently the middle four ADGB off of the cheapo guitar, but tuned to baritone uke tuning DGBE. Think I'll be putting the middle four strings from a standard electric guitar set (12s or 13s) on it. Anyone got any suggestions about that? I've trailed through various ukulele forums and got about twelve different recommendations so another couple won't hurt 😁

[pete.young]

Great work, excellent result. I'd be trying ADF#A or AC#EA and play it with a slide, like a lap steel.

[tauzero]

That sounds a reasonable set of strings to use - scale length is about 4/5 the scale length of a standard guitar so tension using the topmost four strings would be rather slack, heavier strings (ie the lower strings) would bring the tension up. It pretty much corresponds to sticking a capo on fret 5 on a standard guitar and using the middle 4 strings, so it's whatever strings you'd feel comfortable with doing that with.