instructables

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele

by titchtheclown

The aim of this instructable is to go through all the steps necessary to design and build a bass ukulele starting from some
blocks of wood and ending with a nished instrument.

Here is a quick preview of what it sounds like.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vq_6Xen4wy4

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 1

Step 1: Basic Design

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 2

Your scale length will be dependant on the strings you
get (or you will have to get strings dependant on your
design). The strings I have (Aquila Thunderguts) say they
are made for basses with a scale length of 18 to 21
inches. I do all my best design using CAD - or Cardboard
Aided Design using ruler paper and pencil and
scissors/knife. This neck template has a bit of cardboard
extra at the top for attaching the headstock template to
and the rest is to lay on the body.
It is, (as you can see from what is written on it,) 45ish mm
wide at the nut, has a scale length of 514mm (20inches)
Step 2: Things Done Previously
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 3
to which around 10mm compensation is added at the
saddle/bridge. Another 20 or 30 mm may be needed to
give wiggle room for the adjustable/ oating bridge
( xed is OK for fretless). The saddle is at least 70mm wide
to t the acoustic bass piezo pickup.
After a few tense minutes looking at the length of the G
string I decided to forego a little length and aimed for a
485 mm scale length.
I have made a couple of solid bodies, which are simpler
than hollow bodies but because hollow body bass ukes
are so quiet there is not much volume di erence. I
downloaded and adjusted templates from a site that has
since been deleted. This alternative site has a great
variety if not as many versions of the same models like
the old site did https://www.electricherald.com/guitar-
templates/
The Fenwick Rodmaster is a 90% jazzmasterish bass with
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 4
the neck join ddled to t a 100% neck width. The
Chanenbacker is a full sized Rickenbackerish body.
As you may be able to see from the Fenwick Rodmaster
bass the strings I have are a little tricky with the four to a
side tuners as the G string is the shortest one in the set
and has to go the longest distance. Most bass ukes have
two tuners per side like the Chanenbacker.
Step 3: Parts

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 5

You will need to buy some parts - I haven't got them all
in this photo and not all of them are absolutely essential. picture I tted each of the tuners to one of the strings by
In the picture:
- top left a pre-wired passive volume tone control or
variant (not strictly necessary at all) I have used active
control circuits in all my builds there are plenty of active
and passive controllers and preamps available. I much
prefer the nal look of the bass active preamp I used for
the Rodmaster rather than the sit in top box preamp I
put on the Chanenbacker. Some of these active preamps not - The Chanenbacker is fretless I have seen full bass
include tuners which some people nd handy.
- second from left an acoustic bass piezo pickup (it is
about 70mm wide and has 4 big lumps which are the
individual pickups for each string). I have seen people
build cigar box guitar basses with only disc piezos. I have scale length or vice versa.
heard it told that the rod version is better.
- third from left, a Fender style neck attachment plate
(optional - this build is going to be a stick through and
other designs are also possible),
- bottom - A set of open tuners for a regular bass (this
type can be easily ipped left or right the far right one
has been disassembled) or you can splurge on the
purpose built bass ukulele tuners.
Far right - something to quickly and easily widen those
slots to t the thick bass uke strings - this 2 inch
diamond wheel is a little imsy but eventually does the
trick (if you did splurge on the purpose built tuning pegs
you won't need this). As you can see from the next
process of progressive widening. It can be a lot of work
to widen the slot so don't waste any more time than you
need to. Since originally writing this instructible I
switched to using a tile cutting blade in an angle grinder,
which is considerably faster.
More to buy
- fret wire - I used 2.4 mm for the Fenwick Rodmaster or
size frets used which looks a little wrong for some
reason.
- bass ukulele strings there are a wide variety of these
and they need to be roughly matched with your planned
- wood for neck and body,
- pick-guard material,
- nut and saddle material.
- string trees though I made my own from a small scrap
of wood for the Rodmaster.
- Tools you might need - e.g. Fret slotting saw, forstner
drill bits (14 and 18 mm for these tuning pegs), band saw
or sabre saw, an axe and a potato peeler.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 6

 6
2
1

4
3

1. Piezo acoustic bass rod pickup

2. Fender style neck plate
3. Standard bass tuners
4. Disassembled bass tuner to show parts can be flipped over to make a right or left
hand tuner as desired.
5. 50 mm diamond grinding wheel for rotary tool or drill
6. passive volume and tone control

Step 4: Create a Body Blank

Unless you use some form of fabricated wood and I have
heard of electric guitars made from MDF or plywood or
you have some really big bits of wood you will probably
need to glue up a body blank from smaller bits of wood.
This wood is an old wardrobe door frame and is as close
to a 2 by 4 DAR as you might like to nd. It is 45 mm by
90 roughly though it is a little out of square and
varnished and not quite at. Because the middle part
will be our neck as a through body I cut some
preliminary shape into the neck pro le. Because it has
been sitting around holding on to some doors for about
40 years it should have done all the moving around it is
likely to do so I didn't bother with additional
strengthening like a truss rod or laminated neck.
You will need to work out how deep into the body you
want your fretboard to be, this one joins the top part at
the 14th fret which is fairly typical of steel string guitars.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 7

Step 5: Mark Out Your Body and Neck.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 8

Trace your templates out onto a neck and body. If you
are making a neck through design this is done in one go.
If you are making a two piece body and bolt/screw on
neck then they are cut out separately. The advantages of
a neck through design is overall simplicity and structural
integrity. The advantages of a bolt/screw on neck is the
adjustability, ability to mix di erent materials for neck
and body and separation of bits to make mistakes on - if
you ruin your headstock you haven't stu ed up the
whole guitar, just the neck part. To make things easier to
see, especially in the photos, and protect the surface I
used masking tape. Because cardboard is not a premium
template material I remeasured the neck dimensions
directly onto my blank.
Because the 70% size body template notionally has a
70% width neck position I moved the body template to
either side to get the beginnings of the line where the
body meets the neck. after a great deal of head
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 9
scratching I went over only the last 50 mm or so of that
line merging it with the centred body line. You will see
that the templates on the fenderish plan site has
alignment lines roughly down the centre. Feel free to get
creative with your own shape the shaping here is not
critical as it does not in uence much except looks. The
Ashbory bass is an example of how little you need.
The body I nished up is from
https://sites.google.com/site/guitarplanscollection/pdf-
les in a le called Fenderjag-jazz.pdf in the fenderish
collection. I used the poster printing and scaling options
in acrobat reader to print a 70% scaled body. I started
with a le in the Fenderheadstocks.pdf le and did a lot
of ddling to get a shape I was happy with and in the
end I even made this version smaller again. Attached is a
pdf of a scan of the cardboard template I used for my
headstock..
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 10
 Download

https://www.instructables.com/ORIG/FK4/7AXZ/JW6NUF8X/FK47AXZJW6NUF8X.pdf

Step 6: Cut Your Body Out

Now comes the fun part. Head over to your band saw or
break out the jig saw and cut your body out.
Because I had not quite enough width in the 2 by 4 neck
blank for the headstock I had to add a couple of o cuts
At this point I also did a bit of work to reduce the size of
the headstock template, allowing only 44 mm for the
tuners (which seem to vary between 42 and 44 mm
long) rather than 47 mm as in the original template I got
from the web site.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 11

Step 7: Smoothing Off the Body and Making It a Little Thinner

I used my trusty stanley number 4 and a half to smooth boards to get the neck at was also done and checked.
o the front. Then I went a bit medieval on the back with
my number 78 and removed about 6 mm of thickness I did a lot of smoothing around the sides with a japanese
which wasn't really needed. I could actually have shinto rasp and various sanding implements to get
thinned it further but I am ne with it at about 38 mm. I things at or evenly curved and smooth.
believe standard Fender thickness is 41 mm. A quick run
with the orbital sander and sanding with some long

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 12

Step 8: Headstock Angle

I toyed with the idea of a traditional Fender headstock with no neck angle but an o set of about 9 mm down but drifted
to an alternate plan where I used the thickness of the 2 by 4 to give me just a little angle and an 18 mm thick headstock.
This I cut close to width with the band saw and brought to the thickness with the small planes and sander.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 13

Step 9: Making a Fretboard

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 14

Making a fretboard is the area of the guitar that will lectured you about capos and how I use the regular
bene t the most from really accurate measuring. fretboard to make my shorter bass ukulele one you
probably worked this out for yourself already.
I have a home made fret board duplicating jig that uses a
commercially cut fretboard as a pattern for me to Other ways to mark out fret spacing for any length of
duplicate the fret locations on a pre-cut fretboard. It is fretboard are :
simply made by cutting a U shape made from 3 bits of
wood at right angles and putting a bit of snap o razor to use the fret calculator at
knife at the bottom to lock into the frets of the existing http://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator
fretboard, which ensures that the frets I then cut in the
top fretboard duplicate the ones in the bottom. Many or print out a template from
fret slotting jigs go to a deal of trouble to ensure the http://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fret nd2d/
depth of cut is uniform and deep enough for the fret
tang. I use the startlingly simple method of stopping This link will give you the parameters I think would make
when I can no longer see light through the bottom of a good fretboard for a 512mm scale length Link to
the saw teeth. Unfortunately, on this build I later noticed fret nd2d
that the 2.4mm guitar fret wire has a longer fret tang
than my regular 1.7mm ukulele fret wire so I had a bit of If you are going to use the fret nd2d page you have to
work to redo later. The saw I use is a standard dovetail make sure you print your PDF at actual scale because
saw. I started out many years ago using a junior hacksaw some PDF readers default to shrinking over size pages or
and you may nd a saw you have laying around your printing the browser window which can screw things up
shed may do the job. For example I only had to hammer completely. It gives you an accurate scale, just a little
at the teeth of the regular hack saw blades a touch to shorter (or longer) than the one you thought you were
atten the set of the teeth and they worked well too. See printing. Printers have also been known to be slightly
the above set of test cuts I made using saws laying inaccurate. In either case double check that double the
around my shed. length between the "nut" and the 12th fret on the
printout. If this is half of the scale length you thought
One of the magical things about fret boards is that if you you were getting you are good to go. If you are always
start one fret down you have a fretboard that suits a cursing your printer because it gives you wonky looking
guitar with a length one fret shorter. Most guitarists will printout, you probably should not be using it for this
be aware of the use of the capo which is a non- task. Some modern browsers will not let you x things so
permanent application of this principle. In this case I you may have to save it to a separate location and open
used a standard 648mm scale length 26 fret fretboard it up in an old fashioned pdf reader like Acrobat reader. I
given to me by a friend. By starting at fret 3 I have a also had a slight issue with Acrobat ash player needing
fretboard that was a notional 514 mm scale length. One to be enabled when I tried to use it last time.
further down gives 485, which is what I have decided on
for this current build to assuage my anxiety over the G The old fashioned way - multiplying by 17/18ths or 1/18
string being the shortest string in the pack and the depending which way you go. The more accurate old
Fender style headstock making it the string that has to fashioned way multiplying by the 12th root of 1/2 (or 1
reach the longest. minus it as above) - this gives the same result as the
Stewmac calculator.
At the top of the fretboard I make a small recess to put
the nut in. All a nut is is a zero position fret which has If you don't quite feel up to buying fret wire, I have used
slots in it to hold the strings in place, but now I have split bamboo toothpicks superglued down and bent

50mm nail gun nails. rel="nofollow">http://www.cigarboxnation.com/

Most of these tips I got from the cigar box nation site.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 15

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 16
Step 10: Adding a Fretboard Radius or Removing the Part That Is Not Radiused or Not

Many fretboards have a radiused fretboard which to my
eye makes for them looking slightly more groovy and
provide a di erent feel to how they play. I used a 12inch
sanding radius block. To give myself a head start and to
help keep the sanding process even I remove a little
around the edges with a tiny block plane just eyeballing
how much I needed to remove. I then trimmed the
fretboard closer to the tapered width of the neck.
Switching occasionally between the short radiusing
block and a longer at block to maintain longitudinal
atness, which is critical to playability.
Not radiusing saves a lot of work.
I like to literally drench my fretboards in shellac to help
stabilize it and make the grain "pop" particularly when I
use reddish hardwood timber decking (eg karri, jarrah,
meranti) which though hard has a tendency to split and
splinter. Others like to use super glue and most don't
bother but use more select building materials. This
fretboard is karri and bene ts from the stabilisation.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 17

Step 11: Pick Guards
I printed o the version of the body plan that had the
pick guard template. The volume and tone knobs need
to be about 25mm apart to stop them bumping into
each other. I worked out that I didn't have enough room
for the 3 volume/, tone knobs plus plug so I embigened
the tail and cross checked using the templates that my
bridge and pick guards would not interfere with each
other and that my knobs would be in a convenient
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 18
position. In particular that they would not nish up
under the strings and the pick guard would not interfere
with my predicted bridge position. I did all of this in
paper and/or cardboard rst. I could also have shifted
the plug to a side or tail mount position. I also marked
on the body where the bridge should go.
Step 12: Shaping the Body
Most solid body guitars and basses have at least a little
bit of shaping to the body, perchance to make them
easier to hold, have slightly less hard edges and lighter.
Now I know where things like the bridge and pick guard
are going to go I can hack away a bits where the bridge
and pick guard are not. Mostly the part where your body
is hollowed out slightly and where your arm goes is
bevelled back a bit. Use whatever comes to hand. I
1. Careful with that axe Eugene!
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 19
picked up the little baby block plane and before I had
time to think about grabbing a better tool I had already
shaved o enough for the arm bevel. An axe is a little
risky but it is quick and gets the job done if you have the
skills and the courage. I use dumb stupid luck to prevent
accidents. I cleaned it up a bit afterwards using my rasp
and an random orbital sander.
Step 13: Gluing on the Fretboard
Cross check that all surfaces are at. A couple of small
nails are used to prevent the fret board from sliding
about. I pre-drill 1.8 mm holes in the slots of the 3rd and
12th frets. These small holes will get covered when you
put the frets on. The holes also helps me keep track of
where the 3rd and 12th frets are for when I add fret dots
later.
Add glue to both surfaces try not to get too much glue
onto parts where you are not sticking the fretboard.
Place the fret board carefully making sure it aligns with
the nut and body joint intended positions you planned
earlier. Hammer in your two alignment nails.
I then strap it down using a strip of bicycle inner tube.
Step 14: Shaping the Neck
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 20
Anything like that such as surgical tubing or slightly
stretchy string or rubber bands linked together should
be ne though be careful not to get glue on the string. I
have never had much problem with the inner tube
rubber. I held the loose end with a spring clamp and
clamped down the last bit of the fretboard over the
body.
Wipe o excess glue squeeze out. Don't get too
obsessive about wiping up the squeeze out, What you
don't wipe up when it is wet you can remove with a
scraper or sandpaper when it is dry.
After everything is dry remove clamping and nails and
check atness and scrape/sand o excess glue.
I like to do the nal shaping of the neck after adding the ambitious build.
fretboard but before adding the frets. My favourite tool
for this job is a Y handled vegetable peeler. After shaping
with this all I needed was a little bit of sanding but I have
had a lot of practice with this thing and a lot of dumb
https://www.youtube.com/embed/hwpjJeD4_3M
stupid luck.

Here is a video of how well it works on a slightly less

Step 15: Add Fret Dots.

Here I have added some abalone shell fret dots at the 3 5
7 9 12 and 14th frets, front and sides. There is a
surprising amount of debate over whether a dot needs
to be at 9 or 10 and 14 or 15. I cut these ones from an
abalone shell using a diamond core drill bit. I have used
everything from knitting needles to BBQ skewers to
screws to pyrography to dots punched out of plastic
milk bottle lids or bread clips to stained epoxy to mark
fret positions. These are really just bling for the audience.
The side markers are what the player sees.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 21

Step 16: Holes in the Headstock

To maintain accuracy I remeasured the spacing on the grommets need an 18 mm hole and the shaft needs a 14
headstock so the tuners are 25 mm in, the rst is 25 mm mm hole. To keep them aligned I drilled the 18 mm hole
up from the turn at the bottom of the headstock and the rst then used one of the grommets to aid in centring
holes 44 mm apart. This made the t extremely tight and the holes for the shaft.
I had to le a half a mm o one of the tuners when tting
them due to a slight inaccuracy on my part. The

Step 17: Cutting Out Your Pick Guard

There is quite a variety of pick guard material available. I the knob positions. Peeling the protective lm o is a
have here 3 ply White black white, pearlised white, black special pleasure I reserve for the person receiving the
white and black white black. uke.

Because the pick guards have a protective lm on them I Also attached is a pdf of the nal pick guard template I
like to mark the back covering them with masking tape made for this build.
to see what I am doing and avoid taking the protective
lm o by accident. There was also a bit of ddling with

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 22

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 23

https://www.instructables.com/ORIG/FFL/ECS7/JW6NXG8Y/FFLECS7JW6NXG8Y.pdf
Step 18: Electrics
These are all the electrics I am putting in and an
alternate single unit component that I am not using in
this build but could simplify yours if you feel so inclined.
In order of appearance they show
The 9 volt battery case
The socket to plug the instrument into your ampli er.
This is a hot tip plug so it only has current when it is
plugged in (Plug in battery go at. Plug out battery stay
alive!). I heard one person added a power switch so they
could leave their bass plugged in between sets without
the battery going at on them.
The two tone potentiometers.
The volume and switching potentiometers. Because I
only have one pickup I removed that switching
1
1. The 9 volt battery holder
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 24
Download
potentiometers and replaced it with a 2.5 mm socket for
the piezo rod to plug into. The socket I used is an
earphone socket made to disconnect speakers when the
headphone is plugged in and had an issue sorting out
which terminal to solder to as they were not labelled so I
guessed wrong the rst time and had to redo it.
The piezo rod pickup and matching socket are soldered
on in the next picture.
The last picture is of a sealed complete unit which is
simpler to handle. This one is a passive unit you can get a
huge variety of di erent styles.
1
1. The 6.4mm guitar lead socket. The three wires is because the power
cuts when the plug is removed.
 1

1. Two tone knobs 1. The volume knob

2. I will be removing this switching knob- it is set up to allow fading
between two pickups but we only have one.

1. The 2.5mm earphone plug which I will solder to where the switching 1. The pre-amplifier to which everything is connected.
knob was.
2. The piezo rod pickup

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 25


1 cold be used as an alternative.
1. Connects to the ground of the volume potentiometer
2. The 2.5mm earphone socket for the pickup to plug into.
Step 19: Fretting
Start by cross checking the fretboard is at. I had a bit of
a visual problem with the area around the fret dots
being superglue soaked and shinier than the
surrounding wood so I went back over the entire
fretboard with a single coat of superglue.
For this build I decided to experiment with a pre- tting
fret technique. Starting at the wide end, frets are cut and
their ends are rounded over using a le and then
smoothed with super ne sandpaper into perfect semi -
hemispherical nished ends that are just shy of the edge
of the fretboard. If perchance your fret is accidentally cut
too long it can be trimmed. If too short, because of the
taper, it can be used further up the fretboard (thanks for
the tip Sven). I cut and nished and installed each fret
one at a time rather than cut them all and nish them all
and then attach them all.
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 26
1
2
1. A passive volume and tone control that
2. This is where the piezo plugs into
Previously I have just cut the frets a touch long as I
installed them and then led everything at with a 30 to
40 degree bevelled edge and then smoothed with 400
grit sandpaper rubbed on everything. A lot quicker
doing it that way.
My one other issue is that these frets have a slightly
longer tang than the narrower uke ones I normally use
for building ukes so I had to cut some slots deeper. I
stu ed up a few and had to remove the fret using a
small chisel to lever them up.
I cross check atness as much as possible and hammer
down or remount high frets (see above) then atten
properly with a diamond sharpening plate.
Step 20: Holes for the Volume and Tone Potentiometers.
First up I put in the battery compartment. No biggie.
Then I carefully drilled through from the front through
the pick guard where I was mounting my volume/tone
potentiometers and plug. The volume/tone
potentiometers are slightly longer than the pick guard
and can use a bit of the wood in the body to stabilise
them and so that when the knob is tted it does not
stick out too far. The socket unfortunately had to be
drilled out because it was a bit short on mounting screw
length. The step drill allowed me to bore out to the
diameter I needed concentrically from the mounting
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 27
hole in the pick guard tail. I then followed this up with a
14 mm forstner bit. I could have just led it out with a
rasp and it is not that critical it should be exactly 14 and
would not hurt if it were a bit bigger as long as that 14
mm centred hole area was clear.
I also needed a small amount of extra space for the pre-
amp unit box. As you may see later the hole I made came
perilously close to the rebate for the string mounts so
when making yours cross check how they interact
before you make the same close to mistake I did.
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 28
Step 21: Bridge and Pickup Holes

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 29

The bridge was initially shaped at around 100mm wide
and 25mm deep and 19mm high.
A slot is cut for the saddle and pickup using a 3.2 mm
mini router bit mounted in a drill press. A hole is drilled
in the bridge down 4mm in diameter and then in the
bottom and in the face of the ukulele a wider hole is
made. These holes are larger than the cable to allow
movement so that the bridge can be adjusted for
intonation. The location of the hole in the top is made
where the alignment of the strings and the length of the
scale, 485 mm plus a 10mm adjustment for intonation.
Intonation adjustment is required because the tuning of
the strings reacts to the stress of bending the string
down to the fretboard.

Step 22: String Holes

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 30

For this design I am adding string holes 25 mm from the
theoretical scale length plus the 10 mm theoretical
adjustment for intonation. I centred these on the actual
centre line of the actual fretboard not on where I
thought the centre line was going to be in my initial
design. I do this by using a straight edge against either
side of the fretboard to project a line to the bridge
position and mark the centre point of those two lines,
I want the strings to span from outside to outside about
60 mm as the saddle is 75 mm wide. The strings are 5.0,
4.4, 3.1 and 2.6 mm in diameter. This adds up to 15.1 mm.
Because I want equal gaps between the strings the gaps
need to be 60 mm -15.1 mm = 44.9 mm divided by 3 =
14.97 mm. Because I know I am not that accurate in my
pencil lines I will put them at around 15 mm apart. To do
this I measure 30 mm out from the fretboard centre line
and mark the width of each string, 15 mm and the width
of the next string and so on. If my measurements are
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 31
spot on, I nd that last line is 30 mm from the centre line
as well. If it hadn't been then I would have made a
mistake somewhere and need to check where I had
gone wrong.
I then mark the centre of each of those width of string
lines which is where I drill my holes. The drill bits have
been chosen to match the string as closely as possible
while not being too small. My kit has 5, 4.5, 3,5 and 3 mm
bits which makes the strings slide smoothly and yet
snug.
I also recessed the back of the body so the strings would
not dig into the player's body.
I also added a slight turning ramp next to the holes so
they will go round the hole and not have a sharp kink
which could lead to breakages.
Step 23: Varnishing and Adding Logos

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 32

I covered the fretboard face with masking tape because almost as transparent as water transfer or specialised
we are going to be oiling that later. sticker material and much cheaper. I have simply laid
these ones onto a bed of wet varnish and sprayed
My rst spray coat of varnish is a rough spit coat which another layer of varnish over the top. It also works quite
really serves to seal things a bit and create a level we can well by laying it in superglue. The tracing paper is also
sand down to. Now we sand everything down till there is quite useful for tracing patterns and I used it for tracing
no more shine. This ensures everything is at and has the pick guards as well.
been sanded.
Two or three or four more coats of varnish and sanding
Now I add the embedded art and logo. I decided to add between coats. Needless to say feel free to paint the
my business card to the back as a makers mark. I print body with whatever lurid tone you fancy. Varnish is just
onto tracing paper (not baking paper) as it is more what I used.
permeable and after being embedded in varnish is

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 33

Step 24: Putting Grooves in the Nut.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 34

As with the hole drilling for the strings we are
attempting to put the strings at even spacing between
the strings. First step is to mark the outer edges of the
string paths we want. in this case it is simply about 2 to 3
mm in from the edge. These nished up around 39 mm
apart. Now comes the maths. Subtract 15.1 (the
combined widths of all the strings) this gives us 23.9
mm. Divide by three gives us three 7.97 mm gaps
needed. Mark out 5.0 then 8 then 4.4 then 8 then 3.1
then 8 then 2.6 and you reach 39 or there about.
To start the grooves I like to put in a centre starting line
with my mini hack saw. The depth of the grooves needs
to be close to but not less than the height of the frets. To
achieve this I use a piece of metal slightly higher than
my frets as a depth stop. in this case it is an old jigsaw
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 35
blade with a bit of masking tape under it to give it a bit
more height. I then get stuck into the task using a few
needle les and some rotary tool bits that I had in 2, 3
and 4 mm diameters. We want the grooves to match the
diameter of the strings and to ramp slightly down
towards the headstock. I used a nifty little rotary tool I
just bought to do the majority of the cutting in and
nished with a few strokes to widen some of the grooves
a little and bring them closer down to the height of the
depth stop.
Because I am just in the middle stages of the build I like
to keep the depth guide slightly high so I can spend
some time later fettling these settings and getting them
perfect.
Step 25: Oiling the Fretboard

I use a product called hard burnishing oil to oil the
fretboard, though you should be able to get good
results with any danish oil, boiled linseed oil or
something similar. Varnishing fretboards is not
recommended due to chipping and wear and other
issues. I decant a small amount of the oil into a tiny
plastic bottle which allows me to limit the amount of oil I
dab out. I just fold down a 50 mm or so square of paper
towel or rag over the mouth of the small bottle turn it
upside down for a second and then wipe the wet square
over the fretboard.
I leave it to sit for a bit then I rub it down with a paper
towel or rag. Two or three applications, rubbing with ne
steel wool between coats, is all it needs.

Step 26: Back Cover Plate

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 36

Now almost everything is added we can make a cover
plate to keep it all concealed. Masking tape is used to
create an outline of the hole we have to cover and
positions for holes also should be marked now. This is
removed and put on cardboard. My rst feeble attempt
without marking the holes beforehand left a 10 mm
border and I got a nasty surprise when I looked at where
the screws would go as screw holes 10 mm in from the
edge of the cover caught the edge of the hole. A 20 mm
overlap allowance and putting the screws 10 mm in
from the edge of the cover made things work much
better. If you look carefully I crossed out one of my hole
Step 27: Adding the Electrics.
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 37
positions as it was perilously close to my channel to the
battery compartment when I looked closer.
I made my cover out of black white black pick guard
material. As with the pick guard I mark the back after
covering it with masking tape, cut it out and ip it to
reveal the nal product and le a 45 degree bevel into
the edge. If you want to be fancy you can make it out of
matching wood or stainless steel or anything else that
takes your fancy.
Starting in no particular order the 9 volt battery lead is
fed through to the battery compartment hole. The
volume potentiometer is bolted in place at the top end
of the knob tail. The two tone potentiometers are stared
at and due to no idea as to which one is more treble and
which is more bass are put in as they appear to go in
best next down the line of the tail. In the end I appear to
have the treble rst and bass second. Lastly the guitar
lead socket gets bolted in.
Knobs are slid into place on the top. as you may be able
to see from the side angle the extra few millimetres of
wood thickness I left in the top causes the knobs to be
more ush with the surface.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 38

Step 28: Add Tuning Pegs
Add the tuning pegs. Grommets rst and tuners second.
Because I was slightly inaccurate with either in drilling or
measuring I had to le a half a millimetre o one of the
backing plates of the tuning pegs to make them t. I
tested out the alignment with a single screw in each
tuner and had enough wiggle room to straighten them
up slightly better before adding the rest of the screw
holes and tightening it all down. Make sure they are
properly lubricated with a light grease or oil.
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 39
Somewhere around this time I added the strap buttons.
Not a huge step. One at the centre at the base and one at
the tip of the upper horn of the body. Because the body
is a little short I would be tempted to use a string above
the nut rather than the strap button on the horn.
Somewhat handily the strap button makes standing the
bass uke on its end leaning against the wall a lot more
stable.
Step 29: Add the Bridge and Saddle
The bridge was originally shaped at around 100 mm
wide and 25 mm deep and 19 mm high. To work out if
this is the correct measurement we need to a investigate
the action at the 12th fret. The bass ukulele has a high
action compared to other musical instruments where I
would normally make a ukulele with the strings seldom
more than 3 mm above the frets the bass ukulele has an
action about 6 mm above the frets. This is measured in
initial setup by placing a straight edge across the bridge
up to the rst fret, primarily because we have not set up
the nut action yet and it gives more consistent results.
The rst measurements showed I had an action of about
8 or 9 mm at the 12th fret this meant I had to remove a
lot of material from the bottom of the bridge to bring
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 40
that down to something we can work with. I nished up
with the bridge being a touch over 12 mm high and the
saddle which sits on top of the pickup is about 3 mm
higher than that. This gave me an action of around 6 mm
at the 12th fret. You will almost certainly have to adjust
these measurements yourself. I also introduced a curve
in the top of the saddle to match the radius in the fret
board and cut it to length to match the 75 mm slot in
the bridge.
A length of whipper snipper line was also used to further
test and adjust the setup.
Step 30: Adjust the Nut a Little More

I went through my collection of rotary tool bits and
picked out the ones that most closely matched my string
sizes. These were used to smooth out the string notches
I made in the earlier step. To fast forward things I used
the whipper snipper line as a temporary guide. The old
timey luthiers used to hold down the string between the
second and third fret and measure the gap between the
string and the rst fret. If this was about the thickness of
a cigarette paper you were in an ideal position. This
technique works for pretty much all fretted instruments
from ukes to banjos.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 41

Step 31: String It Up

One end of the string has a stopper or gure 8 knot tied during playing, which is not what I was expecting. There
onto it. This is a far more e ective stopping knot than a are two possible solutions:
simple overhand knot though in a pinch the simple or
overhand knot will su ce. To minimise the amount of - a higher nut with a deeper string groove to make it
winding the strings are stretched a little bit by hand as harder for the string to pop out or
you slot them into the tuning pegs. Ideally you want
about one wind around the post before you get in tune. - string trees.

Unfortunately the E string popped out of its nut slot

1
1

1. This is a figure 8 or stopper knot. when you pull on the long end it 1. This is a simple, or overhand knot - do not use this one because it
effectively locks onto the short end more effectively than the simple or comes loose.
overhand knot.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 42

Step 32: Adding String Trees

These are standard fender style bass string trees. Their
purpose is to hold the strings down between the tuner
and the nut to stop the string from popping out. In this
case the E string was the most problematic but the usual
position for the string tree on a Fender style bass is
between the D and G strings so I added one there too to
make things look more traditional even if I didn't need it.
I also dremelled out the slightly small string notches in
the bottom of the string tree to accommodate the fatter
strings of the bass uke a little. A couple of small washers
under the string tree were also needed as these strings
are a lot fatter than standard bass strings and the
deviation introduced looked a little much without them.
The Rodmaster bass needed the string tree on the D and
G string as it has a more traditional Fender layout to the
head angle. As you can see I made that one myself out of
wood.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 43

Step 33: Adjust Intonation
Because we have a oating bridge (i.e. it is not stuck
down) we can make some adjustment to the position of
the bridge. The reason we need to do this is that when
the strings are bent to bring them into contact with the
frets there is a bit of extra stress placed on the string so
the note is higher than it would be in theory if we
shortened the string by the distance between the frets.
The manual adjustment is traditionally done at the 12th
fret (the theoretical half way mark). If the bridge and nut
were equidistant from the 12th fret then the note played
on the 12th fret would be slightly higher than the octave
above the open string note.
Step 34: Playing It
Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 44
If the note played at the 12th fret is too high the bridge
needs to moved away from the 12th fret. If it is too low
then the bridge needs to moved towards the 12th fret.
Unfortunately it is really tricky to fret these fat strings
cleanly each time and together with the height of the
action I found it really di cult to get clean consistent
results but in the end I prevailed and the intonation
adjustment came out at about 11 mm rather than the 10
mm I had initially put in based on my reading of the
internet sources.
As can be expected the the solid body and low tension
strings make for a very quiet acoustic playing
experience. Plugging it in however makes for a full and
https://www.youtube.com/embed/vq_6Xen4wy4
deep sound. Even with the high feeling 6 mm action at
the 12th fret it is still prone to fret noise when played
aggressively. I have decided to christen the noise fret
growl instead and make a feature of it.

Step 35: Supplementary Step - Buying a Case.

Because instruments this size are currently a bit of a
rarity there is no real market for after market hard cases.
However 'student' half size and three quarter size guitars
are about the same dimensions and soft cases are
available. I brought the bass into my local music store
(Better Music in Canberra, Australia-link below) and they
had a selection of cases and gig bags and this one tted
the Jaimemaster perfectly. This bag is designed for a half
size student classical guitar and is padded all round.
Needless to say your measurements and other
manufacturer's gig bags may vary so try them out if you
can and otherwise measure and check speci cations
carefully. The fact that it has a full zippered opening is
also something to look for as having to push the bass
uke down into a bag that only opens in one end could
easily disturb the tuners.
https://www.bettermusic.com.au/xtreme-heavy-duty-
1...

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 45

Hi,
Your labels are mixed up on the 5th photo of the electronics, the one with the piezo pickup and
earphone socket, I think that I saw another erore as well but not sure.
Thanks for showing off your awesome CAD skills with this project! ;) I would love to hear how the
uke sounds.

Designing and Making a Bass Ukulele: Page 46