I’ve made a bit of progress with the bass.
Palatino Electric Upright Bass Part 2
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Palatino Electric Upright Bass
I bought a Palatino Electric Upright Bass as a follow-on from my ukulele bass. I’ve got lessons booked; before then I need to make it sound good.
Palatinos have a mixed reputation. With a bit of fettling they are supposed to sound good. However the build quality is very variable and some fall apart. Hopefully this one has been around a while and is one of the solid ones. It is certainly very heavy!
First issue to solve is the bridge angle. The bridge – as can be seen in the picture above – is fairly flexible.The default position is at right angles to the body of the instrument. However, the strings tend to make the top of the bridge slide upwards, with the eventual result being the bridge firing across the room. It doesn’t help that these strings are very slippery (they will be replaced soon).
Continue readingYamaha P-125 Electric Piano Stand
We bought a Yamaha P-125 electric piano a few years ago for the kids to learn on. We just bought the keyboard, figuring we could get the proper pedals and the stand if the kids took to the instrument.
Fast forward a few years and one of the kids is doing really well. However, the base is no longer sold. I bought the pedals before they disappeared too and figured I needed to make a stand.
Looking through the piles of wood in the workshop I found some likely looking oak for the ends – I thought this would look nice. All was fine until I tried to cut mortices for the cross-panel…
I came to the conclusion that this was beyond my skill and time availability, so I found an old pub table top – also oak, and cut it in half.
Doesn’t look very impressive above, but once filled, painted and the ends covered in shellac it looks better:
Interestingly the piano sounds much better on the stand than it did on the old X metal stand. I assume this is because the downward-firing speaker units are designed for the stand.
Kemenche Bridge
My mum bought a kemenche when on holiday in Turkey many years ago. She’s a violin player so she collects interesting string instruments. She lent the kemenche to someone and when it came back the bridge was missing.
I found a scrap of walnut for the bridge. This isn’t authentic but should look and sound good.
Continue readingNew Trailer for Custard
The old trailer has had its day. It was too hard to get the launching trolley on and off the road base, leading to lots of extra stress. The downside is the cost – the trailer is worth (a lot) more than the boat!
Anyway, I ordered a combi trailer from Mersea Trailers. They’d got aluminium launch trolleys for the same price as a steel version. I rang up to check and they said that wasn’t correct but they’d honour the price. They aren’t close so it took a good few months to arrive – we had to wait for a lorry coming in the right direction. It arrived before we needed the boat anyway.
Continue readingArchtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 10 – Playing!
The uke is now playing 🙂
Some more pictures…
Old Stanley Knife blades made excellent scrapers! The steel is good quality and nicely hardened, plus I’ve always got lots of old ones around. They make a nasty crunch when burnished but work well and hold an edge for ages.
Archtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 9 – End is in (distant) sight!
Made a bridge. This is based on the shape violin bridges – not sure about it yet but we’ll see.
Archtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 8 – Coming together
It is now looking more like a ukulele and less like bits of wood.
Archtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 7 – Soundboard on
Giant Halfway Hinge Repair
My Giant Halfway is wobbling at the hinge. Not nice to ride and once this starts it only gets worse. There is a video on YouTube on repairing this, but the information there is incomplete so I thought this might be useful to share.
First step is to separate the two halves of the frame. This means removing the gear and rear brake cables before removing the pin. Not too hard, especially if you are going to replace the cables which is something you’ll almost certainly need to do anyway.
Getting the bushings out is the big problem. The inner bushings pulled out by inserting an 8mm tap and pulling – this is probably where the wear is – around the bushings in the frame rather than the pin. Anyway, easy.
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