I’ve made a bit of progress with the bass.
Palatino Electric Upright Bass Part 2
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Category Archives: Musical Instruments
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 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
Archtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 6 – new soundboard
I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth using the existing soundboard – it just doesn’t ring nicely. So I tapped all my lumps of wood to find one with a decent sound. The best was some mahongany.
Archtop Pineapple Ukulele Part 5 – Headstock, tailpin and frets
Glued the veneer to the headstock and drilled the tuner holes.
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