Extreme Curl Satin Box Tenor Uke

[Allen]

First time I've worked with Satin Box, and was pleasantly surprised on how it works. Even with this amount of curly figure I managed to bend the sides without any trouble.....though my bum was puckered up to start with.

The bindings are curly Blackwood and Ringed Gidgee for fret boards and head plates. Saverex and Thomastilk-Infeld flat wound stings.. MISI Air pickup system and finished in high gloss polyurehtane.

[GregL]

Hi Allen,

Another beauty!
What is the top wood?
I have some high curl Satin Box (did you get yours from curly?), and you say it worked well? How do you bend it?

Thanks,
GregL.

[Allen]

Cedar soundboard.

I hand bend everything no matter what timber, and then set the shape with blanket and solid form. It was pretty easy.

[Paul Henneberry]

Hi Allen,
I had the pleasure of playing this instrument yesterday. Beautiful and brilliant. Sounded great and the little touch of blue from the turquoise is a nice touch.
You also take excellent photographs. I was hoping you could share a bit of information about how you get such good pictures - lighting , camera , lenses? The actual uke has an exceptional finish that is very shiny but you don't get any reflection in your pictures. Neat trick.

cheers

Paul

[Allen]

Thanks Paul.

I use a Nikon D90 with one of their pro 18-105 zoom lenses.

I bought a 4' square light tent with 3 flouro lights in a kit online years ago Was pretty cheap (under $200 at the time). Does the job but as you said its almost impossible to show any reflections in the finish no matter how shiny it is. That's a good thing and a bad thing. I had to realy work on getting a few in this set to show that it was a gloss finish without the highlights blowing out.

So in order to have a lot more control of lighting I'm upgrading all of my studio right now and going to a seamless paper background with some high end LED lights that I can control brightness and color, as well as soft boxes and barn doors. I got the 30W ones because some reviews I watched said that the 55W ones were so bright that they had trouble in smaller setups like I'll be using them in.

Also chose the bicolor ones so that there are more possibilities to control color on the subject and background depending on the color temperature you set your camera to and post production.

I'm still waiting on the paper to show up (black and white rolls). Looking forward to seeing what I can do with this.

[Paul Henneberry]

Thanks Allen,
I'll be looking closely at your future post pictures but I can't imagine any room for improvement.

cheers


Paul

[colburge]

Top notch as usual! Are you moving away from your old head stock design? I have to say I liked the previous one a little bit more. I do like the heal and cap design that you have recently changed too, even though the way you used to continue the heel cap into the back was awesome.

Cheers

Col

[Allen]

I did this headstock on a couple of 5 string ones to make a better string path, and now am getting client requests for it. The heel cap change is because Im using a bolt on neck now instead of the Spanish Heel. Makes it impossible to do the old style.