It’s Been a While

April 10th, 2010

We keep thinking that maybe we’ll just take this blog off the site–we had to disable the ability for readers to comment because we were getting 1-2 spam comments per day! Must be a bunch of automated spiders that target WordPress.

But, then we’ll have people tell us that they’ve been reading the blog, so I guess we’ll leave it up here for a while.

We have been really busy, and that’s why we don’t blog very much. We work in the shop every day–we try to take Saturday and Sunday off, but we end up doing some miscellaneous work at least one of those days. After our shop time we come into the house and answer emails, update the website, take pictures of the instrument we strung that day, and update our database.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog, but we’re starting and finishing one instrument every day. They take about 20 days to build, but we’ve organized the shop into a production line so that things step through in a very orderly process.

I love building this way, versus building in a batch. This way, every instrument seems unique, rather than part of a large group. We can affect changes immediately, and if we have any process migration, we see it quickly and can fix it.

We’re in between festivals right now. Reno was a few weeks ago, and Dallas is at the end of this month. Then NYC in mid-May.

We’re in the uncomfortable position of having no inventory on our website. We do have some stock instruments, but we’re saving them to take to the festivals (if you read this and you really want an instrument immediately, just call or email and we’ll tell you what’s available).

Ok, back to work!

Gordon

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Intonation & Strings

December 17th, 2009

We are sticklers about intonation.  There’s no reason that a ukulele shouldn’t have perfect intonation all the way up the fretboard.  Yet, many if not most ukuleles fall short in this regard.

Achieving perfect intonation is more difficult as the scale length (distance from nut-to-saddle) gets shorter, so ukes are tough in this regard with the soprano being the most difficult.  Furthermore, with larger diameter nylon (or nylgut, or fluorocarbon) strings it is more difficult for the intonation to be perfect.

But, these are not excuses.  Merely, they put more demands on the luthier and the precision to which the ukulele is built.  Fret slots must be cut in exactly the right place, the action must be correct, and the saddle compensation must be perfect (the saddle compensation is the distance beyond the theoretical scale length that the saddle is placed to compensate for string stretch).

In short, we take great pride in building our instruments very precisely and setting them up for perfect intonation.

But, and here is my real point, sometimes an instrument that is built & set up correctly doesn’t have perfect intonation on one or more strings.  Why?  The answer is that the string is most likely at fault.  Either the strings are old, and when you fret they are stretching unevenly, or you’ve just restrung and one of the strings is bad.

We’ve just experienced this on two different ukuleles.  One of which we just built and strung, and the a-string was flat by about 15 cents.  It turned out to be a bad string (all the other strings were dead-on, and all the measurements checked out).  In another case, a customer had restrung their uke, and the intonation was off on one string.  Again, all the measurements checked out.  We replaced the string and all was well.

Happy Holidays,

Gordon & Char

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Upbeat 2009, Langley Ukulele Workshop

October 1st, 2009

Just got back from Upbeat 2009, the Langley (BC) Ukulele Workshop.  What a great festival!

Formerly run by Peter Luongo, he has now transferred the festival to James Hill, though Peter continues to teach along with James, Jamie Thomas and J. Chalmers Doane.  It’s the only workshop we’re aware of that specifically caters to teaching the teachers.  It had a sellout attendance of about 80 people who could attend workshops in 4 different time slots.  The comments that we heard were great.

And, it was a great conference for Mya-Moe Ukuleles.  We brought 15 different ukes and sold several, including one to J. Chalmers Doane and Jamie Thomas.  We’re quite proud that our ukuleles are being played by these great musicians.

Saturday night was the annual Master’s Concert by the Langley Ukulele Ensemble.  It was another great performance, and we were proud to have our instruments played by Peter Luongo, as well as Bianca  and Joel  (with one on the way to Brendon).  What a huge change from a year ago, and it really raises the bar for what we’ll want to accomplish over the next year.

Well, we’re now on vacation with Char’s family in North Carolina where we’re delivering another resonator (the 3rd one!) to a customer of ours in Wake Forest.  Next week we’re off to the Napa Valley Ukulele Festival, then Uketoberfest (Eugene, OR) and then the Ceilidh in Liverpool, NS.  What a month!

Gordon

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4 New Instruments!

July 13th, 2009

Char and I have been working literally 7 days/week in the shop as we’re working on producing 4 new instruments.

We sent out an email questionaire to all of our owners, dealers & players asking for input on new designs.  They responded with some great suggestions, including specific design ideas for a concert & soprano-sized instrument.  Many asked if we could eliminate some aesthetic items (such as binding) and produce a lower cost version of our popular Classic.

As a result, we designed & introduced a concert & soprano-sized version of our Classic.  We also introduced the Mya-Moe Tradition (available in Concert and Soprano sizes).  The tradition has all of the tone & playability features of our Classic (hand-built, hand-voiced, exact same internal engineering, radiused fretboard, dovetail neck/body joint, perfect intonation) at a very affordable price–$575 for the Soprano and $675 for the Concert.  The Tradition is available in either an all-koa or all-mango body.  It comes with geared Peghed tuners (a $100 upgrade on ukes from most other makers) and a padded gig bag.

But, in order to gear up our “factory” to produce these models, we’ve been slammed building our tooling, templates, and an inventory of parts.  Just today we completed the preparation on 36 necks, and over the weekend we prepped 40 fretboards.  That, along with a stock of neck blocks, end blocks, and bracing has kept us pretty busy.

But, we’re really excited about the new products.  The prototypes have a wonderful tone.  We’ve been asked why we’re adding lower priced instruments when we’ve barely been keeping up with demand.  For sure, it doesn’t make good short-term business sense.  But, we really want to have people with a variety of budgets be able to afford a Mya-Moe ukulele.

Ok, enough rambling & back to the shop!

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Off to Portland UkeFest

June 16th, 2009

It’s Tuesday June 16th and we’re off to the Portland UkeFest for the next 5 days.  Marianne Brogan puts on a great festival which is patterned after the retreats of the PSGW.  As we get ready to leave, Char and I can’t help but reflect back on the last 12 months.

We delivered our first ukulele to Moe Dixon in May of last year (2008).  A month later we attended the Portland UkeFest.  We didn’t know who James Hill was, and we went to the show with 3 ukuleles and maybe 4 semi-completed bodies.  While we received a lot of attention, we didn’t sell an instrument.  The toughest question to answer was, “how long have you been building ukuleles?”

We’ve had a great year.  We just strung our 100th ukulele about 2 weeks ago.  We’re proud to have 10 world-class musicians that endorse our instruments.  Not only do we know who James Hill is, but he owns & plays one of our ukes (a spruce-top koa lap steel).  We’ve attended several festivals (Portland, Langley, Eugene, Denver, New York) and we’ve sponsored several of them.  We sponsored a festival here in Hood River in February and raised over $8000 for our local schools’ music programs.

But, the best part of our last year has been the incredible people we’ve met through this instrument.  It is true that people are just more fun when they pick up a ukulele!  At every conference we meet people whom we invite up to our house and shop, and more than a few of them have taken us up on the invitation.  One couple from Australia just dropped by one day, and then we have our good friends from Eugene who came by to see our “ukulele factory.”

We’ve shipped instruments to all parts of the United States, as well as Belgium and Japan, and 5 of our musician’s put together a ukulele-only group (Ukelicious).  A year ago we probably had 20 sets of raw wood, and now we have well over 200.

Wonder what the next 12 months will bring??

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Water-based lacquer notes

April 16th, 2009

We just started our 100th instrument, and I finally feel like I’m starting to master the application of the water-based lacquer.  It’s not as good as nitro, but that is the nature of the product.  It’s harder to apply, a bit more finicky, and it doesn’t give you as “wet” a finished look.  But, given all the positive impacts to your health and the environment, the water-based lacquer is excellent.  So, here’s my process:

*  I use Stewart-MacDonald’s water-based laquer product line.  I tried KTM-9 (from LMI), but it is more finicky.  The big negative is that when you use shellac as a sealer and don’t need a pore filler (such as on spruce), the KTM-9 easily blisters during buffing.  The StewMac products are really solid, and the folks at StewMac have done a lot of testing.  They are a great help.

*  I sand to 180, then mask, then put on one coat of shellac as a sealer.

*  After a quick sanding, I put on StewMac’s water-based (clear) pore filler.  I mix some micro-beads into the pore filler to thicken it a bit.  This is a really important step–it reduces the number of times you need to pore fill and results in a much better surface.

*  One day later, I put on another coat of pore filler thickened with micro-beads

*  One day later, I sand it flat with 320.  I put on 5 coats of the StewMac sanding sealer at 45 minute intervals.  I’m using a Walcom STM HVLP gun and I put on relatively light coats.  I never get any runs or sags, and I overlap each pass of the gun by 50%.  I leave the product in the cup of the gun during the day and clean it out after the last shooting.  I keep the room at about 70 degrees and the humidy fluctuates during the year from about 35% to 45%.

*  The next day I sand everything flat with 320.  This is the biggest sanding day.  I don’t want to sand through the finish and expose new pores, but I want to get it as flat as possible.  Some pores still show up after this sanding.  I think put on another 5 coats of the sanding sealer.

*  The next day everything gets sanded flat, and you shouldn’t see any pores.  I then put on 5 coats of the StewMac water-based lacquer at 45 minute intervals.  Again, the coats are relatively light.  If you get runs or sags, or you see any milky look to the finish, then it’s going on too thick.

*  I wait about 7 days before sanding & buffing.

*  I go right to 1500 grit wet-sanding.  Surprisingly, the surface right off the gun is so good that I can sand with 1500.  This sanding goes pretty fast.

*  Then I go to the buffer and buff with the Menzerna medium, then extra-fine.

With this process, I get a great gloss finish.  StewMac notes that to get as transparent a finish as possible, keep each coat of finish light.

Gordon

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Early April (2009) in Snowden

April 5th, 2009

So, it’s been about 2 months since we’ve written on our blog.  We’ve been slammed in the ukulele shop!  That’s not such a bad thing.  We love working together in the shop and watching each instrument come together.

In late February we held the first annual Gorge Ukulele Festival (www.gorgeukuleles.org) which was a huge success, though it was also a huge time sink.  We’ve already scheduled next year’s festival and we’ve confirmed James Hill.  Anyway, back to the shop notes…

When Char and I started building ukuleles (we delivered the first one in May, 2008), we built at the rate of 3 per week.  By the end of last year we had 12 in stock and decided to back down production to 2 per week.  Well, by the time our ukulele festival was over (March 1), we didn’t have any instruments in stock!  So, we decided to ramp back up to 3 per week.

When we ramp production up, it consumes a lot of time.  The issue isn’t just that we’ve increased production by 50%, but that we need more fretboards, necks, soundwells, bridges, etc.  And, since we make these parts from scratch in batches, when we ramp up production we suddenly have to make a lot more of those parts.  So, since we ramped up over a month ago, we’ve been spending 7 days a week in the shop.

Now we’ve caught up.  We have 18-21 instruments in process (they take 6-7 weeks to complete);  we have 3 in stock and are adding 1-3 per week (depending upon custom orders and sales);  we have over 30 necks roughed out and 30 fretboards ready.

Amazingly, it hasn’t been a year since we delivered our first ukulele, and we’ll start our 100th uke in 2 weeks!  We’ve decided to make the 100th pretty special, with a spectacular set of wood and abalone purfling around the body and headstock.

After designing the 100th, we’re close to deciding to bring out a new “model” which adds all those aethetic touches to a standard instrument.

It snowed up here (we’re at 2000′) on April 1st, but today we’ve got sunshine and 60 degrees, so maybe spring is here finally?

We’re off to Eugene to see Jake Shimabukuro on Tuesday.  We’ll go to the NYC Uke Festival at the end of May, and then back here for the Portland Ukulele Festival in mid-June.

Thanks to all the people who play and love our instruments.  We’re having a blast continuing to make and hopefully perfect our ukuleles!

Gordon & Char

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Denver Ukulele Festival

February 9th, 2009

Char, Moe and I just returned from the Denver Ukulele Festival–what an amazing festival Michael Schenkelberg put on!  It was a one-day festival held at the Swallow Hill Music Association campus on Saturday, February 7th.  The workshops started at about 10am, and we’d guess they had nearly 100 people attending the classes.  An open jam was held in the downstairs cafe from 4:30-6:30, and the concert started at 7:30.

The camp seemed to run very smoothly.  They had a great set of instructors including James Hill, Victoria Vox, and the Hollywaiians.  The attendees we talked to universally gave high praise for the quality of the classes.

The open mic session was packed and featured 2 full hours of great music.  Char and Moe played 3 songs (while I guarded all the ukuleles on our table!).

The highlight of the day was the evening concert, which went from 7:30 to 11:30 with a 15 minute break.  It was a sell-out crowd (maybe 500 people??) in an acoustically amazing room in the Swallow Hill building.  The sound people had things dialed in so well that the evening could/should have been recorded and sold as-is with no post-editing.  Amazing.  Victoria Vox, James Hill and the Sweet Hollywaiians each played about 40 minutes.  Many of the groups co-mingled, and the Boulder Acoustic Society played their own set and also filled in and backed up some of the others.

We’d never heard the BAS boys before, but now we can’t wait for their West Coast tour this summer.  The Sweet Hollywaiians are an incredibly tight quartet out of Osaka, Japan.  If you get a chance to see them, do it.

In addition to Mya-Moe, there were 4 other great ukulele vendors.  Attendees could find everything from $30 production ukuleles, to $2200 custom ukes to gorgeous banjo ukes (The Bean Sprout) and everything in-between.  We’re very proud to have the Denver Folklore Center carry our instruments.  They were also in attendance as a vendor and had the widest array of ukuleles of any vendor at the festival.  All the tables seemed to be active all-day long, even when the classes were in session.

Moe played ukulele much of the day, often started an impromptu jam session behind our table.  We heard some great voices, along with some amazing play by Aaron (of Bean Sprout) and Matsui-san (from The Sweet Hollywaiians).  Matsui-san convinced me that our Lap Steel is an amazing instrument.  The things he could do with that instrument must be heard to be believed!

We were glad to have donated a resonator ukulele to the festival which was very successfully raffled off.

We can’t wait to go next year.  It was well worth the 2500 mile round-trip (car) journey!

Gordon

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Launch of the 6-String

February 2nd, 2009

Do you know how you look back at a simple conversation or meeting and realize it changed the direction of your life?  Well, one of those instances was when Moe Dixon visited us a year ago and asked if we’d build him a ukulele.  Nearly 100 instruments later, it would appear that that conversation had a bit of an impact on our lives!

About 2 months ago Kate Power called me saying they were coming through Hood River and wondering if we could help them set up a house concert (which they played to a great audience of over 100 people at The Pines this past Friday).  Kate exclusively plays a Lili’u (6-string) ukulele, and by the end of the conversation I’d decided that we would design a 6-string as the newest Mya-Moe model.

Well, we just strung it up today!  It sounds wonderful, and once again I’m so gratified by the combination of art, music, engineering and woodworking that goes into an instrument.  For the 6-string we had to slightly widen the fretboard (easy), redesign the bridge (pretty easy), slot the nut differently (easy), re-design the headstock (medium difficulty), and redesign the internal bracing (difficult).

In theory, redesigning the bracing seems straight-forward.  Just add a few more.  But, too many braces and the instrument will forever be “tight” and way too bright (trebly).  It will sound thin and tinny, which is not a very popular sound.  I’m pleased with the balance we’ve achieved by slightly increasing the interior bracing on the top.

We also had to design a custom set of strings so that we could string them all in nylon (no wound strings).  This feature gives the instrument great balance across the strings.

Now I can’t wait to build the next one!

Gordon

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Building the Perfect Instrument

January 28th, 2009

We’re in the process of building our 100th instrument–something I couldn’t have imagined a few years ago.  But, we have yet to build a “perfect” instrument, and right now I’m not sure we ever will.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about “perfect”.  It is one of the few words that is an absolute.  Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and “perfect” is certainly subjective.  But, for the person doing the judging, “perfect” is an absolute.

For our instruments, I have an incredibly high standard.  Every instrument has some slight flaws and I know where they are in every one.  Of course, I won’t let them go out the door if those flaws are anything more than the most minor aesthetic issues (maybe a pore that went unfilled, or a blip in the purfling).  But, they are less than perfect.

There are so many aspects to an instrument:  acoustics, aesthetics, playability.  And, within each of those areas there are many factors.  Add onto that that we’re dealing with wood, which always has “flaws” (mostly I think of them as features).

In life, I’ve found myself pursuing different hobbies, but then tiring of them when I reach a point of knowing all I can know about them.  After building nearly 100 instruments, what I don’t know about them seems like a much bigger body-of-knowledge that what I know about them.  Every day is an adventure, and I learn several new things every day about wood, our process, finishing materials, and acoustics.

But, isn’t that what makes a pursuit fulfilling?  Why bother do it if you can master it quickly?  I seem to constantly wrestle with the balance between challenge and perfection.  I think if we built a “perfect” instrument, the challenge might no longer be there.  So, in some ways I guess I hope we never achieve perfection.  But, the idea of building (and selling) imperfect instruments is somewhat unsettling.

I guess at the end of the day what keeps me motivated is that our musicians and players seem to love what we’re making.  I hear from at least one of them every day.

Enough introspection, I guess.  Time to drop off a lap steel!

Gordon

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