"Birdy" Bird's Eye Maple and Port Orford Cedar Tenor
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We are calling this uke "Birdy" because the the back and sides are Bird's Eye Maple. It has a Port Orford Cedar top and slighly curly Koa binding.
I used to talk about how Port Orford Cedar is actually a species of cypress, but it turns out that all of our native native "cedar" trees are actually in the cypress family. Only Old World cedars are "true" cedars. Port Orford cedar grows only in a small area of Oregon and is in high demand as a tonewood.
This uke was so pretty and sounded so good that when I took it to Island Bazaar, the owner decided that she needed to keep it for herself! I was a very proud papa.
Bird's eye maple is not a traditional tonewood because it is flat sawn, but it is very hard and reflects sound back to the soundboard very well. It also has a very unique figure.
I took this to show off at the Los Angeles Ukulele Festival. It was very popular with the four professional performers that I showed it to, receiving high marks for tone, volume and intonation.
The accent wood is an orange amboyna burl which goes nicely with the koa binding.
I used gold Gotoh planetary tuners on this one.
The rosette is curly koa with an additional abalone inlay to match the abalone purfling. I really like this type of rosette with tops that don't have a lot of interesting grain.
This picture also shows how clean this piece of Port Orford Cedar is. You almost can't see any grain at all.
The strings are a Pepe Romero wound low G string with custom fluorocarbon strings.
The fretboard and bridge are a very light colored Indian rosewood.
You would expect an instrument with a maple body and a Port Orford Cedar top to be quite loud and this uke does not disappoint. The nice thing about it is that even when played loudly, the tone and articulation stay true and don't get muddy at all.
The neck is quilted maple with a carbon reinforcement bar. Unfortunately, quilted maple only looks quilted when it is flatsawn and necks need to be oriented with vertical grain. It did keep its falt curl though.
