"Beach Baby" Quilted Maple and Port Orford Cedar Tenor
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We are calling this uke "Beach Baby" because the quilted maple reminds me of culry long blonde hair. It has a Port Orford Cedar top and quilted maple back and sides with curly Koa binding.
Port Orford Cedar is actually a species of cypress, but has a cedar-like smell. It grows only in a small area of Oregon and is in high demand as a tonewood.
The quilted maple is also from the Pacific Northwest and comes from very special big leaf maple trees.
The koa binding is very curly and looks great as a border between the cedar and the maple.
This uke was actually sold before it hit the store. The customers wife had just bought "Turtle" a few weeks before. He was interested in a custom build, but I also showed him this one while it was in progress. He ended up calling the day I was delivering this. We ended up meeting at the store to look at both the new ukes and this is the one he chose.
The quilt on this wood is so 3D, its amazing.
Sticking with the Pacific Northwest theme the accents are a burl from a Big Leaf Maple . This piece has a lot of interesting patterns.
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 Quilted Maple has a stronger response to bass tones than some woods so I increased the thickness on the E and A strings a bit to give them a little more power. It worked out quite well.
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 curly maple with a carbon reinforcement bar.
