c.1925 Favilla Wimbrola Ukulele

This is a truly peculiar uke... these were made by Favilla in New York and feature a geometrically-styled pineapple uke body. Unfortunately for this fellow, the headstock was recut with the addition of a mandolin-style topper, and it was refinished at one point. It still has the trademark pineapple-style uke sound, which feels a little warmer and fuller than a typical soprano uke. This thing is a super strummer for that reason!

The nut is new, the bridge saddle is new (the old one was deteriorated, unfortunately, and someone had super-glued the ebony in place which meant a clean swap was not an option), and the finish is new-ish, but the rest is original. It has one previously repaired back crack.

Headstock. Note that this was painted over black later. Originally it would have been finished in natural. The crest at the top of the headstock is a later addition.

Original frets, save the 12th, which is a vintage replacement from my parts bin. When this was refinished, the fretboard was sprayed too, which is a little unfortunate, but doesn't effect the instrument at all.

I've sprayed the instrument with a very light top coat as the refinish job was pretty poor... it was splotchy in parts and missing finish in other parts. This brought the wood alive again, and you can see the pretty decent mahogany that was used in construction.

Simple Martin-esque rosette.

New bone saddle in place over the cut-down original ebony saddle.

Back.

Here you can see where some funny fellow grafted a mandolin-style headstock topper onto the uke. There's also evidence of a tailpiece on this, too, and some extra holes in the bridge tail. Perhaps someone had some bright (stupid!!!) idea of turning this into a mandolin?

Neck join.


Lots more airspace inside this body than a typical soprano.


Here's where a tailpiece was mounted previously.

You can really see those tight bends in the body here.

...