1920s La Pacific California-Style Banjo Ukulele





I've worked on a lot of these banjo ukes over time -- and mostly for customers. I used to pick them up for resale but after getting burned on several that had necks that were simply too warped, twisted, or had fretting nightmares... I gave up on them. You can find these everywhere as they were the "general-issue banjo uke" available from all sorts of mailorder catalogs in the 20s. This is a customer's uke and I was so thankful to find that the neck on this is actually dead-straight and the tiny frets barely needed a level/dress at all.

That, of course, made the other stuff easier -- I pulled off the resonator backplate and installed a second neck bolt for stability's sake, swapped the Kamaka-style tuners out for something more period-looking from my bins, recut an old bridge to fit, restrung it, and set it up. It's playing on-the-dot with 1/16" action at the 12th fret and has that sort of raspy, ka-chunky, pop-pop sound that I'm so familiar with hearing from these ukes.


I love how simply beat this instrument is. It was obviously well-loved.

For those not in the know, the head is "top-tensioned" -- meaning that those screws turned clockwise tighten-up the head rather than hooks/nuts around the edge of the rim.



It's kinda great just how much wear this has.


It turns out that these simple, all-maple, Harmony-made bridges from the 60s are the ideal candidates for fitting to banjo ukes like this as their wide feet don't press the (already fairly-slack due to the rim design) heads down too much. This helps in the summer months when humidity can really loosen-up the heads beyond the adjustability range of the rim's tension screws.






Comments

Jake Milburn said…
I have a La Pacific (open-backed) Banjo-uke myself. It’s been passed down to me all the way back from my great-grandfather. Luckily the neck is not warped, and with a bit of restoration on the bridge and friction pegs (all original), it plays like a charm for small settings. It also has penciled artwork all over the drum head back when my great grandfather took it to events. Not sure what it’s going for, but to me it’s priceless.
David said…
I have one of these (same brand) that has a tapered hole in the neck for a 5th string tuner. Does anyone thing that could be original, or just something done later?