1930s Regal-made Penn Slide/Lap (Modded) Ukulele

My friend Todd came over on Saturday to learn how to make a winter-height bone saddle for his trusty Kalamazoo KG-11. While he was learning the ropes with the tools and getting into it, I turned this lemon into lemonade.

This uke was trade-bait and I've worked on a whole bunch of this basic model of Regal-made soprano uke. They date from the mid-'30s through the early-'50s in this style and come in variations of woods and crazy paintjobs and all of them are unbraced on the top and back and tend to have a decent, if not amazing tone. If you want to see some others of this basic design, click here, click here, click here, click here, click here, and click here).

Unfortunately, this one arrived here in quite good shape overall (bridge needing a reglue, bolted-neck reinforcement needed to shore-up the dumb dowel joint that these use), but its neck had a twist and a backbow. It would've been a real pain (and above this uke's pay-grade) to solve that, so I converted it into something I've wanted to make for a while -- a "lap" ukulele intended for Hawaiian-guitar-style play. To that effect...

Work included: a new raised, ebony nut, old mandolin tailpiece install, same-period tenor guitar floating bridge with bone saddle, removal of the (poorly-reglued-anyhow) original bridge, micro face-dots install, new (funky, old) geared tuners for the headstock, an bolt-reinforcement for the neck joint. It's strung with steel in gauges 36w, 26w, 16, 12 and tuned GDGD low to high with the lowest G note the same pitch as a mandolin's G (or low-G uke's) and the next-lowest note (D) a full step above uke's C. It's stable after this conversion, sounds cool in an almost weird-Indian-instrument way, and sure is a lot better this way than as a pile of bones on a shelf.

Scale length: 13 1/8"
Nut width: 1 3/8"
String spacing at nut: 1 3/16"
String spacing at saddle: 1 5/8"

Lower bout width: 6 1/2"
Upper bout width: 5 1/8"

Side depth at endpin: 2 1/4"

Top wood: solid mahogany
Back/sides wood: solid mahogany
Neck wood: poplar
Fretboard: rosewood

Neck shape: flat board with medium medium, C-shaped rear

Bridge: ebony

Saddle: bone

Nut: ebony

Weight: 14 oz

Condition notes: there's rough wood (and leavings of a not-so-good old reglue job) around the foot of the bridge on the top where the old, glued-on bridge used to be. Clearly, this is also setup in a very unoriginal style.

Penn was a retailer in Los Angeles and there's some historical information to read by clicking here.

I put new face dots on in a pattern I've seen on some (crude) old Hawaiian guitars and one that I find delightfully weird.

The tuners are cut-down from some 1960s Goya/Levin plates I had hanging around in my bins.

The flamey figure around the heel and midsection of the poplar on the neck is probably the reason that the neck twisted and backbowed as it did -- figured woods (save birdseye maple) are generally less-stable than their plain-looking peers.

Note the tiny dot at the back of the heel which betrays my pilot hole for the soundhole-installed bolt reinforcement for the neck. These are made with a doweled joint and no matter how much praying one does, they need extra reinforcement to keep the neck from moving around as they age.