1950s United-made Baritone Uke to Tenor Guitar Conversion

February 22, 2019

1950s United-made Baritone Uke to Tenor Guitar Conversion

I've done a few modifications of these United baritone ukes to mini tenor guitars in the past. They're braced a little more stiffly and have more substantial, stronger necks than your average Harmony and are definitely heavier-built than something like a Favilla, so they're a good choice for the conversion. Some Harmony baris will work for this as well (especially the heavier-built '60s ones), but these are the ones where I've felt the most confident in the conversion process.

A friend of mine had asked about doing one up for him to tune modal DADA (like standard CGDA tenor tuning but with the wound strings raised) so I sent him links to various baris that I thought would suit and, voila, this appeared on my porch a couple weeks later.

He wanted to go to town, however, and make it a kick-butt instrument. That meant a refret and nice tuners as well as the other usual work.

Work included: a board plane and refret with jumbo stock, hairline crack repair to the back, bridge modification to pin-style load, compensation of the saddle, new StewMac repro tuners at the headstock, a new bone nut, parts-bin pearl-inlaid bridge pins, a seam repair or two, and a good setup. The neck is straight, it plays with 1/16" action overall at the 12th fret, and has a good, chimey, sweet sound. It sounds a lot like the all-mahogany 1920s Harmony size 5 tenor guitars I've played -- similar to a Martin 5-15T but more mids and highs and less velvet on the low. I've never played a refretted version of one of these, but of course the bigger, more modern frets make it all that much more fun to play. String gauges are a fairly-tense 36w, 24w, 16, 10 set for DADA tuning.

Materials are: solid mahogany body and top, mahogany neck, rosewood bridge and fretboard. This has a 19" scale but I forgot to do the rest of the measurements.

Condition notes: there are three repaired hairline cracks on the back, the finish shows lots of weather-checking/finish cracking and general use-wear throughout, but it's otherwise in decent shape for its age. The neck had a slight backbow when it came in but between board-leveling and adjusting the fret height in their slots and gluing them in frets 1-4, it was eliminated.

The K&K label at the headstock makes me think there's a pickup on board!

The board has pearl dots.

The soundhole has a very thin rosette inlaid.

This bridge went from tie-block style to pin-load via cutting off the tie-block and drilling for pins. The original saddle just needed a little compensation to get it to play in tune with the steel strings.