1940s Martin 1T Tenor Ukulele

This is a local customer's Martin 1T tenor uke. This one's probably from the '40s and it has the cool tortoise binding and the earlier 12-fret body style. What's nice about this uke is that despite a lot of finish scratching, it's structurally in wonderful shape. All I had to do was give it a level/dress of the frets and shave the saddle a bit to get it playing spot-on.

I also, thankfully, managed to get the OK for an install of Gotoh UPTs for the headstock to replace the original (absolutely horrid) Grover Champion friction pegs. These are actually lighter in weight, look great, and function beautifully. It feels really good to purge the terrible old pegs on these old Martins. It's not like they couldn't be reinstalled, anyway, if someone wanted to embrace self-hatred...

Um -- the uke? It's sweet, it's mellow, it's a bit sparkly, it has a ton of sustain, and its voice gels nicely. You can hear it in the video -- this thing has class.










Comments

Tim Dempsey said…
Awesome Jake, you just convinced me to upgrade the tuners on mine!!