1960s Flamed Koa Homemade Soprano Ukulele

I love weirdos like this! The tuner type and general style suggest this is a late-'50s or early-'60s build. I think the owner knows a lot more about this than I do and I will update this if I hear more about it, but the gist of it is that this is a homemade, Hawaiian-made instrument. It clearly looks it with its Kamaka-like fretboard and ridiculous flamed-koa build.

It's very quirky, though, starting with a "flat-glued" neck to an octagonal body that's held together with "kerfing" that's 1/2" blocking at all sections of the top/back joins. There's no bracing inside otherwise and this design makes the "vibrational plate" of the instrument similar in size to your average soprano uke rather than a big old body like this one has.

Still, how can one not love this instrument?

Work was a little weird -- I had to "bolt" the neck to one of the interior side-blocks and glue it as well, as it was basically falling off of the instrument. The frets needed seating and level/dressing, the saddle needed to be moved 1/8" to the rear of the bridge, seams needed repair, cleats were needed on the back seam, and the top needed some bracing added to make it more stable.

All of this got done and now it plays great and sounds... average! It's such a charmer that I won't complain too much about that, though.