1990s Brian's Canjo
Local buddy Brian made this in shop class for his -- brother? -- decades ago. It had wood pegs, a wrist-eating tailpiece, and a terrible neck angle when it arrived. He wanted to get it playable so his kid (she's adorable) could pick some tunes on it. I also knew that he might want to pick some tunes on it.
As a father-to-Father's-Day gift to him, I spruced it up enough to get it playing for her. This included adding some hilarious old Ibanez tuners, rethinking the string mounting, fitting a cool old bridge, and damping the "head" both from behind and in front to get it to sound clean-enough to be enjoyable.
I used a set of D'Addario EJ99TLG (low G tenor uke) strings and set the scale length at 23" -- and then tuned it like a 5-string banjo without its high drone -- DGBD low to high. That can retune to CGCE, DGBE, whatever...!
To finish-off the functionality-side of things, I drilled 1/16" holes in the side of the neck to mark where each "fret" would be, doubled the holes for the 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. frets, and quadrupled the holes on the 12th. It's dumb and easy but it works.
The ironic part of this instrument is that even though it's stupidly-cheap and funky, it might have been the most inspiring piece of gear in today.
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