2025 Frankenstein Stroh-Style Resonator Ukulele

A customer asked me to make a Stroh ukulele for him and, luckily, he had a modern, low-rent Stroh violin copycat to use as a body donor. I looked-up what the old Stroh ukes looked-like and then mated this old, '20s uke neck to the body of this instrument in the same style as the old Strohs.

The biggest problem with the instrument as it was, though, was that the resonator cone and bridge gizmo attached to it were both heavily overbuilt. I replaced the cone with a super-thin piece of birch plywood which I sanded-down to just one layer in the middle and the bridge with a thin, rosewood one that I reinforced at key points.

The biggest problem with this sort of resonator design is that it works alright with bowed instruments -- which supply a ton of power from the constant contact of the bow -- but not so well with plucked instruments which have a bump of power and then decay as you play them. What I mean to say is that this is not much louder than a normal uke, though its sound is a heck of a lot more directional and it does carry across a room better because its horn sends the sound out in a tighter beam.

Suffice to say, we all had fun and it's adorable.