A Tale Of Two Repair Projects

I had two instruments come into the shop for repair this week and I have been carefully thinking about the best way to approach them. Hopefully contrasting the two will help you understand a little bit more about this part of my working life.

Customer #1- A new ukulele student, signed up for Nicole’s class, came to the shop to get strap buttons for her uke, pick up the instructional book and get a mini lesson from Nicole. I usually give the uke a quick once over, add the buttons and leave the uke alone, especially if it is good enough for a beginner. In this case, she had two, one was a Kala soprano that was fine, but she really preferred the size of her tenor. It is an un-branded Chinese made tenor of Sapele wood. It was fine, except the bridge was about to fall off. In fact, the two screws under the pearl dots on the bridge are the only thing keeping it together. I spoke up, pointing it out and asking if she wanted me to fix it. In a case like this, I am not really fishing for repair work, especially on a uke of this quality level, but I want to help her out and make sure she is ready for class in January. I thought I could get the bridge glued down and put new strings on it quickly and at a budget price.

This type of repair is really part of our community building. In this case, the customer owns a really nice event space, wants to support the arts and works to provide space for women-only programing like Nicole’s classes. Also, she just needs a tenor that can get her started in the class. She already plays guitar and everyone in her family plays music. She mentioned that she wants one built by me some day and this quick repair project could make it happen.

Customer #2- This uke came in from a repeat customer, who has an instrument made by me and also a few repairs. It is a Johnny Marvin tenor ukulele (which really is a concert scale). Marvin was a famous singer and radio personality, please read more about him here. The Harmony company in Chicago retailed a line of instruments with his name on it. They are the nicer Harmony ukes, made of high quality Mahogany, similar in quality to the Aero ukes and Vita ukes for instance.

I believe the airplane bridge was supposed to be in tribute to Charles Lindbergh, famous aviator and American Nazi.

Whoops, I got distracted there for a minute, back to the uke.

The bridge on this uke is also coming off, but instead of being held on by a couple of hardware store bolts, it is basically held on by the tiny, irreplaceable, celluloid plastic bridge pins. Are you ready for a tangent that isn’t about Nazis? Here we go.

At the Portland Use Fest in 2006 or so, I was sitting in the grass with Greg and Jere Canote. We were passing around Jere’s Washburn shrine ukulele, which is a very fancy and collectable model at the same time as the Marvin uke. It also had these little celluloid bridge pins, but they were green. I was tuning it up and one popped out and flew into the lawn. We had at least 20 adults on there hands and knees for half an hour and we could not find it. I felt terrible but Jere wasn’t mad. To make a replacement, you would have to find the same green celluloid and turn one on a mini lathe…or maybe 3d print a modern one…or maybe get into injection molding? Either way, I really do not want to loose one of these again!

The Marvin uke is very lightly built, has many cracks and is missing two braces. The neck is already set at a good angle and it will be easy to play. Because it is a collectable, high quality antique, I will use only the proper glue, finish, materials and techniques to get it back in shape. The customer has many instruments, so I know he isn’t missing out on strumming while I have this. He also has a backlog of ukes waiting for me to fix.

So, which is the more important uke/customer? One is an interesting historical uke, needing extra care and attention to do the job correctly. It is from a long term customer with more work to send me. The other is a local student, with strong community ties with a $50 uke needing $100 of work. She is hoping to have this uke for her first class, beginning her musical journey and hoping for a Beansprout in the future. I guess they both even out, actually. My labor and the knowledge of my craft, given to me by my craft mentors/ancestors, are equally needed in both cases. It is not a question of which is more important, but how to fit these in around my custom build schedule.

Thanks for keeping the lights on…

A