As visitors to my website may have picked up by now, I’m a big fan of the work of Aaron Keim of Beansprout Musical Instruments. He is the primary reason I have gravitated to using nearly all locally-sourced or salvaged wood for my ukuleles. Also, his design aesthetic highlights the beauty of the wood in an understated way that I really appreciate. As a Christmas/birthday/retirement present to myself, I ordered an alto ukulele from Beansprout early this year. The alto is Aaron’s interpretation of an ukulele sized between a soprano and a concert. The uke had an August build slot at Aaron’s workshop, and it was delivered in early September.
Aaron is equally open to the customer selecting the types of wood for their uke or letting him pick the wood. During our email exchanges about construction details, I shared a little about my background and my hobby building ukuleles. I asked Aaron to take into account my background while picking wood. He offered a couple of suggestions in a short video (see below), and we settled on dogwood and western red cedar as the primary woods. I fell in love with the dogwood on first sight.
I kept the stock fluorocarbon strings on the uke for around eight weeks but recently replaced them with Uke Logic fluorocarbon strings (soft tension, high G, “Sandia” pink carbon). My mind (or my fingers) may have been playing tricks with me, but I thought the stock strings had higher tension than I prefer.
The ukulele has serial number 1038 stamped on the headstock. Aaron posted the uke to his gallery page (scroll down to #1038), along with a short video demonstration and some initial reactions from me.
The components are:
Western red cedar top (2-piece)
Dogwood back (2-piece)
Dogwood sides (2-piece)
Fir neck
Dogwood faceplate
Dogwood fretboard
Walnut soundhole rosette
Walnut binding on body
Wood (walnut and ??) endgraft
Pistachio bridge
Gotoh UPT tuners
Weight: 14.3 oz. (407 g) (with strap buttons)
Scale length: 14 7/8 inches (only 1/8 inch less than the scale length of the concert ukes I make)
Nut width: 38 mm
String spacing G to A: 30 mm
Video
Short video sent by Aaron with wood choices
Sound sample of Amazing Grace, Hawaii Aloha (arr. Brett McQueen), and the intro & outro to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s version of Over the Rainbow
