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This one is another recent build in the last batch of tenors. Made from Tiger Myrtle with a Brazilian Mahogany soundboard. All the trim is Indian Rosewood. Grover Sta-Tite tuners.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

Wow, very nice, gorgeous design and it shows a level of craft that I would like to achieve someday.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Beautiful Allen, and very classy!

No experience with that top wood but I'll bet the TM sides and back are a great match tone wise for a Uke.

Beautiful, as all the work you've shown. Something to shoot for for me as well. I like the heelcap design.
Bravo!!!

You've never built with a mahogany soundboard Hesh? You gotta give it a go one time. They are just fantastic sounding.

The heel cap design came about from a router mishap a few years ago. Had to come up with something to hide the stuff up. Got so many comments on it that I decided to make it part of my branding. BTW, it's a pain in the arse to do, but still people seem to love it.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

Sort of a follow on to Hesh's question. I'm building my first two ukes now, both tenors, one with a spruce top, and one (for aesthetic reasons having to do with the overall design) with a 1/2 spruce and 1/2 WRC top. Am I just building little guitars? What's the deal with hardwood tops? Educate me - I have no clue.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Really beautiful. I love the heelcap design as well !

Ukes are not little guitars. The smaller the instrument, the more difficult they are to build well. You have very little real-estate to produce sound, and those nylon strings don't have a lot of energy to drive a top. A soprano is diabolically difficult to build well.

Hardwood tops have less harmonic overtones than something like spruce or WRC. It's one of the things that differentiate the ukulele sound from the guitar sound.

But lots of people coming from a guitar background find that a tenor with a spruce top and linear tuning as opposed to the re-entrant tuning, a much easier transition for their ear.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

Outstanding, Allen!

As has already been said, this is a level of craftsmanship to which a lot of us aspire. I've looked carefully at your tenor ukes and I believe this is the one that appeals to me most, on a visual level. That's strictly a personal reaction, not meant to be critical of the others in any way.

I'll let you have a laugh at my expense. When I first glanced at your ambrosia maple tenor, I wondered why you had put partial frets under the high string. Then I realized I was looking at your position markers. My perception was obviously a little "off" at that moment. They are very elegant!