Family Group Photo

In the last post, I mentioned that the 'zouk was now residing with its two siblings. Well, here is a great family group photo that Adrian sent me.  From left to right; tenor mandola, octave mandolin and the bouzouki. Really pleased to see them altogether, cheers Adrian!

Navazouki Completed

Adrian’s bouzouki is now finished and residing with its two siblings. Below is the last video in my bouzouki mini-series, which includes a great demo by Adrian.

And here are few photos of the completed ‘zouk for you.

Bouzouki Versatility

I’ve made a variety of instruments from the "extended" mandolin family and it occurs to me, how flexible the Irish Bouzouki format could be(is!).  This one is custom built and therefore tuned to Adrian's preference;  GDAD with 3^rd and 4^th courses strung in octave pairs. But by changing the nut and saddle, you could use unison strings, tune it GDAE and you’ve got yourself a long-scale Octave mandolin. The neck has 17 frets clear of the body and 660mm scale, so a capo at the 5^th fret gives you mandola tuning, a scale of just under 500mm and 12 frets clear of the body. Capo at the 12^th and you’re in to mandolin country with 5 frets clear and scale of 330mm.  Interesting eh? I’m sure regular ‘zouk players have already realised that!

Zouk in progress part 3

As promised earlier in the week, here is part 3 of Adrian’s Irish Bouzouki build.

Zouk in progress: Part 2

Here’s the next instalment of Adrian’s 'zouk build. We’ve just bought ourselves a new video camera and we’re really pleased with the results!

Bending

Had a good session of bending yesterday. The first thing that I did was to give the bending iron a thorough clean; I needed to bend the maple bindings for Adrian’s zouk and any old build-up of burnt-on resin could stain the maple.

After bending the maple bindings I did two sets of rosewood; one for Phil’s twin-point and the other for Ewart’s Standard Plus. If you look at the bending iron now, you can see the rosewood resin building up again!

 After the sides have dried out the various blocks, that hold the sides together, have to be shaped and glued. Here’s the tail- block on Ewart’s…………

..........and the points on Phil’s

 In this situation heavy duty rubber bands make excellent clamps.
And of the maple bindings are going on to the ‘zouk in the time honoured fashion.

Let’s start on the ‘Zouk!

With the polish on David’s mandolin being left to harden, work has started in earnest on Adrian’s bouzouki. This will be Adrian’s 3^rd instrument; someone coming back for another instrument is, to me, the finest compliment that I could have. In fact looking at my current waiting list, out of the next ten instruments, five are for returning clients; for which Amanda and I am extremely grateful.

The neck blank is pretty much complete. As the neck will be long and slender (660mm scale length with 17 frets clear of the body!) I decided to make it from maple- it’s laminated with black and mahogany lines; this will complement Adrian’s other two instruments. Carbon fibre also adds stiffness and additionally there is a dual action truss-rod.

The back and sides are Indian rosewood. Back in the late 1970’s when I was at the London College of Furniture, four of us, Bill, Maz, Walter and myself, decided to buy some rosewood- not so easy in those days. Off we went to an importer’s yard somewhere near the docks- this was when London Docklands was synonymous with ships and the import and export of actual physical goods and not banking and electronic trading ! We bought a number of huge boards and struggled back to college on the tube. After a gift of a bottle of whiskey to one of the technicians we managed to get our wood re-sawn into usable sized pieces! Well then, this rosewood back and sides is my last remaining set!