Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Shelley on September 25, 2011 at 10:23pm

I use StewMac. http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Fretting/i-fretcalc.html

Where it says 'Number of Frets' insert 12.

Scale length is the length between the nut and bridge.

And under this you can choose 'ukulele' from the drop down menu.

Good luck!

s.

Permalink Reply by Chris Ellbogen on September 26, 2011 at 3:24am

This is a good one. http://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fretfind2d/

Permalink Reply by Order99 on September 27, 2011 at 3:46pm

   Thank you both-that's exactly what I was looking for! Judging by the lengths i'm getting on the Stewmac calculator, it looks like the Ukulele will have chromatic fret positioning.

 

  My apologies for not replying sooner BTW- I followed the ling to the Stew Mac website and promptly got lost...so many pretty, shiny things over thee...   :}

Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on September 28, 2011 at 3:09am

Hi Order99.

You are right, ukuleles are chromatically fretted instruments. Any guitar-oriented fret calculator will work for a ukulele.

All you need to know is the scale length and number of frets you want. With ukuleles, there are 4 standard sizes: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The larger models have more frets, and offer more tuning options. Should talk to your "client" to see exactly what sized instrument he/she is interested in. I have two sopranos, one concert and one tenor ukulele - all factory made. My preference is the concert, as it gives you a bit more finger (fretting) room. Anyways here are the specs courtesy of Wikipedia:

The number of frets varies a bit from maker to maker. For instance, on a soprano, 12, 14 and 15 fret models are available (I guess 13 frets is unlucky). While for a tenor, usually its 17 or 18 frets. If you are building your own instruments, decide on how long you want your fretboard and whether the fretboard will overlap your sound board. If you decide on not overlapping, then you are probably stuck with 12 frets (on a soprano, the neck joins the body at the 12 fret). At some point adding an overlapping fretboard will conflict with sound hole placement, assuming you are doing a "bolt on neck" and a single big ukulele style sound hole. So, generally, you want to have as many frets as you can reasonably install. When I do fret calculations, I usually specify 24 frets and then check to see how many frets I can put on given the length of my fret board.

 

Also, occasionally you will come across a non-standard sized ukulele such as a long neck soprano or concert, where the sound box size is standard, but the necks are longer than normal. These typically will have more frets as well.

 

-Rand.

 

Permalink Reply by Order99 on September 28, 2011 at 5:00pm

   Given what you've just told me Rand-it sounds like I could just use Uncle Crow's 'divide the total length from bridge to nut, and multiply by 0.9439' method that i've been using. I prefer this method, since I usually calculate the total Fret number on my guitars as  'stop whenever I feel like it or run out of neck'...    : }  

 

  This one's sort of a Through-neck BTW, with the neck bolted onto one block through the cigar box top and two relatively thin oak slats running between that and a small bottom block for a screw-on cedar tailpiece-given the strength of the box (a Firehouse) it's probably a touch over engineered unless the recipient wants to try steel strings later on. I plan a small, rectangular soundhole between the oak supports.... Showing you would be much easier, but until I can find a cheap camera that's backwards-compatible with a 2001 Mac running OSX 10.39...sigh.

 

  Thanks for all the Input BTW!

Permalink Reply by carverman on October 12, 2011 at 1:21am

You can go up to a concert size from a soprano and decide on the number of frets you want.

Anywhere from 14 to 17.

http://liveukulele.com/gear/ukulele-sizes/

 

once you decide on the size, and have the fret board ready, determine the scale length

(concert can have a 15 inch scale. )

here are some ideas on building one..

http://www.wsukes.com/plans.html 

 To calculate the fret slots with any degree of accuracy, you could use Stewart-Macdonald's

fret calculator online.

http://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator

To use it: just fill in the two boxes (ie: number of frets = 14)  (scale = 15) and for instrument type,

select "Ukelele"   and hit the "calculate" button.   It will give you all 14 fret measurements from the nut.