The Tanglewood Cove Creek - I Finally Succumb to its Wiles!

Back in March - the 21st March, actually - I wrote how I'd been wowed by a Tanglewood ukulele in one of the local music shops. It was the Tanglewood TU7 XM Lacewood concert.

Well... more than two months later... it is mine.

I hadn't gone in the shop to buy it - on the contrary, I went in to buy the little Ashton union flag soprano uke as a gift for a friend. But the action at the nut of the little union jack uke was a bit high, and Mike the guitar techy who served me obligingly offered to file the slots down a bit.

That's when it got me. The Tanglewood. I wasn't even playing it.... after all, I'd decided to save for a nice solid wood tenor, most likely an Ashbury solid rose cherry... anyway, I was playing around while I waited on a very pretty solid koa Luna tenor with a pickup - £350 - more than I would, spend anyway... when I heard a lovely sound that jerked my head right up - and it was the Tanglewood Cove Creek I'd been so impressed with before. Bright but liquid, bell-like... and it has the long neck, 14 frets up to the body.

Then came the coup-de-grace - the offer of the sort of deal that's hard to refuse.... but I didn't give in without a fight. "Will you throw a gig-bag in with that?" Done.

So that's how I came to return home with my lovely Tanglewood Cove Creek "exotic" wood long neck concert uke. For a laminate ukulele, it really is lovely.


As for LSH...well, he really doesn't understand. Non-players don't; simple as that. But I'm happy with my little collection of ukuleles; I've put a low G on my original Greg Bennett so I can experiment with jazzy chords, as recommended by Glen Rose, as well as start trying to tackle John Moen's tab of the Bach Prelude for Cello piece - one bar at a time. My little blue Mahalo soprano is handy to leave lying around just anywhere, and hand over to interested friends... and as for my lovely 1920's Slingerland Maybelle banjo-uke - well.... she's going with me to Blackpool this weekend... to play with the George Formby fans at the meeting of the GFS!

If someone had told me six months ago that I'd be doing that, I'd have said they were mad...for my generation, for whom the Beatles and the Stones were nothing short of gods, George Formby was the antithesis of Cool... but watch this space, I'm going for it!

A New Ukulele Hero - Roger - Roger Williams, Luthier

"Luthier" isn't a word that comes normally into conversation. It wasn't even in my vocabulary until very recently - but I now know that a luthier is a person who builds and repairs stringed instruments.

Roger Williams does NOT build ukuleles; he builds guitars, beautiful ones, commissioned and played by professional artists in their field; classical, flamenco, acoustic and baroque... and he tends and repairs them, as well as supplying and fitting pick-up systems to acoustic guitars. And he does refretting and fret-dressing.

Little banjo-ukuleles are not his usual bread-and butter. But the wonderful man has fixed mine up.

My little bird's eye maple, 90 year-old beauty made by Slingerland needed a bit of professional attention. When she arrived, she looked pretty darned good for an instrument built in the 1920's - but I couldn't tune her up because of a slipping friction tuner. I fixed it - but the action was too high, and the frets were chewing up one of the strings. Johnny Foodstamp suggested that it was time for some professional intervention, and the search was on. I found Roger. He agreed that my little darlin' was indeed a beauty, looking so good that she could have passed for five years old, and agreed to level and reshape the frets. He filed down the slots in the nut to lower the action, and perfected the bridge. He put the head on the neck perfectly straight and tightened up the bolts on the tension hooks. And now I can play her.

What a hero - when you see him at work in his workshop, building a beautiful guitar, you will know how privileged I feel that he did this for me and my little banjo-ukulele. Thank you Roger!

Please watch the video of Roger at work, building one of his wonderful guitars.

Note - this was originally posted two days ago, but in editing the post today to embed the video, rather than linking it, I've managed to muck up the order and it has come out as another new post.