Relate how you feel about working with your spouse. What is the secret?

 

We love working together!  But, the secret is that we split up our jobs so that we have no overlap.  Char is responsible for body construction, and Gordon does body bindings, fretboards, necks & finish.  Those two jobs are nearly equal, so we work at the same time in the shop.  Working together allows us to help each other, and to immediately discuss any issues and opportunities.  It is very collaborative.

Did you find it hard to get in with the Ukelele community being from the Northwest?

 

The Pacific Northwest is a hotbed of ukulele activity, so that actually helped us.  People want and respect builders from this area.

What have you done to make your instrument stand apart from all the others?  

 

The ukulele is traditionally a "campfire, folk" instrument where little attention was paid to things like intonation, acoustics, playability and durability of construction.  So, we have focused on those things.  Our fretboards are radiused;  the intonation is spot on;  every instrument is hand-voiced;  and the neck is dovetailed to the body (many ukes have the neck simply epoxied on).

What is your favorite part of the process?   

 

For both of us, it is when I (gordon) string an instrument for the first time.  The way we work, we have set up our shop as a little production line.  We start and instrument every day, and we finish one every day--the one we started 14 work days earlier.  So, every day we get to hear that sweet sound of a ukulele in tune.

 

We tell people that the instruments are like children.  They have the genes of the parents (in this case, our design and building), but they have their own unique personalities (brought on by the unique set of wood).