The Pixelele

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Tom Snape
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Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2012 5:51 pm

The Pixelele

Post by Tom Snape »

It is a baritone scale ukulele.
The body is mostly poplar. The brown streaks became a lot darker under finish than I expected.
The dragon on the headstock is all wood and is proud of the surface (it's not an inlay).
Headstock.jpg
Scene.jpg
Clay Schaeffer
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Clay Schaeffer »

Cool!
Is it electric or acoustic?
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Barry Daniels
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Barry Daniels »

The headstock looks real but the body appears to exist in an imaginary universe.
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Tom Snape
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Tom Snape »

It is acoustic. It's is going to a house with very "active" 4 and 6 year old boys, so it's built rugged. It is set up and intonated well, so it plays fine, but it's not loud. I did consider that I could add a pickup to it at some point if someone wanted to use it that way.
The jagged edge shape isn't the most comfortable either.
Pixelele_01_sm.jpg
Darrel Friesen
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Darrel Friesen »

It threw my eyes for bit of a loop, but pretty darned cool!
Clay Schaeffer
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Clay Schaeffer »

Does it have a hollow center section and solid "wings"?
JC Whitney
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by JC Whitney »

This has had me chuckling for going on three days now - what a hoot. Interestingly, to my eyes the pic of it sitting on that decidedly non-Minecraft blanket somehow manages to make it appear even more eight-bit.
Absolutely brilliant!... although I secretly long for it to have square fret markers and pin heads too
Tom Snape
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Tom Snape »

It's all hollow, but the sides are pretty thick; nominally 1/4", and sawn from glued up pieces.

I'm kicking myself for putting round dots in the fingerboard. Especially because I put square markers (turned 45 degrees) in the next uke I made. I thought about making custom pins with square heads, but I had to finish this thing sometime! I did make an ebony end pin with a square head though.

To make the outline, I took my normal baritone pattern and laid different size square grids over it. I settled on 1/2" squares, and then traced out the pattern that looked best to me.
Screenshot 2021-03-16 071713.png
building.jpg
End pin.jpg
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Jim McConkey
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Jim McConkey »

Love it! This is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking we used to see in our contests a lot. I miss it!
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Karl Wicklund
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Re: The Pixelele

Post by Karl Wicklund »

Hah! I love this thing. I suppose if you got really motivated you could drill out the dots and enlarge them to squares. But then again, maybe the round dots are connect the design just enough to standard designs that it helps create that loopy effect.

The pixels were around the sound hole are really effective. The grain makes them look just a little out of focus and zoomed in too far.
Kaptain Karl
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