Tin Box Uke (IW#035)

I got this little tin at the flea market.  I think it is actually steel soldered together, to be honest.  It has a nice ring to it though, and it made a pretty good little uke.  I am learning things about all of the parts of an instrument, and one of the things I learned with this one is that if the neck is too skinny it is hard to play.  Eventually I reckon I might make a new neck for this one.  I really like the mismatched tuning pegs, too, they really enhance the overall weirdness of the piece.  And the floating bridge on the head of the body makes it basically a banjo, really.  Just a steel head instead of a skin one.  Operates about the same, though.


I ended up running a piece of threaded rod through the body to secure the neck, which has the added bonus of making the neck adjustable.  Pretty cool.  Sounds good too, though I am finding that the limitation of all of the open-backed models is that they are damped when you hold them against your body.  Not too bad, though.  And it sounds real good when you beat on it in the middle of a song.  Real jug band-y in a good way.  Here is how it sounds:





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