MIMF

I'm in the process of building up several banjo-ukes and am hoping to get some feedback or opinions on rim construction and recommended scale lengths etc. The photos attached show my progress on the rims, which is quite different from the standard wood rims that others are building. These rims are similar to the rims that I build for my five string banjos, being that they're a fully brass spunover rim. I've also built a miniature version of my spun Dobson tone rings to go with the smaller 8 inch diameter spunover banjo-uke rims. At this point I'd say that I know very little in regards to banjo-ukes and what players are looking for, so I may be totally off on my thinking and construction methods. I'm basically recreating a 5 string spunover banjo design that I build, and creating a miniature version with a 4 string neck.
Any opinions or suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated. First off, what are your opinions on using a spunover rim? The wood insert is old growth maple that I've steamed and rolled and then epoxied in the spunover brass rim. I've noticed that there are ukes that are referred to as concert ukes, soprano ukes, baritone ukes, or tenor ukes. What's the difference and is one particular model more common or preferred over others? What are the recommended fret lengths for each model? Basically any feedback in regards to banjo-ukes would be greatly appreciated as this instrument is still some what a mystery to me.

Well, I'm not an expert on banjo construction, but I can give you typical scale lengths for different sizes of ukes:
soprano 13.5"
concert 15"
tenor 17"
baritone 20"
These vary a bit by maker.

I only have one banjo-uke (an old Stella, nothing fantastic,) and it just has a wood rim with no separate metal tone ring. All the banjo ukes I've seen have been soprano size.

Hope this helps,
Michael A. Shelley

I've made a handful of simple banjo ukes by making necks and attaching them to a tunable hand drum. These work surprisingly well, and you need to step up to far more advanced construction to get much more in the way of improved tone (if such a thing exists for the banjo uke ).

The impression I get is that 90% of what makes a top end banjo uke is the pot hardware and resonator. So long as the rim is reasonably stout, at this small scale it make little difference. It might be worth studying the classic banjo ukes which go for big money - Abbott, Ludwig Wendell-Hall, Bacon, Dallas D & E and some of the Gibsons. http://www.theukuleleman.com/ usually has examples of the higher end ukes for sale, and some helpful information.

Banjo uke players tend to be traditionalists, probably because most of their music is 1900-1950s. Tradition has a soprano scale of around 13.5 in. Nuts used to be quite narrow (1 1/8), but nowadays are around 1 3/8 in. But you'd want to research the market if you're planning on making several of these, as your pots will clearly be quite expensive and the buyers of top-end new banjo ukes might want narrow nuts; I'm ignorant here. I've seen a few concert and tenor banjo ukes, but all these are for the low/mid-price market, aimed at players who want a BU as well as their other ukes and want the larger size as that's what they are used to. Soprano BUs are loud enough for anyone, and too loud for some! A baritone would really be a small tenor banjo.

It might also be worth signing up to http://www.ukulelecosmos.com as there are two or three very knowledgeable banjo uke players there who seem to have owned or played most of the best models. They could tell you what a player is looking for.