The Flea String

[Tymus]

Hi everyone,

I thought some of you might interested in seeing my latest project, “The Flea String”



It’s a 3 string resonator guitar conversion made from a Busker Flea ukulele in fact the very one that Robin used to perfect the Busker “hand finishing” process on. The reason I decided to build this is that about a year ago I made another 3 string guitar with a biscuit tin for its body, although that instrument is great fun to play with a nice unique tone it is somewhat on the quiet side. For that extra volume needed to play alongside other instruments and to be heard a resonator version was the obvious choice.



I cut some Duolian style “F” holes in the body’s upper bout and blocked the holes in the wall of the sound-well, I also rounded of the “sharp” corners on the soldered joins around the body’s edges.





I made the tailpiece from brass sheet in the style of a National and I electroplated it at home with a salt/vinegar solution a battery charger and a couple of old 10p coins, I think it really looks the part. Incidentally the old 10p coins (the large ones) are made from a copper nickel alloy, we know a similar alloy to this in the reso world as German Silver.



The neck is a piece of an old window frame I found in a skip (some unknown Mahogany substitute), the fretboard is from an old table leg (possibly Elm) and the position dots are cut from an old Planxty LP! I decided not to fit a truss rod but instead made the neck extra deep and therefore stiffer, as the neck is far narrower than a 6 string this deep profile actually fills the hand far more comfortably than a similar width but shallower mandolin neck does.



I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out, it works really well and sounds amazingly good for such a small bodied instrument, it seems to have more volume than an acoustic guitar and has a great unique tone.

Tymus.

[Stevie]

I'm impressed Tymus! Excellent

[Michael Messer]

Tymus, it is beautiful work. You have done a really good job. The F holes are lovely and at only 2 inches long, I am sure they took a lot of time to cut. The tailpiece is also very well made and the plating looks great (I like your homemade plating kit too). All good....the neck, the Planxty dot markers........very nice.

I look forward to seeing and hearing it in the flesh someday. Excellent job!

Thanks for posting the photos

Shine On
Michael

[Deleted]

Tymus, that is amazing! What is the scale length?

I'm sure most people are smart enough to understand your plating process, but if you could explain it in more detail, perhaps with pictures, knuckleheads like me would be very appreciative.

[steverino]

I am in awe, tymus. Superb work!

[Tymus]

Thanks everybody for your nice comments, Michael I’m sure one day soon you will get to see and play it, I would very much like to hear what you could do with it! To answer Eastmountains questions….

I built “The Flea String” with a “standard” guitar scale length of 630mm (about 24 3/4") this gave the body joint at the 22nd fret, with 29 frets in total. The instruments total length from tip to toe is about 865mm (34")




I did a lot of research on the web about plating but all the info said that without the proper chemicals and equipment (kits cost over £100) it couldn’t be done, they also warned that the process can produce chlorine gas (as used in the trenches in WWI) that could kill me! I remembered as a kid I had a chemistry set and with it (using coins) it showed how to copper plate a 10p, which I did. Then being an inquisitive kid I tried reversing the coins and hey presto I ended up with a silver 1p and a copper 10p! Remembering this I thought I’d give it a try on a piece of scrap brass, it came out dark grey but after a few minutes rubbing with metal polish it came to a nice silver shine.

The process……to make the plating electrolyte solution I poured a large bottle of distilled malt vinegar (the clear one) into a saucepan and gently heated it on the cooker for about 45 minutes until it had reduced in volume by about 50%, this concentrates the vinegars acidity. Next I dissolved about two tablespoons of salt into the vinegar, this helps to increase the electrical conductivity of the vinegar therefore aiding the flow of electrons in the plating process.



This photo is a mock up just to show the set up as I didn’t take any shots when I plated the actual tailpiece, unfortunately it doesn’t show it too clearly but gives the general idea.

Using a standard car battery charger, I connected the positive (+) lead to the coin and the negative (-) to the part to be plated, electrons flow from positive to negative. I poured the vinegar/salt solution into a pint beer glass and suspended both the coin and the tailpiece in this, taking care not to allow the parts to touch as this would create a short circuit and blow a fuse. I then switched on the battery charger and ran it for about 10 minutes, small bubbles formed on the coin and more on the brass and the solution started to fizz and warm up, the gas produced could be harmful so I did this outside! I switched off the battery charger and removed the part from the solution, it was covered in a brown/grey slimy crud, after washing this off I saw the brass underneath had changed to a dark grey colour, I also noticed that the solution had turned a green/blue colour. I repeated the plating/washing process about 10 times so as to build up a good thickness. Finally I polished it up with metal polish, it took a while but eventually revealed a nice bright silvery shine! The finished result was not as good as you would get from a professional metal plating shop but perfectly good enough for this instrument!

NB. If anyone tries this please take great care as acid, gasses and electricity could easily end in disaster! Also don’t pour the used solution down the drain as it has a high metal content and would be harmful to sewerage water treatment plants and our environment!

Tymus

[Deleted]

Thanks so much for the tutorial, Tymus. I have a feeling this will be part of a future project of mine some day.

[Deleted]

that is certainly cooler than an awful lot of very cool things...

[pete1951]

3strings, uke resonator, longish scale neck???
Hasn`t everybody got one???


I use this for slide so no frets.
the neck is a stick of holly from a hedge. (good for playing Bach)
It has 2 sets of pietzos(3 under the biscuit,3under the rim of the resonator) still work-in-progress
looking foreword to seeing all the other 3 strings out there.
Pete T

[Tymus]

Nice “cool” comment David!

Pete, although I feel it would have been better if you had started a new thread on 3 strings, here is my biscuit tin one that I referred to earlier.



It sounds good acoustically but a little quiet so I fitted a unique home-made dual piezo low impedance pick-up. This gives a far better match to the inputs on most amplifiers than a normal type ceramic disc piezo transducer does and therefore a much better sound!

Tymus.

[pete1951]

The piezo sounds interesting, where are they from? (I`m messing about with cheap ones from Maplins.
PS : what tuning do you have your `flea` in?

[Tymus]

I messed about with a few different tunings on the biscuit tin and ended up settling in G (tuned GDG), I like the sound and find it a good key for singing so I’ve tuned the Flea String the same. At present it’s temporarily strung with some 2nd hand phosphor bronze acoustic strings (Kaman Adamas) gauges of 38-30-23. It plays beautifully all over the neck (fretting the notes) but the strings do feel a little slack to me, especially the bass, and with a slide it’s hard to keep from clattering on the frets! I’m going to be changing the strings on my Deco soon and will be trying its old strings on the Flea String, 44-34-24, this should tighten it up. I’m also going to make a new nut (same as fitted on the biscuit tin) with dual height slots, this will allow the set-up to be quickly changed between low and high actions.

Tymus.

[pete1951]

Snap! mines the same.

[Michael Messer]

I haven't got into three string guitars yet, I am still on six, twelve and four string instruments. Am I missing something?



Shine On
Michael

[Matt]

Jan 11, 2011 19:48:03 GMT Michael Messer said:

I haven't got into three string guitars yet, I am still on six, twelve and four string instruments. Am I missing something?

I don't play a 3 string guitar either, but it seems you can get some pretty nice tunes with them, like in this video (There's 3 tunes with pictures at the beginning, then some chat, then the actual videos of the tunes being played)