Baritone Ukulele

[seaboyer]

I'm a relatively new ukulele player and was recently looking for something a bit larger than my soprano. On kijiji, I found someone selling a baritone ukulele for only $25. Intrigued, I had to take a look. Besides the usual dings and scratches, it had a pretty big gouge on the backside, and the bridge had completely come unglued. Although I'm no luthier, I figured for the price, it was worth a shot.

I had never heard of El Degas but it looked like a decently made instrument. Amazon came through with some glue, a strap w/buttons, strings, and a case. All told I have less than $100 (Canadian) into this instrument. And I have to tell you, it sounds wonderful. I could not be happier with it. The scratches and dings tell me that this old girl has likely had an interesting life, and I'm glad that I can take care of her now and let her sing again.

As I'm sure you know, very little is known about these ukes so I'd be happy to hear anything that may have come up. After searching here I've only found a few old threads. I suspect this is an EU-55 but the original label is missing so I don't know for sure.



























Full album: https://imgur.com/a/dT1lgpt

Bonus Video of me playing and singing terribly: https://youtu.be/EHEMXSG8_yo

[Barry]

Congratulations on restoring this old gal, nice job!

I don't have a uke so I can't comment too specifically about it. But I do know about bridge repair and I was pleased to see you used Titebond.
That baby ain't going anywhere anytime soon!

I was startled to see a bridge fail on a uke!
Bridges tend to fail on acoustic guitars because of improper gluing or not enough glue, or both. Most often on a guitar the perimeter of the bridge is glued to the finish instead of the soundboard. That's done most often to speed up production. It holds for awhile but it's doomed to fail.

In this case, we're dealing with very low tension compared with a classical guitar, and yet the bridge still pulled away. From what I can see in the pictures, not enough glue was used in the assembly. What a shame.

But you fixed it and now it's great again. Well done!

[seaboyer]

Thanks for the comments!

Re: the bridge, I suspect it's due to the strings being under higher tension. This is my first baritone and the tension is significantly higher than on my sopranos. This very old post was one of the few I could find discussing an EG Baritone and they seemed confused by the steel strings - a baritone is usually strung DGBE with the top two being steel. I chose to go with GCEA to match what I've been playing but it makes sense.

It was my first bridge repair so I did some reading, which is what led me to Titebond. It definitely feels solid now haha.

[charles]

I've been wanting to try out an ED uke for a little while now - glad your fix worked well and i hope you get to enjoy it for years to come!