Since most of you bought Flukes or Fleas from me... I thought this article was
in order.
Hope you're all getting some practice in for the holidays.

The New York Times - Money & Business - Dec. 11, 2005

The Goods: Hawaii Calls, With Clarity
By BRENDAN I. KOERNER

If there is a ukulele stashed in your closet, chances are that it's
a flimsy model bought during a Hawaiian vacation. It might have been
played once upon your return home, at which point everyone within
earshot complained about its shrillness. And so it was cast into
storage, to languish beside old blankets and jigsaw puzzles.

Dale Webb attributes your uke's sad fate to manufacturers who
envision their products as souvenirs first and as serious
instruments second. Mr. Webb has flipped those priorities with his
Fluke line of ukuleles, which are engineered to produce clean tones
and rich vibrato - and not to fall apart if accidentally banged
against a coffee table.

Before being laid off from his job as an ultrasonics engineer in
1998, Mr. Webb had never played a ukulele, let alone built one. But
his brother-in-law, Jim Beloff, is a longtime enthusiast, and he
encouraged Mr. Webb to try his skilled hand at making a prototype
worthy of true musicians, rather than tourists.

Mr. Webb said he researched some widely available ukuleles. "I took
one look at the traditional uke, and it wasn't appealing at all," he
said. "It was this little shrunken guitar, and it was cheap and
boring."

Mr. Webb, who lives in New Hartford, Conn., bought a book on the art
of luthiering, or making stringed instruments, and started
scribbling designs for a first-rate ukulele. He noted that several
guitar makers, like Ovation Guitars, were making high-quality
instruments by using molded plastic, instead of inexpensive woods
like plywood, for the backs of the bodies. The plastic produces a
deeper, chunkier sound than Mother Nature's cheapest alternatives.
(The world's priciest ukuleles, concert-quality instruments that can
sell for much more than $1,000, remain all-wood affairs; they are
typically made of rare koa wood from Hawaii.)

Using his kitchen oven, Mr. Webb baked several plastic shapes,
seeking a ukulele body that would please both eye and ear. He
eventually settled on a rounded arrowhead shape, which makes the
Fluke look more like a space-age lute. Though he kept a wooden top
for the body, Mr. Webb went a less traditional route by molding the
fretboard, or the front of the neck, out of urethane.

In 1999, after some positive feedback from music-store owners at a
trade show where he showed off some prototypes, Mr. Webb refined his
design with the aid of stereolithography. This involves entering a
product's dimensions into a computer, which in turn instructs a
refrigerator-sized machine to build a three-dimensional model using
lasers and liquid plastic. Examining these ukulele mock-ups helped
Mr. Webb work out the kinks, like errant curves in the body, before
production started later that year.

All of this detailed craftsmanship means that the Flukes cost more
than what is typically available at Waikiki Beach gift shops. The
least expensive, solid-colored Fluke sells for $179; adding a body
design, like flames or stars, and a rosewood fretboard can push the
final tally close to $300. The most recent addition to the Fluke
lineup, a model with a koa top, sells for $365 unadorned.

Mr. Webb and his Magic Fluke Company have sold 24,000 Flukes so far;
most sales have come through his brother-in-law's Web site,
fleamarketmusic.com, though the ukes are also available at retail
outlets like Mandolin Brothers on Staten Island. If you think that a
few hundred dollars is a mighty sum for a ukulele, Magic Fluke also
offers a $59 version called the Fortune Soprano. It's imported from
China, where most cheap ukes are made. But Magic Fluke promises that
the Fortune still sounds pretty good - perhaps not as good as the
Fluke, but good enough to keep it out of hall-closet purgatory.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company