I currently make fingerboards with a 12 inch radius, which is somewhat subtle. I have designed a radius cutting jig so that cutting alternate radii is not a big issue. It might be good to have in my ‘toolbox’ as it were the setup for a 10 inch radius or even a 9 inch radius. Might be interesting to see what these more curved fingerboards feel like, but I am not a player, so am not really one to judge. So …
I have cooked up a little test ‘instrument’ (the world’s worst ukulele!) that has interchangeable fingerboards with different radii. (7, 9 10, 12) The test platform is based on a concert sized ukulele, and the fingerboard has only 5 frets, but I figure that should give one some feeling for noting and playing bar chords.
To use it you slack the strings, lift the existing fingerboard, put on another, and tune up the strings. The fingerboards fit over two small placement pins placed in the neck. The nut end of the fingerboard is held down by the string pressure over the zero fret, and the bottom end is held down by a single bolt and wing-nut. I have sent this out to a customer for his feedback, and have another who is interested. I’ll be interested to see if anyone finds a big difference. I find that the different radii make little difference, but again, I’m not a player. Since you are a dedicated reader of this blog, if anyone else is interested in this experiment, send me some e-mail, and I can send the test “ukulele” out when the first two experiments are done.
