LEGO Uke
“It’s mostly a combination of unemployment and boredom.”
Since I’m on the mailing list for the Lansing Area Ukulele Group (L.A.U.G.H), I got a copy of the following YouTube links showing a LEGO ukulele built by Chris Hamilton.
Lego Ukulele Blues
RE: Lego Ukulele Blues
As I’m currently unemployed and bored, I decided to try and replicate this miracle of LEGO engineering myself. Here are the results, and yes, it does play – just not particularly loudly. Total construction time was about 7 hours, most of that was spent searching through four large boxes of LEGO’s muttering something akin to “where is that stupid 4×2 black piece?”
Here’s some photo’s of the first build before strings were put on.
And a size comparison with a Lanikai soprano:
Of course, my original bridge didn’t work and kept snapping off, resulting in a 5 minute redesign with leftover pieces.
All in all, not a bad outcome for a day’s worth of work. However, I think that the excessive pleating in the interior and on the back of the table may need to be scaled back to get more volume. Perhaps a weekend project…
Themocracy
i must admit ben – that is actually pretty cool.
I’m pretty impressed with the photo details, you know, that “a picture is worth 1000 words” thing… I still can’t believe legos can be used for something so “unlego-like’ (I keep thinking trucks and buildings…)
[...] a ukulele out of Legos from a youtube video of coarse. The thing is that Ben’s is much more aesthetically pleasing and thus I post! Plus check out his new site! Ben’s a great composer and you can count on him [...]
Glad to see everyone is enjoying this so far. I’m still working on breaking in the strings, and since they’re a brand I’ve never used before (Hilo), I have no idea how long it will take. But I’ll put up a video when they’ve settled.
Ben. If you don’t get an academic position, this is your new job. You could sell this on ebay – or etsy – for a bunch, I bet. I’m not even kidding! I don’t know, though, if you’d have to get Lego’s permission or not??? :)
Thanks Aryn, but before I do that, I need to solve two problems.
1) How do I make it louder/add a pickup?
2) Where do I find all of the LEGO’s I need? This took a lot time to find all the one needed – especially since I wanted to keep it black and red.
Number two seems the more pressing issue. Corporate sponsorship perhaps…