UK-L100 VS Soprano Ukulele : "Les Paul Uke. Makeover".

The: "Harley Benton UK-L100 VS Soprano Ukulele" has a Les Paul style, cutaway body, with trapeze pearloide inlays along the neck, & a high gloss Vintage Sunburst finish. When it arrived I was quite pleased with what I saw, the finish was done nicely, & the neck inlays were also accurately cut & inserted. There were a couple of discrepancies between the description & pictures in the listing & the instrument I received. It didn't have the vintage style, tulip machine head buttons (it had small oval, cream plastic ones), & it didn't have a strap pin on it. Sound quality was not to bad, but would definitely be improved by fitting Martin Fluorocarbon strings which I prefer. As I was fitting a strap I fitted a strap pin, a word of warning here, because there is no timber reinforcement inside the body to screw into, I had to fit one on a plate with 3 screws. It seems firm enough but had I known before I started drilling, it would probably have been better to fit the type of strap that hooks into the sound hole.

I decided to give the uke. a makeover to enhance it's Les Paul look, which I did as follows. First of all I enlarged an image of a Les Paul style guitar body, to a similar size of the uke. body. I then made templates of the the pickups, pickguard, & Treble/Tone switch plate. I removed the area of the neck pickup template that covered the sound hole, so it wouldn't muffle the sound. Then using 3mm. thick, black ABS sheet with a gold face, I had the template shape cut out, & detailing engraved on top so the black showed through the gold for effect. Then using cream faced black ABS I had the pickguard & Treble/Tone switch plate cut out & engraved in the same way. Finally I made a scale template of a Les Paul truss rod plate made, & using white ABS faced with black had a truss rod plate cut & engraved. I pushed a roof felt tack through the hole in the middle of the switch plate & pushed a real switch tip onto it. All the plates were now ready, so using a good quality double sided tape, I fitted all the plates into the correct positions on the body & headstock of the ukulele. Finally I glued 4 Telecaster, black plastic barrel switch tips onto the body to look like the control knobs on a Les Paul guitar.

All-in-all this was a worthwhile project on a reasonably priced & sounding ukulele. I hope you found it interesting & maybe inspire you to give one of these ukes a "Les Paul Makeover". Pleasant Strumming.