miss my Favilla B2 baritone

[Papa John]

so, I'm getting another one. gonna "hot-rod" it up with new tuners and side sound port just like the last one. new one looks to have been refinished but I don't care, I'll refinish it again...see how it stacks up next to my "hot-rodded" B51 with same mods. My money is on the Favilla.

 

[EDW]

Yeah, great players. The good thing is that you can often find them at a pretty reasonable price. Looking forward to hearing the results.

 

[Papa John]

I wanna do a direct comparison between the Favilla and the Martin

 

[about2]

The fact that out of all your bari’s you miss the Favilla speaks volumes. I very grateful I found one.

And your willingness to add the side port is pretty gutsy. Hope you take some videos on how you do it.

 

[Joe Strummer]

I’ve seen a few posts that mentioned intonation problems up the neck. Is that common with Favillas?

 

[Papa John]

not that I've ever seen. I've had a few over the years.

 

[Strumdaddy]

The intonation on my 50's one is as spot on.
It's one of the wonderful surprises about 60 - 70 year old Favillas: how well made they are!

 

[about2]

I can echo that. The intonation on my 60+ year old Fav is spot on.

 

[Papa John]

So it begins...Favilla arrived Crack free...with the worst ham fisted refinishing job I've ever seen. There are folks out there that should not have spray paint.
Easy enough to fix but sad about the peg head logo.
New pegs and cleated side port are in. It's really loud.
I'll continue to fiddle with the finish...removing the spray crap from the wear-free fret board and frets. I will drill out the fret dot at 9th fret and reinstall at the 10th...and it just barely fits in a Crossrock case.
A brief comparison between my Martin and the Favilla is showing how much more volume the Favilla has over the thrice expensive B51. Volume aside...they really sound similar.

 

[about2]

What a project! Love the side port. Never seen one so large. Did you do it yourself? It looks super.

And what kind of tuners did you install? I’m still wanting to replace the friction tuners on mine.

 

[Papa John]

Waverly tuners...just because I had them laying around...I did the side port. With the old, aged and fragile mahogany on both the Favilla and the Martin, I made the port larger than usual so I could get a proper cleat at the east and west sides of the hole. The Martin really benefitted from the port but the Favilla could probably get by without one. It is a loud ukulele. If all you do is play by yourself, the side port is nice but not necessary, but, if you gig or play with a large group of ukuleles, it really helps the baritones. They can easily get drowned out by tenors and concerts.
Old friction pegs come out easily but the bushings tend to need to be driven out of the peg head. I then drill out the hole to 1/4. Then I use a tool from Stewmac to drill out the peghead from the top for the new tuner bushings. If Gotoh UPT geared pegs are used, I have another tool from Stewmac for that size as well.

 

[about2]

Waverly tuners...just because I had them laying around...I did the side port. With the old, aged and fragile mahogany on both the Favilla and the Martin, I made the port larger than usual so I could get a proper cleat at the east and west sides of the hole. The Martin really benefitted from the port but the Favilla could probably get by without one. It is a loud ukulele. If all you do is play by yourself, the side port is nice but not necessary, but, if you gig or play with a large group of ukuleles, it really helps the baritones. They can easily get drowned out by tenors and concerts.
Old friction pegs come out easily but the bushings tend to need to be driven out of the peg head. I then drill out the hole to 1/4. Then I use a tool from Stewmac to drill out the peghead from the top for the new tuner bushings. If Gotoh UPT geared pegs are used, I have another tool from Stewmac for that size as well.

Very helpful. Thank you. So much to learn.