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I have a friend who wants me to build him a bouzouki. He says I have one hundred percent control of what goes into the entire instrument. I've built plenty of guitars, but never a bouzouki or mandolin so it should be a fun experience. Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has any source(s) for materials or plans on the instrument. I looked around plenty of vendors' websites, but didn't find anything. Would baritone uke sets work for a bouzouki maybe? Any help is much appreciated!

Id recommend Graham Macdonald's book http://www.mcdonaldstrings.com/zookbook.html It is available from US vendors.

As for timber, all of the usual guitar suspects will work well. The instrument is structurally a guitar with two extra strings. As for the size that depends on what body shape you end up with. Ive seen a few with the waisted guitar shape and they work well.

You need to ask him to be more specific. There are so many variants of that thing it's easy to get it all wrong. There's the small, mandolin sized body with the real long neck and then there's the larger bodied kind which can be wide as a guitar. There are LOADS of scale length choices out there too. You guys might be on just the roght page but I thought I'd throw that out there in case you weren't.

As for supplies, mandolin hardware will work, and once you have the dimensions for the thing find tonewood dealers that do custom cuts for smaller instruments. Shane's got bouzouki sized tops available I know, and just about any small wood dealer will get you just what you need for the rest. I also recommend getting the Graham MacDonald Book for refference.

materials?

same as for your guitar supplies unless you want a kit with prebent sides.

the only difference from guitar parts is that you can get two zouks from a single dread top!! or maybe a spare if you make a mistake!!

tail piece is from a mandolin, tuners are from mando or guitar (I prefer individual sealed guitar tuners to 4 on a plate, but that's personal pref)

for truss rod I use one from a 12 fret guitar.

neck & fretboard blanks are standard, though you COULD buy a slotted board. LMI do pretty much any scale length you want, or you could get a guitar board and cut it back so the 1st fret slot becomes the nut. do your sums first though!!

as to plans, I made my first zouk by scaling up a mando body and sticking on a long neck!

if you want to buy plans then I've heard nothing but good stuff about

$33.50 from Stewmac.

I've started making F holed flat top zouks rather than regular round soundholes because its less hassle (for me) to cut Fs than all that fidgetting around with rosettes.

of course, you could always go a LITTLE off the wall, like this one I made......

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Yep, you'll notice no one in the picture is looking in his direction though.

ow, that's harsh!!

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