I'm Rich Holmes, sometimes known online as Doctroid. I've been playing music all my life, and you'd think I'd be any good at it by now. Part of it is that I keep switching instruments. I took piano lessons, I played clarinet (soprano, bass, and alto) through my school years, taught myself recorder in high school, pennywhistle after that, played with synthesizers in college, then took up melodeon (2-row diatonic button accordion), added a 3-row button accordion and dabbled with Anglo concertina, went back to clarinet for a couple years, and most recently have been trying to play ukulele. I tried to teach myself guitar once upon a time; six strings broke my brain, but four I can sort of handle.

As for building instruments, I've not done much along those lines. But this month I resolved to finish the Grizzly soprano ukulele kit I bought a few years ago and did basically nothing with until now. It's nearly completed; I just glued the bridge yesterday. Also yesterday I started building a prototype of an instrument I sketched up a couple days ago, a solid body electric ukulele. The prototype will be pretty rustic, basically a classic cigar box uke without the cigar box, but if it works out okay version 1.0 will be somewhat fancier than that. Cigar box ukes or guitars _with_ the cigar box are a distinct possibility beyond that if my interest holds, and maybe a better quality kit uke or two. We shall see.

I live near Syracuse, NY and would be happy to meet up with similar-minded instrument makers nearby, assuming I can find time...