I’ll definitely share my guitar build. The main reason I want to build one is because I want an electric that features natural wood grain without dyes. I called a couple lumber sawmills I’ve dealt with on other projects to see if they have any Helene debris wood, and one of them has some, but it won’t be ready until next year at minimum. There really aren’t many manufacturers doing this. It seems like the ones I’ve found are either really expensive or really cheap.
As for the ukes…haha. Lower cost is definitely NOT why she has more instruments. Two of hers are handmade Hawaiian ukes, both well over $1k. The maple tenor, IIRC, was around $1600. My MOST EXPENSIVE guitar cost half that. :-p The two she ordered last night are each over $1k, as well (though she did get a nice discount because she’s friends with a musician who is sponsored by KLOS and he has discount codes). Sure, her first uke was pretty inexpensive. It was less than $100 at a local music shop’s going-out-of-business clearance. She also has a really cool tiny one that was gifted to her. And a CNC’d walnut thinline uke that has a pickup but also has a buzzing issue somewhere. She bought it used for around $300, IIRC. I suspect something is loose inside the body. Haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to address that yet, but I’ve claimed it as “mine” since she doesn’t care for the tone of it now that she has a couple fancy Hawaiian ukes.
She considered adding pickups to her nice Hawaiian instruments and she just doesn’t want to have anyone drill them that way. This is why she got the Myers pickup to try. She asked the builder install a strap button on the maple one when she bought it at the factory and they tried REALLY HARD to convince her not to. She ended up having a local luthier do it once we got home from vacation. I suspect they would have kicked her out if she had asked them to install a pickup in it. She’d just rather buy something she likes with a pickup installed to begin with than even have the local luthier do it (he builds acoustic guitars that start at $6k so she trusts him).