Uke Makers: Will Grove-White is Serious About Making Fun Instruments

BY NICOLAS GRIZZLE | FROM THE SUMMER 2025 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE

Will Grove-White builds ukuleles in untraditional styles, including a unique, angled-neck design he calls the Wonkylele. So, it’s ironic, in a way, that his favorite ukulele is a classic soprano.

“Personally, my favorite thing is a soprano size because it’s the thing I started on and is the original,” he says. “It’s portable and tidy.” 

Grove-White joined the boundary-pushing Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in 1990 at age 16 and toured with them for 30 years, performing as a singer and soprano uke player at Carnegie Hall (twice), the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Sydney Opera House, and many other memorable venues. After retiring from the group during the Covid pandemic, he started learning to build ukuleles. These days, he finds himself in the workshop more than on the stage, but still performs solo at festivals and other events.

Grove-White has a dry sense of humor with a dose of silliness sprinkled throughout. His jokes and style, unsurprisingly, fit right into the ukulele community. For example, on his website, he describes the Wonkylele as: “The world’s only off-kilter ukulele, with a face only a mother could love.” And the sopranino: “A mini-ukulele for those who find soprano ukuleles far too big.” 

“My thing with music, and life generally, is just to try and have a bit of fun with it,” he says. “The one thing the Ukulele Orchestra taught me was not to be constrained by the historical baggage of music. If you want to play Beethoven and then play Jimi Hendrix, why not? So, if I think, ‘Oh, I wonder what it would be like to make this sort of thing?’ then I can just have a go.”

Though he pokes fun at them, his instruments are no joke. Each uke is handmade with high-quality tonewoods, expert craftsmanship, and meticulous attention to detail. Hearing and seeing his instruments, it’s evident he is passionate about the uke and holds it in high regard.

“I love rhythm and I think the ukulele is a brilliant rhythm instrument,” says Grove-White. “It’s a limitation, the kind of lack of sustain it has. But you can think of it as a limitation, or you can think that this is the great thing a ukulele has—it sort of stops itself all the time. That’s the thing that ukuleles have over other instruments.”

I caught up with Grove-White via Zoom from his workshop in Southeast London to discuss how he constructs his ukes like violins, instruments he’s dreamt up but has yet to create, and the little people that live inside his ukuleles.

The ukuleles you make are unusual, save for a traditional soprano. Tell me about the soprano-tenor, tenor-soprano, and Wonkylele.

I wanted to really get into it through sopranos. Although I’ve been doing this—been learning—for two years, I’ve only been on the selling end in the last few months. It’s quite a new adventure.

The long-neck soprano is a tenor scale, but it’s got a soprano body. What I was thinking was everyone likes a tenor—people complain that they need more room for their fingers at the fret end. But I like the sound of the soprano so much because once you start making it bigger and bigger, it just starts sounding to me more and more like a guitar—which is another great instrument, but the thing the ukulele has that no other instrument has is this tiny body. It’s really punchy. So that was the idea: to have a tenor scale for people who are grumbling about how small the soprano scale was.

And how does that affect the sound?

It’s unusual. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think it sounds a bit more dulcimer-y or something like that. When you play it, you can really hear it projecting. 

How about the tenor-soprano?

It’s a tenor body, but then this one’s only got eight frets. I was thinking of what would be the ultimate first-position rhythm ukulele. You want something really loud. The most complicated chord you’re going play on it is an Ab, right? This is a soprano scale. So many people I know never travel past the fifth fret, and I just thought, well, why bother putting on the (extra) frets? 

In the ukulele orchestra, we all had different roles. My role was really punchy, like the snare drum. I’d love to have had a uke like this, I would have played that.

What about the “wonky” one? If I walk into a room and see someone playing that, I’m immediately going to want to talk to them.

Well, you’re going to want to have a go, aren’t you?

Yeah, exactly.

Really, the reason I made it is because I realized that I could make it. If you look at the majority of ukuleles, they join at the tip of the body. It’s flush, then they’re bolted on through the flat section. But I’ve been making them so the neck actually goes into a block, like a violin neck. It’s like a really simple dovetail. The funny thing is that playing it, it’s really ergonomic, because the neck sort of sits up and your hand isn’t down when you hold it. It feels really natural to play. The second one I sold was to Victoria Vox, actually. It’s got a really mellow sound, that one. 

What inspired you to do that neck angle?

I was lying in bed one night and I had been thinking about how to put the neck on the ukulele for so long. I didn’t want to put it on a flat bit, I wanted a nice curve at the top (of the body). But the only way that I could think of to do that was to create this really complicated dovetail situation. The implications were really complicated, technically. I was also trying to think of things that would stand out, because there’s a lot of good ukulele makers out there already—you’ve got to stand out from the crowd. And I thought that wonky’s good, it’s got an aesthetic to it—kind of Picasso-esque.

How’d you come up with the exact angle? Is it the same on every Wonkylele?

It’s the same on every one. You want the strings to pass nicely over the soundhole just for aesthetic sake. And then with the bridge not far enough off, it just looks like a slight mistake. To my ear, I haven’t heard a huge difference in sound between putting the bridge to the side or in the middle on a soprano. I plan to try it on the bigger sizes soon. These fit in a regular soprano case, which is amazing, although I think the ultimate would be to have a proper wonky case as well.

How did you get started making ukuleles? Did you have a woodworking background?

I always liked making things, and I had been making small wooden toys called automata—winding toys. And the busier the orchestra got, the less I made the automata. So those plans were put on hold and then in (pandemic) lockdown, after 30 years of Ukulele Orchestra stuff, I quit the band. No bad feelings, I was just exhausted with the touring and wanted to do something else. I knew I wanted to make something, and why not ukuleles? I suddenly realized I knew some good people who could help me, and it was like a real lightbulb moment. 

My ukulele was made by [luthier] Pete Howlett. And he was the first person I called when I thought that this is something I wanted to do. So, I went and spent about three weeks with him, and I made my first ukulele with him. We made a pineapple koa uke. He’s done maybe 1,000 ukes, I think, and I’m on number 32. So, I’ve been going pretty hard. I’m kind of catching up [laughs]. 

Then I went and visited another guy in the West of England named Liam Kirby, who runs the Wunderkammer Musical Instrument Co. He doesn’t have one power tool in his shop. Even his drill is one of those hand-crank drills. He thins all the tops by hand, cuts every single bit of the binding channels. The whole thing is by hand.

Another person who was really brilliant is Aaron Keim. He was so nice and he put me on to loads of great YouTube stuff—like with Mya-Moe there’s a whole thing of making a ukulele from start to finish.

But you know the most invaluable experience without a doubt was with Pete. Just doing it, being in a place with your hands on the wood, and then to get it wrong a few times and keep doing it.

Is there anything unique or special about the insides of your ukes? Like bracing, for example?

Inside all my ukuleles I’ve been putting these little figurines. You can just see them if you get a torch (flashlight) and look inside, you can see these little people. They’re little plastic characters.

My real obsession throughout life has been with miniature things, starting with the automata and as a kid, little model houses and things like that. Whenever the Ukulele Orchestra went to Germany, we’d always go out—me and Jonty (Bankes), the bass player, were mad about these model miniature villages—and in the gift shops, they’d have these little boxes of little people who were waiting on the benches and things, for the model villages. I like the idea of it because I think they are like these weird things that no one else has seen. Ukuleles should be fun objects, sculptural objects as well as nice-sounding things.

Speaking of sound, is there a particular sound you go for with your instruments?

I’m finding more and more that I personally am really enjoying the mahogany for its classic ukulele sound, like the Martin mahogany ukes. But cherry has got a real richness to it, too. It’s also an English wood, Pete calls it the “English koa.” These lighter woods, like the black limba, the cherry, I’m sort of veering toward those woods a bit more these days. I made a couple of oak ukuleles, and they did sound amazing. 

The bodies of your ukes look a little thinner than standard, and talking about working with Pete Howlett, that kind of clicked for me because he does a thinner body, too.

Well, the reason I’ve been doing that is I was given one by (Kala founder and owner) Mike Upton, it was called a travel tenor or something. It’s thin and it sounds great. It sounds better than a lot of tenors I’ve played. And the opposite of that was when I was in Barcelona, I remember buying a cuatro, which is just like the ukulele with a very deep body. It’s a nice instrument, but it feels like the sound gets lost in the in the insides a bit. 

I’m not sure what the science is, but the thinner body doesn’t feel like it is making a huge difference to the tone (on my ukes). I quite like the way it’s really close (to my body) and you can see everything really easily. They’re quite ergonomic, also.

What do you feel is the most important aspect from a builder’s perspective?

The most important thing in terms of build is making sure it’s in tune, and that the relationship between the nut and the frets and the bridge and the saddle are correct. Because if that’s wrong, then it’s all wrong. And that’s really engineering. That’s the bit I really have to get focused on because I’m not an engineer to begin with; I’m an artist to begin with.

And then it’s about the thickness of the top and having good, solid tuners. I’m getting hold of a load of Gotoh (tuners) soon to work with because I’ve been having headaches with other ones.

Is there a ukulele you’ve dreamed of but haven’t built yet?

There are two which I’d like to have a go at. One is a hurdy-gurdy ukulele inspired by a Fron Reilly model called the Ukuwheele. What he’s got is a uke with a wheel and you wind the thing and you make the chord shapes and it makes a sustained chord. But what I’d love to do is make one with the wheel on the inside.

Would it be strummed? Or just function as a drone instrument?

It would just be a drone instrument. Coming from the Ukulele Orchestra, I tend to think of instruments as part of a group. It would have been good for some songs to have a hurdy-gurdy uke. And then another one I’d really like to make is—do you know the Stroh violins?

Those old violins with a phonograph horn?

Yeah. I’ve always wanted to make one with a ukulele. I don’t know if I will, but I did meet a guy who’d made one. He built it from an old trumpet or something which he twisted around. And then he used a resonator from an old 78 record player. The saddle vibrated on to this resonator, which then went through to the trumpet. It sounds like a 78 record playing ukulele. Amazing. That would be really fun to make. I may never get further than the wonky ukulele, because these are quite involved, these ideas. My feeling is there are so many brilliant ukuleles out there. There are people making really fancy, beautiful inlaid things. I want to think outside of that. I could spend years learning how to do that and make a ukulele like some other people are already making, or I can think of what I can bring to this table. Something different, maybe, that’s really more unusual. Have a bit of fun with it.