ABOUT US

We started Outdoor Ukulele because we got tired of watching wooden instruments crack, swell, and go out of tune the moment they left the living room. As lifelong Oregonians who spend a lot of time outside, we wanted instruments that could actually keep up with real life — rain, heat, dust, and the occasional drop.

Outdoor Instruments™ was founded by Scott and Jennifer Seelye in 2015. Scott spent 20 years as an industrial designer developing products for consumer and aerospace companies. We still design and hand-assemble every instrument here on our small farm in Corvallis, Oregon.

HOW THEY'RE MADE

Developing the first instrument took a couple of years. Injection molding thin-wall, high-performance polymers with composite reinforcements in long lengths was considered nearly impossible at the time. It came down to careful part design, help from polymer chemists, skilled molders, and very large injection molding machines.

Our instruments are molded in Corvallis on hardened steel tools at 600°F under 420 tons of pressure. Polycarbonate reinforced with carbon fiber gives them a natural grain structure that increases both strength and acoustics. They are roughly 4× stronger than typical ABS plastic instruments and fully weather resistant.

Parts are joined with industrial-grade cyanoacrylate adhesive and cured in machined aluminum fixtures. This lets us set the action as low and consistent as possible. The shop is temperature- and humidity-controlled so the adhesive cures correctly every time.

We run a lean production system — six instruments a day, three days from start to finish. Every ukulele, banjolele, and guitar is assembled in our Corvallis shop.

We use custom tuning machines with cast baseplates and precision-ground gears, installed with stainless screws made specifically for polymers. Strings are custom-made by D’Addario. Ukuleles and banjoleles get high-tension fluorocarbon; guitars get silver-plated nylon core basses with fluorocarbon trebles. We stretch and tune every instrument multiple times over 24 hours before it ships.

OUT IN THE WORLD

We’ve now built and shipped more than 26,000 instruments. They’ve been played in the Arctic Ocean, on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and by hikers on the Pacific Crest and Appalachian Trails every season. We have dealers in Germany, Holland, France, Japan, China, and beyond. The best part is still the emails and photos customers send us from their adventures.