STRINGING TOGETHER 25 YEARS OF SUCCESS, AND COUNTING
July 24
By Liam Gorman
Photos By Anastasia Stanmeyer
The ukulele might be small, but it’s mighty. This four-string pint-sized cousin of the guitar has seen a steady rise in popularity over the past 25 years, and Magic Fluke on Route 7 in Sheffield has been along for the ride from the start.
This mom-and-pop shop started in 1999 at the home of Dale and Phyllis Webb in New Hartford, Connecticut. While raising small children at the time, Dale used his background in engineering and injection molding to produce their first ukulele. “To make the prototypes, I thermoformed some sheets in the kitchen oven and cast the first fingerboards in the toaster oven,” he says. “I went through a lot of iterations. I have to admit, I probably got lucky.”
Lucky or not, Dale had built the first of thousands of tiny musical instruments that would become the base for a business that now includes the next generation of Webb family members.
“The ukelele was built around the concept of composite construction, utilizing wood and molded components to develop an instrument that has a really reliable acoustic performance,” explains Josh, the couple’s eldest son while holding one of Dale’s first designs. “The plastics in this are formulated so that they mimic the properties of wood. It lends itself to being extremely durable and weather resistant.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Josh and his 26-year-old brother Ben returned home during Covid and have joined their parents in continuing to build the family business. The youngest sibling, Sam, is still in school at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“Dad’s full-time job was using ultrasonic sensing to determine the quality of materials,” says Ben. “So, you're creating sound waves, bouncing them off materials, and then interpreting that data. In his brilliance, he knew music is physics, and that says. “I went through a lot of iterations. I have to admit, I probably got lucky.”
Lucky or not, Dale had built the first of thousands of tiny musical instruments that would become the base for a business that now includes the next generation of Webb family members.
“The ukelele was built around the concept of composite construction, utilizing wood and molded components to develop an instrument that has a really reliable acoustic performance,” explains Josh, the couple’s eldest son while holding one of Dale’s first designs. “The plastics in this are formulated so that they mimic the properties of wood. It lends itself to being extremely durable and weather resistant.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Josh and his 26-year-old brother Ben returned home during Covid and have joined their parents in continuing to build the family business. The youngest sibling, Sam, is still in school at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“Dad’s full-time job was using ultrasonic sensing to determine the quality of materials,” says Ben. “So, you're creating sound waves, bouncing them off materials, and then interpreting that data. In his brilliance, he knew music is physics, and that can be distilled to pretty simple math. Once you understand that, you go and build an instrument. There is an amount of applied physics, and then there's a bit of magic.”
Magic Fluke’s first ukulele, “The Fluke,” was named after its unique design that resembles the tail of a whale, also known as a fluke—which then gave birth to their name, “Magic Fluke,” a variation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Dale and Phyllis saw a niche that was vacant at the time. The ukulele (often simply called “uke”) has had waves of popularity in the past. But in the 1990s, it wasn’t exactly seen as a serious instrument—it was more of a novelty popularized by the likes of Tiny Tim and his 1968 hit song “Tip Toe Through the Tulips.”
Jumping into making ukes wasn’t a complete leap of faith; Phyllis’s brother Jim Beloff had been a lifelong guitarist before stumbling across a uke at a Los Angeles flea market—and fell in love with the instrument. “I always joke that my brother didn't like leaving his wife at home when he traveled, but he didn't like leaving his guitar home even less,” says Phyllis. “He thought, ‘I can do with four strings what I've been doing with six all my life, fit it in the overhead bin or underneath the seat in front of me.’ And he's just never looked back.”
Never looking back included publishing a series of songbooks and instructionals that helped popularize the instrument and gave Dale the confidence that there might be a market here. Despite the work Phyllis’ brother had done to blaze a path towards success, showing up at a big trade show with a small instrument wasn’t easy.
“Twenty-five years ago, when Dale went to the first show for us with my brother, they had a little kiosk at this big show. People were snickering, ‘Nobody's playing ukulele. How are you guys affording to even have a booth here? Nobody's gonna play it,’ ” recalls Phyliis.
But like any good entrepreneur, they felt there was a demand. Despite the snickering from market professionals, they were right. Once Dale was set with the the proper injection molded tooling, they were shipping all over the world and ramped up to a few thousand units a year. Since then, they’ve sold ukes to people all over the world—hitting every continent, even Antarctica and the bright lights of Vegas and Broadway.
Bette Midler used a customized version of their soprano concert uke, called “The Flea,” for a Las Vegas residency starting in 2008. And Tony Danza has brought his Flea to Broadway and beyond. “He's taken it to the White House. He's taken it all over the place. He's been pretty supportive and just loves his original instrument,” says Phyllis, who has handled bookkeeping and customer interaction from the start.
Magic Fluke moved out of their home base in New Hartford to a nearby converted gas station and then to their current location in the Berkshires—a beautiful high-beamed studio with a variety of workshops and hallway lined with Magic Fluke instruments and more.
That’s instruments, plural, because since Dale’s days of creating in the kitchen, Magic Fluke has expanded the variety of stringed instruments. “I was intrigued by other instruments,” says Dale, “so we got into the banjos and then the solid body with the bass, the mandolin, and then the violin.” All told, Magic Fluke can tout to selling over 72,000 instruments over their 25 years.
But that’s not all for this family tree. Apples not falling too far, Ben and Josh have continued in the family tradition of creating. Josh grew up watching his dad tinker on things in the garage and around the house, inspiring him to follow in his father’s footsteps, studying mechanical engineering at UMass Amherst. While still helping at the family business, he is also working as an engineer for a company in Great Barrington and running True Wheels, a bike-tuning and E-Bike rental business out of the same location as Magic Fluke.
“I've grown up alongside the business and my first job was putting hangtags together,” says Josh as he pulls on one of the artfully designed price tags attached to a uke. “Eventually, I was stringing the ukes after school. And just gradually, as I got older, gaining a little bit more responsibility.”
Ben had an interest in architecture and design and studied renewable energy and ecological design at Green Mountain College in Vermont. “We learned about design and architecture in relation to a context of other things,” says Ben. “So, my approach is taking context clues: Where is this going to be? Where's the sun shining? What resources do we have? You design based on these principles and take that into consideration.”
He has applied those same principles while exploring another interest, building fine furniture. “I am enjoying learning and diving into particularly Eastern traditional joinery and Japanese craft,” says Ben. Some of his work can be found for sale in the same hallway where the Magic Fluke instruments are displayed.
“Josh and Ben had been really supportive since they came home. They have a lot on their plates, but they've been innovating,” says Phyllis. “They’ve been collaborating on a redesign of our bass right now, and people are waiting for it.”
Clearly, this is a family that can’t sit still for long. After being on the forefront of a musical comeback for 25 years, you’d think Dale and Phyllis might want to take a breather. Think again. “It’s very interesting work, and I still enjoy it,” says Dale. “I'm trying to pull back a little bit—let the young folks you know, take it in their own direction. But I don't anticipate retiring anytime soon.”
“We look back and realize we raised three sons, and it's been a good business for us,” says Phyllis. “We go to bed at night and feel just really proud that we're making a difference in lives.”
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