How do I make a Unoa / Minifee hybrid?

I get asked this a lot so I thought I'd put together a bit of a resource on how to get your minifee hybrid together. I love my hybrid and I'm so glad I worked up the guts to do it. If I can do it, then you can too!

The biggest stumbling block is the minifee neck piece, it's like some mystical contraption designed by otherworldly beings that which mere mortals should not wot of. But really it's just a chunk of plastic with an S hook in it.

Taking the neck piece off isn't nearly as big a deal as it seems. It's really daunting before you do it, but it's one of those things where afterwards you can't believe you were so worried.

That being said, depending on how tightly strung the body is the level of difficulty for removing the neck piece will vary. My girl was tightly strung and it was a total bitch to get the neck piece off. You might want someone around to help, have them hold the body while you wrestle with the neck.

Terrible cell phone photos; apologies. If I hybrid a third girl I'll take better pics! 

By the way, no you don't need to totally un-string your body to take the neck piece off. To make life easier you could un-string the feet to create a little slack, it's up to you. I find it easier to take the feet off. If you're leaving the feet on you'll need to lift the neck piece up and clamp the elastic underneath so you can keep the doll strung but still fiddle with the neck piece. You'll find a hemostat pretty useful here. 

This is a hemostat; I got mine from Ace hardware for $2
You could probably order them online; Google is your friend (photo from LINK)

When you yank out the elastic you might find a resin ball in your neck piece, this should slide down pretty easily, sometimes even of its own accord, but if it gets stuck then you might be in for a world of pain. The both times I've done it the ball hasn't been an issue. Anyway, this is what it looks like:

Slide the ball down and clamp above it to remove the neck piece. Once you've got the elastic up you'll see the neck piece has a tiny S hook inside it with the fat elastic squished into it. The S hook is pretty small and you'll find you won't be able to just slide the elastic out like a regular S hook. You'll need some pliers to pry the hook open until you can slide the elastic off it. And then viola, neck piece is removed!

All you need to make the headback work is an S hook that fits the head back you have. Or you can do what I did and use a ring, just go with whatever works. This was just a simple jewellery finding that I had kicking around.

I'm using a Buff headback for my girl, but the headback in the picture to the left is my old Amaeta headback. They are both compatible with minifee so no modding is necessary if you have either of those headbacks. Both are good. I like the Buff headback because it give a greater range of motion, but it does have big gaps at the sides. If you're going to use short haired wigs go for the Amaeta, though be warned your girl won't be able to look up much.

By the way I know nothing about any other headback so don't ask lol.



Here's a great wiki on neck pieces that will help you get an idea of how things work {LINK}
And here's a post by Bluoxyde with some pics talking about unoa/minifee hybrids {LINK}
Here's a resin comparison photo by Lisadragon {LINK}

Here's a photo of a Unoa on a whiteskin minifee {LINK}

Quick word on resin matching; all I can tell you is that my lusis faceplate matches very well with my MNF body. Unoa is lighter in colour but I found that with a faceup the difference was negligible and I wasn't blushing to match or anything, it just worked out that way.

She's had a couple of faceups and it's always the same; blank you can see an obvious difference but it's not horrible, with a faceup you just don't notice. It's also probably worth noting the my faceplate was brand spanking new, still in it's packet, and the body she has was also brand spanking new, ordered direct from Fairyland specifically for her (2010).

Photo is a bit crappy, my camera battery is charging so no new pics today, but you can see the resin match between the Amaeta headback, the MNF body, and the faceplate.

 Good luck with your hybriding!