Ukuleles

It's VERY light for a resonator Ukulele, and quite small for a Tenor with a 42cm scale length, but it does have a very chunky neck and feels very solidly and nicely made. Its quite quiet for a resonator too, I think some spruce tops could match it for volume and quite trebly with a lot of top and not much base (a bit like a spruce top). It's certainly more ordinary, non-resonator Ukulele sounding that the other resonators. I'm thinking if I just heard it without knowing its a resonator Uke I would think it a spruce top? No just had another go and it's less harsh that a spruce top tone

It has a nato neck and a basswood body and, apart from the bold graphics is the standard budget fair. What I particularly like about mine though is the bright green saddle, nut and tuning buttons. (In case you are wondering about the Eyes, it is a label in the sound hole that you have to line up to get the eye effect) It comes in quite high for budget pricing and does have that little bit of extra quality to justify that. The decal finish is good, the neck is straight and the action is quite low. It sounds ok, is quite nice to play and would be a good first Ukulele if you like the animals pictured

This is one of Mahalo's 2018 "specials", it's part of the new creative series that have come out along with the latest art series and a new designer series. The Alien is the only new model to have a distinctly non traditional body shape, (there is another "skull" one that is a standard Ukulele body shape but put on the wrong way around, so the neck connects to the larger bout ), and though it comes in 4 colours, this is the only fluorescent one. You have to leave it under the lights for a bit before it glows (and turn the lights out once it is "charged"). Not glowing it is off white under normal lights and it plays nicely enough but it does miss a proper fretboard; as it comes, it is just some "ebonising" on the neck. OK its a reasonable job but it does look cheap and will probably wear through after a bit of use. Speaking of cheap, the whole thing looks a little cheap, well more feels than looks, the finish is a little rough and uneven. However it plays nicely enough and what did I expect for the money? It is what it is, a bit of fun and... It Glows! The soundboard glows, the headstock glows even the back and sides glow!

I was given this so I can't really comment on the value for money too much. I can see what they are priced at RRP, but who pays RRP? anyway the review... Well I'm sadly very disappointed. It's solid enough but not particularly well made. The nut needed a lot of work to get the intonation and setup right; far more than most buyers would put up with. The back plate is poorly fitting and the faux wood pattern on it doesn't really match the actual wood of the body very well. Plus the electrics underneath it are shockingly bad. I can't say I'm enamoured with the looks ether, I have already said the backplate looks bad; to be honest it would look a lot better with a plain black, or white one, to match the scratchplate its crying out for. It doesn't have to be identical to the Fender Telecaster scratchplate but with that headstock design and body shape that would be a place to start. My biggest dislike of the looks is the pickup though. To my mind it looks too big and the angle too acute, (possibly to try and hide the fact that its too big?) It looks like rather than sourcing the right pickup they just took the first rail guitar pickup they came across and said"that will do". I think a cover might help too but it still wouldn't hide the fact that the pickup is too big. My biggest disappointment though is the electrics and the tone. I like the ambition of the bluetooth, I like the rechargeable battery and the USB method for recharging it but every time I have switched it on and plugged it into an amp it performs dreadfully! I've tried different leads, I've tried different amps, I've tried the same setup using different instruments to make sure its not the amp or the leads. But whatever I have tried whenever I have plugged it in there has been a huge amount of noise! So much that the extraneous noise is louder than what is suppose to come from the pickup. I say I'm unhappy with the tone but to be honest I haven't been able to judge the tone because of all of the other noise Nice knobs though

Boulder Creek maybe a small river outside of Boulder, Colorado but the head office for this company is in California and all of the Ukuleles are made in China. They are very nice Ukuleles though; my one has a beautiful satin finish, very nice inlay and is an absolute joy to play. It is laminate mahogany, (their Standard Mahogany range), but it has a really nice blemish free top layer plus a nice rounded bridge and a solid fretboard. The frets are smooth, the intonation is great and it doesn't really rattle. For those that worry about the lack of fret markers they are on the side at 5, 7, 10 and 12. The overall tone is what you would expect from a laminate but delivered cleanly and powerfully. The only thing that lets it down is the buttons on the otherwise excellent sealed machine heads look cheap up close. All Boulder Creek Ukuleles are Riptides and all feature the small epaulette sound hole and the larger side sound port. The idea is and the side sound port allows the player to better hear what is going on. I have never really though, when playing a Ukulele with a sound hole in the traditional place, "do you know I wish I could hear better what is going on", but the idea seems to have taken off as a lot of people put these sound holes in nowadays, even on acoustic guitars Mine is the first edition of the Boulder Creek Riptide range of Ukulele. if you look for them now the "Riptide" inlay has gone from the center of the body,reduced in size and replacing "Boulder Creek" on the headstock. Also the saw tooth along the top of the headstock has gone for later editions. I understand that these changes would have reduced the cost per unit to Boulder Creek, but I think it makes the Ukulele less distinctive in a crowded marketplace.

In the Luna Ukuleles catalogue, the "Tattoo" is at the bottom end of the product range, but its still a very good quality instrument with its laser etching based on a Polynesian tattoo design. It has a mahogany laminate body, (as you would expect for the price), but thanks to the "Pineapple" shape giving it a larger internal sound displacement zone than the standard body shape, it has a good solid tone and plenty of of volume. It came with Aquila string fitted as standard, and a good, padded gig-bag. I have tried it with a set of low G worths but I prefer it with a standard high G tuning

Blackbird is a Californian chordophone manufacturer that make Carbon Fibre Guitars. Also as part of their range they make a nice looking Tenor Ukulele (so long as you can live with the old Henry Ford "any colour you like so long as it's black"; and I know he never really said that). The process itself is interesting because the whole thing including both sides of the body and the neck are made as one piece in a single process. On the downside, It's an expensive Ukulele and if you order from the factory there is an 8 week wait while they grow it or whatever. Expensive enough that I never really thought I would get one. I toyed with the idea that if I did go and work in the Middle East I would have to get one as being carbon fibre it is not affected by heat or humidity and so would one of a very few good Ukuleles I could use. Well I didn't get a job in the Middle East, (I did apply), but I did get a Blackbird complete with a top end hard case for about a third the price of a new one. OK its second hand but in perfect condition, (well these are just about the most indestructible Ukulele money can buy - that said I wouldn't want to play cricket with it), and it really is a joy to play. It is still an expensive Ukulele but it really is quality both in build and in sound and it is also very light and very easy to play. Going back to the expensive for a beginner, if you did live in the middle east and were an oil sheik who wanted to learn the Ukulele, then I suppose it wouldn't be that expensive and all of the climate proofing would make it much better and more consistent to learn on

The general consensus in the Ukulele world is that the Makala Dolphin is the best budget starter Ukulele you can get. Its not a view I fully agree with, not counting second hand bargains there are other potentially good Ukuleles aimed at this level. I have played and own Mahalos that are just as good and I think if you hunt around you can find other brands too that have some reasonable Ukuleles for the money. What I think is the case is that with its ABS body, (the soundboard is still wood though), the Dolphin is the most consistently good budget Ukulele and probably the safest if you are buying unseen, (what you must be aware of here is that the bridge design has been widely copied, so there are a lot of imitation / fake ones about with ordinary basswood bodies), and reasonably robust making it an ideal Ukulele to take to places where there is a risk of damage. The ABS also helps with humidity, water resistance and seem splitting, (but is any of that a worry on a starter Ukulele?) When I first started inviting Ukuleles to the corner and came across the Dolphin, I thought with its bright colours and dolphin shaped bridge, it looked a bit childish. this is why I didn't get one then. Now the look has grown on me, I like the bold colour and the bridge is a bit of fun. The build and decoration are perfectly adequate done and the open backed 14:1 tuners are perfectly adequate too (I'm not damning it with faint praise here, remember though its on the expensive side of budget, it is still a budget Ukulele and you shouldn't expect miracles on a budget) The GHS strings it comes with do need to be replaced to get the best tone from it but again there is a limit to what you should expect tone-wise from it. In experimenting with different strings I was pleasantly surprised when I tried it with a low G set. It gave a reasonable ever bass dimension to the tone and performed better as a low G soprano that a lot ot the more expensive sopranos I have tried, (also given its price point you don't worry about it to much if you have to widen the nut slot to accommodate) the thicker string

Lanyao Musical Instrument Co. ABS Concert Ukulele My one was branded Clearwater but I have seen a lot of other people selling the same model of Ukulele under different Brand Names. Korala and Brunswick are two more but I'm sure there are others and Lanyao sell them under their own Vorson branding. Sometimes they are a single colour sometimes that are graphics on the front. It has a red all plastic body with a red plastic neck and headstock, a black plastic bridge with a white plastic saddle and a black plastic fretboard. The neck meets the body at the 14th fret and the fret board continues over the body to 18 frets, the frets themselves are plastic and moulded into the board, but there are 4 white markers on the 5th, 7th, 10th and 12th frets that are inlaid separately. The tuners are open geared, 14-1 (or there about) and have cream plastic buttons, (a different kind of plastic). It has a scale length of 37½cm (13¾ in), so a Concert with a fairly traditional figure 8 body shape, moulded plastic fan bracing under the sound board and quite a narrow headstock with a Clearwater decal logo in it. Finally as the advert for it promised it came with Aquila Nygut strings - so it looks like a Ukulele, but smells like a washing up bowl, and here's where it all starts to go wrong, sounds like a washing up bowl too! Up close the build, though very solid feeling, is not great, there are noticeable ridges where the soundboard is not glued exactly onto the back and sides body shell. The tuners are not very smooth either and give those experiences where you turn and turn with nothing happening then you turn a little more and it goes up half a tone. The biggest issue though, because after all it was very cheap and manufacturing flaws like that are to be expected, is the neck is not straight. There is a noticeable bowing when you look at it side on and this leads to a very high action from about the 4th fret onward making it a very awkward and unforgiving player. It also puts the intonation out as you go up the fretboard, not that you would want to much as the action is so high. And then you come back to that other BIG issue the sound. Despite the effort made putting fan bracing in on the soundboard it still sounds like someone has put rubber bands around a washing up bowl. There is no treble, very little bass and no sustain, (probably a good thing, you wouldn't want to torture the notes any more by dragging them out for to long). This leads to a very muddy, percussive thunk when you play it. Its sound is also not well balanced, the C string for example comes across much louder than the A string (probably not helping with the tone) and this gives a real lack of chord definition. Given its plastic nature I do fear this Ukulele will last... Forever! In millennia to come when the human race is all but forgotten and the dominant species on the planet is the super intelligent, highly evolved descendants of the Humboldt Squid, who are making their first exploratory forays onto land. They won't find the Taj Mahal, the Mona Lisa or even a copy of Photographers Monthly from 1993, but they will find one of these Ukuleles, string it up, strum it and think "Blimey those monkeys were cloth eared! and we don't even have auditory organs!" That said I think if you left it in the back of a car it would melt and if you got it wet the tuners would rust. All in all this is pretty horrible It's an awful choice as a first Uke given its tone and unpleasantness to play and I don't think it would be a particularly good take anywhere beater. Sad really I have a couple of other Clearwater Ukuleles and I think they are really good. I was hoping for more. The new Maccaferri Islander this isn't. In the end I have given this away - to someone I didn't like much. I did have a good long go on it before I gave it away to see if it had improved any, if I thought I was being too harsh on it and if I should write anything positive for its final epitaph; and the answers are no, no and no! No its not got any better, if anything its worse. The tuners which were never great have developed a nasty grinding to them like they have got sand in the works(?) but it has never been near sand, possibly it could have been solved with a good oiling? I'll never know now I didn't have any oil to hand at the time and I wasn't going to get some specially (and none of my other budget Ukuleles with open gear tuners have ever developed this fault?). The neck didn't appear to get any worse, but it didn't miraculously get any better and the tone didn't improve either again it would be fairly miraculous if it did. So no I wasn't too harsh in my original assessment and the only thing good I can say as a farewell note is good riddance...

When I first saw one of these I thought it was some kind of fake. A coloured Martin! And in red, green or blue!! Surely that should be "Martin Smith" or something? Surely they can't be faking the logo that much again? Surely something odd?!? Anyway I checked it out and it is legit! One of Martin's 2015 special limited editions is in the 0X series and is a laminate Soprano in three colours and made of Bamboo, (Bamboo is always laminate you don't get strips big enough to make anything from a single strip; but the technology is well proven and as a material it has very "green" sustainable credentials). Colour is a bit of a departure for Martin but they had already broken the laminate taboo for the Martin 0XK so why not? So Martin are doing a Budget(?! ~ only for Martin would you call it budget), colourful Soprano! Now I'm a sucker for colourful Sopranos, (along with many other things), so I wondered how much? After all it's very different from the normal Martins, it's a limited edition so production will stop soon, and like the old Martin Backpacker Ukuleles, which were very "different" at the time, and they are now unavailable, have become something of a cult Ukulele, I predict this one is likely to too in a few years. Like I say, how much? I had trouble tracking one down in Europe. My usual places didn't have them but I found a top end eBay shop in Germany advertising them with a Buy it now / make an offer for the blue or green. As I hinted earlier though, it wasn't cheap but I thought I would put a very cheeky offer in on the blue one; at least I tried... And, (and I'll remember how much under the asking price I went because they are a high end supplier so I may try again now as), my offer was accepted! Now it's here and it doesn't smell (Bamboo Ukuleles I have encountered previously had a strong glue smell). It does sound good though; and it's very blue. Certainly not your traditional Martin but it is quality and I'm even more sure it will become a classic one day

This is a horrible Ukulele and most of the time I kept it hidden in its box like some Victorian illegitimate and somehow deformed child who was kept in the attic. In its defence I knew it was horrible when I brought it, my brother has a pink one that I had played before getting this and we had both agreed that that one was a piece of pink shite. I also went out of my way when choosing it to pick a particularly bad one when I was in the shop! Why? Well I brought it fairly soon after I had started collecting Ukuleles specifically for the purpose of practicing things like restringing, adjusting the saddle and nut, replacing the tuners; all of those things that I wanted to learn how to do properly but didn't want to practice on using Ukuleles that I valued. I picked Ashton over Lazy, (which was also in the shop and equally awful), because it was cheaper, and I picked the worst one in the shop so I have a big saddle and nut to work on and see if I could make it better - I couldn't! I have abused it quite a bit over the years and I have now lost the saddle too, (Hoover accident). At one time I was going to take the neck off and use it for a Biscuit Tin Banjo but it got a reprieve, mainly because the neck is pretty horrible with a bad paint job up close, scratchy, badly finished frets and a horrible "ebonised" front that only pays the barest lip service to being a proper fret board. It must have some redeeming survivability after sitting in my bits box for all of these years. Maybe if you were looking for a toy to give a small child? (but with the point on the headstock! Probably not if you want them to grow up with both eyes - that's Australian design for you, brash and vaguely dangerous!) As a quick review on it as a proper Ukulele; it is awful! I have put a couple on Amazon but just to sum up here. Build quality is quite strong but the fit and finish is very poor. The paintwork is messy and poorly applied, as is the sound hole decal and the frets (which are made of some kind of metal but painted- badly - to look like brass). The frets are also rough and need proper dressing to avoid scratches when playing. The nut and saddle were not well fitted and the bridge unit is pretty poor quality and uses wood screws. With the poor nut and saddle the action is very high and the bridge itself is too high without a saddle, which means it cannot be lowered to an acceptable level (unless you took that off and sanded it down too!) With the poor nut and bridge the intonation is way, way off, half a tone out by about the third fret! It is not really possible to make two chords without one of them being out of tune. This makes the sound quality hard to judge but from what you can make out it really isn't worth making the effort to improve any of the build issues. Would I buy one again? NO!!! (and I've given this one away) Would it last? Who cares its too awful to play To sum up:- its very bright from a distance but there are plenty of better Ukuleles out there; even in this price range

Body Body Type Ukulele Top AAA Grade Flame Maple Back and Sides Mahogany Binding White Bracing Hand-Scalloped Neck Species 1-piece Mahogany Profile SlimTaper™ "D" Profile 4-bolt recessed Thickness 168" at Nut Binding 1 Ply PVC Binding Adhesive Premium Titebond Neck Fit Joint 4-Bolt Recessed Adhesive Premium TiteBond Fingerboard Species Rosewood Frets 19 Scale Length 15" Concert Scale Radius 16" Fingerboard Radius Inlays Mother of Pearl Dots Adhesive Premium Titebond Headstock Type Classic Epiphone Angle 14 deg Logo Gold Epiphone Logo with Les Paul Signature model silkscreen Nut Material Synthetic Bone Width 1.312" Tuning Keys Type Four Geared Open Machine Heads Material Nickel Ratio 14:1 Bridge Type Rosewood with Synthetic Bone Saddle Hardware Pickguard Cassic LP Strings Premium Black Nylon Strings Output Jack Rim-Mounted 1/4" Output Jack Pickups Model High-Quality Piezo Film Pickup Location Under Saddle Finish Sealer Premium Urethane Clear-coat Heritage Cherry SunburstVintage Sunburst Case Type Gig Bag with Accessory Pocket Accessories Additional Materials Each Les Paul Ukulele includes an owner's manual with warranty information, poster, truss rod adjument wrench and economy 10' cord UTILIZATION This is such a cool ukulele! The very idea of taking a Les Paul guitar ethos, Gibson's most venerated design ever, and applying it to a ukulele...well, to be frank it's ludicrous, but in a very fun way! I'm glad to see a ukulele with a cutaway, a uke with a AAA flame maple top, and a uke with a good sunburst finish. One doesn't typically find these kinds of appointments on a ukulele, but this one has all of them. It plays very smoothly, with no extra effort to fret each string. SOUNDS This is a decent-sounding ukulele, but I've heard better, to be honest. Lanakai and Cordoba are a couple of modern brands that I've tried around this price point, and I liked their sound better. The cutaway is a cool feature for playability, but I think the smaller body shape as a result tones down the volume one can achieve with this. Also, the built in piezo pickup is very quacky sounding - it reminds me of the piezo system sound from early 90s guitars - that is to say, unrealistic and plinky sounding. OVERALL OPINION Overall, this isn't bad. This is a like a main practice uke, or a ukulele gift for a person who has a Les Paul as their primary instrument. I wouldn't use it for a real "serious" singer-songwriter or folk gig. It is a touch gimmicky, but it will put a smile on anyone's face. But it's certainly worth a look, for sure.