Ukulele Help

[catmandu2]

Oops - duplicate

[catmandu2]

Mark -

Do you do any building with some of the less - prevalent items like ronroco, taropartch, etc? I like small with lots of strings. The 'guitaron chileno' is wonderfully evocative:

https://youtu.be/HCMMfsB02so

[Rodney Riley]

http://hoffmannlutherie.com/index.html
Maybe a little on the pricey side. But has unique designs and they really sound great. The 8 stringed one shown in his gallery is my mandolin. NFI

[pointpergame]

I have suffered some arthritis misfortune of the basal thumb kind. The finger forces on the mandolin are about as high as as any other instrument I know of. I'm just not ready to quit being a musician. So, the ukulele has been a wonderful alternative. I have a Banjo Uke tuned in 5ths. And an 8-string tenor. And a re-entrant soprano for that traditional sound.

It took a while. I was singing and studying jazz on the mandolin and the ukulele has its own wonderful jazz tradition. It's also been the catalyst for two or three intense American crazes in the last century so there are several bodies of music that go with it. It's perfect for singing along with ( just the right volume ) and I think that was part of its charm in at least one of the former fads.

I truly miss making melody. The mandolin is so fine for bouncing back and forth between chords and melody. So, the 5ths-tuned instrument lets me keep my hand in. I will have to have a bow re-haired and return to the fiddle to scratch the melody itch, I suppose.

Anyway, the instrument pursuit has been fun. A fine ukulele is to a fine mandolin as a modern Vespa is to a 911 Porsche. Sort of. There are every day ones and there are great ones. The distance between an ordinary uke and the very best is not nearly as great as the same distance between mandolins. Mandolin players on this forum are from a far different musical stratum than the more everyday folk on the Underground Ukulele forum. Different music. Different tensions.

[Petrus]

http://hoffmannlutherie.com/index.html
Maybe a little on the pricey side. But has unique designs and they really sound great. The 8 stringed one shown in his gallery is my mandolin. NFI

I didn't know Breedlove made ukes in their mando style!

[pelone]

Ukes can be so variable in tone, resonance, sustain....all of those subjective qualities that we attribute to a well built instrument. I have gone to a local music store that carries many name brands, all nicely made and great attention to detail. Have asked a friend to play 5 various randomly selected instruments while my back was turned away from him. The uke that seemed to rise above the others, in my estimation, turned out to be a Kala that was priced at a bit higher than 200 hundred dollars. My blind study helped me cut through the marketing and branding.

I, also, enjoyed restringing and retuning my soprano uke to GDAE using nylon Elixir mandolin strings (.010, .014, .024, .034) I love the playability and at my age, it saves me from having to learn a whole new set of chords as I can rely on my ingrained mando chords.

[crisscross]

I found out, ukes, unlike mandolins, don't sound necessarily better the more you pay for them, at least recorded.
I recently bought a used solid koa Kamaka soprano, which costs about 1000€ new and made a recording comparison with a 200€ all solid acacia soprano.
Most listeners favored the first, which is the China made Acacia Soprano over the Hawaiian made Kamaka.

Played live, the Kamaka sure sounds a little fuller, but the difference isn't that big, at least not to my ear.

[UsuallyPickin]

My Sister, an ukulele aficionado, reports .... Yes it is a really good brand and a good price for this model if the instrument is in good shape. She would buy it if she liked the tone.
Check out http://ukulelehunt.com/ for general ukulele information. R/