London Ukulele Festival: Friday Links
May 8, 2009
The London Uke Festival 2009 will be held on 20th June. They’ll be attempting to break the world record for most ukuleles played at the same time. You can read more about it in this PDF and register on their website.
More festival news: the Milwaukee Ukulele Festival will include Victoria Vox, The Fabulous Heftones, Boulder Acoustic Society and Lil Rev.
Amy Crehore’s Ticker #2 ukulele is revealed. More pictures on Flickr.
Armelle is posting videos of ukulele songs in different languages (and part two is here and part 3 here). If you know of any others let her know.
The tragedy of the T-Rex in t-shirt form.
Ken Middleton has a new job: Official European envoy for Ohana Ukuleles.
Watch the KoAloha Story here – worth signing up to the site for. But skip about the first 1/3 of the main film and go straight to the animation.
Rod Thomas’s award winning song Same Old Lines is now being used in a DFS ad. And Mr Kazookeylele flogs Doritoes.
Trying to win Zooey Deschanel’s heart by building her a ukulele.
‘Ukelele’ spells trouble for Clint Eastwood.
Ukulele Mike sees himself as the Susan Boyle of the ukulele. He also seems to be spamming the hell out of Twitter in the hopes that Perez Hilton and Jessica Alba are fans in the making.
Oscar Schmidt OU7, Ohana Deluxe TK-70CG
April 24, 2009
Oscar Schmidt go one louder with the OU7. It looks cool, but if they’re going to keep jacking up the price they’ll have to switch to solid ukes pretty soon.
A ‘deluxe’ and ‘limited edition’ Ohana TK-70CG. Sexy cutaway, but not sure about the pink tuners (and I usually love pink).
One uke that might want to think about adding a cutaway is this Mike Chock Mango ukulele. What’s the point of 23 frets if you can only reach 12 of them? But I do quite like the pear shape.
Every time a vintage Martin 5K crops up on eBay I do a quick ‘pros and cons’ list of selling one of the kids. And in this case the uke has a lovely battered case – making the list dangerously close to even.
We’ve been total idiots. Practicing when all we had to do was learn to play the ukulele subliminally.
Easel style ukulele stand: classy solution.
Window Shopping: Ohana CK-65D, Kala Slimline
April 17, 2009
The Ohana CK-65D is a bit of a strange beast. As well as the off-centre soundhole, it has a fretboard that is a mixture of rosewood and maple.
I think Kala’s thinline travel ukulele is a good idea. I can see how shaving a little off the size could help. But then way make one in tenor size?
I think I might have expressed my surprise at a bamboo ukulele before. But it sounds pretty good in MGM’s video. But at $1,500 you’d expect it to.
Lovely Keech Banjolele on eBay UK.
Friday Links
March 13, 2009
Three videos that had me clutching my sides with laughter: Hilary Clinton and John McCain do the Ukulele Forum Rap, Ukulele en Francais and Unicorn Fantasy (that last one is NSFW and via Zym).
The Guardian Music Blog discusses the ukulele resurgence with Dent May, Jens Lekman (who seems to be a titanic knobhead) and the world’s handsomest ukulele blogger. If you’re at all interested in what I said in the rest of the interview, you can read it here.
The Ukulele Movement comes to Singapore.
Win an Ohana by designing the logo for the Wine Country Uke Fest.
Getting Serious… about Ukulele: “The thing is — with a very few exceptions — for my money there isn’t that much creativity around in the world of uke design.”
Come Sail Away by Styx on Uker Tabs.
Ukulele Chord Tool for Palm OS.
WIUO rock the hat and goatee look (and, gosh, doesn’t Megan have hairy shoulders).
The Ukulele Bible: “And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Ukulele shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not Ukulele, and that obey not the gospel of our Ukulele. Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Ukulele, and from the glory of his power.” (Thessalonians 1:7-9)
Ohana Tenor Ukulele TK-35G Review
February 18, 2009
No need to stretch to outlandish reasons to buy a new ukulele for this one. I needed a tenor (and, no, a Fluke with a tenor neck doesn’t count) particularly for fingerpicking. The Ukulele Shop had a sale on the Ohana TK-35G and after watching Ken Middleton’s review of his tenor Ohana.
Sound: A lovely warm tone to it. The sound is plenty strong enough for single note playing. But when you’re strumming chords, the sound isn’t as sharp and defined as I’d like.
I’m not too sure how useful MP3 examples are once they’ve been through all the equipment, but here are some anyway.
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Sustain Test (open C string then A string 12th fret) using the Aquila strings it came with.
Construction: Solid mahogany body. Rosewood fretboard. Rosewood binding on body, soundhole and headstock. Chrome geared tuners (MGM lists them as friction tuners – unless there’s some funky mechanism in there, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case). Genuine bone nut and bridge (that’s how it’s listed but they seem quite plastic-y to me – and obviously to Ken too; he refers to them as being plastic in his review). It’s reasonably well put together but not perfect – more on that later.
Playability: Like Ken mentioned in his video, the action is very high. I wouldn’t say it’s ‘unplayably high’ though. I quite like the high action – it means a whole lot less fret buzz and cleaner fretting. But it does mean it’s not an easy instrument to play. I’m tempted to lower the action a little.
A gripe I have with it is the fret marker is at the ninth fret (guitar style) rather than the tenth fret (ukulele style). It has thrown me off on a number of occasions and I’m still not used to it. Looking at the Ohana ukuleles on eBay, it seems like TK-35G is the only model with this. Very annoying.
Intonation: I’ve got no complaints here. It’s playable all the way up the neck.
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Looks: It’s a pretty sexy ukulele. The mahogany and gloss finish look great. But, like most of the girls I go for, it’s pretty on the outside and a complete mess on the inside. There are splashes of glue all over the place and some splintering around the joints. It is the sort of slapdash stuff you’d expect from a Chinese made instrument, but it doesn’t worry me unduly.
Overall: I’m very pleased with it. It is my first choice fingerpicking uke. It was less than £150 for a solid tenor ukulele and a very sturdy case – I’m a happy bunny.
Ukulele Window Shopping
January 16, 2009
I hope you all got a ukulele for Christmas. I bought myself an Ohana TK-35G (full review coming up). And it’s lucky I bought my own present as my brother bought me a Mahalo Flying-V. Bless him, but it’s the worst ukulele I’ve ever laid hands on. So right now I’m purely window shopping. Here’s a few ukes that caught my eye.
Ohana have brought out a plastic backed ukulele which MGM describes as sounding like a, “Fluke on steroids.”
Another gorgeous vintage uke laying in the ‘Hula’ category currently massively undervalued.
What the jumping-Jehoshaphats is this thing? Quite possibly the weirdest ukulele I’ve ever seen. And what’s going on with the frets?
It’s not often you see a Tahitian ukulele on eBay, but right now there’s a Cook Island ukulele listed.
“Alright mate, do you fancy buying one of those stickers from a Swagerty ukulele?” “Cool, yeah!” “Great. That’ll be $150.” “Fu…”
