I've got a tenor from the same seller.
not bad for the price... but definitely looks better on the interweb than in person... and truth be told, it also looks pretty decent from a few feet away, but close inspection reveals problems... at least with mine.
first off, all that gorgeous inlay (and it is pretty nice looking) is pretty hastily done... on my rosewood fret board, they over-carved and filled in the gaps with matching putty or something. again, looks fine from a far. the fancy MOP purfing on mine is laid in pretty rough and the small gaps were left to be filled in with whatever they used for finish... which is sprayed on pretty thick. I'm guessing it some gloss polyurethane. As i mentioned, the finish is pretty thick, i'm guessing to cover up gaps and smooth out the rough wood. the body on mine is solid Koa (probably sourced in Asia) as listed, but I would say that there was little to no attempts made to sand/plane it smooth.... even with the previously mentioned thick finish coat the wood is visibly wavy... but thankfully not because its warped.
they used a stain on the Mahogany neck and it is really dark... and they may have just quickly masked and sprayed it 'cause the mask job is not so great, the bad masking got stain on the koa wood part where the neck joins the body... most noticeable on the side of the body with the cutaway at the transition. the dark stain shows little of the woods characteristics... which must be unremarkable.
near some of the structural areas of the body, like on the back near the neck, I can see the small holes filled with metal... I assume that these are nails... they must be pin nailing some areas to hold the uke together while the glue dries rather than clamping. not sure how that might affect sound, but visually it adds to the sense that these ukes are made very quickly.
there are some finish issues too. and the slots for the slotted head stock is completely unfinished... like they cut the slots after the final gloss finish was sprayed.
Overall, visually it makes for a great uke for display on a high-not-so-accessible shelf.
most of the issues I've mentioned till now are largely cosmetic...
I guess it wouldn't be too bad if it the uke sounded decent...
and for the most part it does... NOW ... AFTER I've put some work setting it up.
The "master luthier" (as the listing states) that made mine must have been having an off day. the intonation is not perfect, but it's not bad, well within the range I've seen with lower priced instrument grade mass produced ukes. Frets needed a little filing down to make even. I had to file a new nut because it was too low and there was a lot of buzzing... well, to be fair it didn't buzz until I filled down the saddle to lower the too high action down the fretboard. the new nut fixed another problem, the string spacing wasn't even at the nut... I didn't have spacing rule so i did it by eye and it still ended up better than the original set up. Oooo, almost forgot to mention that the saddle was/is not parallel, that is, it is deeper on one side than the other... the whole bridge is hand carved out of Koa and I think they carved out the saddle channel real quick, and jam in the saddle and mark the line to file down to... the channel depth was uneven, so the saddle is thicker on one side than the other... I guess I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't take it out to file down. I am probably going to eventually make a jig and router out the channel to straighten the depth... which means I'll have to file a new saddle, which is good because the original saddle is also skinnier than the channel it sits in so it laid in there at an angle held in by the strings. at the moment I cut a little strip of card stock to fill the gap and now the saddle is straight in there.
all that said, sound-wise it's not bad... it has a fairly sweet tone. pretty solid-Koa like... which it is, so I suppose I shouldn't be as surprised as I am. It's not as loud as I expect and maybe not as full as I would expect either... part of that might be because it is a cutaway.
If you don't put in the effort to get it set up better, it may only be useful as wall art, but after the work I put into it, not only does it look really nice when not scrutinized, it is a pretty nice sounding uke too. They are pretty cheap so I think it is worth the money. and as mentioned in another post, the case that comes with it makes it an even better value. Actually the case is really nice. mine has a faux animal skin texture outside, nice faux fur inside and good padding... and good solid latches and a good seal that holds humidity pretty well according to my hygrometer. The case is arguably better than the uke! similar quality aftermarket cases are pretty pricey.
