For crying out loud...it's a ukelele. It is a cheap and fun entry into the musical magical adventure ..come on stop dissing the cheap end of the market because that is what most starters will buy...and most will just strum the darn things and then WHEN and IF they want to carry on to other methods of play they will buy a better one .....all this BS about setups and intonation ....get off it .....BN I am not having a pop at you,per se ...
but there is so much nonsense spouted on this forum sometimes ..... setting up ukuleles pthh..!! what is to adjust ...if the nut slots are too shallow or deep and so much so that even a basic C chord is unplayable then that's a manufacturing problem and you want your money back,
There is nothing else to adjust ,maybe shim the saddle ...like your average beginner is even going to know how to do that anyway....as long as it says GCEA on the tuner then that is what they need to get started.
Now on an an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar..yes they have adjustable and floating bridges , they have a longer scale and intonation over that scale is a problem if not set up right ...on a ukulele that is being played in a strum and sing group it isn't going to be a problem. By the time it might become a problem then the player will have wanted to move onto a better uke anyway .
All this does is makes people afraid to buy .
Yes, it's a ukulele, not the Holy Grail.
Last time I checked the NAMM annual report, the worldwide annual sale of ukuleles was somewhere around 2 milion units. The price range per unit ranges from next-to-nothing to sky's-the-limit.
On this forum the dialogue about various ukulele brands/models covers the entire price gamut, with good and not-so-good comments occurring. Lately, the number of Waterman and comparable posts have been fairly high, indicating the <US$50 market is alive and well.
I agree that the "setup" topic gets a lot of bytes, and I'm guilty of over-commenting about setups as anyone. Simple adjustments of a uke (the nut and saddle specifically) are not hard or mysterious. The fact that some stores do them and others don't is just a fact of business - not much different than the auto dealership which pre-sets the radio channels or fills the fuel tank prior to customer drive-away. Even then, the customer will still change settings (e.g., uke action) to personal comfort levels which will be different than factory/store settings.
The pricetag of the instrument does not matter, as folk will spend what they want when they want to do so. The uke is not a life-necessity. How much of one's expendable (e.g., entertainment) budget one wants to commit will probably be based on the fun factor, and whether the expenditure is for one (or a few) high-ticket ukes or one (or many) lower-ticket ukes doesn't matter. It's still a fun thing!
When it all stops being a fun thing and switches to an ego trip or a profession, then the factors change from fun to either image or business. Ego and image (look at me and what I have!) speak for themselves; profession and business (it's a tool, and I need reliable and durable tools) are no different.
As a rank amateur (and happy to be one), when it stops being fun, then off I go to something else. Six-string guitar stopped being fun when the left hand couldn't handle the fret span anymore, and that led to the four-string-based instrument world. Yes, it's a ukulele.....