Unboxing and Review: Ken Potts Tenor Uke

Thanks for the updated video. It sounds and looks great! Very nice playing of Blue Roses Falling, and a very useful review too.

Here is Ken's website:

http://www.kpukuleles.com

Very nice uke, totally jealous. And it sounds just like you suggested, loud and warm.

Ken makes nice 'ukuleles,no doubt about it. I met Ken a few years back and he took my wife and I out with his canoe team and then we had a kanikapila. Very nice quality 'ukuleles. Congratulations!

Had a small issue with one of the Sperzel tuners this week. As best I can tell normal tension from the strings pushed the fluted plastic sleeve that covers the winding post over and jammed it into the wood with enough force that it got stuck and I couldn't push it back myself no matter what I tried. Called Ken and he told me to send it back to him and he would fix it and send it back (at his cost both ways). To be frank he didn't seem to want to believe me that I couldn't just stick something small and pointy in the winding hole and nudge the sleeve over no matter how many times I explained to him that it wouldn't move even when I tried doing that and so he kind of treated me as if I was making a big deal out of nothing which was annoying. Then again, I tend to be the same way when trying to explain something which I think is very simple to someone who doesn't seem to get it, so it is really hard for me to fault him too much for that.

I dropped it off at my local luthier rather than burn the money and uke-less time to ship it back to Maui and back. They were able to dissasemble the peg, unstick the sleeve, and put it together. Ken told me to send him the bill but it was a small enough charge that I'm not going to worry about it. He actually put a new tuner in the mail to me yesterday before it was known that the local guy could fix it cheaply.

Again, I believe this is an isolated issue with the one Sperzel tuner unit, not with Ken. I do appreciate that Ken was willing to stand behind his work and make sure it was repaired properly. I'm back to happily strumming now.

A quick update: The tuning peg continued to be an issue but it only cropped up when I changed strings so I just dealt with it. I play this uke every day and it is outstanding.

I had a trip to Maui planned for May so I contacted him a few months ahead of time to ask if he would swap out the tuners (as posted above, he had offered to replace them) while I was in town. He agreed and told me to select a finish on some Schertler tuners from Stewmac, which he offered to pay for but I did not think that was fair so I bought them and had them shipped to him ahead of my trip.

When I went to give him the uke it was quickly discovered that my headstock was not quite thick enough for the tuners he had chosen. He tried for a couple days to make it work but decided to make me a new neck to fit the tuners. That seems like a pretty insane length to go to me for a simple warranty repair! Oh and this also meant that he had to re-do the bridge apparently because the strings were not "paralleling the neck properly". He did not ask for any money to cover the additional work.

So the repairs were unfortunately not able to be done before the end of my trip as planned, but my uke will get to my house tomorrow about three weeks after I got home. I can't wait to play it.

Ken is a great builder who makes quality instruments for much less than equivalent models from the big K brands, and I can attest that he stands behind his work like no other. http://www.kpukuleles.com/.