Hello everyone and happy belated Thanksgiving to those of you in the USA.
I started playing uke this past summer and have been using an Eleuke. I really like the quietness of the electric so that I can practice without disturbing others around me, but my particular uke is . . . not the highest quality. Two music repairs techs told me that the bridge appears to have been installed slightly too close to the neck so if you tuned an open string, then that same string at the 12th fret was like 20 cents sharp. A setup from one of the shops made it playable, but it still has some issues so I've been considering purchasing a slightly better acoustic concert sized uke.
Being in Alberta, Canada, the dollar exchange, shipping and duties add a lot to the purchase from the American sites that are usually recommended here, so I've been considering purchasing from a local store. We have the general big box instrument stores but I don't particularly trust their setups. Then there are two stores in town that specialize in stringed instruments. One leans a little more towards guitar/bass, and there other towards orchestral strings but they both carry ukuleles. I also read a thread on here recently where one of these two stores got very high praise from UU members.
One store carries Kala, Ohana and Twisted Wood and the other carries Kala, Twisted Wood and apparently Martins and Collings, though I don't see any in their current stock and I believe those would be way above my price range.
I see lots and lots of recommendations for Kala for starter ukes on this site, as well as Ohana but my local stores carry a larger selection of the Twisted Wood (Alberta company, etc.) and the prices of the TWs and the Kalas are basically the same.
I tried looking up Twisted Wood on this site and found a couple of threads but they're 18 months to 3 years old. Nothing recent so I was wondering if anyone on here had any more recent experience with these instruments? One of the threads from about 2 years ago is about a "horrible" purchasing experience from Twisted Wood directly, but I'm looking at purchasing though a local, trusted store, not direct from the company. Discussion about the instruments themselves seem positive.
I don't have a very large budget if I go ahead with this. It would only be around $200 CDN, maybe $300 if I really had to push.
Also, one of the stores had a November sale where if you buy an instrument that's over $100, they'll give you 4 free lessons, which is a $96 value.
So yeah. . . Anyone with any more recent experience with TW ukes?
I started playing uke this past summer and have been using an Eleuke. I really like the quietness of the electric so that I can practice without disturbing others around me, but my particular uke is . . . not the highest quality. Two music repairs techs told me that the bridge appears to have been installed slightly too close to the neck so if you tuned an open string, then that same string at the 12th fret was like 20 cents sharp. A setup from one of the shops made it playable, but it still has some issues so I've been considering purchasing a slightly better acoustic concert sized uke.
Being in Alberta, Canada, the dollar exchange, shipping and duties add a lot to the purchase from the American sites that are usually recommended here, so I've been considering purchasing from a local store. We have the general big box instrument stores but I don't particularly trust their setups. Then there are two stores in town that specialize in stringed instruments. One leans a little more towards guitar/bass, and there other towards orchestral strings but they both carry ukuleles. I also read a thread on here recently where one of these two stores got very high praise from UU members.
One store carries Kala, Ohana and Twisted Wood and the other carries Kala, Twisted Wood and apparently Martins and Collings, though I don't see any in their current stock and I believe those would be way above my price range.
I see lots and lots of recommendations for Kala for starter ukes on this site, as well as Ohana but my local stores carry a larger selection of the Twisted Wood (Alberta company, etc.) and the prices of the TWs and the Kalas are basically the same.
I tried looking up Twisted Wood on this site and found a couple of threads but they're 18 months to 3 years old. Nothing recent so I was wondering if anyone on here had any more recent experience with these instruments? One of the threads from about 2 years ago is about a "horrible" purchasing experience from Twisted Wood directly, but I'm looking at purchasing though a local, trusted store, not direct from the company. Discussion about the instruments themselves seem positive.
I don't have a very large budget if I go ahead with this. It would only be around $200 CDN, maybe $300 if I really had to push.
Also, one of the stores had a November sale where if you buy an instrument that's over $100, they'll give you 4 free lessons, which is a $96 value.
So yeah. . . Anyone with any more recent experience with TW ukes?