Gillian
Well-known member
The different sound, loudness, resonance, lightness, playability, crisp notes, spot-on intonation past the 12th fret…so many reasons why I love the BTU.
However, the main reason I bought the BTU is because my really nice wood ukes were getting beat up at our uke meetings! I almost had a uke-on-uke crash with a fellow member which would have done considerable damage to both our ukes. We have a small performing space with microphone, instrument and amp cables everywhere. Even though we tape down the cables, it is still like walking into a snake pit. I have the BTU model with the RMC pickups which uses an 8-pin jack and cable, rather than the usual jack and plug-in cable. A member tripped on the cable and one side of the jack was pulled out. If that happened to a wood uke, the wood would have split.
Fortunately, I live a little over an hour's drive to the Blackbird factory in San Francisco. The technicians examined it, said it was nothing serious and fixed it in 10 minutes while I waited. Fantastic service!
My hubby bought gold Gotoh tuners for my birthday. Noticing the screws that came with the tuners were different than the ones in the BTU, I decided to let the carbon fibre professionals at Blackbird change the tuners for me and I’m glad I did. Wood screws are not used with carbon fibre.
I was prepared to leave the uke there but, again, they installed the new tuners while I waited, even though they were really busy. (Thank you Paul and Paul!) The gold tuners look ever so nice with the gold RMC pick-ups and Fremont Soloist gold low-G. I played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (Brittni Paiva's version) and Paul (the supervisor) was grateful I didn’t play “Blackbird”!
Here are some pix of my Blackbird’s bling. (I don't know why the images are rotated.)
However, the main reason I bought the BTU is because my really nice wood ukes were getting beat up at our uke meetings! I almost had a uke-on-uke crash with a fellow member which would have done considerable damage to both our ukes. We have a small performing space with microphone, instrument and amp cables everywhere. Even though we tape down the cables, it is still like walking into a snake pit. I have the BTU model with the RMC pickups which uses an 8-pin jack and cable, rather than the usual jack and plug-in cable. A member tripped on the cable and one side of the jack was pulled out. If that happened to a wood uke, the wood would have split.
Fortunately, I live a little over an hour's drive to the Blackbird factory in San Francisco. The technicians examined it, said it was nothing serious and fixed it in 10 minutes while I waited. Fantastic service!
My hubby bought gold Gotoh tuners for my birthday. Noticing the screws that came with the tuners were different than the ones in the BTU, I decided to let the carbon fibre professionals at Blackbird change the tuners for me and I’m glad I did. Wood screws are not used with carbon fibre.
I was prepared to leave the uke there but, again, they installed the new tuners while I waited, even though they were really busy. (Thank you Paul and Paul!) The gold tuners look ever so nice with the gold RMC pick-ups and Fremont Soloist gold low-G. I played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (Brittni Paiva's version) and Paul (the supervisor) was grateful I didn’t play “Blackbird”!
Here are some pix of my Blackbird’s bling. (I don't know why the images are rotated.)