Recstar24
Well-known member
http://myamoeukuleles.com/uketracker.php?trackingNumber=1818
Feel free to take a listen and a look, the recording was made through the ipad so nothing fancy. Below are some quick thoughts that have popped up in the first day of ownership, with the hopes of a more full comparative review with my other ukes.
Build Quality: The uke is designed and built as flawlessly as you can expect from a hand-made instrument. It is built super light, with excellent quality woods. The redwood top has tons of silking with very tight straight grain. It has some color streaking which is normal for old growth wood. The binding looks great with very clean purfling lines, and the binding and purfling work all the way up the fretboard and the headstock is all very clean. All the joinery is excellent. For the anal-retentive types, I just don't see anything here that can be critiqued for a hand-made custom instrument, and is consistent (if not even slightly better in some aspects) with my other customs.
Playability: This area is where the uke truly shines. The fretboard feels fantastic - I notice that they bevel the edge of the fretboard binding towards the end of the fret, which gives it a little relief and feels super smooth on the fingers. You just don't get any rough edge whatsoever. The neck is really nicely shaped - I would call it a D shape, with the edges sloping down towards a more flat neck bottom, which feels great. It reminds me of a traditional guitar-style neck shape but sized appropriately for an uke, that I would define as "medium-thin" if that makes sense. The neck slides really fast and for whatever reason, I notice and feel the improvement of the radius fretboard more so than my 1st MM, a myrtle tenor.
I am most impressed with how well this thing intonates - the intonation is about as perfect as you can get for a small fretted instrument equally tempered in my experience. I am really going to start taking my classical playing more seriously with this instrument as it will really highlight the rock solid intonation cross string and up the neck.
Sound: This is my 2nd Mya-Moe and I find it superior acoustically to my first one in almost every aspect. It has more volume, it has more punch, it has longer sustain, and is richer in tone. Basically, it has significantly more of the Mya-Moe goodness. I have been playing low-g exclusively for the past few weeks and this is making me fall in love with high-g again. The tone on my 1st myrtle tenor was excellent but sounded muted in comparison to this redwood walnut tenor. This may have affirmed that I am probably in the camp that prefers a very light top with a denser back and sides, and I am sure what I am hearing is the quality of the redwood top and how its braced, because the thing is amazingly responsive.
Hope that helps anyone considering getting a MM!