Travel ukulele recommendations

Any recommendations for a good travel ukulele? One that would be fine sitting in a hot car in the summer or cold car in the winter?

There was a fairly long thread on this recently you may want to look up.

For the weather extremes I'd say check out Outdoor Ukulele. That's probably the best bet for your needs.

I have one of the very cheap sopranos bought direct from China on AliExpress. The body is made from a HPL type substance (Like Formica). Mine is well made, cheap, very tough, cheap, good looking, cheap, and sounds quite decent. All I had to do was drop the action at little at the nut to make it a good player.

I am still using the original strings, which look like Aquila Nylguts, but might not be. Mine is branded Burks, but there are others, with varied and interesting interesting names. I have had two others - one I broke up (with difficulty) to cannibalise the neck, the other I gave to a friend of my son.

John Colter.

But is it cheap?

Less than £30 delivered, IIRC. Man, that's cheap! Of the three, two sounded tolerably decent, and the Burks is a bit better. There was nothing to chose between them in appearance or build quality. All three really looked like nicely chosen wood - or a photograph thereof.

Previously, for several years, I kept a Yellow Mahalo in the car. On a couple of occasions the temperatures were so high (yes, in England) that the strings were destroyed, but the uke itself is shrugged off such harsh treatment.

Cheap is the way to go for me.

John Colter.

How much do you want to spend?

Even the plastic & carbon fiber ones can have problems in temperature extremes. -50° F or 120° F (Easily reached in an ungaraged closed car.)

Wdh777 said:

Any recommendations for a good travel ukulele? One that would be fine sitting in a hot car in the summer or cold car in the winter?

Click to expand...

Like JC above I have a painted Mahalo for outdoor use. It cost me next to nothing to buy second hand but to get it to play and sound tolerably like a musical instrument has been a long and time consuming journey. For me that journey was interesting (I learnt some stuff along the way) but the end point confirms that ‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ ..... but in this case you can still make something useful . Besides purchase price my Mahalo’s biggest virtue is toughness - one benefit from being overbuilt - I think that it would take effort rather than an accident to break it. It’s also quite compact as the body is neither wide or deep and the intonation - on mine anyway - is good. I’m not recommending a painted Mahalo to you but believe that one could do what you ask (provided a bit of corrective work is done on it first).

It’s interesting to hear about trouble with strings in high temperatures, something to investigate further. I’ve also heard of glue softening too.

If I lived in the States and wanted something really tough then top of my list would be a basic Soprano Outdoor Uke (about $120) as made in Bend, Oregon. If something less robust was acceptable then nearly any basic laminate Soprano would do - just replace it if and when it fails - and would be noticeably cheaper. I have no personal experience of the hpl route that JC speaks of but suggest you investigate that too; IIRC Enya make a standard shape Soprano that’s considered OK, I’m not sure about the Pineapple and suggest avoiding the fully round ‘camp’ style (unless its looks are particularly important to you).

Edit. I see Sven’s comment below on the Dolphin and definitely agree with him. My own is loaned out and the person with it is pleased, after a bit of work they’re reasonable sounding and they’re pretty rugged too.

You can't go wrong with a Makala Dolphin/Shark.
Its is reasonably affordable, the composite construction of back and sides make it very sturdy and loud enough to play outside.
I chose a white one, so it is easy to locate when the light is getting dimmer.

Good luck with your travels!

There's lots of room for various answers when asking about a travel uke. Does size matter? How about the cost? What conditions? The Klos is a tough uke, but it's around $500. Look at the Vorson AUG24 ABS, on one of the recommended lists - https://www.amazon.com/Vorson-AUG24-Concert-Ukulele-Orange/dp/B015RCYZ6K

For heat and cold resistance, non-wood construction would be best, but I wonder how much difference it would actually making leaving a cheap wooden uke in a hot car.

https://www.musicindustryhowto.com/7-best-travel-ukulele-on-sale-for-backpackers/
https://musicalpros.com/best-travel-ukulele/
https://soundchime.com/instruments/ukulele/best-travel-ukulele/
https://brokeandtalented.com/top-7-travel-ukuleles-updated-2019/

My Martin OXK has been on road trips with me in typical year round Northern New England weather. (90 degrees F in the Summer to -40 degrees in the Winter with humidity ranging from 80% to 20%)

I have an Alic soprano which I keep in the car. It's construction is similar to a Flea but it's much cheaper. They're sold by Risa in Germany. Current price is 55 Euros. I found it good value for money. Sounds very good considering it's relatively low price.