Time for a REAL Ukulele

Hello everyone!

It's time for a new higher quality Ukulele!

I've been playing for nearly three years now and I think it's time I bought a new uke. I currently own a Bushman "Engleman" series sprucetop concert uke, and am satisfied with its performance yet I'm limited in terms of shredding up solos on the higher end of the fret board. I want to move up in size to a tenor with pickups so that I can keep up with my buddies in terms of volume, and I plan on buying in the price range of $300 to $500 dollars. Although I know what I want I'm still abit lost. I have absolutely no clue as to what brand of ukulele to buy, and I have to buy off of the internet. The local selection is garbage, due to the fact that I live 10miles south of Forest Gump "Mobile Alabama". Can anyone point me towards some reliable ukulele brands or webpages?

Thank you so much for the support!

I just bought a Pono tenor uke from musicguymic on ebay and it is great! its the deluxe solid mahogany with ebony fingerboard, bridge and binding. It also has an undersaddle pickup installed, but more on that later.

Ive been working on a little review of it, that i STILL havent finished cause I spend more time playing it than reviewing it haha. Its a great uke, all solid woods and has grover tuners, definitely top notch and it was something like 450 shipped from musicguymic. It included an extremely nice hard shell case as well.

The pono's are probably the upper echelon of "budget" ukes, in that the are made in Java, not in hawaii, and the craftsmanship is about 99 percent. My uke has two small spots on the back near the binding where the finish wasnt sanded entirely smooth, keep in mind these spots are only half the size of # 2 pencil eraser, very small, almost not even there...you get the point.

All in all, amazing ukes for the money, Id say you'd be hard pressed to find a better value. They also make a regular version tenor, with pickup and without the binding, for i think about 50-60 dollars cheaper, and im sure it sounds just as sweet.

http://cgi.ebay.com/PONO-TENOR-Soli...16224QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

there the one I bought, you can check out the rest of his selection too.

good luck finding the perfect uke for you!

Yep....Pono is what I would go for in that range. I also recommend musicguymic on ebay.

yup one more vote for pono! I got a cedar top, mahog. sides tenor, PTC and it's awesome. Great volume and looks good too! A lot of fun to play

Good luck on your search!

Pono cedar top--YES, YES, YES!!!!

After playing an old Silvertone with a plastic fingerboard for 15 years, I got me a Kala Archtop Tenor from MGM. $250 and worth twice the price. I play it electric with blues guitar players all the time with great results. Click on my sig to hear it.

Those Pono cut aways do like nice tho'. Call MGM and see what he says.

MGM has a couple Pono tenors with spruce tops listed now on ebay -- sounds like a match made in heaven for this one -- one little concern though, on the listing description he mentions that there is a pickup installed, but the model ## does not indicate it -- it would be worth a phone call to verify, and he's a great guy to deal with -- he'll get it to you faster than you would expect.


have fun!

on the ukuleleunderground home page at the top there is the "Links" section. there you will find the homepage for many good brands.