Ashbury / vintage Tenors

Hi, As I cant seem to find any reviews of Ashbury or Vintage Tenors , does anyone out there have any experience of either ,good or bad. Unfortunately here in the UK we are not spoilt for choice and where I live these plus Kala sometimes, are the ones mostly offered to me.
Thanks

When me and my wife wanted to buy a half decent ukulele we had the same problem,not much choice.
We ended up finding a Ashbury Concert so we bought it for my wife, she really likes it, so do I. As for the sound, I find it really quite nice for the price we paid.. just over a £100, and when hung up together it's quite hard to distinguish from my Lankai C-CK which was twice the price. If you get a good one I'm sure you'll be quite happy with it.

As far as I am aware, Ashbury is the Hobgoblin house brand... They buy stuff from the same Chinese, Korean and/or Romanian factories as many other well known brands (ozark etc etc etc).

Quality is generally ok. As Leroy said, if you get a good one they're pretty fine.

I am also in Hertfordshire (near Hitchin). If you can handle a drive up the M1, there's a Hobgoblin shop in Newport Pagnell that I visit quite regularly. You can try them for yourself in that shop.

Thanks for the replies.
Buddhuu,I will go up to N.P , I have phoned them and they did seem to have Ashbury mostly.There's also a shop in Harlow( Tones) that sells Ashbury but again a very limited choice, when I went in there, they just had a Baritone maybe a Concert but no Tenors. It's nice to be able to compare sounds yourself. I used to play accoustic guitar reasonably well and spent quite a while in shops in central Londons Shaftsbury Ave (almost all gone now) comparing different makes but when I finally picked up the one I bought I knew straight away that it was what I wanted. Somehow I think this is going to be different with the Uke. Most shops I have phoned have the same reply "I can get you one" even though their web site is full of them.

BuddhUU,
There is another shop, in Ware High St, called Playsomething.They stock Antonio Cavalho and Kala and they reckon they are getting some more in shorlty, they have got a Kala Archtop Tenor but I dont want an Amplifier.

Yeh, the archtops are, I believe, laminate topped and a little on the quiet side.

Kala do a line of solid mahogany ukes. They also do ukes with solid spruce tops. I play one of their mahogany tenors, and the spruce topped models are very popular ad get good reviews.

The Ashbury's are imported by Gremlin, I believe. There are a number of outlets selling the brand, but Hobgoblin seems to be the largest. They carry that brand across most of their instrument ranges. You'll see it on ukuleles, mandolins, guitars etc etc etc. They also do a rock-bottom range called Blue Moon, but that stuff is really not too great.

buddhuu said:

Yeh, the archtops are, I believe, laminate topped and a little on the quiet side.

Kala do a line of solid mahogany ukes. They also do ukes with solid spruce tops. I play one of their mahogany tenors, and the spruce topped models are very popular ad get good reviews.

The Ashbury's are imported by Gremlin, I believe. There are a number of outlets selling the brand, but Hobgoblin seems to be the largest. They carry that brand across most of their instrument ranges. You'll see it on ukuleles, mandolins, guitars etc etc etc. They also do a rock-bottom range called Blue Moon, but that stuff is really not too great.

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I thought that the Ashbury baritone seemed quite nicely put together, what would be good would be trying the Kala Spruce top and the Mahogany together.I dont really want laminated if I can help it, as I remember how good my solid wood guitar sounded against the laminates at the time.The shop told me that the Archtop was solid but Ken Myddleton says laminate in his review as you do. I guess the shops dont always know.