The Kiwaya KTS-5 arrived!

rmcnelly

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I had been looking for a KTS-4 after hearing the folks speak so highly of it on the Martin forum, but found a used KTS-5 for a fair price and it came in yesterday. The previous owner had it strung up as a low G (Aquilas I think), and I immediately replaced the strings with some Worth CL's. I have Worth CM's on a Royal Aloha and that uke just rings!

The KTS-5 is super light, and is so smoothly finished the wood doesn't seem real. But it is very light solid mahogany. The frets and neck are so smooth and the action is lower than any other uke I have, which combined with the Worth CL's results in very little finger pressure needed to fret the strings (hope I described that right). The friction tuners are also super smooth, I wish I could purchase these somewhere and put them on the rest of my ukes.

I almost didn't buy the uke, having just bought the KoAloha Concert and I already had a mahogany soprano in the Royal Aloha (an older Japanese made uke) which is a super player and surprisingly lightweight. But I have no regrets as the KTS-5 is wonderful, very loud and resonant with a sweet tone that is so nice even when played very softly.

The Kiwaya KTS-5 is a keeper!

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..The friction tuners are also super smooth, I wish I could purchase these somewhere and put them on the rest of my ukes.

rmcnelly,

Great looking uke. Where did you find it?

The tuners look like Grover 4W tuners (or very similar to them). The letter "W" refers to the white buttons/knobs. Grover 4B tuners would be the same thing in black buttons. The 4B tuners can be purchased for about $12 a set from Flea Market Music. Other places have the 4W tuners, but the price varies.
 
Wonderful sounding ukes!
Just know you will love it.....and the more you play it the nicer it sounds!
 
Thanks guys. I'm not able to do recordings at the moment but I know there are some KTS-4 videos on YouTube which should give an idea of how it sounds.
 
Well, here is a sample of the KTS-5. Pardon my playing but I was very nervous having never recorded myself before and I was very frustrated by the webcam in my laptop. The audio on all recordings but this one seems to cut in and out and I don't know why. YouTube's conversion of the upload really killed the audio quality as the original did convey the sweet overtones this uke has.

 
Sounds good. I'm not sure what causes it to cut in and out. Perhaps its over working your processor? Recording in a smaller video size may help that some, if that is what it is. Getting good recordings on video is almost as hard as playing sometimes, but it gets easier after that first one.

Thanks for posting it.
 
Sounds good. I'm not sure what causes it to cut in and out. Perhaps its over working your processor? Recording in a smaller video size may help that some, if that is what it is. Getting good recordings on video is almost as hard as playing sometimes, but it gets easier after that first one.

Thanks for posting it.

My widget that shows processor activity indicates the laptop (it has pretty good specs and was considered a "gamer's laptop") is not loaded down at all but I tried lower resolutions and lower quality audio settings and it still does it. I've posted a new thread in the video section asking for suggested recording settings, but I think the cutting out problem is due to the built in microphone.
 
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