veneer over solid wood

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MIM-Kala-So...238?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a15f3d6ee

over something like this...cedar top, mahogany back and sides with koa veneer. how does this effect the sound? will it still sound like a cedar/mahogany uke or more laminated or dampened or what?

I guess it depends...apparently my new Fender is Koa veneer over mahogany, and to my ear it sounds kinds like koa. YMMV, and every laminate is different!

To your ear it sounds like koa, but if you close your eyes it sounds like mahogany.

Sounds like laminate....ply.

If there is a veneer, it ain't solid. ...

...Unless you get that one in a million, it wont sound like anything but what a lam sounds like. May look pretty, but the veneers and core, will still be plywood, so it can not take on the tonal qualities of a true solid tonewood.

In the guitar world, you get run off if you try to pass off any kind of laminate as solid tonewood. The word 'solid' is held up as true, no plywood, solid.

I often see some brands claim "solid 'x' covered with 'pretty' veneer".
Misleading descriptions, trying to justify prices that are in the region of true, honest, genuine all solid instruments.

With a very few exceptions, carbon fiber and properly designed "double tops" (honeycomb core), $$$, no laminated plywood insturment will sound as good as a solid tonewood. Unless the solid is very badly made. There is a reason the boutique and high end luthiers do not use laminates. Threre is a reason we pay top $$$ for genuine solid wood insturments.

Please don't get me wrong, I don't hate laminates, just those who try to 'mislead' us by stealing the 'solid' word and sell us laminated instruments at true solid wood prices. I have a pretty nice all lam guitar that I keep in my work truck for lunch time pickin'. It was snowing today, and I would not put a solid one in that cold-heated-airconditioned, all over the map conditions. Solid wouldn,t survive. I am thinking pretty hard about the Islander MT-4 (lam) to add to my work diversions. ((bought one for my son-in-law for Christmas, sounded pretty good)).

The Uke community seems to be more tolerant of the misleading descriptions. But in the end, none of the "veneered solid" ukuleles are at the top of anyones, money no object, Dream List.

just my $.02

that's what I needed to hear daysailor

cornfedgroove said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MIM-Kala-So...238?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a15f3d6ee

over something like this...cedar top, mahogany back and sides with koa veneer. how does this effect the sound? will it still sound like a cedar/mahogany uke or more laminated or dampened or what?

Click to expand...

The back & sides are laminate, while the top is solid cedar. It sounds like cedar.
I've played this line from Kala and IMO it sounds better than the cedar Mainlands, and more lively you can feel the vibrations down the neck. Also better finished than Mainland. I think they were (still are?) billed as "Limited Edition".

I have owned the tenor and concert from this line and they both sounded excellent. In this price range you will be hard pressed to find a better sounding uke, 100% solid or solid top+laminate back and sides, that will sound and play better.

It's still a budget uke, but it's a pretty damn good one.

It's less about what you've got and more about how you use it.

You'd be better off with a laminate uke built by someone who knows what they're doing than a solid uke by someone who doesn't.

Today, I learned on the internet that my Sailor Brand must suck because it's got solid poplar back/sides with a eucalyptus veneer. Nevermind that the top is solid and the sides matter not one bit, and the back matters more than the sides and less than the top. That's not the point. It just sucks. Yet another case where "All of X must equal Y, and no I've not proved all of X myself, but I'm an expert." - come on!

There's a good reason to do that to the back and sides, and one of those is stability? Nah, I don't need to play a uke during the winter.

You're being sarcastic when you mention your sailor, but I e been wondering about them and their use of laminate.
I'm debating between a sailor, Pono ms and mainland cedar for my first upgrade and just cannot find much info on the sailors.
Can anyone else chime in? Does it seem silly to upgrade to a laminate when there are less expensive and / or same price solid woods available?

I bought my laminate Fender for a number of reasons, one of which was cost. Laminate appeals to me because it will be significantly less of a hassle to care for than my beautiful KoAloha. Would I say that it is as good an instrument as the KoAloha? Of course not, it's a budget laminate. Despite that fact though, it is a fantastic sounding instrument and really opens my eyes to what's available at that price range. The lam does have a touch of that Koa sound, too, which is really nice.

It also opens my eyes to the possibility that those Eco Kiwayas made of thin Koa laminate might be a great buy....

I've said this in other threads, but it's worth saying again: design, build quality, and bracing will have more to do with the sound of a uke than whether the back & sides are solid or laminate. With equivalent build quality, yes, I would definitely give the edge to solid; with that being said, I've played many instruments of all types with laminte back & sides that sounded absolutely wonderful. As the primary vibrating surface, the top is the most important issue for me, and I would not compromise with a laminate top. However, laminate back & sides very often produces a fine instrument.

I think part of the problem here is that very cheap instruments are very often all-laminate, and people have associated laminate with cheap. And high-end instruments are typically all-solid, so people assume all-solid equals good. Solid has definite tonal advantages over laminate, so I won't argue that point. But I will point out that I have played many fine instruments with laminate b&s, and many disappointing instruments with solid b&s.

In the end, trust your ears. If it sounds good, it is good. I have the tenor version of the Kala in question, and I think it sounds great, and is one of the better instruments that I've played in that price range. And since you linked to an ebay auction from Mim, you're absolutely safe; Mim is a very active member of this community and one of the most trusted instrument sellers around.

Plainsong said:

Today, I learned on the internet that my Sailor Brand must suck because it's got solid poplar back/sides with a eucalyptus veneer. Nevermind that the top is solid and the sides matter not one bit, and the back matters more than the sides and less than the top. That's not the point. It just sucks. Yet another case where "All of X must equal Y, and no I've not proved all of X myself, but I'm an expert." - come on!

There's a good reason to do that to the back and sides, and one of those is stability? Nah, I don't need to play a uke during the winter.

Click to expand...

So, on the Sailor brand - laminate vs. veneer, vs. whatever. If you search the forum (I'll try & find the threads later), you'll find at least one thread where several of the more accomplished luthiers in our midst talked about "luthier made laminates" of a veneer over solid wood as the Sailor uke is constructed. The luthiers who make the Sailor (located in the CONUS , well-known & respected in their own right but officially unnamed as they currently are...) in my understanding, do not purchase or create their laminate in bulk like the Chinese factories, but instead manufacture it in house in small production runs. A "typical" laminate uke might be more like a cheap grade of construction plywood w/a thin outward veneer than the solid wood core w/figured wood veneer created by an accomplished luthier. Look at many of the most expensive brands of guitars & you will find plenty of similarly constructed instruments.

Anyway, I'm quite comfortable owning a Sailor along w/my other solid ukes & enjoy its brilliance as well as the obvious skill of the luthiers who built it. But hey, from my signature, its obvious that I'm suffering from a bit of UAS... Mahalo!

Plainsong said:

Today, I learned on the internet that my Sailor Brand must suck because it's got solid poplar back/sides with a eucalyptus veneer. Nevermind that the top is solid and the sides matter not one bit, and the back matters more than the sides and less than the top. That's not the point. It just sucks. Yet another case where "All of X must equal Y, and no I've not proved all of X myself, but I'm an expert." - come on!

There's a good reason to do that to the back and sides, and one of those is stability? Nah, I don't need to play a uke during the winter.

Click to expand...

I agree with you. I was going to chime in with your argument but you beat me to it.

hellotracy said:

You're being sarcastic when you mention your sailor, but I e been wondering about them and their use of laminate.
I'm debating between a sailor, Pono ms and mainland cedar for my first upgrade and just cannot find much info on the sailors.
Can anyone else chime in? Does it seem silly to upgrade to a laminate when there are less expensive and / or same price solid woods available?

Click to expand...

Of those you are listing...Sailor by far. I know the process that a Sailor goes through. IT is made in America. It is made by one of the best luthiers in America. It uses a solid wood base with the veneer over it to cut down production costs. It is hand made. Check out the thread that Nurpin did where he compared his sailor with some other high end ukes. It was very surprising b/c it hung with ukes worth much more.

I'm just wondering why anyone would want to put a veneer over a solid wood body? Isn't that sort of just plain old silly?

Another question I've always had is why would a builder opt for an all-solid wood uke, but with a mahog top and koa back & sides? I see some Meles described that way. I always figured Koa was either the more expensive wood, or more desirable for uke building, so why waste it on the back & sides? I mean, I'd understand of koa were significantly less expensive, but if it's on par wth mahog or more expensive, this doesn't make sense to me. Particularly when it is the top that is the overwhelmingly predominant sound producer?

Just a couple of things that make me wonder a bit

Hardwood over spruce?

To me, the important consideration here is that the top is solid cedar, not laminate. As I have come to understand it, the soundboard quality and the physical size of the chamber generally affect the sound (most importantly, volume and sustain) much more than the quality of the shell material.

For instance, choosing nearly bullet-proof, acoustically-dense, 1/4"-thick, 5-ply Baltic birch plywood for the back and sides rather than thin, vibration-responsive, solid koa might actually have less deadening effect on sound quality than a decision to go with a durable nitrocellulose lacquer on your top instead of a light tung oil finish.

Even so, what's your style of playing? Are you a stage musician? Do you need every bit of volume you can get out of it? If so, a $300 soprano might not even be enough uke for you. But, otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much about the acoustic dampening on this one. Sure, I understand that an instrument is way more enjoyable to play if every note sounds sweet and tickles your brain. But the uke in question is a Kala; I doubt you'll find that they compromised much, if anything, on the sound in the process of making it pleasing to the eye.

Now, that said, one Kala uke that *does* have me scratching my head a little is this current model of Pocket Uke:
http://www.kalaukulele.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=KA-PU-SSFM

The description says "Solid Spruce on Top, Back, and Sides with Flame/Spalted Maple veneer", but the photos clearly show spalted figured maple on the soundboard. Does that mean that they laminated a hardwood veneer onto a spruce top?!? (Or even, as the description literally indicates, that the back and sides are also spruce? Pretty unlikely. Getting solid spruce to curve around the shell would not be an easy task, and there probably wouldn't be any tonal or structural advantage to be gained for the effort.)

I have a Greg Bennett/Samick concert uke (with which I'm actually quite pleased--considering the price I paid) that has a spruce veneer over a mahogany top (that its rosewood and spruce are merely veneers is, of course, mentioned nowhere in the product information, but I confirmed it by examining the instrument prior to purchase--No surprise. . .solid tonewoods would have been far too much to expect at that price).

Now I knew that the spruce on my uke was there just for visual aesthetics (I guess to make it *look* like it's louder than it actually is), but the thought of Kala putting maple over top of an otherwise solid spruce soundboard was a surprise. Wouldn't such lamination rather negate the tonal reasons for having a spruce top in the first place? Hardwood veneer over a mahogany top, I could understand. . .but hardwood over spruce?

What's more, even ignoring the veneer issue, can solid spruce even make that much difference for such a small soundboard? (Pocket Uke is a sopranissimo/sopranino size--soprano's even smaller sibling.) Then again, maybe I have that backwards. Maybe it makes even *more* difference the smaller you go.

Done digressin', back to uke-in'

+1 on design and construction - especially bracing - being biggest factor in how an instrument sounds

Also +1 on prefering solid top over laminated, but not to the point that I'd exclude a lam top from all consideration. In fact, my all laminated Kiwaya longneck soprano doesn't give up as much ground to my KoAloha longneck soprano as you might expect.

Technically, it should be possible to actually build a louder, better sounding uke from the right laminates than can be accomplished with solid wood. Of course, it would actually end up being more expensive than a good solid wood uke and most laminated instruments use the laminated wood so that a very fancy exterior can be achieved while saving money.

BTW, except for the very cheap ukes, most of the laminated woods used in instrument construction are not your typical "paneling grade" plywood. Usually they are one or two plys of a decent but inexpensive tonewood with very thin fancy "appearance" veneers applied to one or both sides. The biggest single problem with laminated ukes is that builders tend to brace them as if solid wood was being used. Laminated woods are much stronger than solid wood of a given thickness, yet most mfrs use laminates as thick as solids and braced as heavily.

So, yeah, a solid top is prefered if you can afford it (and if it's not going to be a "trunk uke"). But, the sides and to a slightly lesser extent the back could probably be made of concrete without having a huge impact on the tone and projection. The real issue is that most laminated ukes are "cheaper" in other ways - not as well designed, not as well constructed, and so on.

Who here remembers musicguymic's A/B comparisons of lam vs. solid ukes? It wasn't that long ago. The listeners picked lam over solid in several of the tests, or at least couldn't name which was which based on listening alone.

Although it makes more difference on larger instruments such as guitars with their larger vibrating surface, it doesn't seem to matter so much on a uke except to the purists among us.

A famous guitar luthier used to line the inner back and sides with a different wood to get his unique sound. Technically they'd be considered laminates, but they are some of the most highly prized instruments out there.

DaveVisi said:

Who here remembers musicguymic's A/B comparisons of lam vs. solid ukes? It wasn't that long ago. The listeners picked lam over solid in several of the tests, or at least couldn't name which was which based on listening alone.

Click to expand...

I wasn't around when that took place, but I've heard it mentioned several times. I think that only emphasizes the point that recordings (especially low audio quality ones made with a video camera or phone) blur the differences in sound quality between the ukes. Hearing the ukes played in person would remove a major layer of abstraction and actually playing the ukes (blindfolded, of course) would provide the best comparison testing ground.

A famous guitar luthier used to line the inner back and sides with a different wood to get his unique sound. Technically they'd be considered laminates, but they are some of the most highly prized instruments out there.

Click to expand...

There was a discussion recently about custom-made laminate wood. Those are a very different beast to the mass-produced laminates we're discussing here. That said, if someone prefers the sound, look & feel of a laminate uke to a solid wood one, then they should buy the laminate.