I realise I'm probably leaving myself open to friendly ridicule until I can get around to justifying my purchases. Suffice it to say, I saw the Luna in Sam Ash for $ 89 and beat the salesman around the head with Guitar Center until he agreed to let me have it for $ 69 with a gig bag.
I can justify this purchase easily by referring you to my avatar
In terms of Tenors, I tried/looked at:
Lanikai
Luna
Cordoba
Mainland
Some others
I bought the Fender because of a combination of the following:
Gibson don't make Ukuleles
The intonation is BANG on
It looks utterly gorgeous
As a guitarist, and a Les Paul Custom user for many years, the bound fingerboard makes me happy
It sounds nice to my n00b ears
It plays nicely, and the neck profile and fingerboard radius (what there is) feels very comfortable
It looks utterly gorgeous
As awesome as they undoubtedly are, I'm afraid I just couldn't live with the Mainland rope binding.
Neck and frets are great, I'm confident I can drop the action quite a way.
It looks utterly gorgeous
On every other Tenor I tried, the intonation was significantly "out". I'm sorry, but if the manufacturers of these instruments can't be bothered to address something as important as this, they don't deserve my money. If Fender can fit a compensating bridge, the others should, too.
Oh yeah, I bought a Snark SN8 as well.
And a Baseball glove.
And the wife spent north of $ 500 on Pandora jewellery, so she can't complain about my Ukes. (Damn, shoulda bought a Pono!)
