Heh, heh. If you look through threads from a couple of years ago you'll see where I hesitantly ordered my first Mainland, quite skeptical of all the "evangelism" around here (I already had a KoAloha, BTW). I think I posted something like, "you guys better not be pulling my leg."
Well, since then I've purchased three tenors, a concert, a baritone, and two sopranos. I've purchased some of them from Mike directly and some used. One of the tenors I couldn't connect with (the rosewood & red cedar). There was nothing wrong with it but it sounded a little "guitarish" to me no matter how I strung it; I think I'm just not a cedar uke kinda guy. I gave this one to my oldest daughter's husband and he loves it.
All of them have been very good to superb. The intonation at the first fret has always been within a gnat's whisker of perfect - though I'm a perfectionist so on a couple of the ukes I've taken a stroke or two with a nut file not to correct intonation so much as to lower the nut-end action even more for the Bb chord. Action up the neck has been good on all of them, especially those I ordered directly from Mike because he knows I like the action a little lower than most people do. Intonation up the neck has been good to very good - though this is somewhat string dependent no matter what uke you buy and some strings will give better results than others. Part of the "fun" of being a tone snob is finding the perfect strings
The two sopranos (one mango, one mahogany) I really have to crow about at the risk of sounding like a giddy fan boi. The mango was absolutely amazing right out of the box and improved noticeably and quickly as I played it (this isn't always the case, most of my ukes, even the solids including the other Mainlands, haven't shown a lot of tendency to noticeably open up much). The mahogany, when I picked it up during UWC, was good, intonation was fine, volume was decent but it was just an okay uke. Not something to complain about by any means, but not something to make me giddy like the mango. Then, I got it home and started playing it and it
OPENED UP. I've only had one other instrument that changed so stunningly over the first few weeks or months and that was a Seagull cedar top guitar. The mango and the mahogany have about the same amount of play time on them now, and identical strings (fluorocarbon fishing leaders in the same gages as a Worth "CH" set), and the mahogany is louder and more commanding than the mango - yeah, the mango that had me tripping over my tongue from the moment I opened the box.
With the heavy strings both of these ukes are within whispering distance of my KoAloha longneck (with medium strings, it didn't like heavy strings at all) even given its longer vibrating length and slightly larger body. More imporantly, they actually have better, more chimey, pinched harmonics and clearer ringing notes far up the fretboard! Are these two Mainlands "the pick of their litter" - maybe, I have know way of knowing - but even before they opened up they were all the ukulele most players would ever "need." (Want can be a 'whole nudder thing for some.
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