My (Wife's) new Kala Lacewood

We got this in one week ago, but I wasn't able to post any pictures of it until tonight. It's a Kala Spruce/Lacewood soprano that we bought from Hawaii Music Supply. It was our first purchase from them, and probably not the last... I'm sure I have contracted UAS already, and they are super kind and super fast (8 days from initial order to arrival in South Korea).

I bought it for my wife, since she expressed an interest in learning to play after watching me learn to play. She absolutely loves it, and can't wait to start her private lessons. Maybe she'll be able to teach me a thing or two soon!

It's beautiful. Glad she's happy and excited to learn.

Lovely! I'm sure you'll both have a great time!

It looks so pretty!! Must resist!!!! :drool:

That's a beautiful uke. Though I don't have one, I really do want one. I'm trying to resist though.

Dan

I had one just like it for some time and I was very pleased with it. I thought she looked like a rock star and I called her Blondie.

Simply gorgeous! :shaka:

I've played this uke. At it's current price at HMS, it's a "steal"....IMHO! One of those Kala ukes some folks say "sounds as good as........."

I have the concert version of this. I wrote a review of it on theukulelesite.com. It's out of stock now and my review is unavailable, so I'll post it below.

I bought this case for it: http://amzn.com/B005EZU2Z4

The case and ukulele go well together, although neither is really my style. It is a nice instrument with a nice sound, though.

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This was my first all-solid uke. I'm no expert on comparing different woods and the sound they produce, but having purchased eight (mostly pretty cheap) ukuleles, I do appreciate the sound that comes out of this one.

The look is interesting. I wouldn't call it beautiful on the whole. It's more like a bunch of very nice details ("fancy" fret markers, the red/pink stripe on the bindings, and the really nice look of the lacewood grain). But those things mixed up in one instrument with a black Kala logo on the headstock, black tuners, and the almost-boring-white top don't seem to quite come together.

It does sound very nice, and I'm certainly one who values function over form. The blowout price made it a great value for me.

The one thing I don't like is that the outer strings are extremely close to the tapered ends of the frets, so it's easy to fret the string, especially the first string, right off the edge. I measured, and on the first string there's less than two millimeters till the taper. On my Kala KA-GATU-C (slim "travel" uke) it's somewhere around 2.5 millimeters, and my Cordoba 25CK is over 3 millimeters. I may be fairly new to ukuleles and I know Kala has a good reputation, so maybe I just need to learn to play better. But I thought I should mention it just in case.

[update] Since writing this, the problem with fretting the first string off the fretboard has gone away. So chalk it up to clumsy playing.

How beautiful! And your photos show it off wonderfully well, it looks even better than it does on the Kala site! Your wife is going to enjoy this a lot, for sure!