ashbury

Anyone play an ashbury? There's a shop close to me selling them of at pretty good prices... I like the look of the au-70t any opinions.

Some of our members do play them.

I've played other Ashbury instruments (Hobgoblin house brand) and many of them are pretty good.

Your best bet is to pop into the shop and play a few for yourself. There's no better way to find out how good an instrument is.

You really need to try them for yourself. A member of our uke group has one and it sounds OK to me and she's happy with it.

Otoh, I tried one at the Hobgoblin stall at Whitby folk fest a couple of years ago and was not overly impressed with it.

I don't know if either is/was the specific model you're interested in, so treat my comments as a general impression.

I have an Ashbury Octave Mandola and it's a superb instrument, except for the tuning pegs which are crap. I keep meaning to getting around to replacing them. The gear ratio is poor and it is difficult to tune using them. I also had to add a bit of graphite (pencil lead) to the nut to get the string to move smoothly over it - tendency to tune without anything apparently happening then suddenly a jump in tone or the reverse.

However, that apart, my Bouzouki teacher had a play of it last year and said: "What a powerhouse of an instrument!"

I've got an ashbury tenor cutaway - decent instrument with decent electronics. My experience is it has been good value for money. I gigged it for years with no issues.

One of the first Ukes I bought was an Ashbury Tenor, And for the price it was excellent. I might have been lucky with a good one, so as others have said, " Try before you buy"