kamaka vs Imua
- Thread starter Kabog
- Start date
Imua is VERY new. I don't know that they've been around long enough to characterize their sound. Certainly Big Island ukuleles - Jorma Winkler is the owner of both, I believe, are beautiful. One of the nicest-sounding ukes I've ever heard is a Big Island mahogany. I would expect great things from Imua - but it's still a very new prospect.
Bao
Well-known member
I've read only good things about Imua on this forum so far 
Is it possible you can try both of them out? that would be best.
Here are two threads which will give you an idea of them:
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?67709-Summer-NAMM-IMUA-Ukuleles
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?85423-IMUA-Master-Grade-Koa-Tenor
Is it possible you can try both of them out? that would be best.Here are two threads which will give you an idea of them:
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?67709-Summer-NAMM-IMUA-Ukuleles
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?85423-IMUA-Master-Grade-Koa-Tenor
Last edited:
Moore Bettah Ukuleles
Well-known member
Remember, with Kamaka you are owning (and supporting) a longstanding piece of history and tradition.
Doc_J
Well-known member
Spend the extra $100 and get the Kamaka. They have a very good, repeatable building process, refined over many years. That yields a quality product.
Kamaka has probably made more ukes than anyone else.
Kamaka has probably made more ukes than anyone else.
Moore Bettah Ukuleles
Well-known member
And have done so continuously for 97 years while other companies have folded or have only jumped off and on the $$$ bandwagon as they see fit.
coolkayaker1
Well-known member
With Kamaka, you'll get the entire $100 back in future resale.
UncleElvis
Well-known member
And... you know... you get to own a Kamaka.
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Resale Kamaka hold their value too... I see only high end customs, K brands and vintage martins do this....
coolkayaker1
Well-known member
Stan's right.
I currently own three Kamaka's (Tenor, Soprano and 8 string). I'll probably buy a few more (Ohta-san, a high g Tenor and pineapple). Great consistent build quality. They age with grace (unlike myself).
If it ain't broke, I don't fix it. I'm sure there are other brands that are equal in characteristics and customs that are better but Kamaka works for my acoustic needs.
If it ain't broke, I don't fix it. I'm sure there are other brands that are equal in characteristics and customs that are better but Kamaka works for my acoustic needs.
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I almost sold my Kamaka Pineapple and then realized my ukulele collection would never be complete without this tie to the instrument's history. Plus it plays, sounds, and looks great. I feel like I dodged a bullet I shot at myself there.
I own a Big Island Concert Koa Traditional style and a Kamaka Tenor White Label. I would go with the Kamaka without a doubt for the above mentioned reasons and one more, sound. My Kamaka blows the Big Island away in that area alone. The Big Island I would imagine is just as nice as the Imua only assembled in Vietnam to keep the cost down, but I am sure the build is almost identical other than very small cosmetic differences. Big Island and Imua are quality built Ukuleles in fact they are gorgeous but they are no Kamaka. Go with the Kamaka you won’t be disappointed.
coolkayaker1
Well-known member
So, Kabog, when do you get your Imua? :rotfl::rotfl:
Imua_Ukulele
Member
Aloha!
You will probably tell by my handle I am very Imua-biased but I thought some might appreciate some facts and other tidbits of info from the source... and by the way, I am quite close with Casey Kamaka and he has shared his support for our new factory that has been in the works for more than 5 years. I respect and admire the Kamakas and their instruments. Their is no other company out there who has been building quality ukulele day in and day out for as long as they have! They have done more for our industry than anyone. I often try to get some advice and pointers from Casey and we also help them out with resawing or wood when he needs it. I also admire very much how they are investing in their factory and technology to make even better instruments! We are so far behind from where they are it will take years to come close to their level of production. On a side note, only after about 15 months we are now producing 50+ ukuleles per month and our factory is top-notch. I have been told that what we have done in a year usually takes companies many years to accomplish. This was not by accident, by the way, and I would like to share a little bit of the history and story behind the company that will give you some insight into much more about the build of our instruments. As for the sound, well, that can only be found out by playing them!
Companies do come and go... I don't expect we will be one of them... our instrument is very different from a Kamaka- looks similar, build style similar, price similar, but sounds very different.
We are a new brand company, but certainly not new in the industry. My partner, who is the luthier in in this project training our staff to build, has been building guitars and ukuleles for over 30 years. I have been in the koa wood industry for decades. My roots are from the Big Island (son of a koa logger) and my wife is from Japan. Life took me to Japan many years ago where I met Shinji Takahashi (my partner and the actual builder in Japan of T's, Kiwaya and other quite famous brands of ukuleles) by chance while I was trying to sell some koa to Mr. Nakanishi who was one of the first builders of ukuleles in Japan decades ago (Famous brand). I didn't even know I met Shinji at that time. Mr. Nakanishi happened to live in my same town so I decided to do a very American and very UN-Japanese thing by dropping by for a visit to see if he had any interest in Koa. I was politely dismissed.
A year or so later I met Shinji at his factory in Matsumoto and found out he had visited my father's company in Hilo to buy koa (the exact same thing happened with Mr. Yairi of Yairi guitars- he had also visited my father's company).
Over the years, Shinji and I developed a strong bond and at some point I wanted to build an ukulele factory in Hawaii that would build high-quality ukuleles that we could be proud of and I could think of none better than Shinji. From the business side of things, the demand for high quality ukulele was and has been growing. While many of the local Hawaii factories focused on overseas production, rather than increasing their own production, we felt it was an opportunity to fill much of the gap for good quality, Hawaiian made ukuleles. This around the same time that G-string decided to pull out of the market as a production factory. And when we mean Hawaiian-made, we don't mean having boxes built in the Philippines, or sides bent in China and then bringing them to some warehouse that we don't let people into and put Made In Hawaii on the sticker because we can claim that "over 50% of the work was done in Hawaii".
No, our intent, and what we have done, is put together a very high end factory in Kaka'ako Honolulu that does everything from start to finish, from the koa drying (we air and kiln dry) to the resawing, to the side bending, body building, spraying and final setup. The factory is air and humidity controlled and is about 6,000 SF. We have the capability of building hundreds per month. I won't talk sales figures quite yet, but we invested a LOT of money into this factory. Every successful company and builder has their story and they are all great. Our story is that two professionals in their industry, Shinji at luthiery and myself in business in the industry, decided to spend a whole bunch of money on a dream to build ukuleles in Hawaii that decades later your grandchildren will be proud to have had their imua ukulele passed down to them from their grandchildren. That is how we are building them- long-lasting and great-sounding.
I will add that as we increased our production over the last year we decided to out-source our necks to a facility in the US that specializes in CNC necks and fingerboards. They are actually the same that G-string and Kamaka have used in the past. So until our production gets up to justify our own CNC machine, we felt this one part of out-sourcing would be appreciated by our customers so that we can have perfect necks and fingerboards every time. But I do source the Indian rosewood directly from India and then send it to them to make our fingerboards.
We also keep a big stock of Honduras Mahogany and Indian Rosewood on hand for those custom models or when we have to. But otherwise everything else is done in house.
We chose the name because of both Shinji and I's progression in life and business and what we wanted to do in this industry- move forward, go ahead. I will also give the claim to coming up with the name to a Hawaiian individual I met at a forestry symposium. He had a booth displaying his Hawaiian weapons. We got to chatting about this project and after he heard my story and some of my name restrictions, such as, no "K" names, short name, preferably 4 letters, and possibly a word that started with i because we wanted to keep the logo simple. I was almost settled on Waimanu (because the street we are on) but just was not too happy with it. He suggested "imua" and after checking that no other makes were using it, we decided that was perfect for us!
Our design person came up with the lowercase "i" for our logo and Shinji and I decided to use two different color shell for our logo inlay on the headstock, which is extremely difficult to make because if you look very close at our logo you will see that there are two pieces of shell without any cutting into the side of the shell. So the dot and the line with the dot cut out have to be perfect for it to fit together perfectly. Then the cavity in the headstock also has to be perfect if you do not want any gaps. Although not something people usually pick up on, but it is just one of the many details we pay attention to that try to make each and every instrument a quality piece. It's interesting, mistakes are easily noticed but doing it correctly is often overlooked... I am sure ever maker out there can talk about how hard it is to do a particular part of their build without the player ever really noticing.
You will also notice we do a radius on the both the top and bottom of our ukulele. This is also a difficult thing to do on a production ukulele. If you can imagine, a curved top means you also have to make the neck curved and the head block curved to the EXACT same radius or they will not fit properly. By the way, the bottom is exactly half the radius as the top. Side note- we use metric in our shop. Doing business internationally and living in Japan got me to use it regularly and so we decided we would be mostly metric at imua ukulele. In my opinion, once you get used to it, it is just so much easier to use and visualize.
As for which one to buy... well the best is if you can try them both, and pick the sound of the one you like, because from a build and quality standpoint I do think we rival the best of them. But if you cannot try them first, decide what is important to you. And if you have enough money, just buy both
Mahalo,
Jorma Winkler
You will probably tell by my handle I am very Imua-biased but I thought some might appreciate some facts and other tidbits of info from the source... and by the way, I am quite close with Casey Kamaka and he has shared his support for our new factory that has been in the works for more than 5 years. I respect and admire the Kamakas and their instruments. Their is no other company out there who has been building quality ukulele day in and day out for as long as they have! They have done more for our industry than anyone. I often try to get some advice and pointers from Casey and we also help them out with resawing or wood when he needs it. I also admire very much how they are investing in their factory and technology to make even better instruments! We are so far behind from where they are it will take years to come close to their level of production. On a side note, only after about 15 months we are now producing 50+ ukuleles per month and our factory is top-notch. I have been told that what we have done in a year usually takes companies many years to accomplish. This was not by accident, by the way, and I would like to share a little bit of the history and story behind the company that will give you some insight into much more about the build of our instruments. As for the sound, well, that can only be found out by playing them!
Companies do come and go... I don't expect we will be one of them... our instrument is very different from a Kamaka- looks similar, build style similar, price similar, but sounds very different.
We are a new brand company, but certainly not new in the industry. My partner, who is the luthier in in this project training our staff to build, has been building guitars and ukuleles for over 30 years. I have been in the koa wood industry for decades. My roots are from the Big Island (son of a koa logger) and my wife is from Japan. Life took me to Japan many years ago where I met Shinji Takahashi (my partner and the actual builder in Japan of T's, Kiwaya and other quite famous brands of ukuleles) by chance while I was trying to sell some koa to Mr. Nakanishi who was one of the first builders of ukuleles in Japan decades ago (Famous brand). I didn't even know I met Shinji at that time. Mr. Nakanishi happened to live in my same town so I decided to do a very American and very UN-Japanese thing by dropping by for a visit to see if he had any interest in Koa. I was politely dismissed.
A year or so later I met Shinji at his factory in Matsumoto and found out he had visited my father's company in Hilo to buy koa (the exact same thing happened with Mr. Yairi of Yairi guitars- he had also visited my father's company).
Over the years, Shinji and I developed a strong bond and at some point I wanted to build an ukulele factory in Hawaii that would build high-quality ukuleles that we could be proud of and I could think of none better than Shinji. From the business side of things, the demand for high quality ukulele was and has been growing. While many of the local Hawaii factories focused on overseas production, rather than increasing their own production, we felt it was an opportunity to fill much of the gap for good quality, Hawaiian made ukuleles. This around the same time that G-string decided to pull out of the market as a production factory. And when we mean Hawaiian-made, we don't mean having boxes built in the Philippines, or sides bent in China and then bringing them to some warehouse that we don't let people into and put Made In Hawaii on the sticker because we can claim that "over 50% of the work was done in Hawaii".
No, our intent, and what we have done, is put together a very high end factory in Kaka'ako Honolulu that does everything from start to finish, from the koa drying (we air and kiln dry) to the resawing, to the side bending, body building, spraying and final setup. The factory is air and humidity controlled and is about 6,000 SF. We have the capability of building hundreds per month. I won't talk sales figures quite yet, but we invested a LOT of money into this factory. Every successful company and builder has their story and they are all great. Our story is that two professionals in their industry, Shinji at luthiery and myself in business in the industry, decided to spend a whole bunch of money on a dream to build ukuleles in Hawaii that decades later your grandchildren will be proud to have had their imua ukulele passed down to them from their grandchildren. That is how we are building them- long-lasting and great-sounding.
I will add that as we increased our production over the last year we decided to out-source our necks to a facility in the US that specializes in CNC necks and fingerboards. They are actually the same that G-string and Kamaka have used in the past. So until our production gets up to justify our own CNC machine, we felt this one part of out-sourcing would be appreciated by our customers so that we can have perfect necks and fingerboards every time. But I do source the Indian rosewood directly from India and then send it to them to make our fingerboards.
We also keep a big stock of Honduras Mahogany and Indian Rosewood on hand for those custom models or when we have to. But otherwise everything else is done in house.
We chose the name because of both Shinji and I's progression in life and business and what we wanted to do in this industry- move forward, go ahead. I will also give the claim to coming up with the name to a Hawaiian individual I met at a forestry symposium. He had a booth displaying his Hawaiian weapons. We got to chatting about this project and after he heard my story and some of my name restrictions, such as, no "K" names, short name, preferably 4 letters, and possibly a word that started with i because we wanted to keep the logo simple. I was almost settled on Waimanu (because the street we are on) but just was not too happy with it. He suggested "imua" and after checking that no other makes were using it, we decided that was perfect for us!
Our design person came up with the lowercase "i" for our logo and Shinji and I decided to use two different color shell for our logo inlay on the headstock, which is extremely difficult to make because if you look very close at our logo you will see that there are two pieces of shell without any cutting into the side of the shell. So the dot and the line with the dot cut out have to be perfect for it to fit together perfectly. Then the cavity in the headstock also has to be perfect if you do not want any gaps. Although not something people usually pick up on, but it is just one of the many details we pay attention to that try to make each and every instrument a quality piece. It's interesting, mistakes are easily noticed but doing it correctly is often overlooked... I am sure ever maker out there can talk about how hard it is to do a particular part of their build without the player ever really noticing.
You will also notice we do a radius on the both the top and bottom of our ukulele. This is also a difficult thing to do on a production ukulele. If you can imagine, a curved top means you also have to make the neck curved and the head block curved to the EXACT same radius or they will not fit properly. By the way, the bottom is exactly half the radius as the top. Side note- we use metric in our shop. Doing business internationally and living in Japan got me to use it regularly and so we decided we would be mostly metric at imua ukulele. In my opinion, once you get used to it, it is just so much easier to use and visualize.
As for which one to buy... well the best is if you can try them both, and pick the sound of the one you like, because from a build and quality standpoint I do think we rival the best of them. But if you cannot try them first, decide what is important to you. And if you have enough money, just buy both
Mahalo,
Jorma Winkler
Imua_Ukulele
Member
Hi Again,
I forgot to add... Imua Ukulele has nothing to do with Big Island Ukulele... owner of the company is the same, but build, style, country of origin are all different. I think someone out there said Imua is a brand of Big Island Ukulele. Completely false. Please read the story of Imua and the company.
I will also add that after a year of production we have been improving. We made some tweaks along the way, like bracing style (and type of wood for the soundboard), top thickness, spray technique, strings (we use Orcas made in Japan black fluorocarbon).
By the way, Big Island Ukulele's necks are not done on a CNC machine, but rather all by hand. That is how they prefer to continue to do it at the factory in Vietnam. That has its plus' and minus'. Our imua necks are all done on the CNC and perfectly built to our engineered specs each and every time- that is a plus! We also use a one piece Honduras Mahogany! Also very high-end.
Big Island Ukulele was meant to serve the $400-$1000 market for a well-made solid koa ukulele. We cannot do that in Hawaii for that price on a production level. So to compare model specs, basically the $400 Big Island would be similar to the $800 Imua. A $1000 Big Island would be more like a $2000 - $3000 Hawaiian made instrument.
This has been about giving the market options... remember when Big Island came around there were very few solid koa models out there under $600 and even then they were hard to find. I started that brand when the very first solid mahogany models were coming out of China. The Big Island was meant to give the buyer a better instrument than the $200 model but who could not afford or find a Hawaiian made koa instrument.
Hope that helps shed some light on the background and helps people make better, informed decisions!
Aloha,
Jorma Winkler
I forgot to add... Imua Ukulele has nothing to do with Big Island Ukulele... owner of the company is the same, but build, style, country of origin are all different. I think someone out there said Imua is a brand of Big Island Ukulele. Completely false. Please read the story of Imua and the company.
I will also add that after a year of production we have been improving. We made some tweaks along the way, like bracing style (and type of wood for the soundboard), top thickness, spray technique, strings (we use Orcas made in Japan black fluorocarbon).
By the way, Big Island Ukulele's necks are not done on a CNC machine, but rather all by hand. That is how they prefer to continue to do it at the factory in Vietnam. That has its plus' and minus'. Our imua necks are all done on the CNC and perfectly built to our engineered specs each and every time- that is a plus! We also use a one piece Honduras Mahogany! Also very high-end.
Big Island Ukulele was meant to serve the $400-$1000 market for a well-made solid koa ukulele. We cannot do that in Hawaii for that price on a production level. So to compare model specs, basically the $400 Big Island would be similar to the $800 Imua. A $1000 Big Island would be more like a $2000 - $3000 Hawaiian made instrument.
This has been about giving the market options... remember when Big Island came around there were very few solid koa models out there under $600 and even then they were hard to find. I started that brand when the very first solid mahogany models were coming out of China. The Big Island was meant to give the buyer a better instrument than the $200 model but who could not afford or find a Hawaiian made koa instrument.
Hope that helps shed some light on the background and helps people make better, informed decisions!
Aloha,
Jorma Winkler
Imua_Ukulele
Member
Aloha!
Sorry, but that just is not correct. Imua ukuleles were designed by my partner, Shinji Takahashi, and don't even come close to the same specs, size, sound, etc. Two very different instruments. Imua ukuleles are very small, they were built more with an original Martin size, which many of the Japanese builders tend to do. Small size but great tone and enough volume.
I think the comparisons of imua to Big Island are somehow coming from some false assumptions about them being part of each other.
And I urge some posters out there who have had a chance to play or have at least seen them chime in on some comments so we can all get some first-hand feedback. But I do understand that is hard to do when we have not been around as long and not too much product out there, but that is changing! We are building 60+ per month now with a staff of 4 full time builders (not including myself who has to make sure we have enough supplies AND customers to buy them all!)
Mahalo for listening,
Jorma Winkler
molokinirum
Well-known member
I agree....I vote to get the Kamaka!!!
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