New Ukulele Company In Hawaii

Aloha members,
Hoku ukulele's is a fairly new company in Hawaii on the Island of Kauai.We make all hand made ukulele's by players for players by a small well known luthier in vietnam. Please check out our web site and if there is anything we can do for you please contact me by email.
www.hokuukuleles.com

Camsuke said:

Welcome to UU Hoku Ukuleles!

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Thank you very much

To the OP, please review the Forum Rules (#5) regarding links to business or other for-profit websites at the following thread. http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?85568-Ukulele-Underground-Forum-Rules. For that reason, I moved your thread to the appropriate forum. Much Mahalos!

Yeah, because what Hawaii really needs is another company spying a fast buck and importing Asian ukes, selling them on via a hastily assembled website...so hasty that nobody had the time or inclination to correct the multitude of spelling and grammatical errors...and trading on the fact that they are "based in Hawaii", in the vain hope that this will lend a sense of legitimacy and quality to the enterprise.

Stick to snorkelling.

Hi there, Hoku Ukuleles!

Welcome to UU! I am excited to see your company's line-up and I will definitely visit your web site! Thank you for reaching out to us folks here in the Ukulele Underground Forum community!

Peace and Happy Strummings!
~ Chelle
"hochapeafarm"

The Big Kahuna said:

Yeah, because what Hawaii really needs is another company spying a fast buck and importing Asian ukes, selling them on via a hastily assembled website...so hasty that nobody had the time or inclination to correct the multitude of spelling and grammatical errors...and trading on the fact that they are "based in Hawaii", in the vain hope that this will lend a sense of legitimacy and quality to the enterprise.

Stick to snorkelling.

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DUDE!

To see such rage and animosity here on UU is a surprise to me.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt for a moment that you have a legitimate gripe with either a specific vendor or luthier and this is because some situation with them was not resolved to your satisfaction.

There are better ways to deal with your angst than to attack a new member with such verbal hostility, who has no history on UU that I can see.

Would you please share the specific details of the problem you had, instead of going after this individual and/or company with such comments?

You will feel much better once you get it all out in the open.

If you have a legitimate problem and this company is somehow evil or dishonest, you would be doing a great service to your fellow UU members by letting us all know of your experience.

Otherwise, your comments appear to have malicious intent, which is highly irregular here in the forum.

So please take this chance to explain yourself.

-Booli

Thank you Chelle and enjoy the music and with ukulele's all that matters is that you are happy with the instrument you have and it's sounds good and has easy playability.


Aloha Mike,
Hoku ukulele's

Aloha Booli,
His rage was a new company started up in hawaii and he didn't like it, as I have never meet or had any contact with this man called the big Kahuna and he is not even from hawaii.Because of this rudeness I have ask UU to remove me from this form as this is rude and out of line from a member. I thank you for sticking up for me and hope and wish all the best for you. Also aldrien and I are from the same home town on Kauai and I don't think he would like this at all but I'm not going to subject my company to this kind of rudeness from the big Kahuna and man from englend using a Hawaiin name.

Mike,
HokuUkuleles.com
slackkeylessonsandworkshops.com

Big K your post is inappropriate and unacceptable. Have a short holiday mate and re-read the golden rule.

Welcome to the forum Mike and all the best with your venture.

Welcome to UU Hoku ukulele Mike!

I found your website interesting and thought it was sensible that you were beginning with a small production model of uke building which allows for good quality control.

Aloha Fretie,
Thank you for your support and kind word's. I will alway's stay small as a player and Slack key guitar teacher I'm not trying to get rich but share the Music and try to get quality instruments to people without having to pay thousands ( expecially the chilrden ) the futher of music. I thank all the members who have welcomed me even the one who has his own issue's hate only breeds hate and people who love music share and open arm's to new way's for music to reach people.

Aloha,
Mike
hokuukuleles.com
slackkeylessonsandworkshops.com

Aloha Mike,

I Look forward to hearing one of your new ukuleles. No videos from your company that I found online yet (but, I well could have missed it/them). Please link if I did.

There are a lot of ukuleles out there now, what distinguishes yours from the similarly priced competitors? What are your goals for 2014? (I got those questions from brother Aldrine's NAMM videos...lol)

Peace, Mike.

Aloha coolkayaker,

At present I have not made the video yet for people to hear but I'm going to. I don't have alot of changes for 2014 as I believe when the wheel is round and work's good don't keep changing it. I make my luthier focus on voice the instrument the way I want it to sound which means to shape the tone bars properly by hand for each instrument. My bracing was designed by one of the nations best luthiers in california and it's a 5 fan design with antino torres influnce put into it. Antino was the father of the classical guitar. I hand pick most of my wood when I can and often even get the quarter logs dry them and then have them cut into billets and the after a year cut into sets. I have in a few months I have coming a Macacauba rosewood tenor with 45 yr old sitka spruce soundboard and a Cocobolo tenor with very rare douglas fir wavy cut soundboard coming. As a classical trained guitar player and a slack key guitar teacher I go for tonal qualities of different wood rather that chaning designs every year. The two most important things about any instrument is good quality tone and ease of playing without to much effort from the player. I hope this helps you understand where I come from as a player and teacher and try to put everything I have learned and been taught by my master teachers into the instrument to make them better and sound the best they can.

Mike
hokuukuleles.com
slackkeylessonsandworkshops.com

Hoku Ukulele's said:

Aloha coolkayaker,

At present I have not made the video yet for people to hear but I'm going to. I don't have alot of changes for 2014 as I believe when the wheel is round and work's good don't keep changing it. I make my luthier focus on voice the instrument the way I want it to sound which means to shape the tone bars properly by hand for each instrument. My bracing was designed by one of the nations best luthiers in california and it's a 5 fan design with antino torres influnce put into it. Antino was the father of the classical guitar. I hand pick most of my wood when I can and often even get the quarter logs dry them and then have them cut into billets and the after a year cut into sets. I have in a few months I have coming a Macacauba rosewood tenor with 45 yr old sitka spruce soundboard and a Cocobolo tenor with very rare douglas fir wavy cut soundboard coming. As a classical trained guitar player and a slack key guitar teacher I go for tonal qualities of different wood rather that chaning designs every year. The two most important things about any instrument is good quality tone and ease of playing without to much effort from the player. I hope this helps you understand where I come from as a player and teacher and try to put everything I have learned and been taught by my master teachers into the instrument to make them better and sound the best they can.

Mike
hokuukuleles.com
slackkeylessonsandworkshops.com

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Hi Mike,

This sounds really awesome. I can't wait to hear some sound samples!

For me as a player, my instrument selection is now decided primarily by intonation accuracy, then tone, and then appearance.

If the intonation is bad, there are times that even with nut and saddle work, the string geometry can not be fixed, and it seems to me that this is typically due to some flaw in either the design of, or build of the instrument.

I can hear when the intonation is off more than 10 cents after the 5th fret, and those instruments are completely unplayable to me unless the intonation is fixed.

It seems that you are giving lots of attention to detail, and have some really good intentions with your products, so hopefully your instruments will not have these kinds of problems.

-Booli

Booli,
If the intonation is off then more than likely the fret's are miss placed for the scale of the instrument or maybe the whole scale is wrong and you really can't fix that without a new neck. I also use a wide neck my normal is 38mm and my wide for large fingers is 40mm. It seems all ukulele's have a problem around the 7th fret dieing out in tone a little but remember it's a small instrument and we are demanding alot from it. Don't get me wrong we can get good tone up the neck 7th,9th.12th frets but we have to work harder voicing the instrument and with proper bracing.

Mike

Hoku Ukulele's said:

Booli,
If the intonation is off then more than likely the fret's are miss placed for the scale of the instrument or maybe the whole scale is wrong and you really can't fix that without a new neck. I also use a wide neck my normal is 38mm and my wide for large fingers is 40mm. It seems all ukulele's have a problem around the 7th fret dieing out in tone a little but remember it's a small instrument and we are demanding alot from it. Don't get me wrong we can get good tone up the neck 7th,9th.12th frets but we have to work harder voicing the instrument and with proper bracing.

Mike

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Hi Mike,

Thank you for the reply.

It sounds like you are aware of the problem and conscientious about minimizing it. I know that good intonation is possible, and even with an inexpensive instrument as well. It's been my experience that the Magic Fluke Company (http://www.magicfluke.com/) has achieved near-perfect intonation with their Flea and Fluke lines of ukulele.

I have a concert Flea with the polycarbonate fretboard, and a tenor Fluke with the rosewood fretboard, and the intonation is absolutely perfect up to the 9th fret, after which is is about 5 cents sharp, and at the 12th fret and thereafter, it is a steady 10 cents sharp, but since I rarely play chords at or above the 12th fret, this level of intonation accuracy is not a problem for me.

It seems to me that most of the problems with intonation that I've seen are simply because the bridge, and therefore the saddle are in the wrong place, even 3mm too long or too short can screw with the intonation. If the tenor fretboard is made for a 17" scale but the bridge/saddle is 17.25" from the nut, there is no way to fix the intonation without moving the bridge/saddle closer to the nut.

It simply baffles me that certain uke makers cannot seem to understand how to use a ruler and measure properly.

Sorry to mix metric and imperial measurements, I have not yet converted the scale lengths in my head to their metric equivalents, which I prefer instead of trying to figure out 16ths" or 32nd" divisions.

This problem is very common on instruments that sell retail for $100 or less, regardless of scale length.

If the intonation is off by too much, and unless the instrument is a one-string ukulele, the tone could be like the sound of angels, but without proper intonation you cannot play chords without serious problems with fretted pitches being accurate along the neck.

For example, the open A string should register at 440hz, and then the 12th fret of the same string should be VERY close to 880hz, but NOT 720hz or 970hz. I have played many instruments on the shelf at big-box retail stores and if the intonation is off by too much, altering the nut and saddle may not be able to fix the string geometry, especially if the bridge is misplaced. ALL of this can be remedied and prevented during manufacturing, but many ukulele makers in this range of the market seem not to care about this problem.

I like a wider neck as well. So far what you have said here all sounds like very good news to me.

-Booli

Booli,

Yes the Bridge more than likely is to far forward or to far back and that can change everything in the scale as the scale is measured from saddle to nut. The luthier should be watching that, the problem is many instruments are mass produced by machine and everything is placed where it is. I say never play around with the nut you can cause big problems and the saddle only when you want to change the action or use a different material for a different tone.

Mike

Hoku Ukulele's said:

Booli,

Yes the Bridge more than likely is to far forward or to far back and that can change everything in the scale as the scale is measured from saddle to nut. The luthier should be watching that, the problem is many instruments are mass produced by machine and everything is placed where it is. I say never play around with the nut you can cause big problems and the saddle only when you want to change the action or use a different material for a different tone.

Mike

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This is very true.:agree: