made it to sylvan music

never been to a store with ukes before. anyhow i was on the left coast with my boy's wedding and we traipsed into sylvan. i played the kamakas and kanileas briefly, it was a wedding weekend with a lot of ground to cover, and nothing resonated although they were good instruments.
i like my vintage kamaka gold label soprano better than anything in the store, but it has been broken in, and strings changed to martins. i suspect the kamakas at sylvan would all be good suspects with a string change with more of a question on the kanileas.
part of the problem here is being a mahogany guy. it's an open question whether the sound concept can extend to koa although i think it can. in the soprano size the kamaka is delightful and i wonder it might be brash as the sound cavity enlarges.
i found going into the store to have equal problems as ordering online or by phone.

if you are staying further North check out Gryphon String Instruments in Palo Alto...this is a World class guitar store with many more ukes than Sylvan
or the Ukulele Source in San Jose...

but the one and only Rick Turner(Comoass Rose Ukes) was a couple blocks away from Sylvan in Santa Cruz...

hawaii 50 said:

if you are staying further North check out Gryphon String Instruments in Palo Alto...this is a World class guitar store with many more ukes than Sylvan
or the Ukulele Source in San Jose...

but the one and only Rick Turner(Comoass Rose Ukes) was a couple blocks away from Sylvan in Santa Cruz...

Click to expand...

The last time I was at Sylvan (a few months ago) it had a few Compass Rose ukuleles. Gryphon also has some sometimes; Gryphon posts its inventory online so you can generally check before going. For what it's worth, Ukulele Source has a bigger selection of ukuleles than either Gryphon or Sylvan.

mds725 said:

The last time I was at Sylvan (a few months ago) it had a few Compass Rose ukuleles. Gryphon also has some sometimes; Gryphon posts its inventory online so you can generally check before going. For what it's worth, Ukulele Source has a bigger selection of ukuleles than either Gryphon or Sylvan.

Click to expand...

ukulele source would have been my first choice, i came and left out of san jose airport. i didn't have spare time until sunday when they were closed.

My workshop is about four blocks from Sylvan, so if you come back, do get in touch.

rick

i did not know whether all your instruments had 1 5/8" saddle spacing, and so didn't set up an appointment to stop by.

A lot of what we do is custom work, so what is normal for Compass Rose ukes is not all we do. We make the occasional 5 string and 6 string ukes, too, and we're not far from an 8 string taropatch or two.