Older Man and his 1st Ukulele?

Two things to consider:

I'd go with a concert size rather than a soprano, particularly for a big-guy beginnner.

My experience with Mitchell ukuleles has not been good. I've never owned one but I've played several in various retail stores. Lots of bling, but heavy, dead finishes, thick plywood bodies, lousy intonation, extremely high action (height of the strings over the frets), and basically sound like crap. You can do much better with a Kala, Ohana, or even the Caramels or Enyas that were recommended above. Don't cripple yourself with a bad instrument right out of the box. You're likely to stick it in a closet and forget about it in a couple of weeks.


Thinking of just purchasing this one until I can decide exactly what I want. Would it be a horrible one to start learning on for the money?

https://www.musiciansfriend.com/folk-traditional-instruments/mitchell-mu40-soprano-ukulele/j22072000001000

Thanks for all the help and input!

DGG
 
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I recently picked up one of these .... decent uke for the money. I've got quite a few ukes from which to choose when I play and a surprising number of times I find myself grabbing this one..solid African mahogany all around, real floral inlays on the fretboard and inlaid herringbone rosette, bone nut and saddle, bound fretboard, strap buttons.. the neck's thick, but not too bad. It's light, well balanced, reasonably well built, plays easily, stays in tune, pretty well set up, and it sounds pretty darn good too. ..It will probably sound even better when I change the stock D'addario strings.

Someone posted about it in Marketplace recently and when I linked, there was an offer for $70 off if I got an Amazon card... I figured, what the heck... a new uke for $13? :shaka:
 
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I think a concert would be better to start. I agree that Mitchells are 'bad' ukes and not as good as Caramels, Kalas, Ohana or lots of other ukes.

I started with a tenor and had a problem with the fingering of chords, so switched to Concert and learned the fingering. Now my favorites are tenors or baritone, and I have not problems reaching most chords now. The nice thing about tenors is you can tune them dGBE and it sounds more guitar like. My voice is pretty low so the Bari-tenor matches my voice better.

My recommendation is the Caramel CC-100 concert about $55 and you get an equalizer so when you want to play electric, you just need batteries and an amp, a Honeytone for ~$25 will give you the taste of electric playing but CHEAPLY! My CC-100 pays/sounds better than my Ohana CK-22 which was $165. The Ohana is good for finger picking but for struming and fingerpicking the CC-100 is darn good.
 
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