Graham Greenbag
Well-known member
The Dolphin and Flea were both suggestions that I made so I add additional comments which I hope will be helpful. I’ve played someone else’s Flea and it seemed easy enough to play, with the Flea and the Dolphin being virtually the same scale length they will feel very similar to your fingers - though different strings might give some small effect. The Flea’s string spacing was good and I don’t recall the zero fret being set high so fretting wasn’t an issue to me. With weak fingers I’d be more concerned about how you’ll get on with the friction tuners on the Flea, various geared tuners can be fitted but obviously there is a cost to that.
Other than that concern about tuners the Flea can (I believe) be played without any modification, in contrast I’ve found that Dolphins do need quite a bit of work on them to get the best out of them and certainly mine didn’t play even acceptably straight out of the box. On Dolphins I sort the action at the nut, replace the saddle with a bone one of the correct height, replace the strings with Fluorocarbon ones, oil the tuners and check for intonation (rework saddle if needed). Occasionally someone will manage to crack a Dolphin’s body but typically these things stand a lot of abuse without failure - IMHO for the little that they cost they’re excellent value.
Keneltime’s evaluation seems fair enough to me and I think that either option (Flea or Dolphin) would work for you. However both those Ukes would need setting up to meet your needs, who will do that work for you? If you can afford then, IMHO, the Flea will be a great choice and something that you will enjoy playing anywhere. I don’t have one because Fleas are (relative to the USA) both expensive here in the U.K. and rarely available second hand. In contrast Dolphins are readily available here, inexpensive and most importantly my time (quite a few hours) to sort them out is cost ($) free to me.
So: if you have free labour then a Dolphin is worth considering as it could be all you need, but if you have to pay for labour or can readily afford a Flea then get one of those.
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