Rationalizing a new uke purchase.

plunker · Sep 22, 2018

My uke collection has grown because they are all different (Kinda). Baritone, High G tenor, Low G tenor, tenor lute- a -lele, tenor banjo-le-le, and a soprano, in the arms of Ben in my avatar. My very first. Not sure what else I would want, except a ____________________________________.

RafterGirl · Sep 23, 2018

El Viejo said:
I'm also headed to the LA Uke Festival this morning!

My latest rationalizations are "but the sound is so cool, and different from what I already have" and "but I really want to support the builder".

Tyde and Iriguchi are supposed to be here today and I am extremely excited to see both and play their instruments for the first time, particularly Iriguchi. It should be a blast. Today my reason for not buying a uke will be that I physically can't carry it on the plane on the way home tonight, otherwise the likelihood of buying something is sadly high!

A guy in my ukulele group plays an Iriguchi & loves it. I spent some time talking to Dan at the Iriguchi booth. Maybe get one built in the future. Flying to the festival definitely curbs the buying bug.

hollisdwyer · Sep 23, 2018

mikelz777 said:
I'm not as tormented or afflicted as I may have made it sound in my original post. I'm just having a little fun with a situation a lot of people here experience at one time or another. When I sell my stuff on Ebay I often use that money for fun things. I have enough to pay for about 2/3rds of the uke so the rest would come out of household funds and I don't want to spend household funds on something so indulgent and unnecessary so in this case, future Ebay sales will have to be dedicated to paying off the debt I'll owe to household funds. This is a beautiful uke but it doesn't qualify as a "fine" instrument like those in your signature. The manufacturer calls it a "mid-range" option. As for the Disney trip, I was never going to go so that was money we were never going to spend but that didn't stop me from using that hypothetical spending to help me rationalize purchasing another uke. This will be my 4th uke which I think is still "reasonable" and managable and the practical and realistic me says that this will be the limit. If another uke catches my fancy somewhere down the road and I can't resist buying it then I'll have to follow your example and sell one of my old ones.

My strategy for affording my ‘diversions’ is very similar to yours actually. I bought my first Ukulele because I was having difficulty playing my guitars because of a bad left wrist. That first Uke was just a cheapy but it taught me that I could have as much fun with a Uke and without the pain I was experiencing playing the guitar. At that time I had a small collection of good quality guitars and it was these that funded my incursion into the land of quality ukuleles. Starting with 2nd hand instruments I learned what I liked and didn’t like. Once I knew what would be mandatory in a selection process I realised that I would have to go the custom route. Because I had the nest egg in my guitar collection, now all sold, and was able to flip my quality 2nd hand Ukes at a minor loss, it wasn’t too expensive a learning exercise to arrive at where I am now.

El Viejo · Sep 23, 2018

RafterGirl said:
A guy in my ukulele group plays an Iriguchi & loves it. I spent some time talking to Dan at the Iriguchi booth. Maybe get one built in the future. Flying to the festival definitely curbs the buying bug.

I really enjoyed talking to both of those builders today- I only had enough time to stay at the festival for an hour, but it was still well worth it! Both were incredibly cool. After playing both I've decided for sure that my next two instruments will be an Iriguchi and a Tyde custom! Now the great debate is to decide which order (leaning to the Tyde first, which means it's time to call the herd and figure out what to sell to finance a build).

Did you get to try out any of the Tyde customs they were displaying? One in particular with an ultra curly koa back and sinker redwood top was incredible- great resonance and tone. Tyde also had a tenor out on their rack for people to jam on, I think they said it was a myrtle body. If I could've walked away with any instrument today it would've been that one. In the end, my wallet and budget are happy I had to fly home and already had a uke to carry on.

Rationalizing a new uke purchase.

plunker

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RafterGirl

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hollisdwyer

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El Viejo

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