NUD: 1940s? Vintage Martin Concert Ukulele

What a difference!!!

Oh my! I'll be honest, when I first tried this on Friday I was a little lukewarm about the tone. It was a nice tone, but seemed quieter than I expected and was a little dead sounding with less sustain than I expected.

So today when I went out to practice on my lunch (I do most my playing on my lunch at work) I immediately put on a new pair of M600s.

I had initially thought that's what was on there but I was dead wrong. The strings that were on there and WAY thicker and stretchier. Some type of clear nylon and not a particular hard tension nylon at that, which fully explains my initial ho-hum response to playing this.

IT SOUNDS AMAZING with the M600s. Huge dynamic range. It can really blast but is still very warm. And played softly it still sounds super full. Now that I've played it for longer I can say that it is very nicely set up too. It plays like butter.

I definitely see what all the fuss is about with these old Martins. What an incredible instrument.

CPG said:

I definitely see what all the fuss is about with these old Martins. What an incredible instrument.

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Of course I totally agree.

Great news on the transformation via strings (TVS ). I'm about to try a set of the Martin Premium strings on my vintage Style 0. I hope my results are as good as yours, although it already sounds great with M600, we'll see.

Ukecaster said:

Great news on the transformation via strings (TVS ). I'm about to try a set of the Martin Premium strings on my vintage Style 0. I hope my results are as good as yours, although it already sounds great with M600, we'll see.

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Thanks.

I'll probably try those on mine at some point. They are really nice strings. Really clear sounding all over the neck (at least on the instrument I put them on). I remember being really blown away by how much volume they had up at the 12th. On that particular instrument I went back to flourcarbon because I think I liked the tone better, but I'll probably put them back on at some point for giggles and I'd definitely like to try them on other instruments. My teacher use those on their nearly 100 year old Martin a lot and they sound great on there.

Hope you like em!

PetalumaRescuke said:

Of course I totally agree.

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It's pretty awesome. I wasn't planning on replacing my Takumi with this, but this thing is so good that I'm going to have to play them side by side and give some long hard thought over whether I can justify having all that money tied up in that Takumi (as much as I love it).