In June of 2013 I was leafing through a Musician's Friend magazine and came across a ukulele that looked like the Fender Telecaster electric guitar I recently bought. The uke was only $60 and I thought it would look cute hanging next to the Tele. About 2 weeks later I received a post Card from the Los Angeles Music Center announcing their annual summer Play-Along series, which I did a couple of time for guitar, but this time it was for ukulele. I thought since I had one, I'd go for it.
It required learning a few chords, but when I tried them online, I discovered it was rather difficult forming the chords compared to my full size guitars. I looked up ukes and discovered mine was a soprano, and that tenor tends to be recommended for guitar players. So I went over to my my local Sam Ash and bought a Lanikai quilted ash tenor cutaway with electronics.
Being a major gadget freak, in the next year I went through 16 ukes, but when Mim recommended a Kala solid top cedar, I realized the shortcomings of most of the others and sold or gifted all but 4. Since then I've been more discreet and after over 6 years, I'm up to 9, one on it's way, an all bamboo tenor cutaway to replace a tenor walnut Fluke I bought here in the Marketplace that I ultimately don't like.
A year after starting uke, I took up bass uke. That's where gear acquisition syndrome really took me over. I'm up to 32 bass uke/mini bass guitars and loving every minute of it. Many are short scale guitars that I had converted to basses, it's become my hobby since retiring at the same time I started playing uke. You asked for photos, here they are.
This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly West near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 6 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 41)
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Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs.
www.theukc.org
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