So after reading all this and doing some thinking on things, I went ahead and bought the Ohana I had been eyeing. Hopefully a pic will show up in this post...
Going in, I knew that:
1, this was from a small shop and they don’t do setups (none locally do)
2, there were some big QC issues that I noticed, but felt they did not hurt the functionality
3, I would have to completely tear the uke down and redo it, which I did in about an hour going fairly slow and kinda stumbling thru it
4, there’s a few small issues I can’t fix myself, no do i feel that they could be fixed by anyone else outside of a pro woodworker or luthier (some are finish issues, one is the resonator isn’t round...)
All that said, the damn thing is beautiful to play. I still need to dial in the neck angles and all but I think I’m set.
I had to take it all apart to recenter the head, straighten the tail piece and most of the hooks, set the bridge blah blah blah.
I think that my uke is probably better quality than say a kmise but not by much, but it does have a nice head on it rather than a no name.