KoAlana

Terry Carter just put out a video comparing Koalana with Koaloha. He plays the same songs on both with the same microphone so you can hear the sound quality differences. Like with most of his videos, he sometimes rambles and sounds like a used car salesman, but the sound samples are good.
 
Terry Carter just put out a video comparing Koalana with Koaloha. He plays the same songs on both with the same microphone so you can hear the sound quality differences. Like with most of his videos, he sometimes rambles and sounds like a used car salesman, but the sound samples are good.


Thanks for that!

I think the Koa uke sounds better, but not $1,000 better. You could probably find two koa ukes that sound different, but would one sound better? I doubt that anyone buys a KoAloha rather than a KoAlana because of the sound alone. I like KoAloha ukes because they're grown in Hawaii and made in Hawaii. The "quality feel" sounds like sales hype. My KoAloha and KoAlana feel equally good. Did anyone expect a seller of ukuleles to say that the expensive one is not worth the money? :)

I didn't see any point in including the low-G uke. If he wanted to include that, he should have compared it to a koa low-G.
 
Last edited:
I still think it's strange the Koaloha does not publish anything about the Koalana ukes on their website, where they list all the various series of Koaloha and Opio ukes. The Koalana ukes were listed on the website for a while last year, then vanished. Makes we wonder if they are already planning to drop that line.
 
I still think it's strange the Koaloha does not publish anything about the Koalana ukes on their website, where they list all the various series of Koaloha and Opio ukes. The Koalana ukes were listed on the website for a while last year, then vanished. Makes we wonder if they are already planning to drop that line.

I asked them that exact question when they disappeared off the website, and was told that they were having difficulty with sourcing/shipping and they were not being discontinued. But maybe things have changed.
 
I asked them that exact question when they disappeared off the website, and was told that they were having difficulty with sourcing/shipping and they were not being discontinued. But maybe things have changed.

The shipping and customs are very very slow. My Koalana was shipped from Honolulu on Dec 16 and arrived today January 20.

20210120_121003.jpg
 
All my ukes have been shipped inside a second outer box.

Mine too, and with a lot of padding between the 2 boxes. The thin factory box is more of a dust cover than a shipping container.
 
Mine too, and with a lot of padding between the 2 boxes. The thin factory box is more of a dust cover than a shipping container.

Does the factory ship with a single thin box like that?
 
Does the factory ship with a single thin box like that?

The factory puts several ukuleles in these thin boxes into a larger sturdier shipping box when they ship to dealers.
 
Is that not the way it's supposed to be shipped?
View attachment 131852

Wow! That is minimal. I've never received a uke packaged like that, and I've received 135.

I've sold at least 35, and I use lots of padding inside and a very sturdy box. If I'm shipping the uke in a hard case, I'm more confident that it will arrive undamaged. I've received some boxes with holes poked in them, but the inner box and/or padding protected the ukulele.
 
I guess I was lucky that it arrived unharmed. So far I have bought four very high end guitars and four ukuleles online and none of them was double boxed. One of the ukes was sent from Japan just in hard case and some wrap without a box. One of the guitars was professionally packed and arrived like a thick cocoon in many layers of bubble wrap.
 
I guess I was lucky that it arrived unharmed. So far I have bought four very high end guitars and four ukuleles online and none of them was double boxed. One of the ukes was sent from Japan just in hard case and some wrap without a box. One of the guitars was professionally packed and arrived like a thick cocoon in many layers of bubble wrap.

I hate it when people tape the bubble wrap? Where is it going to go? ;)
 
I hate it when people tape the bubble wrap? Where is it going to go? ;)

Do you mean where will the packaging go? It was also wrapped with many layers of tape and was as hard as a cocoon. So I just sliced it open to pull the guitar case out. I thought it can be reused to protect a guitar and it is likely sitting inside one of the guitar boxes in the basement. I don't throw out potentially useful packaging material, try to minimize waste.
 
I guess I was lucky that it arrived unharmed. So far I have bought four very high end guitars and four ukuleles online and none of them was double boxed. One of the ukes was sent from Japan just in hard case and some wrap without a box. One of the guitars was professionally packed and arrived like a thick cocoon in many layers of bubble wrap.

Higher end stuff that comes with a its own hardcase has never come double-boxed; but they still come inside a box, even if the hardcase is wrapped with bubble wrap. I'd say, you're pretty lucky WRT this KoAlana and the above-mentioned guitar (as the bubble wrap "cocoon" could have easily be poked and deflated during transport.
 
Do you mean where will the packaging go? It was also wrapped with many layers of tape and was as hard as a cocoon. So I just sliced it open to pull the guitar case out. I thought it can be reused to protect a guitar and it is likely sitting inside one of the guitar boxes in the basement. I don't throw out potentially useful packaging material, try to minimize waste.

I save all my guitar shipping boxes because those are very hard to find, but packing peanuts and bubble wrap, I don't save. I gather the peanuts and give them away when I fill a large box. Bubble wraps, I like to pop them for fun.
 
Top Bottom