Stagg solid body electric ukulele

Great meeting you too! Looks like you all had a lot of fun at the rest of UWC.

And... sorry? Ha!

Really appreciated your input on the Stagg. No buyer's remorse, but nice to be able to keep feeling good about the uke.

Glad to see that you got your Mainland!

Good to meet you, too, oldrookie! Thanks for showing me your Honeytone amp. I just may need one of those. Some day maybe I'll be able to make it sound as good with my K-Wave as bassukuguy can!
 
Yo! Mailman! It was great meeting you. Wish I could have stuck around and conversed longer. Glad to see you got home safely.

I REALLY like that K-Wave you brought to UWC. I am in the middle of refinishing a Peavey bass. It has a maple neck and I think I'm going to try and recreate the color scheme of your K-Wave. That transparent red with the maple neck just really caught my eye. Transparent red wasn't even on the radar until I saw your uke.

I'm sitting here with sore fingers working hard on Uncle Rod's Ukulele Boot Camp materials. I just hope to be able to play something reasonably well by next year...suspect bassukuguy has nothing to fear from me.
 
lol, i cant wait to hear your progress. And yes i did get my beautiful mainland tenor, it plays so sweet. As i have said though, im really thinking this may be my next purchase
 
I've had mine for a few days now, and I pretty much agree with sgporc. This is a great deal (I paid $125, delivered) and have very little to complain about. The strings aren't that good (I'm replacing them with Aquilas), I would have preferred a larger cutaway, and the tuners are cheap, but that's about it. Sound quality depends very much on the amp you choose. Plugged into my Acoustic Image Contra it sounds amazingly rich and full.
 
Thanks for the review! I'm glad to see some proper photos of it as well, the photos on the sellers websites look synthetic :p
 
I've had mine for a few days now, and I pretty much agree with sgporc. This is a great deal (I paid $125, delivered) and have very little to complain about. The strings aren't that good (I'm replacing them with Aquilas), I would have preferred a larger cutaway, and the tuners are cheap, but that's about it. Sound quality depends very much on the amp you choose. Plugged into my Acoustic Image Contra it sounds amazingly rich and full.

Yes ,I agree , it's very fun to play with a good amp .
I want to change the strings . But wich strings are recommanded ? I have just buy Worth ( clear and brown) and Ko'olau gold. I have Aquila too but I prefer use them with my Flea.
 
I'm using Aquila and Worth mixed.

Put regular Aquila's on, but wanted to go low G unwound on it. Only one I could find was the Worth.
 
Hmm, concert scale, but overall length closer to soprano. Sounds like a good thing. Wish it was a little longer overall. Only one I could find on YouTube used so much distortion that you could hardly tell what it sounded like.
 
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B goode!
Got my Stagg LP (I'm a marley fan) a week ago and I love it!
Seems to me the guy is not playing a solid body. At 3:10 I see a sound hole (maybe).
Peace
Olivah

Vid is gone?
 
To me the traditional soprano ukes are distinctively very bright and lively sounding, amplified by the reverberations of the body. For the stagg solid body without amplification, it's pretty much just the sound of the strings themselves, not as bright and "boomy". I'm not sure how else to describe. I'm new to electronic amplification and don't know what to expect with amplified music. I have a honeytone mini-amp but I haven't been playing around with it much. To me, once music is modified by all the knobs you can adjust on the amp, I really don't know how much the original tone of the instrument plays a role. With the electronic modifications that you can do these days I'm sure you can make it sound like a trumpet if you want... :) Many other reviews of other solid body electric ukes describe the sounds as like the electric guitar. The stagg is pretty much like the eleuke videos you can find on youtube. But as for the quality of the electronics, I'd say it's not bad. No hissing or crackling. The controls seem fine too. I normally just leave them in the middle...

I hope this is of some help... I'm really a philistine when it comes to music and these ukes (I also have the kala ka-15s) are practically my first musical instruments (and just for less than 2 months now)...

In researching the Honeytone, several people noted that it can be used as an "effects pedal"...kind of, to get a gritty, bluesy sound similar to the earliest single tube blues amps that you just can't get anywhere else. There's one in my future just to go for that sound for my "blues uke."
 
A proper review for this uke was sorely missed when I was researching solid body electric ukes so here I am to contribute my review after taking the plunge to get this often passed-over uke. I bought it from Butler Music on ebay and have had it for almost 2 weeks.

Features :10. Simply cannot be beaten!!!
I'll start with the listed specifications which were accurate.
# Body: Solid Maple
# Neck: Solid Maple, bolt-on
# Fingerboard & Bridge: Rosewood
# Machine Heads: diecast nickel minis
# Electronics: UK-2000 active onboard preamp w/ Slider-style 2-band EQ (bass/treble) & Volume control
# Fingerboard Dim. 240 mm (9.4 in.), 16 frets (body is cutaway so all frets accessible)
# Scale length: 375 mm / 14.8 in.
# Neck & Headstock: 325 mm, (12.8 in.)
# Body: 285 mm, (11.2 in.)
# Total length: 574 mm (22.6 in.)
# Power: 1 x 9V battery (included)
# Output: 1 x 1/4" jack
Finish was high gloss throughout (besides the fingerboard of course). Comes with a free gig bag which protects relatively well. Best of all, there were other features that were surprisingly not advertised. It came with an amp cable, and there was a headphone jack and mp3 input too! (just like the eleuke). Volume was not too loud on the headphones. I haven't tried the mp3 yet (don't have the double-ended jack cables) but I expect it to work as it is supposed to. The only minor concern here is that the headphone and mp3 sockets are on the back so there may be pressure on the jacks if you hold the uke too tightly to your body.

Sound :8
I'm a total music novice and everything sounds ok to me. It definitely not the standard uke-y sound, but I expected that from a solid-body. It came with a set of black strings which were rather soft and almost silent when played without amplification, which I changed out to aquilas. It's now definitely audible to people around you but not out of the room, so it's great for late night practices. Intonation is pretty good (to me). When measured at the 12th fret on a chromatic tuner, it's about 10-15 cents sharp, but I understand that no uke has perfect intonation, and the discrepancy could even be because of how I fret or play the strings. So I'm fine with it since I cannot hear the difference anyway.

Action, Fit, & Finish :9
According to commonly recommended action heights of 1/8" to 3/16", this uke came in good at 1/8", but I preferred it lower so I sanded down the saddle a little more. Fit is good with everything tight and snug. The black and glossy finish was also good, but to be extremely picky, there was a very small spot up at the neck just abutting the fingerboard that was not covered well by the gloss coating. Fingerboard also looked fine and not dry.

Reliability/Durability : 10
This is a solid body uke so I expect it to be able to take all sorts of abuse.

Customer Support :10
Never had to bother them. This was my second order from them and no problems so far.

Overall Rating : 8
This uke is great for me... I have no complaints. It's great for almost silent practice (which was why I bought it). It's really a great value for money cause it costs half of it's more popular competitor with all the same features. I'm happy with this buy...


Added on 2/25:
# Neck width at nut: 1 3/8" String spacing: 11/32"
# Neck width at 12th fret: 1 3/4" String spacing: 1/2"



Well, great work! You have helped me to improve my knowledge about this field. Thank you so much for sharing.
 
I stumbled upon this ukulele on eBay, and was going to buy it, but I always like to read a review before I spend any money, so I went off to Google, and as you mentioned, I was really surprised at the lack of reviews. That put me off a little bit, but reading this has rekindled my love!

I'm going to make my order at the end of the week, thank you so much for the review!
 
FlakMonkey, did you get one? If so where from and how much? I'm after the S style and a new ebay dealer has listed that this week at just £60 plus shipping which is £40 lower than Southern Ukulele Store!!
 
As for amps, I ran it through a Marshall MG2FX, a Vox 3Mini and a Roland Micro-Cube, because I like to make my tinkering sound "serias geetar" :eek:.

3rd place: the Roland sounded a little fake and plastic, volume was way to dim on the clean channel, distortion was just too much of it.
2nd place: The Marshall was very nice but a hassle to change settings. Every knob has at least 2 functions and you have to press a small button -and keep pressing it- to use the second function. But the sound was hilariously accurate.
1st place: The Vox. No competition, this thingie has an amazing real feel to it. Everyone that walked in the store had to look at that tiny guitar and that tiny amp, and the sound that came out of it. The shop-owner had most of the fun himself.
 
October, 2012 purchase

I just got mine (fueled primarily due to this link's initial review) an I'm thrilled! The one thing that I feel is not stressed enough is the fact that when merely holding the uke one is struck with the quality of the workmanship. I don't know if this has been improving over the life of the sales or if it was just presumed to "be there" all along, but small details like the rounded edges of the frets and the feel of the neck and the balancing all speak volumes about the fact that someone really cared when they were designing, and assembling, the instrument. Also, thanks to the existence, now, of Kala red low "G" concert strings mixed with the EQ settings, you can make this ukulele sound like a happy soprano or a rich tenor. All-in-all, it's a deal!
 
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My wife is buying me one of these for Christmas. I can't wait. Thanks for the review :)
 
Oops, I meant the amp-u-plug-n-play. http://www.ampuplugnplay.com/ I've heard good things about it on these boards. Cheap and simple, lets you play clear or fuzzed out.

I for one am sceptical about this.
Personally I'm using my iPad 2 with Peavey Ampkit for practice.
But for a more portabe solution try looking at the Vox AmPlugs. They come in different flavours if you will.
Bt if you're on an iPhone 4S or better try peavey Ampkit. Just do yourself a favour and get yourself a better soundcard. For example Apogee Jam..
My two cents..
Actually my approx. 500 dollars to be more exact.. ;)
 
An when the economy improves and you want to upgrade? Try one of thse:

DSCF4269.jpg

Mr Howlett sir..
How much would one of those beauties drain my bank account?
I seem to have developed an "umhealthy"(atleast for my bank account) fascination for electric ukes.

And while I'm at it.
I love your work sir..
 
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