Your First Ukulele and what it meant to you.

I've always wanted a Hawaiian koa wood uke--something to remind me of the fours year I lived there, back in the early 70's. 25 years later and ten years ago, I happened to be passing through Hawaii at the time and was wandering around Ala Moana Mall. I saw a kiosk selling ukes and, after considering my budget, bought an all koa, standard-sized uke for $365. KoAloha had been in business for only five years, but the one I walked away with turned out to be a lot nicer than I had any idea about. It took me eight years to wake up to what I had, but I'm glad that I finally got around to focusing on the uke over the past two years. Talk about taking something for granted. At least I did get around to it.
 
My very first ukulele was purchased in Honolulu in Feb. 2008. It was my main ukulele for 6 months. I donated it to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Ukulele. It started getting signatures right before UWC 2009. It went to UWC and then started traveling. It traveled until UWC 2010. We got a lot of signatures -- Victoria Vox, Liz Beloff, Jake, Aldrine, plus tons of others. I have it back now and we are really ready to auction it off. Thanks for reminding me to get off my butt and do something with it.

It was a Hawaiian Ukulele Company concert.
 
Bought my first uke about three or four weeks ago. Only bought it after playing one at my nephews house. It is a blue plastic backed Makala Dolphin ( so many recommendations a a good starter uke...and they are not wrong ), Now has a 1950s pin up waterslide transfer of a very lovely lady on the front ( now called Betty ). I have been playing guitar for a long while so picked the basics of the uke up very quickly. I now have a Makala MKC Concert another cheapy but a nice instrument , a second Dolphin ( painted as the Who-kulele a whole other forum thread ) the third Dolphin that I am n the process of painting to sell on e bay, and am picking up a Kala Flame Maple Concert tomorrow( definitely not a cheap instrument and boy it sounds sweet...( was considering the tenor but the same number of frets, a mere 2 inches difference in string length and to me it slightly loses that Uke tone and starts to sound a little like a small guitar...each to their own ). So there you are in a short space of time I have 4 Ukes, and have sold my electric guitar to pay for my new Kala. ( will be keeping both my acoustic guitars though )
 
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This blurry picture is of Vera, my very first ukulele.

She's an Amigo tenor, and we'll get into that a bit more later.

I'm not sure what possessed me that fateful day in 2004 to drive the six miles across town and pay $78 for a ukulele. Probably a combination of Central California heat, graduate school insanity (I'd also bought an XBox and a special quilting sewing machine), and one too many viewings of Lilo and Stitch.

I also bought a beginner's chord book. I think I stuck with it for about nine days.

Between 2004 and 2010, I moved seven times. Vera moved with me every time, and I'd find a corner to stick her in, just in case I got the urge to try playing again.

Didn't get that urge until March this year, when I picked her up and did a Google for "Ukulele Chords".

Now, back to the Amigo brand-- not one I've ever seen mentioned on here. Probably because it stinks on ice. The sound's awful, the intonation's off starting at the 6th fret, and it won't stay tuned thanks to friction(less) pegs and a cracked headstock. Which is why Vera lives on a shelf and I bought Johnny in April of this year.

Because for all that she's a royal pain in my behind, I can't bear to part with her. She has witnessed some of the best and worst moments of my life from her perch on the shelf in all the houses I've lived in. And she brought me back to music at a time in my life when not only did I need it, I didn't think I'd ever get it back. She's going to stay up there on that shelf in honorable retirement.
 
My first ukulele wasn't my first ukulele.

The ukulele belonged to my father and since he went abroad a lot, I picked up the uke while looking for a Queen album in his closet. I looked at the cheap little plastic blue ukulele and was instantly smitten. I've lived a sad life where so far I've only fallen in love with ukuleles, hope I grow to love people soon too :D.
 
My first uke (see signature) allowed me to indulge my rock star fantasies.

My mom is a big classic rock fan who got me started on her favorite bands when I was really little, and from that time on, I've been a bit of a crazy fangirl when it comes to the bands I love. I always loved the idea of making my own music and performing, but my parents said no when I wanted to learn to play drums as a kid, my attempts at learning guitar went nowhere, and my voice is passable but not anything all that special. When I started playing uke, I finally had that satisfaction of making music rather than just listening to it. Granted, for the moment, I mostly perform to an empty living room, but I'm working on moving up to actual audiences :).
 
...it was my mothers she passed away last October...
I feel ya! It's been almost four years, in October, but it always reminds me of the beauty that Mom brought into my life. Before I start tearing-up (too late), my first memory of the ukulele was her pulling one off the wall at a condo we were vacationing in, four decades ago. It was meant purely as decoration, but she tuned it a bit, and absolutely wailed on it.

I believe she started playing when she was chasing my Dad, who was going to the University of Hawaii (before statehood). It was in her retirement that she became reacquainted with the instrument. She had acquired a couple ukuleles (early onset of UAS), and one went to my nephew, the other to me.

What was the question?

My first ukulele was an old baritone. It was my first stringed instrument, and the discovery process was painfully funny. The first surprise was finding out that it was tuned differently than other ukuleles. Took me weeks to figure that one out! The second was a bit later, taking it in for repairs, and finding out that it was a Martin. I didn't know that was significant. Then the other shoe dropped when I picked it up, and was told it was a fake!

Doesn't really matter to me. I loved the ukulele the moment I picked it up. Even before I learned it might be worth something, it already was worth something, to me. Although today the baritone not my daily hatchet, Mom is the reason I am here talking to you beautiful people today.

My heart goes out to you Keef.

Spirit does live on.
 
I am a relative newcomer when it comes to ukuleles. My first ukulele was a KoAloha soprano from MGM in March 2007. I probabaly went beyond the cost of a typical first instrument, but I had played guitar for 40 years so a stringed instrument wasn't totally foreign to me.

Getting that ukulele really opened my eyes that a ukulele is a real instrument and a very cool one at that. I moved on to tenor size ukes, but that soprano started it off.

The other good thing about that ukulele is that it got the opportunity to become someone else's first ukulele and everything that goes along with it.

John
 
Great thread!!

I bought my first uke on a whim at my local music store during late June of this year....a Lanikai LU-21T. Due to my hectic schedule and some work issues I did not actually start to learn to play until the beginning of July. I was instantly hooked. In the middle of July, I was taking a few days to travel from PA to KY and visit some local sites. I read all the great reviews of Mainland Ukes so I decided to purchase a classic mahogany tenor with the gloss finish and MOP tuners. I was already traveling 12 hours from PA to KY and Mike's shop was only about 1 1/2 hrs from my Louisville destination so I figured I might as well visit his shop and pick up my uke in person. It was a great experience. I love both of my ukes and I plan on keeping both of them.
 
I bought my first uke in 1981 to learn how to play a guitar that my folks gave me which I was having trouble with, so naturally, I opted for a baritone - a nice little Japanese import made to look like a Martin. It was a phenomenal feeling getting my first tunes together, and I finally felt confident enough to play guitar. I sold that baritone shortly after that to buy a 1947 Martin 00-17, a guitar I still own, but I never felt good about having sold it.

So, a couple of years later I bought a 1960 Martin style O soprano which I still have and I've been playing mostly uke ever since. Four more ukes later, I still miss that old baritone.
 
Mine was a sky blue plastic Mahalo. $25 bucks. I bought it as a novelty to decorate with stickers and drawings with coloured permanent markers.

I learnt some simple songs by people like Loudon Wainwright and Tripod (an Oz musical comedy trio), took it to parties with friends and family and played and sang with them for fun. After that I started incorporating it into some Sunday School classes I used to run and to my captive audiences in nursing homes!!!

I fell in love with it and have hardly played the guitar since.

An expensive habit but hey, a healthier one than drugs...

I could never part with it. Right now it's hanging up on the studio wall next to my pinball machine.
 
Mine was an Uilani by Pignose. I bought it when they had a special promotion at Costco, for $20.

I used it to play "White Sandy Beach" at my nieces wedding reception, so it's kinda special to me. :)
 
My first was a Kamaka gold label soprano w/OHSC purchased by my parents thru grade school music appreciation program—during 4th grade IIRC circa 1970s. The beautiful koa ukulele and golden-lined case came at a price less than $30US, but those were hard earned dollars back then, according to our folks. It meant a lot to me then own a brand new ukulele of my very own. As an aside our mother recalls the local chain drug store here even selling CF Martin ukulele for about $30 a piece...those were the days. Unfortunately she could not afford buying one for dad raising us keiki. So their buying Kamaka ukulele for us kids was really something special. I still remember dad affixing a piece of scotch tape on the back then writing our family name on it. Wonderful memories of dad picking tunes on it too...”Hilo March” one of his all-time favorite jalangalangs. Anyway, I still have this Kamaka soprano to this day...a fine piece of craftsmanship and loving family memories. Aloha!
 
My first ukulele purchase was a very special Collings UC3 K Concert. Yes, I know, I way over-spent on an instrument that I didn't know how to play, but it was so unbelievably beautiful – in sight and sound. This instrument was the actual one used for the primary ukulele photos on the previous Collings website; unfortunately all of the uke photos are no longer available on the site (Collings ceased production of ukuleles due to the time it took to make one at their quality level vs what they felt they could reasonably charge for one in the market). Surprisingly Collings is currently doing a one-off batch uke production run right now . . . hmmm.

Oh, such beautiful koa, you could get lost in the depths of the wood grain. And, I literally played the heck out of it – yes, there were lots of scratches and dings, none of which I minded because I bought it to play and its sound was just sublime. Later in 2010, I had some serious financial difficulties at the end of the mortgage crisis and was forced to sell it along with several other stringed instruments, but we did manage to keep my wife’s first uke, her Santa Cruz Custom Mahogany.

Fast forward to last winter, in early December one evening I was just scrolling through a few dealer’s websites before turning off the light for the night when I came upon another Collings UC3 K Concert – now, to be fair it was not the uke that I had sold, but it looked like a pretty darned good available replacement. Funny thing was that it was located at my local shop (the Denver Folklore Center) and I had not even noticed it when I’d last been in the store. I raced down the next morning and walked out with a very proper substitute for my beloved uke that I'd had to sell. Prior to this most recent purchase I had bought a few ukes along the way (see the signature below) but none of these were quite the same. Yet, here was the best Christmas present I could ever ask for.

Please know that I feel very, very lucky to have found another instrument that sings to me like this one does when I play it – this ukulele, along with my wife’s, are absolute keepers for the rest of our lives, regardless of any financial difficulties that may come up.
 
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My first ukulele was a Fender Nohea tenor purchased from Amazon. I knew nothing about ukuleles other than I liked the tenor size and that I had read the Koa was the best wood to use in a uke. I had some Amazon gift cards and my wife suggested that I buy one with them. The listing said "All Koa" (it's all laminate), and I thought the headstock shape was different and cool. So I bought it. I played it for about 3 months. It took a pair of vicegrips to play a first fret barre chord. Then I read about setups and action. I took it to an area music store that sold ukes and bought an Ohana TK-50G that I thought sounded quite good. And asked them to do a setup on my Fender as well as the Ohana. I also bought new D'Addario nylon strings for the Fender. It was somewhat easier to play after the tweeks. Then I put some Martin Fluorocarbons on it and that was better. But it still sounded boxy, and barres were still hard to play cleanly. Oh, and the fret ends were sharp. Built like a tank though.
 
My first ukulele a little over 6 years ago was bought on a whim, a Mahalo UT-30 for $60 that looked like my Fender Telecaster. My plan was to hang it on the wall next to my Tele, but a couple weeks later I received notice that the Los Angeles Music Center is having their annual Play-Along, this time for ukulele instead of guitar. I decided to join since I had a uke, but when I started to play it, I had a hard time forming chords. I played guitar for almost 50 years before and discovered the uke was a soprano, so I went to Sam Ash, tried out a few and decided that tenor is my size. I sold the Mahalo a few weeks later.


This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly West near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 5 acoustic bass ukes, 11 solid body bass ukes, 11 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 35)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
I believe my first ukulele was a wooden blue Classic soprano I bought from eBay for under $30. It was not as described. There was a seam open, a loose rib?, and the nut was broken. I removed the back glued on the rib? back on with wood glue, then glued the back on with same glue. I wrote the company that sold Classic ukuleles and asked them how much a new nut would cost. They mailed me a new nut, no charge. I played it several years, but did not keep it when I moved.
 
My first was, and still is, my Pono deluxe mahogany baritone that I found on eBay several years ago.

What it means to me? More than I ever expected, certainly! I originally bought it to be a short-term stand-in for an octave mandolin, because I could never quite find the short scaled OM I was after, and $300 was so much easier to drop than much more for an octave mandolin I didn't know if I'd like or not. But a quite unexpected thing happened. I became enamored of the nylon string sound. There was also something alluring and challenging about playing with direct finger contact on the strings, without a pick. The more I got used to that, the more I enjoyed it. And I eventually wound up with three tenor ukes as well.

So the Pono baritone was my "gateway drug" to the uke world. It still sits next to my desk (in its case, of course) and is my go-to instrument whenever I want to quickly grab one to play something, try out a tune, work on an arrangement, or whatever.

bratsche
 
My 1st uke brought me angst. It was a bari, the wrong size. The person who got it for me had no idea what he was doing, and neither did I.
But I didn't give up. I bought a concert size, and it meant that I could learn to play an instrument. IT meant that I could go to jam sessions and meet other new ukers, and experience the joy of trying to play together. It meant that I could learn to sing. I made lots of new friends, most of whom still play.
I had over a dozen new friends, very quickly, which has exploded to almost 100.
I didn't know it at the time, but it meant that I could be in 2 musical groups, the Ladies of Uke, which plays in ALFs and nursing homes and in fundraisers. Also, Ukers For Life, which plays in Shriner's Children's hospital and for hospice patients.
I also didn't know I would be hospice's first Certified Music Clinician, as a nurse.
It meant that I was brought closer to my late GF, who played bass....
 
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