What's the worst sounding uke you have ever played.

garyg said:
You know this is kinda like a "who's got the ugliest kid" contest in a room of parents <g>.
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Then I have a gorgeous looking kid who sounds like I imagine Julia Child would sound like performing "Over the Rainbow." Bamboo uke. Never again.
 
Kohala concert at Costco Hawaii. I don't have a very discerning ear but even Helen Keller would have returned that one!
 
I have two. First one is a soprano from ron jon's surf shop in orlando or somewhere in florida a student brough in and the other is a epi les paul.
 
haolejohn said:
I have two. First one is a soprano from ron jon's surf shop in orlando or somewhere in florida a student brough in and the other is a epi les paul.
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My daughter as the epi les paul concert. It's very quiet until plugged in to an amp. After two months the original strings shot though, getting some Aquilas this weekend.
 
I kind of want to buy any of your ukes if you actually own them. From the stories I've read... My best offer is $5
 
My mom has an old soprano with a plastic fretboard. I think it was a Harmony. I never really gave it much of a chance, but when I played it, it sounded dreadful, the tuners couldn't hold and the intonation was off. Perhaps next time I'll throw some new strings on and fix the tuners and see how it plays. I think we got it at a souvenir shop 30 years ago in Hawaii.
 
I don't have near the experience that others have, but the worst I have encountered so far is my Lanakai LU-21S...BEFORE I performed surgery on it. It had a plastic nut whose slots were terribly cut, and a horrible plastic saddle that was too high, so thin that it was canted at an angle from the pressure of the strings, and the bottom was as rough as a snow-packed road in the dead of a Laramie WY winter.

I replaced both with bone spares I had on hand. Correctly cut the string slots on the nut--had to tweak this a few times before I got it right due to my inexperience with the vastly different string diameters of a ukulele compared to guitar strings. Created a saddle that stood straight and actually made constant contact with the bottom of the bridge slot. I had to lower the saddle to bare minimum to compensate for the terrible neck angle.

Now it's much louder and it's tone is really not bad at all for a $50US uke.

Of course it doesn't hold a candle to my newly acquired Mainland Mango Soprano. :)

Just goes to show that sometimes not giving up on something can bring rewards.

Doug
 
Easy, it was the really cute uke that I bought at Hilo Hatties. It even showed chord diagrams on the back of the box. It's plastic with decorations. I'd never played so I used my husband's tuner he'd bought with his Kala tenor at a "real" ukulele store in Hilo. I tuned it and tuned it and it wouldn't even come close to holding the strings in tune. I've never heard a sound like what came out of that ukulele. I gave it to the 3 yr old granddaughter when we got home. She used it more as a hammer -- worked welll that way. I broke down and bought her a Dolphin when she turned 5 and put good strings on it. She plays and it doesn't hurt our ears. We took another cruise and I took their lessons and then bought a Kamaka pineapple in Honolulu. (However it doesn't have those cool decorations that the other one had.)
 
Jnobianchi said:
Hands down - the $20 Hilo. Thick top, poor intonation, bad frets, and not even nice looking. You get what you pay for with that one, but you can take it anywhere and if you forget it, no one's going to cry.
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My niece has one of these and it was truly dreadful, frets not set or level, action almost high enough to shoot arrows with. But after a few hours and a new set of Aquilas it was pretty much....playable. So I gave her my LU21C and she's really taken to the uke.
 
The little Tara soprano I bought a few weeks ago. They're still on sell on ebay. Do not get!
Ernest
 
Ronnie Aloha said:
Kohala concert at Costco Hawaii. I don't have a very discerning ear but even Helen Keller would have returned that one!
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my daughter won a Kohala concert in a sweepstakes, and hers is pretty nice she loves it. (mabee a differnt model? )the neck feels very nice and the wood is pretty. nice geared tuners, not fabulous sounding but ok. the bag that came with it was only cloth with 0 padding but Im goign to fix that


I think the $25 Rogue (from musicians friend) that I got her to start out on was not bad sounding but terrible issues, the fret edges very sharp, bad tuners, action very high. but the worst thing was that the fret spacing is way off from the nut and first fret. I lowered the action adn am goign to install a 0 fret. other than that the neck and body shape is light and nice. and it came with a very nice bag. once I have it all tweeked it may be a nice lil uke.

I have to say as bad as that one was , the beginner $45 Mahalo I tryed out in the local music store seemed much worse, that thing was realy rough made. very high action worse than the rouge, and 'clunky' feeling and dead sounding, the finish all 'drippy' and incomplete, looked like it was put together in someones high school shop class and they got a D on the project.
 
That would be my Dixie banjolele as it was when I got it. Someone had cut the skin out and replaced it with the lid from a coffee tin! Yeah... that sounded good ;-/
 
allanr said:
That would be my Dixie banjolele as it was when I got it. Someone had cut the skin out and replaced it with the lid from a coffee tin! Yeah... that sounded good ;-/
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Believe me, mine didn't sound any better, and it did not contain the lid from a coffee tin. I sent it to Tudorp, who managed to get it to the point where it was almost bearable to listen to, though not quite. I've heard okay-sounding Dixies online, so clearly, there is some magic word or gesture that I simply don't know.
 
While it might be unfair to mention the brand - I had a look at a uke a while ago it had a nut were the strings sat proud on the tiniest notches and highest of all was the good old C string.
When attempting to strum softly that C string really boomed out. If you strummed hard an open A string would jump out of it's notch.
I handed it back it to the music shop asistant who blamed my bad technique and then fetched the owner who harangued me for bothering his staff when I didn't want to buy, damn right I didn't want to buy from him - EVER. Thing is they are usually a reasonable quality brand and often the only brand carried by local music shops.
 
willisoften said:
While it might be unfair to mention the brand - I had a look at a uke a while ago it had a nut were the strings sat proud on the tiniest notches and highest of all was the good old C string.
When attempting to strum softly that C string really boomed out. If you strummed hard an open A string would jump out of it's notch.
I handed it back it to the music shop asistant who blamed my bad technique and then fetched the owner who harangued me for bothering his staff when I didn't want to buy, damn right I didn't want to buy from him - EVER. Thing is they are usually a reasonable quality brand and often the only brand carried by local music shops.
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That would have ticked me off.
 
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