RichM
Well-known member
I think the premise of the thread is kind of funny. Why do we "accept" cheap ukes on the market? We don't! We don't buy them, we don't recommend people buy them. If ever there was a forum recommending that people pay a few dollars more and get a quality instrument, it's UU, home of UAS. The best we can do is be good advisors to those who are considering a purchase and steer them in the right direction.
I recently helped a friend pick out her first uke. It was a lot of fun pulling down different ukes, explaining to her what the different sizes, parts, etc were, and why one uke was preferable to another. We were at an excellent music store, so there was no cheapie junk, and everything they had was set up reasonably well. She ended up with a Kala long-neck soprano, which I thought fulfilled all of the requirements of a starter uke: good intonation, playable action, and enough tone and volume to be a good musical experience. We paid a "bricks and mortar" price of about $120, and got a very nice musical instrument in the deal. That seems a very fair price to pay for a solid, basic instrument.
I recently helped a friend pick out her first uke. It was a lot of fun pulling down different ukes, explaining to her what the different sizes, parts, etc were, and why one uke was preferable to another. We were at an excellent music store, so there was no cheapie junk, and everything they had was set up reasonably well. She ended up with a Kala long-neck soprano, which I thought fulfilled all of the requirements of a starter uke: good intonation, playable action, and enough tone and volume to be a good musical experience. We paid a "bricks and mortar" price of about $120, and got a very nice musical instrument in the deal. That seems a very fair price to pay for a solid, basic instrument.