Baz your site and reviews have been really helpful while choosing ukes!!, that Im happy i picked. Keep the great work!

Those Makalas can be great little ukes, my daughters both have them. Enjoy Smouldering Uke! If you see Stanley Sokolow, Rhan Wilson or Rick Zeek, say "Hi" from me :-)

Can't go wrong with Southern Ukulele Store.

Yes, I've played a couple of nice Enya ukes. I don't have a problem with where they are made, there are some fabulous instruments coming out of China (including my own signature model uke!)

Yes, you could be right about the nut, just eyeballing it it's not parallel to the frets!

There are a couple of those in the house, that my kids have, and they're so much better than the uke in the video!

Yeah, my 2 ukes are now decorations on the book case.👍

I once heard that cheap ukes like this were only good a background props in silent movies 😵‍💫👍

I have the best cheap ukuleles for china....worst I have is Pono Mango consert , thick plastic varnish and top too thick 4mm ...big job me to fix...and it is 375 euro ukulele ? 🤬

Same on the uke, but not on this one!

@@PhilDoleman I found someone who did a fix on the intonation. He filed down the grooves on the nut to lower the action and he got new strings. His name is dizzy dad and his video is titled "Martin Smith UK 222 BK (A Total New Jack's Review)""

All true, and if you know that's why you're buying, then it can be a great way of learning, setup skills.

I've not come across the Melody Minor, but I'm sure it'll come up a treat. If you don't already, keep an eye on Andy Eastwood's Marketplace, there are often Dallas ukes for sale there.

@@PhilDoleman Yeah we know Andy. He is tutoring my wife on the uke.

There are many videos about how to change strings out there. Really there is nothing to be afraid of. Just watch through a couple and do it!

@@emba4535 That's encouraging. I will check out some restringing videos. Thx

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, both with cheap ukes and with buying on Amazon (or similar drop-shippers). I could have got lucky and the review may well have been very different, but I got what I got. If I had bought it from a reputable dealer, this one would never have been sold, so whilst it might have cost a bit more I would have been guaranteed to be a good one. With many thinks at the low end, price wise, the biggest issue is quality control.

@@PhilDoleman Totally agree, I was lucky, you were not. My granddaughter has a Martin Smith that she leaves here with us, and that is perfect too, and as they say, two out of three ain't bad. Love the videos by the way :)

I just checked, and yes it is! I've never come across the Joy, I'll have to check that out.

@@PhilDoleman Sadly I think Clas Ohlsen has gone bust, so we'll probably never see any Joys again.

Hope yours is better than the one I got!

Thanks. I love the polytune. I'm actually going to get the unitune model (without the polyphonic feature) to keep in my uke case, and leave this one in my guitar case for easy polyphonic tuning on that.

I need one that can be clearly seen outdoors, are the Polytune or Unitune models good for this please? 😊

Cool, you don't have to spend a fortune to get a perfectly good uke nowadays. I still regularly play one that cost me £60!

Of course, the very cheapest instruments are what my last two were: A 4-string Tenor banjo in good condition, dating from the fifties probably, that I haven't even needed to change the strings for, for a TENNER; and a Baton Rouge 8string tenor uke which has been sent to me gratis out of the blue from someone I don't know that well! But I've had to buy several other instruments in the past.

@@ukeleleEric Yes, the Dolphins can be decent, and I've played some good Octopus (octopi?) ukes too. I have a 'shop soiled' (nothing wrong with it at all!) solid mahogany Bruko that cost me £60 from the now long gone 'Ukulele Shop' and I still play to this day. My best deal was the £5 worth of raffle tickets than won me a luthier-made solid koa concert :-)

Aquila's can really bring a uke to life. A better uke would probably sound better in many ways, but the good news is that these days 'better' doesn't have to cost a lot!

It's a mahogany soprano by Millar. You can see it here... worldofukes.co.uk/soprano-ukuleles/millar-pd-210mn-all-solid-mahogany-soprano-ukulele-phil-doleman-signature-model

I'm afraid the uke is long gone, along with any measurements.

No, and not even straight. The nut was a little out of place too.

It's a TC Electronic polytune clip.

@@PhilDoleman thanks I have Attached stark and wanted to check as I have confirmation to check mine

I'm afraid I've no experience of the Tiare Tanglewood ukes, but several students own Baton Rouge and I've been quite impressed with them.

I think I'll go with the Baton Rouge then! My current soprano is a £20 amazon job. Thankfully I have a reasonable concert but I'm still trying to buy more ukes?

@@ClumsyBumble You're not alone there!

I don't know if they are linked, but I've played a couple of nice, inexpensive Laka ukes.

I have a Laka VUT-40 which was bought from a well know London ukelele shop. The intonation isn't absolutely perfect once you get up to the twelfth fret but it's pretty good overall and sounds great. I recently visited a relative who had found a ukelele dumped in the street and gave it a try. I've no idea of the brand but it was a navy blue soprano. I was unable to get it in tune and chords sounded awful, just like the uke in this video. I could see it would put off any beginner.

Absolutely, though there's a whole new video to be made about the possible pitfalls there :-)

Thing is, it's brand new, it shouldn't need fixing!

You never know, you might get lucky. The poor quality control means that some of them will probably play in tune!

@@PhilDoleman oh, ok! thank you!

I completely agree, though as I point out, most at least have been tuned at some point to be checked. A reputable shop that had made adjustments would have tuned the instrument to pitch, even though it would need adjusting for a while until it settled. What shocked me was that this instrument appeared to NEVER have been tuned up to pitch, and it certainly isn't normal to receive an instrument with no tension in the strings (if it were a second hand instrument that would immediate make me think that the seller was tring to hide something like a lifting bridge or bowing neck). Allowing the strings to settle in will never make a poorly constructed instrument play in tune. As far as the strings not being any good, In this video I am assuming the buyer wants to play what they bought. If the manufacturer cannot put decent enough strings on it, then that again shows me they really don't care about it being playable. A set of Worth strings in the UK cost almost as much as the uke! Replace them straight away and this uke then costs around £30, and still will never play in tune due to the bridge/nut/frets not going properly placed. The reason I made this video is because I see ukes like this on Facebook posts all the time, with people asking "Is this any good?" and pre-pandemic I had students come to my house every day with unplayable instruments dropped-shipped from Amazon. There's no misinformation in this video, I understand how strings work (I've been a gigging musician for over 30 years). No amount of allowing these strings to stretch or replacing them with a known brand will fix the problems with this instrument.

@@PhilDolemanThe very important abouth this information for us ( better knowing ) is that a beginner needs a good instrument that sounds greath so they are inspired to continue playing. I allways urge parents to invest in a good instrument for the child interesting in music.

@@ronaldberg4588 Absolutely!

I'm in the UK, but looking on Amazon.com, around $20 www.amazon.com/Martin-Smith-UK-222-Soprano-Ukulele/dp/B077F1G21S