Resources

Buying an ukulele

If you have the money to buy a really good ukulele right off the bat, your task is easy. But if, like most of us, you want to start with something a little cheaper, you have challenges.

My experience is that you can get a good learner ukulele for relatively little money ($60). However, you can also get a real piece of crap and I have one of those in the basement. I think there are two things to look for in a beginner ukulele.

Intonation

The whole process of learning is connecting your ear/brain to your fingers. In order for that to work the instrument has to be capable of actually producing the desired notes. If you get a note that is a little higher or lower than what you are supposed to get on certain frets then the connection never gets made.

So here is the thing: buy a chromatic tuner before you buy your ukulele! And then test every ukulele you look at. You want a chromatic tuner with numbers on the scale. It should have a mark in the middle to indicate when the note is right on and then plus and minus numbers on a scale on either side. Go to the store and go up the fret board playing each note.

Any ukulele worth buying should get the vast majority of notes right on the centre. Of the few that are off it should not miss notes by more than "ten cents". Ten cents is an expression meaning more than plus or minus 10 one hundredths off the note. When you buy your chromatic tuner, get the salesperson to show you where that is on your tuner. (A good store, by the way, should have tuners ready to lend you so you can do this test.)

If there are no stores in your area and you have to buy mail order, make sure you can return the instrument if the intonation is bad. (By the way, pay attention to how the tone is affected by how hard you push down. Some "intonation problems" vanish when you learn how to apply the right amount of pressure.

By the way, I strongly suggest that your first uke should be a concert-size. These are the second smallest of the common ukulele sizes. Purists will push for the soprano or standard size but the truth is that it is much, much harder to build a good soprano and you are much more likely to find a concert size with good intonation. And good intonation is absolutely essential. A boomerang that doesn't come back is just a stick and an ukulele with bad intonation is just a decoration for your wall.

Playability and my recommendation

This refers to how hard it is to press the strings down, how wide the neck is and other elements. The bad news here is that there are limits to how much of this you can figure out ahead of time. Worse, it will hurt at first. Pushing the strings down is hard until you build up muscles and skin thickness on your fingers.

If you have a friend who plays they can give you some guidance. There are some brands that are more reliable than others. I started with an Oscar Schmidt and I recommend it. It has an obvious downside in that the sound is a little dull largely because these ukuleles are built a little too solidly. On the other hand, that is a good thing for a beginner. But the intonation was good, better than anything else in the price range (you'll want to test anyway because even a good manufacturer will mess one up now and then).

Best of all, they are widely available so the odds are pretty good that the guitar shop in your town will have one.

If you Google around and visit message boads, you will notice some really savage reviews of Oscar Schmidt ukuleles. There is a simple reason for this: Oscar Schmidt are readily available and are a threat to a lot of people.

You'll find a concurring opinion here. And you'll find another here.