Bass ukeleles

[Kiwi]

Had a go on one of these yesterday.



It was truly terrible. Buy one and you will be totally disappointed. The intonation was shocking, absolutely impossible to tune up on open strings and play a note in tune. The E string was a non event.

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='990795' date='Oct 17 2010, 12:48 AM']Had a go on one of these yesterday.



It was truly terrible. Buy one and you will be totally disappointed. The intonation was shocking, absolutely impossible to tune up on open strings and play a note in tune. The E string was a non event.[/quote]
This is surprising because all the other reports have been positive, for example:

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=93168&hl=ukulele"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=...&hl=ukulele[/url]

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=91933&hl=ukulele"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=...&hl=ukulele[/url]

[Kiwi]

Thats surprising also. The one I played couldn't even have been used for fun.

[squire5]

I watched 'The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain' on the Cambridge folk festival that was shown on Sky Arts last night.There was a Bass Uke involved in that and it sounded fine.Hell,he even did a bass solo on it.They did some weird stuff,namely an Acapella version of 'Pinball Wizard' and a rockin version of 'Oops I did it again'

[Owen]

My experience has been totally different to this (yes I know I sound like a scratched record). I have used mine in Jazz settings ( [url="http://www.myspace.com/huwwarrenmusic)"]http://www.myspace.com/huwwarrenmusic)[/url] as well as the National Folk Orchestra of Wales and numerous other smaller settings. It has been greeted with nothing less than rabid enthusiasm by very experienced musicians who certainly would not just say nice things to my face to humour me.

Kiwi, the one you played might well have been a duff one, but I have played duff P basses and would not choose to tar the whole of P bass world by that one dodgy one I played.

"The intonation was shocking, absolutely impossible to tune up on open strings and play a note in tune."

Again my experience is the polar opposite. The intonation at the 12th fret on mine is not bang on but shocking is not a word I would use. I can quite happily tune mine on open strings and both my Polytune and iStrobosoft apps are more than happy to tune it acoustically. If it was a new one then yes the strings need time to settle, like any strings, but definitely non metal ones.

"The E string was a non event".

Dead string? Certainly not an issue on mine.

I am not looking for any sort of conflict here, each to their own and it would be pretty tedious if we all played Gibson EBO basses and nothing else but to diss a whole model line so publicly as you did on the initial post is I think slightly unfair. Your experience, while quite possibly true for the one you played was presented as a factual analysis of the whole line.

[Kiwi]

Oh well, there we go. Completely different experiences.

[dlloyd]

[quote name='Crazykiwi' post='990795' date='Oct 17 2010, 12:48 AM']It was truly terrible. Buy one and you will be totally disappointed. The intonation was shocking, absolutely impossible to tune up on open strings and play a note in tune. The E string was a non event.[/quote]

Was it brand new?

All my ukes (soprano, concert, baritone) were difficult to tune at first as the nylon strings take a while to settle in. I imagine there is a similar issue with the bass uke strings.

[Kiwi]

Yeah it was, I just tried it in a shop so don't have the benefit of long term ownership like some on the forum. The bridge definitely needed looking at for intonation and action.