I do a lot of really dumb things. Fun, but dumb. Even though I've seen some really poor quality Pono's, when I saw a Tenor Ko'olau Pineapple uke on ebay, I had to get it. I was really sweating this purchase and wondering if the mother company of Pono had better quality control of their own products.
Today the uke came. I looked all over this uke and could not find one flaw. (with the exception of Aquila strings, although Ko'olau Golds were supposed to be on the uke) I studied and studied the uke and couldn't find one stinking flaw, not a drop of excess glue, no dents, dings or scratches, not even one speck of mouse fart. The frets are smooth, the finish perfect, the tuners smooth blah blah blah blah blah.
I'm glad I took a chance and decided to buy it despite my experiences with Ponos. Ko'olau needs to drop Pono or increase the quality control of Pono's ukes.
10 comments:
Wow. You suprise me my friend. I remember how our little buddy from Hawaii was talking about how he toured the factory and the builder was kind of an A-hole. Then with all the problems Pono has been having on top of that, you went ahead a took a chance on this uke. I am impressed and kind of glad. When I consider buying on of the K's I alway discount Koolau, thinking that I would'nt get the same quality as the others. Hopefully we'll see this in a video soon.
but how would you compare with this with Kala? i hear they make really good ukes too.
strange that it came with Aquilas and not the Golds. was it second hand? (no HJ)
Boozie - ACASI. until a company puts my Hate Bacon caricature on a fretboard, I'll keep my options open. Seriously though, my standards are way lower than his.
Russ - I was looking at pictures of the wine festival and I see it on display. I think MGM spent his plane trip back to Hawaii cleaning off Jake Hill's and Brittni Gardner's fingerprints and restringing it with whatever he had.
Deach, I dont know if you took that picture, or if it was the one MGM had up, but that is one good looking uke.
deach - lolz at brittni gardner
booze - put your thing away, that uke is clear across the country.
It can almost reach.
Hmm, I own 4 Pono ukeses. A Mango Tenor, a Mango Bari, a Mahogany Bari and an Ohai Tenor. All of these instruments are in perfect condition ("no blahs"!). I'm not so happy with the sound of the Ohai Tenor (I believe it's because the wood of the top is too thick), but it doesn't have any cosmetic issues. Maybe I was just lucky with the Ponos I bought? I have to admit that I haven't seen any other Ponos except the ones I own.
I have browsed the Ko'olau website recently and was surprised to find that they are not going to produce any more ukes made of koa, mango or ohai wood in the future, saying that they are going to concentrate on mahogany only because "it also sounds nice". (That's how I understood their message.) I can understand if they stop making ukeses out of koa for environmental reasons. But I thought mango wood was available in abundance and not endangered at all? The mango instruments are excellent and I think they were sold successfully. So why this? Does anybody know? I'm just curious...
BTW: Congrats, Deach! The Ko'olau Pineapple Tenor looks awesome! I bet it also sounds sweet. :-)
Now I want pineapple. And sample.
Did I mention that that is one good looking ukulele. Every once in a while i come back to this post just to look at that picture.
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