Baritone Ukulele, Solid Mahogany

Well, its a bit too soon to tell about this Baritone uke, but, here's whats happened so far....I really would not recommend anyone to buy a uke online, sight unseen, and having not tried it outbefore you buy!...BUT, I did just that, so that might not be saying to much about my expertise onuke's..Look, I went to a few of the MAJOR music stores in my area that are very well equipped withmusical instruments for sale. But, they simply did not have any BARITONE ukes to sell me!.All they had was soprano, concert or tenor ukes, which I did not want.SO....what to do!..I simply "threw caution to the wind"and decided to buy online from Amazon,who is the only online dealer that I would trust my money with!... the first baritone uke they sent mei had to send back due to poor workmanship on the uke. Amazon gladly took it back, paid for shippingsince it was a defective uke, and I proceeded to order another baritone uke from Amazon.This time, after doing as much research as I possibly could, I decided on this KOLOA baritone ukewhich I've had now for about one week. Its ALL Mahogany and sounded pretty darn good to me.But, what do I know,since I"m new to ukes.So, yesterday I went to a jazz guitar performance featuring Bucky and John Pizzarelli, father andson, guitar virtuoso, EXTRAORDINAIR!... and, before they performed I asked them to pleasetake a look at my precious baritone uke and tell me their thoughts on it.Bucky played the uke and told me it was a very fine bariton uke. Then, his son, John wanted tosee the uke, so I handed it to him and he proceeded to get sounded out of it that stunned meto no end!...simply great sounds!.. of course Johns a Pro and his papa also!.. and John thentold me he LOVED THE UKE. so, look, maybe they were just trying to nice to me, since I wasthere to hear their permormance, but, I did love the sounds that were coming out of this"purchased, sight unseen" and can happily say that I did make a very sound purchasewith this terrific Koloa baritone ukulele.End of story!...so excuse me now, I've got some practicing to do on my great soundingKOLOA baritone uke. Right now, I'm up to Dm7, G7 dim and a few others thatI"ve got to memorize.And, YES, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS GREAT BARITONE UKE!....

Very disappointed. this item was listed as brand new but the packaging was opened. this item has scratches all over it and one of the strings is fraying at the bridge and hanging down several inches. this item was clearly not new and I feel like I have been ripped off.

This was my first experience with a baritone-sized ukulele and one of Koloa brand, but I have several ukuleles and guitars including solid wood instruments. I ended up going through three of these trying to find one that did not have some kind of problem until I decided to give up and sent each one back. All of them had finish problems. These ukuleles has a gloss finish and a dark stain, but there were patches where they did not stain and/or varnish the instruments - on the instruments I received, they were at the body edge or on the soundboard near where the body met the neck. These areas were about a centimeter or more in length. Also they arrived with scratches in the finish, some worse than others. I think the varnish the manufacturer used was not allowed to dry and harden long enough before they shipped them out of the factory or they used substandard varnish. I have instruments with glossy finishes that have hardly scratched and weren't "pre-scratched" for me - I can do that on my own, thanks. One of the instruments had a buzz on the 3rd string. One of them had a back that was not bookmatched. Two of them had a nice deep sound because of the depth of the body and one had a brighter sound because its action was higher. The inside bracing of one looked like it had either black marker or mold spots. Overall I thought the sound was pretty good but to me personally the deeper sounding ones had poor dynamic range - they were very focused in the bass and everything sounded sad/mellow on them. The brighter instrument was more fun and had more variation but strangely enough it was the one that developed the buzz. I know most reviewers have nothing but high praise for these instruments but my experience was different. It was a big disappointment because I had been admiring these on amazon for a while. I'll probably try a solid-top baritone in the same price range or a different all-solid next. If I wanted a throw around instrument maybe I would have kept one of these but at this price it's not really a throw around and who really wants to throw around a solid instrument?

Thought I'd take a punt with this solid mahogany baritone uke despite the slightly average experience I had with another uke from Amazon. This time though it was packed incredibly well. Boxed within a box.Speed of delivery was incredible. I ordered this on tuesday afternoon and it arrived friday just after lunch. It was shipped from Philidelphia. I live in New Zealand. The delivery cost is actually cheaper than it would have been for me to put gas in my car to drive somewhere to buy it (if you could actually find one here in NZ, let alone for that price).The uke itself is solid mahogany. Is not in perfect condition. There are a few minor finishing blemishes. But no dents or scratches or faulty parts. The strings aren't to my taste. Daddario's - just a bit too wound-guitar sounding. Will change to Hilo's. The nut is a little sharp on the edges and cuts into fingers - will have to sand down I think. Action is pretty good. Nice warm full sound. Brighter and fuller than my Makala mahogany laminate cheapie.I was sold on the price for a solid mahogany uke but have to admit the Hawaiian sounding name helped also. The power of marketing eh? If it was called Chang or Smith I probably wouldn't have touched it. But is in fact 100% made in China which I guess is the main reason its so cheap. So I suppose at this price some of the finishing issues can be ignored.OVerall a nice instrument. Should sound great with a new set of strings.