Baton Rouge UTW-C Wild Service Tree

As a ukulele teacher I thought I would upgrade to a tenor Uke so that my students could actually see what I am playing - I read and watched a lot of reviews - all raved about this model - then I was told to never buy a Uku from a big company as they don't look after the items when they dispatch them - when it arrived all though the strings rightfully were slackened it was perfect, after a good tune to stretch the strings it plays really well and seemed like it was set up perfectly - I have recommended the Baton Rouge UTW-C to some of my student.

I bought this ukulele as a present for my wife, looking for an all solid wood ukulele, that will be comfortable to play and not very expensive. At a first glance it looks very nice, but if look closer you will see flaws. It is expected at such a price, but still anoying. The nut was not filed flush with the neck and there is a protruding edge, that is catching your fingers. The tuners are very cheap and don't work that well. The finish has dust particles that were sprayed on and you can feel them running your hand on the body. It looks like the factory had a rushed order and QC was not very thorough. Intonation is not very good either, but it is fine for that kind of instrument, and probably due to poor factory strings. The frets on the other hand are very good, and it has a nice comfortable neck, a little bit on the narrow side. Soundwise it is excellent. Snappy and with good sustain, and I hope that the sound will improve over time being an all solid wood instrument - you can feel when you are playing that the whole body vibrates. All in all a good instrument that has a poor QC.

Edit: After some use I found that the nut was not cut properly and that was causing bad intonation. I did some work on it and now it has no problems with intonation, and is much easier to play. The dust particles polished themselves by playing it and moving it arround. I filed the protruding edges of the nut. So all in all after using it my impressions are much more positive, but it is definately not perfect out of the box. My only gripe now is the narrow neck, since I bought it for a beginner. I can manage it fine, but my wife, that is still learning basic chords, struggles, while our cheap stagg toy uke neck is easier for her.

Etwas besseres ist im Einsteiger-Segment glaube ich kaum zu finden. Die reco-Timber Serie macht es möglich, einheimische Hölzer zu verbauen. Bei der Elsbeere muss man minimal tiefer in die Tasche greifen, dafür klingt das Instrument wunderbar rund. Ich hatte 3x so teure Ukes, die weniger gut klangen. Als erstes, wie meistens, müssen die Werksaiten runter. Intonation ist sauber, das finde ich ist fast das wichtigste Kriterium. Super bespielbar, niedrige Saitenlage. Keine scharfen Bünde. Bei mir hat ein Bündchen etwas geschnarrt, das habe ich einfach abgefeilt. Generell ist es hilfreich, wenn man sich kleine handwerkliche Griffe zutraut, denn auch eine teure Ukulele kann aufgrund von Luftfeuchtigkeit/ Temperaturschwankungen mal herausstehende Bundstäbchen usw. haben.
Die Farbe der Tuner ist nicht so meins und sie könnten etwas geschmeidiger laufen, aber das fällt hier wirklich nicht ins Gewicht.
Meine Baton Rouge habe ich mittlerweile an eine Schülerin weitergegeben und bereue es irgendwie :)

Design, Anschlag, der Klang ist (Fichtendecke) - alles "super", Haptik der Mechanik ebenso. Das Preis-Leistung-Verhältnis stimmt für mich. Achtung: Wie auf dem Foto beim genauen Hinsehen erkennbar, ist der Korpus sehr leicht abgeflacht! Mehr "arm rest" kann man bei dem Preis m.E. auch nicht verlangen - immerhin, die sonst scharfe Kante ist abgemildert. Spiel gerne und freue mich jedesmal über Klang und Aussehen.