FAN-Tastic Ukulele Fretboard
Happy new gear day!! Well I finally did it. I got my first ukulele with a fan fretboard. I had been looking for one of these for awhile, but they were always sold out on Reverb and the custom made ones were not in scope since I wasn’t sure I would be able to easily play one and I didn’t want to fork out a lot of money.
This put the “need” to have one out of my mind for awhile until I saw an ‘Oli custom fan fret tenor being played on the Ukulele Site Sample channel on YouTube. It was gorgeous and of course sounded great being played by Kalei Gamiao.
The $1500 price was a deal breaker but it did compel me to check out Reverb again, where I discovered a handful of UMA Fan fret ukuleles for under $400. I never owned an UMA before but I have seen a few reviews online which gave them a thumb’s up. I am also familiar with their adorable bunny and bear sound hole ukuleles. (I think I might need one of those as well… hmmmnn… I digress.)
Uma is a Taiwanese company but this was ordered from a distributor in Southern California that operates on Reverb. They might have a local store since they have an option for picking up the purchase locally.
Anyway, I pulled the trigger on a concert sized fan fret ukulele. Here are a few photos from unboxing day as well as first impressions.
Great Look and Build Quality
The look and feel of the instrument is better than expected. It’s a glossy body with a solid spruce top and black walnut back and sides. The neck has a satin finish, topped off with a slotted headstock. Inside the body, the workmanship is very clean.
The sound hole is a beautiful mosaic of different woods. I was surprised to see a buffalo bone nut and saddle, but since it was made in China, that’s not uncommon.
My first impressions after strumming a bit was that I didn’t like the strings. Usually I change strings on a new ukulele right away but I left these on since they seemed fairly decent and not the usual cheap plastic or nylon strings. I did add a couple of strap buttons before testing.
Much to my surprise I didn’t need to adjust my fingerings much on the fretboard. It seems like the angle that you hold the instrument matters more than the fingering. As you move up the fretboard there is a little bit of adjustment needed if you forget the frets are angled. This happened during my demo and I left it in.
The frets are very low and really nice for slides. And the low G definitely feels better since the tension is a bit higher than normal. All the strings feel more balanced and I feel like I can pick all of them the same way. I will still change the strings but this set is good enough to give you an accurate feel for the instrument. The sound is nice and full for such a small instrument. I think different strings will help with the sustain.
(Recorded with an iPhone 13 mini. No audio adjustments.)
It comes with a nice gig bag and the size makes it easy to travel with on public transportation.
All in all, a nice addition to my collection.
THE SPECS:
Top: Solid Englemann Spruce
Back and Sides: Solid Mahogany
Scale: Concert
Fretboard: Engineered wood
Bridge: Engineered wood
Tuners: Taiwan DER JUNG Diecast
Nut and Saddle Bone with compensated saddle
Strings: D’addario
Slotted Headstock
Side position markers: 5th, 7th, 10th, 12th, 14th
Total Frets: 19