Review Details

Pono Mahogany Baritone Deluxe (MBD 6647 Free Hard Case!)

Product Rating:

Product Rating
Price
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Quality
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Value
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Product Review (submitted on December 29, 2012):

Mine is a second that I purchased a few weeks ago. It took me quite a while to figure out what made it a second, and of course it didn't affect the playability or sound.

So, how is the uke? This is an excellent ukulele and I would have been quite happy with it even at the regular price, let alone the deal I got on the second. If some ABD seconds don't show up soon I will probably have to break down and purchase an ABD at full price. I want to string the ABD reentrant (high-D) and keep this one in standard baritone tuning.

That speaks a lot for how good this ukulele is, that I want to keep it in standard tuning - usually I am not satisfied with the tone on the low-D string of baritones but this body manages to resonate down there quite nicely. I bought this expecting to restring it reentrant. The best way I can describe this uke is that the response is balanced even down to the open low-D - without getting "sloppy" there the way some baritones do. As a guitar player I tend to think of this as my "little, comfortable guitar" because it is in that linear tuning. LOL (Actually, it sounds much better than my classical guitar, now that I think about it.)

The Ko'Olau strings that came on it I am not quite as enthusiastic about. Actually, the low-D is not bad aside from being typically squeaky. The G seems even squeakier than usual for a wound string but to be fair it could be my imagination and my disdain for wound strings and the fact that I know a wound string really isn't necessary for the G.

Interestingly, the unwound strings exhibit some of the same temperature sensitivity that I've noticed with the Ko'Olau Gold strings (going sharp as they warm up the first few minutes of playing). On the Ko'Olau Gold strings I live with that because I adore the tone but I am not especially fond of the tone of these unwound strings. Also, since only two of the four strings are changing the tuning drift shows up much more obviously on the baritone than it does on my Ko'Olau Gold-strung sopranos.

I will probably end up using the fluorocarbon strings on the G,B, and E that I've used on other baritones and that leaves me needing only the single wound string for the D.

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