Loading ...More and more I’ve been seeing ukulele references in pop culture; Train’s “Soul Sister”, Eddie Vedder’s “Ukulele Songs”, a Tiny Tim reference in Insidious and recently I’ve seen a “Uke Jam” on my local Craigslist.
I knew I wanted to dabble into the uke world, but I had no idea where to start. There’s ukuleles in all shapes, sizes, voice ranges and prices. If I were to put a tag on the LM-T by Lanikai I’d call it the high end budget line of ukes. It sounds as beautiful as it looks, plays great and doesn’t cost a fortune.
The LM-T boasts a solid mahogany top, back, sides and neck and a rosewood fingerboard. The tuning pegs are vintage gold Klusons. Most importantly the uke came with a handy manual on how to get started. The tenor uke is a four stringed instrument tuned GCEA. The manual also showed me some easy chord shapes. Within minutes I was tuned up and already making music.
It helps if you have some basic guitar knowledge. Fretting techniques and strumming patterns are very similar. With a 1.4″ nut width and a 17.25″ scale it was tighter than strumming an acoustic guitar, but nowhere near as cramped as I thought, much easier to play than a mandolin.
Lanikai Ukuleles are distributed by Hohner Inc. and can be purchased straight from the website; http://www.lanikaiukes.com or at many local and online music shops. There are plenty of accessories available; tuners, cases, gig bags, stands etc.
Here’s a quick sound clip to give you an idea of it’s tone. Really listen to the bottom end and midrange this isn’t there on most ukes in it’s price range.
Web: http://lanikaiukes.com/laniblog/
Street Price: $249.00
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