So my good wife has offered to buy me an instrument for Christmas. :? I'm looking at a small instrument I can keep around the house to fool around on.

I played a Yamaha guitalele and enjoyed the familiarity of six strings but is labelled at R2000 which is ambitious in my mind. Does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap, decent sounding uke or a better source for a Yamaha GL1?

Those Ibanez exotic wood ukes are superb for around 1200 (on special if I remember correctly)
Played one at Toms Braam the last sale they had and I was blown away! It's also got a build in pickup.
Otherwise the Aria Uke I have is pretty great too for cheaper. It doesn't have a pickup but it's a lot of fun to just jam on.
Kala and Lanikai also make some nice entry level stuff

peterleroux wrote: So my good wife has offered to buy me an instrument for Christmas. :? I'm looking at a small instrument I can keep around the house to fool around on.

I played a Yamaha guitalele and enjoyed the familiarity of six strings but is labelled at R2000 which is ambitious in my mind. Does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap, decent sounding uke or a better source for a Yamaha GL1?

I got a GL1 and I'm very fond of it! It travels like a champ and it quite a quality item.

R2k is ambitious price, but indicative of the exchange rate I guess. Cheapest source I found was Thomann for around 50Euro's - but I was on the road and bought one from a brick's mortar store in Amsterdam for around 65Euro's. Luckily they had about 10 in stock so I could pick the sweetest one - there was quite a difference in looks and smaller difference in tone (impossible to judge till you bin the factory strings, they are awful).

Like Chocklit mentions, Aria make a 6 string guitalele too, I've seen that around 1k or so - not tried it out yet.

Thanks for the input, I'll visit a few music shops this weekend and try out their ukes.
Any recommendations for strings?

peterleroux wrote: Thanks for the input, I'll visit a few music shops this weekend and try out their ukes.
Any recommendations for strings?

I prefer high tension on the standard size nylon string - as the GL1 the factory strings are awful, I've tried a set of savarez high tensions. They were a vast improvement, but didn't last all that long (6 weeks). Then a set of D'Addario Pro Arte Composite Flamenco high tensions, which lasted forever & sounded ok, but the trebles were like piano wire on the fingers. Currently got a set of EJ45 Pro-Arte Nylon (normal tension), which feel similar to a high tension string on a normal size guitar and seem fairly balanced in volume.

I'll probably try a set of normal tension Pro Arte Composites next, they tend to last forever.

I got a new Tanglewood uke from marshall music around 2 years ago. nice little soprano with a cutaway and some form of transducer and preamp system. Cost me R700. All laminate (ply wood is a more fair description), but it's sturdy and sounds reasonable (it's no Cole Clark tho )

I use magma uke strings. D'Addario's aren't bad either. We're pretty limited in terms of strings locally though.... Music stores tend to carry average/crappy brands for ukes, mandos and banjos.... :'(