Benny on the Uke

The history of the ukulele is quite literally a history of woods. The ukulele was introduced to Hawaii by  Portuguese immigrants in the 1880s . They brought a Portuguese instrument called the machete to the island, and the Hawaiians renamed it the "ukulele" which literally translates to "jumping flea." There are several theories about the name, and my personal favorite is that "ukulele" was  a nickname for an English officer  who himself resembled a jumping flea, and also played the machete. But the ukuleles that people got to know and love in the 20th century were different from the Portuguese  machetes played  by Officer Jumping-Flea. The machetes often had  softwood tops, such as pine or spruce , like guitars. Those soft woods grew on the Portuguese island of Madeira, but Hawaii's tropical ecosystem is different. Hawaii is home to many hardwoods, including koa, a tree in the acacia family. This wood was abundant in Hawaii at the time, and it is ...

The following is a story of how I learned to like friction tuners. If you want to read an in-depth review of two types of tuners - the Grover 6's and the Gotoh UPT's - or if you like reading about ukuleles in general, then please read the whole thing. If you want to see some very basic recommendations, please skip to the last paragraph. *** My first uke and the friction tuner problem The first ukulele I owned was like many people's first: it was an actual toy. Because I didn't have a reference point yet for the many things that make some ukes better than others - things like the intonation, feel, playability, or even the weight - the first thing that I noticed about it was how hard it was to tune it. Every time I got it tuned to GCEA it seemed to slip out of tune. And tuning it up again was always time-consuming. The next uke I got was slightly more expensive, though not by much - it was an Oscar Schmidt ,  definitely a cheap uke rather than a toy uke. When I p...