Recording King RU-998 Metal Body ukelele

Only just bought this ukulele, and played it for the first time in a Christmas concert last night. As delivered it is reasonably well set up, the strings were already partially tensioned so settled in quite quickly. It looks stunning and sounds really good. So why only three stars? Well there are three reasons.



Firstly, and major reason is that, despite what the BAX website says, this is NOT a TENOR ukulele, it is a CONCERT size. It has virtually the same overall length as my Islander Concert Ukulele and the fret spacing from nut to 12th fret is definitely concert size at about 19cm , considerably smaller than the 22.5cm length of both of my Tenor Ukes.



Secondly - for an instrument of this price the friction peg tuners are not good quality - not the worst I have ever seen, but not very smooth to use, so tuning is a chore. I replaced them with a set of Grover friction pegs.



Finally - the fret markings are not repeated down the edge of the fretboard. A sad omission for a ukulele of this price.



All that said, I am actually very pleased with this purchase. The concert size makes the tone brighter, which I think is good on a resonator. It really looks the part with it's chrome finish, and belts out plenty of sound without being too over the top in our ukulele orchestra.



I don't know what make of strings are on it as supplied, but they sound pretty good, I don't feel in any hurry to change them.