Fender say the C shape gives it 'comfort', but I personally disagree with a small ukulele. The profile is rounded C shape that I don't like on a soprano though the nut width is a reasonable 35mm. The neck is made of Nato (another generic term for any wood from the Mora family and is another giveaway on a cheap ukulele) and is made of three pieces with a heel and headstock joint. The finish also makes it hard to tell how it is constucted, but I think the top and dead flat back are single pieces, whilst the sides are a pair. The finish is very uneven with darker patches in places and plenty of bubbles and flaws. More precisely, it's a term used for Linden wood (The Lime tree) and is very cheap, light and, well, utterly unremarkable as a tone wood! This one is stained in a cherry red colour, but is also available in black and 'natural'. Fender specify this as 'basswood', so that's a pretty generic plywood description. An Ashton or a Mahalo it is not! Saying that though there are a heck of a lot of tooling marks, scuffs and scratches on this example which would trouble me, regardless of the price. At first glance it doesn't really stand out against the many other coloured cheaper laminate ukuleles that fill the lower priced market, but it is reasonably well put together I suppose. This is a standard shaped and rather plain looking soprano made of all laminate wood. They just sponsor an America's Got Talent person instead. For me it leaves Fender completely outside the ukulele community and you would have thought they would be knocking down doors to be on the racks alongside the other true great names in the ukulele world. That may be the reason (and I am happy to be corrected) but for us mere consumers it just looks really odd and from what I am told, most of the uke specialists probably wouldn't carry them even if they could because uke fans don't tend to want them anyway. Small specialists just can't carry all that stock.
#Fender ukelele full#
I am told that a big part of that is down to how Fender work with dealers, and that they may expect them to carry big stocks and their full lines, guitars and basses included. That is compounded by the fact that whilst you will find their ukes in the big name high street music stores (who, it must be said, in many cases stock ukuleles just to be 'on the bandwagon'), you just don't really see Fender ukes in the real ukulele specialist ukulele stores. As such I just don't consider them a true ukulele maker either. As an electric guitar player I hold them in the highest regard (and have owned several, and still do own a lush American deluxe Stratocaster I would run into a burning building to save!), but I have never been totally taken with them as acoustic builders.
(groan.)īut Fender have troubled me in other ways when it comes to ukuleles too.
You probably saw it last year in the endless press spots of Grace VanDerWaal who 'apparently' is now a Fender player and for whom they are releasing a line of 'signature models'. The Venice goes to the other end of their new-ish range of ukuleles named after Californian beaches and is their entry level soprano. I couldn't have personally lived with it due to that lack of response, but it wasn't a wholly bad ukulele at all. Whilst the Montecito was somewhat on the quiet side, it was very well put together and had a pretty tone to be fair. Prior to reviewing that model, I had actually played quite a few Fender ukes and they had always completely underwhelmed me for being over built and very bland on tone. That first Fender ukulele to feature was the top of their current line in the form of the Montecito Tenor, and it surprised me a little.
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