Merry Christmas everyone! After waiting for a week, my present arrived in which I placed it under the tree.
This ukulele is rather well known in the ukulele community as a loud, clear projection and overall solid ukulele. It is called the Anuenue MoonBird, or the model specifically, UT200. (Tenor size) The case is rather heavy and built like a tank. My arm was sore lugging this around on public transport. There are no straps on this case and you will have to rely on your arm strength alone.
What do we get when we unbox it? Opening the box, we see a beautifully coloured Spruce top ukulele nestled in soft furry padding. With flawless gloss finish, the top gleams as light hits on it. The ukulele has uneven bouts which give this series its signature “cutaway”-esque on the A string higher frets.
I love the glossy black head stop with ebony and a pearl inlay of the Anuenue logo. The ebony has some translucency to it in which you can see the beautiful grain underneath. You have Gotoh Planetary tuners which are geared tuners in form factor of friction tuners.
Further down is an ebony radius fretboard with wide frets. The traditional use of ebony, being a hard wood was to resist the bending from the tension of the strings on the neck. You will see the different moon phases as fret markers, ranging from New moon, to waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous to full moon. This compliments the maple rosette that is made to imitate the moon as well.
The back is a beautifully chocolate dark Indian rosewood with fairly parallel grain. It really is just so beautiful.
First impressions: I absolutely adore and love it! It is so beautiful. It is true what others say! This is a very loud ukulele. It reacts to very delicate touches. You can certainly project the sound far with this ukulele. It has a long sustain and a resonance that you feel is bouncing around the box desperate to escape through the sound hole. It has a bit more clarity than the all acacia concert ukulele.
The plan is to mess with this ukulele when it still has the high G, then throw on a low G string. The concert will remain high G so I can practice and play more repertoire. Sound samples of high G and low G to follow! New ukulele days are always so exciting. Have any of you unboxed a new instrument?