Batking fretless ubass,30 inch baritone electric ukulele bass,Electric Acoustic Bass Ukulele Wtih Gig Bag

Love this bass…Plays and sounds great!

The pickup only picks up the middle two strings sound, so the lowest and the highest string are pretty much 50 percent less volume.

Some years ago I bought one of the first Kala U-Basses, a well made instrument that I enjoyed playing and even used on a gig once. I sold it a while back, as it wasn’t being played, but recently I thought it might be fun to have one for travel and sofa jamming. Kalas are still on the expensive side, and this time I thought I’d see what you can get while paying as little as possible. This was the cheapest bass ukulele I found on Amazon, and for the money, it’s not too bad.I chose a fretless uke as fret placement is very critical on a scale this short, and most instruments get it wrong. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ukulele of any sort under $200 that played in tune all the way up to the 12th fret.) The stretchy strings make it even harder to play a fretted bass ukulele in tune, but with a fretless instrument you can easily compensate for that.The fingerboard has very little crown, but that doesn’t seem to cause too many problems. What does cause problems is that the strings are too low on the bass side- the E is actually lower than the G! Playing requires a light touch to keep the low E from rattling against the fingerboard.About the preamp, and the electronics in general: They’re good enough for home use. The built in tuner is very handy, the tone controls work, and both a 1/4” and Canon-type low-Z connector are available for connecting to amp or PA. The connectors are mounted on a plastic plate, so you might want to use a magnetic break-away cable if you plan on using this on stage. I had one problem initially with the volume control- it was full of dust or other contaminant and didn’t made good contact, cutting out at several points. Exercising it back and forth for a minute cleared this up.There’s a removable plate on the back to allow you to insert strings through the bridge, just as on the U-Bass, but while the Kala uses magnets to hold the plate on, this bass uses six tiny screws. Luckily starting replacement is not something you need to do very often. The strings are the typical soft polyurethane used on most instruments, and take a while (like, several days) to stretch out and stabilize, especially if they’re installed the way these are, with far too many turns on the tuners.Overall, it’s not terrible, given what I paid for it, but it did arrive with several flaws that you really shouldn’t accept in a new instrument. It serves the function I bought it for, and with a few fixes (raise the bridge saddle, put magnets in the cover plate, repair the cracked jack plate, etc) it’ll could be a better instrument, but a buyer shouldn’t have to deal with these issues. Should you buy one? Honestly, I don’t think I’d recommend it. I recently received another U-Bass that sells for about $20 more, and is much, much, better. It has a solid top, accurate frets, a neck with a truss rod, and comes with real Aquila Thundergut strings. The overall build quality is much better, too.

Top will warp, then it will be unplayable! Warp, warp, warp, warp, warp, warp, warp, warp.

Pretty. Still experimenting with ancillary equipment. As is the Uke makes hardly any sound: requires compatible amplification; no manufacture’s guidance.

I'm having a lot of fun with mine. It's probably the cheapest way to try out fretless, or play around with that upright sound. It has some flaws, although I'm tempering my expectations in line with its budget price.If you're buying it for a kid, open it up first so you or your local guitar shop can check/adjust the setup for them.The fret dots on the side of the neck are misleading, they're in different positions on the fingerboard than usual, and a bit out of tune any way you try to interpret them. How far off changes depending on how far up the fingerboard you are... that's not a surprise given that fretted bass ukes are reported to have intonation problems higher up the fretboard, but it's annoying that on an instrument that DOESN'T inherently have that problem the markers are still misleading. I think the makers may have just used precomputed measurements rather than measure the correct positions using a tuner. So anyway, you have to treat the dots only as a very rough map of the fretboard and rely on your ear instead. (Which you should probably do anyway, but even so misleading dots introduce a lot of cognitive dissonance.) I'll probably replace them with more helpful ones at some point.Out of the box, pickup was poor on the E string. If this happens to yours, first try inverting the saddle (that is, remove the strings, pick up the saddle -- it's tight but be reassured it's removeable -- and rotate it 180°, so that the end of the saddle that was under the G string is now under E.) That worked well enough for my satisfaction, but you may want to install a new saddle instead. I've gathered that restringing sometimes helps too.(You can see why I'd be hesitant to give this, as-is, on Christmas morning! It really does need some rework...)As a review in the UK noted, the electronics quality isn't great; they suggested just replacing it all. I'm considering that, too, if I continue playing with this regularly (as opposed to relegating it to house decor ;)It looks nice, it's always a conversation piece, and a great visual/auditory joke as people hear it plugged in for the first time.