Uke News for 2016

Aloha friends and Happy New Year! I haven’t posted here lately but I am excited to let you know that we will resume with the review and add some new content we think you’ll enjoy. We’ll be expanding with the addition of third-party reviews and uke-related articles. More on that in an upcoming post. We will also add more sheet music, video comparisons and all that good stuff. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

Today’s update is to give you guys the heads up on some changes coming to the big K brands as well as our plans for the upcoming NAMM conference (National Association of Music Merchants).

As most of you already know, this is Kamaka’s 100 year anniversary. Yes, in business for 100 years!! What an amazing accomplishment! Kamaka will put a special anniversary label on all its ukes made this year, which will be extra cool. There will be a slight price increase of $100 on each model. We know these ukes will be worth every penny and are honored to carry such quality instruments in their centennial anniversary. Kamaka was THE ukulele company through many generations and for many, they still are. We know we love ‘um!

There will be plenty of eye and ear candy from Kamaka at NAMM, so keep an eye out for our NAMM coverage. We will also be getting our fist slothead tenors from Kamaka in a few months so stay tuned for that.

KoAloha has some interesting changes that will be shown in a few weeks at NAMM, though they will not be in production for a few more months. The main change is going to be abalone inlayed logos and fret markers across the entire line. There will also be a price increase but we have not received details on that yet. So…now is a great time to get a KoAloha with their classic look and before the increase.

Kanile’a also told us they will have a price increase. We can’t wait to see what new models and goodies they will introduce at NAMM. We know there will be a Willie K. signature model and also a new Platinum model for 2016.

Speaking of NAMM, Zach, Corey and I will be doing coverage on these brands and many more. This year I decided to focus on video production more than pictures. We’re gonna just do one video for each booth and it will be a mix of looking at the ukes, interviews with the makers and artists, along with sound samples. We’ll do sound samples in the morning before the halls open and it gets too noisy.

Before we hit NAMM, we’ll fly to San Fransisco to do a Blackbird shop tour video and then head over to Petaluma to do the same at Kala. So there should be a lot of fun videos coming this month! Stay tuned and mahalo for your support and friendship.
Aloha and a hui ho!