Ukulele Buying Recommendations

Updated: Jan 7, 2022

Just a few good brands for beginners

Many of these brands offer a range of beginner/intermediate instruments as well as some that are professional quality.

Brands for professional players may offer some models for beginners/intermediates:

Things to consider when buying a ukulele:

Be wary of fun and funky designs and colors, as you are likely paying for design instead of quality and tone.

Be wary of the popular ukulele product “bundle.” Try to invest ALL the money you want to spend at this moment into only the ukulele instrument itself, and a tuner. The more you are able to spend on your instrument, the better the sound will be.

Plan to spend at least $60-$100+ for an acceptable beginner ukulele. The biggest downside (besides sound quality) to the cheaper ukuleles is that they aren't made as well, which actually makes them harder to play. For example the distance of the strings from the fretboards and the frets themselves may not be filed down on the sides. They also often have a hard time staying in tune, especially when you first purchase them because of the quality of the tuning pegs.

A Snark tuner is ideal. (It’s called a guitar tuner, but it’s for ukuleles also.) See my link below for purchasing this tuner.

Three sizes of ukuleles get tuned with the G,C,E,A strings. (Baritone is not the same tuning - Do not purchase!).

The size of ukulele you most prefer can be very much tied to your own personal preferences.

Large - “Tenor” Medium - “Concert” Small - “Soprano”

We recommend soprano size only for children under 8.

What to look for in a quality instrument:

Wood

Ideally the ukulele will state what wood it is made out of. Elements that could be made from different woods include the body, the neck, the bridge, and the fretboard. Solid wood will have better sound quality than laminate. You might try digging in to the details to find out which parts, if any, are solid wood.

Koa is the traditional wood for ukuleles, but isn’t as easy to find for beginner ukuleles.

Mahogany is good quality for the body and will give you louder projection and a good clear tone compared to other woods available for beginner ukuleles.

Nubone is the best quality synthetic bone material.

Strings: Aquila Super Nylgut Strings

Where to purchase?

I suggest you support your local independent music store if you have a great one near you.
Sweetwater is a reliable online music equipment retailer. They have great search tools (you can search by size or brand and even specific woods or solid wood vs solid top)
Austin Bazaar is another online retailer of music equipment.
Then of course there is Amazon.

Here are a few recommendations for ukulele’s that are currently available online with direct links to purchase:

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