Saturday, November 17, 2007

Clearwater Roundback Concert - Sound and Intonation

When I first started looking to upgrade from my cheap coloured Mahalo, other than reading what others have have said about particular ukuleles I could not find examples of what the ones I was interested in sounded like and how good or bad was their intonation. While this is no replacement for actually trying out a ukulele, I thought it would be useful if I recorded a sound sample and a few intonation diagrams for the ukuleles that I own. Therefore this is not a review of the Clearwater Roundback Concert ukulele (UCW7R), but I am hoping that what is included on this post will help someone who may have bought one of these ukes cold. At some point I will also be doing posts for my other two ukes, a cheapo Mahalo and my Ohana SK25 Soprano.

Clearwater Roundback Concert ukulele (UCW7R)- Really Useful Music Company
The following sound sample was recorded in Audacity, no effects applied using a Logitech USB Desktop Microphone. Just a simple chord sequence from a familiar song (can you recognise what from the chords?). They are first thumbed slowly so as to hear individual strings and then played at normal and faster speeds.

Sound Sample


I used AP Tuner 3 ( a fantastic shareware tuner) to generate the intonation pictures, I hope they are self explanatory.

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Finally a few pics of how it looks, note the plastic back and how it joins to the neck, very well constructed.

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It would be great if there were more sound samples for other ukuleles, if you want to do one or have done one send me your urls and I will link to them.