Great Ukes: Gibson’s Creative and Innovative Ukuleles are Still Sought After by Collectors
STORY AND PHOTOS BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE SPRING 2026 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE
Riding a wave of success propelled by its inventive guitars, mandolins, and banjos, Gibson started producing ukuleles around 1926–27, a decade or so after Martin had established itself as America’s premier ukulele maker. Gibson’s entry into the uke market reflected both public demand and the company’s desire to compete with not only Martin, but Lyon & Healy, Harmony, and other prominent ukulele manufacturers.
Early Models
Gibson’s first line of soprano models ranged from the very plain Uke‑1 (no bindings, simple dot markers) to the ornate Uke‑3, which featured multi‑ply bindings and pearl inlays. Its UB‑1 and UB‑2 banjo ukes, produced through the 1930s, combined Gibson’s banjo expertise with ukulele mojo. The company introduced a tenor model ukulele in 1927, making it one of the few major American instrument manufacturers to offer tenor ukes at that time. Gibson’s soprano ukes had dark-stained, all-mahogany bodies and necks, as did the majority of its tenor ukes. The company didn’t produce any koa ukes, possibly because mahogany was less expensive and easier to source than Hawaiian koa.
While Martin made relatively minor feature changes to its various uke models over the decades, Gibson changed model specifications frequently, at times seemingly randomly. For example, some of its tenor ukes featured a sunburst finish, in lieu of the dark mahogany finish that was standard. This may be because Gibson typically built ukes in small batches, as well as readily building custom ukes to order—something Martin rarely did. While Martin focused on consistency and refinement, Gibson leaned into variety, and over the years created quite a number of ornate custom instruments. This period cemented Gibson’s reputation for quality craftsmanship and bold design choices.
The custom ukuleles that Gibson is known for today include some of the most decorative and elaborate ukes the world has ever seen. Some of these were produced in small numbers, while others are one-of-a-kind instruments.
The Poinsettia
Probably the best known special ukulele made by Gibson is its Poinsettia model, one of the rarest and most collectible ukes ever made. Produced around 1926–1930 as a custom model, the Poinsettia is a soprano-sized uke based on Gibson’s Style 3 model, featuring a mahogany body with a rosewood bridge and floral decorations. The Poinsettia was never part of Gibson’s standard catalog, and fewer than ten are believed to have been built, with some sources saying only four or five confirmed examples survive today.
What makes this custom so special are the hand-painted floral decorations featured on the uke’s body and, on some examples, the back of the headstock. Each Poinsettia’s fingerboard and headstock overlay is made of ivory-colored pearloid adorned with sparkly multi-colored inlays. Because each Poinsettia was hand-painted and inlaid, each surviving example shows slight variations in design and ornamentation, a clear sign of the model’s custom nature.
Vaudevillian ukulele virtuoso and popular song composer Ray Canfield (once called the “Paderewski of the uke”) was an early endorser of Gibson ukes. If you look closely at the cover of his 1927 Symphonic Ukulele Arrangements instruction booklet, it looks like Canfield is playing a Gibson Poinsettia, likely made especially for him.
Because so few were made, the Poinsettia is considered a “Holy Grail” uke among collectors. Depending on the instrument’s condition, examples have sold for $10,000–$12,000 in recent years.
The Florentine
If you think that Gibson’s Poinsettia ukes were highly decorated, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Starting in the late 1920s through the 1930s, Gibson created what are likely some of the most over-the-top ukuleles ever made: The so-called Florentine ukes. The inspiration for these ultra-fancy soprano-sized ukes likely sprang from the Florentine plectrum and tenor banjos Gibson produced in the late 1920s. The Florentines reflect Gibson’s attempt to elevate the ukulele from a popular fad instrument into a luxury item appealing to wealthy musicians and collectors.
Available by special order only, each Florentine uke featured extensive decorations on its body, headstock, and fingerboard, including loads of pearloid, sparkly inlays, and hand‑painted scenes often portraying European motifs such as Venetian gondolas, flowers, butterflies, and more. The two examples shown here also feature faceted rhinestones set as a border around the headstock; one even has rhinestones enhancing the designs on the sides. The Florentine uke shown at right features Gibson’s iconic “moustache” bridge, which was first seen on a custom J-200 guitar built in 1937 for singing cowboy Ray Whitley.
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As you might guess, very few Florentine ukes were made—likely fewer than a dozen. Any surviving examples are considered museum‑worthy instruments.
The Frieda
The early 1930s were clearly a period when Gibson experimented with more elaborate ukulele ornamentation. But unlike the Poinsettia and Florentine, which were produced in limited numbers, Gibson’s “Frieda” is a one-off custom instrument. For a uke collector, the Frieda represents both a rare artifact and a glimpse into Gibson’s artistry as echoed on its fanciest guitars and mandolins.
The Frieda is notable for its unique design, with a walnut-stained mahogany body and ivoroid bindings that feature a repeating pattern of pearl diamonds and rhinestones. Its ivoroid fretboard has colorful, sparkly inlays that resemble those found on the Poinsettia. It also has a one-of-a-kind shapely bridge, complete with pearl inlays and pearl-capped bridge pins.
The uke’s name comes from the personalized inlay on its headstock. Clearly this instrument was custom-ordered, likely commissioned by or gifted to someone named Frieda. Cryptically, a diamond-shaped gold label inside the body is monogrammed with the name Fred J. Grecia.
Godfrey’s Electric Tenor
In 1949, Gibson started installing magnetic pickups on its model TU tenor ukes. These ukulele pickups were a smaller version of Gibson’s guitar pickups and were wired to both a volume and a tone control, with output through a standard 1/4-inch jack. Thus, the ETU-1 became the world’s first electrically-amplified acoustic ukulele.
Gibson also produced an ETU-3 tenor, which had the same pickup and construction of the ETU-1 but sported fancier triple bindings on its body. Unlike its nylon-strung standard tenors, Gibson’s ETU models were fitted with metal strings, which made them sound more like electric guitars than acoustic ukes. Despite their novelty, these tenors were never very popular: Gibson produced only about 88 ETUs between 1949 and 1953.
During this period, Gibson built one very special custom electric ETU tenor for Arthur Godfrey, who was not only an avid musician and radio personality but also an early television star featured on several programs, including Arthur Godfrey and His Friends and Arthur Godfrey and His Ukulele. Godfrey wanted an amplifiable instrument because his regular acoustic uke couldn’t be heard when he played with his TV band, especially if some members were plugged into amplifiers. He wanted a ukulele that could sound as loud as an electric guitar.
But there was a problem: Godfrey didn’t like the sound or feel of the steel strings on a standard ETU tenor. So, he contacted Gibson’s president, Ted McCarty, and asked him to come up with a way of fitting the uke with regular nylon strings. But stringing an electric uke with nylon would not work, since a nylon string doesn’t excite the magnetic field of an electromagnetic pickup, and hence produces no amplified sound.
McCarty evidently posed this string problem to some of Gibson’s best engineers, who simply told him it couldn’t be done. McCarty’s response was “the hell (it) can’t!” In his own words: “You have to get some iron into the strings somehow, and we couldn’t get a string inside a string and not get it too thick. So, the only thing you could do was melt the nylon into a liquid, then run another string through a goo with iron powder. All you needed was some metal in the strings, so I put in fine iron-powdered metal and mixed it all up really well. I ran the strings through that, and after they dried, we milled them down to size. I made the strings, but didn’t want to fool around with (mass-producing) them. It was too time-consuming and expensive.”
All that string engineering took quite a bit of time and Godfrey wasn’t a man known for his great patience. At one point, he complained about the delayed delivery of his tenor on live TV, saying, “Ted McCarty—that used-to-be friend of mine—he promised to give me an electric ukulele, and I never got it!” There was a further delay when the custom ETU Gibson made for him was temporarily lost in transit.
But when the one-of-one electric tenor finally got into Godfrey’s hands, he evidently loved the sound it produced, which, as he had requested, was much softer and ukulele-like than the sound of the steel-stringed ETUs. He is said to have played that uke often on his television shows.
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Ritz’s Custom Cutaway
Talented jazz musician and former member of L.A.’s legendary Wrecking Crew (a group of top studio musicians featured on hundreds of hit songs during the 1960s and 70s), Lyle Ritz is remembered for his session work on both the bass (electric and upright) and ukulele. Ritz first encountered Gibson tenor ukes while working in a Los Angeles music shop in the early 1950s. He immediately fell in love with its size and tone, describing the instrument as having “the right sound” for his jazz explorations.
Ritz’s personal Gibson uke started life as a standard 1950s TU tenor model, with a mahogany body and celluloid bindings. But Ritz had the body of the instrument altered by a local luthier to include a cutaway on the lower side of its upper bout. This allowed him easier access to higher frets, crucial for the jazz music he loved to play. To perform in amplified settings, Ritz added a pickup inside the body. An unusual feature for ukuleles at the time, the pickup gave him the flexibility to play in studio settings and with live bands.
This customized tenor uke quickly became his signature instrument and was central to his pioneering jazz recordings and live performances. Ritz’s 1958 debut album How About Uke? included jazz standards like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Moonlight in Vermont.” The cutaway tenor allowed him to play complex chord voicings and improvisations that were unheard of on ukulele at the time. His 1959 album, 50th State Jazz, was recorded in Hawaii using his Gibson cutaway. That album, which blended Ritz’s jazz sensibilities with Hawaiian influences, was pivotal in inspiring other musicians to adopt the ukulele for jazz and ensemble playing.
From the plain Uke‑1 to the electrified ETU-series tenor to the dazzling Florentine, Gibson’s ukuleles reveal a company willing to experiment, customize, and push boundaries. While Martin’s ukes defined consistency, Gibson defined creativity—producing instruments that remain among the rarest, most ornate, and most collectible ukes in history. Gibson’s ukes are not just instruments but artifacts of artistry, innovation, and the enduring charm of the Jazz Age.
