Great Ukes is a regular column in Ukulele magazine that looks into interesting and often unusual ukuleles through history. It is usually written by the ukulele historian Sandor Nagyszalanczy.
The rise of ukulele popularity in the 1920s coincided with the Golden Age of Spectator Sports, as shown by the vintage ukes shown here.... Read More...
The first big windfall for Kumalae came in 1915, when he won a bid to display ukuleles in the Hawaiian Building at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.... Read More...
In the 1930s, Harmony created a new instrument model named for the Art Moderne design style it embodied, decorated with an array of geometrical forms.... Read More...
Regal's Jungle Uke had a body that was completely covered in fake leopard fur fabric, making it one of the worst sounding—but coolest looking—ukuleles ever made.... Read More...
BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY| FROM THE SUMMER 2020 ISSUE OF UKULELE
If you asked a room full of luthiers what the most tedious part of building a ukulele is, I b... Read More...
BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE WINTER 2019 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE
The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing seems to have everyone thinking ab... Read More...
BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE FALL 2019 ISSUE UKULELE MAGAZINE
In the past few years that I’ve been writing the Great Ukes column, folks have asked me ... Read More...
Gibson’s first line of ukuleles, introduced in 1926, included three styles of soprano and one tenor, likely patterning their models after Martin.... Read More...
BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE SPRING 2019 ISSUE OF UKULELE
If you set a dozen ukes on a table face-side down, it’s usually pretty hard to tell who made the... Read More...
No one knows when the first ukulele with a coconut shell body was made, but Hawaiian examples of such instruments from the 1910s and ’20s are plentiful.... Read More...