When the Dopyera brothers left their Austro-Hungarian homeland and emigrated to the United States in 1908, little did they know what an unpredictable and fascinating journey their lives would take
To say that Mahelona’s violin ukes are rare is an understatement; only a handful are known to exist
Gibson introduced its first ukulele banjo, the UB model, sometime around 1925
The rise of ukulele popularity in the 1920s coincided with the Golden Age of Spectator Sports, as shown by the vintage ukes shown here.
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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.
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.
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.
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 bet that most would say it’s installing the frets, the thin…
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BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE WINTER 2019 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE The 50th anniversary of the first moon landing seems to have everyone thinking about America’s great accomplishments in flight. And right up there with the names of heroes…
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 what exactly constitutes a “great” uke? Does it have to be fancy,…