Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I love this thing. I tied a strap to it with some shoe strings, I slap it on my back, get on my bike. I take it with me when I go hiking, to school, to the beach, or anywhere really. The tuning on it is ADGCEA which would be equal to as if you had a capo on a regular guitar's 5th fret, which means that you can play the same chord shapes as a regular guitar, the notes will just be higher.
As far as quality goes, I'm pretty happy with it. Some people said the strings that they got were no good, but I've had mine for about 3 months now and I have no complaints. The strings are very sensitive though. They bend very easily, so sometimes the chords played sound good and other times they might sound a little off. I see as a very delicate instrument.. when I press down my fingers for chords I press them straight down and make sure I'm not bending them. A;so, because they bend easily, it can go out of tune pretty easily too. I tune mine often, to make sure they are good to go. I have always tuned my normal guitars by ear, however I find that it is harder to do with the guitarlele, so I use a tuner usually.
Visually I have no complaints, the wood and finish are nice, the neck has good action and feel, although a small part of me wishes that they had some artwork around the soundhole. As for sound quality, I love it.. the higher strings/notes do stand out more in a way, and definitely have the ukulele sound, but if you play gently enough it creates a nice balance. The resonance is beautiful. It has a very warm, mellow sound. It's pretty loud for it's size too. And it is so versatile, you can play Spanish style chords like Em and Am which sounds awesome (Onda Vaga uses a uke, perfect example, youtube them), .. you can emulate a mandolin to an extent.. I'm not saying it sounds exactly like a mandolin since it obviously can't replicate the resonant-sound of the double layered strings, but it does have the high notes from the strings that at least sound somewhat similar to a mandolin, if you want to cover a song with one. Or you can just play regular songs, normal chord shapes, even powerchords sound good.
It's just like guitar. Just tuned to much higher notes. If you know music theory, you can do a lot with this little guitar. I even have used a capo on mine and it sounds good, although when I put it too high up the fret spaces are so small it's hard to make the chord shapes ;-)
Before I saw the guitarlele I was looking at rogue instruments because they sell cheap mandolins and ukuleles. I checked out reviews of their instruments on youtube and they had some mixed reviews.. they didn't seem like very good quality. I saw someone mention the guitarlele on the comments, and when I looked it up I knew it was the 'travel' instrument I wanted. 100 bucks, for a completely unique Yamaha brand instrument? You can't go wrong. Yamaha aren't the super-high end guitars, but my bigger acoustic is a yamaha and I don't have any complaints about that one either (a friend gave it to me to replace my epiphone acoustic which I need to get a new saddle for).
I hope this review was helpful. If you get one, enjoy it. I know I enjoy mine. I've even started buying other travel instruments like a melodica and a Buffalo Drum.. so yeah. Enjoy!!
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