New Pins for Kanile'a

My Kanile'a super soprano has always been a looker. It features some great looking curly koa that has a glowing 3D look. I like wide curls in curly koa and when I first saw this uke for sale on musicguymic's shop, I knew I had to have it. Appearance-wize, I really liked everything about this uke. The wood is gorgeous, the bridge and headstock looks handsome, the new Kanile'a logo looks very nice, I love the Kanile'a soprano body shape, and even the geared "sidewinder" tuners look good. I really had no complaints until I read on the FMM board about someone wanting to switch out the plastic bridge pins on his Kanile'a. I realized that the plastic pins are kind of cheezy, especially when you pull it out, when it looks pretty cheap. Another guy on FMM commented that Stewmac sells some bridge pins that worked well on his Kanile'a, so without further ado, I was at the Stewmac website right away looking for replacement pins.

I found the pins that guy was talking about and there were several attractive options for me to choose from. The snakewood pins looked good but I was drawn to the koa pins since it is a 'ukulele we're talking about here. I decided that I would get a set with pearl dots to match the pearl position dots on the fretboard. The uke has slot cut into the bridge for the string to pass through, so I bought the unslotted version of the bridge pins. Stewmac ship items quickly and the pins arrived after about 2 days. I immediately put them onto my Kanile'a and I think they look great and a lot more classy than the white plastic pins that came with the uke. Take a look at the pictures here and judge for yourself.