Gypsy Rose, Initial Impressions

Well, the Gypsy Rose arrived today. I had a chance to play it for several minutes, so here are some quick impressions of it.


First off, the sound and feel are excellent. I was hoping that it would approach the Koa Works tenor in terms of feel, and it does indeed have that nice feedback/vibration while playing it. It's hard to explain in words, but when you play these great custom ukes, you can tell. The sound is similar to the William King LS-tenor, so it is on the punchy side, which is what I like. The redwood top seem to result in a similar tone as spruce tops. So based on some limited playing, I'd say I'm very satisfied with how the sound turned out.

It certainly looks very cool, to me anyway. I've always thought those Maccaferri style guitars looked cool (that's why I wanted one of these in the first place) and this little uke certainly does a good job evoking the Maccaferri gypsy guitar. I specified an odd looking headstock, as seen in the previous post, for this uke just so it has something different, and I think it turned out pretty good. At least I like it now that I have seen it in person.

I haven't had a chance to check out the Mi-Si pickup, but it works great in the William King LS-tenor, so I'm sure it will be just fine here.

I ordered some inlay stickers that I intend to dress up the headstock with as it currently have nothing on it. Hopefully one of the stickers will look nice on the headstock. I'll post pics once I get the sticker applied.

So my initial impression is very positive. This should beat out the Honu concert as my favorite concert uke and should be good enough to vie for the "second favorite" spot behind the William King LS-tenor. I will try to post more complete impressions once I have spent some more time with the Gypsy Rose.