[Muddslide]

I am a major ukulele victim--er, I mean "lover."

Been playing guitar and bass since 1977 and '78 respectively, but close to 20 years back I began experiencing hand and wrist pain to an extent that I feared I would have to give up playing string instruments altogether (with the intention--were that to be the case--of taking up harmonica, since only death will keep me from making music of some kind!)

Anyways, my then-wife suggested ukulele to me. At first I considered this a joke, but decided to give it a try and ordered an OS concert uke. This was early 2000.

I quickly became an addict and at one time owned 15 ukes including an Ovation a/e, several nice vintage Sopranos, a custom-made Beltona resonator, banjo ukes, other assorted and one baritone--a 1950s Martin bought new by my uncle and gifted to me.

For 2-3 years ukulele was all I played. My guitars and basses gathered dust. Then I lost all my instruments in a flood in 2010 but managed to salvage one old Japanese no-name, probably '50s-'60s era, that a friend of mine completely rebuilt for me. (Thanks Ron--you are a genius!)

So now I have that one El Cheapo no-name soprano and a nice Kala baritone my father gave me last year after he bought it then decided against learning to play.

I still have hand issues and am on the brink--almost--of once again packing in guitar and going uke-only. However, I will always keep my six string acoustic guitar.

In my years of uking, I have discovered my very strong preference is for sopranos and baritones. I don't care much for concerts and tenors for some reason.

And again because of hand issues, I sometimes find sopranos a bit cramped, so I'm leaning towards making baritone uke my main instrument.

On a side note, I am also quite interested in tenor guitar, but I have owned a couple (as well as a tenor banjo) and I find the necks far too narrow for me. The ones I've seen and played would be useless for finger style, and I love playing that way.

I wish there was a steel string tenor guitar, sized like a tenor body, but with a wider neck for fingerpicking.

I definitely do NOT have the resources to have anything custom built anymore.