I bought an Orangewood Juno uke from their factory second sale -- mini review

[Horseflesh]

The Juno Tenor ukulele, with a pickup, was on sale for 36% off ($125 all in) at the recent Orangewood scratch 'n' dent sale. I decided to go for it. Our Orangewood Oliver guitar has been pretty nice.

I don't know much about ukuleles, but it seems to sound nice and build quality is decent... ish. It is NOT as well built as the Oliver in some ways, that is for sure. Lots of pics below. (Sorry the color is not matched across all of them, I was being lazy with my phone camera.)

So, what was wrong with this uke, why was it in the factory second sale? Well, there are 3 small defects on the front finish. They are less than pinhead sized, not too bad. It seemed like a reasonable compromise for a factory second deal.



I also thought the fretboard wood was either a poor piece, or had been poorly finished, or some of each. It looked really dried out down towards the body. You can also see the higher frets look a little scummy. This was not awesome.





The bridge wood also looked really dry.



And, a half dozen higher frets had pretty poor end finish on one side. I don't think you'd get cut... But you'd sure feel it. It snagged my shop towel for sure.



Since there's blue tape in some of these shots you can guess what happened next... I put a little work in.

I took steel wool to the fretboard and frets, oiled the fretboard, then taped it up and used micro files to smooth the jaggy fret ends. I don't have the ideal files for the job but finishing the ends with steel wool made them look good enough. I oiled the bridge too.

Oh, and I also found a few frets that were a little high and tapped them down. They still aren't perfect but with the high action on a uke I doubt I would have noticed them even before. I only found them because I got out the fret rocker.

This was the first time I had tried polishing a fretboard and frets, though I had read about it many times. I figured if I was going to goof something up, better to do it to this uke than a nicer guitar.

When I was done, the fret ends didn't snag any more, and the fretboard looked nice instead of gnarly. The bridge was also much improved. This isn't rocket surgery, but was satisfying for this novice luthier.





Overall this seems to be an OK instrument but compared to my wife's Oliver, I was somewhat disappointed in the quality. I expected cosmetic issues like the finish spots, but the poor fingerboard wood and fret ends were surprising.

After putting a little work in it became what I expected to unbox, so I am not sore about it.

[Rudy4]

Nice review of a "factory second" instrument. There's no way anyone could buy the raw materials and gig bag for $125.

[jricc]

Looks great. Nice job of spit n polishing that uke up.

[airborne1]

That was a great review!

The photos suggest that you’ve done a fantastic job getting it up to par! A few of those fret ends looked like you could have gutted a deer with them prior to your refinishing!

The uke looks great now, how does it sound?

[Horseflesh]

I don't know beans about ukes yet, but the Juno sounds good to me.

What's interesting is that I have another 26" uke here on loan... Nothing fancy, it is an Aklot, but it does have a solid mahogany top. On another forum I was told Aklot was a great value pick and now that I have one here I can see that is true.

The Aklot is much louder than the Orangewood, but it does have nicer Aquila strings on it, and the Orangewood is stock. Not sure if that makes a difference.

I think that overall the Orangewood has a slightly nicer timbre, but the Aklot sounds very close to me, and it is a fraction of the price. And if volume matters, it becomes the clear winner.

The Aklot also had much better fretwork, though comparing it to my factory second Orangewood may not be fair.

Currently the Aklot 23" is $59 (no electronics). I don't even need it, I will probably get it anyway!

So, I do like the Orangewood. But in retrospect, there are better values out there.

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