Lanikai MAS-C All Solid Mahogany - Concert Review

Went through two of these. Unseated frets on both

First of all, thank you so much to Sweetwater for helping me with exchanges and ultimately replacing this with a Kala that is a much better instrument for the money. I ordered this for my Uncle, as he needed a decent Uke, and I advised him to go with an all solid model... My goals were:-all solid wood-no cutaway-no electronics-concert size.The Lanikai MAS-C checks all the boxes,… read more and at $250, it was right on the money price wise. It arrived, and I began to inspect it.First major issue is, it doesn't have a compensated saddle, so this instrument does NOT intonate. I know this is a problem with a lot of Ukes, but it's also present here. Fit and finish in general was...eh, okay I guess. For a chinese made mass produced Uke, you get what you pay for. Glue spots, chewed up wood on the bridge from bad tooling, not the best nut work, but all in all, it was adequate. The gloss finish itself was nice and it was generally an attractive instrument. The first problem was minor, but the walnut bridge and fingerboard were bone dry and needed to be oiled. Once that was over with, I began checking the fret work and...Frets 1 and 2, especially fret 1, was unseated. I could fit a 0.008'' feeler gauge under the fret, pictured below. I informed Sweetwater, and they said it was their last one so I had to wait on a replacement. The wait took about four months. Eventually, the second one arrived, and it had even WORSE unseated frets. The second one was so bad, I could literally see the tooth of the fret under fret 1. I tried to picture it. While you can't make out the teeth from this angle/lighting, you can clearly see this fret was badly unseated.In general, it looks like the fretboard is flatter than the radius of the fretwire, which may be causing this problem while the frets are stamped in, but I can't be sure. Anyway, what bugs me about this is, a vast majority of consumers don't have the tools/know what to look for to properly investigate manufacturing problems like these, and things like unseated frets are PROGRESSIVE problems. Gunk and residue adds up under the frets, changes in temp/weather/moisture continue to contribute to the fret separating from the board, and eventually the problem is 10x worse. Anyway, after dealing with two Lanikais with the same problem, my advice is, stay away. Go to Kala or spend another couple hundred bucks and get an all-solid Martin Uke.

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