The Tanglewood Cove Creek - I Finally Succumb to its Wiles!

Back in March - the 21st March, actually - I wrote how I'd been wowed by a Tanglewood ukulele in one of the local music shops. It was the Tanglewood TU7 XM Lacewood concert.

Well... more than two months later... it is mine.

I hadn't gone in the shop to buy it - on the contrary, I went in to buy the little Ashton union flag soprano uke as a gift for a friend. But the action at the nut of the little union jack uke was a bit high, and Mike the guitar techy who served me obligingly offered to file the slots down a bit.

That's when it got me. The Tanglewood. I wasn't even playing it.... after all, I'd decided to save for a nice solid wood tenor, most likely an Ashbury solid rose cherry... anyway, I was playing around while I waited on a very pretty solid koa Luna tenor with a pickup - £350 - more than I would, spend anyway... when I heard a lovely sound that jerked my head right up - and it was the Tanglewood Cove Creek I'd been so impressed with before. Bright but liquid, bell-like... and it has the long neck, 14 frets up to the body.

Then came the coup-de-grace - the offer of the sort of deal that's hard to refuse.... but I didn't give in without a fight. "Will you throw a gig-bag in with that?" Done.

So that's how I came to return home with my lovely Tanglewood Cove Creek "exotic" wood long neck concert uke. For a laminate ukulele, it really is lovely.


As for LSH...well, he really doesn't understand. Non-players don't; simple as that. But I'm happy with my little collection of ukuleles; I've put a low G on my original Greg Bennett so I can experiment with jazzy chords, as recommended by Glen Rose, as well as start trying to tackle John Moen's tab of the Bach Prelude for Cello piece - one bar at a time. My little blue Mahalo soprano is handy to leave lying around just anywhere, and hand over to interested friends... and as for my lovely 1920's Slingerland Maybelle banjo-uke - well.... she's going with me to Blackpool this weekend... to play with the George Formby fans at the meeting of the GFS!

If someone had told me six months ago that I'd be doing that, I'd have said they were mad...for my generation, for whom the Beatles and the Stones were nothing short of gods, George Formby was the antithesis of Cool... but watch this space, I'm going for it!

Tango'd by a Tanglewood

If I keep taking deep breaths and panting, perhaps it'll go away, I don't NEED another ukulele. My little Samich Indonesian-built Greg Bennett UK50 is a sweetie.... lovely intonation, a warm pleasing sound, especially since I put Aquila "new nylgut" strings on. Low action... why would I want another wooden uke?

I've been to slow to realise that guitars, ukuleles and banjos produce different sorts and qualities of sound "timbres" - watching a concert, I'd be mystified, why a guitarist had two or three different instruments on stage with him - "What's wrong with just one?" I'd think. George Harrison always had his Gretsch, Paul McCartney his Hofner bass.....but now I know. A whole new world of sound has opened up to me, and I realise a Stratocaster does not sound like - well - anything else. And if a musician wants a particular guitar sound, they have a guitar to suit.

I have come to realise that all ukuleles do not sound the same... yes, dear reader, I was slow there. Of course, until recently I had only ever played the one - and I have no complaints about it, it's a great little ukulele, I know that for the price, it's particularly good quality. The trouble is, I went into a music shop a few months ago and picked up a couple of ukes - and heard a difference. So now I have an itch - to get a ukulele that's better. That's prettier, with a sound that's somehow superior.

So the research has started. Trip number one to a music shop, to explore the wonderful world of ukulele.

I think I played every concert and tenor size in the shop, and played them against my own ukulele, to compare. I had a blast. I'll return to that.

Now I'm not looking for a top-of-the-range ukulele - just the next step up, within a limited budget. The thing is I think I have been Tango'd...... in the UK there was a TV advert a few years ago for Tango, a fizzy, soft orange drink - so fizzy and full of flavour, (allegedly), that when you tasted it you got zapped - or "Tango'd" - and the bright orange bursts exploded all over the screen.

Well, there was a Tanglewood concert ukulele in their exotic wood range, in "mango" - or, according to the Tanglewood website, lacewood. And it is very bright - not actually what I had in mind - quite "orange" with a very unusual pattern in the grain. But the sound is beautiful. I find that the very bright sound of a spruce-top ukulele does not appeal; my little Greg Bennett is mahogany, with a voice at the opposite end of the spectrum to spruce - warm and full. I don't have the technical vocabulary to accurately describe the difference in the sound of the Tanglewood lacewood to my UK50 mahogany; I can only say that it is better - hence the higher price tag. (Still very moderate.) Perhaps it's that the Tanglewood has more definition and a more bell-like voice - rather like the difference between a bel-canto tenor, like Paverotti and any other tenor singer.

But it is beautiful, and I have the itch to possess it.

Here it is - the Tanglewood TU7 XM Lacewood concert ukulele

Deep breaths girl - and the itch will go away.