I was talking to my mate about ukuleles the other day, and convinced him he should get himself one. After looking on various forums I noticed that a few people were rating ‘Makalas’ ukes over Mahalos’ for being pretty good for the money, and after a brief google, i found this place selling them for £9 + £1.80 p&p!! (They are normally £15-£20)
So it ordered it last week, and it came today - yay!!!
Look at the rather cute bridge 
And the geared tuners - Definately a selling point - I think they make a BIG difference
Ive taken off those horrible black ’strings’ you get with new ukes,(i use the word strings in the loosest possible sense) and put a set of Aquila Concert Strings on. It INSTANTLY sounds about 1000 times better. 
On the whole im rather impressed by it. I was worried that the action would be a bit mental, but actually is OK, and the build quality in seems pretty good too. You also get a free bag, which will not stop it from getting damaged, but will at least keep the dust off.
If you fancy giving the uke a go but dont want to spend much money, I would definately recommed buying one. My only caveat would be that you NEED to buy a decent set of strings (like Aquilas) for it. (If you’re in the UK, you can get these from www.theukuleleshop.co.uk/ )
And heres me giving it a quick demo - I apologise for the singing 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv7GuV8K5v0
Apr 11th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Yeah, but never the less, I think this post is debatable.
Apr 14th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
debate away..
Apr 23rd, 2008 at 7:29 pm
well, i came here cause flickr stats said that you had a photo of mine here somewhere but i can’t find it :-s
ive got one of the crappy mahalo uke’s and it sounds worse than 4 pieces of cotton taped to an empty tissue box! i’ll take your advice on the strings and try and learn to play cause everytime i see a £200 uke in the music shop in town i reach for my switch card which is just crazy cause i can’t even play a single chord.
i shall be back cause i too love pop, monkeys, robots and ukulele songs (magnetic fields, jens lekman etc.)
t
http://www.boxingduck.blogspot.com
http://www.tfrancis.co.uk
May 8th, 2008 at 8:05 am
sorry for the delay (new baby and all that…!)
One of my friends has a mahalo, i know that he was amazed the difference i decent set of strings had on it. you should go for it!
The photos on the top of the page are generated through a flickr RSS feed that pulls out photos tagged with a variety of words ranging from ukulele to monkey, to xbox!
Thinking about it, a believe a rather good photo of a someone playing a ukuele at a gig in Cardiff popped up on here at one stage. I clicked on it a few times and *nearly* linked to it from here