I travel a lot, and so I wanted an ukulele that I wouldn’t mind if it got dinged up a little bit. Also, I wanted to experiment with recording ukulele tracks on a DAW such as GarageBand. So I thought I’d try the Fender ’52 Ukulele.
Note that this is a concert ukulele, but its most obvious feature is its telecaster shape and all the tuners on one side of the headstock. The body has a laminated spruce top with laminated mahogany back and sides. The neck is mahogany, with a rosewood fingerboard. The gloss urethane finish and overall look of the ukulele is very nice.
This is an acoustic ukulele with a pickup so you can also play it over an amp or into a DAW. The Fishman electronics have a built-in tuner, and volume, bass, middle, and treble frequency controls. The uke also comes with Aquila Nylagut Concert C strings.
In the video below I show all these details, plus let you have a listen.
What I like most about this uke is that it is relatively inexpensive, yet allows me to play acoustically as well as amped and into my computer–with the Apogee JAM I can record directly into my laptop and ipad. So for me, this makes the Fender ’52 a great travel/practice uke.
However, I do have to point out that you do give up something for the inexpensive price. I noticed that the chromatic tuner is not as accurate as it could be, and the setup could be better as well–in particular, there’s a bit of buzzing on some of the strings.
Here’s the video where I have a look at the Fender ’52 Ukulele as well as let you have a listen:
For me these shortcomings are OK, since I’m using this as my travel/practice uke.
So I hope this look at the Fender ’52 Ukulele has been helpful!
Pricing and Availability: Fender ’52 Ukulele