Look at the title and you’ll see it says this Baton Rouge UTA-C concert ukulele is made from solid spruce and solid alder. Look at the price and you’ll see that this can’t be possible. But yet it is correct! Baton Rouge have been working with a university’s sustainability department to develop a process to use European woods for the instruments by advancing the drying process using heat, calling this, ‘rECOtimber’. OK, these woods are shipped to China for the uke to be made so the ECO in rECO isn’t that ECO - but it does mean sustainable, managed European timber can be used rather than exotic woods from unmanaged sources.

This UTA-C has a satin finish, decent geared tuners, a 35mm nut width and Aquila strings. It has a strong projection and plenty of volume. It’s bright but not too bright, with a good bit of ‘body’ in the sound too. The sustain is perhaps average - though I’d put that down to the Aquila strings. I have re-strung other models with fluorocarbon strings before and that improves things in my view, quite significantly. However, even without this change, it’s an impressive sound for the price.