This is an expansion of the Kala Revelator series into steel-string solid body electro ukulele territory. Championed by Kala UK, this model is a baritone, tuned DGBE, with steel string. In effect, with baritone tuning it’s like a four string, short scale electric guitar - and it sounds like a very good one too.

I play a steel string ukulele in the band I’m in and they have their nuances in how you have to play them, generally speaking. A lighter touch is required, particularly with chords, to prevent excess pressure pushing down the steel strings too far and making the notes sound sharp. (Although you can use this on purpose much more easily for techniques like vibrato). However, while this still applies here, the effect is lessened. The tension feels really good, and you really have to play in a ham fisted, purposefully bad way to get it to sound bad! And I tried, I promise!

The Electric Owl baritone has gold hardware and twin humbucker pickups, with a three way selector switch, allowing you to vary the tone through your amp by using the neck or bridge pickups independently, or both at once. There are tone and volume knobs nicely recessed into the body too. All of it has been extensively tested and tweaked during the development process - it helping that the Kala UK team have extensive electric guitar experience in their pre-ukulele days. It sounds premium… it sounds great.

The KA-EO-BLB-B has a quilted maple top with a classy blue stain, and a lovely gloss finish, and is all sweeping curves. It’s not a shrinking violet, with all that gold… but if you want to make a statement it will definitely do that. The nut width is 38mm and it comes with a nice gig bag.

At the bottom of the page there are some standard options you can add but in this case, they’re pretty redundant. Adding a low G is not needed as this is tuned DGBE so has low D and G. Strap buttons are already in place (two), and there’s a gig bag included. Due to its unusual shape, the gig bag is ideal - but a hard case won’t fit.