Kala Solid Body UBASS Candy Apple Red Bass Ukulele
This is the Kala solid body bass ukulele in candy apple red. Or, if you prefer to use their clunky product code, the ubass-sb-rd-fs. Thankfully this fretted UBASS isn’t clunky, as it’s body is nicely shaped and contoured for comfort. It’s really well made and finished too.
The scale length is 23.5”, with an overall length of 33.25”, making it a bit bigger than a baritone uke in overall size, but still very much ‘size appropriate’ for a ukulele group. The strings are Kala roundwounds, and this solid body bass ukulele has a passive, split-coil pickup. I find this nice and responsive, with a great bass tone that’s rich and smooth, and yet it defined too - with your notes sounding out nice and clearly (just in a bass-laden way!).
There’s a very smooth satin maple neck, and laurel fingerboard, with a 40mm nut width (there I go, switching from imperial to metric as I used my own tape measure to do the nut width!). Two strap buttons are fitted and Kala supply this bass ukulele in a good quality gig bag.
I check and adjust all of these instruments but I don’t have to do a massive amount as they’ve clearly been looked and and gone through a good quality check process. The first one I opened up was in tune, so someone is clearly going over them and checking everything at Kala too. This gives me confidence, particularly as I’ve had issues with similarly priced alternatives.
I’ve added a video demo from Kala. This isn’t overly fancy, but gives a good represenation from a player who is competent on bass (unlike me, hence using their video!).