This is a really gorgeous ‘Oli baritone uke, made from solid spruce and myrtle. The build quality is excellent, and there are a number of exciting visual features that make an extensive list, and yet marry together very well. It’s like the kitchen sink has been thrown at the spec. sheet, but everything in that kitchen sink has somehow arranged itself perfectly - knives, forks and dishes thrown in there and somehow settle and arrange themselves like a Picasso painting.

You have the nicely shaped headstock, and an organic curve at the bottom of the ebony fingerboard that seems. That fingerboard has a delicate, wafer thin maple purfling. Maple is again used for the position markers, which flow over the edge of the fretboard forming a marker on the top and side simultaneously. I don’t know what it is about asymmetrical fretboard markers… they really get me going. I think I need to get out more.

There’s ebony binding around the top, which sweeps into a bevelled comfort edge. You also get a polished ebony rosette around the soundhole and side soundport, projecting a little more of the rich tone towards the player. Apart from the mahogany neck (which has a truss rod), there’s a flawless gloss finish on the solid Engelmann spruce top. (One of these days I’ll look up Engelmann and work out why he has so much good, tightly grained spruce). The back and sides are myrtle from Oregon, which is very pretty, with a grey tinge to a biscuit brown colour and some lovely dark grain.

The L2-BSMR is fitted with the ‘Oli Uke Logic baritone string set, with a polished wound D string, and fluorocarbon G, B and E. These are very nice, with the D giving projection and clarity, and the unwound G mixing with some mellow lows. Then the B and E are nice and bright. Overall there’s a big bass response, but clarity at the top end to complete. Lovely. There’s also a slight radius on the fretboard which many find aid barre chords, and a 37mm nut coupled with a relatively slender neck profile/thickness. Very comfortable for me, that’s for sure. Gotoh UPT tuners are fitted as well, elite level rear facing 1:4 ratio geared units. Hard to find better, if possible at all.

If I had a frustration with ‘Oli is that’s the range grows constantly and there’s always a new model out. But then they all seem to be so good, it’s not hard to understand why the team behind it (Andrew Kitakis and the Ukulele Site gang) keep wanting to see what else they can do!

This ‘Oli is also supplied with an excellent quality hard case. At the bottom of the page you’ll find some optional extras. Obviously with a nice hard case you can ignore the bag and case options.