What is the good thing about the Baton Rouge UTCY-S soprano ukulele and the rest of the company’s rECOtimber range? The sheer value. The impressive (all solid) specficiation at a price where you’re usually lucky to get a decent laminate uke.

What are the bad things about it? Well… from a customer perspective, while you may not NEED one of these soprano ukuleles, you might look at it and think you have to have one anyway as the price is stupidly low! The temptation to add to a collection when you don’t really need to must be strong! From my point of view, there are so many models with slight differences (and clunky codes) that I feel like I’ve written about this amazing value in a hundred different ways while adding them to the website!

This particularly model, the UTCY-S has a solid German spruce top and solid cypress back and sides. The wood is treated by a process called ‘rECOtimber’, which uses heat to advance the seasoning process and allows European wood to be made suitable for use in instruments more swiftly (and therefore more cheaply, hence some of that value again…). There’s nice maple binding and a pretty abalone soundhole decoration, a 35mm nut (made from nubone) and a eucalyptus fingerboard, with inlaid black, half-moon shaped position markers.

The sound, with the Aquila strings, has a strong initial attack, a bright punch of projection, which ebbs away to quite a deep, resonant ‘bark’, that leans towards quite a vintage soprano sound. My only criticism here (well, apart from the finger feel of Aquila strings which always feel a bit stiff to me) is how the different models have quite similar tone. It’s really hard for me to accurately say what the difference is between this spruce and cypress model, and the spruce and maple one, for example. But, as they’re both good and great value (there’s that value again, mentioned for the 1000th time), you can’t really go wrong!

The price includes shipping in the UK. You can read about international shipping here. But in short, to ship to the EU requires you to add £15 shipping by adding this product to your basket. And an additional £25 to ship the the USA, by adding this product to your order.

This uke has one strap button fitted, but other common extras, like a gig bag and straps, can be added easily using the common add-ons, located at the bottom of this page.