This Millar SP-210LL is made in small workshop in Taiwan, and somehow they’ve managed to imbue this all sold spruce and acacia uke with magic - such is the incredible volume such a diminutive ukulele can produce. There is simply no way the sound that comes out of it can actually be coming out of the nicely decorated soundhole. I’ll confess when I first tried one, tuned it up and gave it a firm strum, I let out a yelp and nearly jumped out of my skin. It is one of the biggest sounding ukes I’ve ever heard.

The top is a tight-grained solid Englemann spruce, which is paired on the back and sides with some handsome solid acacia. This has a pleasing satin finish, giving the body a nice vintage feel. The binding is made up of mahogany, maple and ebony and continues around the acacia capped headstock. Mixing tradition and modernity, the tuners are geared planetary units, which look like friction pegs and are nice and lightweight, but are geared so they don’t slip.

The fingerboard and bridge are rosewood, with a bone saddle and 35mm nut. I do like companies that choose strings to match instruments, rather than just use one type of string for all of their offerings. This SP-210L long neck soprano has Worth Browns on and they really sing.

The long neck soprano has a concert scale neck, with a soprano body, and this one has plenty going for it in the sound department as well as the aforementioned bonkers volume. As you’d expect with solid spruce, there’s plenty of bite to the attack and clarity in the trebles. The deeper notes are well matched to these singing highs, with a nicely balanced sound across the strings. This makes it really adept for chord melody, as there’s a wash of rich background from strummed chords, providing an ideal canvas for the strong, crystal clear trebles when picked.

When I ordered these for the first time, I had thought it was a laminate instrument, as Google Translate described ‘veneer’, but it is indeed all solid wood. Given the same program said it had 18 grids (frets) and matt paint (finish), I perhaps placed too much faith in its abilities to get the message across. Millar work only with solid wood - but I just thought I’d mention that in case anyone delved into the same inaccurate translations as I did!

Really I should wrap this up, but I don’t want to stop talking about this one (can you tell I am quite excited about the SP-210LL?) I came across this brand on the recommendation of Taiwan-based ukulele artist David Chen, who is friends with the owner. I had met him when we both performed at a ukulele festival in Finland - and it turned out that we’d both studied at Leeds University between 1995 and 1998. So, perhaps there was a touch of destiny there too.

The Millar SP-210L is a little cracker. A belter. A cracking uke. I love it when something comes along that knocks my socks off, and this long necked soprano has left me positively barefoot!

(An update about volume - I used a decibel meter to experiment and did manage to find a louder uke, the Kala KA-BFTE tenor. This Millar SP-210LL was louder than a Kanile’a E-Silk concert and a Snail S60T tenor however, it is very loud!)

For a video demo of the Millar SP-210LL long neck soprano, click additional info below. There are two demos, a quick 60 second sample and a longer format demonstration too.

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