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Episode 2 – Comparing Tonewoods with Kalei Gamiao

Our 2nd podcast features Kalei Gamiao playing 4 different LFDM’s with different tonewoods along with 5 of his personal ukes. NOTE: Kalei comes in around 38 minutes or so, if you wanna skip our banter and opinions and get right to it. All of the ukes featured are tenor size but with all with different woods so you can listen to some of the differences, at least with these particular woods. Of course a lot of, or even most of the tone comes from the builder and their design, but there are also distinct tones you’ll get from certain woods so this is just another data point for those wondering which woods they will like.

LFDM is the brand made by custom luthier in Canada, Luis Feu de Mesquita. We first featured this builder at the review site HERE, and then a few years ago we featured them again HERE. Since then we’ve gotten them a number of times and you can hear a number of videos from them at our Vimeo channel HERE.

Kalei is one of the artists that lives in the area and we regularly record him for sound samples on our Vimeo channel so check out those videos to hear humdreds of samples from him. You can also learn more about Kalei and get his tour dates and music at his website HERE.

Kalei first samples the LFDM’s at about 40 minutes in and gives us feedback on what he hears, decidedly different from the feedback from Joel and Zach but that’s one of the things to understand here. These are opinions, and no matter how well someone plays they might have a different opinion on what they like than you. Their technique and preference will be unique to them so take every opinion for what it is, just a personal opinion. Kalei then gives us sound samples from 5 of his personal ukes with various tonewoods. Hope you guys enjoy and maybe even learn a few things.

All the episodes can be found on iTunes HERE. The podcast is an informal discussion with Joel, Zach, and I so take it with a grain of salt. We do study the ukulele market and products available and have worked together to run The Ukulele Site where we set-up and ship out 20-30+ ukes a day. Our experience comes from playing, setting up, and regularly working with customers and getting their feedback. We aren’t doing sponsors or trying to monetize this in any way but you can support it by going onto iTunes, subscribing and rating. Mahalo!

Comments 2

  1. Great presentation! Maybe as close as one can get to a “blind” assessment of instrument sound. Really shows me how I can be visually biased when watching/listening to video. I think the key comments were about how everybody hears something a bit different. And then there is that endless glossary of terms everyone uses to describe what they hear. Like going to an art museum and overhearing what people say about a famous painting (or something like that).
    Very interesting podcast. I want to say very informative too (which it was) except what it really did was just feed my addiction.
    Mahalo!

  2. Pingback: Master Built Ukuleles from Luis Feu de Mesquita | The Ukulele Review

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