Martin T1K Koa Tenor Ukulele Natural

My ring finger on my left hand is stiffening up. Can't play my guitars. Can play a ukulele. The Martin T1-K, looks, sounds, well made, and the cost is reasonable. The soft case ( bag) is not sufficient. Bought a "Gator "hard case. Resonates very loud. Ordered it on line. When it arrived, checked it. It has a beautiful quilted grain. Dark fretboard. Like I said. Looks, sounds and is made well. Of course, It's a "Martin ". I do have a D-35 and a soprano uke too. Steve.

Beautiful solid Koa well engineered by Martin. Beautiful tone

Depending on your finances and how "into it" you are, this could be a starter, a step up or an lifetime keeper. I think it's a good value any way you want to approach it. There is nothing fancy here, just quality materials and capable workmanship. An example would be the tuners, which feature kind of cheap looking plastic buttons, but they operate Grover tuning machines that are superb. As many people know, Martins -- whether ukes or guitars -- come with fairly high action. They figure you can lower it if you want to. I took mine to a local guitar tech, who shaved the saddle to lower the string height a bit, smoothed some rough fret ends and installed strap buttons, all for about the price a couple of fast-food meals. Despite these little projects, this Martin arrived from the factory set up better than a couple of higher-end ukes I bought through respected online uke sellers that promised great setups. The T1K comes with a pretty decent gig bag that would probably suffice if you live in an area without temperature or humidity extremes. If the indoor humidity drops below 40% often, you'll probably want to invest in a hard case. This is solid koa and won't take kindly to wide swings in temperature or relative humidity. Jim

Perfect build… no flaws!

I will use this for practice, learning, and my own enjoyment. The tone is very nice for the koa wood, which I realize is not as warm as the mahogany wood. I just wish that the tone was louder. It does have a clear tone and the only buzzes seem to be of my own making, and when I inadvertently mute a string by just touching the string instead of pressing the finger down solidly enough on the string. Pleased with the quality. Seems very solidly constructed by a company with many years of experience in building quality instruments.

I've recently gotten into the ukulele and since I'm a professional classical full time musician, I decided to get a step up uke. I've been shopping for 3-4 months. Finally I decided to try this Martin as I had read many good reviews. I was really disappointed. The frets were not finished properly and were noticeably sharp on the upper side (lower side was ok). Intonation was mediocre at best, certainly not what one would expect from a $500+ ukulele. Since GC has such a good satisfaction policy, I'm glad I tried this and was able to return it (literally the next day). I decided to keep a similarly priced ukulele I was comparing it to, and this one has great intonation and much nicer finishing touches like binding, abalone shell, and movable individual bridges for each string. Your experience might be different, but I would warn you to beware.