When it comes to ukulele, we are starting to see China developing awesome ukuleles for an inexpensive pricepoint.
And while we would love to old koa, acacia, or some expensive wooden ukulele, many beginners purchasing ukulele under $300 are purchasing HPL or some type of laminated wood-based ukulele.
And a lot of third party companies contracted by major ukulele companies that are trying to target the budget-minded consumer are having their ukulele’s made in China.
While there are Chinese guitar makers that pride themselves in selling inexpensive guitars and ukuleles for those looking for something entry level.
Sinomusic Enterprise is one of the leading supplier in bowed instruments and stringed instruments in China and many of their violin, viola, cello, double bass, guitar, bass, ukulele and accessories are sold under sinomusic and Aiersi.
The Aiersi brand is old in over 75 countries and in the US, their products are sold in Amazon.
The product I am reviewing is the Aiersi SU-21D Soprano Dolphin Ukulele which is an inexpensive ukulele at under $30.
Aiersi ukuleles use Aquila Supernylgut nylon strings, which many ukuleles come with.
The body features a mahogany top, back, side and solid mahogany neck. The head features plastic/open and a saddle with a plastic fingerboard and Richlite wood which is walnut and white with copper frets and white pearl dots. The finish utilizes a matte open wood pore finish and it does look very nice!
If there is one thing about Aersi ukulele’s that remain consistent, they do look nice.
But let’s now go to the inherent problems with this certain ukulele. Let me first preface that if you are going to buy a ukulele, buy yourself a tuner or download a phone app. This is important!
Now, because this is the cheapest of the Aiersi ukulele’s I have tested, this one has more problems than the others.
Because the lack of a true sound hole, tuning and the usual bigger circular sound hole, instead it’s replaced with two dolphins, tuning this ukulele was a challenge. My tuners were not picking things up that well.
In fact, comparing to another Chinese-based ukulele maker that uses creative sound hole designs, they added a hole to the top left side of the body in order to allow the sound to work effectively. Aersi doesn’t have a sound hole, just the two dolphins.
I know for many people, creatively and aesthetically, two dolphins as the soundhole is fascinating. In fact, for those who are looking at this ukulele as a decorative purpose, I can see it being used for that. But if you want to use this as an actually ukulele, tuning it is a challenge.
There is no way to sugarcoat it, tuning this Aersi dolphin ukulele is not easy. It’s the only time where I have had such difficulty time tuning a uke.
In fact, once I spent quite a bit of time tuning it, around several minutes of play and strumming, the tuning changed so much that it became a hassle to tune it over and over.
Is this a playable ukulele? If you mean, where a young kid can play and pluck or bang on strings, then yes. But is it a ukulele that you can play songs? No. Is it more of a decorative ukulele. Yes. But again, all is not lost because if you are practicing plucking, practicing tremolo, I suppose this can be used.
But if you are serious about getting a ukulele for playing, I can’t recommend the Aiersi SU-21D Soprano Dolphin Ukulele. For wall decoration, then yes, that should be fine. But there are much better, inexpensive ukuleles available that are from Aersi.
