Flight Vanguard Solid Body Electric Tenor Ukulele - Trans Purple

Please allow us an extra 2-3 working days to set up and dispatch this Vanguard solid body electric tenor Flight ukulele.

The Pathfinder and Centurion have been a revelation the past couple of years bringing a playable, affordable solidbody electric ukulele to the masses for the first time. It only makes sense Flight would want to expand this range given the popularity and growing popularity of sister company to Flight; Jet (a guitar brand gaining fantastic reviews).

The Vanguard is more than a little bit based on an extremely famous set neck electric guitar models favoured by many modern guitar players. Available initially in a crazy cool Trans black and a purple capped top with a pair of humbucker magnetic pickups. If you want to plug in with effects or explore the overdrive channel of your amp then this ukulele was built with you in mind. Equally, if you want to roll back the volume and tone and learn some jazz chords the unique metallic timbre of brighter edge to this ukulele can certainly exceed your expectations.

The Flight Vanguard, solid body tenor ukulele is a dual cutaway steel string electric ukulele, offering the tonal possibilities of a true electric ukulele from the trusted name of Flight Ukulele. The ukulele itself is stunning with a purple flamed maple top with blue basswood body and neck. The ukulele features a rosewood fingerboard, 35mm nut width, white ABS binding, hardtail fixed bridge, back-through stringing, humbuckers, chrome hardware, single controls for volume and tone, and a three way switch.

The steel strings, slim taper to the neck and lack of acoustic chambering mean that this uke will require some adjustment to your playing style to truly master. It's clear Flight thought long and hard about the spec of this ukulele because it has a zero fret, an electric mandolin style bridge with individual saddles and finally a nice padded blue Flight gigbag.

The question you will be asking now is whether this instrument can be nearly as good as the Risa LP, ST or TE models that have been on the market for the better half of the last decade and I would say that these Ukes offer the same experience with perfectly acceptable and serviceable hardware but they are still a Chinese factory ukulele (the Risa's are made in the EU) with cosmetic marks visible when you really scrutinise it.

The most important thing to factor in about these instruments is the large amount of set up work required to make them perform at their best - on average, each one of these sold so far has spend between 60-120 minutes on the workbench. This does mean our prices sit a notch higher than large box-shifting retailers that don't check instruments before dispatching them and only you can decide whether the comprehensive check and work carried out beforehand is worth the extra investment.

For many, the difference in price between the two will more than make up for these differences and my hope is that by introducing an actual affordable solid body to Uke players that works (unlike some disastrous models other brands have tried to introduce in the past and failed), Flight will be the spark for an entire generation of loud and proud electric uke players... That sounds lovely, but I better buy some earplugs!

These are now strung at the factory with a good set of strings in 10 - 26 gauge. The Low G is wound whilst the top 3 are plain strings.

Pictures show an average example.