Baton Rouge UR 11-C
Last December we got to know the Baton Rouge V2-S Sun ukulele, which I have continued to use regularly and genuinely enjoy playing. In the second part of the Baton Rouge series, we try a concert-size instrument: the Baton Rouge UR 11-C.
Compared with its smaller Sun sibling, it has less “visual tuning”: there is no carving around the sound hole. The body is made uniformly from mahogany, which gives the ukulele a simple and elegant appearance in the best sense of the words, and it is actually not an especially common construction. It comes fitted with Aquila strings from the factory, which are good-quality strings. So once we pick up the instrument, apart from tuning it, there is very little else to do before we can start playing. There is no need to begin by replacing poor factory strings, and no need to rush to a luthier to have the instrument set up. This Baton Rouge is immediately playable and likeable exactly as it leaves the factory.
If I were a beginner choosing a ukulele today and wanted a good concert-size instrument at an affordable price, this one would be a strong contender. I find it difficult to name a real negative. The tuning machines perhaps felt slightly tighter to my hands, which are accustomed to another type – just as I wrote about the smaller Sun model – but this is not annoying and is probably only a matter of habit. There is nothing wrong with the tuning itself; the strings can be adjusted accurately and smoothly.
So here is the video in which I try the Baton Rouge UR 11-C. Editing this one was a little difficult because I recorded an unusually large amount of raw footage. For once, it was not because I made lots of mistakes, but because I simply played and played and played the ukulele while the camera kept recording... I also performed my usual “fret test”: I fretted a few notes on the strings and checked whether the same note on another string sounded at exactly the same pitch – in other words, whether the instrument's intonation was accurate. My answer is a clear yes. That means the chords sound clean and pleasant, without irritating sour notes.
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