1950s Emenee Flamingo Plastic Soprano Ukulele

The last Flamingo I had through the shop was very cool in looks. This one is more sedate but features an integral pitch-pipe tuner at the headstock. Not bad! It also sounds and plays quite well, though it was destined for the wall-hanging pile when my in-laws delivered this and two other plastic ukes to me as a delayed Xmas present over the weekend.

Work included regluing some popped seams (top to sides), monkey-resetting the neck back to get the action down (via shimming the joint back against the edge of the top while the top was loose), "regular" friction pegs replacing the original, broken, plastic violin-style pegs, and a general setup with fluorocarbon strings.

The only rub? The pitch-pipe's C note is out of tune. Oh well!

It's hard to beat the cool scenes that plastic ukes tend to display proudly on their headstocks.

"Maroon bowling ball" is the featured back/side/neck coloration.

My replacement tuners are cheesy and cobbled, but that's what happens when I scrounge for random bits in the bins. One must remember that the strings are nearly 10% of the value on your average old plastic uke find.