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Monkey jail.

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Yesterday I got another ukulele, which is my third so far. This one is one of the Fluke models of uke that are quite popular among musicians (aka "the kids") these days.

This particular model is the Camp Fluke, which is one of the discontinued designs that you can't really get anymore. Yeah, I'm a sucker for limited edition, out-of-print items. Plus, the price was really cheap, I couldn't pass it up.

I've only played it a couple of hours so far, and it's been a difficult transition to the new uke. It's a larger instrument than what I've been playing previously, and so all the little finger-picking exercises that I've been working on for the smaller size of uke have to be relearned for the larger size. Plus, the sound is a lot different than my old uke; the intrument is a little bass-heavy, and the strings have a lot of squeak when you play. So it's like "chord, SQUEEEK, chord, chord, chord, SQUEEEK..." If someone wrote ukulele tunes specifically with squeaks in the song, I'd be all set.

Still, it's good to have a different instrument to play, if only for the variety. And the Fluke is a cheap, resilient instrument, so you feel a little better taking it along with you on, say, a weekend getaway to the Poconos, than you would taking a more expensive and more fragile instrument. So it's got that going for it.

Fluke trivia: John Pierson, the guitarist from Screeching Weasel, owns three Flukes.

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