Boulder Creek Riptide UC5

Boulder Creek maybe a small river outside of Boulder, Colorado but the head office for this company is in California and all of the Ukuleles are made in China. They are very nice Ukuleles though, my one has a beautiful satin finish, very nice inlay and is an absolute joy to play. It is laminate mahogany (their Standard Mahogany range) but it has a really nice blemish free top layer plus a nice rounded bridge and a solid fretboard. The frets are smooth the intonation is great and it doesn't really rattle. For those that worry about the lack of fret markers they are on the side at 5, 7, 10 and 12. The overall tone is what you would expect from a laminate but delivered cleanly and powerfully. The only thing that lets it down is the buttons on the otherwise excellent sealed machine heads look cheap up close.

All Boulder Creek Ukuleles are Riptides and all feature the small epaulette sound hole and the larger side sound hole. The idea is and the side sound hole allows the player to better hear what is going on. I have never really though, when playing a Ukulele with a sound hole in the traditional place, "do you know I wish I could hear better what is going on", but the idea seems to have taken off as a lot of people put these sound holes in nowadays and refer to them as Sound Ports.

Mine is the oldest version of the Boulder Creek Riptide range of Ukulele. As you can see with the publicity photo for the current design, the "Riptide" inlay has gone from the center of the body and is now on the headstock replacing "Boulder Creek". The saw tooth along the top of the headstock has gone as well. I understand that these changes would have reduced the cost per unit to Boulder Creek, but I think it makes the Ukulele less distinctive in a crowded marketplace and I didn't see them passing any savings on.