(AXL) Recording King RU998

My Nickel Resonator

I love my Resonator Ukulele! It's very shiny, (so hard to photograph and prone to tarnish), sounds great, is loud and is everything I want from a Resonator Ukulele. 

It says Recording King on the headstock but I know its just a badge and it comes from an AXL factory in China, the same as most of the other Resonator Ukuleles out there. As well as badging them for everybody, (Ashbury, Gold Tone, Johnson to name a few), they do a Brass finish as well as the Nickel and I have seen wooden body ones too. The Nickel ones can be smooth or  come with an engraved body and mine is engraved. The engraving looks good and effect is only diminished if you see a lot of them with the identical engraved pattern so you know its all done by machine.

Recording King was a pre war brand originally owned by the US mail order firm Montgomery Ward but they stopped using it, let the name lapse and it was picked up by AXL as one of their brands to try and add some "history" and "mystique" to the instruments.

The strings it came weren't great so I have replaced them with some Aquila Banjo Ukulele strings, (I wanted to keep the strings heavy to get the most from the resonator cone)