Malani MSU-53

A Mystery Solved

When I first came across this Ukulele it was incorrectly identified as a "Malawee" Soprano. I had never heard of this branding and as I was trawling the "ending soonest" filter of my eBay search I thought "I had better make some kind of note of the brands existence for the database" so I went in to save the picture that had been posted. Unfortunately(?) all of the pictures posted were pretty awful and not likely to be usable without a LOT of work, however there was only an hour to go on the auction as so far there had only been 1 bid so it was still very cheap, so I decided to send a small increment as an invitation. After all I had recently sold the spalted maple B&M Tenor and I do like the effect spalting makes, also by bidding, if it came I could take better pictures and if it didn't then the listing would remain in my didn't win listing for a month so I would have some time to sort out the pictures...

Well I won; and it's a good job I did because when it arrived at Ukulele Corner I found that it was incorrectly listed! It's a Malani NOT a Malawee, (how they got WEE from NI I'll never know?) Now I had seen that branding before but not often, and it is a reasonable Ukulele with some fairly dramatic, (more dramatic than the B&M), spalting, especially the back with its almost Rorschach owl. (well I can see it!)