Oscar Schmidt Comfort Review -­ Beautiful Functionality

Body And Neck:
Hardware:
Sound:
Value:

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Oscar Schmidt Comfort series ukulele bass is among the most capable models on the market right now. Even though this brand isn't really specialized in making ukuleles, they have proven to be more than capable of putting together an instrument that plays and sounds great. Lets take a closer look.

Body and Neck

You could go ahead and say that Oscar Schmidt Comfort bass uke features dead giveaways as to who made it. One of the most obvious ones is the choice of materials. We don't often see spruce being used in ukuleles. Yet, Oscar Schmidt did just that. This bass comes with a solid spruce top combined with more traditional koa back and sides. Performance implications are quite interesting as we are going to find out in just a little bit. In terms of aesthetics, you are looking at a finish pattern that resembles something often seen on acoustic guitars. Oscar Schmidt did go beyond basic when it comes to details. There is black binding all around the top and back of the uke, but they extended that binding at the top. By doing so, they gave the Comfort bass uke a rather unique appearance. Build quality wise, everything is rock solid.

Hardware

Looking at the hardware, there are several things worth noticing. For starters, Oscar Schmidt used a beefy rosewood bridge to house a set of four compensated saddles. Mind you, all of these are fully independent making it pretty easy to adjust the action should you need to. Headstock features four robust die cast tuning machines that come across as over engineered to a certain extent. Be that as it may, they do a great job at retaining the key of the instrument as well as offering enough precision for proper fine tuning. Much like most other bass ukes in this category, Oscar Schmidt Comfort series bass uke features a built in preamp. It is a Belcat package that offers bass and treble correction, as well as volume control and a built in tuner. For an instrument such as this one, you don't really need much more than that.

Sound

When you finally tune this thing and pick those strings for the first time, you'll definitely realize that the sound produced isn't quite standard. Oscar Schmidt Comfort series packs a lot of punch for such a tiny body. Even though you don't usually expect it, those bass overtones and that trademark girth of sound is definitely there. On top of that, Oscar Schmidt bass uke feels very playable. The profile of the neck and the way the action is set up simply make it effortless to use. On the preamp side of the equation, things are looking more than good. That volume, bass and treble combo is sufficient for dialing in a great tone. With that said, the preamp itself is fairly accurate when it comes to rendering the natural sound of this bass uke. If you decide to push the signal through a few effects, it gets even better.

Conclusion

Despite Oscar Schmidt's lack of ‘street cred' in the ukelele community and their unconventional approach to materials, this bass uke is a total success. They've successfully managed to capture the essence of what this type of instrument is supposed to represent. Because of that, we recommend this model to anyone.

For more info about the Oscar Schmidt Comfort, click here.
For more Bass Ukulele you might like, click here.