Vorson E-Style Electric Ukulele Review: Electric Uke with Metal Attitude

Body And Neck:
Hardware:
Sound:
Value:

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While some ukuleles can be a little… well, a little boring, there is nothing run-of-the-mill about this E-Style electric uke from Vorson. Featuring a unique metal guitar-inspired design – with many of the same features that you’d find on an actual guitar – it’s certainly one for the extroverted ukulelist. It appears in our chart of the best electric ukuleles, so let’s check out what’s on offer.

Body and Neck

At first glance, you may think that the E-Style is a miniature guitar. However, look closer, and you’ll find the four strings give away that this is actually a pretty neat tenor ukulele, tucked behind cool electric guitar aesthetics.

The body features a modified Explorer shape and is made from a solid piece of paulownia with a sleek glossy black finish. Paulownia may not be your usual ukulele tonewood, but it is a strong, lightweight material that is more commonly seen in the guitar world – and it’s becoming more common in the electric uke world.

On the maple neck, Vorson uses a very commendable simulated rosewood composite (SRC) fretboard with dot inlays and 19 frets. All of these frets can be easily accessed due to the lower bout design, which is something many regular ukes struggle to offer. At the top, the pointy headstock with a six-in-a-line tuner configuration wraps up the rock-guitar vibe.

Hardware

Since the body is solid, there’s no under-bridge piezo setup on the E-Style. Instead, it uses two basic single-coil pickups that have been designed specifically for use on a uke. In particular, they have only two pole pieces, with each one centered between either the top two or lower two strings. Pickup selection is accomplished with a three-way switch.

The bridge has adjustable saddles to help with correcting intonation, which is a unique feature to a ukulele, while a single volume knob controls the output level. Strap buttons come pre-installed, and chrome-plated tuners, a gig bag, and an instrument cable round out the package quite nicely.

Sound

The E-Style is different from a traditional electric uke in that you do have some control over the tone thanks to the onboard controls. Its three-position pickup selector gives you access to the neck pickup – which has a thicker, more mid-rangey sound – and the bridge pickup, which brightens things up. The middle position turns on both pickups at the same time, and it is fairly balanced between the two-tone profiles.

None of these tones are anything more than basic and a little shrill, but for adding a little something extra to your ukulele arsenal, it’s worthwhile.

Since it’s truly an electric ukulele, we wouldn’t plan on playing it without an amp of some sort. It won’t resonate very well on its own due to the solid body, but – let’s face it – you don’t buy a uke like this to play acoustically. Truth be told, we were tempted to crank it through a Marshall stack, but we held off…

Conclusion

We can’t deny that you could look at the Vorson E-Style electric ukulele as a bit of a novelty item. However, after taking a closer look, we were pretty surprised. Despite some poor quality control and an entry-level sound quality, it’s hard to beat the unique design and vibe, the range of sounds, and some of the features that are on offer for the wallet-friendly price.

For more info about the Vorson E-Style Electric Ukulele, click here.

For more of the best electric ukuleles, click here.