Gremlin Music
Ashbury AU60 Baritone
|
Blue Moon ƒ Hole Tenor
|
Ashbury Lonely Player
|
|
Gremlin Music is a major British Importer and distributor of Folk style musical instruments founded in 1981. Whilst they do distribute other people's instruments in the UK, and I believe they own the Hobgoblin Music Shops, they also distribute a number of their own house brand ranges, including Ashbury, Blue Moon, Atlas, Hobgoblin and others, some but not all of them include Ukuleles within the range. In the past they have used the main Gremlin name on Ukuleles, they no longer do so but there are two Ukulele ranges they do brand and distribute
Blue Moon
This is the budget line and has taken over from Gremlin. The range includes other chordophones as well as Ukuleles like Mandolins, Guitars and Banjos; but no Banjoleles. On the Ukulele range there are Sopranos only, starting with a Colorful Soprano range but there have been Tenors and Baritone models in the past, including the ƒ hole mandolin bodied Jumbo Tenor made by Jisheng. They are made in China or Romania, mainly laminate, and there are no extra string options.
Ashbury
This is the more expensive, (I've seen it described as), semi-professional line. Again there are a lot of different instruments with this brand name, even more so than Blue Moon. There are also more wood choices and more solid options here too but some of the ranges are still laminate. The Ukulele ranges come from either Indonesia, (the 60's and 80's model numbers, and the rumour is, it's the same factory that produce Oscar Schmidts), or Vietnam, (the 20's-50's and 70's model numbers). This brand does include Banjoleles, (the usual Daewon rebrands) and a brass bodied Concert Resonator Ukulele, (the AXL one). The Ukuleles come in all of the usual scale sizes from Soprano to Baritone plus Baritone Bass, Tenor Lili'us and Taropatches, In 2015 they added an innovative headless travel Soprano too, they call the Lonely Player. The number ranges more directly refer to the woods used to make the instruments, rather than the country of manufacture though I'm not going to try and decode it here. Some of the better, (30, which is Koa) ranges were apparently designed by Phil Davidson, though they are still made in Vietnam. |
Please contact me if you have any information or pictures that would improve the page
contact Web Administrator if you think your copyright has been infringed |
|