My Flight Blackbird just arrived! First impressions
Forgive me - taking a good photo of a completely black uke is not the easiest thing. LOL
Body: https://i.imgur.com/DwkUmzs.jpg
Headstock: https://i.imgur.com/2fBHN81.jpg
This was sort of an impulse buy. I was uke shopping but had an Ohana in mind. But Mim just recently added some new brands to her offerings as she's phasing out Kala and has moved to using her own site w/ Shopify for sales instead of Reverb's platform.
Anyway. Naturally I had to check out the new stuff, and while I had seen Flight ukes before and heard good things about them, most dealers carry the Flight travel ukes, so I hadn't seen the NUS310's before, and certainly not in an all-black design. I had to have it. (Now that I've thoroughly browsed Flight's web site, there are about 20 others I want. That's how it goes.)
Flight uses their own black nylon strings on these, and that's probably the only part of it I'm not completely sold on. They *sound* great - the uke has a great bright, punchy sound... it's like that classic uke sound but with a bit more depth. I don't know how much of that is the strings and how much is the construction. It has a lightly arched back and the finish, while painted, is matte and not super heavy, so it doesn't have that sound-dampening gloss that my beloved Ziricote has.
I just don't love the way the strings feel. It is brand new, so I'll give them some time and see how it goes. Strings are cheap enough that I can try some things if they don't settle in and grow on me. One thing that struck me is that despite leaving Virginia 4 days ago, the uke was only about a half step out of tune on arrival. So either they were stretched out nicely for me already, or they don't stretch very much.
Mim's setup is fantastic as always! The action and intonation is perfect.
But, uncertain string feelings aside, I love this little thing! It sounds good, it feels good, it even smells good! (Smells more like a woodshop than a paint factory.) It retails for about US$80. Worth every penny, IMO.
Edit: [Link to the Blackbird on Flight's site](https://flightmusic.com/product/flight-nus310-blackbird-soprano-ukulele/), where they have much better photos.