With the Hydra Double Neck Ukulele offers Ortega a novel Tenor Ukulele one with two necks. Accordingly, the lower body delivers the typical Tenor ukulele sound, while the upper body is double-stringed. The double-chorus strings produce an amazingly broad sound, which is ideally suited to support a powerful vocal accompaniment. In addition, the Custom pickup provides a natural amplified stage sound and with the 3-way switch the 4-string, 8-string or both can be activated simultaneously. Last but not least, one is already included in Gigbag the scope of delivery.
This is a rather wonderfully unique instrument that sounds far bigger than it really is. Loud, woody and resonant. This is a great choice for the Ukulele player who wants something different or the guitarist who wants to branch out into different musical textures.
That being said, there are a two things to note as this was not a perfect instrument out of the box:
- The frets were filed level on both necks, but the scratches were still very much present on the frets, making for a rather scratchy playing experience. Polishing the frets with successive grits solved that issue.
- The action on both necks was incredibly high- both necks needed the bridge sanding down by quite some margin to achieve a more playable action.
All in all, this is a surprisingly inspiring and useful instrument that can enrich your instrument collection, however with the caveat that some prior setup knowledge is needed to make this instrument play as well as it deserves. It would have gotten 5 stars, had it not been for the issues that I encountered out of the box.