The following is a review of both the KLOS full carbon tenor and the equivalent concert ukulele, from customer Peter. It was too long for the regular reviews, so is posted here instead!

A story of high-spending serendipity here when I came to Carlisle expecting to trade in my Millar tenor for a specific upgrade but left with *two* comparably-priced KLŌS ukes instead, thus happily preventing Matt from persuading yet another customer to spend less than they’d planned!

While the instrument I’d come 200 miles to see looked stunning and was lovely and articulate to play, I still wasn’t quite sure it was ‘the one’ when it simply had to be at its price point. So, also curious about concerts when I love tenor but just don’t get on with soprano scale, asked to try the KLŌS concert as a more compact alternative I could take anywhere, found myself so bewitched by it that I had to see the tenor as well and, in a decision of wild extravagance but total conviction that remains unshaken four weeks later (no buyer’s remorse here!), bought them both.

So what are they like? Hard to say exactly, but something like good spruce tops (which my Millar was) but maybe rounder with extra warmth and body, ample volume where you can just keep digging in without driving them to harshness, fine set-up with easy-playing action and good intonation all the way up (12th fret harmonics vs. fretted notes being one of the first things I check when trying instruments) and a lovely, easy response to vibrato. While I’m playing mostly full melody-with-chords fingerpicking arrangements and love these for that, they still sound great (never thin or tinny) strummed with the backs of the nails as I sometimes do.

Now carbon fibre might be light and KLŌS might describe these as ‘lightweight’, but they’re not, with my concert weighing in at 710g and my tenor at a hefty 872g where they quote the imperial equivalents of 765g and 850g respectively. While I can see potential issues here if you support your uke(s) with just hands and chest, it doesn’t bother me when I hold mine like a classical guitar or use a strap if I want to stand. Close (or KLŌS?) examination will also reveal tiny marks and imperfections in the finish where the high gloss over black carbon fibre weave shows everything and *will* pick up more, but, while you probably can’t keep them ‘perfect’ unless you never play them, the flip side is that you can stand on these things (not personally tested!) and they’ll still play.

One more thing, which is that this concert came with a low G fitted and sounded if anything bigger than the tenor in the shop, which it probably wasn’t really. But that was always coming straight off for me and, with high Gs on both, things are now definitely as you’d expect re. a lovely clarity from the concert and bigger warmth from the tenor, but both clear, bright (without being excessively so) *and* full. Of course you might question whether I really ‘needed’ the same thing in both sizes, but (as I was already discovering in the shop) I love both their family likeness and simultaneously distinct feel and character, making swapping between them both comfortably reassuring and interestingly different. So one very happy and uke-richer — if that extravagant couple of grand poorer — customer here!