I'm going through my inbox trying to catch up on lots and lots of Google Alerts.

On ukulele, of course. What else?

So twice in a row today, from two different self-appointed experts, I run into the persistent idiocy that concert ukulele are louder than sopranos — with the tacit understanding that tenors are therefore louder than concerts and baritones the loudest of all. This is crap. It makes me almost as mad as the one about needing small hands to play soprano. Grrrr!

The truth is — and you've heard this before — size doesn't matter. What matters is quality. I have a nice, high-end soprano that will blow your lower-end concerts, tenors and baris right out of the water, and not just in the volume department.

Please note that I said "quality" rather than "price" above. You can get a very nice instrument nowadays for around $200 (sometimes even less). Note this is for sopranos, my fave as you all know. The larger sizes will be more but in proportion to the soprano price range. They'll sound nice, have good volume and be emminently playable.

I'm still a soprano fiend, but whatever size ukulele makes you happy is the one you should play. Just don't choose a larger size thinking that's an automatic ticket to higher volume.

And the rest of you really need to stop spreading the silly idea around. Beginners come across that sort of thing and think it must be true. Why start them out with a disappointment?