Ayers Guitars

Ayers Guitars was founded in 1996 by Huang Cheng Fa who hired Australian luthier Gerard Gilet to provide expertise and training, as well as design and materials advice in the new venture. Gerard no longer works there but I guess this is where the Australian themed branding comes from?

Ayers Guitars started out producing Ayers Ukuleles, but in 2009 they changed all of the Ukulele branding to Uluru, (Uluru is the original name for Ayers Rock in Australia). For all of the Australian pretensions, Ayers Guitars and Uluru Ukuleles are all manufactured in Vietnam by a Taiwanese Company.

What is the case is, all of the instruments are hand built as Soprano, Concert or Tenor scale, (I am told they have made Baritones in the past but they are no longer in the standard catalogue, and I know they have made Taropatches but these don't feature in the catalogue either?) using a variety of solid woods and because the instruments are all hand built, Ayers / Uluru can do a lot of custom work like inlays on them too.

In rather confusing marketing sometimes the various tone wood models get a Hawaiian sounding model name, (like "Manako" for mango or "Kohola" for cedar and rosewood), other times they don't. Then with the mahogany models are just called "Uluru" but the others all have a second branding name, even if it is just "Koa" and to finally confuse as well as having a range of koa Ukuleles they call "Koa"