With regard to the decorated ukulele that I bought in Bardolino whilst on holiday at Lake Garda last week, I’ve put on some regular ukulele strings and it sounds quite good. Yet the intonation on the fretboard is way off and it’s difficult to play even the most basic chords. As I bought it in a souvenir/gift shop, I think it’s more of a wall decoration than a musical instrument that’s meant to be played. The decoration is most attractive and is made up of lots of dots of different coloured thick paint.
However, I’ve just retuned it with open C tuning – gCEA. This involved tuning the first string down from A to G so that playing the open strings gives a C chord. So I can now play a variety of chords by just sliding my finger as a barre up and down the neck.