Fishing Leader line on ukulele

Without wishing to re-ignite a whole debate on the subject again, I have been testing fishing leader lines on my ukuleles for the last couple of months.

I am delighted with them!
http://www.gotaukulele.com/2015/05/something-fishy-fishing-line-as-ukulele.html

Thanks for the clear writeup.
I don't see it as a debate, just useful info that could save someones sanity for instance on a long distance sailing trip.
I am happy to pay for the labeled packages of strings and for the pleasure they bring they are worth the price. I hate to think what they would cost if the uke business had to support the manufacturing technology involved.

You could add the string gauges in mm and inches - here's numbers I find on uke sets and the floroucarbon fishing line I've seen in these sizes:
.520 mm .020 in 30#
.570 mm .024 in 40#
.660 mm .026 in 50#
.740 mm .029 in 60#
.810 mm .032 in 80#
.910 mm .036 in 100# (non on your chart - Baritone D string)

Although the guages are consistent, I'm not familiar with a floroucarbon fishing line that is brown. The whole point for fishing is that its nearly invisible in the water.

How about the nylon strings - there are a lot more varieties there in the fishing lines and they are cheaper than floro.
-Vinnie in Juneau

I'm convinced.

Have done the same with monofilament fishing line, the $4/100yards from WallyWorld. It works satusfactory,a little hgh on tension, but won't snap. 40-50 pound test did A well enough. Usually the hardest part is actually finding the right weight test line, as many store seem to only go to 50 pounds max.

Once upon a time last year, I priced out 25 yd spools of 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, 100 # Seaguars fishing line from a few online vendors, all 6 spools with free shipping came to about $180 USD. Both OldePhart (John) and PhilUSAFret had shared a similar spec on which FC fishing leaders to use...

What talked me out of it was a comment from Dirk from Southcoast, in that instead of finding the best strings for your instrument, since you will already have this massive supply of strings, you might INSTEAD end up trying to find the best instrument for your strings, and if you go this route, you run the risk of becoming closed off to trying other strings (even if only out of guilt for having made such a huge investment and wanting to use them all up before buying something else)...

I'm quite ineloquent compared to what Dirk originally said, more like fitting strings to uke (as it should be) vs. fitting uke to strings (which is what you'd be doing in the end).

Of course, consider the source, which as a string-maker and seller, could be seen as bias, but in all of his posts Dirk has been a straight shooter which I much appreciate, and at the very least it gave me pause....

However, I am glad that Baz has tried it, AND was successful, and to me this proves, once again that this is not a completely insane way to go, especially if you have more than a dozen ukes to buy strings for like I do.

Thanks man - yes - was just an experiment and as much as it may not have worked out for me, it may not work for others. Fun though.

Booli said:

... since you will already have this massive supply of strings, you might INSTEAD end up trying to find the best instrument for your strings, and if you go this route, you run the risk of becoming closed off to trying other strings ...

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Good point - I think it's always worthwhile to try different strings on any uke.

How does monofilaments compare to others, like aquila or the more expensive fluoro?

SteveZ said:

Have done the same with monofilament fishing line, the $4/100yards from WallyWorld. It works satusfactory,a little hgh on tension, but won't snap. 40-50 pound test did A well enough. Usually the hardest part is actually finding the right weight test line, as many store seem to only go to 50 pounds max.

Click to expand...

tangimango said:

How does monofilaments compare to others, like aquila or the more expensive fluoro?

Click to expand...

For me, I'd always go with Aquila and other commercial packages first. I use monofilament fishing in two situations only: 1) I can't find anything in the commercial packages that timely fits the bill, and 2) I need it now and can't wait for the mail or my local music store doesn't carry it. So, mono-line is normally a backup, not a primary. It only becomes a primary when there are no other options ((e.g. needing an E5 string (GDAE tuning) that won't snap easily)).