Rubin RP-100 Sopranino

Took a chance and bought one of those $25 sopranino-scale ukuleles (Rubin RP-100) sold online. What came was a nice looking instrument with badly-working tuners, way out of intonation and peculiar strings. However, the body, neck and frets looked good, so thought I'd invest some work time on it. After some work, it works pretty good!

Changed the OEM tuners which binded badly. Got a set from CBGitty.Com (item #31-068-01) - much better quality tuner from the same manufacturer of the OEM set. All the holes matched perfectly and installation was strictly a remove-and-replace.

The original intonation was very sharp. The fix turned out to be sanding the plastic saddle down as far as I dared. The Intonation is now almost perfect (a little bit sharp, but quite tolerable). A little more sanding could be done, but the effort isn't worth (to me, anyway) the probable result.

Replaced the OEM strings from stock from my cache of spare (new and used) nylon uke and guitar strings (all unmarked!). I selected a number of eyeball-measurement strings and was able to get to GDAE (mandolin tuning). It should tune to whatever I have the right strings, but I had a personal reason to try GDAE.

So for a $35 total cash outlay and a couple hours of work, I have an acceptable (for me, anyway) mini-instrument. The sound quality (sound sample below) is satisfactory for what it is, but I wasn't looking for jamming or concert hall quality. As a hotel room time killer, leave-in-car to play while waiting for folk, or any other situation where having a mini-instrument would be handy, the instrument isn't half bad.

https://soundcloud.com/steveztv/rubin-sopranino-gdae-test

the saddle on mine also needed tons of sanding as well, almost half the saddle material had to come off. And a lot of work at the nut too. I put on worth CH's tuned GCEA however those strings quickly dented and the C string doesn't intone very well. I probably should restring this little thing.

bnolsen said:

the saddle on mine also needed tons of sanding as well, almost half the saddle material had to come off. And a lot of work at the nut too. I put on worth CH's tuned GCEA however those strings quickly dented and the C string doesn't intone very well. I probably should restring this little thing.

Click to expand...

Did you have the same problem with the tuners binding? Mine were terrible, like they were discarded stock. It was dumb luck that the replacement tuners were from the same manufacturer, fit the tuner holes in the instrument perfectly, and even used the same screw holes. Once all the work was done, it was like nght and day with the instrument. Now it's a keeper.

SteveZ said:

Did you have the same problem with the tuners binding? Mine were terrible, like they were discarded stock. It was dumb luck that the replacement tuners were from the same manufacturer, fit the tuner holes in the instrument perfectly, and even used the same screw holes. Once all the work was done, it was like nght and day with the instrument. Now it's a keeper.

Click to expand...

No the tuners were fine. The geared tuners make this uke very headstock heavy. I recently put grover 2b's on mine which are okay and definitely weigh a lot less.

I bought one of the RP-100's just so I'd have a little zebra to match my others. (B-T-C-S, all Zebra wood). I had my local shop set it up and put some Fremont Hard Black lines on it. It sounds great but it's too small for me to play comfortably.

I have the Caramel solid acacia top sopranino. A close relative of the Rubin ukes i understand? Similar issues around action and intonation that I solved with a little work on both the nut and the saddle. Original strings were like the fake Chinese aquilas, pretty bad, so I replaced them with Southcoast extra lights. The string replacement transformed the sound in ordinary GCEA but I am keen to try other tunings too...

I chose GDAE tuning for two reasons: 1) the small body accepts the higher pitch better than lower tunings, and 2) I was looking for an "in the suitcase/carryon" low-volume substitute for the mandolin for hotel-room or waiting-in-the-car use. For the price (after doing the work) the uke has been a pleasant surprise.