Tenor Uke with Bridge Pins...

Hey guys,

I'm a guitar tech slowly stepping in to the world of ukuleles. I was given a beautiful ukulele to setup and I'm having trouble. The scale length is 17", which makes it a tenor if I'm not mistaken (disregard this if I'm correct, but tenor ukes are tuned with the same G-C-E-A re-entrant tuning, right?). The frustrating part is that this thing has bridge pins instead of the normal nylon tie-through bridge. On top of that, it has friction tuning pegs...

This thing has been nothing but a headache for me. From the tension on the bridge pins to the tension on the friction tuners, it's one giant tension nightmare. There's gotta be a somewhat simple answer here.

Aside from tracking down a set of nylon tenor uke strings with ball ends (which may or may not exist for all I know), what's the best way to go about getting this thing strung up and tuned?

Ball-end strings can be easily made up using small beads (small enough to fit through the pin holes) that have big enough holes for the string to go through. As for the friction tuners ... depends on the design. If they're violin-style wooden pegs best ask a violin specialist, but for "normal" friction tuners a strip-down and clean is often all that's required. Remember to look for wear on the headstock from over-tightened tuners and also worn-out friction washers. Either circumstance can cause problems.

Good luck!
:music:

Yes, bridge pins on instruments that use plain strings is a little bonkers. You need to fit your own ball ends using beads. Yes the tension at g,C,E,A is too high for me on a tenor but that is considered "standard" these days. I tune my tenors E,A,C#,F#.

Historically Soprano, Concert and Tenor ukuleles were tuned at different pitches but for the sake of convenience someone somewhere along the line has decided that they will all be tuned the same.

Anthony

Some well established brands like Kanile'a and Ko'olau use bridge pins on their ukuleles. Beeds with a knot are one way to go, but I find that it is enough to just make a double or triple knot at the end of the string (whithout a beed). Use at least one figure 8 to prevent the knots from slipping.

As for the friction tuners, they mey indeed be tricky at the tension of a tenor; have you tried tighten the screws?

Tenors can be strung both re-entrant (high G) or linear (low G), but you need a a string with a different gauge for those two cases.

GHS strings have a small ball end.

But as Rakele suggested, why not just tie a knot at the end?

lfoo6952 said:

GHS strings have a small ball end.

But as Rakele suggested, why not just tie a knot at the end?

Click to expand...

Why not just tie a knot in the end?

Because that's not how bridge pins work. Bridge pins work by displacing the ball end sideways so that its trapped under the top and then resisting the pressure of the ball end to return sideways. Bridge pins are not designed to resist vertical forces. Just tying a knot in the string, which seems to work somewhat, doesn't place enough sideways force on the bridge pin for it to be totally secure and places more vertical force on the bridge pin than it was designed to resist.

Make sure the bridge pin holes are slotted. Use unslotted bridge pins. I've used beads (ceramic, plastic, brass), but find knots to be best (sharp edges on beads can shear the string at the knot). I've not found tonal advantage to beads. DAMHIKT. YMMV.

If your ukulele is setup with a slotted hole and uses a solid pin then that's a different setup to the standard bridge pin setup that uses a plain hole and a slotted pin. Having a slotted hole would make the setup like a slotted top mounted bridge except its anchoring under the top. That would be a good way of doing things and in such a case a knotted string would be enough.

If your ukulele has a standard hole and uses slotted pins then you really need a bead on the end of the string which the pin displaces sideways under the top. That's just how it works.