maximum baritone uke scale length

bird's eye view of my ukelele

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stewmac says baritone ukes can have a scale length of 20-24 inches, but alot of other sites, and indeed real life ukes and listings, tend to say/be more like 19-20 inches

how long of a scale length could you have, and still call the instrument a baritone uke?
 
Well if it is a longer scale than normal, 19~20", you could get away with calling it a 'long neck' baritone. :)

I think it may actually come down to construction, ukes are lightly constructed, (with generally less tension in the strings than a guitar, from what I can tell).
 
stewmac says baritone ukes can have a scale length of 20-24 inches, but alot of other sites, and indeed real life ukes and listings, tend to say/be more like 19-20 inches

how long of a scale length could you have, and still call the instrument a baritone uke?

I am by no means an authority on these matters, but the following is what I have observed:

13"-14".........soprano uke
14.75"-16"....concert uke
17"-19".........tenor uke
19"-21.5"......baritone uke
22"-23".........tenor guitar
24"................7/8 size 'short scale' guitar
24.75"...........'Les Paul' scale length standard
25.5"..............Strat, Tele, classical guitar scale lengths standard


I know of a few others in this range, like Mandola, Irish Tenor Banjo, Octave Mandolin, but these are maybe outside the realm of what you are looking for, no?

Maybe this wiki page is helpful?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_length_(string_instruments)
 
It seems most commercially made baritones have a scale length of 19" - 21-1/2" as Booli pointed out. LfdM is a custom builder who makes his baritones 22-1/4", that is the longest I am aware of at the moment
 
thanks guys! my friend who just made me a fab 2 string cigar box geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetar says she'll make me a uke too, i was wondering how long of a scale i could have and still call it a baritone uke and be able to take it to the seasons! i suspect i might use the following get-out-of-jail-free card, and call whatever it turns out to be...

a 'long neck' baritone. :)
 
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thanks guys! my friend who just made me a fab 2 string cigar box geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetar says she'll make me a uke too, i was wondering how long of a scale i could have and still call it a baritone uke and be able to take it to the seasons! i suspect i might use the following get-out-of-jail-free card, and call whatever it turns out to be...

YES!

Maybe PART of what makes it an ukulele or not is the TUNING and the music played on it, no?

I think if you tune it like a uke, it is a uke.

OTOH...

I have several ukes that were made and sold as ukes that I have in 5ths tunings, GDAE on a soprano, like a mandolin, and CGDA on a tenor, like a mandola or 'tenor guitar', what should they be called now?

They are NOT tuned GCEA nor gCEA, but the GDAE soprano is using the Aquila 30-U strings specially made for soprano ukes in this tuning, and I am using the D'Addario EJ99-TLG strings for CGDA, with the #3 & #4 strings from the set switched, which gives me a re-entrant 5ths tuning, and I just have the E string tuned only up to a D, thus C4-G3-D4-A4...

I will be 'calling' them 'ukes in fifths tunings' but the die-hard purists from either the mando or uke magisteria will likely call this blasphemy, but it matters not to me, for I make MUSIC, and that is what I care about. :)

So, BEV, I'd called it whatever you like and play whatever you like...and if worried that it can be used for Seasons - maybe it's time to learn multi-tracking so you can pull out one of your kewl-and-funky sopranos and have a duet with yourself and your new-to-be-built goodness from your CBG-making friend?

May I suggest that your own happiness should outweigh other concerns? :music:
 
The Pono Nui has a 23" scale length. I haven't heard anyone comment that it is not a baritone.
 
thank you for the new posts!

that is a good point about the pono nui

and of course when the bari uke first came out, the idea was for something easier to play than guitar, for kids and lovely ladies with small hands, so 4 rather than 6 strings is key, i think that is a bigger factor even than reduced scale length, plus the smaller body makes the instrument so much easier to handle, i think we can safely say a cigar box will cover that and then some!

and thank you booli, for the encouragement!
 
The Pono Nui has a 23" scale length. I haven't heard anyone comment that it is not a baritone.

I completely forgot about the Pono Nui. I consider it more of a nylon string tenor guitar because of the body size but most refer to it as a ukulele. I know those that own them really like them
 
There are several factors which contribute to our understanding of what an ukulele (or any other stringed instrument) is, like string courses, string material, tuning, and scale length. Then there are grey areas such as "long neck soprano" which, according to its scale length, could just as well be labelled "small body concert". In this sense, a long neck tenor could be used as a small baritone. Then there are some intersections between baritones and tenor guitars, which also have four courses, but normally steel strings. They can also be tuned to DGBE,which is referred to as "Chicago Tuning".

Personally, I enjoy this grey area the most, with little interest for what it is called. Among my favorite instruments are the Pono Nui (23") and their UL4 (21.4") made for steel strings. In my own thinking, both are being used as baritones, tuned to DGBE (or relative to that). Even with a longer scale of, say, 24" or even 26", I would be using a four course instrument in the same way, so I would be considering it a baritone, too.
 
I completely forgot about the Pono Nui. I consider it more of a nylon string tenor guitar because of the body size but most refer to it as a ukulele. I know those that own them really like them

I have got the Pono "Big Bari" .... it's definitely a baritone uke, not a tenor guitar. (Have no idea whether it could be tuned in fifths.)
 
Even with a longer scale of, say, 24" or even 26", I would be using a four course instrument in the same way, so I would be considering it a baritone, too.
that's just how i feel!


val thanks for swinging by, i love your pono nui, it looks and sounds gorgeous, i was thinking of you when i started this thread actually! like dave says, everyone who has one really loves those ukes
 
I will emphatically disagree with several of the posts in this thread.

We've built these sort of instruments long before Pono introduced theirs (the Ponos are fine instruments BTW). When it comes to defining instruments by name there are certain conventions. We've always held that those who go by scale only miss the primary determinant of sound: the body size.

So what we would say in regards to the possibilities being discussed here is that "longneck Baritone" would be an instrument with a body size approximately that of a standard Baritone (they vary a bit), but with a scale longer than say 21". But if you're going to increase both the body and the scale, then you've got another instrument.

The Pono Baritone Nui was originally called a Tenor Guitar (in one way or another, can't recall exactly). The body is as large as many Tenor Guitars, the scale length is the same. That body has a depth of resonance suitable for a C note, so it has the depth for a C g d' a' fifths tuning. The only reason it doesn't work as well as a traditional Tenor Guitar in that tuning is that the 1st string is delicate in steel. You'd replace it all the time with classical material.

They decided that since it was strung with classical strings, the name "Tenor Guitar" was confusing those who were used to a Tenor Guitar being strung with steel. So "Baritone Nui" was decided on as something that people might not get as confused about. I have no problems with a builder naming his instrument in whatever fashion he feels appropriate. And I have no problems with the name Baritone Nui. However "Nui" in Hawaiian signifies "Big". In effect, the name means "Big Baritone".

But based on significant increases in both body and scale, we'd say the Baritone Nui is not a Baritone Ukulele. The key is that it's a NUI. We use the term "Classical Tenor Guitar", but as I said, no problem with Baritone Nui; just remember the "Nui".

To say that simply because they're often tuned the same they should have the same name is a false argument. A Soprano Ukulele can be tuned to a reentrant C tuning and so can a Tenor Ukuele. Do you want stop using the term "Tenor Ukulele" and start calling it a "Big Giant Soprano" based on tuning?
 
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that's very interesting about body size

as i'm looking to have a friend build me the *whatever it is we're gonna call it!* using a cigar box body, body-size wise i'd say it might well be "a very very very VERY long neck soprano uke"! but tuning and strings-wise it's gonna be DGBE and nylon. "long neck tiny body cigar box bari"????? i'm gonna have to come up with something a bit more catchy, i think!
 
Cigar Box Bari

After all, if it is bari scale length, that is the main thing to the player - though I would also agree that body size is a denominator as well - that's why I say it is a controversial area - never thought of the Nui as a bari, personally speaking. :)
 
I'm no expert but you can probably call the instrument that you're having made what you like, it won't hear you.
 
I'm no expert but you can probably call the instrument that you're having made what you like, it won't hear you.

I agree :) I have got a "hybrid" instrument that was made for me as follows, because this was the sound that I was looking for and I am used to playing ukuleles: baritone scale (21.75"), baritone neck width, wooden bodied resonator built for steel strings - although it also works very nicely with classical strings.

When I was using steel strings I got really sick of people telling me that it was not a Baritone Ukulele and that it was "really" a tenor guitar. The scale is a bit short for a Tenor Guitar, the neck definitely too wide and body size too small for a Tenor Guitar.

I told the maker that I was being pestered about what sort of instrument it was and asked him what he would call it. He thought about it and then said, "A Squillum".

So now that is what I say it is. If anyone then replies, "What are THEY?" I just say, "There's only one, and this is it." Saves a whole lot of bother! If he ever made more of them, which is unlikely, I do hope that he would call them "Squillums"!

Though it probably would not take long for someone to say, "Actually, this is an Argentinian Bandersnatch. My grandfather had a photograph that he took in 1926 in Tierra del Fuego of an old man playing one of these and he said that the old man told him it was a Bandersnatch. I later discovered that it was built and designed by the Norwegian explorer Lars Andersnage and the Welsh-speaking locals called it, affectionately, Ap (son of) Andersnage. This was misheard by Spanish-speakers in the area as 'Bandersnatch'. The earliest written record of this instrument, on a Wanted Dead or Alive poster for notorious bank robber Hiram J. Squillum, describes Squillum brandishing his Bandersnatch at terrifed bank staff. IMHO this is how confusion about the name arose."

I have used both Tenor Guitar Strings and steel Guitar Strings on it in the past but I happen to have Thomastic flatwound classical strings on it at the moment. They look rather like steel Guitar Strings so, when the usual questions start, I think I might have to start explaining it as something like, "A Baritone ukulele version of a Dobro but with classical guitar strings, like a little Del Vecchio Dinamico."

The original question is about maximum scale length for a Baritone but minimum length is also grey area, as has been mentioned. Some "ukulele sizes" seem to have got bigger over time, a bit like the way the newest model of car is always bigger than the previous incarnation, until eventually the manufacturer comes out with a new, smaller model and gives it a different name. (I have seen several descriptions of old Tenor Ukuleles that include a caveat along the lines of, "this is more the size that would be called a concert ukulele today".)

My old Harmony baritone has a 18.75" scale and I have been told more than once that it is too small to be a Baritone and is "really" a Tenor Ukulele. (Are tenor ukes getting bigger too??)

I agree with Dirk about tuning being a red herring. I have got a Soprano strung with Southcoast Ukes cuatro strings and tuned DGBE - it is still a soprano ukulele. (Personally, I would be more comfortable thinking of it as a tiny cuatro rather than a tiny Baritone. The form of the tuning seems more relevant than the sound that rings out when you strum open strings.)

I wonder . . . with there being more and more "non standard", mix-and-match combinations of scale length, body size and depth, with a whole variety of naming conventions, will there be more of a tendency to focus on the spec details, in order to work out what cases might fit and what strings to use for particular tunings? And use of equivalences, like, "Brand X model Y is much the same size as Brand A model B"?

It is interesting what Dirk explained above about the naming/marketing history of the Pono Nui:
"The Pono Baritone Nui was originally called a Tenor Guitar (in one way or another, can't recall exactly). The body is as large as many Tenor Guitars, the scale length is the same. That body has a depth of resonance suitable for a C note, so it has the depth for a C g d' a' fifths tuning. The only reason it doesn't work as well as a traditional Tenor Guitar in that tuning is that the 1st string is delicate in steel. You'd replace it all the time with classical material.

They decided that since it was strung with classical strings, the name "Tenor Guitar" was confusing those who were used to a Tenor Guitar being strung with steel. So "Baritone Nui" was decided on as something that people might not get as confused about. I have no problems with a builder naming his instrument in whatever fashion he feels appropriate. And I have no problems with the name Baritone Nui. However "Nui" in Hawaiian signifies "Big". In effect, the name means "Big Baritone".

But based on significant increases in both body and scale, we'd say the Baritone Nui is not a Baritone Ukulele. The key is that it's a NUI
. We use the term "Classical Tenor Guitar", but as I said, no problem with Baritone Nui; just remember the "Nui"."

Exercises in ukulele "instrument taxonomy", attempting to classify and categorise, are cross-cut with marketing strategies.

I have been looking at the Cordoba Mini recently - scale length 20" so falling into the "Baritone size" area. In discussions about the Mini there seems to be quite a difference depending on whether the comments are primarily from people who are first and foremost ukulele players or are from people who very obviously only have a guitar background.

"Ukulele players" seem to "get" the Cordoba Mini, understanding and welcoming it as a type of "guitarlele/guitalele/guilele etc." - and to a lesser extent as a "mini classical guitar" if you string it differently.

"Guitarists" often seem to be quite confused about it, because of the option of ADGCEA tuning and also because it is small but does not have steel strings, ie. like a Tenor Guitar or Parlour Guitar.

Cordoba seem to be targeting guitarists, by calling it a "Mini" (miniature guitar) but my impression is that they might have been better off targeting ukulele players and calling it something like a "wide necked Guitarlele". . . . or maybe not. Perhaps there are still so many more guitarists in the world than ukulele players that it makes way more sense to "sell" it as a miniature guitar? That does not stop retailers marketing it and ukulele players "adopting" it as a type of "Guitarlele", of course.

The Cordoba Mini also made me think about the disputed birth and subsequent history of the Baritone Ukulele. Whether or not the Baritone was first invented as a small, simplified guitar by Herk Favilla it is, at the moment, primarily thought of and marketed as the "big ukulele" that, perhaps, was instead envisioned by Arthur Godfrey and invented by Eddie Connors.

Give it another ten or twenty years and I bet the parameters and terminology of a discussion like this will have changed again :)

Best wishes,
Liz
 
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