Thank you, Booli, for the additional information and insight.
When I said "tuned like guitars" I meant that the chord shapes were the same as those used to fret a guitar. The one I played didn't sound like it was in the same key as a guitar. I do have a short-scale six-string nylon stringed instrument (a quatro, not a guitarlele, although I'm not sure what the difference is) tuned ADGCEA. What made this Veillette Avanti Gryphon different than anything else I'd heard before was that unlike the courses of strings on a 12-string guitar, which has some paired and some octaved courses, all six courses on the Gryphon are paired, like all four courses of a mandolin. That probably is what contributes (along with the short scale and tuning) to the mandolin sound.
Sorry if my previous comment read to the otherwise, but I think we are both on the same page in understanding.
Before I had bought any uke, I had bought a Yamaha GL-1 Guitalele, thinking it was a cheap way to approximate the custom Martin Terz guitar that I saw Sting playing on Good Morning America. I was very wrong. However, on the 'Stupid Deal of the Day' for $60 shipped it was not bad for that price... but it was nothing at all like my full sized Yamaha classical guitar that I've had and studied with for the past 28 yrs. With the GL-1, the sound was 'just' ok, and the intonation not terrible, but the 44mm nut width was very difficult for me...
Last year, during the Cordoba Mini frenzy that occurred here on UU, I was able to find a used Cordoba Mini SM-CE, which has the cedar top, and spalted mango back and sides with their pickup, which is one of those cheap Belcat UK-2000 models. However the 21.5" scale length and 51mm nut and shallow neck depth made it very easy to play, and the intonation is nearly spot on. I have it strung with high-tension classical strings and in Terz tuning, which is 2 semitones down from most 'A' guilele/Kiku, i.e., not ADGCEA but G-C-F-Bb-D-G, and now I have my 'terz' guitar but with the pleasure of nylon classical strings....and btw it sounds great acoustically, but the pickup is very plastic sounding and I will likely change it for something else later on...
Ibanez also has a 17" scale length 6-string, steel string guilele type instrument, and I played one, and it sounded nice, but a 42mm nut width is near impossible for me to finger normal guitar chords due to the tight string-to-string spacing, and the intonation was really bad, like 15+ cents sharp all up the fretboard, and despite using medium gauge steel strings 10-52 (and tuned ADGCEA), really did not have enough tension to intonate well, and even with the typical slanted saddle for a steel string acoustic, it's not really possible to compensate enough in the maybe 3mm of the saddle breakpoint.
when I return to that shop I am going to buy a set of extra-heavy strings that has a 0.058" 'E' string and and ask them if I can test the strings on one of the demo models, and then see if it can intonate well and not sound thuddy and/or too quiet. If so, such an instrument would be a prime candidate for converting to a 5-string 5ths tunings either FCGDA (mandola/tenor guitar) or to CGDAE (octave mando)...and there should be a more comfortable string spacing with only 5 strings on it....
anyway, sorry for the digression so far off topic...please pardon my ramblings....:music: