Help ref baritone uke

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Hi Friends, Does anyone know if it is acceptable to put baritone strings on a concert uke, thus effectively making it a baritone. ??

Thanks in advance overthehillphil75

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I have put some cheap classical guitar strings on one of my (laminate) concert ukes with reasonable success, it is tuned like a bari DGBE, &, I think, it sounds quite good. :)

I also have same strings on a (laminate) tenor tuned DGBE too.
 
If you are interested in a fluorocarbon solution, check with Ken at Living Waters to see if he has a set of G6 strings for Concert. What you need to be concerned with is string tension when tuned down a fourth from standard C6 or “traditional” D6 (even higher) tuning. Or you could contact The Ukulele Site as they like to throw different string and tuning solutions together.
 
Thanks for the input yes I have thought about fluorocarbon....In fact fluro fishing line came to mind as a cheaper way of doing things.

As I have played the guitar for donkeys years I found it only took me a week to pick up the uke. Another factor in Baritone is the same tuning as the top 4 strings on guitar. DGBE

Regards overthehillphil75
 
I'd assume that pretty much any strings will be floppy when being tuned to DGBE like a guitar on such a short scale. Moreover, the body of a concert is too small to fully resonate at such a low pitch. As a long-time guitar player converted to the ukulele, I would advise you to not worry about the "familiar" pitch of a guitar and tune to GCEA instead. This is exactly the same as a guitar capoed at the fifth fret; the chord shapes will all be the same, they'll just ring out five notes higher. So your familiar D shape will in fact sound like G, G like C, etc.
 
I would think you'd have a hard time getting low D on concert scale, but I don't doubt C.K. If he says he's done it. Another option would be high d. The Southcoast HU-NW set might get you there even going it isn't specifically recommended for concert: http://southcoastukes.com/uku-nw.htm

I'd expect low tension and quiet voice.
 
...I'd expect low tension and quiet voice.

I agree and I'll also add that intonation is going to start at ~10 cents sharp at the 3rd fret and get even worse as you go up towards the bridge, specifically on account of the too-low tension and the fact that a saddle parallel to the nut will not allow for enough compensation to offset the required string length to achieve useful compensation.

Due to physics, it will be impossible to fix the compensation within the 3mm of a uke saddle's width, you'd need to bolt-on something like a Fender P-bass bridge with movable saddles so you have about 20mm of throw to adjust them enough to get usable compensation for intonation correction.


OTOH, if you go the other way and use strings that are fat enough to not have too low tension, you are likely starting with something like an 0.032" nylon string for the E4 note, and the rest will have to be wound classical guitar strings, and just guessing gauges here for ~15" scale for a concert uke, something like

E4 - 0.032" nylon classical
B3 - 0.038" classical wound
G3 - 0.045" classical wound
D3 - 0.056" classical wound

and for all these strings you'd likely have to file all the nut slots wider, as well as the bridge slots for the D and G strings....and likely you will STILL have intonation issues even if you can achieve ~35 lbs total string tension.

all of this is the long-way-around of saying G6 DGBE linear baritone tuning on concert scale is a really bad idea.

YMMV :)
 
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Because I only did it as an experiment, I had only used some first position chords, so having read the above, I just put my tuner on it & had a look at where it is at the 12th fret, well no surprises, I guess, it's way out, except the D string. ;) But it sounds quite nice in first position. :)

(Checked my tenor scale, whilst I was at it, & that one is almost the same at the 12th fret, so definately OK on that scale.)
 
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