baritone uke?

hello, im new to this forum. i have some questions, and i hope i post it in the right subforum (otherwise feel free to move it to the right place)..

about 20 years ago an old man gave me his ukulele. he said a baritone that he played as a kid. i used it a bit back then in a bigband tuned DGBE (im a guitar player ), but that is many years ago. recently i wanted to bring the instrument back alive. but i found it so hard to keep it tuned well enough that i started to read into it on the web. and i got confused, so i thought i need some professional help, so i joined this forum.
should i use nylon or steel?
should i tune it an octave above the guitar tuning?
is it even, as i believed for so many years a baritone?
what else could i do to improve the stability of the tuning?

i attached a picture of the instrument. the distance from nut to bridge is about 42 centimeter.

thanks

gab

gappie said:

should i use nylon or steel?
should i tune it an octave above the guitar tuning?
is it even, as i believed for so many years a baritone?

Click to expand...

Its traditional to use Nylon strings. Some are wound with wire. Steel might pull off the bridge.
I don't play the guitar but I don't think so. - You will know when the strings are too tight. DGBE is normal for the Baritone.

At 42cm/16.5" it is likely to be a Tenor & tuned gCEA (or low G, GCEA).

42 cm is a tenor scale, baritone starts around 48 cm. So I guess it's a tenor.

thank you all for the realy quick response. ill have to order some other strings then and see how it goes..

Nylon or steel?
Nylon/Nylgut/Flurocarbon - not steel!

Octave above guitar?
Not quite - tune it to GCEA low to high (or gCEA) and the "e" string should be the same pitch as the guitar high "e" to give you a reference point.

Is it a baritone?
I think it's a tenor from that scale length. Tenors are usually around 17" (42.5cm), baritones tend to be about 19 or 20".

Stability of tuning?
Once you've got the right strings on there it will be fairly stable. Remember that nylon (or similar) strings can take a couple of weeks to stretch out, so expect a lot of retuning when you put new strings on for a week or two before it settles.

Wow, what a beautiful ukulele. Is that solid wood instrument?

432 mm -> 17" is a usual tenor scale.

Jerwin said:

Wow, what a beautiful ukulele. Is that solid wood instrument?

432 mm -> 17" is a usual tenor scale.

Click to expand...

i have no idea.. maybe the top is, i think the back and the sides are not. the story the man told me, is that the instrument was build from cheap materials in germany just after ww 2. many years ago i mailed hopf to ask about the instrument, but they never replied.. i guessed they were not proud of it..