Alternate tunings

wildfire070

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I've been wanting to try out alternate tunings and had a few questions. Can a baritone be tuned to standard gcea? Or low gcea? Can smaller scale ukes like concert and soprano be tuned to dgbe? And on the smaller scale ukes would you tune up to dgbe or slack it down?
 
Yes. A Baritone can be tuned to gCEA or GCEA. You can buy string sets that have both high and low G for baritones from Musicians Friend. Personally, I think they sound great, but the action on them is a little sloppy for my tastes. I eventually decided to string one with low G tenor strings, so my C tuned baritone is actually a large tenor.

I'm not sure about your question concerning the sopranos and concert DGBE tuning. However, if you look around you can find string sets for ADF#B for a soprano (which will also fit a concert if you string it carefully). Or, you could simply tune a standard set of GCEA strings up to open D.
 
You can tune just about anything to just about anything. My baritone is currently CGDA. It's just a matter of getting the right strings and keeping the string tension level to what the instrument can safely tolerate.
 
Yes its all personal preference though.. you can try it to see if you like it.. its a good learning experience.. me I like DGBE or F# tuning
 
I have a soprano tuned ADF#B which is a former standard. It makes that particular ukulele sing for me. I have my tenors tuned DGBE (high D) and I prefer that tuning for a tenor to the standard GCEA both because tuning lower brings something out in the tenor and also I find the high tension of a GCEA tuned tenor uncomfortable.

All these are really just variants on standard tuning and there are a variety of other options to try. I'm quite happy with the choices I've made though I have considered fifths tuning to try playing fiddle tunes on the ukulele. However, I have other instruments for that so it's not high on my list of priorities.
 
I'm getting a variety of string sets from South Coast to try the different tunings. DGBE (octave higher than baritone tuning) on a sopranino should be interesting. Also going to try open tuning too.
 
That one is for sure a keeper. I sent it to Kamaka for them to look over and they cleaned everything up and refinished it...man it looks so good and sounds great too.
 
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