Soprano ukulele, baritone tuning!?

Lillymo

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I just bought a Favilla Soprano in nice condition. I suspected it hadn't been tuned in a very long time so when I put new Martin M600s on it, I initially tuned it to DGBE. Huge surprise: it sounded really great! Lovely tone, lots of volume. The only issue was the sound was a little bit floppy, hardly noticeable. It didn't feel floppy at all and was a pleasure to play.

Over the next couple days, I brought it up to the typical GCEA Soprano range. Nice tone, but not as nice as the lower tuning. Do I have an itty bitty re-entrant baritone on my hands? For comparison I lowered the pitch of my Mainland soprano to DGBE and the tone was bland - clearly this isn't a tuning that would work on every soprano.

I thought I might try thicker OR high density fluorocarbon strings on the Favilla to eliminate the floppy sound. My theory is, because of the lower tuning. the increased tension would be minimized so they wouldn't put undue stress on this little vintage ukulele. I'd stick with a high GCEA set because a high D seems more achievable than a low D on a soprano.

Kooky yes, but I have to ask - anybody ever tune a soprano like a baritone?
 
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Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. Now I tune it GCEA low G with high G string set, hence it is enough floppy but nice. I've tuned my friend's soprano to DGBE yesterday, because he is very beginner and low tension is better for him to practice. He is very happy too. I don't use thicker strings, because I am quite happy with floppy instrument, I feel it has better sustain.
 
Southcoast has a DGBE set for the soprano scale, but it's one octave higher. I think low-G on a soprano is already hard to pull off, dropping down even lower to the D seems very challenging to me. :)
 
Southcoast has sets for both reentrant and linear G tuning on soprano but both are an octave higher than standard baritone tuning.

ETA: oops, Mivo bear me to it
 
The strings I put on my soprano were a high G set, so I ended up with a high D when tuning them to DGBE. I really liked the sound, fluorocarbon seems to suit this ukulele. What I'm aiming for is DGBE in the same octave as a baritone, but with a high D and ideally a little more tension than the Martin M600s.

One thing I noticed when I tried this tuning on my Mainland soprano with friction tuners - it took just a quarter turn of the pegs to lower the pitch from C tuning to G tuning.

Thanks for the comments! - Would love to hear if anybody else has tried a baritone tuning on a soprano. I'm curious about the brand and model of the uke and what kind of strings you used.
 
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I've always liked dropping Tenors down to Bb, for the reduced tension/ bluesier sound. This seems like the same concept but much much more dropped tuning.
 
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