new uke tuned too low?

Hello everyone,

I'm a guitar player and my girlfriend bought me a ukulele from a music shop. The ukulele is an Amigo tenor and I cannot tell if it's tuned correctly or not. I've listened to all the tenor uke videos I could find and they don't sound as low as mine. My gf said that the person who sold it to her said it should be an octave lower but any chord I try to play sounds terrible and the strings are wound completely around the peg so I cannot tune the strings to a higher octave. Here's a link to what it sounds like.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=46VPZP74

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Your uke should be tuned GCEA where C is "middle C". If you have a tuner that indicates what octave you're in...it should be G4,C4,E4,A4 for high G tuning, or G3,C4,E4,A4 for low G. If you don't have a tuner...here is a free one for Windows called AP Tuner. Hope that helps.

Edit: I realized you mentioned that you are a guitar player...you uke is the same as the 1st 4 strings on the guitar capo'd at the 5th fret.

You know how ukuleles are tuned, right? Generally either gcea or dgbe. There's a number of pitchpipe sites that ought to be able to help you out. Your strings should have a reasonable amount of tension on them, and if you find them winding too many times around the peg, just cut them down to size..

Definitely sounds funky. What I would try first is restringing it. Do you know what kind of stings came on it? If it's from a music shop, there's a good chance it has GHS stings on it which are pretty aweful. You may want to find a store nearby that sells Aquila strings (or find them online. MusicGuyMic is a solid source).

Now this is just my :2cents: but what I would do is this:

-Unwind the G string and remove it from the tuning peg.
-Put the end of the string back through the hole of the peg and pull the string tight and line it up on the nut.
-Wrap the string around the top of the peg and run the end back through the hole and pull out the other end; Hopefully there will be some excess string.
-If there is indeed excess string, start winding. You should already be in decent shape as far as octave goes and you should have plenty of room on the peg to wind to the proper note (which should be an octave higher than what your is at now).

Unfortunately, if you dont have excess string when you loop it through, you may be out of luck. If that is the case, I think your best bet will be to find some new strings and start from scratch.

Hope this helps, feel free to PM me if you have any questions, or reply here. Maybe you will get some other input as well that differs from mine.

Good luck! :shaka:

If you don't have one, I'd highly recommend getting a clip-on tuner. The Eno 3000 they sell in the UU store is what I have, and it's an excellent little tuner, does chromatic, guitar, violin and bass modes, also has a mic as well as clip.

Thanks for the fast replies everyone!

Ok so this uke is definetely tuned too low, I think whatever the guy told my girlfriend is rubbish and gave her a uke with bad tuning. I'll probably get some new strings and tune it myself, I'm guessing I should get tenor strings? I'm thinking low G ones.

You can just use the bottom 4 strings for a classical guitar if you want. I have a tenor low g with savarez alliance strings. There are lots of string threads and sound samples, good luck.

Flip2k said:

Thanks for the fast replies everyone!

Ok so this uke is definetely tuned too low, I think whatever the guy told my girlfriend is rubbish and gave her a uke with bad tuning. I'll probably get some new strings and tune it myself, I'm guessing I should get tenor strings? I'm thinking low G ones.

Click to expand...

You can just loosen the strings you have on there already and re-tune it in the meantime.

Yeah, buy tenor strings for it. Most players think the best brands are Aquila, D'Addario (Pro Arte), and Worth.

Like Rzr said, you can also use classical guitar strings if you want. For low-G tuning, use a D, G, B, and E from a classical guitar set. For high-G, use a two E strings, one for the re-entrant G and one for the A.