Physical comparisons: Uke/Guitar

brokenwing

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As narrow as the nut width on a uke is, the string-to-string spacing is actually wider than on my guitar (3/8" for the uke and 2/8" on the git). That actually surprised me. The same holds true for string spacing at the saddle (9/16" on the uke; 7/16" on the git).

I'm guessing that a uke's string-to-string spacing is comparable to a classical guitar which is considered too wide by many guitar players. The uke's fretboard is usually not radiused (yea?) like a classical guitar. All that makes sense when you consider the Portuguese origins of the ukulele.

The big difference of course is in scale. From nut to the 5th fret on my tenor uke is 4-1/4"; the guitar is 6-1/4" and that's of course where playing starts to become a stretch (not to mention access to 6 strings as opposed to 4)

The waist on my uke is 5 1/2" vs. 9" on my 000 guitar (which is considered a fairly tight waist for a medium-sized guitar) and forget about the lower bout – 9" vs. 15"

No wonder several people compared playing a guitar to hugging a refrigerator in another thread. Still, all that body means bass response, which the uke really doesn't have. Neither does mandolin, violin, banjo...

It's all about trade-offs. The uke does the uke-thing perfectly. Gotta love it. But I also love to hug the refrigerator.:D
 
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