found this while looking at guitaleles:

kudama · Feb 20, 2011

So in my search for a guitalele I noticed people mentioning the requinto a lot, then I stumbled onto this little guy on the Cordoba guitar site:

http://www.cordobaguitars.com/requinto480

it's 1/8 sized requinto guitar. according to the specs it's 31.5 inches in overall length with a scale length of 18.89 inches. So it's more baritone ukulele sized I suppose and slightly bigger than their new guilele.

anyone have any experience with the cordoba requinto guitars?

Ken of York · Feb 20, 2011

That's interesting. I'm fully intent on getting a high class guitarlele. This is certainly a throughbred classical though. I notice in the Specification a suggestion to tune it up to G for correct string tension. The guitarlele is tuned higher to A.

I have the Yamaha GL-1 which is a great instrument when tuned correctly. I'm still looking for the ideal set of strings.

Deek · Feb 20, 2011

If steel strings meet your needs, you might want to look at a Tacoma Papoose. It has a scale length of 19 inches and is tuned up to "A".
I bought a "project" papoose a few years back with no neck and some other damage. My original thought was to use the body to make a baritone uke, but I ended up building a regular neck for it. It plays and sounds good.
Tacoma was bought out by Fender a couple years back and I'm not sure if they continued production of the papoose. If not, I'm sure you can find one on eBay.

JT_Ukes · Feb 20, 2011

Deek said:
If steel strings meet your needs, you might want to look at a Tacoma Papoose. It has a scale length of 19 inches and is tuned up to "A".
I bought a "project" papoose a few years back with no neck and some other damage. My original thought was to use the body to make a baritone uke, but I ended up building a regular neck for it. It plays and sounds good.
Tacoma was bought out by Fender a couple years back and I'm not sure if they continued production of the papoose. If not, I'm sure you can find one on eBay.

They didn't.

My brother has a pre fender one I will steal form him some day.

maikii · Feb 21, 2011

kudama said:
So in my search for a guitalele I noticed people mentioning the requinto a lot, then I stumbled onto this little guy on the Cordoba guitar site:

http://www.cordobaguitars.com/requinto480

it's 1/8 sized requinto guitar. according to the specs it's 31.5 inches in overall length with a scale length of 18.89 inches. So it's more baritone ukulele sized I suppose and slightly bigger than their new guilele.

anyone have any experience with the cordoba requinto guitars?

No experience with Cordoba guitars, but I believe I read somewhere that that isn't a true requinto, but just a smaller guitar. (1/8 certainly does not sound correct, for that size.)

Requintos are usually larger than instruments that are called guitalele, which tend to have a tenor uke size body and scale. (Not that there is any exact definition of what guitalele is. I believe the Kala U-tar, for example, is larger than that. The Mahalo uke-guitar has about a tenor size body, but about a 19 inch scale.)

I think requintos are usually somewhat larger than a baritone uke. However, the normal requinto tuning is the same as the guitalele-AECGDA. They are able to tune the larger instrument to the higher tuning, by using thinner requinto strings, not CG strings. Different kind of sound, due to the larger body-more sustain and resonance, etc.

maikii · Feb 21, 2011

Ken of York said:
That's interesting. I'm fully intent on getting a high class guitarlele. This is certainly a throughbred classical though. I notice in the Specification a suggestion to tune it up to G for correct string tension. The guitarlele is tuned higher to A.

I have the Yamaha GL-1 which is a great instrument when tuned correctly. I'm still looking for the ideal set of strings.

What strings have you found best to work for the GL-1 so far?

Ken of York · Feb 21, 2011

maikii - I have a set of Pro Arte EJ45 Normal Tension classical strings on the GL-1 right now. They are better than the original strings but the GL-1 does have its limitations due to the materials of the body. It is a fab instrument for the price but you can't expect sonic fireworks from it. I'm finding the 1st and 2nd strings (thinnest 2) are not coming through with enough brightness in my playing, not a huge problem but something I need to fix.

So I have a new set of Pro Arte EJ45C ready to go, They are a composite set which apparently try to emulate gut strings. The thing is the 1st and 2nd strings seem to be just the same clear nylon as the present set so I'm thinking of using only the 3rd to 6th strings and trying Aquila's for strings 1 and 2. So I'll end up with a composite/hybrid set. Probably not a great idea, or possibly a stroke of genius, but we won't know till we try eh? I shall take some time this coming weekend to fit them all, but an insert note on the new Pro Arte set says the special wound strings need a lot of 'playing in' time (6 hrs) before they sound natural but also that they are guaranteed to least 3 times longer than a normal wound set.

mds725 · Feb 21, 2011

maikii said:
Requintos are usually larger than instruments that are called guitalele, which tend to have a tenor uke size body and scale. (Not that there is any exact definition of what guitalele is. I believe the Kala U-tar, for example, is larger than that. The Mahalo uke-guitar has about a tenor size body, but about a 19 inch scale.)

Cordoba has three requintos on its website: the already-mentioned requinto 480 (scale is 480 mm = 18.89 inches), the requinto 520 (scale is 520 mm = 20.47 inches) and the just plain requinto (scale is 580 mm = 22.8 inches). I read somewhere that the 22.8 scale Cordoba requinto was selected as "Best in Show" at the Winter 2010 NAMM.

maikii · Feb 21, 2011

Ken of York said:
maikii - I have a set of Pro Arte EJ45 Normal Tension classical strings on the GL-1 right now. They are better than the original strings but the GL-1 does have its limitations due to the materials of the body. It is a fab instrument for the price but you can't expect sonic fireworks from it. I'm finding the 1st and 2nd strings (thinnest 2) are not coming through with enough brightness in my playing, not a huge problem but something I need to fix.

So I have a new set of Pro Arte EJ45C ready to go, They are a composite set which apparently try to emulate gut strings. The thing is the 1st and 2nd strings seem to be just the same clear nylon as the present set so I'm thinking of using only the 3rd to 6th strings and trying Aquila's for strings 1 and 2. So I'll end up with a composite/hybrid set. Probably not a great idea, or possibly a stroke of genius, but we won't know till we try eh? I shall take some time this coming weekend to fit them all, but an insert note on the new Pro Arte set says the special wound strings need a lot of 'playing in' time (6 hrs) before they sound natural but also that they are guaranteed to least 3 times longer than a normal wound set.

Having a tenor uke body and scale--why not a tenor uke low g set for strings 1-4, and find other cg strings for 5 and 6?

Ken of York · Feb 22, 2011

Because I'm a Joker, I'm a Smoker, I'm a Midnight Toker, and I sure don't want to hurt no one

maikii · May 29, 2011

I'm sorry I misunderstood before.

Although this instrument is called "requinto" by Cordoba (requinto 480), it is not the size normally thought of as requinto, but considerably smaller, but a little larger than the Yamaha guitalele. IT sounds interesting. I wish I could try one somewhere. I am liking my Yamaha GL-1 a lot, but it would be nice to try a little larger too. (The Kala U-Tar was a larger guitalele, but they discontinued it.)

I would guess that with normal tension CG strings, one could tune it up the same as guitalele or regular requinto. If that is too tight, use a light tension cg set. (One could certainly tune it up to AECGDA with requinto strings, but they would be rather loose on tha instrument, as they are made for the larger normal-sized requinto.

Their new guilele out soon, looks cool too. Very similar to the GL-1, but solid spruce top rather than laminate. Probably a step up from the GL-1, but much less expensive than the Hawaiian guitaleles.

found this while looking at guitaleles:

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