Why Marker at 10th Fret and Not 9th Fret?

70sSanO

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I see more and more ukuleles have a fret marker at the 10th fret and I am curious why?

There's usually one at the 5th, 7th, and 12th just like a guitar, but I can't figure out what makes the 9th fret special for a guitar and the 10th special for a ukulele.

John
 
If I had to guess.. and this is JUST a guess... I'd say because that's where Martin put them on their ukes.
 
I'll guess too. I thought it was normal. Must be an ukulele thing.
The ukulele is not a guitar and if the guitar makers want to place a fret marker on the 9th fret, then that is ok.
But Uke makers want to be different. I look at it as one more difference between uke and guitar.
 
Do you think it is because the dots on the guitar for the high E string go: G A B D E and on a uke the dots on the A string go: C D E G A. Possibly like transposing from G to C, noting that the standard guitar tuning makes a G6 chord (or Em7) and the standard uke tuning makes a C6 (or Am7) chord? Is it possible that the location of the B - C and E - F intervals on the two fretboards could be the reason for the difference? Maybe if you don't understand this you shouldn't worry, just use the dots as they were intended as reference points so you can find the frets you want quickly. You will notice that when you "find" the ninth fret on a uke with a ninth fret marker, it has some notes like Gb, Bb, Ab and E which are not used a lot in the "easy to play" ukulele arrangements, whereas the tenth fret has the common notes G D B and E.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable explanation. I always wondered about the 10th fret thing to.
 
If you strum the whole ukulele, and fret the A string on the dots, you get a C pentatonic scale over a C chord. Genius.
 
Do you think it is because the dots on the guitar for the high E string go: G A B D E and on a uke the dots on the A string go: C D E G A.

What you are saying makes sense, but I think the 3-5-7-9-12 guitar dots are G A B C# E.

Not sure if that throws off the rest of your explanation.

Thanks for the reply.

John
 
I see more and more ukuleles have a fret marker at the 10th fret and I am curious why?
So people can tell it's not a little guitar... :)

Actually, my Kiwaya longneck is really wierd. It has markers at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, and 12th; but the "double" marker is on the 7th fret instead of the tweflth.
 
If you strum the whole ukulele, and fret the A string on the dots, you get a C pentatonic scale over a C chord. Genius.

You learn something new every day!
 
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