Strings for a Tincan Dulcimer/Ukulele Bastard

Cheers!

I built a choromatic tincan ukulele-dulcimer bastard and now I am about to finish it. Thats what it looks like:



Its basically a baritone ukulele with 3 strings (one double course) tuned like a dulcimer. When I built it I wanted to build a Baritone at first but then changed my mind It is strung with concert guitar Nylons (cant use regular uke strings because the string holder is in the body and requires longer strings) and the A and d strings fit very well for bass and drone. However, the melody strings (b-strings) are a little to quiet and tend to be droned out, specially at higher tones where they have very little sustain. I think I have the following possibilities:

1. take g strings. As I tried it the last time I had the Feeling that this didnt help very much and that the Intonation suffered a little. Also I dont know if the tension wouldnt be to high...

2. take wound g strings. Should fix the volume issue, howver I dont want the squeeking noises when playing on the melody strings.

3. Take nylgut strings. They are supposed to be louder and brighter, which should be good, but do you think it will be sufficient?

4. would anything speak for carbon instead of nylgut?

5. I have seen Savarez plastic wound strings and wonder if anyone has experience with these.

I hope someone can give me a clue on what to do!

You really need to decide if you want a uke (nylon strings) or a dulcimer (steel strings) - it can't really be both. If you want to stay with nylon strings then I would just keep trying different combinations till you find the combination you're looking for.

One thing that comes to mind is that we do use Martin Silk&Steels on some smaller finger picking guitars to get a balance between the steel and nylon sound. Just a thought, you might try them, but you do have wound D,A and E strings, so depending how you use the mid and base string you will have some squeak on those strings, or you could go with the G in the middle and the B for melody (both are silver plated steel, unwound).

Hope this helps.

Hey Erich.

Steel strings were never a choice - I tried them and they squeezed together the tin. :-(

What do you have for a back? I built a "panjolele" It has a threaded rod through the body for support. I had to wedge a "sound post" between the threaded rod and upper bout and also put a thin back on it to get a half way decent sound:
http://www.archive.org/details/AintSheSweetOnPanjolele

Somewhere, I had posted more pictures. It was concert scale with a steel pie pan for a body.

Top and back are both the Tincan - The Stick goes through the Tin and is reinforced with some little woodblocks. Your Pan looks cute. However, I dont even want steel Strings, i think the Instrument has a characteristic sound the way it is.

I did a small sound sample with some random improvisations.

http://www.box.net/shared/g0exoya1g4

Wow. That sounds pretty darn good.

Nice work!

OK the picture now shows.

Thank you!

I tried to attach a file to this post...