Tenor strings on a baritone

My baritone is a Clearwater roundback (like my concert). Not very prestigious, but not distilled junk either.

When it came, the strings allegedly were Aquilas, but I doubt that, as the strings were black and not very sophisticated.

I soon changed them to the original Aquila nylgut strings, which were better, but not as alive, easy-played, and projecting as I would like. Since then I also have tried Martin and Addario strings, which where even worse.

As tenor and concert strings come much longer than needed, I got the idea to try them on the baritone, as at least the thickness would be less of a problem.

My little stock of spare strings now was all-Aquilas with the tenor strings being the new nylgut version.

I had to give up on the concert strings. They were long enough, but at least the 4th string was rough in one end, so that the sounding length of string wouldn’t be all smooth, when mounted on the baritone.

The scale of the baritone is roughly 15% longer than the tenor scale, so from pure Pythagorean math one might expect the ideal tuning being a little less than a minor third lower than the tenor.

However my ears prefer the tuning to be in Ab a major third below the tenor. And a semitone above the 4 top strings of the guitar, which is all fine with me. I practice chord progressions all around the circle of fifths, but some keys definitely are less friendly than others. That is where transposing instruments are helpful.

I like the response and clarity of the tenor strings on the baritone, and they are a bit easier to hold down. It also feels like I am a little less prone to un-intendedly dampen strings in (for me) more complex fingerings.

If I have become a radically better player? No way! But at my modest level all help is welcome.

To be fair part of the clarity may come from linear to re-entrant tuning.

Klaus

check with Southcoastukes.com Never heard of anyone regretting they put their linears on their Baritone.

I was having a terrible time with the wound strings tarnishing and wearing at the frets.
I don't even play baritone often, but wanted to experiment with some jazz tunes and the deep voice seemed to be a good fit.
I am accustomed to replacing the low g on my tenor a few times before putting on a new full set, but after two days my wound baritone strings looked really bad.
I decided to experiment a bit and put a set of Orca low g tenors. The Orcas have an unwound g. I was guessing that the longer scale of the baritone would let me tune to dgbe.
It seems to be working, the string tension feels good and the volume is strong. Orcas stretch like crazy so I am still getting them to settle in, but I like the results so far.

Almost any tuning with a higher tonal value is better for a Baritone size body than the common linear key of G. I know there are people now tuning below that. You don't have to have the best sounding tuning to have an enjoyable set-up, but if you're looking for better sound on a Baritone, look up, not down.

Remember that moving from a linear tuning to high reentrant tuning in the same key, is equivalent to about a 1 1/2 step change. In other words, changing G tuning from linear to high reentrant would have about the same effect as going fom a linear G to a linear B flat. In both cases, the big difference comes from raising the lowest note.

Here is our Baritone/Tenor page. At the bottom are a bunch of tuning samples. While Baritones are built heavily to take the linear G tuning, still, switching to any one of these tunings will usually improve things:

http://www.southcoastukes.com/index_files/inters.htm

While we have strings that work for all of these, (and of course we think they're best) in most cases, you don't need to get them from us. A linear B flat, for example, can be had with standard guitar string sets that have a wound 3rd, and B flat happens to be an ideal key for jazz accompaniment.

With the original baritone strings I found it hard to make the upper overtones speak. Possibly because my aged fingers found it hard to hold the thicker strings tight behind the rather low frets.

But then there also is a psycho-acoustic matter behind my wish for a reentrant set-up. When I first started on uke before Christmas, I played some simpler triad sequences. For that purpose the linear tuning is better, as strings rarely are played in unison on that set-up. Very soon I realised that some keys would be to hard for me, so I started playing more complex chords, where the freedom in making ones own chords is much greater.

On the tenor in reentrant C tuning I play an F maj9 by just pressing the 5th fret on the 3rd string. That gives a cluster of E, F, G, and A, which has a very crisp sound. The same figure on a linear baritone gives a Cmaj9, but with the 9th in the bottom down in a range, where one wants to hear the root of the chord. Alone the re-entrant tuning solves that muddying problem.

Klaus