question/help in regards to my new konablaster baritone uke

kissing said:

With a scale of that length, it may not be possible to tune it in regular GCEA tuning as a ukulele. The strings may be too thin.
What you can do is tune it to GCEA one octave low, which gives you a rather bassy instrument.

Otherwise, on your DGBE tuned Konablaster, use a capo at the 5th fret, that will also give you GCEA (and allow you to switch back n forth).


With guitar strings, what I did was do a bit of trial and error. You can predict what gauge strings will allow what tuning.
As we're already dealing with an experimental instrument, your guess is as good as anybody's. There aren't textbook answers to an instrument that doesn't exist in textbooks.

I think an electric ukulele would sound quite good as DGBE, re-entrant D.
The high D just needs to be a slightly thicker string than the E string.

For an octave GCEA tuning, you have two options..
-Find a heavy/medium gauge "BARITONE GUITAR" string set, and see if the GCEA strings out of that set will work.

-Just use the EADG strings out of a regular electric guitar set, see how you like the tension.

Just be careful not to let the strings become too tight, they may snap or put too much pressure on the wooden neck.

Click to expand...

kissing said:

With a scale of that length, it may not be possible to tune it in regular GCEA tuning as a ukulele. The strings may be too thin.
What you can do is tune it to GCEA one octave low, which gives you a rather bassy instrument.

Otherwise, on your DGBE tuned Konablaster, use a capo at the 5th fret, that will also give you GCEA (and allow you to switch back n forth).


With guitar strings, what I did was do a bit of trial and error. You can predict what gauge strings will allow what tuning.
As we're already dealing with an experimental instrument, your guess is as good as anybody's. There aren't textbook answers to an instrument that doesn't exist in textbooks.

I think an electric ukulele would sound quite good as DGBE, re-entrant D.
The high D just needs to be a slightly thicker string than the E string.

For an octave GCEA tuning, you have two options..
-Find a heavy/medium gauge "BARITONE GUITAR" string set, and see if the GCEA strings out of that set will work.

-Just use the EADG strings out of a regular electric guitar set, see how you like the tension.

Just be careful not to let the strings become too tight, they may snap or put too much pressure on the wooden neck.

Click to expand...

WhenDogsSing said:

Tenor scale is approximately 17" and baritone scale is approximately 19"-20".

You can take a set of guitar strings and put the DGBE strings on a baritone and tune it to GCEA with no problems. Depending on how taut you like your strings, lighter gage strings will have less tension while heavier gage strings will have higher tension. You can experiment to find your preference.

Click to expand...

seonachan said:

The general rule for scale length is baritone uke = 19-20" and tenor guitar = 23", but there are exceptions - Regal, Supertone, etc. made short-scale tenor guitars at 21" (as do Ozark and Fletcher today), for example. It's better to think of scale length as more of a guideline than a strict borderline, to be combined with other factors (tuning, steel vs. nylon strings, target market, etc.) in making the distinction, and even then it can overlap. Rob Dick of Jupiter Creek instruments used to sell his 20-24" scale steel string solid body electrics using both terms.

As for the Konablaster, the scale length is more in the tenor guitar range, but they're clearly marketing it as a bari uke. How about "long scale electric baritone ukulele"? Ultimately you can call it what you want, and tune it how you want, within the limits of physics.

Click to expand...