JonThysell
Well-known member
Does anyone know anything about Suzuki baritone ukes?
Here's the background: my grandmother gave me this uke to use about 10 years ago when I didn't know what I was doing and complained at how hard it was to play a little soprano. She told me this was a tenor; I had the friction tuners replaced (by Mike DaSilva no less) and I strung it up with tenor strings.
Thing buzzed and still sounded pretty awful, and was way too hard for me to finger, so it ended up back in the closet.
Now, ten years later I'm visiting family for the holidays, and exploring baritone, and it occurs to me- maybe that old Suzuki was actually a baritone all along!
Sure enough, it's got a 19.5" scale. Still a banged up mess- dings and scratches and peeling laminate, plus it looks like someone re-set the bridge at some point and was too lazy to clean up the glue. They also glued in the saddle, the top of which is squared off and probably why the thing buzzes despite the mile-high action.
The backboard is splitting off the sides in some places, and in other places looks like someone already tried to re-glue it. The Nut is fixed and pretty ugly with its huge slots, but at least there's a zero fret.
I cleaned it up, gave it some much needed TLC, and strung it up with some Aquila DGBE strings. Now it doesn't sound half bad! More buzzing than I would like, and obviously could use some real set-up work, though I'm not sure if the money would be worth it.
Right now I think I'll leave it with my mom so she can noodle around on bari with my sister (since I just bought her one of the Butler bari refurbs for Christmas).
