strange string attachment on new Carvalho tenor

Hi folks, my husband bought me this gorgeous new Carvalho Portuguese-built solid koa tenor for Christmas. I love it, can't fault it in any way, and I'm very picky on ukes - but I wanted to put a low G on it. I had noticed that the string attachment was exceptionally neat....taking the existing high G string off, I found that the string would not pull out, the end was invisible and stuck - and it turned out that the strings had been inserted from the inside of the uke! I managed to pull it out from the inside after a bit of fiddling about. (See pics).

I was wondering, how unusual is this? There's no way of putting a new string on the same way - so I've done the usual timber hitch to put the new low G on. Thanks!

If I understand you correctly, this isn't all that unusual -- I've owned a couple of ukes with a thru-bridge design.

You feed one end of the string through, pull it out of the sound hole, knot it, and then pull the other end so the knot is fast against the inside of the bridge plate. The advantage is that any strain the string tension creates is dispersed over a larger surface, ie you won't ever have the worry about the bridge lifting.

Oh, thank you so much for that! I have already used an ordinary knot to put the new string on, but I've left enough spare string at the tuner to redo it..... which I think I will, as it will look much neater if I can manage it...... thanks again, that's great! I knew you lovely folk on the Forum would have the answer!

barefootgypsy said:

Oh, thank you so much for that! I have already used an ordinary knot to put the new string on, but I've left enough spare string at the tuner to redo it..... which I think I will, as it will look much neater if I can manage it...... thanks again, that's great! I knew you lovely folk on the Forum would have the answer!

Click to expand...

No problemo! Lots of folks use a bead at the knotted end as well. It will ensure the knot doesn't pull through the hole (or eventually widen it) and the weight of the bead makes it easier to fish it out from the body when it's time for a string change.

Cheers.

This might help (it helped me):
http://www.pohakuukulele.com/pages/t_pinless.html