Thinking about low a on soprano

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aarondminnick

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My baritone uke broke its fairly new (low) D string up near the headstock, so I have a pretty nice length of barely-used string left. I'm thinking of swapping it onto my D-tuned (aDF#B) Harmony soprano and tuning down to low A to give a linear tuning on soprano. Has anyone tried this?
 
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Gut reaction is that'd be too low to sound well on a Soprano, but I'm not sure it would hurt anything if it should fail.
 
I play low G on my Koaloha soprano and it sounds great, so it is certainly possible for yours to play fine.
 
I had one of my longneck sopranos tuned low-G for a while and it was okay. Not anything to write home about but it was okay.

However, I suspect that a D string is going to be a bit too thick - if it had been your baritone's G string that broke that would have been better...

But...it shouldn't hurt to try it. If the tension is noticeably higher than the other strings when tuned up I wouldn't leave it strung that way long as drastically uneven tension can warp the neck over time.

John
 
I say give it a try. You tell us what you think. I'll be all ears.
 
I have a low-G soprano. I like it when I play it alone, but it always sounded weird when I took it to my group lessons and played it with others. I'd like to hear what yours sounds like.
 
I agree with posts #6,5 and 4.
 
The efficiency of low G tuning increases with scale length, with soprano being the least efficient. Will it work? Yeah. Will you be ok with it? Maybe. Will you be thrilled with it? Not likely.
 
I used a baritone G string on a soprano tuned low A. It sounds better than a low g string tuned to low g, in my opinion. I had it strung this way for a few months and didn't have any problems.
 
I have tried all my ukes with a low G, and it has never sounded good enough for me. I can't play anything larger than a soprano because of arthritis. Check out the South Coast strings on my Mango. The sound is higher, but beautiful! I like having a uke that plays linear notes.
 
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