Anyone own a Cavaquinho?

Saw a Giannini Cavaquinho in a local music store--the ukulele's Brazilian sibling. It seems like a pretty cool instrument. Four steel strings, tuned DGBD, but I assume it can easily be tunes to DGBE as well, obviating the need to learn a whole new chord fingering. Anyone have or ever play a cavaquinho? I'd appreciate your thoughts. This one was a lower end laminate one, but looked very nice nonetheless. Since I had no idea how to form chords on a DGDB tuned instrument, I didn't really get a good test of its sound.

Can also be tuned gCEA

WKerrigan said:

Saw a Giannini Cavaquinho in a local music store--the ukulele's Brazilian sibling. It seems like a pretty cool instrument. Four steel strings, tuned DGBD, but I assume it can easily be tunes to DGBE as well, obviating the need to learn a whole new chord fingering. Anyone have or ever play a cavaquinho? I'd appreciate your thoughts. This one was a lower end laminate one, but looked very nice nonetheless. Since I had no idea how to form chords on a DGDB tuned instrument, I didn't really get a good test of its sound.

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have seen on eBay and the seller is from Portugal I think and it's good price for a solid wood not laminate

The one I saw in the store was laminate. Made in China. I think Giannini makes higher end ones as well that are solid wood.

WKerrigan said:

Saw a Giannini Cavaquinho in a local music store--the ukulele's Brazilian sibling. It seems like a pretty cool instrument. Four steel strings, tuned DGBD, but I assume it can easily be tunes to DGBE as well, obviating the need to learn a whole new chord fingering. Anyone have or ever play a cavaquinho? I'd appreciate your thoughts. This one was a lower end laminate one, but looked very nice nonetheless. Since I had no idea how to form chords on a DGDB tuned instrument, I didn't really get a good test of its sound.

Click to expand...

nice I wouldn't mind getting one
I'm sure I could adjust to that tuning
quickly

I had a rosewood 10EL with a cedar top. It was like having a tenor body with a concert neck. It was tuned gCEA. I still have the rarely imported banjo cavaquinho. It has concert Aquila white strings currently but I am considering fitting it with Aquila RED as 5ths apart.

Here's a cavaquinho "go to" guy on UU who can advise you: fernandogardinali

I have a Portuguese 'Minhota' style Cavaquinho. I experimented with different tunings and found CFAD to be very nice. However with D'Addario wire strings my Cavaquinho can go as low as ADF#B and it is beautiful....Well worth a try.

Is it a Portuguese Cavaquinho (more or less soprano Uke size) or a Brazilian Cavaquinho (more or less Baritone size)? I'm guessing, from the steel strings, that it is the former. I bought one in Portugal, all tonewoods and a beautiful resonant unvarnished top for less than €100. That was at the excellent Salao Musical de Lisboa - Check out their wonderful selection of traditional instruments.

After an initial enthusiasm, I didn't actually find much use for the sound of the Cavaquinho in my repertory at the time, but I still do take it down occasionally and give its super treble sound a workout. There is also an 8 string version which I owned, but traded in when I bought my first serious Uke (the wonderful Kala Tenor in my tag below).