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I used to have a soprano. It was a quirky little thing. Electronics were ok - decent passive. You're making me miss having one. I might go looking for one online :) The tenors had active pickups, but I heard the battery is a pain to change.

Whole set for me, as an idiosyncratic OCD thing. Low G strings, even wound ones have generally lasted for me. However, I prefer using unwound where possible.

My goto strings are D'addario clear nylons. They're the right blend of mellow/bright for my tastes, but most of all it's the feel of the strings. They're a bit thicker and feel a bit less in tension. Fluorocarbons feel thin and taut in comparison, which I don't like.

Some Mahalo are really good, even their mid-range stuff. I've had good experiences with some tenor and baritones in $100-200 range. Their solid body bass ukulele is also fantastic.

Most ukuleles don't need adjustment for low-G to work. There is some tolerance. If the uke has plastic frets as mentioned in above post, then consider unwound low-G strings such as Aquila, Fremont or Worth.

Personally I always go for passive piezo's and have installed quite a few. Artec is cheap and excellent, or if that doesn't fit (some ukes have narrower saddle slots) Shadow Nanoflex works great!

Just a thought that came to me having bought my fair share of ukulele bags and cases over the years. When I buy a Soprano sized gigbag, often it doesn't fit the Soprano ukulele I bought it for as some Sopranos are slightly longer due to headstock shape, etc. So I end up returning the Soprano...

This is correct. I experienced the same thing with a used black soprano I bought. The higher frets caused some notes to jump whole notes. I hammered down the frets using a plastic faced hammer and it improved the situation. One of the frets wouldn't stay down so I had to glue it down as per the...

Cables - any 1/4 inch mono instrumental cable from a reputable company will work just fine. Most local music store varieties will work just fine. Avoid no-name ones that are really cheap on Ebay, etc, as they might cause unwanted hum or not be very durable. Not much point buying very expensive...

I was thinking about the other day. Where I am (Australia) strap buttons are cheap but to get one it might mean a long drive to a music store if you live somewhere that isn't close to any (eg: me) or waiting a long time for it to arrive in the post. The last time I ordered some $2 strap...

The explanations I can think of is that it sold for way more than the seller's perceived value so they don't want to look like they ripped someone off, or it sold for way below market price and the seller/buyer doesn't want the market to view it as undervalued.

Yep, can confirm I got a wound red string in an Aquila set. Might have been the Aquila set where all the strings are reds - Aquila 86U might have been the name of the set.

Coupled with an external pre-amp, the actual pickup installed in the uke doesn't seem to make that much of a difference other than inherent output strength. Sure each pickup system does sound a bit different, but rarely will the audience be there to hear how amazing your pickup is. They're there...

I agree. The "acoustic effects" system is sort of an electric Enya's gimmick that is somewhat central to its design and probably made up the a significant portion of the instrument's cost. I don't imagine it would be easy to completely remove as there are bits of it stuck onto the soundboard...

I was a huge skeptic of this phenomena, and I still am. I think there are several different perspectives on this, and many can be debunked as wishful thinking and mysticism. For instance, I don't believe that the wood has the kind of sentience to know that it's a tone-wood top of an instrument...

Any classical guitar's DGBE strings tune up to GCEA (low G) on Soprano, Concert and Tenor ukuleles.

Yes, I've installed this type of strings on ukulele before and they work fine. You need to be very careful about cutting them because they will immediately start to unwind once cut. You have to either not cut them at all (leave them in curls at the headstock) or if you do cut them, leave...

The strings designed to tune to DGBE on classical guitar are all safe to be tuned GCEA (low G) on ukulele. You can also use the classical guitar's ADGB strings on a baritone ukulele for DGBE tuning.

There are classical guitar sets where the strings are all wound (eg: Savarez). Ukulele strings are basically the DGBE strings of classical guitar sets tuned up to GCEA.

I don't see why not. Obviously a ukulele and mandolin aren't the same, but universally they are both instruments capable of playing notes and chords. If you amplify an ukulele with a pickup, there are no issues with it being heard as much as a mandolin.