5 string a la Jim Hanks?

Piecomics

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So I've been thinking for a while about a franken-uke... I have a pono nui big baritone that I really like, and a similar sized inexpensive nylon strung guitar.

Thinking about taking it to my favorite luthier and having him turn it into either another nui/4 string so I can have one with a high "D" and one low, or turning it into a 5 sting instrument along the lines of a rajao or the custom instrument Jim posted about a few months ago.

Which got me thinking about possible tuning ideas for it. There are 3 options I keep thinking about for a 5 string: dDGBE (or dDBGD), Ddgbe (or Ddgbd), or ADGBE.

Curious what thoughts anyone might have on this. My goal with this instrument is to be able to play in a group, which likely means chording and double stops more than fingerstyle, but I am open to exploring some clawhammer with it as well if I go dDBGE...
 
I'm not sure I understand all your options. The dDGBE and dDGBD options would be more typical 5-string configurations with 4-courses, i.e. a doubled low course. What does Ddgbe mean?

ADGBE of course makes sense as you're just losing the 6th string of the guitar or you could do aDGBE to give a reentrant feel with the same guitar chord shapes.

I did have two other ideas that I still haven't tried yet:
dGBEA : reentrant but with high 1st string
cGCEG : banjo-like tuning
Of course mine is tenor scale and I don't know what strings you'd need to achieve similar with your instrument.
 
Thinking about taking it to my favorite luthier and having him turn it into either another nui/4 string so I can have one with a high "D" and one low, or turning it into a 5 sting instrument along the lines of a rajao or the custom instrument Jim posted about a few months ago.

Which got me thinking about possible tuning ideas for it. There are 3 options I keep thinking about for a 5 string: dDGBE (or dDBGD), Ddgbe (or Ddgbd), or ADGBE.

Hi, Piecomics!

You can make them into 5 string instruments like Jim Hanks, Kieth Richards or Albert King.

 
So the idea with the D an octave up would allow for claw hammer ukulele with an additional bass string. The octave below D would be to allow those reciprocating bass lines that you often hear from John Fahey or in early blues. He would often use two running bass lines, an octave bass line D d D d and then a 1 5 bass line like D A D A.

Maybe these aren’t good ideas though, I’m just interested in trying something new.
 
Hmm, I think typical claw hammer would be gDGBD ?

I see what you mean by Ddgbe now. So your low string would be D2, the same as a guitar in "drop D" tuning. Interesting.

I'm sure all these options have their uses. Just depends on how far off from "standard" you want to go and how confused you want to get when you go back. :D
 
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