All Nylon Ukulele Strings

johnnysmash

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I am having some rash problems with my fingers and I have reason to believe it may be caused by medal in the strings. Is there strings on the market for baritone and tenor that are all non-metal type? String sets that come with Low G. Your recommendations for strings would be appreciated. I like warm mellow type sounds. Thank you.
 
Yes there are many sets. You are looking for "unwound" low G strings. Metal is in the wound strings. Unwound are like the other three except with a larger diameter.
 
No, Aquila strings have metal wound strings whether it be low G or DGBE strings. The only brands I know that don't have wound strings for lower tuning strings are Worth and Living Water whose strings are all fluorocarbon. I'm sure there are other similar brands that do fluorocarbon strings without wound low G or DGBE but those two are the ones I'm most familiar with.
 
Unwound means plain just like unthaw is freeze. Aquila red low G I think has copper powder in it but that may have very little exposure at the surface. I don't think that there are plain nylon low G strings as they would have to be very thick to reach sufficient mass.
 
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They are out there. I bought "Luthier" brand strings from Strings by Mail which are all fluorocarbon. I'm not sure who else would sell that brand, but I'm sure there are other brands which are all fluoro or maybe all nylon.
 
Yeah, you want Living Water. Be aware that the low G and especially low D on baritone are much thicker than the wound counterparts so you may need to widen the nut slots to accommodate.
 
A day or two before I thought of this post I ordered two sets of Martin Ukulele Strings from Lazada.com, a mail order company servicing Thailand. I ordered Martin 630 ukulele strings with low G. I thought I would give the Martin Strings a try and see how they sound. Now I want information on them about thickness of strings and is the low G string wound but I cannot seem to find this information on google search. Has anyone used these before and know anything about them? They will not be delivered until about 20 May.
 
A day or two before I thought of this post I ordered two sets of Martin Ukulele Strings from Lazada.com, a mail order company servicing Thailand. I ordered Martin 630 ukulele strings with low G. I thought I would give the Martin Strings a try and see how they sound. Now I want information on them about thickness of strings and is the low G string wound but I cannot seem to find this information on google search. Has anyone used these before and know anything about them? They will not be delivered until about 20 May.

The Martins come with a wound Low D, and may even have a wound Low G (Not 100% certain on that, my memory is fuzzy on that). The Tenor set is high G, M620, and is all flourocarbon...no wound strings.
 
In my post above about ordering Martin Strings. I mentioned a low G string. I meant a low D string. I think I need to learn the proper wording for different strings. Going from Low G on one instrument and Low D on my baritone I get confused when talking/typing. I have tried high G strings on my Tenor Ukulele and a ukulele I recently received a Kmise Baritone that is strung high G, C E A. I am just not a high G string person. I want all of my ukuleles to be DGBE. Maybe a Low G on a GCEA tuned ukulele would be OK, however, I just cannot get use to that high G. I play mostly chord melodies and finger pick. For strumming the high G is not too bad.
 
The Martin baritone strings do have two wound strings. I use them in my baritone and prefer them to unwound strings because unwound D and G strings start to feel too low tension for me, but since you can't use wound strings you should probably cancel your order if you can. As mentioned, try Worth or Living Water strings. I tried Worth Brown strings on my baritone previously, and despite the low tension I otherwise liked them. If you can't find Worth strings locally you can order Living Water strings straight from Ken Middleton's website. They're a bit more expensive as far as strings go but they are good quality.
 
No, Aquila strings have metal wound strings whether it be low G or DGBE strings.

No, Aquila "Reds" have an unwound low G.

I have them on my Tenor and the tension feels higher than any other string I've tried. Rather like the tension on a steel string acoustic guitar (not actual tension, but "feel").
 
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No, Aquila "Reds" have an unwound low G.

I have them on my Tenor and the tension feels higher than any other string I've tried. Rather like the tension on a steel string acoustic guitar (not actual tension, but "feel").

Well now that you mention it, I have heard of unwound Aquila reds, but when I check the usual stores where I buy my strings they all mention wound low G or wound third and fourth string for baritone sets. What I did find is that you can buy individual unwound Aquila red strings for low G. Whether there's some illusive string sets for unwound low G, I don't know but I certainly can't find one.
 
Well now that you mention it, I have heard of unwound Aquila reds, but when I check the usual stores where I buy my strings they all mention wound low G or wound third and fourth string for baritone sets. What I did find is that you can buy individual unwound Aquila red strings for low G. Whether there's some illusive string sets for unwound low G, I don't know but I certainly can't find one.

Ok, now I'm confused.

I have 5 full sets of Aquila Reds in front of me (What's left from my 10-pack), and they clearly have unwound low G's. Yet when I go to Aquila's web site, it says the low G is wound. So, either the online information is wrong, or they've changed the formula for these strings in the past couple of years. I don't know which.

Here's a picture of the ones I have (set # 88U):
2020-05-03 08.58.19.jpg

And here are the strings themselves:
2020-05-03 09.17.40.jpg
 
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Well now that you mention it, I have heard of unwound Aquila reds, but when I check the usual stores where I buy my strings they all mention wound low G or wound third and fourth string for baritone sets. What I did find is that you can buy individual unwound Aquila red strings for low G. Whether there's some illusive string sets for unwound low G, I don't know but I certainly can't find one.

I think that the current sets of Aquila reds actually come with wound low G's. A plain low G used to come with the Super Nylguts but that may be wound now too. Some dealers may have older packs left. The 6 string set comes with a red low A and it is fantastic. So best bet is buy a single string and mix with nylguts or reds for nice balanced sound. This will also give you the comfort and thickness similar to Nylon strings.
 
It could very well be that the info on Aquila's site, and by extension on other sites, is just incorrect. Or maybe older sets have an unwound low G and newer ones have a wound one, or vice versa. I don't really use low G so I haven't bought a set of Aquila reds with a low G myself but I have seen others that have and they had a wound low G in the set. I've also seen this confusion on this very forum before. In any case, at the very least you can buy individual Aquila red low G strings that are unwound, that much is certain.
 
Maybe Mimmo will find this thread and confirm if low G sets now include the plain strings or wound strings. I certainly have often enough complained about having wound strings as default.

And for description of strings: plain strings get wound to create a wound string. It does not work the other way round where a wound string gets unwound to create a plain string. I don't even understand how this notion can enter so many people's minds in this forum.
 
In addition to the brands mentioned already, Worth strings also are all non-metal, non-wound, etc. I like them a lot.
 
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