What different size ukes do you own and play in 2020?

I still don't understand the attraction. I've tried a few - just not my cuppa tea I guess. :rolleyes:

I can imagine playing only concerts and preferring the concert sound but maybe wanting a little more space on the fretboard. A long-neck concert solves that problem. For me, part of the fun is adapting to different sized fretboards, but if you're only playing small instruments, you might want a long-neck for some stretching room.

But yeah, it's not my cup of tea either, and I actually think some ukes that sort of go in the opposite direction are more interesting. Like the Romero Creations that pair a larger body with a shorter scale. I think I'd rather have an elephant with 12 or 13 frets to a big fat body (maybe add a cutaway for reach), than a giraffe with a tiny body and a long neck.
 
The key to understanding long-neck aficionados is to appreciate our different slant on musicianship. We're finger stylists and soloists. After all you don't need a long neck to strum "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" or "When I'm Cleaning Windows." Long necks afford me with 7 pentatonic shapes and 10 modal shapes. Long necks give me the space I need to construct arpeggio runs up the fret board. I can finger chords (even with my fingers) up to about fret fifteen and that gives a lot of options when playing something like Rhythm Changes. Since my comfort zone is the key of E, my favorite place to play is the 11th fret where that B note sticks out so egregiously. I couldn't do that on a 12-fret instrument. Anyway...I'm not trying to sell anyone on this way of approaching music. I just wanted to explain why some of us like these goofy giraffes.
 
The key to understanding long-neck aficionados is to appreciate our different slant on musicianship. We're finger stylists and soloists. After all you don't need a long neck to strum "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" or "When I'm Cleaning Windows." Long necks afford me with 7 pentatonic shapes and 10 modal shapes. Long necks give me the space I need to construct arpeggio runs up the fret board. I can finger chords (even with my fingers) up to about fret fifteen and that gives a lot of options when playing something like Rhythm Changes. Since my comfort zone is the key of E, my favorite place to play is the 11th fret where that B note sticks out so egregiously. I couldn't do that on a 12-fret instrument. Anyway...I'm not trying to sell anyone on this way of approaching music. I just wanted to explain why some of us like these goofy giraffes.

That makes sense, though I'm mostly a fingerstyle player as well. For that reason, I'm not really fond of 12-fret instruments either, but that's only an issue on sopranos (or smaller), and even then, it's easy enough to find sopranos with 15+ frets.

I do have one soprano with just 12 frets total but with quite a bit more space on the fretboard. I'm a little curious how difficult it would be to for a luthier/tech to add 2 or 3 more frets, to accommodate pieces that range more than an octave.

Anyway, I'm not really playing anything past the 15th fret, which is no problem with 13 frets to the body and doable with 12, though a cutaway helps. In the meantime, I feel like some of those "short-scale" concerts and tenors hit the sweet spot in terms of tone (at least for me). 13 might be my lucky number when it comes to frets to the body.

To be fair, I haven't really given long-neck instruments a chance, so maybe I'll change my mind later. But so far the need hasn't arisen, and the appeal isn't there for me yet.

I think that's pretty impressive that you're hanging out so far up the neck. I'm not even close to mastering just the first 5 frets with linear much less re-entrant tunings.
 
Well, I played these all, today...
favs.jpg
 
The picture above, I emailed myself, this one, I used a cable to transfer to my computer...
favs2.jpg
 
I've been playing tenor, baritone, and UBass, and I keep a Makala Dolphin (soprano) near my desk for when I want to works something out quickly and don't want to grab a tenor.
 
I have way too many ukuleles, from Soprano to Baritone, but I mostly play my low-G Tenor ukes.

One of these days I'm gonna start selling some of my rarely-played ukes.
 
I only play soprano. I like the small size and its characteristic sound. Because I split my time between ukulele and guitar, it doesn't make sense to me to play a larger uke size.
 
I basically only play baritone or tenor. I came from a guitar background, and it even took me a while to get used to what I felt was a tiny tenor fretboard. Not long ago I built a soprano, and it was just far too small for me to hold and play comfortably. I'm not a virtuoso by any stretch, but I found trying to finger single notes on the soprano nearly impossible. Not long after that, a friend saw the soprano and asked if I was interested in selling it, so I no longer have it. I still have seven other ukes I've built, all tenors and baritones except for one concert I'm finishing. Even if it turns out to be too small, I'm keeping it, because it incorporates wood I rescued when we remodeled our home almost 20 years ago.
 
Top Bottom