Small to big

Resurrecting this one that started a year ago. Back then it was early in my guitar playing and I was playing the Taylor GS Mini, which is a smaller guitar. I have since discovered bluegrass and old time music which is generally played on dreadnaught guitars. Dreadnaughts are big guitars and I play a Guild dreadnaught quite regularly now. It has been a natural transference and I'm still playing the ukulele at group strum-a-longs with no problem. I think if one is of the mindset that they can be versatile in their playing that it isn't that difficult. If uniformity is important and versatility is not their thing, then not so much so.
 
I spent 40 years being a miserable failure on all sorts of guitars. Perhaps I just never really liked them. Then I bought an LU-21B and just ate it up. Felt good, sounded good, and the "1 string per finger" sealed the deal. It served me well for almost 3 years.

I moved on from there by adding soprano and tenor.

Now I am happy!
 
I spent 40 years being a miserable failure on all sorts of guitars. Perhaps I just never really liked them. Then I bought an LU-21B and just ate it up. Felt good, sounded good, and the "1 string per finger" sealed the deal. It served me well for almost 3 years.

I moved on from there by adding soprano and tenor.

Now I am happy!
Well then, that is good for you that you did that.
 
The E on the uke is just ridiculously difficult, in the opinion of many (just do a search). This says something: it says E is non-ergonomic and hurts your fingers; even with practice many can't play it.

However, everybody can play the F on the guitar. To me, this says that you can too, just do some practice. A tip is to barre on the 3rd or 5th fret instead of the 1st; this will give you a G and A, respectively. Once you can do those barre chords no problem, then move to 1st fret. You want to train finger strength and barre techniques on easier frets (and 3rd and 5th is going to be easier than 1st even on a well-setup guitar).
This is super important, do not try to learn the F chord at the first fret. FFFFFrustraion is all you'll get. Unless the nut is super low, maybe too low to strum the guitar loudly without buzzing, it will be too hard for the reasons mentioned above. You may want to capo on the second or fifth fret, and try to learn like that for a while. Uke folks especially will hear familiar tones with a fifth fret capo!

While learning, I took the lowest tone string off the guitar and liked what I could do better. I then took two strings off a guitar, the low sounding ones, and felt much better. Then I capoed at the fifth fret with only the 4 strings, DGBe, and had a great time. Then I bought a baritone uke.

I second or third the sentiment that, while cool sounding, a classical guitar neck is too freaking big to deal with, for some folks, like me. As with all lute-style things I've played, the neck is the instrument IMHO. While I enjoy all sorts of necks, I don't think I'll find anything that plays as nicely with my left hand as a Mexican (MIM) Fender Stratocaster.
 
The first time I saw Gord Lightfoot was in 1962. He was part of a duo called the Two Tones and his partner Terry Whelan played a ukulele while Gord played a tenor guitar. The last time I saw him he was playing a dreadnought size 12-string; a much bigger guitar with 3X as many strings.
The Two Tones.jpg Gord Lightfoot at Mariposa '64.jpg

My first guitar was a Goya Goliath M-26 (The Levin/Goya Company's word for "dreadnought) that I got in 1960.
Jim and Goya.jpg
These days the guitar I play much of the time is a Gibson LG1, a smaller bodied instrument. For the past decade, I have been spending almost as much time with the ukulele as with the guitar. My instruments of choice are getting smaller.
Jim &LG1.jpg jimuke.jpg
 
Glad to see this thread revived. It was really all about being flexible, expanding your horizons and playing your instrument of choice. One of my playing partners grew up in a musical family, there was pressure to play something serious, he choice classical guitar. The stiff collared attitude, disciplined practice and adherence to perfection eventual made him quite. Decades went by without him touching an instrument, then about 15 years ago he discovered the ukulele. He fell in love with it and plays constantly to this day.

He will now even pick up one of my guitars and noodle around from time to time. Music is meant to make you happy, whatever you play to get you there is your choice
 
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