Ukudolin? Ukumando? Mandolulu? Mandolele? Hmm...............

Idyll comment: In shopping around, I have discovered that beautiful, sweet-sounding mandolins are, quite often, significantly less expensive than equally beautiful, sweet-sounding ukuleles.

Bellgamin's dumb question 5.3.1 (beta-2): Straight out of the box, can a mandolin easily be tuned, & finger-picked, & strummed like an 8-string tenor ukulele?

A mandolin has about the same scale length as a soprano ukulele. A mandola is about the same scale length as a tenor uke.

Mandolins are steel strung and are harder to finger pick or strum than a nylon instrument. Most mandolinists use plectrums.

Tuning mandolins is a pitb: 8 strings, and if a course is out of unison it can sound really bad. It's said that mandolinists spend half their time tuning and half their time playing out of tune (The same is probably true for 8 string ukes)

Mandolins are typically tuned in 5ths GDAE. They can be tuned like a uke GCEA but may want different strings. There probably are threads on mandolincafe.com discussing this.

Mandolins have significantly skinnier necks than ukuleles, and 5ths tuning has some big stretches for several chords. I have a much hard time fingering these on a GDAE soprano uke than on the mandolin.

Your initial premise strikes me as odd - I'd expect ukes to be less expensive than mandolins of similar quality. I haven't cross-shopped, but I'd be shocked to get a decent mandolin for the prices I've paid for decent but inexpensive ukes.

I usually call my 8-string soprano uke a "Mandolele", unless I want people to know what I'm talking about

I once loaned an old Ibanez mandolin to a guitar player who needed one to play in a pit band for a musical. He returned it with guitar strings tuned to DGBE, an octave above a guitar. (He also included three sets of regular mandolin strings and apologised for not putting a set on.)
The talented session guitarist, one of the most, if not THE most recorded session guitarists in the world, Tommy Tedesco, tuned all of his instruments, guitar, banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, balalaika. . . like a guitar.

I think that the steel strings and closer spacing would make a mandolin very different from a uke, even if you tuned them the same. A mandolin is braced for steel strings and nylon strings would probably not be able to drive the top properly.

A mandolin has about the same scale length as a concert uke. Here are a Joe Zier tenor ukulele, an Eastman MD605 A5 style mandolin and a Harmony "Roy Smeck" soprano uke to compare the size/scale length.



Here's a photo that my friend, Kim took of my Johnson concert reso uke and my Washburn mandolin. The scale length is about the same.

Arcy said:

Mandolins are steel strung and are harder to finger pick or strum than a nylon instrument. Most mandolinists use plectrums.

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I don't know any mandolin player who finger pick. I heard that Peter Lang does.
The way he plays the guitar, that must be something, I am not surprised...

The baroq-ulele has the same shape as a (Neapolitan) mandolin.
It is tuned in GDAE, same as mandolins, but in single strings (Aquila).
It's taking the lead in the first and last parts in the following video.

I do recall David Essig playing some impressive finger-style ukulele. I couldn't find him on Youtube, but did find this guy:


Or this guy:

Aqula has a uke string set tuned in 5ths for concert ukulele. They work on tenors too. I think its a fun change of pace, especially if you have an extra concert ukulele lying around.

Converting a mandolin into a ukulele is possible, but it won't sound as fabulous. Mandolins are (on top of the differences mentioned above by Arcy) stiffer and have a floating bridge system, on which four single course nylon strings will sound a bit feeble. Double course steel strings push down with a lot more energy, even when fingerpicked instead of the usual flatpicking.

You'll also need to file the nut and saddle to accomodate ukulele strings, in reentrant uke tuning or in mandolin-style fifths tuning.

ukulelekarcsi said:

Converting a mandolin into a ukulele is possible, but it won't sound as fabulous. Mandolins are (on top of the differences mentioned above by Arcy) stiffer and have a floating bridge system, on which four single course nylon strings will sound a bit feeble. Double course steel strings push down with a lot more energy, even when fingerpicked instead of the usual flatpicking.

You'll also need to file the nut and saddle to accomodate ukulele strings, in reentrant uke tuning or in mandolin-style fifths tuning.

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I didn't plan to use ukulele strings. I was thinking of using metal strings selected for tuning to G3 C4 E4 A4. However, based on the comments herein, I have dropped the idea of using a mandolin tuned uke-style. Bad idea, I see.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful comments.

I wouldn't say it was a bad idea. As long as you're careful about string gauges (using a standard mandolin set would almost certainly be a bad idea), I have no doubt there's plenty of new ground to be explored.

In my research, in general a decent uke comes at a lower price point than almost any other instrument. That said, tuning a mandolin to uke tunings could be fun. If you're going to do that I'd look around for a mandolin with a wider than traditional neck. I think some guitar manufacturers build wider necked mandolins for people transitioning over from guitar - and the ukulele chords benefit from a wider fingerboard in my opion.

Or you could always try one of these - it looks like a hybrid between a ukulele and a mandolin https://eastwoodguitars.com/products/mrg-ukulele

NewKid said:

Aqula has a uke string set tuned in 5ths for concert ukulele. They work on tenors too. I think its a fun change of pace, especially if you have an extra concert ukulele lying around.

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Aquila has actually a string set for soprano, tuned like a mandolin or a fiddle
Aquila 30U Soprano GDAE