Rearranging Re-Entrant GCEA to Low gCEA Cheat

roastbeast

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Aloha UU'ers, not sure if this is the right forum and will be happy to move this topic to the correct forum.

Been in several FB comment discussions where I've shared my trick for short term low g fix for people looking to experiment with low g. There's been some debate as to whether my method works so I would def appreciate comments from other experienced ukers.

First, I'd like to say that I'm still vetting this cheat across my ukes but so far seems it seems to work for me. I have this done with Martin Fluorocarbon a solid spruce / solid ziricote b&s tenor (with compensated saddle), solid mango pineapple tenor, Enya Nova U concert (with compensated saddle), and a long neck solid koa soprano.

Cheat: Rearrange re-entrant GCEA Martin Fluorocarbon strings on a tenor, concert and soprano to low g by using C string > low g, E > C, G > E, A staying the same.

My reason for doing this: Prefer Martin Fluorocarbons and unwound low G to wound low G as, in my opinion, the bass of a wound low G over powers the rest of the strings. If anything I would prefer half and half wound vs unwound like baritone uke string sets for a more even balance but I haven't seen a low g set like this.

I felt this would work because rearranging strings by order of thickness is similar to how linear tuned string sets work. Martin FCs tend to be high tension already so to me, the difference in tension is acceptable - certainly not floppy by any means. There's a bit more sustain and body because of lower tension for the first 3 strings that I think actually helps to highlight the A string a bit more as sometimes on my re-entrant ukes the A-string note changes don't power through as much as I'd like.

I think this works better on non-compensated saddles vs. compensated saddles set up to re-entrant GCEA. Possibly better on concert and up. Intonation down the neck seems to be acceptable within 15 cents as long as you are open to adjusting your open string within 15 cents as well.

I recently emailed Martin Customer Support to get their feedback on my method.

Thoughts? Has anybody else tried this before? Anybody willing to try this and give me their feedback? Mahalo!
 
This is the correct Forum, as far as I know.
I've never tried this "cheat".
Actually, GCEA denotes lo G setup. It shows a linear progression.
gCEA denotes re-entrant setup.

Fixed it for you.
 
I haven't tried it. It doesn't seem like it would work particularly well from a "design" perspective - meaning that your strings are going to end up at very different tensions than intended. But if it works for you and your ukes, great.

You can do wound G & C. For example, on tenor, the Thomastik-Infeld CF30 and CF27 strings should work great.
 
I haven't tried it. It doesn't seem like it would work particularly well from a "design" perspective - meaning that your strings are going to end up at very different tensions than intended. But if it works for you and your ukes, great.

You can do wound G & C. For example, on tenor, the Thomastik-Infeld CF30 and CF27 strings should work great.

String tension is different but the difference doesn't affect playability as much as one might theorize... your first 3 strings would have same tension ending in the thinnest string being the highest tension. I think if you had alternating tensions playability would be more of an issue.

Also, seems like different FC string sets from different makers have different tensions as well as some brands having varying tension sets for same scale ukes. Because of this I reasoned that tension within a certain range matters more for preference vs actual playability.
 
I think this is an interesting idea to throw your high g on top, and move all your other strings down one where your C string becomes your low G string, thus giving you GCEA low G tuning instead of gCEA, re-entrant high g tuning. I wish I had an extra set of strings, they are in the mail, and I'm not sure I could re-string the ones that came with my Uke since they are clipped short and may not catch the post again. I would hate to wait around not playing. I ordered a low G since my Uke came strung with high g and I decided to give it a go for a few months before swapping them out.

Do you find them too slack, or are they nice?

Just to clarify, you are doing the rearranging with the bottom 3 strings. Your first string, A will stay in place. Personally, I think the difference in tension is very acceptable. If you are restringing with the same set from re-entrant tuning you need to let the strings tighten up a bit and then get them settled after restringing. But this is just my opinion and seeing what others have to say after trying it out themselves.
 
It sounds feasible but it also sounds like a lot of work with strings that will be all curly from being wound around posts and tied to bridges. Why not just buy a low-G string and change the one string?
 
It sounds feasible but it also sounds like a lot of work with strings that will be all curly from being wound around posts and tied to bridges. Why not just buy a low-G string and change the one string?

From my experience experimenting with different FC brands, they all have a different sound and I want to keep the sound of the strings consistent with each other.

Def some work to restring for sure but part of the process of appreciating your ukes.
 
Hi -
When I was playing tenor, I used to use Glen Rose's method of just rearranging strings from a standard set, as explained below. Of course, now you always have the option of just buying a single low G string, as mentioned earlier in this thread. But rearranging the strings, as you and Glen suggested, always worked for me. Different strokes for different folks................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99-LcHRJZs
 
If it works and you like it, it's good! As has been pointed out by others in the past, there are no ukulele police.

For kicks, I just lowered a concert uke (with Oasis Brights) C string to G to see what would happen. It buzzed at a a few frets. This was a uke with a very low setup that works great with the usual re-entrant gCEA. Perhaps it wouldn't have buzzed if I moved the string to the usual low G position, but I'm much too lazy to do that. :eek:
 
From my experience experimenting with different FC brands, they all have a different sound and I want to keep the sound of the strings consistent with each other.

Def some work to restring for sure but part of the process of appreciating your ukes.

No problem. I appreciate cleverishness for cleverishness' sake. Who knows? I could be stuck on a desert island with a tinny re-entrant ukulele where this would come in handy.
 
If it works and you like it, it's good! As has been pointed out by others in the past, there are no ukulele police.

For kicks, I just lowered a concert uke (with Oasis Brights) C string to G to see what would happen. It buzzed at a a few frets. This was a uke with a very low setup that works great with the usual re-entrant gCEA. Perhaps it wouldn't have buzzed if I moved the string to the usual low G position, but I'm much too lazy to do that. :eek:

Mahalo for trying this out Ed. I do not know what Oasis Brights default tension is. Some brands are medium tension and if that is Oasis then the method I suggested would not work. So far I have only experimented heavily with Martin FCs which have pretty stiff tension on my tenors.
 
Hi -
When I was playing tenor, I used to use Glen Rose's method of just rearranging strings from a standard set, as explained below. Of course, now you always have the option of just buying a single low G string, as mentioned earlier in this thread. But rearranging the strings, as you and Glen suggested, always worked for me. Different strokes for different folks................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99-LcHRJZs

Mahalo for this link Griole. Never seen this before today but it was good validation! Glad to know it works for you too.
 
Its a useful thing to do if you want to try out low G without buying new strings. I recall reading about it somewhere back in 2007/8(?), its not new. I actually tried it then to see how the low G went.

If you are going to change the strings anyway, why not have a go at low G by re-arranging them, it only has to be for a week or so to find out how much you like it? It wont do any harm and you can play with it for a week or so before you decide whether to buy a set of Low G or Re-entrant strings as your next set.

The easiest way to work out how to do it is to take off all the strings, sort them from fat to thin, put the fattest as the G string and the skinniest as the A string. If they have some curly bits, that will make it a bit more fiddly, but it will still work.

A main musical difference between low G and re-entrant is about the inversions of the chords. For a person who does not want to read any more about "inversions", they are about the sound, the sound that happens when you pick a particular note to be the low note in a chord. So when you play a C chord (0003) on a re-entrant uke, the lowest note is C on the open C string. When you play a C chord (0003) on a low G uke, G is the lowest note on the open G string. The difference is sound that you hear is a lot of what inversions are about, voicing or matching the sound to a tune. If you want a C chord that has C as the lowest note in low G tuning you need to use 5433. You can play 0003 and 5433 on your low G and see if you can hear the difference. On re-entrant tuning 5433 has E (fret 4 on C string) as the lowest note. When you try out Low G tuning, I know it will sound deeper and lower and stuff overall, but if you listen to the difference in the sound of the chords, without reading any theory, just listen, you may start to understand how the two tunings are musically different to help you decide which one you like most.

Mahalo Bill for additional validation on my (and apparently others') method for low G with re-entrant sets. Some ukers on FB discussions were quite insistent that this method would result in floppy strings and bad sound, but it hasn't been my experience so far.

Will definitely be trying 5433 on low g!
 
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