Soprano Owners: Sustain

I've played quite a few sopranos in the past couple of months but didn't focus on sustain until now. Two questions for soprano owners:

In many ways I'm loving the sound of my mahogany soprano (not the lowest end, but not a K brand either), but I'm noticing it has a lower sustain on the A string, particularly when fretted. It almost sounds stubby in comparison to the other strings (rings for two seconds tops). I've swapped out the strings from Aquila to fluorocarbons and it's helped, but I'm curious what causes lower sustain in one string and whether there is a remedy. It doesn't sound bad, and I realize sustain is not usually the strong suit of a soprano...I just notice it (my husband maintains he doesn't detect it).

And, a random poll just for fun: what is your soprano's sustain in seconds?

That is the soprano sound. Punchy, bright and happy.. though some sopranos have more sustain than others.. the sopranos are meant to sound that ways. It has to do with the size of the instrument.

Thanks for your input Kerneltime. I thought it was interesting for sustain to be noticeably different on one particular string.

My sopranos all ring for 5 to 8 seconds on the A string, with my ear to the sound hole.

I think I heard Aldrine once say that nylon strings have more sustain and Aquila Nylgut has the least, with fluorocarbon in the middle. I forget where he said that, though. Higher tension strings can give you more sustain, too.

man0a said:

My sopranos all ring for 5 to 8 seconds on the A string, with my ear to the sound hole.

I think I heard Aldrine once say that nylon strings have more sustain and Aquila Nylgut has the least, with fluorocarbon in the middle. I forget where he said that, though. Higher tension strings can give you more sustain, too.

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Thanks man0a, that's pretty good! Mine isn't bad played open, but once I fret it, it drops from about 5 seconds to 2-3, whereas the others ring out more (it's a bit longer than I thought now that I too have put my ear directly to the soundhole).

I may just be nitpicking...it makes sense for the sustain to drop a bit with fretting because the string is essentially shortened...but the dead-ish sounding A string has been something that has stood out to me as a curiosity so I thought I'd reach out to see what others think

Maybe put a new A string on and see what happens. Could be the string ? Just a newbie guess / suggestion.

Does the A string's stubbiness occur regardless of where you fret it? I ask because I let my uke get too dry and it got wonky on the 16th fret, and I had to go get it serviced. Maybe you also have a naughty fret.

ripock said:

Does the A string's stubbiness occur regardless of where you fret it? I ask because I let my uke get too dry and it got wonky on the 16th fret, and I had to go get it serviced. Maybe you also have a naughty fret.

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It's mostly the lower frets. It seems to get better once you hit the fifth fret. So...several naughty frets I guess. I wonder if it's too dry in that case.

Tin Ear said:

Maybe put a new A string on and see what happens. Could be the string ? Just a newbie guess / suggestion.

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Thanks for the suggestion Tin Ear. I did change the strings from Aquila Supernylgut strings to fluorocarbons and it helped a bit, but the issue (if you can call it that) persists.

The A string has more tension than the other strings in most sets. More tension can decrease sustain. If you try a lower tension string, you may see the sustain come up a bit...but that might require mixing strings...or just go with some low tension strings in general, and see what happens. Worth makes CL and BL (I think I got that right) light tension in fluorocarbon. Some nylon strings are pretty light.

I suspect this is down to lots of individual issues. Technique may be an issue; if you were traditionally a guitarist not all of your skills are portable. Could be a (slightly!) dead fret. Could be your particular uke.

Just as an experiment, I tried this on the soprano uke in front of me (a weird 1950s frankenuke of unknown manufacture, possibly a Kay). I get about four seconds on each fret consistently, and about six on the open string.

I suppose if you were at the very top of your musical game, you would arrange your songs to always use open strings whenever you could.

Generally, I think less sustain is part of the percussive, immediate nature of the soprano ukulele. That's a good thing, or at least it definitely is for all the music I am interested in. If I wanted sustain, I'd get a guitar.

As others have said because the soprano has a short scale length and the A string is under the highest tension of all the string it will have the least amount of sustain. Coupled with the smaller body size, particularly the sound board (ie top) it’s hard to have a soprano with much A string sustain period, compared to a concert or tenor size.

What make and model is your uke. Do you know the body materials, all this can make a big difference. A lightly built high end uke with a spruce top will sustain longer then an inexpensive heavily built laminate top..........usually

Farkvam said:

Thanks for the suggestion Tin Ear. I did change the strings from Aquila Supernylgut strings to fluorocarbons and it helped a bit, but the issue (if you can call it that) persists.

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I think the A string has the least sustain on any size uke, and sopranos generally have the least sustain overall. Isn’t it also partially down to the thinness of the string, as well as the shortness of the scale? You may be able to tweak it with different strings or tunings or technique, but on that particular instrument you may not be able to change it much. Some soprano builds will have more, but pretty much everything is against you on sustain on the A string on a soprano.

An important thing to consider is that the sustain of an instrument is not simply a function of the strings (although those are super important!) but is really about the entire instrument, as a system. It is all about resonance.

Instruments are built so that they will be resonant, and make a pleasing sound, across their full range of notes. At least that is the intention. This can be really hard to do, and often times an instrument is better with some ranges of notes than others.

Some instruments will have dead notes; they will have certain notes that don't resonate well. It is possible that on your specific instrument, those notes on the A string are just less resonant than other notes.

You should be able to test this. If you fret the exact same notes (same frequency, not different octaves) on the E string, do they still sound "stubby"?

Thanks for the info everyone, much appreciated. I am glad to know that the A string has generally the least amount of sustain due to the tension. I thought that would be the case. So it's probably not just my uke...and on the other hand, it may be just my uke too ha ha. What I mean is, the fact that the sustain increases by the fifth fret on mine could mean some minor issue with the lower frets, coupled with the fact that it's a low-sustain string.
I tuned it up to B and down to G to see what would happen and it increased the sustain on some frets but not others, and vice versa.
I was formerly a guitar player so another factor is allowing my ear to adjust to the sound of a percussive soprano. I had chosen the soprano specifically over other scales after listening to sound clips comparing the scales, and I liked the traditional ukulele sound of the soprano. So low sustain is, I suppose, part of what I liked about it without knowing it.

My model is just a $200 CAD uke, the all solid mahogany Ohana SK-25. I'm actually rather pleased with it in many ways and it has a rich but bright sound. I may take it to a luthier one day to see if a setup would make any difference (I'd like the action lowered a bit as well), but otherwise I can live with the A string at the lower frets.

Cluze said:

Some instruments will have dead notes; they will have certain notes that don't resonate well. It is possible that on your specific instrument, those notes on the A string are just less resonant than other notes.

You should be able to test this. If you fret the exact same notes (same frequency, not different octaves) on the E string, do they still sound "stubby"?

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That's very interesting Cluze, I didn't think to test the same notes on other strings. Those four notes do indeed sound less resonant on other strings. I should say that they probably aren't totally "dead" as they do ring out, it's just not as long as the other notes. "Stubby" is probably a bit of an extreme description on my part.
Thank you for pointing this out! I think we've discovered what's going on. Can this be fixed by a luthier, or it is just the way it is? As mentioned I'm quite happy with the uke in spite of, so it's not a deal breaker if it can't be fixed.