How low can you go??

[MarTay6]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Buckdancer's Choice- in Portland, Maine... I live about 150 miles north of there, and had the pleasure of playing a few old vintage uke's they had there... and the thing that struck me was how low the action was on these. I typically set my ukes up for about .2 mm at the 12th fret, and .018-.025 at the nut.... I wish I would have had some measuring tools with me, just to see what they actually measured.
I guess the only way to find out how low you can go for easiest playability is to be willing to sacrifice a nut and a saddle by taking it down too low- to see how far one can go??
How far down is considered reasonable? My 74 year old arthritic hands absolutely loved the feel of these old low-actioned vintage ukes!

Thanks for any guidance!

 

[man0a]

There were a couple of threads in this forum recently about how too-low string action can make your ukulele harder to play (mostly for fingerstyle techniques) and can also reduce your volume and sound quality.

String height / action - what do you consider acceptable?

I've only been playing uke < 3 months but all of the ukes I own have a certain action which I consider good, and one uke which I say is horrible. I'm told the horrible height is standard (2.5mm at 12 on 4th string). Am I too picky? Did I just luck out that all my other ukes happen to be under...

forum.ukuleleunderground.com

Why does lowering string action (without buzzing) cause decreased volume?

If the string is not buzzing, in my opinion the lower the better, but i'm told advanced players who don't want to sacrifice volume want higher action. Also was told my Kamaka is sketchy in it's lowness. What is the physics behind higher strings = more volume (discounting buzzing)

forum.ukuleleunderground.com

 

[MarTay6]

I think that part of what I experienced might be due to the frets being smaller/lower to the fretboard surface...

 

[Ukecaster]

For best volume and tone, I like 2 25 - 2.5mm at the 12th. I've had some ukes that routinely came with low action setups, about 1.75mm at the 12th. They play very easily and sound good, but I wonder if they'd sound even better with higher saddles, but the saddle slots are already so shallow that you'd probably need to deepen them to add a 1mm higher saddle. Anything below 1.75mm at the 12th gets buzzy IME.