Just a quick note about my tenor ukulele set up that I thought y’all might like to try…
Y’all ever head the old axiom, “when you are a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail?” Such is the life of a banjo player. Now, I learnt the uke long before I ever touched a banjo, but I really took to the banjo. Then when my joints started giving me peedoodles I discovered slack key tunings for uke and guitar as a bit of a compensation. It was easier on my hands AND I could translate a ton of cool banjo stuff since the fingering closely resembles open G tuning on a 5-string banjo.
Tuning
Today, my go-to set up for tenor uke is to tune the uke a step lower than standard, drop the first string another step, and use a wound 4th string. So my tuning is F (wound 4th string), B-Flat, D, and high F. That slack key pattern makes an open B-Flat chord. Tuning down a step from standard also gives me another voice between my soprano, (as well as concert, and my-dog-has-fleas tenor) and my baritone ukes.
Strings and Action
One of the issues with some uke strings is that the plain strings are often quite a bit more mellow than the wound strings, and sometimes using a drop 4th (wound string – tuned an octave lower than the “my dog has fleas” standard) exacerbates this issue. I love the tensile and string-to-string consistency of the Aguila Red strings. Also they feel much like higher tension strings so the need to have just a tab higher action to compensate for three strings being tuned a step low, and one string two steps down, is mitigated just a bit. So I just need to nudge the action a bit from where most uke pickers keep it. I am at a slight 2.0mm on the 4th at the 12th fret with a capo on the 1st fret. I keep the nut action as low as I dare so the capo really doesn’t make much difference. Today my drop 4th tenor has a flat fingerboard, so that makes it feel even more “banjo-like.”
Demonstration
Below is my YouTube video demonstrating this set up with a few great old standard tunes, as well as a link to the kit with some of the products I mention in this blog…
https://kit.co/NekkidMusic.com/tenor-uke-kit
Y’all come back and we’ll do some pickin!
Timmy