Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Yellowbelly Flatt on June 23, 2013 at 11:21pm

The standard spacing on this size of uke would be around 9mm or about 1/3 inch. But, as there are no rules, you can use whatever spacing you need. I have a 'special' medieval style baritone 'lute'  ukulele with a string space of 12mm or 1/2 inch

Permalink Reply by HarleyTodd on June 24, 2013 at 6:46am

Cool....thanks for the info YellowBelly!

Permalink Reply by Richard Holmes on June 25, 2013 at 3:14am

The ukes I own are about 3/8" spacing at the nut. For four strings that gives about 3/16" on either side of the outer strings on a 1 1/2" wide neck. 1/2" spacing would take the outer strings right to the edge of the fretboard unless you made it wider.

Permalink Reply by terry harris on July 30, 2013 at 4:04am

Kinda late with this reply but I thought some folks might like to know about the string spacing gauge.

Most ukes are 1 3/8" wide at the nut and 1/3/4" at the 12th fret. I like to leave about 5/32" between the center of the first string and the edge of the neck at the nut. Then, there is this cool gadget made by this guy in England for laying out string locations. You can see it here 

http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?57339-Nut-sa...

and here

http://ukulele-innovation.tripod.com/string-spacing-gauges.html

He has 6 string gauges now too. They are kinda spendy but man, they save a lot of time and I like it so much better than the ones that StewMac puts out.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Special_tools_for_Nuts_and_saddle...

Permalink Reply by HarleyTodd on July 31, 2013 at 6:18am

Thanks guys....I ended up making it pretty wide, gave up on using the "stock' 1  1/2 wide boards at home depot and cut my own at a touch over 1 5/8", and set my strings at the nut at 11-12 mils.  Pretty wide for most, but I am a new player and for now it seems easier to get my fingers on the chords.  I got the action set pretty low, and am happy...good volumn from the box.  Now on to the next,....going to do a hybrid baritone uke/tenor guitar probably about 22 scale length with a cohiba box I just scored!  Thanks again though for all the advice. 

Attachments:

• uke.JPG, 2.3 MB

Permalink Reply by Old Fingers Green on July 31, 2013 at 1:50am

I tend to go for 9mm at the nut to 11mm at the saddle, I've got quite big fingers and that seems to work for me.