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Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on March 12, 2017 at 2:51pm

Well Stewart there are a few possibilities here. The chord shapes will be identical on a 4 string tenor guitar tuned DGbe but what is a C chord on uke is now a G chord on the tenor guitar. You still put your fingers in the exact same pattern. This, in fact, is the case on a Baritone uke which has around a 19" scale and is tuned DGbe.. Of course the 4th string won't be a high note like on most soprano ukes. I f you absolutely want the GCea tuning an octave lower I think what might work is the 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings from a 6 string set. So the A string would tune down to G, the D string to C, the G string down to E and the B string to A. Nylon strings would give a more uke type sound. It might take a few different gauge sets to find what works best. You'll never get that 6 string set up to the high A so what you need to aim for is one octave below standard uke..So instead of A 440 for the high string you want A 220. In summary, the simplest way is to make a 24"scale bari uke or tenor guitar type instrument where your fingers make the same shapes but the chords will be lower.

Here's one of my baritone ukes on a 17" scale using bari uke strings

https://youtu.be/VfboNs64xcc

You'd likely need guitar strings on 24" scale.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on March 13, 2017 at 2:54am

Very nice build! Love the tailpiece; we had roughly 3 dozen of those exact cabinet pulls in our old house. :-)

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Permalink Reply by Lane Martin on March 14, 2017 at 8:22am

Maybe a piece of old brass formed over the edge and super-glued in place to protect the box edge?

Lovely build. I hadn't thought about using a gold pen.

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Permalink Reply by JL on March 16, 2017 at 3:48am

G - #3G tuned to G
C - #4D tuned down to C
E - #3G tuned down to E or #4D tuned up to E
A - #2B tuned down to A

and I agree a classic set will sound more ukulele than bronze phosphor acoustic strings will.

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