Hello all,
I have seen a couple threads on this subject and just finished a conversion so I thought I would share the results. First some background. I play a Blueridge Tenor in DGBE tuning and sometimes GDAE or GDAD. I also play mountain dulcimer. I wanted to get a little travel tenor, so I picked up 2 Lanikai LU-21 B Ukes from Butler music. They were inexpensive Blems, but perfectly playable with a little setup work. They were around $50 each. I also picked up a mando tailpiece off StewMac in case I needed it.
Some research showed that nylon string tension on these Baritone ukes was around 54 pounds. I wondered if the neck and top could handle steel strings. I have a bias towards the sound of steel strings, even though these little instruments sounded pretty good right out of the box. A little boomy, hollow and a little short on sustain, however.
The 20.3 inch scale length is a benefit to young players or those with small hands, particularly in the more open 5th tunings such as GDAE. $50 to introduce someone to music or to experiment with a tenor or have an instrument all set up in an alternative tuning. What a deal!!!
First I let them adjust to the cold, dry of Northwestern Maine and played them a couple days. Then I relaxed the strings and laid a straight edge on the neck and measured the deflection at the 7th fret with a feeler guage. It was -.001". Then I laid the straight edge acroos the lower bout an inch above and below the bridge to see how the top looked unstressed. It varied acrooss the bout from .000 to -.018 on the tail side and .000 to -.032" on the neck side. Then I brought the nylon strings into tune and repeated the measurements. The neck remained unchanged, the top on the tail side went from +.0025 to -.016. in other words the string tension bowed the top up .0025, as expected. On the neck side the tension depressed the top about .0015 from the previous measurements as the bridge rocked forward.
I concluded the neck can take considerably more string tension, while the top is right about at its optimum design point and the bridge is starting to rock forward under tension. So I set my steel string tension ceiling at 60 lbs.
Using the steel string tension calculator at Stewmacs website, I selected the following string guages. E .011 @ 12.5 lbs; B .016 @ 14.8; G .018 @12.4; D .032w @ 19 lbs. Total 58.7 lbs. Since small instrument usual lack bass, I wanted a higher string tension and mass on the bass. A .028w might be better and kick the G up to .020w. But I didn't have those strings and went with what I had on hand, being 45 miles from the nearest music store.
So I strung it up and remeasured the instrument under tension. No change!! So the million dollar question, How does it sound?? Of course this is subjective, but having 2 of the same instruments one set up in steel the other in nylon allowed me to do a nice comparison. Volume about equal, the nylon may have a bit of an edge, but the tonal quality to me is a bit more boomy and hollow sounding. The steel has much improved sustain and much better clarity. What I immediately noticed with the steel was that the intonation was off, and I think that I noticed it due to the clarity of the individual strings. I did not notice this as much with the nylon. The action was way to high at both the nut and bridge. out came the files and feeler guage. I dropped the string height at the first fret to .025 by carefully filing the nut and checking frequently. I dropped the height at the 12th fret to about .115 by sanding the bottom of the bridge. Intonation came right in.
If you wanted to do this for GDAE tuning you could use: E .011; A .016; D .024 or .028 and G .042. The tension would be at the 60 lb and should be ok.
So for $50 bucks I have a beautiful little Tenor Traveler!! It might be possible to get a cleaner sound than nylon by using Flourocarbon strings, but those are only available for the 2 treble strings, the D and G are still wound nylon (as I understand it). anyhow it still would n't sound like steel.
It might be possible to install a tailpoece and go to more medium weight strings, but I'm not sure if that would improve things. I thought I would do this, but I am very pleased with the instrument as is. These little Lanikai Baritone Ukes are really nice little instruments.
Tom
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