tenor uke to mandolin tuning

[northfolk]

Has anyone tried tuning a tenor uke to mandolin tuning; if so what were the results; pros and cons? Thanks.

[Bunnyf]

The slightly longer scale will make fretting some chords harder but the soprano uke makes a decent mandouke. I use one as a quieter practice "mando".

[allenhopkins]

There are Aquila Nylgut strings for fifths GDAE tuning -- but they're designed for soprano uke. Would they take being tuned to the same pitch on the longer tenor scale? You might try a set and see.

Don't put steel mandolin strings on your tenor ukulele, for sure. That would do damage.

[Jacob]

From my personal experience, there is ZERO chance of tuning the Aquila GDAE Nylgut set to mandolin pitch on a tenor ukulele scale of around 17 inches. The E string will pop well below the mandolin pitch. It will even break trying to tune GDAE on concert 15 inch scale. However, I've had excellent results with tenor and concert ukuleles at mandola CGDA tuning using the Aquila 31U Nylgut Concert (Mandolin Tuning CGDA) Ukulele Strings. Two sets on 8 string tenors at mandola tuning is especially pleasing.

[bratsche]

Tenor ukes work great in CGDA mandola tuning. GDAE, not so much - you need a shorter scale uke.

bratsche

[Happymandolin]

Ukulele tenor are typically strung GCEA either linear with G as the lowest note or Reentrant with C as the lowest. The C may be able to be tuned up to D. The two highest strings (E and A) would pose a problem, but probably not insurmountable.

[fifths]

Ukulele tenor are typically strung GCEA either linear with G as the lowest note or Reentrant with C as the lowest. The C may be able to be tuned up to D. The two highest strings (E and A) would pose a problem, but probably not insurmountable.

The tension you would need on the E at that scale length would for sure be a string buster.
A baritone uke makes a usable OCTAVE mandolin with some judiciously selected nylon classical guitar strings though..