Posted by Tim Arnsmeyer on September 25, 2016 at 9:06pm
I am building two CBG for a customer. It's for his two granddaughters, which are around 8 year old. Should I use nylon strings and which 3 to use and the tuning. B
I use Fishing line for my ukes for tenor lengths with gCEA tuning up to 435 mm i use 50 80 60 40 lb fishing line.
For concert and standard lengths around 330 to 360mm i use 60 100 80 50
For sopranino with a 275mm length and dGBE tuning i use 40 60 50 30 and up the D string to 80 lb line for DGBE linear/nonreentrant tuning. The sopranino size with the octaves over guitar tuning works well for mimicking and plaing along with a full size guitar, guitar tabs etc.
You can also look at a dulcimer style fretboard. It might be limited but it's limitation is that you can't really play anything wrong on it and musically you have more fun when everything sounds like it matches. It might be a good thing for a child.
The strings vary with the scale length. Someone here mentioned using a capo on a regular six string. When the capo is positioned at your desired scale length you can see what notes each string makes to help select the appropriate set. As to nylon or steel, are you planning on them fretting or only slide? If slide only it might be easier (and certainly brighter) to have steel strings, they won't clunk the fret board as easily.
Also you could consider a scale length using one of the Ukulele scales and then use 3 strings from a Uke string set.
Comments
I use Fishing line for my ukes for tenor lengths with gCEA tuning up to 435 mm i use 50 80 60 40 lb fishing line.
For concert and standard lengths around 330 to 360mm i use 60 100 80 50
For sopranino with a 275mm length and dGBE tuning i use 40 60 50 30 and up the D string to 80 lb line for DGBE linear/nonreentrant tuning. The sopranino size with the octaves over guitar tuning works well for mimicking and plaing along with a full size guitar, guitar tabs etc.
You can also look at a dulcimer style fretboard. It might be limited but it's limitation is that you can't really play anything wrong on it and musically you have more fun when everything sounds like it matches. It might be a good thing for a child.
The strings vary with the scale length. Someone here mentioned using a capo on a regular six string. When the capo is positioned at your desired scale length you can see what notes each string makes to help select the appropriate set. As to nylon or steel, are you planning on them fretting or only slide? If slide only it might be easier (and certainly brighter) to have steel strings, they won't clunk the fret board as easily.
Also you could consider a scale length using one of the Ukulele scales and then use 3 strings from a Uke string set.