Help!--keep breaking 1st and 4th strings when installing new strings...

[OldePhart]

I go twice strung through the shaft hole...

Yep...I forgot to mention that! It really helps keep the string from slipping as you wind it up. I put the string through with a 1/2 to 3/4 turn as mentioned before, then I take the loose end and wrap it "backwards" around the post the other way and through the hole again, then wind one over and the rest under. Even the thin strings hold pretty good this way with only two or three wraps.

Some fat C strings and unwound low G strings won't fit through the hole twice - but then they don't generally slip, either.

John


John

 

[chasapple]

Awesome tip, thanks!

And I checked my pegheads compared to other pono tenor models and they're definitely the same, so it's purely a problem with my technique
and I'll try this 'twice through' tip for sure.

-- Charles

Yep...I forgot to mention that! It really helps keep the string from slipping as you wind it up. I put the string through with a 1/2 to 3/4 turn as mentioned before, then I take the loose end and wrap it "backwards" around the post the other way and through the hole again, then wind one over and the rest under. Even the thin strings hold pretty good this way with only two or three wraps.

John

 

[Pueo]

I have 9 ukuleles and, coincidentally, one of them is a Pono PKT-1 Tenor. The ONLY ukulele that I have ever opened up the case and found a snapped string was my Pono! It has happened only three times in the six years or so I have owned it, and twice was with Ko`Olau Gold strings, which I heard were discontinued because they broke, and most recently was Mimmo's demo version of Aquila Red Low G - which has already been discussed.

Sometimes it seems like the A string will never get to the right pitch, but it always does eventually. I rarely have more than 4 wraps on the A string.

When I change strings, I orient the hole in the peg perpendicular to the neck, and I go one wrap around and then through the hole. The tail exits below that first coil I made. I hold onto the tail and make that first wrap go underneath the tail, so that it is "pinched" by the next coil that comes along. I wind down. I also will just put maybe two turns, wait a few minutes, then strum like crazy, then tune up a bit, wait a few minutes, strum like crazy - I just do it while I am watching TV and do the tighten and strum during commercials. Only after doing that a couple of times will I then attempt to go all the way to full tension.

 

[OldePhart]

I have 9 ukuleles and, coincidentally, one of them is a Pono PKT-1 Tenor. The ONLY ukulele that I have ever opened up the case and found a snapped string was my Pono! It has happened only three times in the six years or so I have owned it, and twice was with Ko`Olau Gold strings, which I heard were discontinued because they broke, and most recently was Mimmo's demo version of Aquila Red Low G - which has already been discussed.

Kind of funny you should mention that. The only time I've had strings break in the case is on my Pono baritone. Once the D string and once the E string, in both cases the strings had been on for somewhere between three and six months. The D was a wound that definitely broke right at the tuner, the E it's harder to tell, it could have been the tuner or the nut but it was a very heavy gage fluorocarbon string and I've never had a fluorocarbon string break before in or out of the case.

I also looked at the holes in the tuners on that baritone, they aren't all the way at the bottom as the OP describes on his tenor, but they are about the middle of the shaft and lower than the holes on some of my other ukes. I don't think there is anything "wrong" with them but it might be that with a little less space between the bottom of the hole and the bottom of the capstan that it is easier to pinch a string against the sharp inner face of the mounting nut, especially if you run too many winds down tight against that nut. Definitely something worth keeping in mind, I think.

I've got the strings off the uke right now, getting ready to put the MiSi pickup in it that I won in the raffle at UWC. I think maybe I'll get out a glass and make sure there aren't any burrs on the tuners or anything and maybe make little felt washers to go on the top side of the nuts that hold the tuners on...nothing more annoying than opening a case and finding a broken string. LOL In fact, I'd planned on taking the Pono to UWC but took the reentrant Mainland at the last minute because I discovered the broken E string as I was packing the car for the trip. It ended up not mattering anyway, because I barely had the baritone out of it's case the whole week.

John

 

[OldePhart]

Follow up...so, when I restrung the Pono baritone the neck had been unstrung for a few days waiting for me to put the pickup in and I guess that the neck had relaxed a little because on the treble strings I had more turns than usual. I noticed that they went all the way down to the bottom of the shaft and when they did it became more difficult to turn them. I let the neck "settle" overnight and then loosened and restrung the strings with fewer winds. When I loosened the E string I could very clearly see where it had been nicked by being wound down tight against the nut holding the tuner on.

If you look at the closeup photo you can see how it looks like maybe these tuners were designed for a headstock about 3/32" thinner. Notice how the tapered part of the shaft sinks down below the top of the mounting nut. If you let the strings wind down this far this traps the string between the shaft and the sharp threads and edges inside the nut, gouging the string. (BTW, I took a photo of one of the bass tuners because it was completely unobscured - but the treble side tuners do the same thing.



I don't know if this same situation exists on the Pono tenor, but on the baritone it's definitely changed the way I think about winding strings - baritone strings are long enough to have more stretch anyway so it's common to have an extra turn or so (vs. a smaller uke) on the treble strings. I ended up winding the B string on the baritone "up" because I couldn't get few enough turns going down to avoid having the string pinched in that gap between the shaft and the mounting nut.

Hope this helps the OP...

John

 

[mindfly]

Breaking 4th and 1st string... been there, done that... frustrating as hell. Several of these posts have hit on partial solutions but I thought I'd add my own experience in the hope that others can avoid the path I took.

First, one thing that can cause this problem is tuning your uke to different key tuning than it was designed for. The most common of these is using GCEA tuning on a baritone uke. It won't hurt the uke, but the string tension can be higher than "normal" putting the strings at the limit of their elasticity.

Unfortunately, the DGBE->GCEA issue isn't well-covered across the internet uke-niverse.

Second, emerging instruments like big baritones are new to the market and the rest of the industry, specifically the uke string industry, hasn't quite caught up. So currently, there are no low GCEA strings designed specifically for a big baritone on the market.

Consequently, you have to modify and extrapolate the existing advice and stringing tutorials to address these new configurations.

I broke 2 G, 2 A, and 1 E string trying to tune my new Pono Nui to low GCEA. Eventually, I had a luthier look at it and here's what I learned..

1. Problem #1: The nut notches were not shaped correctly. The back half of the notches, nearest the tuning pegs, wasn't even touching the string, which caused the strings to break at the front of the notch.
2. Problem #2: The 23" fretboard length greatly increases the tension required to tune these Nui's to GCEA. I had to increase the strings' diameters to keep them from breaking. However, the higher tension also pulls up the faceboard and reduces the sound projection and sustain a bit.

In the end, I am probably going to re-string it back to the conventional DGBE baritone tuning and learn how to play that tuning. However, I'm not looking forward to re-learning how to play a different tuning and/or convert from GCEA tab to DGBE

I would love to hear any suggestions and/or thoughts anyone may have regarding the low GCEA tuning on the Nui.

HTH

 

[Wiggy]

After you have 4 or 5 windings, loosen the string to just one. Then pull on the loose end to take up the slack. Tune up again. You may have do to this a couple of times on the two thinnest strings. You should end up with fewer windings. Avoid winding over where the spool angles (flares), as that's where it will bind. This is what 'uncle david' may have been referring to in reply #8

 

[Kenn2018]

This is a very old thread. With comments about the Aquila Red problems, which have been fixed.

MTH you make some very good suggestions. I only play tenors, so I haven't had these issues.

Wiggy, yep I do that as well. Some strings stretch a LOT. I have to release and take up tension again. Sometimes as I bring a string up to tension for the first time. Sometimes as I play and retune over days, the number of windings gets too large and I have to unwind, pull the string and rewind. Your method is ideal for this.

 

[Patty]

This is a very old thread. With comments about the Aquila Red problems, which have been fixed.

MTH you make some very good suggestions. I only play tenors, so I haven't had these issues.

Wiggy, yep I do that as well. Some strings stretch a LOT. I have to release and take up tension again. Sometimes as I bring a string up to tension for the first time. Sometimes as I play and retune over days, the number of windings gets too large and I have to unwind, pull the string and rewind. Your method is ideal for this.

The hardest thing for me to learn about stringing was how NOT to end up with big pileups of string down at the bottom of the spool. Solution: trim off extra string to start with, before winding it on.

But last weekend I went overboard and trimmed off too much when beginning to wind. (I was putting Fremont hard Blacklines on my 2 ukes.) I ended up with only a couple of windings around each spool. Uh-oh.

But of course they stretched, and over the next couple of days I ended up with a good 4 or so turns around each spool. We live & loin!