Recent content by Mivo

It's the diameters that make them superb to me. I admittedly went a little overboard with the search for the perfect strings for my ukuleles, but the Living Water strings felt and sounded just right on my sopranos in high-G tuning Better than other strings I had tried, except maybe Aquila's...

Exploring the different styles is a good approach. With the 5-string banjo, there are several different playing styles of varying popularity. The two currently big ones are clawhammer (using the back of the nails) and Srcuggs style (three fingers, using fingerpicks). My preference are...

I had a UC200 Moon Bird once, and that was the finest concert I've played. Amazing craftsmanship, big sound, really great playability. It felt underpriced to me, even though it wasn't cheap. I sold it later on when I downsized my "collection", but if concerts had been my most preferred size, I'd...

I got a fair bit of value out of “Ukulele Aerobics”. Even though it uses a structure of weekly exercises, it’s best utilized as a collection of progressive exercises that you do at your own pace. Of the beginner books I bought when I started out, I liked “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing...

As others already mentioned, look into "campanella" and tabs written for this style of playing. It uses the re-entrant tuning and you'll be using all four strings. It's really a game changer once you wrap your mind around it. I tried low-G fairly early on. I found that I liked it more when I...

Weren’t you saving up for something else? :p I do like the sound of double courses. Strings are never quite tuned exactly the same, so you get this particular, distinct sound that I find very appealing and that my mind latches onto. But an eight-string ukulele is a fairly niche variant of the...

Here, me! I started on a concert, then discovered this forum and I saw that tenors were very popular. The ukulele celebrities ten years ago also mostly played tenors, so I felt I was missing out. Within a few months, I bought a custom built tenor. It was a wonderful instrument, one that I never...

If it's a decent-ish pickup, or something passive that you may not even see, I feel that it's worth considering. It's one of those "better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it" things. Putting one in later will be more work and/or cost more, and alternative solutions, like...

“More tips than pads” is good advice. With many ukuleles you can get away with somewhat using the pads, especially in the first few frets, but it’ll come back to haunt you as you go further up the neck (higher action) or want to increase your speed. It also won’t work with many other fretted...

My current book is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. its one of the finest novels I’ve read in quite a while. Thought provoking, intriguing. The first half in particular has been compelling. I have about a fifth left to read.

My FS-5G doesn’t sound boomy to my ears. It’s louder than most sopranos, and it has a full sound, but I’d not describe it as boomy. I had imported it from Japan in 2016, and it is strung with Living Water strings. Experimenting with strings is a good idea. I didn’t really care for the nylons it...

I started with a concert, then quickly acquired a soprano and a tenor, eventually a baritone too, and a few years later I had gone through 20+ different instruments of all sizes, wood types, etc. I don't regret this journey, but in retrospect I would approach my ukulele learning differently. If...

My oldest uke is a Lyon&Healy built Washburn from the early 1920s. It required a small bridge repair some years ago (you can see where a string ripped off part of the bridge), but plays fine. It's a bit battered, but hasn't lost its voice over the past hundred years. All original parts. The...

For low-D, the strings I like the most on my baritone (a Pono pro classic, the discontinued rosewood/spruce model) were the Aquila Reds for baritone. The wound strings were a little thinner and I felt they lasted longer. I've not checked if they are still available since I have a few sets left...

A little late to the thread, but after a long string discovery journey (it was cheaper than UAS at least!), I had settled on Ken Middleton's Living Water strings. Some shops have these strings stocked, too. The Worth Clears are a good alternative. I generally prefer brighter, thinner strings on...