A tenor ukulele is a 17-inch scale and about 26 inches of instrument, which is a quarter longer in the fretting hand than a soprano and fifteen percent longer than a concert. That is the whole reason the size exists, and if your fingers have been landing on two frets at once it is the fix. Under $400 the choice comes down to two numbers that most listings never print: how wide the neck is at the nut, and whether any of the wood is solid.
Kala KA-15T
The tenor everything else gets compared against, and the one to buy unless something below describes you specifically. Laminate mahogany, so it takes a knock and ignores the weather, with a NuBone nut and saddle and Aquila strings — the two parts of a cheap ukulele that usually need replacing, already done. Around $115 buys it with a gig bag and a tuner.
The six at a glance
| Ukulele | Top | Back & sides | Nut width | Fingerboard | Price band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kala KA-15T | Laminate mahogany | Laminate mahogany | 1 3/8″ | Walnut | ~$115 |
| Donner DUT-1 | Laminate mahogany | Laminate mahogany | Not published | Rosewood | ~$70 |
| Enya Nova U Pro | Carbon fibre composite | Carbon fibre composite | 1 1/2″ | Composite | ~$120 |
| Cordoba 15TM | Laminate mahogany | Laminate mahogany | 1 1/2″ | Composite | ~$130 |
| Cordoba 20TM | Solid mahogany | Laminate mahogany | 1 3/8″ | Pau ferro | ~$210 |
| Kala KA-KOA-T | Solid koa | Solid koa | 1 3/8″ | Rosewood | ~$369 |
The two specs that decide it
The scale is fixed. The nut width is not.
Every tenor here has a 17-inch scale, give or take a sixteenth. That part is standardised and it is not where instruments differ. The width across the nut is, and it runs from 1 3/8 inches to 1 1/2 inches across these six — an eighth of an inch, spread over four strings.
An eighth of an inch sounds like a rounding error and it is not. It is roughly the difference between fingerpicking cleanly and muting the string next door, and it is the specification that decides whether a tenor actually solves the problem you bought it to solve. Most people buying a tenor are buying it for their hands.
It does not track price and it does not track brand. Córdoba’s $130 15TM is 1 1/2 inches at the nut; their $210 20TM, a better instrument in every other respect, is 1 3/8. Kala’s tenors are 1 3/8 across the range. So if wide string spacing is what you are after, the cheaper Córdoba is the one that has it, and paying more inside the same brand takes it away again.
Laminate, solid top, all solid
Under about $200 everything is laminate — thin plies under a decorative outer veneer. That is not the insult it sounds like. Laminate is tougher, it shrugs off dry winters and damp summers, and on an instrument that is going to live on a sofa it is arguably the better engineering choice. What it will not do is open up. A laminate ukulele sounds the same in ten years as it did on the first afternoon.
A solid top is the first upgrade that changes the sound rather than the specification sheet, and it arrives around $200. The top does most of the work of making the note, so a solid top with laminate back and sides gets you most of the way for a fraction of the jump. All-solid construction starts around $350 and the difference from there is real but much smaller than the price step suggests. Our guide to ukulele tonewoods goes through what each species actually contributes once the construction is settled.
One thing to read carefully: koa is the wood people want, and the word gets attached to instruments that only wear it. Genuine all-koa construction does not happen below about $350 — anything cheaper carrying the name is a koa veneer, or a koa-patterned one, over something else. A laminate with a koa face and solid koa are not the same instrument in two finishes, and they do not sound alike.
Low G is what the size is actually for
Standard gCEA tuning is reentrant: the fourth string sits above the third, so the instrument has no bass note and everything lives inside one octave. That is the sound people think of as ukulele, and it is why strummed chords ring the way they do. Replace that fourth string with a wound low G and the range drops a fifth, chords get a root underneath them, and melody lines stop falling off the bottom of the neck.
A tenor’s longer scale and bigger box carry that low string properly. A soprano makes it sound slack and dull, which is why solo arrangements and jazz playing collect on tenors. Almost every tenor still ships in high G, so the thing the size is best at is not what comes out of the box. A low-G tenor set is around $13 and takes twenty minutes to fit — check the packet says Tenor Low-G, because the standard tenor set looks almost identical and only the fourth string differs. It changes the instrument more than the next $150 of budget would.
The six picks
Kala KA-15T
- Laminate mahogany top, back and sides
- 17″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut
- Walnut fingerboard, 18 frets
- GraphTech NuBone nut and saddle
- Aquila Super Nylgut strings
- Satin finish
- ~$115 with gig bag and tuner
Kala’s mahogany series is the closest thing the ukulele world has to a default, and the tenor is the reason — it is competent everywhere and bad nowhere. The parts that matter on a cheap instrument are the ones makers usually save money on, and Kala does not: a NuBone nut and saddle instead of moulded plastic, and Aquila strings instead of whatever was on the reel. Both are the first things owners of cheaper ukuleles end up replacing.
The 1 3/8-inch nut is the one reservation. It is the narrower of the two widths in this range, and if you came to the tenor because a concert felt cramped under the fretting hand, the extra fret spacing will help but the string spacing will not have changed much. Worth knowing before rather than after.
- NuBone nut and saddle, not moulded plastic
- Aquila strings from the factory
- Gig bag and tuner included at this price
- Laminate, so humidity is a non-issue
- Narrower nut than the Córdoba 15TM at a similar price
- Laminate will not open up with age
- Satin finish marks more readily than gloss
Donner DUT-1
- Laminate mahogany body
- 17″ scale, 26″ overall
- Rosewood fingerboard and bridge, 18 frets
- Bone nut and saddle
- Aquila strings
- Gig bag, strap, tuner, spare strings, picks and cloth included
- ~$70
Seventy dollars is where tenors start being real instruments rather than toys, and this is the one that clears the bar. A bone nut and saddle at this price is unusual and it is the single component that most affects whether a cheap ukulele plays in tune up the neck. The rest of the box is the reason to buy it: the bag, strap, tuner and spares would come to most of the price of the instrument bought separately.
What you are giving up against the Kala is refinement rather than function — the fretwork is less consistently dressed, and the finish is thicker. Neither stops it doing the job. If the budget is firm at under $100, this is the answer, and it is a better instrument than spending the same money on a soprano bundle from a name you have not heard of.
- Bone nut and saddle at seventy dollars
- Aquila strings fitted
- Everything needed to start, in the box
- The cheapest tenor here worth owning
- Fret ends less consistently finished than the Kala
- Nut width not published, so you cannot check it before buying
- Thicker finish than the instruments above it
Enya Nova U Pro
- Carbon fibre composite top, back, sides, nut, saddle and bridge
- 17 1/8″ scale, 1 1/2″ at the nut
- Venetian cutaway
- Enya fluorocarbon strings
- About 1.6 lb
- Case, strap and capo included
- ~$120
Not wood at all, and that is the point. A carbon fibre body does not care about humidity, temperature, a tent, a beach or the boot of a car, and it weighs about a pound and a half. For anyone whose ukulele is going to travel — or who lives somewhere that swings from bone dry to tropical twice a year — it removes an entire category of problem that wooden instruments spend their lives losing to.
It also has the widest neck here at 1 1/2 inches, and a cutaway, both unusual at this price. The trade is tone: composite gives a bright, even, slightly clinical voice with less warmth and less complexity than mahogany. It is a good sound rather than a rich one, and if the ukulele is going to sit indoors on a stand, wood is the better buy at the same money.
- Impervious to humidity and temperature
- 1 1/2″ nut — the widest here, tied with the Córdoba 15TM
- About 1.6 lb, with a case, strap and capo included
- Cutaway for upper-fret access
- Brighter and plainer than mahogany at the same price
- Nothing to gain with age
- Composite fingerboard feels different under the hand
Córdoba 15TM
- Laminate mahogany top, back and sides
- 17″ scale, 1 1/2″ at the nut
- Composite fingerboard, 18 frets
- Abalone rosette, cream binding
- Aquila New Nylgut Tenor strings
- Satin polyurethane finish
- ~$130
The same class of instrument as the Kala and fifteen dollars dearer, but with an eighth of an inch more room at the nut — which, if you have big hands or you fingerpick, is the entire argument. It is the widest wooden neck on this page, and it is on the cheapest Córdoba.
Against it: the fingerboard is composite rather than wood, which is a cost saving Kala does not make at this price, and Córdoba does not fit a bone or NuBone nut down here either. Neither is a problem in use, but they are the reasons the Kala is the default pick and this one is the answer to a specific question.
- 1 1/2″ nut — the widest wooden neck here
- Aquila strings fitted
- Genuinely handsome for the money
- Laminate, so it tolerates being ignored
- Composite fingerboard rather than wood
- No NuBone nut and saddle at this price
- Nothing included — no bag, no tuner
Córdoba 20TM
- Solid mahogany top, laminate mahogany back and sides
- 17″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut
- Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge
- Aquila New Nylgut Tenor strings
- Satin polyurethane finish
- ~$210
The step that changes the sound rather than the spec sheet. The top is the part of a ukulele that makes most of the note, so moving it from laminate to solid mahogany does more than moving the back and sides would, and this is about the least money that buys it. It is warmer and louder than anything above it here, and unlike the laminates it will keep opening up for years.
The catch is that Córdoba narrows the neck as you go up their range, so this is 1 3/8 inches at the nut against the 15TM’s 1 1/2. Spending eighty dollars more inside the same brand buys a better instrument with less room for your fingers, which is worth being deliberate about. A solid top also means it now cares about humidity — it wants a case and a room that does not swing wildly.
- Solid mahogany top for around $210
- Noticeably warmer and louder than the laminates
- Improves with playing, which no laminate does
- Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge
- Narrower at the nut than the cheaper 15TM
- Needs a case and stable humidity
- Nothing included at the price
Kala KA-KOA-T
- Solid Hawaiian koa top, back and sides
- 17″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut
- Rosewood fingerboard, 19 frets
- GraphTech NuBone nut and saddle
- D’Addario Titanium strings
- Satin finish, black binding
- ~$369
All-solid koa, and about as cheap as that honestly gets. Koa is the traditional Hawaiian ukulele wood and on a solid instrument it earns the reputation — brighter and more complex than mahogany, with a sparkle in the top end that laminates cannot fake and a midrange that fills in as the instrument is played. This is the only thing on the page that will sound meaningfully better in five years than it does on arrival.
Whether it is worth nearly double the Córdoba 20TM is a genuine question and the answer is often no. The 20TM’s solid top captures most of the audible gain; going all-solid and changing species is the refinement on top. If this is a first ukulele, it is more instrument than the playing will use. If you already play and you know you want koa, it is the right end of the range to be at.
- Genuinely all-solid koa, not veneer
- The only one here that will improve with age
- NuBone nut and saddle, 19 frets
- At the top of the budget rather than over it
- Most of the audible gain is already in the $210 solid top
- 1 3/8″ at the nut, like the rest of Kala’s range
- Wants humidity control and a hard case
- Too much instrument for a first ukulele
If you need to plug in
None of the six has a pickup, and retro-fitting one means paying for the part and the labour separately, so if you already know you will be playing through an amp it is cheaper to buy it built in. The Kala KA-STGE-C is around $310 and is the sensible version of that: a solid spruce top over mahogany, a Venetian cutaway, and Kala’s UK-300TR system with a tuner built into the preamp. A spruce top is brighter and more immediate than mahogany, which suits amplification — it cuts through where mahogany goes soft. Our electric ukulele guide covers the rest of that end of the market.
What to budget beyond the instrument
A clip-on tuner is the one thing nobody should be without, and a ukulele-specific one at around $18 tracks nylon strings better than a general chromatic tuner does. The Kala and Donner above include one; the Córdobas do not.
New strings settle for a week or two and then need retuning constantly until they stop stretching — that is normal on a new ukulele and not a fault, though if it persists past a fortnight our guide to a ukulele that will not stay in tune covers what else it might be. Budget $40 to $75 for a proper setup if the action feels high; on a laminate instrument under $150 that is a large fraction of the purchase price and rarely worth it, while on the 20TM or the koa it is money well spent.
Solid-topped instruments want a case and a room that does not swing from bone dry to steaming. Laminates do not care. That is a running cost worth counting before deciding which side of the $200 line to land on, and our general ukulele buying guide works through the same decision across all four sizes.
FAQs
Is a tenor ukulele good for a beginner?
Yes, and for an adult beginner it is usually the better choice. The wider fret spacing makes early chord shapes easier to place accurately, not harder. Sopranos are the traditional starting point because they are the cheapest and they suit children’s hands — neither of which is an argument for an adult choosing at this budget.
How is a tenor ukulele tuned?
gCEA, the same as a soprano and a concert, so every chord chart and every lesson transfers directly. The lower-case g means the fourth string is tuned above the third rather than below it. Some players restring the fourth with a wound low G, which drops the range a fifth; a few tune tenors DGBE like the top four strings of a guitar, but that puts you outside standard ukulele material.
Is a tenor louder than a concert?
Somewhat, and deeper more than louder. The larger body and longer string length push the voice down and add sustain, which is why tenors suit fingerstyle and solo arrangements. For strummed accompaniment in a group the difference is smaller than the size gap suggests.
Is solid wood worth it under $400?
A solid top is, at around $200. It is the point where the instrument starts sounding better rather than just reading better on paper, and it keeps improving. Going all the way to all-solid at $350 and up is a real difference but a smaller one, and it brings humidity care with it.
What size strings does a tenor take?
Tenor-specific sets — concert or soprano strings will fit but will be under the wrong tension for a 17-inch scale, which costs you tone and intonation. Choose between high-G and low-G when you buy, since they are different sets rather than a setting. Our ukulele strings guide goes through the materials.
Which tenor has the widest neck?
Of the six here, the Córdoba 15TM and the Enya Nova U Pro, both at 1 1/2 inches. Kala’s tenors and the Córdoba 20TM are 1 3/8. It is worth checking rather than assuming, because the figure does not rise with price — within Córdoba’s range it falls.