Generated by All in One SEO Pro v5.0.1.1, this is an llms-full.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # Pro Music Vault Find The Instrument For You ## Posts ### [How Much Does a Baritone Weigh? Five and a Half Pounds, Half a Euphonium](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-baritone-weigh/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Baritone](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/baritone/ "Baritone")› How Much Does a Baritone Weigh? Five and a Half Pounds, Half a Euphonium A B♭ baritone horn weighs about five and a half pounds — 2.5 kg. Two makers publish a figure for one, they were measured independently, and they land within fifty grams of each other. That number holds whether the bell points up or forward, and it does not change much between a student horn and a professional one. What does change, dramatically, is whether the instrument in your hands is actually a baritone. The short answer### 5 to 6 pounds — 2.3 to 2.8 kg — and a marching baritone is the same Besson lists its three-valve Sovereign baritone at 5 lb 8 oz and its four-valve Prestige at 5 lb 15 oz. Wessex, measuring its own instruments, gives 5.4 lb for a three-valve compensated baritone and 6 lb for a four-valve one. John Packer gives 5 lb 1 oz for its three-valve student horn, and Yamaha puts its marching baritone at 2.5 kg, which is 5.5 lb. Six figures from four makers, the whole spread fifteen ounces. If yours weighs ten pounds, it is a euphonium. **Concert baritone:** 5–6 lb **Marching baritone:** 5½ lb **Euphonium:** 10½ lb **BB♭ tuba:** 23–26 lb ## Table of Contents - [What the makers actually publish](#what-the-makers-actually-publish) - [The fourth valve costs about 300 grams](#the-fourth-valve-costs-about-300-grams) - [The marching baritone is not the heavy one](#the-marching-baritone-is-not-the-heavy-one) - [If your baritone weighs ten pounds, it is a euphonium](#if-your-baritone-weighs-ten-pounds-it-is-a-euphonium) - [Where five and a half pounds actually lands](#where-five-and-a-half-pounds-actually-lands) - [What actually helps, and who needs it](#what-actually-helps-and-who-needs-it) - [If you play standing or marching](#if-you-play-standing-or-marching) - [Somewhere to put it down](#somewhere-to-put-it-down) - [Where the baritone sits in the low brass row](#where-the-baritone-sits-in-the-low-brass-row) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [Related](#related) ## What the makers actually publish Most brass makers publish a full specification — bore to three decimals, bell flare, valve count, leadpipe alloy, the mouthpiece in the box — and no weight at all. Conn-Selmer publishes none for any of its Conn, King or Holton baritones. Neither does Yamaha for its concert YBH-301, nor Jupiter. Three companies do publish — Besson, Wessex and John Packer, the last of which gives a separate weight with and without the case — and between them they cover the whole tenor family, so the ladder below is comparable rather than assembled from guesses. InstrumentModelWeight**E♭ tenor (alto) horn**Besson Prestige BE20504 lb 10 oz · 2,100 g**B♭ baritone, 3 valve**John Packer JP1735 lb 1 oz · 2.30 kg**B♭ baritone, 3 valve**Wessex BR1405.4 lb · 2.45 kg**B♭ baritone, 3 valve**Besson Sovereign BE9555 lb 8 oz · 2,500 g**Marching baritone**Yamaha YBH-301M5.5 lb · 2.5 kg**Marching baritone**Wessex BR1125.7 lb · 2.5 kg**B♭ baritone, 4 valve**Besson Prestige BE20565 lb 15 oz · 2,800 g**B♭ baritone, 4 valve**Wessex BR144P6 lb · 2.8 kg**Kaiser baritone (.59″ bore)**Wessex ER1207.8 lb · 3.53 kg**Marching euphonium**Wessex ME127.5 lb · 3.4 kg**Euphonium, compensating**Besson Prestige BE205110 lb 8 oz · 4,700 g**BB♭ tuba**Wessex TB210 / TB692P23.1 lb · 29 lb 12 oz Read down that column and the baritone sits in a narrow band while everything around it spreads out. A tenor horn is a pound lighter, a euphonium is nearly twice as heavy, and a tuba is four to five times. The baritone is the one instrument in the family whose weight barely moves. ## The fourth valve costs about 300 grams The two makers agree twice, and the second time they agree to the gram. Besson’s three-valve Sovereign is 2,500 g and Wessex’s three-valve compensated horn is 2.45 kg — fifty grams apart. Besson’s four-valve Prestige is 2,800 g and Wessex’s four-valve British baritone is 2.8 kg. Identical. So the step from three valves to four, together with the heavier build that comes with it, is worth roughly 300 g — eleven ounces. That is a rare thing to have: a maker putting a number on what a feature costs you to carry, confirmed by a second maker who measured separately. What those eleven ounces buy is the bottom of the range. Wessex describes its four-valve loop as aiding the low register and giving alternative fingerings higher up, which is what the fourth valve does on any horn in this family; Yamaha, writing about its own three-piston euphoniums, notes that part of the low register played 1–3 or 1–2–3 tends to sound sharp. Whatever you decide about that, eleven ounces should not be the thing that decides it. ## The marching baritone is not the heavy one This is the part that runs against expectation, and the figures are unambiguous. Yamaha gives 2.5 kg for the YBH-301M. Wessex gives 2.5 kg for the BR112. Set those against 2.45 kg for a three-valve concert horn and 2.8 kg for a four-valve one, and the marching instrument sits in the middle of the concert range rather than above it. What changes on the field is not how much there is but how long you hold it and in what position. A concert player carries the weight in the lap with the left arm steadying it, sitting down, for a rehearsal. A marching player carries the same weight out in front of the body, standing, moving, for a two-hour show — and holds the instrument up rather than resting it on anything. That is a different physical job done with an identical number of pounds. ## If your baritone weighs ten pounds, it is a euphonium Yamaha states the problem plainly in its own instrument guide: in the United States, a euphonium with the bell and pistons facing forward may be called a baritone to distinguish it from a true euphonium. The word covers two instruments here, and they are not close in weight. Besson’s baritone is 5 lb 15 oz and Besson’s euphonium is 10 lb 8 oz — same company, same top tier, same key, and one is nearly double the other. The bell settles it faster than a scale does. Among the makers who build the instrument to its British pattern, a baritone flares to somewhere between eight and nine and a half inches: Conn’s CBH301 is bored .503″ behind an 8.25″ bell, Yamaha’s YBH-301 is .504″ behind 8⅜″, Besson’s Sovereign is .543″ behind 9.25″. A euphonium flares to eleven or twelve. Then there is King’s Diplomat 625, labeled a baritone and bored .562″ behind an *eleven-inch* bell — euphonium proportions with a baritone name on them. Our [euphonium vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) comparison walks through three ways to tell which one you have been handed. Here is the honest limit of what can be said about that middle ground. No American maker publishes a weight for any of these horns, so there is no figure to quote for a King Diplomat or a Holton Collegiate. The nearest published number for an instrument of those dimensions is Wessex’s Kaiser baritone, bored .59″ behind a 10.24″ bell, at 7.8 lb. A large-bore American school “baritone” will land somewhere between that and the five and a half pounds at the top of this page, and anyone who gives you a decimal is inventing it. ## Where five and a half pounds actually lands For a seated player in a concert band, it lands on one thigh and one forearm, and for most people that is genuinely a non-issue for the length of a rehearsal. It is worth saying so before anything else on this page is read as a warning. The baritone is the low brass instrument a small twelve-year-old can carry without help, which is most of why band directors reach for it. The part that is not obvious is what happens when the horn is not properly supported. If the instrument is balanced partly against your face, some of those five and a half pounds is being carried by your embouchure — and an embouchure holding the horn up is not an embouchure making a sound. Neotech, which builds the straps players buy to fix this, describes the effect exactly: its sling removes the need to use the lips as a balancing point. That is a tone problem wearing the costume of a comfort problem, and it is the one reason a five-pound instrument is worth thinking about at all. The other one is what you grab when you pick it up. Yamaha’s guidance for the tuba is that if you take hold of the instrument by its slides, they will bend under its own weight, and that you should grip the thick outer tubing instead, over as wide an area as you can. That advice matters more on a baritone, not less: a tuba is heavy enough that nobody lifts it casually, while a baritone is light enough to be swung out of a chair one-handed by whatever tube is nearest. Same tubing, same bending, less caution. Yamaha’s other line is worth repeating too — set the instrument on a chair or a desk rather than the floor, where it can be knocked over. One figure nobody publishes: the case. Besson, Wessex, Yamaha and Conn-Selmer all name the case that ships with each horn — molded ABS, latched, on nearly every student model — and not one of them gives its weight, and no dedicated case maker checked publishes one for a baritone either. So the number you actually carry to school, horn plus case, cannot be sourced. What can be said is that if you march, the instrument travels in a case built for a forward-bell horn rather than a concert one, and [Protec’s PRO PAC marching baritone case](https://amzn.to/4x6C4O6) is the model made for that shape, at around $175. ## What actually helps, and who needs it Four things, and only two of them apply to most readers. A seated concert player in a school band needs a stand and nothing else. A marcher, a standing player, or anyone whose “baritone” turned out to be a ten-pound euphonium is the person the straps are for. ### If you play standing or marching \#1 — Takes the weight off entirely ### Neotech Holster Harness, 10″ Baritone/Euphonium - 10″ holster — the size Neotech names for the baritone - Padded ballistic nylon cradle for the bottom bow - Neoprene two-shoulder harness, ambidextrous - Upper strap fastens to the horn so it cannot tip forward - ~$90 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Neotech builds this holster in four sizes and labels them by instrument: 18″ tuba, 14″ small tuba, 12″ euphonium, 10″ baritone/euphonium. That last one is the size for a baritone, and it is the detail worth getting right, because the tuba sizes look near enough on paper and a bow that rattles around in an oversized cradle defeats the point of buying one. The bottom bow drops into the holster and the load goes across both shoulders rather than onto your neck, arms or lips. It is the difference between holding the instrument and simply playing it, which on a two-hour show is not a small difference. It is also the answer if the horn you were handed is a forward-bell euphonium rather than a baritone, where the same five and a half pounds becomes ten and a half. **Pros**- Sized specifically for a baritone rather than a tuba - Spreads the load across both shoulders, not the neck - Frees the left hand and takes the horn off your embouchure - Works seated, standing or marching **Cons**- The most expensive answer to the problem by some distance - Complete overkill for a seated player at a rehearsal - A harness to put on and take off at every call Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46l5Dk9) \#2 — A third of the price, most of the benefit ### Neotech Brass Sling - Padded neoprene sling, single strap - Rated by Neotech for tuba, baritone and euphonium - Made in the USA - ~$30 The sling does the same job as the holster with a single loop rather than a cradle and a harness. Neotech’s own claim is that it cuts the felt weight of the instrument by up to half and, more usefully, that it removes the need to use the lips as a balancing point. That second effect is the one you notice: the horn stops resting any part of itself on your face, and the sound settles. It is the sensible first purchase for a student who finds the horn awkward but is not marching in it. If thirty dollars fixes the problem there is no reason to spend ninety, and if it does not fix it you will know within a rehearsal exactly what the harness is for. **Pros**- Cheap enough to try before committing to a harness - Solves the embouchure-as-a-shelf problem, which is the one that costs you tone - Packs into a case pocket **Cons**- A single strap, so the load sits on one shoulder - Less stable than a holster on the move - Does not stop the instrument tipping forward Around $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UvC9NJ) ### Somewhere to put it down This is the one that applies to everybody, and which stand you want depends on which way the bell points. Note that the tuba and euphonium stands sold alongside these do not go low enough for a baritone — Hercules specifies its low-brass stand for euphonium and tuba and gives its shortest setting as 36″, which is taller than the instrument. \#3 — Bell pointing forward ### K&M 14985 Trombone Stand - König & Meyer specifies it for trombones *and* marching baritones - Height 23.6″ to 38.2″ - 2.6 lb, folds into two pieces - Fiberglass-reinforced base, non-marring rubber support - ~$50 A marching baritone points its bell forward, which means it will sit on a peg the way a trombone does, and K&M says so on the product itself rather than leaving you to guess. That is worth insisting on: most stands that turn up under a search for a baritone are built for a baritone saxophone, which is a completely different instrument and a completely different cradle. At two and a half pounds and folding to the size of a music stand, it is also the one accessory here you will actually carry to a rehearsal rather than leave at home. **Pros**- The maker names the marching baritone explicitly - Cheapest thing on this page and the most used - Light and folds flat - Doubles as a trombone stand if the section shares one **Cons**- No use at all for an upright-bell concert baritone - A peg-in-the-bell design, so the horn is only as stable as the floor Around $50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UQERNL) \#4 — Bell pointing up ### K&M 149/2 Tenor Horn and Baritone Stand - König & Meyer specifies it for baritone, B♭ tenor horn and E♭ alto horn - Height 24.4″ to 41.3″ — low enough for the instrument - 4.5 lb, steel, folds in two - Integrated mouthpiece holder - ~$160 An upright-bell baritone cannot sit on a trombone peg, and the tuba stands are built for something a foot taller. This is the one made for the instrument, and its 24.4″ minimum is the number that matters — that is what lets the horn sit on a cradle at its own height rather than perched on a post. It is expensive for what it is, and there is no way around that. K&M publishes no list price for it, so there is nothing to measure the asking price against either. If your horn lives in its case between rehearsals, skip it. If it lives on a chair, weigh the cost against a bent slide and a horn that will not tune. **Pros**- Actually specified for a baritone rather than adapted to one - Adjusts low enough for the instrument and wide enough for the body - Holds the mouthpiece too, which is the part that rolls off chairs - Steel, and built to outlast the student **Cons**- Three times the price of the trombone stand - Four and a half pounds — nearly as heavy as the horn - Overkill if the instrument goes back in its case every night Around $160[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xAOq20) ## Where the baritone sits in the low brass row Weight is most of the reason a beginner is put on one instrument rather than another, so it is worth seeing the row in order. A tenor horn is 4 lb 10 oz, a baritone 5 to 6 lb, a euphonium 10½ lb, a BB♭ tuba 23 to 26 lb, and a brass sousaphone 12.5 kg — about 27 lb — carried on one shoulder. Apart from the trombone, which is about three pounds, the baritone is the lightest instrument in the section that plays the tenor line — and it is the lightest of the ones that rest against the body, which is why it is the one handed to a twelve-year-old who wants the low part. If you are weighing the baritone against something else, [tuba vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/) covers the octave below it and [mellophone vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) covers the other horn a marching band is likely to offer you. Our guide to [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) puts the whole family in order. ## FAQs ### How much does a baritone horn weigh? About five to six pounds, or 2.3 to 2.8 kg. Besson lists 5 lb 8 oz for its three-valve Sovereign and 5 lb 15 oz for its four-valve Prestige; Wessex gives 5.4 lb and 6 lb for the equivalent instruments; Yamaha gives 2.5 kg for its marching model. Most makers publish no weight at all, so these are the figures that exist. ### Is a marching baritone heavier than a concert baritone? No. Yamaha lists the YBH-301M marching baritone at 2.5 kg and Wessex lists its marching model at the same 2.5 kg, which sits inside the concert range of 2.3 to 2.8 kg rather than above it. What changes on the field is that you carry the same weight standing, moving and unsupported for a two-hour show instead of resting it in your lap for a rehearsal. ### Why does my school baritone feel much heavier than five pounds? It may not be a baritone. Yamaha notes that in the United States a euphonium with the bell and pistons facing forward is often called a baritone, and a euphonium is close to twice the weight — Besson publishes 10 lb 8 oz for its own. Measure the bell: eight to nine and a half inches is a baritone, eleven or twelve is a euphonium. ### How much does a baritone weigh compared with a euphonium? Roughly half. Besson publishes weights for both of its top instruments: the Sovereign baritone at 5 lb 8 oz and the Prestige euphonium at 10 lb 8 oz. Wessex’s marching euphonium is 7.5 lb against 5.7 lb for its marching baritone. Same maker, same scales, and the euphonium is the heavier instrument every time. ### Does a four-valve baritone weigh more than a three-valve one? By about 300 grams, or eleven ounces. Besson goes from 2,500 g on the three-valve Sovereign to 2,800 g on the four-valve Prestige, and Wessex goes from 2.45 kg to 2.8 kg across the same step. The fourth valve extends the low register and adds alternative fingerings above it; eleven ounces is not a reason to avoid it. ### Can a beginner handle the weight of a baritone? Yes. At five and a half pounds it is among the lightest instruments in the low brass row — only a trombone, at about three pounds, is lighter — and it rests in the lap when seated, which is why band directors reach for it before the euphonium or the tuba. The thing to check is not strength but support: if a student is steadying the horn against their face, the weight is landing on their embouchure and the tone will suffer before the arms do. ### How do I pick up a baritone without damaging it? By the thick outer tubing, gripping as wide an area as you can, never by a tuning slide. Yamaha’s own guidance for low brass is that slides bend under the instrument’s own weight if you lift by them. A baritone is light enough to grab one-handed by whatever tube is nearest, which is exactly why it happens to baritones. Set it on a chair, a desk or a stand rather than the floor. ## Related - [Euphonium vs. Baritone (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) - [Tuba vs. Baritone (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/) - [Mellophone vs. Baritone (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) - [Euphonium vs. Tuba (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) - [Brass Instruments: The Complete Guide](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) **Categories:** Baritone, Saxophone --- ### [How Much Does a Trombone Weigh? About 3 Pounds - the Case Weighs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trombone-weigh/) **Published:** January 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Trombone](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/trombone/ "Trombone")› How Much Does a Trombone Weigh? About 3 Pounds – the Case Weighs More A B♭ tenor trombone weighs about three pounds. That makes it the lightest instrument in the low brass row — lighter than a tenor horn, lighter than a baritone, a third the weight of a euphonium. If it feels heavy, the weight is not the reason, and the rest of this page is about what actually is. The short answer### 3 to 3½ pounds for a straight B♭ tenor, 4 to 4½ with an F attachment, 5 to 6 for a bass John Packer publishes a separate **weight without case** for every trombone it builds, which is the only complete family measured one way by one company. Its student B♭ tenor is **3 lb 1 oz**, its large-bore B♭/F tenor **4 lb 1 oz**, its two-valve bass **5 lb**. Wessex lands in the same place from the other end. A plastic pBone is **1.8 lb**. And the case around any of them weighs 5 to 9½ lb on its own. **E♭ alto:** 2½ lb **B♭ tenor:** 3–3½ lb **B♭/F tenor:** 4–4½ lb **Bass:** 5–6 lb **The case:** 5–9½ lb ## Table of Contents - [What the makers actually publish](#what-the-makers-actually-publish) - [There is a row on the spec sheet marked Weight, and it is not the weight](#there-is-a-row-on-the-spec-sheet-marked-weight-and-it-is-not-the-weight) - [The F attachment costs nine ounces](#the-f-attachment-costs-nine-ounces) - [Reach is the real limit, not weight](#reach-is-the-real-limit-not-weight) - [Three pounds at arm's length is not three pounds](#three-pounds-at-arms-length-is-not-three-pounds) - [The case weighs more than the trombone](#the-case-weighs-more-than-the-trombone) - [How big is a trombone?](#how-big-is-a-trombone) - [Where the trombone sits in the brass section](#where-the-trombone-sits-in-the-brass-section) - [What actually helps](#what-actually-helps) - [Somewhere to put it down](#somewhere-to-put-it-down) - [If carrying it is the problem](#if-carrying-it-is-the-problem) - [If the player is genuinely too small for a brass one](#if-the-player-is-genuinely-too-small-for-a-brass-one) - [If you are replacing the horn anyway](#if-you-are-replacing-the-horn-anyway) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [Related](#related) ## What the makers actually publish Almost no brass maker publishes an instrument weight. Yamaha gives you bore to three decimals, bell diameter, leadpipe alloy, slide materials and the mouthpiece in the box, and no mass for any trombone it builds. Conn-Selmer publishes none for Bach, Conn or King. Neither does Getzen, Shires, Rath, Eastman or Schagerl. Two companies do, and one of them does it properly. John Packer puts a *Weights & Dimensions* block on every product page carrying three separate numbers: **weight without case**, **weight with case**, and boxed weight. That distinction is the whole reason this page can be accurate. Every figure you will find on a retail listing is one of the last two — a courier’s number that counts the case, the mouthpiece, the carton and the packing — and quoting it is how the internet ended up telling people a trombone weighs eight pounds. InstrumentModelBore / bellWeight, no case**B♭ tenor, plastic**pBone.500″1.8 lb · 800 g**E♭ alto**John Packer JP236 Rath.481″ / 7″2 lb 7 oz**B♭ tenor, student**John Packer JP031.500″ / 8″3 lb 1 oz**B♭ tenor, small bore**John Packer JP230 Rath.500″ / 7½″3 lb 3 oz**B♭ tenor, dual bore**John Packer JP131R.500/.525″ / 8″3 lb 3 oz**B♭ tenor, large bore**John Packer JP132R.547″ / 8½″3 lb 8 oz**Marching trombone**Wessex FB124 Flugabone—3.97 lb · 1.8 kg**B♭/F tenor, large bore**John Packer JP133LR.547″ / 8½″4 lb 1 oz**B♭/F tenor, medium large**John Packer JP331 Rath.525″ / 8″4 lb 3 oz**B♭/F tenor, large bore**John Packer JP332 Rath.547″4 lb 8 oz**Valve trombone**John Packer JP135.484″4 lb 8 oz**Bass, single trigger**John Packer JP233 Rath—4 lb 10 oz**Bass, two valves**John Packer JP232.563″ / 9½″5 lb**Bass, professional**Wessex PBF565P—5.1 lb · 2.35 kg**Bass, B♭/F/G♭**John Packer JP333 Rath—5 lb 12 oz The two makers corroborate each other where they overlap. Wessex gives 5.1 lb for its professional double-valve bass and John Packer gives 5 lb for its two-valve bass — two companies, two factories, one and a half ounces apart. That is the check that turns a single maker’s spec sheet into a number you can rely on. Read down the last column and the range is narrower than the reputation. From the smallest jazz tenor to a professional bass with two valves is 3 lb to 5¾ lb — less than three pounds of spread across the entire family. The commonly repeated “three to eight pounds” is right at the bottom and roughly double at the top. ## There is a row on the spec sheet marked Weight, and it is not the weight This is worth knowing before you go looking. Yamaha’s trombone specification pages do carry a field called **Weight**. On the YBL-620G bass it reads **Standard**. On the YSL-897Z it reads **Light**. On the student YSL-354 the row is not there at all. Those are descriptions of the *bell* — how thick the brass is where it flares. A lightweight bell is thinner metal, it responds faster and it breaks up sooner at volume, and it is a tone specification rather than a number of pounds. Nothing on the sheet tells you what the instrument weighs. Two trombones both marked Standard can differ by a pound, and a Light one is not meaningfully lighter to hold. ## The F attachment costs nine ounces John Packer builds two trombones that are identical on every published line except one. The JP132R and the JP133LR are both .547″ large bore, both an 8½″ rose brass bell, both a yellow brass body, both one water key. The JP133LR has a rotary valve and a coil of F tubing; the JP132R does not. **3 lb 8 oz against 4 lb 1 oz.** Nine ounces — about 255 grams — for the valve, its linkage and the wrap behind the bell. The same step in the Rath line costs a little more, a pound, because the F-attachment model also has a bigger bore and a bigger bell. Nine ounces is the clean answer, because it is the only pair where nothing else changes. Here is the part that catches people out. That heavier trombone is the one a smaller player should be looking at. ## Reach is the real limit, not weight Yamaha states the number outright in its own guide to the instrument: the furthest slide position on a tenor trombone sits at **around 60 cm** — roughly 23½ inches from the slide’s home position — and that, in Yamaha’s words, is “right around the maximum distance that the average adult male can extend his arm.” Seventh position is at the end of an adult arm. It is not at the end of a twelve-year-old’s. Three pounds does not stop anybody. Twenty-three and a half inches does, and it stops them in a specific way: the low notes at the bottom of the horn are exactly the ones that need the longest reach. A student who cannot get to sixth and seventh position cannot play E and low B♭ in tune, which is most of what a third trombone part is made of. Yamaha gives two fixes. The cheap one is to tie a length of string to the slide so it can be pulled back from a position the arm cannot reach — a maker recommending a piece of string, which tells you how ordinary the problem is. The real one is the F attachment. Its whole purpose is to put the low range under a thumb lever instead of an arm: with the trigger down, the notes that lived in sixth and seventh come back within easy reach, and Yamaha says plainly that this “has made it possible for even smaller people to play the trombone.” So the nine ounces buys a shorter reach. On any page that treats weight as the obstacle that is a contradiction; on the instrument it is simply the answer. The one caveat is Yamaha’s own: a *large* bore B♭/F tenor takes a great deal of air and it recommends those for advanced players only. A beginner who needs the trigger wants a medium or medium-large bore, which is also the lighter of the two. ## Three pounds at arm’s length is not three pounds Every other instrument in the low brass row rests on something. A baritone sits against your chest, a euphonium on your thigh, a tuba in your lap or on a stand. A trombone rests on nothing at all. Yamaha describes the grip exactly: the instrument is held to the lips with the left hand, and the right hand grips the slide brace and moves it. The right hand is not helping. It cannot help — it is busy, and it is holding a part that is not attached. The outer slide is simply inserted, with nothing retaining it, so that it runs freely; let go and it drops off the end. That is a deliberate design choice and it means the entire mass of the instrument, permanently, hangs on one hand. And it hangs a long way out. The bell sits forward of the shoulder and the slide reaches out past that, so what the left arm is actually resisting is a lever, not a weight. Hold three pounds against your chest and you can do it all afternoon; hold three pounds at half an arm’s length, with your shoulder raised so the mouthpiece meets your lips, and twenty minutes is a workout. That is the ache trombone players describe, and it is why the answer is never a lighter instrument. Two things genuinely fix it. Somewhere to put the horn down between numbers, so a two-hour rehearsal is not two hours of holding. And a technique fix rather than a purchase: the weight belongs on the ledge between your left thumb and forefinger with the arm hanging under it, not gripped in a fist with the wrist cocked. A teacher can correct that in five minutes and it is worth more than anything on this page. ## The case weighs more than the trombone This is where the eight-pound figure comes from, and it is the honest answer to what you are carrying to school. John Packer’s student JP031 is 3 lb 1 oz on its own and **12 lb 5 oz in its case**. The case is three times the instrument. The other two makers who publish case weights agree on the range: Case or bagMakerWeight**Tenor trombone gig bag**BAM BAMTECH4 lb 6 oz**Lightweight beginner case**Gator Largo GBB-TROMBONE5 lb**Tenor trombone case**BAM Classic6 lb**Lightweight EPS case, F attachment**Gator Adagio GL-TROMBONE-F236.4 lb**Bass trombone case**BAM Classic8 lb 3 oz**Pro gig bag**Gator Allegro GBPB-TROMBONE9 lb**Tenor trombone case**BAM Conservatoire9 lb 10 oz Nothing in that table weighs less than the instrument it protects, and the heaviest weighs three times as much. Two things follow. If the walk from the parking lot is the complaint, the case is what to change, and swapping a rigid case for a padded bag is a five-pound saving against three ounces anywhere on the horn. And do not read a case weight as a trombone weight, which is what a shipping figure invites you to do. The trade is real, though. A soft bag saves the weight and gives up the protection, and a trombone slide is the single most damage-prone thing in a school band room — a dent in an inner slide is not a cosmetic problem, it is a horn that no longer plays. A bag is right for a player who carries the instrument themselves. A rigid case is right for one whose horn travels in the bottom of a bus. ## How big is a trombone? It is a three-foot package holding nine feet of tubing, and it comes apart into two pieces to travel. Yamaha gives the figure: straighten out a typical tenor trombone and it runs **270 cm** from mouthpiece to bell rim — 8 ft 10 in. Push the slide out to seventh and the air path becomes **about 380 cm**, or 12 ft 6 in. Everything the slide does is that: it is a variable length of pipe, and the seven positions are seven lengths. No maker publishes an assembled length, but the cases give it away. Gator’s trombone cases are 34¾ to 35 inches inside and 35½ to 38½ inches outside, and John Packer ships its trombones in a 38-inch box. The instrument travels as two pieces — the slide separates from the bell section — and each of them is a little under three feet. That length, not the weight, is what decides whether it fits in a locker, a footwell or an overhead bin. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Bell diameter is the other dimension people quote, and it is a smaller range than the internet suggests. Across John Packer’s line it runs 7″ on an alto, 7½″ on a small-bore jazz tenor, 8″ on a student horn, 8½″ on a large-bore tenor and 9½″ on a bass. Yamaha’s student YSL-354 is 8″ and its YBL-620G bass is 9½″ — the same span. Bore runs .481″ on an alto to .563″ on a bass, and Yamaha’s summary of what that does is worth having: a smaller bore takes less air and gives a mellower, easier sound, a larger one takes more air and gives a bigger, louder one. One more thing about the slide, since it explains the care instructions. There are no position markers on it. Yamaha’s comparison is to a violin rather than a guitar — the positions are learned by feel, and they are learned on a mechanism that has to run frictionlessly for the feel to be reliable. That is the case for the stand and against laying the horn across two chairs. ## Where the trombone sits in the brass section InstrumentWeightHow it is carried**B♭ tenor trombone**3–3½ lbOne hand, at arm’s length**B♭/F tenor trombone**4–4½ lbOne hand, at arm’s length**E♭ tenor (alto) horn**4 lb 10 ozAgainst the body**Bass trombone**5–6 lbOne hand, at arm’s length**B♭ baritone horn**5½–6 lbAgainst the body**Euphonium**10½ lbIn the lap**BB♭ tuba**23–26 lbIn the lap or on a stand The tenor trombone is the lightest thing on that list and the only one held out in front of the player. It is a pound and a half under a baritone and a third the weight of a euphonium, and it is the one that makes your arm ache. The column that explains the discomfort is the third one, not the second. ## What actually helps Four things, and most readers need one of them. A seated player in a school band needs somewhere to put the horn down. Someone whose walk to school is the problem needs a lighter bag. A child who genuinely cannot manage a brass instrument needs a plastic one. And a player who has decided the answer is a better horn should know that a good brass tenor is barely heavier than the plastic one it replaces. ### Somewhere to put it down \#1 — The one purchase most players need ### K&M 14985 Trombone Stand - Folding three-leg base, peg into the bell - Fits tenor and bass trombones, and marching baritones - K&M’s own long-standing design, made in Germany - Collapses to sit inside the bell for transport - ~$50 A trombone that is not in your hand has to go somewhere, and the places players actually use are all bad: across two chairs, propped in a corner, on the floor beside the stand. The slide is the part that gets hit, and it is the part that has to run perfectly — a dent in an inner slide is a repair bill, not a scratch. A stand is the difference between a two-hour rehearsal spent holding the instrument and one spent playing it. That matters more here than on any other brass instrument, because the trombone is the only one that cannot simply rest in your lap during forty bars of rest. This is the same stand we point baritone players at, for the same reason: it is the design everyone else copies, it folds flat, and it costs about a sixth of the cheapest slide repair. **Pros**- Takes the load off the left arm during rests - Keeps the slide off the floor, which is where the damage happens - Folds down small enough to travel in the bell - Also holds a marching baritone, so it survives an instrument change **Cons**- Dearer than the unbranded stands next to it - One more thing to carry and set up - Wants a flat floor — it is not a riser stand Around $50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gUIEBe) ### If carrying it is the problem \#2 — Where the pounds actually are ### Protec C239X Explorer Series Tenor Trombone Gig Bag - Padded soft bag for straight tenor trombones - Backpack straps and a shoulder strap - Full-length sheet music pocket - ~$105 The instrument is three pounds and the rigid case is five to nine and a half. If the complaint is the walk rather than the playing, this is the only change on the page that moves real weight, and it moves several times more of it than anything you could do to the horn. A padded bag also carries better than it weighs, because backpack straps put the load on two shoulders instead of one hand. The honest limit is protection: this is right for a student who carries their own instrument between home, school and rehearsal, and wrong for one whose trombone goes in the hold of a bus under everyone else’s. If that is your situation, keep the hard case and buy the stand instead. **Pros**- Saves several pounds against a rigid case - Backpack straps spread the load across both shoulders - Sheet music pocket removes a second bag - Slim enough to sit in a footwell or a locker **Cons**- Padding, not armor — a hard knock reaches the slide - Straight tenors only; an F attachment needs the larger bag - Costs more than some hard cases Around $105[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cZt1Ho) ### If the player is genuinely too small for a brass one \#3 — 1.8 pounds, and a real .500″ bore ### pBone B♭ Plastic Trombone - **1.8 lb · 800 g**, published by pBone - .500″ bore and an 8″ bell — the same as a student brass tenor - ABS body, glass-fiber slide, two plastic mouthpieces - Carrying bag included - ~$200 This is the only genuine answer to “it is too heavy,” and it is a real instrument rather than a toy. It is pitched in B♭, it takes standard mouthpieces, and its bore is the same .500″ as John Packer’s student brass tenor — so it is a like-for-like swap that removes 40% of the weight and, more to the point, 40% of the load on a small arm held out in front. What you give up is tone and slide feel. A plastic slide never runs quite like nickel silver on chrome, and the sound is thinner and less centered than brass at the same money. Against that, it does not dent, it does not care about being dropped, and a seven-year-old can hold it. If the alternative is a child giving up on the instrument, the trade is easy; if the alternative is an adult who simply finds a long rehearsal tiring, buy the stand. **Pros**- Under two pounds, from the maker’s own published figure - Standard B♭ pitch and .500″ bore, so nothing has to be relearned - Effectively indestructible, which suits a school band room - Takes an ordinary small-shank mouthpiece **Cons**- Thinner, less focused sound than brass - Slide action does not match a good brass slide - Costs about what a decent used brass tenor does - Does not solve the reach problem — the slide is the same length Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4covH1a) ### If you are replacing the horn anyway \#4 — A pound and a bit more, and a different instrument ### Jean Paul TB-400 Straight B♭ Tenor Trombone - Straight B♭ tenor, no F attachment - Case and 12C mouthpiece included - One-year warranty to the original purchaser, dated and published - Jean Paul stocks spare slides, slide locks and water keys for it - ~$500 The point of putting this here is the arithmetic. A brass student tenor is about three pounds; the plastic one is 1.8. The whole weight saving available anywhere in this category is a pound and a quarter, and it costs you the tone of the instrument. Anyone weighing a plastic trombone against a brass one on grounds of weight should know how small the gap actually is. Jean Paul is the budget brand this site keeps coming back to for one unglamorous reason: it publishes what happens when something breaks. Its warranty is a dated document — one year, original purchaser, authorized purchase required — and it names the remedy rather than gesturing at one: send parts, or approve a local repair shop and pay that shop directly. It also sells replacement parts for its own trombone, a slide, a slide lock and a water key assembly, each listed with a price. Most brands at this money publish none of that. The TB-400 is a straight horn, which means no trigger and no help with the reach, so a short-armed player should be looking at an F-attachment model instead and accepting the extra nine ounces. **Pros**- Around three pounds — barely heavier than plastic - Supported by the maker, with spare parts published and priced - Case and mouthpiece in the box - No premium over the maker’s own list price **Cons**- No F attachment, so seventh position is still seventh position - Two and a half times the price of the plastic one - Dents like any brass instrument Around $500[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xEzFv5) ## FAQs ### How much does a trombone weigh in pounds? A straight B♭ tenor trombone weighs 3 to 3½ pounds. John Packer, which publishes a weight without the case for every model it builds, gives 3 lb 1 oz for its student tenor and 3 lb 8 oz for a large-bore one. Add an F attachment and it becomes 4 to 4½ lb; a bass trombone is 5 to 6 lb; an E♭ alto is about 2½ lb. ### How much does a trombone weigh in its case? About 12 pounds. John Packer gives 12 lb 5 oz for a student tenor in its supplied case against 3 lb 1 oz for the instrument alone. Case makers who publish weights put a trombone case at 5 to 9½ lb on its own — BAM’s tenor gig bag is 4 lb 6 oz and its Conservatoire case 9 lb 10 oz — so the case is always the heavier half of what you carry. ### Is a trombone heavy for a beginner? No — it is the lightest instrument in the low brass section, lighter than a tenor horn or a baritone. What limits a young beginner is reach rather than weight. Yamaha puts the furthest slide position on a tenor trombone at around 60 cm, about the full stretch of an adult arm, so a small player cannot get to sixth and seventh position and cannot play the lowest notes in tune. ### Does an F attachment make a trombone much heavier? About nine ounces. John Packer’s JP132R and JP133LR are identical — same .547″ bore, same 8½″ rose brass bell, same body — except for the valve, and they weigh 3 lb 8 oz and 4 lb 1 oz. It is worth the nine ounces for a shorter player, because the trigger brings the low notes back out of the positions their arm cannot reach. ### Why does my trombone feel heavy if it only weighs three pounds? Because all of it hangs on one hand, held out in front of you. The left hand carries the instrument and the right hand cannot help — it is moving the slide, which is not even fastened to the horn. Three pounds at half an arm’s length behaves like a lever rather than a weight. A stand to rest it on between numbers and a check on your left-hand grip help far more than a lighter instrument would. ### How long is a trombone? It travels in two pieces, each a little under three feet, which is why trombone cases run 35½ to 38½ inches long. Straightened out, the tubing of a tenor trombone measures 270 cm (8 ft 10 in) from mouthpiece to bell, and about 380 cm (12 ft 6 in) with the slide fully extended. ### How much does a plastic trombone weigh? 1.8 pounds, or 800 grams, which is pBone’s own published figure for its B♭ tenor. Its smaller pBone mini is 1.1 lb. That is around 40% lighter than a brass student tenor, on the same .500″ bore — the largest weight saving available in the instrument, and the only one worth calling significant. ## Related [How much does a trombone cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trombone-cost/) — what the three, four and five-pound instruments above actually sell for. [How much does a baritone weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-baritone-weigh/) — the next instrument along the row, and the one people confuse with a euphonium. [Brass instruments explained](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) — where the trombone sits in the family, and why it is the only one with a slide. [Orchestra vs. band](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) — how many trombone seats each one has, and what they are asked to play. **Categories:** Trombone --- ### [Do Flutes Have Reeds? No — the Air Jet Does the Reed's Job](https://promusicvault.com/do-flutes-have-reeds/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Flute](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/flute/ "Flute")› Do Flutes Have Reeds? No — the Air Jet Does the Reed’s Job No. A flute has no reed and never has had one. What it has instead is the jet of air leaving your lips, which flips in and out of the hole in the headjoint hundreds of times a second and does exactly the job a clarinet reed does. The music acoustics group at the University of New South Wales puts it plainly: at the blowing end of a woodwind there is something that controls the airflow, and it is *“an air jet for the flute family and cane reeds for other woodwinds.”* Which matters more than it sounds, because that one difference decides what the instrument costs to keep playing. A clarinet consumes about $2.35 of cane every time a reed dies. An oboe consumes $17.50. A flute consumes nothing at all, which is one of the reasons [a flute costs what it costs](/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) to own rather than to buy. If the flute is the instrument in your house### Yamaha Flute Maintenance Kit — the entire consumables list, about $21 A flute player never buys a reed. What they do go through is cleaning gauze, pad paper and tone-hole cleaners, and this is the manufacturer’s own box of all three. It lasts most of a school year and it is the closest thing a flute has to a box of reeds. Around $21 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yoPB4E) **Clarinet:** Vandoren JUNO 2½, box of ten, ~$23.50 **Alto saxophone:** Vandoren JUNO 2½, box of ten, ~$29 **Oboe:** Jones JR101MS, one reed, ~$17.50 **Cost per reed:** flute $0 · clarinet $2.35 · sax $2.90 · oboe $17.50 ## What a reed actually does A reed is not a sound source. It is a valve. You blow steady air into a clarinet — steady pressure, no wobble in it, about 3 kPa, which would hold a column of water 30 centimeters up a tube. Steady air makes no sound. Something has to chop it into pulses, and on a clarinet that is the strip of cane clamped to the mouthpiece: as the pressure inside the instrument rises, the reed is pushed shut and the flow stops; as the pressure falls, the reed springs open and lets a slug of air through. The acoustics group at UNSW describes it as *“an oscillating valve (technically, a control oscillator)”*, and that is the whole of what a reed is for. Crucially, the reed does not choose the speed. The air column in the tube does, and the reed is dragged along at whatever frequency the tube resonates at. Change the fingering, and the same reed obediently opens and closes at the new rate. When a reed does insist on vibrating at its own natural frequency instead, you get the squeak every beginning clarinetist knows. Cane reeds are cut from *Arundo donax*, giant cane, and single-reed instruments use one blade against the flat table of a mouthpiece. Double-reed instruments — oboe, English horn, bassoon, contrabassoon — use two blades bound together and beating against each other, with no mouthpiece at all. You can build a crude one in ten seconds by flattening the end of a drinking straw and cutting a V into it; UNSW recommends the experiment and notes that the result *“probably resembles that of a beginning oboist.”* ## What the flute has instead Start with the vocabulary, because most pages about this get it wrong. A flute has no mouthpiece. It has a **headjoint**, and on the headjoint is a **lip plate** with an oval **embouchure hole** cut through it. You rest your lower lip across roughly the bottom third of that hole and blow across it toward the far edge. What happens next is the reed’s job being done by moving air. The jet crosses the hole and strikes the sharp far edge. The air column in the tube is already sloshing, and it deflects the jet — down into the hole on one half of the cycle, up and out of it on the other. When the jet is going in, it pumps energy into the vibration; when it is going out, it does not. Time it right and the note sustains itself. Yamaha describes the same loop from the instrument’s side: the sound waves reach the open end, bounce back, and *“force the air in the vicinity of the embouchure hole back out through the embouchure hole,”* after which the pressure falls and air is sucked back in. The jet leaves the lips at somewhere between 20 and 60 meters per second, and the wave that ripples along it travels at about half that. To play higher, the trip has to be quicker, so a flutist blows harder and pushes the lips forward to shorten the distance to the edge. That adjustment is invisible, it is learned entirely by feel, and it is the single reason the flute is harder to get a first note out of than a clarinet. A clarinet’s reed is already the right shape. A flutist has to build the reed out of their own face, every time they pick the instrument up. Two more corrections to the usual description while we are here. A flute is not a plain cylinder: the body is, but the headjoint **tapers**, narrowing toward the closed end, and Yamaha cuts three different taper profiles because each one changes how much resistance the player feels. And the headjoint is not open at the top — a cork holds a metal reflective plate exactly 17 mm from the center of the embouchure hole, a distance Theobald Boehm arrived at by trial and error in the nineteenth century and nobody has improved on since. Between the taper and that 17 mm the octaves land in tune, which on a perfectly cylindrical tube they would not. ## So is a recorder a flute? Yes, and for a precise reason. A recorder makes its sound the same way a flute does — an air jet striking a sharp edge — and the only difference is who aims the jet. On a flute your lips shape and point it. On a recorder a molded channel called a windway does it for you, and the edge is built into the instrument a centimeter beyond. Yamaha says it in one line: *“The principle is the same as that for the recorder. However, on the flute the lips fix the outlet for the breath, while on the recorder the windway fixes the outlet for the breath.”* UNSW puts the recorder in the flute family on exactly the same grounds, and adds the consequence — fixing the jet in plastic *“makes the recorder a relatively easy instrument for beginners.”* That is why a five-year-old gets a note out of a [plastic recorder](/best-plastic-recorder/) in four seconds and a note out of a flute in about four days. It is also why every reedless pipe belongs to the same half of the woodwind family: piccolo, recorder, [tin whistle](/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/), [fife](/fife-vs-flute/), [Irish flute](/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/) and pan pipes are all flutes, whatever they are made of and whichever end you blow. ## Which woodwinds have reeds, and how many InstrumentWhat starts the soundConsumableCost per reed**Flute, piccolo**Air jet across an embouchure holeNone—**Recorder, tin whistle, fife**Air jet, aimed by a windwayNone—**Clarinet**Single cane reed on a mouthpieceBoxes of tenAbout $2.35**Saxophone**Single cane reed on a mouthpieceBoxes of tenAbout $2.90 (alto)**Oboe**Two cane blades beating togetherSold singlyAbout $17.50**English horn**Two cane blades, on a curved metal crookSold singlyAbout $25**Bassoon**Two cane blades, largerSold singlyAbout $24**Bagpipe chanter**Cane or plastic reed inside the chanterSold singlyVaries widely**Harmonica, accordion**Metal free reeds, fixed in the instrumentNone in normal use— The last row is worth a sentence, because it is where the word “reed” splits in two. A clarinet reed *beats* — it slams shut against the mouthpiece every cycle. A harmonica or [accordion](/how-much-do-accordions-cost/) reed is a metal tongue that swings freely through a slot and never closes anything. Both are called reeds; only one is a thing you buy in boxes. ## Reeds are not the only thing that divides the woodwinds Here is the part almost nobody puts in front of a beginner, and it explains an oddity you will hit in the first year of playing. A flute is open at both ends. A reed instrument is closed at the mouth end, because the reed seals it. That would seem to be the whole story — except that it only holds for a *cylindrical* tube. The clarinet is a closed cylinder, so it behaves like one: it plays nearly an octave lower than a flute of the same length, it produces only the odd harmonics, and it overblows a twelfth rather than an octave. That is why a clarinetist has to climb nineteen semitones before the fingerings repeat, and why the instrument needs the pile of little-finger keys it has. The oboe, saxophone and bassoon all have reeds too, and none of that applies to them, because their bores are cones rather than cylinders. A closed cone has almost exactly the resonances of an open cylinder. So an oboe is about the same length as a flute, starts on about the same note, plays the full harmonic series and overblows at the octave — it is a reed instrument that behaves like a flute. So the two questions are separate. *Reed or no reed* decides how the sound gets started and what you spend. *Cylinder or cone* decides the register, the length and half the fingering. The clarinet is the only common woodwind that sits on the awkward corner of both. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## What each instrument costs to keep playing Four products, four instruments, and every price below is the manufacturer’s own list price for the item. № 1 · Flute — the no-reed option ### Yamaha Flute Maintenance Kit - Tone hole cleaners - Pad cleaning paper - Cleaning gauze - Plain polishing cloth and silver polishing cloth - Care and maintenance manual - Fits any brand of flute - ~$21 This is what a flute consumes instead of reeds, and it is a short list. The gauze wraps around the cleaning rod to dry the bore after playing. The pad paper goes between a damp pad and its tone hole to draw the moisture out. The tone-hole cleaners get under the keys once a week. One kit covers a school year’s worth of ordinary care, and it is bought once in that time rather than every few weeks. Note what is *not* in the box: a cleaning rod. Every flute is sold with one, and it is worth keeping hold of, because the line scored near its tip is a measuring gauge. Push the rod into the headjoint and the line should sit dead center in the embouchure hole; if it has drifted, the cork behind the reflective plate has moved and the instrument will not play in tune across the octaves. That is the flute’s one hidden adjustment, and the rod is the only tool that reveals it. **Pros**- The maker’s own kit, so nothing in it is the wrong grade for a silver-plated instrument - Covers daily, weekly and monthly care in one purchase - Includes a silver cloth, which the tarnish on a plated flute eventually needs **Cons**- No cleaning rod, so a secondhand flute that arrived without one still needs it - Priced like a box of reeds, which makes a single purchase feel steep until you notice it is the only one Around $21[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yoPB4E) № 2 · Clarinet — one reed at a time ### Vandoren JUNO B♭ Clarinet Reeds, Strength 2½, Box of Ten - Single reed, B♭ soprano clarinet - Strength 2½ — the usual first strength - Box of ten, code JCR0125 - Cut in Vandoren’s own factory in France - ~$23.50, so about $2.35 a reed Vandoren designed the JUNO specifically for players at the very start, and says so: it is meant to give musicians *“starting to play the clarinet or saxophone the opportunity to have a beautiful sound from the moment they make their first sounds.”* It is cut from the same cane, in the same factory, as their professional lines. For a beginner it is the reed that makes the instrument sound like an instrument fastest. Check the box says 2½. Strengths run from 1½ to 3½ in this line, and 3 and above take an embouchure that has not been built yet — a reed that is too hard is indistinguishable, from the outside, from a child who cannot play. **Pros**- Designed for the first months rather than adapted down from a pro reed - Ten in a box, so there is always a spare when one splits mid-week - Costs less than the orange box most students are handed **Cons**- You will move to a different model within a year or two - Strength is instrument- and mouthpiece-specific, so a teacher may want a different number Around $23.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cuwKfV) № 3 · Saxophone — the same reed, bigger ### Vandoren JUNO Alto Saxophone Reeds, Strength 2½, Box of Ten - Single reed, E♭ alto saxophone - Strength 2½ - Box of ten, code JSR6125 - ~$29, so about $2.90 a reed The saxophone uses exactly the same kind of reed as the clarinet, cut wider and thicker, and it is the same beginner line at a slightly higher price. A saxophone reed will not fit a clarinet and a clarinet reed will not fit a saxophone; nor will a tenor reed fit an alto. Whatever the case says on the outside is what the box has to say too. Ten is the right quantity to buy for the same reason it is on the clarinet: a reed that splits the night before a concert is only a problem if it was the last one. **Pros**- Easy response, which is most of what a first-year tone problem actually is - Same family as the clarinet reed, so a doubling student learns one system **Cons**- A jazz player will want a harder, differently cut reed before long - Five and a half dollars a box more than the clarinet version for the same ten pieces Around $29[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zXAlgC) № 4 · Oboe — where the arithmetic changes ### Jones JR101MS Oboe Reed, Medium Soft - Double reed, oboe - Medium soft — the student strength - Sold as one reed - ~$17.50 each One reed, for seven times what a clarinetist pays for one, and this is the cheap end. Fox charges $16.25 for a Renard oboe reed and $19 for their Artist grade, so $17.50 is squarely the going rate rather than a markup. The reason is that a double reed is two shaped blades scraped by hand and bound to a metal tube, and no machine makes them. The part that catches parents out is quantity. Jones itself says it is *“very important to have three or more good reeds”* in rotation, because an oboe reed dies suddenly and being mid-concert with your only one is not a position anyone wants. Three at a time is roughly fifty dollars sitting in the case, and it is why oboists eventually learn to make their own — not for the tone, for the arithmetic. **Pros**- Medium soft is the right resistance for a school player - From a specialist double-reed maker rather than a general accessory brand - Priced with the manufacturers rather than above them **Cons**- Handmade, so two reeds from the same box can play differently - You need three of them, not one Around $17.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zXQH8Z) ## How to tell a reed is finished “A few weeks to a few months” is the usual answer and it is useless, because it is not a question about time. Cane is a plant. It absorbs moisture, swells, dries, warps and loses its spring, and how fast depends on how long the instrument is played and how the reed is treated between sessions. The symptoms are specific enough to check. Jones lists them for double reeds and the same signs show up on a single reed: the cane discolors, the tip closes up, the reed starts to play **sharp**, it gets harder to blow rather than easier, the sides begin to slip apart, and eventually it cracks. Playing sharp is the one to learn, because it arrives before the reed is obviously dead and it is easy to blame on the player. Care buys a surprising amount of life. Jones reckons that rinsing a reed in fresh water after playing, blowing the excess out and letting it dry in a ventilated case rather than in the packaging it came in gets *up to four times* the life out of it — which on an oboe reed is worth more per year than most accessories on this page. The flute’s version of all this is short: swab the bore out after playing so the pads do not sit wet, and get the instrument to a technician when the pads stop sealing. There is no consumable in that sentence, which is the whole point of the page. ## Common questions ### If a flute has no reed, why is it a woodwind? Because the family is defined by how the sound starts, not by what the tube is made of. Woodwinds set a column of air vibrating with a reed or an air jet; [brass instruments](/brass-instruments/) do it with the player’s buzzing lips. A concert flute is metal and a saxophone is brass, and both are woodwinds. There is more on the whole family in our guide to [woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/). ### Do any flutes have reeds? No. If it has a reed it is not a flute — that is the definition, not a coincidence. Instruments sometimes called flutes that do have reeds are named loosely: a “reed flute” in a folk context is usually a single-reed pipe of the clarinet type, and the melodica sold as a school instrument is a free-reed instrument with a keyboard on it. ### Is a flute or a clarinet easier to start on? The clarinet, in the first few weeks, because the reed makes the note for you and a flute makes you build the equivalent out of your lips. After that the clarinet asks for more: twelve scale steps between registers, more keys, and a reed to manage. The [full comparison](/clarinet-vs-flute/) goes into which suits which player. ### Why do oboists and bassoonists make their own reeds? Money and fit, in that order. At $17.50 a reed with three in rotation the cane bill outruns the tools within a couple of years, and a hand-scraped reed can be matched to an individual player’s embouchure and the resistance they like. It is a real craft with knives, mandrels and shapers, and it is why the [oboe asks more of a student](/oboe-vs-clarinet/) than any other woodwind in a school band. ### Are synthetic reeds worth it? They change the arithmetic more than the sound. A synthetic B♭ clarinet reed runs about $25 — one reed for the price of ten cane ones — and lasts months rather than weeks, so on a clarinet it roughly breaks even while removing the wet-reed routine. On an oboe the same maker charges around $130 for one, against $17.50 for cane, and there the calculation is much less obvious. Our [guide to reed cuts](/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/) covers what the differences between models actually do. If you are choosing between these instruments rather than maintaining one you already own, the [flute against the clarinet](/clarinet-vs-flute/) and the [flute against the recorder](/flute-vs-recorder/) are the two comparisons that decide most of it. **Categories:** Flute --- ### [English Horn vs. Oboe: Why Nobody Starts on the Bigger One](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-oboe/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› English Horn vs. Oboe: Why Nobody Starts on the Bigger One These two really are the same instrument in two sizes, which is unusual — most comparisons on this site are between things that merely look alike. The English horn is the oboe scaled up by a fixed ratio, and Yamaha publishes the arithmetic. Same double reed, same key system, same fingerings, a fifth lower. So the interesting question is not what separates them acoustically. It is why one of them is in every school band room and the other is an instrument you can only take up after you already play the first. The short answer### You learn the oboe. The English horn is what an oboist adds later Fox builds ten oboes and five English horns, and splits the oboes into student, intermediate and professional while the English horns start at intermediate. Howarth’s cheapest oboe is £1,595 and its cheapest cor anglais is £8,395 — dearer than every Howarth oboe but the top two. Yamaha’s American catalog lists a category for alto horns and one for pianicas and none for the English horn. Even Jones, who make the reeds, sell a student oboe reed and no student English horn reed at all. Four makers, four product lines, one answer: the entry rung does not exist, so the instrument reaches you through the oboe or not at all. Reed, around $25 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ie0ilM) **Already play the oboe:** the fingerings transfer intact — the reading does not **Want the mournful sound:** that is the English horn, and Yamaha says so in as many words **Want to be in an orchestra:** the oboe first, because the English horn part is written for an oboist **Buying for a school player:** the oboe, every time — districts do not tender for English horns ## The differences that decide it OboeEnglish horn**Pitched in**C — reads and sounds the same noteF — sounds a perfect fifth below what is written**Air column**The reference length1.5 times as long, by Yamaha’s own design law**Bore at the top**About 4 mm acrossAbout 1.22 times that — nearer 5 mm**How the reed attaches**Straight into the top joint on its own cork-wrapped stapleOnto a curved metal crook, which is part of the air column**Bell**Flared, and short by clarinet standardsEgg-shaped bulb**Lowest written note**Low B♭ on every Fox modelLow B on every Fox model — which sounds six semitones below the oboe’s**Thumb rest**Standard or adjustableRing style on all five Fox models — the maker expects a strap**Reeds cost**From about $17 eachFrom about $25 each, and only in an artist grade**Reed case supplied by Fox**Three reeds on the student models, six on the professionalThree on every model — the reeds are bigger**Cheapest new instrument from one maker**£1,595£8,395**Entry tier**StudentThere isn’t one ## One instrument, multiplied by 1.5 Yamaha sets out the scaling in two lines. Doubling the length of a pipe drops it an octave, so dropping a perfect fifth needs a pipe half again as long. A second design law says the cross-sectional area of the bore scales with the length, and since area goes as the square of the radius, the English horn’s bore radius works out at the square root of 1.5 — about 1.22 times the oboe’s. An oboe measures roughly 4 mm across at the top of the upper joint. An English horn is nearer 5 mm. Two things follow that a player feels immediately. The first is the crook, sometimes called the bocal: a curved metal tube that carries the reed and forms the top of the air column. Part of the instrument’s extra length lives in that bend, which is why an English horn stood next to an oboe does not look half again as tall. It also angles the reed back toward a mouth that is no longer directly above the tone holes, which is the whole reason the part exists. The second is the wider bore. Yamaha’s own demonstration of this uses drinking straws: the narrower the tube, the greater the resistance and the harder you have to blow, while a wider one is easier to blow but empties your lungs faster. The oboe is famous for the first problem — so little breath escapes that the player’s difficulty is stale air backing up rather than running out. Twenty-two percent more bore radius does not abolish that, but it moves the instrument measurably along the scale toward ordinary wind-instrument breathing. What the bulb bell does is smaller than it looks. Yamaha’s guide notes that the covered, slightly nasal tone is usually credited to the egg shape when in fact “there is a greater relationship with the different tapering” of the bore. The taper is doing most of the work; the bell is finishing it. And the maker is careful about the terminology: an eighteenth-century instrument at this pitch was called an alto oboe, but the taper of a modern English horn differs enough that Yamaha says it “is never referred to as an alto oboe” and that, comparing notes at the same pitch, it “produces notes that are more nasal and softer.” ## What the makers build, and what they refuse to The clearest evidence about which instrument a person can start on comes from companies that build both and have every commercial reason to sell you either. **Fox, in Indiana, publishes a model-features chart for each instrument in the same format.** The oboe chart carries ten models, grouped as student, intermediate and professional. The English horn chart carries five, grouped as intermediate and professional — there is no student heading on it. The cheapest English horn, the Renard 555, is the one with modified rather than full conservatory keywork, and it drops exactly the four features Fox’s cheap oboes drop: the low B vent, the third octave key, the adjustable split D ring and the adjustable A♭–B♭ trill. It is the same simplification, applied several thousand dollars further up the ladder. **Howarth, in London, builds the same two instruments and publishes a full price list.** The oboes run from a Junior at £1,595 through the Junior Conservatoire, the Junior PLUS+, the S10, the S20 and the S40C, up to an XL at £10,295 — a dozen rungs. The cor anglais line has two. The S40C sits at £8,395 and the XL at £11,495, and Howarth describes the cheaper of the two as a graduate model for advanced students and professionals. Read the two lists side by side and the cheapest cor anglais the company makes costs more than nine of its twelve oboes. **Yamaha, which builds more wind instruments than anyone, does not build one at all.** Its American catalog is divided into more than twenty-five instrument categories — oboes, bassoons, piccolos, alto horns, marching brass, recorders, even harmony directors and pianicas. There is no English horn category. The company writes about the cor anglais at length in its own instrument guide and does not sell one. **Jones, who make the reeds, split the same way.** Their oboe range is a Student reed — described in their own words as intended for beginners during the first few years of playing — alongside an Artist reed, a European short-scrape reed and an oboe d’amore reed. For the English horn there is one product: the Artist reed, “designed for intermediate to professional players.” The gap is visible in the price. A student oboe reed is about $17 and the only English horn reed Jones sells is about $25, because there is no cheaper grade of it to buy. And the schools confirm it from the other end. American districts put band instrument purchases out to competitive tender and publish the results, and one Florida county’s tabulation runs to sixty-odd numbered line items — oboe, bassoon, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, piccolo, baritone saxophone, euphonium, tuba, congas. There is no English horn row. Two other district tabulations checked the same way list an oboe and no English horn either. Schools buy the instrument a beginner can be handed; they do not buy this one. ## What actually changes when an oboist picks one up ### The fingerings transfer. The reading does not. This is the good news and it is the reason the double exists. Both instruments use conservatory-system keywork, and every Fox model of both is semi-automatic in its octave mechanism — the system Yamaha recommends for beginners on the oboe, and the one Fox fits to all fifteen instruments across both charts. An oboist’s hands already know where everything is. What changes is what comes out. Finger a written C on an English horn and an F sounds. Every note on the page is now a fifth away from the note you hear, and that gap does not fade with practice the way an unfamiliar fingering does — it is a permanent second layer between the part and the instrument. If you also read concert-pitch scores, or play from an oboe part in an emergency, you are transposing at sight. Yamaha’s guide adds a historical wrinkle worth knowing before you open old music: in older scores the sounding pitch of the alto oboe is sometimes notated in the alto clef, as a viola part would be. ### You can no longer hold it up with your thumb No maker publishes a weight for either instrument — the specification sheets give keywork and accessories, not dimensions — so the honest evidence here is what the makers fit rather than what they measure. Fox’s oboe chart lists the thumb rest as Standard on seven models and Adjustable on three. Its English horn chart lists Ring Style on all five. A ring is a strap attachment. The company that builds both instruments assumes you will hold one with your right thumb and hang the other from your neck, and it says so by fitting different hardware. The accessory makers agree by what they build. There are cor anglais slings, elasticated slings, floor support pegs and peg-and-base sets catalogued for this instrument, and no equivalent range for the oboe. Players who spend hours on it end up on a floor peg; everybody else starts with a strap. ### There is a part you have never owned before The crook is a real component with a real price and it is chosen, not just supplied. Howarth’s own crooks run from about £235 for a standard one to £375 gold-plated, and they come in different lengths and two bend angles, 15 and 20 degrees, which changes both how the instrument sits in tune and where the reed meets the mouth. An American maker’s crook for the same instrument carries a list price around $340 — more than most of the accessories on any other page on this site put together. Fox settles the question of how many you need by shipping two with every English horn it builds, a 2XL and a 3XL, on all five models from the Renard 555 upward. That is not generosity. It is the maker acknowledging that the crook is a tuning and response choice rather than a fixed part, and that a player will want to compare. ### The instrument goes lower than you think, and the reed does not get much dearer Fox’s charts give the bottom note directly: low B♭ on every oboe, low B on every English horn. Those are written notes, so on the English horn that B sounds an E — six semitones below the oboe’s lowest B♭. The old received wisdom that the English horn is the narrower instrument is the wrong way round at the bottom of the range; where it genuinely gives ground is at the top, and in the tone, which Yamaha describes as more nasal and softer at any given pitch. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The running cost is the surprise. Everything about this instrument is five times an oboe except the thing you buy every few weeks: about $25 a reed against about $17, roughly a third more for a reed a third bigger. Reed life is the same on both, and Yamaha puts an oboe reed’s working life at somewhere between ten minutes and a week. Jones tells players to keep three or more good reeds on hand rather than one, for the obvious reason — a reed that collapses mid-concert is not a thing you can practice your way out of. If you double, you are keeping three of each. ## Where the English horn sits in the oboe family The oboe has three relatives and you will only ever meet one of them. Between the oboe in C and the English horn in F sits the oboe d’amore in A, a minor third down, with the same egg-shaped bell; Howarth builds one and Jones makes a reed for it, and it exists mostly for Bach. Below the English horn is the bass oboe, and Yamaha is blunt about it: only a few dozen exist in Japan, only a few are made per year worldwide, and it survives chiefly because it appears in Holst’s *The Planets*. As the guide puts it, the instrument is so rarely used that it could be said to exist virtually for a single work. That is the context that makes the English horn’s position clear. It is not an exotic curiosity like the bass oboe and it is not a specialist’s period instrument like the d’amore. It is the one member of the family, apart from the oboe itself, that a working orchestral player is genuinely expected to cover — which is exactly why the makers build it in five professional grades and none for a beginner. [The woodwind family](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) puts all of them beside the flutes, clarinets and bassoons. ## What to buy № 1 · The English horn’s running cost ### Jones JR301AMS Artist Model English Horn Reed, medium soft - Cane double reed wound onto a brass staple with Jones’s purple artist thread - Artist grade — the only grade Jones makes for this instrument - Crow adjusted by hand to an exact pitch before it ships - Medium soft; a medium hard is sold alongside it - Around $25 each This is the part of an English horn that decides whether it plays, and it is also the tuning mechanism, because unlike a clarinet there is no barrel to pull and unlike a flute no headjoint to draw out. Jones describes this reed as designed for intermediate to professional players, and that is not marketing modesty: it is the only English horn reed they list, where the oboe gets a student grade, an artist grade, a European scrape and a d’amore. Medium soft is the sensible default for anyone arriving from the oboe or coming back after a layoff; harder reeds give more control and cost more air. Buy more than one. Jones’s own guidance is to keep three or more in playable condition, and their reed-care article reckons the difference between rinsing a reed and letting it dry properly and doing neither is up to four times the working life. **Pros**- Consistent enough between examples to be a fair baseline for judging the instrument - Medium soft is the forgiving strength for someone whose embouchure is set up for an oboe - One product to learn rather than a range — there is no wrong grade to pick **Cons**- A commercial reed is a compromise, and advanced players adjust or make their own - Working life measured in hours of playing, not months - No student grade exists, so there is no cheaper way in Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ie0ilM) № 2 · The oboe’s, for comparison ### Jones JR101MS Oboe Reed, medium soft - Student grade — red thread, against the Artist reed’s purple - Cane tied to a 47 mm nickel silver tube - Same maker and same hand-adjusted crow as the English horn reed above - Intended for the first few years of playing - Around $17 each Worth naming on this page for one reason: it is the only honest way to see how little of the English horn’s cost is in the reed. Same firm, same cane, same finishing process, one instrument a fifth larger, and the gap is eight dollars. Everything else about the English horn is a multiple — five times the instrument, a crook that costs as much as a decent student oboe — and the consumable that a player actually buys again and again is barely dearer. It is also the reed to have if you play the oboe and are only thinking about the other one; medium soft is the strength most teachers start people on, and Jones’s care routine applies to both instruments identically. **Pros**- A genuine student grade, which the English horn has no equivalent of - Consistent enough that a bad note is your embouchure rather than the reed - Cheap enough to keep the three-reed rotation Jones recommend **Cons**- Student cut, so an advancing player moves to the Artist reed within a year or two - Sold singly, which makes the per-month cost higher than any single-reed instrument - Strength is personal, and medium soft will not suit everyone Around $17[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gBsHAW) № 3 · If you play both ### Protec A252 Oboe & English Horn Reed Case, 8 reeds - Holds eight oboe or English horn reeds, or a mix - Padded dividers grip and separate each reed - Ventilated, so reeds dry rather than sit wet - Rigid clamshell with a locking closure - Lists at $29.50; sells for around $20 The one accessory that is specifically a doubler’s product, and it exists because the two instruments’ reeds are close enough in size to share a case and different enough to need separating. Fox ships a three-reed case with every English horn and a six-reed case with its professional oboes; an oboist who has taken up the English horn is now carrying two rotations and two cases, which is how reeds get crushed in a gig bag. Eight slots covers both. The ventilation is the part that matters most: Jones’s care instructions end by telling players to store a rinsed reed in a case with ventilation holes rather than in the manufactured packaging it arrived in, and reckon the whole routine is worth up to four times the reed’s life. At eight reeds a case, this pays for itself the first time it saves one. **Pros**- Takes both instruments’ reeds, which almost no reed case does - Ventilated, which is the specific thing the reed makers ask for - Sells about a third under Protec’s own published list price **Cons**- Rigid clamshell takes more room in a case than a fabric roll - Eight slots is more than an oboist alone needs - No soaking cup or hygrometer, both of which serious players end up buying separately Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cWzyCI) № 4 · Because of the ring on the thumb rest ### Neotech C.E.O. Comfort Strap - Padded neoprene neck pad, fully adjustable 15.5″–20.5″ - Coated metal hook, or a polyurethane tab for a thumb rest with no ring - Junior, Regular and X-Long lengths - Made in the USA - Lists at $22.99; sells for around $20 Fox fits a ring-style thumb rest to all five of its English horns and to none of its ten oboes. That single difference between two otherwise parallel specification sheets is the maker telling you the instrument is not meant to hang off a thumb joint, and it is the most decision-useful thing on either chart. Neotech’s own copy names clarinet, oboe and English horn players as the people it built this for, and includes the thumb-rest tab precisely because plenty of instruments have no ring to hook onto. Get the length right — Regular suits most adults, X-Long anyone tall or reading from a low stand. A strap is a compromise rather than the final answer; players who spend hours on the instrument move to a floor peg, which takes the weight off the neck entirely. **Pros**- Answers the exact thing the maker’s own spec sheet implies - Two attachment options, so it works on an oboe as well - Sells under Neotech’s own published list price **Cons**- Three lengths, so ordering the wrong one means sending it back - Moves the load to the neck, which is why long-session players go to a peg - Does nothing for the left index finger, which takes its share on any bottom-heavy woodwind Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cWzByo) ## Common questions ### Is the English horn just a big oboe? Closer than most instrument pairs, and the makers still resist the shorthand. It is the F member of the oboe family, built to a 1.5-to-1 scaling of the air column, with the same conservatory keywork and the same semi-automatic octave mechanism. But the rate at which the bore tapers is not the same, and Yamaha says the result “can be considered a separate instrument with a different feeling” and that it “is never referred to as an alto oboe.” ### Can I learn the English horn first? In practice, no, and the obstacle is not difficulty but supply. Fox’s English horn line starts at intermediate. Howarth’s starts at £8,395. Yamaha does not list one in America. Jones does not make a student reed for it. School districts that tender for oboes, bassoons and contra-alto clarinets do not tender for English horns. Every route by which a beginner normally reaches an instrument — a school’s inventory, a student-grade purchase, a rental, a cheap reed to learn on — is closed. Start on the oboe. ### Which one is easier to get a note out of? Neither is easy, and the old claim that the English horn is the friendlier of the two is not supported by anything a maker publishes. What is true is that the wider bore means less resistance: Yamaha’s own straw demonstration shows that a narrower tube requires more forceful blowing and a wider one is easier to blow but empties the lungs faster. The oboe’s characteristic problem is that too little air escapes, and a bore about 22 percent wider takes some of the edge off that. It does not make the reed any less unforgiving. ### Why is it called an English horn when it is neither? Because two mistranslations got there first, and nobody is certain which. [English horn vs. French horn](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-french-horn/) works through both stories — the angelic one and the angled one — and covers why the other instrument’s name is equally wrong. ### Does it use the same reed as an oboe? No. The reed is scaled with the instrument and sits on a longer staple, and an oboe reed will not fit the crook. They are close enough in shape to share a reed case — Protec sells one for both — and close enough in method that everything you know about soaking, rinsing and rotating carries straight across. Jones’s routine is the same for either: soak about two minutes in enough water to cover the cane, blow the excess through the cork end before playing, rinse afterward, and dry it in a ventilated case rather than in the tube it came in. ### What is the bulb at the bottom for? It contributes to the covered, slightly nasal tone the instrument is known for, but less than its appearance suggests. Yamaha attributes more of that character to the different rate at which the bore widens along its length than to the shape of the bell. The oboe d’amore, pitched between the two in A, has the same egg-shaped bell. ## Where to go next [Oboe vs. clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/) is the comparison that actually decides a first instrument, and [bassoon vs. oboe](https://promusicvault.com/bassoon-vs-oboe/) covers the other end of the double-reed family. [English horn vs. French horn](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-french-horn/) untangles the two names and the one thing the instruments genuinely share. If the reed is the part that worries you, [why bassoons cost what they do](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/) explains what hand work does to the price of a double-reed instrument, and [the woodwind family](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) puts all of them in one place. **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Banjo vs Mandolin: Which Is Easier, and Which One to Buy](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-mandolin/) **Published:** March 25, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Banjo vs Mandolin: Which Is Easier, and Which One to Buy Pick up a five-string banjo, put both hands in your lap, and strum it. That is a G major chord, in tune, played properly, before you have learned anything. Pick up a mandolin and do the same thing and you get four notes that do not belong together, because a mandolin is tuned in fifths and nothing about it is a chord until your fingers make one. That is the first fortnight decided. It is not the answer to the question, because the two instruments are difficult in opposite hands. On a banjo the fretting hand is close to free and the picking hand is the entire instrument. On a mandolin the picking hand is a flatpick — the most ordinary technique in stringed music — and every hard thing about the instrument is happening under your left fingertips. If you want one answer### The mandolin — unless the sound in your head is a banjo It costs less to find out, there is one technique to learn instead of two schools to choose between, and the tuning is a system rather than a set of shapes to memorize. It also arrives tuned the same as a fiddle, which puts the entire fiddle repertoire within reach of the tuning it comes in. The exception is not a small one: the banjo makes a finished, recognizable noise faster than any other stringed instrument, and if that noise is why you are here, nothing below should talk you out of it. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hbKajz) **If you choose the banjo:** Jameson 5-string — around $175 **Play fiddle already?** The mandolin, and it is not close **Thick fingertips?** The banjo has room and the mandolin does not **Thin walls?** The mandolin ## Side by side Figures below are Gold Tone’s, which is useful because Gold Tone builds both instruments and measures them the same way. The banjo column is their AC-1; the mandolin column is their GM-35 and GM-55, which agree with each other on every dimension that matters here. 5-string banjoMandolin**Strings**5 steel, all separate8 steel, in 4 doubled pairs**Standard tuning**g–D–G–B–D — an open G chordG–D–A–E, fifths throughout**Scale length**26³⁄₁₆”13¾”**Nut to first fret**About 1½”About ¾”**Nut width**1³⁄₁₆” for five strings1⅛” for eight**Frets**22, plus a fifth string starting at the 5th20 to 24**Weight**3.75 lb open back, 6 lb with a resonator2.4 to 2.8 lb**Factory strings**.011 .013 .016 .024w .011.011 .016 .026w .040w, each doubled**Picking hand**Fingerpicks, or the back of a fingernailA flatpick**Realistic entry price**~$175~$100**Setup on arrival**$50–100 at a shop$60–125 at a shop**A set of strings**Around $6.50$9 to $13**Written in**TablatureTablature or notation**Job in a band**A continuous rolling texture, and breaksThe melody, and the backbeat ## They are hard in opposite hands This is the whole comparison, and it is why “which is easier” has no single answer. The two instruments load the difficulty onto different arms, and which arm you would rather struggle with is a real preference that people have. ### The banjo: a free left hand and a picking hand that takes months Open G tuning does an enormous amount of work. The five strings are g–D–G–B–D, a G major already assembled, so the instrument is consonant before you touch it. One finger gives you a different chord. Two fingers gives you another. Somebody who has never held an instrument can accompany a simple song inside an hour, and that is not a sales pitch — it is a consequence of the tuning. The bill arrives in the right hand. Bluegrass means Scruggs-style rolls: fixed eight-note patterns of thumb, index and middle finger that have to run underneath a tune at speed, automatically, before any melody can be threaded through them. Old-time means clawhammer, a downward strike with the back of a fingernail followed by the thumb dropping onto that fifth string — a motion you have almost certainly never made with your hand before, and one that takes months rather than weeks to stop being conscious. There is more on both in [how hard the banjo is to learn](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). ### The mandolin: an ordinary picking hand and a left hand doing something small and exact A mandolin is played with a flatpick held the way a guitar pick is held, so if you have ever strummed anything, the right hand starts most of the way home. What is difficult is on the fingerboard, and it is difficult from the first note rather than from month three. Every note is two strings. A fingertip has to hold both cleanly or the note buzzes on one and rings on the other, and that is easy to hear as bad playing rather than as one string not being pressed. The frets are half the size they are on almost anything else, so a finger that lands a couple of millimeters wide is on the wrong note. And the chord that defines mandolin rhythm — the chop, a closed four-finger shape struck and immediately damped — is a genuinely hard grip that most people cannot make for the first few weeks. [How hard the mandolin is to play](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/) goes through each of those. So the banjo is easier for a fortnight and the mandolin is easier from about month two, when the banjo’s picking hand becomes the whole problem and the mandolin’s fretting hand starts behaving. After the first year neither is easier than the other. Both take as long as anything else takes. ## The numbers underneath that A banjo’s scale length is 26³⁄₁₆” on Gold Tone’s spec sheet and 26¼” on Deering’s. A mandolin’s is 13¾”, and Ibanez publishes 350 mm — 13.8″ — for the M510. So a mandolin neck is not a bit shorter than a banjo neck. It is half of one, and every fret spacing halves with it. The gap between the nut and the first fret is about an inch and a half on a banjo and about three quarters of an inch on a mandolin. The twelfth fret sits thirteen inches up a banjo neck and just under seven up a mandolin’s. That ratio holds all the way to the body, so a stretch that is comfortable on one is either a reach or a pile-up on the other. The necks are almost exactly as wide as each other, and that is the part people do not expect. Gold Tone cuts its banjo nut at 1³⁄₁₆” and its mandolin nut at 1⅛” — about five percent narrower — and then puts eight strings across it instead of five. Ibanez states 30 mm at the nut with 10 mm between courses. A mandolin fingerboard is not a small version of a banjo fingerboard; it is a considerably more crowded one. The strings differ in the same direction. Gold Tone ships its banjos with .011, .013, .016, a wound .024 and another .011, and its mandolins with .011, .016, a wound .026 and a wound .040 — each of those doubled. The heaviest string on a mandolin is nearly twice the gauge of the heaviest on a banjo, and there are two of it. That is why a banjo is kind to fingertips that have never played anything and a mandolin is not, and it is also why D’Addario lists a five-string banjo set at around $6.50 and its mandolin sets at $9 to $13. ## Which one fits your hands Those two measurements point in opposite directions, and between them they settle the question for a fair number of people. Short fingers and a short reach favor the mandolin. Nothing on it is more than a few frets away, and the shapes that cripple beginners on a long-scale instrument are comfortable inside one hand position. Broad fingertips favor the banjo, strongly. Five strings across 1³⁄₁₆” leaves roughly a quarter of an inch of clear space per string, and the frets are far enough apart that a finger sits between them rather than on one. Eight strings across 1⅛” does not, and a fingertip that keeps muting the course next door is a fit problem rather than a technique fault. If you have thick hands, try a mandolin in a shop before you order one, and read the two-strings-under-one-finger paragraph above as a warning rather than a detail. For a child the mandolin is usually the easier object to hold — two and a half pounds against nearly four to six, and a body about the size of a hardback book. A banjo with a resonator on it is a genuinely heavy thing to sit under for half an hour. ## What you already play changes the answer **Fiddle or violin.** Take the mandolin, and stop reading. It is tuned G–D–A–E, the same as your fiddle, over a scale of 13¾” against a violin’s roughly 13″ of speaking string. Everything your left hand knows transfers on the first afternoon: the same fingerings, the same keys, the same tunes, the same positions. There is no other pair of instruments on this site where the transfer is as complete, and all you are learning is a pick. **Guitar, strummed with a pick.** Both are a fresh start for the left hand — banjo chord shapes are their own thing and mandolin fifths tuning shares nothing with the guitar’s fourths. What differs is which hand you keep. The mandolin keeps your pick hand; the banjo keeps almost none of your technique but hands you a tuning that plays chords for you. We take that comparison apart in [mandolin vs guitar](/mandolin-vs-guitar/) and [banjo vs guitar](/banjo-vs-guitar/). **Guitar, fingerpicked.** This tilts to the banjo. Thumb-and-fingers independence is exactly what Scruggs rolls are built on, and it is the part that takes everyone else months. **Mandolin already, wanting a banjo.** The five-string will not feel like a relative — the tuning is unrelated and the picking hand is unrelated. The tenor banjo is the natural jump instead, because it is tuned in fifths too and is played with a flatpick. [Tenor banjos](/best-tenor-banjo/) covers what that means and what it costs. ## The banjo asks you to choose a school before you start There is a practical cost attached to that, and it arrives before the first lesson. There are two ways to play a five-string banjo, they have almost nothing in common, and the books, the videos and the teachers are separate. Bluegrass three-finger picking plucks upward with a thumbpick and two metal fingerpicks. Clawhammer strikes downward with the back of a nail. Buying a method for one of them and then discovering you wanted the other means starting over, and the instruments differ too — bluegrass wants a resonator behind the head, old-time usually does not. That is the argument in [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). A mandolin has one right hand. Downstrokes and upstrokes with a pick, tremolo when a note has to last, and the chop for rhythm. Those are three uses of one technique rather than two techniques, and every beginner method teaches them in the same order. If the idea of committing to a style you have not heard enough of yet puts you off, that alone is a reason to start on the mandolin. ## They are not really competing for the same seat Worth saying plainly, because pitting the two against each other obscures it: in a bluegrass band there is one of each. They are not alternatives to one another in the music where both are common — they are two different jobs, and a band that has one wants the other. The mandolin carries the melody and provides the backbeat. It plays the tune when it is that instrument’s turn, and it chops on two and four the rest of the time, doing the job a snare drum does in music that has no drums. It is a fiddle-shaped role, and mandolin players and fiddlers read the same tune books. The banjo makes a texture. In bluegrass a roll runs continuously underneath everything, whether or not the banjo is the instrument being listened to, and the banjo’s breaks come out of that texture rather than interrupting it. In old-time it is a rhythm instrument first and a melodic one second. It is not a lead instrument that happens to be twangy. Outside that overlap they part company. The mandolin is at home in Irish and Scottish sessions, in classical repertoire going back three centuries, in country, in swing and in a great deal of modern folk and rock. The five-string banjo is an American instrument with an American repertoire — bluegrass, old-time, some country and a fringe elsewhere. If the music you actually listen to is not on that first list, that is your answer, and if it is bluegrass you will end up owning both eventually anyway. ## How loud each one is, and why it matters more than you think A banjo’s soundboard is a plastic head stretched over an eleven-inch rim and tensioned by sixteen to twenty-four brackets, with the bridge standing directly on it. It is a drum being played by strings, designed to cut through a band with no amplification at all. That is the sound the instrument is for, and it is also a sound that travels through a wall, through a floor, and into a conversation happening in another room. A mandolin is a small carved wooden box — an Ibanez M510’s body is 13⅝” long, 10⅞” across and 2″ deep. It is loud for its size and it is not in the same category. A mandolin can be practiced in an apartment in the evening. A banjo, honestly, cannot, and a beginner practicing rolls is repeating the same eight notes for an hour. There are mutes for banjos and they work, at the cost of most of the tone you bought the instrument for. If you live with other people and cannot practice at a time when they are out, weigh this before anything else on this page. ## What each one costs The mandolin is cheaper to try and roughly level after that. A complete beginner mandolin with a bag, a tuner and spare strings runs about $100; a five-string banjo worth owning starts around $175, and it comes with nothing. That gap closes fast. The rung where a banjo starts arriving properly adjusted is about $315, and the rung where a mandolin gets a carved solid top and starts improving with playing is about $400. The full ladders are in [how much a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) and [how much a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Budget for a setup on either. Nothing under a few hundred dollars has been adjusted by a person before it ships, and the adjustment is what makes an instrument playable rather than merely complete. A banjo setup runs $50 to $100 — head tension, bridge placement, action, string change. A mandolin setup runs $60 to $125, and it is dearer for a specific reason: the bridge is not glued down. It stands on the top under string pressure alone, so positioning it is part of the job every time, and some shops charge over their guitar rate for that. After that both are cheap to keep. Strings a few times a year at around $6.50 for a banjo set and $9 to $13 for a mandolin set, a head on a banjo every several years, and nothing else. Neither has moving parts or electronics. ## What to buy, either way Two on each side: the cheapest instrument that answers the question honestly, and the one that is worth owning if you already know the answer. If you try the mandolin ### Donner DML-1 A-Style - A-style, eight strings in four courses - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 20 frets, adjustable compensated bridge - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, spare strings, picks and cloth in the box - ~$100 The cheapest mandolin that is a real instrument rather than a shape, and the tuner in the box matters more than it sounds like it does. A mandolin has eight strings to bring into tune and four of them to hold against each other in unison, which is a miserable job by ear on day one and trivial with a clip-on. Donner’s own list price for it is $159.99, so a hundred dollars is a real discount on the maker’s figure rather than a marked-up bargain. It is laminate, it will need the setup described above, and it is not an instrument you keep. What it is good at is answering the question the page is about for a hundred dollars, and if the answer turns out to be no, you have lost less than a month of lessons. **Pros**- Everything needed to start is in the box - Adjustable truss rod and a compensated bridge at the price - Cheapest honest way to find out **Cons**- Laminate top, so it will not develop with playing - Quality varies unit to unit - Wants a setup before it plays its best Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hbKajz) If you keep the mandolin ### Ibanez M510 - A-style, spruce top, sapele back and sides - Okoume neck, purpleheart fingerboard and bridge - 350 mm (13.8″) scale, 30 mm nut, 20 frets - Factory gauges .010 .014 .024 .034 - ~$200 Twice the Donner, and the difference is in the parts that are hard to fix afterwards: the neck is straighter, the frets are dressed, and the tuners hold overnight. It is still a laminate top — Ibanez writes “Spruce top” here and “Solid sitka Spruce top” on the M522S above it, and that omission is the maker’s way of saying so — but it is a properly built instrument at the price of a badly built one. Ibanez builds it in three finishes and the brown sunburst is the one linked here. The wood underneath is identical across all three, so the choice is cosmetic — but the finish is part of the model code, so check you have the one you meant before ordering. **Pros**- Fretwork and neck a long way above the budget tier - Purpleheart fingerboard and bridge rather than dyed hardwood - Holds its tuning, which a beginner needs more than tone **Cons**- Laminate top, so the $400 rung is still a real upgrade - Nothing in the box - Plain appointments Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4r1kQjS) If you try the banjo ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - Five strings, full size - 5-ply maple and mahogany shell, mahogany neck - Mahogany resonator, and it unbolts - 24 brackets, Remo Weatherking head, geared 5th tuner - ~$175 The resonator comes off with a screwdriver, and that is the reason to start here rather than anywhere cheaper. A resonator throws the sound forward and is what bluegrass wants; an open back is warmer and quieter and is what clawhammer wants. Since the banjo makes you choose a school and you cannot choose one yet, buy the instrument that postpones it. Twenty-four brackets is unusual at this money — sixteen is the norm — and they are what let you tension the head evenly enough to get a tone rather than a thud. Expect to spend an evening on the bridge, which ships loose in the carton and whose position is what makes the instrument play in tune above the fifth fret. **Pros**- Works as a resonator banjo or an open back - 24 brackets and a Remo head at a budget price - Geared fifth-string tuner rather than a friction peg **Cons**- Heavy with the resonator fitted - Nothing in the box — no tuner, no picks - Factory strings and bridge both want attention Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xDTyCp) If you keep the banjo ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim - 26³⁄₁₆” scale, 22 frets, 1³⁄₁₆” nut - 3.75 lb - Adjusted in Florida before it ships - ~$315 The rung where a banjo arrives playable. Gold Tone sets every instrument up before it leaves the building, which is roughly the money a shop setup on the Jameson would cost, so the real gap between the two is smaller than the sticker suggests. At three and three-quarter pounds it is the lightest thing here by a wide margin, and the composite rim is why — it also means the instrument does not mind a cold car. It is an open back, so it leans toward clawhammer and old-time rather than bluegrass, though it does both. Gold Tone’s warranty on the AC line is five years and transferable, on the condition that you buy from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Arrives adjusted, which nothing cheaper does - Lightest full-scale banjo on this page - Five-year transferable warranty **Cons**- No resonator and no way to add one - Composite rim rather than wood - Nearly twice the Jameson Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i8XypJ) ### The two things to buy alongside A chromatic clip-on tuner, on either instrument. It clamps to the headstock, reads the string through the wood and ignores the room, which matters because a mandolin’s paired strings have to be tuned to each other as well as to a pitch, and because a beginner’s ear cannot yet tell a slightly flat banjo from a badly played one. The Donner arrives with one; the Jameson and the Gold Tone do not. ### KLIQ UberTuner - Chromatic, so it names whatever note it hears - Dedicated banjo and mandolin modes as well - Clips to the headstock and reads vibration, not sound - Accurate to within a cent, 430–450 Hz calibration - ~$19 Chromatic is the word that matters. A tuner locked to a guitar preset argues with a banjo’s fifth string and with every alternate tuning you end up in later; a chromatic one simply reports the note it hears. This one carries banjo and mandolin modes on top of that, so it covers whichever way you go — and both, if you end up with one of each. Reading vibration rather than sound is the other half. It means the tuner works in a room with other people playing in it, which is exactly the situation a beginner most needs to retune in and cannot. Around $19[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gMfFRn) Fingerpicks, if you went with the banjo and you are heading for bluegrass. A thumbpick and two metal fingerpicks are what Scruggs-style playing is done with, and starting on bare fingers and switching later means relearning the feel of the strings. Clawhammer players need neither, which is another reason the school question is worth settling early. ### Dunlop Shell Fingerpicks and Thumbpick, Medium - Three fingerpicks and one thumbpick - Medium gauge - ~$10 They feel wrong for about a week and then stop being noticeable. Medium is the usual starting gauge, and the metal fingerpicks bend, so the fit is something you adjust rather than something you order — squeeze them until they sit against the pad of the finger without pinching. Ten dollars is also the cheapest available way to find out whether three-finger picking is what you want to spend the next year on. Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/469nOJn) ## Where each one came from The banjo descends from West African plucked lutes — the akonting, the ngoni and the xalam among more than sixty gourd-lute instruments across the region. Enslaved West Africans carried the tradition to the Caribbean and colonial North America and rebuilt it from what was available: a gourd body, a hide stretched over it, a wooden neck and gut strings. The short thumb string that defines the five-string is the oldest idea in it; the akonting has one too. Frets, a wooden rim and mass production all arrived in the nineteenth century. The mandolin came out of the Italian lute family. The older Brescian and Cremonese instruments carried four single gut strings tuned in fifths — the same G–D–A–E as today, without the doubling — and the louder Neapolitan form with doubled metal courses replaced them. The instrument most people picture, though, is much younger than either: the carved, f-holed, scrolled mandolin is Gibson’s F-5, designed by Lloyd Loar in 1922, and it is the shape bluegrass was built on twenty years later. Both instruments are older than they look and both took their modern form within living memory of each other. [Types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) and [types of mandolins](/types-of-mandolins/) follow each family from there. ## Frequently asked questions ### Which is easier to learn, banjo or mandolin? The banjo for the first two weeks and the mandolin for the six months after that. Open G tuning means a banjo plays a chord with nobody touching the neck, so the first evening is far more rewarding. But the banjo’s difficulty is all in the picking hand and it takes months to clear, while the mandolin’s is in the fretting hand and clears the way ordinary practice clears things. Past the first year neither is easier. ### Can you play the same music on both? Some of it. In bluegrass and old-time they overlap, but they overlap the way a rhythm guitar and a lead guitar overlap — the tunes are shared and the jobs are not. Outside that, the mandolin goes places the five-string banjo does not: Irish and Scottish sessions, classical repertoire, swing, country, a lot of modern folk and rock. The five-string is an American instrument with an American repertoire. ### Does playing the mandolin help you learn the banjo? Barely, for the five-string. The tunings are unrelated, so no shape transfers, and a flatpick teaches you nothing about rolls or clawhammer. What does transfer is everything that is not the instrument — your ear, your timing, your sense of where a tune is going. If you want a banjo that uses what you already have, the tenor banjo is tuned in fifths and played with a pick, and it is the obvious move for a mandolin player. ### Why does a mandolin have eight strings for four notes? Volume, originally. Two strings tuned in unison are louder than one and they beat against each other very slightly, which is what gives the instrument its shimmer. It is also why the fretting hand has to be exact: the finger has to hold both strings of a course or one buzzes while the other rings. [How many strings a mandolin has](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) goes into the variants. ### Which is better for a child? Usually the mandolin, on size alone. It weighs two and a half pounds against nearly four to six, the body is about the size of a hardback book, and the frets are close enough together that a small hand can make chords without a stretch. The counterargument is that a child gets a satisfying noise out of a banjo on the first day and out of a mandolin in the second week, and for some children that matters more than anything. ### Which is louder? The banjo, by a distance. Its head is a tensioned drum with the bridge standing on it, built to cut through a band with no amplification. A mandolin is a small carved box and is loud for its size, which is not the same thing. If you share walls, the banjo is the harder instrument to own. ### How much should I spend to find out which I prefer? About $100 on the mandolin side and about $175 on the banjo side, plus a setup at $60–125 or $50–100. Below those figures on either instrument you are buying something harder to play than it should be, and a beginner cannot tell a badly made instrument from their own lack of skill — which is the most expensive way there is to give up. ### Can I learn both? Yes, and in bluegrass a lot of people do, because a band needs one of each. Learn one to the point where you are not thinking about your hands before you start the other, though. Two instruments at three months each is slower than one instrument at six. ### Do I need to read music? No, on either. Banjo material is almost entirely tablature — a diagram of which string and which fret rather than a pitch on a staff. Mandolin material comes both ways, and mandolin players who came from the fiddle usually read notation because the tune books they share are written in it. Neither instrument makes reading a prerequisite for playing. ## So which one? Choose by the hand you would rather have trouble with, and by the sound you cannot stop thinking about. If you already play fiddle the tuning decides it. If you have thick fingertips or thin walls, that decides it. Where it is genuinely a tie, the mandolin costs less to find out about, asks you to commit to less, and lives in more music — start there, and know that the banjo is a fortnight of fun ahead and several months of work behind. Whichever way you go, spend the setup money. It is the difference between an instrument that plays and one that fights, and it is the cheapest upgrade available on either. [Beginner mandolins](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) and [beginner banjos](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) go further into the rung above the ones here. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Best Ukulele Apps: Which Are Free, and What the Rest Charge](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-apps/) **Published:** December 11, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ukulele/ "Ukulele")› Best Ukulele Apps: Which Are Free, and What the Rest Charge Every ukulele app in the store installs for nothing. That is not the same as being free, and the difference is printed on the listing page if you know where to look: Google Play states each app’s in-app purchase range in one line, and for ukulele apps those ranges run from **nothing at all** to **$229.99 per item**. There are four jobs an app can do for a ukulele player — tune it, show you a chord shape, put a song’s chords in front of you, and teach you. Three of those are genuinely free from apps with millions of downloads behind them. The fourth is a subscription, and it costs more per year than a decent concert ukulele. If you install two things### Fender Tune for tuning, and a chord app for everything else Fender Tune is the only app here with **no ads and no in-app purchases at all** — Google Play shows neither chip on its listing, where every other app worth naming carries one or both. It handles ukulele alongside guitar and bass, adds a metronome and 65 drum patterns, and Fender’s expanded “Tune Plus” tier is free with an account and, in Fender’s words, “no credit card required.” Pair it with a chord app and the free tier is complete. **Chords, iPhone:** Chord Lord for Ukulele — every chord, free **Song chords, both platforms:** Ultimate Guitar **Chords from a recording:** Chordify **Buy rather than subscribe:** a clip-on tuner — around $18 ## Table of Contents - [Check the “Updated” date before you install anything](#check-the-ldquoupdatedrdquo-date-before-you-install-anything) - [Tuning: the one job worth doing on a maker’s app](#tuning-the-one-job-worth-doing-on-a-makerrsquos-app) - [Chords: the free tier is genuinely complete](#chords-the-free-tier-is-genuinely-complete) - [Chords from a recording, which is the trick worth having](#chords-from-a-recording-which-is-the-trick-worth-having) - [Lessons: where the money is, and how much of it](#lessons-where-the-money-is-and-how-much-of-it) - [At a glance](#at-a-glance) - [Three things no app on your phone can do](#three-things-no-app-on-your-phone-can-do) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [Also worth reading](#also-worth-reading) ## Check the “Updated” date before you install anything Ukulele apps die quietly. They stay in the store, they keep their star rating, and they keep appearing in search results for years after the person who wrote them stopped answering email. The rating is no help — it is an average of everyone who ever left a review, most of them years ago. Two live examples. *Tunefor Ukulele tuner & chords* has **14,671 App Store ratings**, which makes it one of the most-reviewed ukulele-specific apps in existence, and it was last updated in **February 2022**. *UKE Magazine* — a genuinely good British ukulele magazine with an app that sold a $4.99 quarterly subscription — was last updated in **January 2021**, and the magazine’s own domain now redirects to a domain-parking page. A subscription inside an app whose publisher has gone is a subscription to nothing. The check takes five seconds. On iPhone the App Store listing has a *Version History* line with a date; on Android the Play listing has *Updated on*. Anything more than about eighteen months stale is a museum piece, however many stars it has. Everything recommended here was updated in 2026. ## Tuning: the one job worth doing on a maker’s app **Fender Tune** (listed as *Fender Guitar Tuner* on Android) is the pick, and the reason is what is missing from its store listing rather than what is on it. Google Play tags apps that carry advertising and apps that sell in-app purchases; Fender’s listing has neither tag. Across both stores it holds 4.8 stars from 150,000 ratings on iPhone and 4.6 from 70,000 on Android, with over five million downloads, and it was updated in 2026. For a ukulele you get automatic and manual tuning, a chromatic mode, 26 alternate tunings and custom ones you can save, plus a metronome and 65 preset drum patterns across seven genres. The drum patterns are more useful than they sound — a strumming problem is almost always a timing problem, and playing along with a beat fixes it faster than counting does. Our guide to [how to strum a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) goes into why. One limit worth knowing, because Fender states it and nobody quotes it: the app’s chord and scale libraries are for **six-string guitar only**. Fender Tune is a tuner and a practice clock for a ukulele player, not a chord book. **GuitarTuna** is the alternative and the one most people already have — over 100 million downloads and 2.66 million Play reviews. It tunes ukulele, guitar, bass and violin and it works well. It also carries advertising and in-app purchases running to **$139.99**, because it belongs to Yousician, whose real business is selling lessons. ## Chords: the free tier is genuinely complete A ukulele chord dictionary is a finite thing. There are only so many shapes, they have not changed, and an app that charges to unlock more of them is charging for a lookup table. The good ones know it. **Chord Lord for Ukulele** is 17 megabytes, holds 4.7 stars across 499 ratings, and its developer states the position outright: “ALL the chords for free, we will never charge you to unlock extra chords.” You can strum a shape to hear it or pick out individual strings, switch to a left-handed display, and change between standard, baritone and D tunings. It is **iPhone only**. It is not on Google Play at all, and there is no Android equivalent that gives every shape away without advertising. For chords to actual songs, **Ultimate Guitar** is the library everyone uses: 474,000 App Store ratings, a Google Play Editors’ Choice badge, and ukulele chords alongside guitar and bass. It is free to read tabs, it carries ads, and its in-app purchases go to **$109.99** for the Pro tier. You do not need the Pro tier to look up a song. **UkuTabs** released an app in July 2026 covering the same 20,000-song catalog as its long-running website, with a chord diagram and a playable strumming pattern on every song and no sign-up. It is too new to have a rating worth reading — one App Store review so far — and its free tier caps you at five saved favorites. Worth watching rather than leading with. ## Chords from a recording, which is the trick worth having **Chordify** listens to a recording and prints the chords over a moving timeline, with animated ukulele shapes rather than guitar ones. It works against YouTube, which in practice means any song that exists. Free gets you the chords and the timeline; 4.7 stars across 33,000 App Store ratings, another Editors’ Choice badge. What Premium adds is the interesting part, because it tells you what a ukulele player is short of. Chordify’s paid tier ($6.99 to $54.00 in in-app purchases) unlocks transposing to another key, slowing a song down, looping a difficult bar, printing a PDF — and a capo feature, which works out where to clamp a capo so that a song in a hard key becomes the four shapes you already know. That last one is the pattern for this whole category. The app charges a subscription for the calculation. The thing the calculation tells you to do requires an eighteen-dollar piece of aluminum, once. ## Lessons: where the money is, and how much of it Two apps teach. Both listen through the phone’s microphone while you play and tell you whether you hit the chord. Both are excellent at the part they are good at, which is turning practice into something with a score attached. The **Kala app** is the one with an instrument maker’s name on it, and Kala promotes it on its own site. It is built by Musopia, a Finnish app studio, which is who both stores list as the developer. The tuner is free and so is a beginner learning path; a premium subscription unlocks a songbook of over 2,000 songs. It holds 4.7 stars across 12,613 App Store ratings and was updated in August 2026. Google Play lists its in-app purchases at **$2.49 to $229.99 per item**. **Ukulele by Yousician** is the same idea with a games studio’s polish — bite-sized lessons, real-time feedback, weekly challenges, a million downloads. Its in-app purchases run **$14.99 to $139.99**, the top of that being an annual Premium+ plan. Set those against what they are teaching you to play. A Kala KA-15C concert ukulele — laminated mahogany, a Graph Tech NuBone nut, the instrument we recommend to [most beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) — is about $85. One year of the app costs more than the ukulele, and in the top case, more than the ukulele, a case, a tuner and a book together. That is not an argument against paying for lessons. It is an argument for knowing that the free tier of these same apps, plus a $19 songbook, covers the first year for most people. Our piece on [how hard the ukulele actually is](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) covers what that first year contains. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## At a glance AppBest forPlatformsAdsIn-app purchasesFender TuneTuning, metronome, drum patternsiOS, AndroidNone**None**Chord Lord for UkuleleEvery chord shape, offlineiOS onlyNoneNone — stated by the developerUltimate GuitarChords and tabs for songsiOS, AndroidYes$0.99–$109.99ChordifyChords from a recordingiOS, AndroidYes$6.99–$54.00GuitarTunaTuning, if you already have itiOS, AndroidYes$0.99–$139.99KalaStructured lessons, 2,000-song bookiOS, AndroidNone$2.49–$229.99Ukulele by YousicianLessons that grade your playingiOS, AndroidNone$14.99–$139.99UkuTabsSong chords, new and untestediOS, AndroidNone$2.99–$49.99 In-app purchase ranges are Google Play’s own figures from each app’s listing. They are ceilings rather than what most people pay — a monthly plan sits at the bottom of the range and a lifetime unlock at the top. ## Three things no app on your phone can do Free apps cover tuning, chords, songs and timing. They leave three gaps, and all three are cheap to close. № 1 · The app tuner’s blind spot ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner - Reads vibration through the wood, not sound through the air - “Stay Put” clip - Full-color display, rotates 360° - Works clipped either way for left-handed players - 4.7 stars, 7,100+ ratings - ~$18 A phone tuner listens through a microphone, which is fine alone in a quiet room and useless everywhere a ukulele actually gets played. In a ukulele club, a classroom or a family room with a television on, the microphone hears everybody else’s instrument as well as yours and the needle will not settle. A clip-on tuner reads the vibration in the wood and does not care what the room is doing. It is also the one that works when the phone is dead, in someone’s pocket, or being used for the chords. The SN6X is Snark’s ukulele model rather than a general one, and the current revision has a faster chip and a screen readable from any angle — which matters because the display swivels a full turn, so the same clip works whichever side of the headstock you put it on. **Pros**- Works in a noisy room, where the app does not - No phone, no battery anxiety, no unlocking - Four seconds per string - Rotating display suits left- or right-handed players **Cons**- One more thing to lose - Button cell to replace eventually - The clip is the part that fails first on any clip-on tuner Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3ISeSMh) № 2 · What the paid “capo feature” needs ### D’Addario Ukulele Pro Capo - Micrometer tension adjustment - Aircraft-grade aluminum - One-handed operation - Sized for ukulele necks, not a guitar capo pressed into service - 4.8 stars, 1,280+ ratings - ~$18, which is D’Addario’s own list price Free chord apps give you a song in the key it was recorded in, and a great many pop songs are recorded in keys that put a barre chord in bar one. A capo moves the whole instrument so those songs come out under the four shapes a beginner already owns. It is the single largest jump in how many songs you can play, and it costs less than two months of any lessons subscription. The reason to spend eighteen dollars rather than eight is the micrometer screw. A cheap spring capo applies whatever tension its spring happens to have, which on a short ukulele neck with nylon strings pulls everything sharp — you clamp it on and the instrument is out of tune. The D’Addario dials the pressure to just enough to stop the buzz, so it goes on and stays in tune, and it comes off one-handed mid-song. **Pros**- Adjustable tension, so it does not pull the strings sharp - Made for a ukulele neck rather than adapted from a guitar - Amazon sells it at D’Addario’s list price - One hand, mid-song **Cons**- Twice the price of a spring capo that mostly works - Needs setting once for your instrument - Nothing to do with tone — it only changes what is easy to play Around $18[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GTSM8CK?tag=sjj363-20) № 3 · The one that outlives the subscription ### First 50 Songs You Should Play on Ukulele - Hal Leonard, 136 pages, 9″ × 12″ - **Melody, lyrics and chord diagrams** — not chords alone - 50 songs, listed in full by the publisher - Publisher’s list price $19.99; digital edition $16.99 - 4.6 stars, 4,300+ ratings - ~$18 Every free app here gives you chords over lyrics. None of them gives you the melody. That is the difference between strumming behind a song you already know and being able to pick out the tune, and it is the reason a printed book still earns its shelf: Hal Leonard’s own description of this one is “melody, lyrics, and chord diagrams,” and the melody is the part that is genuinely absent from the phone. The fifty are the songs a ukulele club actually plays — *Over the Rainbow*, *Riptide*, *I’m Yours*, *Hallelujah*, *Take Me Home, Country Roads*, *You Are My Sunshine*, *Sweet Caroline*, *Puff the Magic Dragon*. Hal Leonard aims it at “the beginner who’s learned enough to feel ready to step into songbooks,” which is roughly a month in. It does not need charging, does not run ads, and will not lapse. **Pros**- Melody as well as chords, which no free app offers - Licensed, edited arrangements rather than user-uploaded guesses - Costs less than two months of a lessons subscription, once - Works on a music stand with no screen **Cons**- Reading standard notation is a skill on top of playing - Fifty songs, fixed, against 20,000 in a free app - Standard tuning only — a baritone needs the separate edition Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/41RQ2oE) ## FAQs ### Are ukulele apps really free? All of them install free. Tuning, chord shapes and song chords are genuinely free and stay that way. Lessons are a subscription: Google Play lists the Kala app’s in-app purchases at $2.49 to $229.99 and Ukulele by Yousician’s at $14.99 to $139.99. Fender Tune is the only one with no in-app purchases and no advertising at all. ### Can a tuner app replace a clip-on tuner? On your own in a quiet room, yes — a good app tuner is as accurate as a clip-on. It fails wherever other people are playing, because the microphone hears the whole room. A clip-on reads the vibration in the wood instead, so it works in a ukulele club, a classroom, or a lesson. If you only ever play alone, the app is enough. ### Which ukulele app actually teaches you to play? The Kala app and Ukulele by Yousician are the two that listen while you play and tell you whether you got the chord. Both have free beginner paths worth working through before you decide whether the subscription is worth it. Neither can see your hands, so neither will correct the two things a teacher fixes first: how you hold the instrument and where your thumb sits behind the neck. ### Do these apps work on both Android and iPhone? All of them except one. Chord Lord for Ukulele, the chord dictionary that gives every shape away free, is iPhone only and is not on Google Play. Android users wanting an offline chord book are better served by looking up shapes inside Ultimate Guitar, which is on both. ### How can I tell whether a ukulele app is abandoned? Read the update date, not the star rating. Android listings show “Updated on” near the bottom; iPhone listings have a Version History entry with a date. Ratings accumulate over an app’s whole life, so a four-star average tells you nothing about whether anyone is still maintaining it. One popular ukulele tuner with nearly 15,000 App Store ratings has not been updated since February 2022. ### Also worth reading [The best ukuleles for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) — what to point the app at. [Is the ukulele easy to learn?](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) — what the first month really involves. [How to strum a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) — the timing an app will not explain. [How to choose a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) — size, wood and what actually changes the sound. **Categories:** Ukulele --- ### [How to Strum a Ukulele: The Counting Nobody Writes Down](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) **Published:** August 14, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ukulele/ "Ukulele")› How to Strum a Ukulele: The Counting Nobody Writes Down Strumming patterns are written as strings of letters — `D - D U - U D U` — and the letters leave out the only thing that makes them work. **The hand never stops.** It swings down on every beat and up on every “and” in between, at a steady rate, forever. A dash does not mean pause. It means the hand keeps swinging and misses the strings. Once that is in the wrist, every pattern below is the same pattern with different strings touched. Beginners who try to *execute* the letters — down, stop, down, up, stop — end up with a hand that stutters, and no amount of practice fixes it, because the thing being practiced is wrong. If you buy one thing after reading this### Ukulele Aerobics — Chad Johnson, Hal Leonard A 40-week, one-lick-a-day program with online audio, and the audio is the part that matters: a strumming problem is a timing problem, and timing is fixed by playing along with something, not by reading. 88 pages. Hal Leonard lists it at $22.99. Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UrCbGq) **The thing that actually fixes timing:** Korg MA-2 metronome — around $20 **If a guitar pick sounds harsh:** felt picks, six for about $7 **If you play standing:** a clip-on strap — around $16 **Costs nothing:** count out loud ## Table of Contents - [Count it, and the notation explains itself](#count-it-and-the-notation-explains-itself) - [That one has a name, and it is the one you came for](#that-one-has-a-name-and-it-is-the-one-you-came-for) - [The patterns worth having, and what each one is for](#the-patterns-worth-having-and-what-each-one-is-for) - [Where to strum, and why the answer moves with the size](#where-to-strum-and-why-the-answer-moves-with-the-size) - [The wrist does the work](#the-wrist-does-the-work) - [The “chuck” is two different techniques](#the-ldquochuckrdquo-is-two-different-techniques) - [What is worth buying](#what-is-worth-buying) - [Questions people actually ask](#questions-people-actually-ask) - [How long before strumming stops sounding stiff?](#how-long-before-strumming-stops-sounding-stiff) - [Fingers, thumb or a pick?](#fingers-thumb-or-a-pick) - [Why does my up-strum sound weak?](#why-does-my-upstrum-sound-weak) - [Do I have to learn to read strumming notation?](#do-i-have-to-learn-to-read-strumming-notation) - [Should I use the same pattern for a whole song?](#should-i-use-the-same-pattern-for-a-whole-song) - [Is strumming different on a tenor or a baritone?](#is-strumming-different-on-a-tenor-or-a-baritone) - [The short version](#the-short-version) ## Count it, and the notation explains itself A bar of 4/4 has four beats. Between each beat there is an “and.” Say it out loud: *one and two and three and four and*. That is eight slots, and a strumming hand covers all eight — down on the numbers, up on the ands — whether or not it touches the strings on any given one. Write a pattern against those eight slots and it stops being a code. Here is the most-played ukulele strum in the world, laid out the way it is actually played: Count1&2&3&4&**Hand**↓↑↓↑↓↑↓↑**Strings**↓—↓↑—↑↓↑ The top row is what the arm does and it never changes. The bottom row is the pattern. The two misses — the “and” of one, and beat three — are where the syncopation comes from, and they are the reason the pattern sounds like a record rather than a metronome. Practice it as three separate things, in this order. Strum all eight slots until the arm is even. Then keep strumming all eight and just *say* which two you are about to skip. Then lift the hand off the strings on those two without changing anything else. That third step is the whole skill, and it takes minutes rather than weeks once the first two are solid. ## That one has a name, and it is the one you came for It is the **island strum**. Kala — which sells more first ukuleles in the United States than anyone — calls it “broadly regarded as the most classic and popular strum pattern in the world of ukulele,” says it came out of Hawaiian music, and names four songs built on a variation of it: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Riptide,” “Hey Soul Sister,” and Twenty One Pilots’ “The Judge.” If you learn one pattern and stop, learn that one. It will carry most of a campfire songbook on its own, and three of those four songs are among the first things anybody wants to play on the instrument. ## The patterns worth having, and what each one is for Read the middle column the same way as the table above: the hand covers all eight slots, and the arrows are only where it touches the strings. Pattern1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &Use it forDifficulty**All downs**↓ ↓ ↓ ↓Anything, while you learn the chord changes. Never a wasted choiceFirst hour**Down-up**↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑Getting the arm even. This is the drill every other pattern is built onFirst hour**Basic rock**↓ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑Pop and rock. Kala rates it for simplicity and for how much variation it takesWeek one**Island strum**↓ ↓ ↑ ↑ ↓ ↑The default. Hawaiian in origin, and now most of the ukulele repertoireWeek one**Swing / shuffle**↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ *uneven: long-short*Jazz, blues, reggae. Kala notes it lingers on the down to get the grooveWeek two**Off-beat (reggae)** ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑Reggae and ska. The beats themselves are silent, which is the pointWeek two**Chuck on 2 and 4**↓ ↑ × ↑ ↓ ↑ × ↑Anything that wants a backbeat. × is a damped strum, not a missed oneMonth one**Waltz (3/4)**↓ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ *six slots, not eight*Waltzes and anything counted in threeWeek two Kala’s own core set is four: island, swing, basic rock, and the hula pattern, which developed alongside the instrument and is the foundation of the dance. Four is about right, and a longer list is worth less than it looks — most entries on any thirteen-pattern chart are the island strum with one slot moved, and learning them separately teaches you nothing you did not already have. ## Where to strum, and why the answer moves with the size Not over the soundhole. That is where a guitarist’s hand lands, and on a ukulele it is loud and glassy. The reason is where the strings are being disturbed, and it is measurable. Plucking a string at a point one-nth of the way along suppresses its nth harmonic — the physics group at the University of New South Wales demonstrates it with a test anyone can run on a guitar: pluck the low E anywhere except a third of the way along and the B string, tuned near its third harmonic, starts to ring on its own; pluck it exactly at the third and it stays quiet. Strum close to the bridge and you are at a small fraction of the string, exciting the high harmonics hard and the fundamental barely, which is the thin, tinny sound. Move toward the middle of the string and the fundamental takes over. The middle of the string is easy to find, because it is a fixed point on every fretted instrument ever built: **the 12th fret**. An octave is half the string, so the 12th fret sits at exactly half the scale length, and the fullest, roundest strum is over or just past it. That is why the old advice — strum where the neck meets the body — works on some ukuleles and drifts on others. Take Kala’s own published measurements for one model in three sizes: SizeScale lengthFretsHalfway point (12th fret)Where the fretboard ends**Soprano** (KA-15S)13⅝″12About 6.8″ from the nutAt the 12th — the midpoint exactly**Concert** (KA-15C)14⅞″18About 7.4″ from the nutSix frets past the midpoint**Tenor** (KA-15T)16.97″18About 8.5″ from the nutSix frets past the midpoint On a soprano the fretboard stops dead at the midpoint, so “the end of the fretboard” and “the sweet spot” are the same place and the advice is exact. On a concert or a tenor the board runs six frets past it and out over the body, so following the same instruction puts your hand noticeably closer to the bridge and brighter than it needs to be. Slide back up the neck an inch or so and the instrument thickens up. None of which makes one spot correct. It makes it a control you can reach for: forward for cut and clarity in a noisy room, back over the 12th for warmth when you are singing over it. ## The wrist does the work The motion is a rotation of the forearm and a hinge at the wrist, not a swing from the elbow or the shoulder. An elbow-driven strum is slow, heavy and impossible to keep even at eight slots a bar; a wrist-driven one can run all night. Three details, in the order they matter: - **Loose fist, index finger out.** The pad and nail of the index finger cross the strings — nail on the way down, pad on the way up. Some players rest the thumb against the index finger for support, which firms it up at the cost of a little speed. - **Do not dig.** Four nylon strings under low tension do not need force, and pressing into them is what produces the thumping, uneven sound most beginners are actually complaining about. - **Down and up should sound different, and that is fine.** The down stroke starts on the low G string and the up stroke starts on the high A, so they have different weights. Trying to make them identical is a waste of a month. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## The “chuck” is two different techniques The percussive click written as `×` gets called chnk, chuck or chunk, and the confusion is that there are two ways to make it and they live in different hands. **The fretting-hand mute** is the one to learn first. Relax the fingers already on the chord so they stay touching the strings but stop pressing them to the frets, and strum normally. Out comes a click with no pitch. The strumming hand does nothing new at all, which is why it works on the first attempt. **The strumming-hand chuck** is the harder one and the one that sounds like a record. On the down stroke the fleshy edge of the hand lands on the strings at the same moment the finger crosses them, so the chord is struck and killed in one motion. It has to be one motion; strumming and then damping gives you a chord with a full stop after it, which is a different noise. Both are worth having. Put one on beats two and four of the down-up drill and the ukulele suddenly has a drummer in it. ## What is worth buying Very little, and none of it is an instrument. Strumming is a rhythm problem, and rhythm problems are solved by a clock and a program to follow. № 1 · The program ### Ukulele Aerobics for All Levels — Chad Johnson - Hal Leonard, 88 pages, 9″ × 12″ - 40 weeks, one lick per day, seven days a week - Online audio access code for every workout in the book - Covers strumming, fingerstyle, legato and staccato, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, damping, vibrato and tremolo - Styles: pop, rock, folk, old-time, blues, jazz, reggae - Publisher’s list price $22.99 - Around $18 - The audio is the point — playing along is what fixes timing, and reading a pattern never will - A day is a few minutes, which is the only practice schedule anybody keeps - Damping and muting get proper coverage rather than a paragraph - It runs past beginner, so it does not become useless in March - A workout book, not a songbook — there are no complete songs in it - Standard notation and tab together; if you read neither, expect a slower start - The later weeks are genuinely advanced and will sit unused for a while Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UrCbGq) № 2 · The clock ### Korg MA-2 Digital Metronome - Tempo 30–252 bpm, accurate to ±0.02% - 0–9 beats per bar - **Quarter notes, eighths, triplets and sixteenths** as click subdivisions - Pendulum step, full step and tap tempo - 3.5 mm headphone jack; reference tone C4–B4 - 68 g, 3.94″ × 2.36″, about 400 hours on two AAA alkalines - Around $20 - Set it to eighth notes and there is a click under every slot in the patterns above — the notation stops being abstract - Korg redesigned the buzzer to be heard over the instrument, which is the one thing a quiet metronome fails at - Tap tempo means you can find the speed of a record you are trying to play along with - The headphone jack keeps the click out of a recording, and out of the room - Your phone will also make a clicking noise for free — what you are buying is a dial for subdivisions and a device that is not your phone - No tuner in it; that is the TM series, and costs more - The buzzer is a buzzer, not a woodblock. Nobody enjoys the sound Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gQM73w) № 3 · If it sounds harsh ### BoloPick Felt Ukulele Picks, 6-pack - Wool felt, 3 mm thick, standard 351 guitar-pick outline - Six picks, mixed colors; also sold in 8 and 12 - Made in the USA; washable and reusable - 4.6★ across more than 3,500 ratings - Around $7 - A guitar pick on nylon strings is loud and clicky; felt takes the click out and leaves the chord - Cheap enough that losing them does not matter, which is the actual failure mode of picks - Thick enough to hold properly, unlike the thin celluloid most people already own - Felt is not the only answer. Kala’s own branded pick is a **0.60 mm Dunlop Tortex**, which Kala describes as designed with ukulele and nylon strings in mind — so what matters is thin or soft, not felt specifically - You lose attack and note definition, which is the wrong trade for fingerpicking - Most ukulele playing is done with bare fingers, and a pick is optional forever Around $7 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gP7jH4) № 4 · If you play standing ### Eyeshot Double J-Hook Ukulele Strap - Two J-hooks — no strap button, no drilling - Adjustable 33.3″ to 52.1″, 1.57″ wide - Jacquard fabric with a doubled leather shoulder pad - Fits soprano through baritone - Around $16 - Standing without one, the fretting hand is holding the instrument up as well as fretting — and a fretting hand doing two jobs is what makes a strumming hand tense - The J-hooks clip to the soundhole, so nothing has to be fitted to the instrument - Long enough to sit properly on a tenor or baritone, which many uke straps are not - Sitting down with a soprano you do not need one at all - The hooks rest against the soundhole edge, so a high-gloss finish wants a check now and then - Fabric, not leather — it is a $16 strap and looks like one up close Around $16 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gQMr2e) WhatFixesPrice bandBuy it when**Ukulele Aerobics**Having patterns and no planAround $18Once the chord changes are clean**Korg MA-2**Speeding up, dragging, uneven barsAround $20Straight away — it is the first one**Felt picks**A hard, clicky attackAround $7Only if you have tried fingers and want more volume**Clip-on strap**A fretting hand doing two jobsAround $16The first time you stand up to play If the instrument itself is fighting you, that is a different page: our guide to [choosing a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) covers the sizes, and [the beginner instruments worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) covers the nut and saddle, which is what decides whether a cheap ukulele plays in tune. If it just sounds dull, it is probably the [strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/). There is more choice than one strap on our [ukulele strap guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/). ## Questions people actually ask ### How long before strumming stops sounding stiff? Days for the arm, weeks for the changes. An even down-up at a slow tempo is a single afternoon. What takes longer is keeping it even *while* the other hand moves to a new chord, and that is a chord-change problem wearing a strumming problem’s clothes. The fix is to keep strumming through the change even if the chord arrives late and sounds wrong — stopping the hand to get the fingers down is the habit that has to be broken. More on the shape of the first month in [is the ukulele easy to learn](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/). ### Fingers, thumb or a pick? Fingers, for almost everything. The index finger alone covers the whole repertoire above, and it is what nearly every ukulele player uses nearly all of the time. The thumb on its own is softer and slower and suits quiet down-strums behind a voice. A pick is for volume — playing outdoors, or with a guitar in the room — and it should be a soft one. ### Why does my up-strum sound weak? Usually because it is traveling too far. A down-stroke naturally crosses all four strings; an up-stroke only needs to catch the top two or three to do its job, and reaching all the way back across on every one makes the hand late for the next beat. Shorten it. It is meant to be lighter than the down. ### Do I have to learn to read strumming notation? No, and it is worth knowing what the symbols mean anyway because every songbook uses them. `D` is down and `U` is up. A dash is a slot where the hand keeps moving and misses the strings. An `×` is a damped, percussive strum. A capital letter, where the rest are lower case, means play that one harder. ### Should I use the same pattern for a whole song? To begin with, yes. One pattern held steady for three minutes sounds far better than three patterns applied nervously. Once it is automatic, the usual move is to strip back rather than add — all downs in a verse, the full pattern in a chorus — because the difference between the two is what an audience hears as dynamics. ### Is strumming different on a tenor or a baritone? The patterns are identical. What changes is where the sweet spot sits relative to the fretboard, as the table above shows, and how much string there is to cross — a tenor’s 16.97″ scale takes a slightly wider sweep than a soprano’s 13⅝″. A baritone is tuned D–G–B–E rather than G–C–E–A, which changes the chord shapes and nothing about the strumming hand. [Concert against tenor](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) goes into the sizes. ## The short version Keep the hand moving on all eight slots and skip the ones the pattern skips. Learn the island strum and one damped variation, and you have the ukulele repertoire. Strum over the end of the fretboard rather than the soundhole, from the wrist, without digging in. Then put a metronome on and do it every day for a month, which is the part nobody wants to hear and the only part that works. **Categories:** Ukulele --- ### [How Much Do Bagpipes Cost? $90 to Start, $1,200 to Play](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-bagpipes-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bagpipes/ "Bagpipes")› How Much Do Bagpipes Cost? $90 to Start, $1,200 to Play Nobody’s first purchase is a set of bagpipes. Every maker, every pipe band and every teaching institution starts a beginner on a practice chanter — a single reeded pipe with no bag and no drones, costing about $90 — and keeps them there for six months to a year. So the honest answer to what bagpipes cost is two numbers, and the small one comes first. The big one is around **$1,200**. That is a full set of Great Highland bagpipes in polypenco from a maker who actually builds them, once you have added the bag, the cover and the reeds that the quoted price leaves out. African blackwood roughly doubles it. The $130 sets are a different thing entirely, and the last section explains what. What you actually buy first### McCallum Extended Practice Chanter Six months to a year of piping happens on this before a bag is involved, and the extended length puts the finger holes at close to real pipe chanter spacing, so the muscle memory carries over instead of having to be rebuilt. Polypenco, made in Kilmarnock in the same factory as the pipe chanters it is preparing you for, with a tested Scottish reed in the box. Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xDlNRH) **The consumable:** Frazer Warnock practice chanter reeds, two for around $34 **The tutor:** *Hal Leonard Bagpipe Method*, around $15 **For a child of ten or under:** R.G. Hardie junior length, around $80 ## The whole ladder, in one table These are the rungs a piper climbs, priced from the published lists of makers who build the instruments rather than from what a search engine averages. The middle column is what most people are actually asking about. RungWhat it isCostHow long you are on it**Practice chanter**Polypenco, reed included$50–906–12 months, then forever as a practice toolChanter, reed and tutor bookThe complete first-year kit$105–140The whole of year oneBlackwood practice chanterThe same instrument in wood$130–250Optional, ever**Poly pipes, as quoted**Sticks and stocks only**from $800**—**Poly pipes, playing**Plus bag, cover, cords and reeds**$1,200–1,300**DecadesBlackwood pipes, playingPlain to combed and beaded$2,100–2,600GenerationsSilver mountedSame instrument, metal fittings+$3,300 and up— ## Year one costs about ninety dollars, and the lessons may cost nothing The makers say this themselves, which is unusual for an industry with a $2,000 product to sell. Dunbar Bagpipes heads its beginner range with the line “Every piper begins with a practice chanter, not a full set of pipes,” puts the transition at eight to twelve months, and names buying a full set straight away as “the most common mistake.” Its own chanter-and-tutor packages run $140 to $210. American pipe bands say the same and go further. Minnesota Pipes and Drums teaches free, sells practice chanters at cost — $73 — and states that “this initial investment is all you need until you’re ready for the bagpipes, usually within a year.” Nashville Pipes and Drums runs a beginner chanter class of sixteen to twenty weeks twice a year, taught by volunteers and free of cost, followed by roughly six months of intermediate chanter work; students are told it is time to buy pipes only toward the end of that second class. Neither band recommends starting a child much before ten. Set against that, formal tuition is the expensive part. The National Piping Centre in Glasgow publishes its 2026 rates: £45.50 for a fifty-minute one-to-one lesson, £38.50 for under-eighteens, £408 for a ten-lesson bundle. Its community piping clubs are £80 for eight forty-five-minute sessions. At one lesson a week, a year of formal teaching costs more than a blackwood set of pipes; through a band, the same year costs the price of a chanter. That is the single largest variable in what learning this instrument costs, and it is not the instrument. № 1 · The ninety dollars that covers year one ### McCallum Extended Length Practice Chanter - Extended length, close to pipe chanter finger spacing - Polypenco body - Tested Scottish reed included - Made in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire - Also sold in regular and junior lengths for a little less - ~$90 Chanters divide by length rather than by quality, and the choice is a real one. A regular chanter is cheaper and shorter; an extended chanter spaces the holes closer to a pipe chanter’s, so the hand you spend a year training is the hand you will need. If the plan ends in a set of pipes, that is worth the small premium. If the plan is to play a chanter in the evenings and nothing more, it is not. What separates $90 from $50 is mostly the reed. A practice chanter reed has to speak at low breath pressure, hold its pitch as it warms through a session, and stay balanced between the top hand and the bottom. A poor one goes flat and then chokes, and a beginner has no way to tell that from their own playing being wrong — which is a genuinely discouraging month to spend. This ships with a tested Scottish reed rather than whatever was in the crate. Polypenco rather than rosewood matters more than it sounds. This is a mouth-blown instrument that lives permanently damp, and polypenco will not swell, split at the top or move its bore over a winter. Every serious maker uses it for chanters at this price. **Pros**- Finger spacing transfers to the pipe chanter - Tested Scottish reed supplied, not an afterthought - Polypenco ignores the damp - Built by a maker whose pipe chanters win championships **Cons**- Roughly twice what a plain plastic chanter costs - Too long a stretch for a small hand — get the junior instead - No moisture trap, so it wants separating to dry after playing Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xDlNRH) ## Reeds are the running cost, and they are not optional extras A bagpipe has five reeds in it: one in the chanter and one in each of the three drones, plus the practice chanter reed on the bench. They are cane or moulded composite, they wear out, and they are the parts that turn a collection of turned wood into an instrument. Published prices from makers put them at: ReedPrice each or per setNotesPractice chanter reed$12–20Named makers around $18; generic multipacks less, and it showsPipe chanter reed$22–30Cane. Chosen to suit the player’s breath, not just the chanterCane drone reeds, set of threefrom about $20Traditional sound, but they move with humidityComposite drone reeds, set of three$65–135Stable, and what most bands now use The reason to put this in a costing rather than an accessories footnote is that makers sell pipes without them. On a Dunbar order form, “No Pipe Reed” and “No Drone Reeds” are both selectable options on a set of bagpipes. A quoted price is therefore not a price for something that makes a noise, and that fact runs right through the next section. № 2 · The one you will buy again ### Frazer Warnock Practice Chanter Reeds, two-pack with tube - Two cane practice chanter reeds - Reusable flip-top tube to keep them from drying and cracking - Made by Frazer Warnock - Works in any standard practice chanter - ~$34 for two A practice chanter reed is a strip of cane under constant moisture, and it does not last forever. It softens, goes flat, gets harder to start, and eventually stops speaking at the pressure a beginner can hold. Most people meet this in month four, decide they have stopped improving, and put the chanter in a cupboard. A spare reed in a drawer is the cheapest insurance in piping. At about $17 a reed this is what named makers charge; the six-for-nine-dollars synthetic packs are cheaper per unit and inconsistent from reed to reed, which is exactly the wrong quality in the part a beginner cannot diagnose. The tube matters more than it looks, because a reed left in a chanter overnight stays wet and a reed left loose in a bag gets stood on. **Pros**- A named reedmaker rather than an anonymous multipack - Two reeds, so the spare exists before you need it - Storage tube included - Priced at what makers charge for singles **Cons**- Cane, so it still needs drying and careful handling - Reed strength is not stated, so expect to break one in gently - Nothing here a good chanter did not already ship with once Around $34 for two [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zUWmwD) ## What $800 buys, and what it does not The cheapest full set of Great Highland bagpipes from a maker who builds them is around $800. Dunbar’s P1, its plainest polypenco model, is priced there, and the description of what the standard setup includes is precise: five stocks, three drones, a blowpipe and a poly pipe chanter. Sticks and stocks. That is a wooden skeleton. Everything that makes it playable is a separate line on the same order form, and the maker publishes what each costs: PartAdded costCan you skip it?Sticks, stocks, blowpipe, pipe chanter**$800**This is the quoted pricePipe bag, tied in and leak checked$290–450No. Nothing plays without itChanter reed$22–30NoDrone reeds$50–135No, unless you want a chanter with three silent polesBag cover$65Practically no — it protects the bag and holds the shapeSilk drone cords$45Yes. This one is decoration**Playing total****about $1,230** The bag is the item that surprises people, because it is a bag. A modern synthetic pipe bag with a zip and grommets is $240 to $330 on its own, a hide bag about the same, and a bag with a built-in moisture canister system around $400. Buying it fitted with the pipes is worth the few dollars it adds, since the maker ties it in and leak checks it — a job that is fiddly, and a leak you cannot find is the single most common reason a set of pipes sits unplayed. In African blackwood the same arithmetic starts from $1,650 for a plain antique-style set and $1,995 to $2,150 for a combed and beaded one, so a playing blackwood set lands between about $2,100 and $2,600. In the UK the ladder runs about £795 for plain polypenco to £1,395 for combed and beaded blackwood with amber or jade mounts, which is the same instrument at the same money once the exchange rate is done. № 3 · The line item that gets left off ### Selbie Drone Reeds, set of three - One bass and two tenor reeds - Composite imitation-cane body - Redesigned bass reed for steadier tone - Fits standard Highland drone stocks - ~$94 a set [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Three drones need three reeds, they are almost never included in a quoted price for a set of pipes, and they decide most of what a listener hears. Cane drone reeds cost about twenty dollars and sound wonderful when the weather agrees with them; composite reeds cost three to six times that and hold steady through a damp afternoon, which is why most pipe bands stopped using cane. At around $94 a set this sits at the same price as the equivalent from a Scottish maker’s own list, so there is no premium being paid for convenience. If you are pricing a used set of pipes, or costing what a $800 stick set will really run to, this is the number to put in the column. **Pros**- Stable in humidity in a way cane is not - Named maker, priced at parity with the makers’ own lists - Sold as a complete bass-and-two-tenors set **Cons**- Nothing a beginner on a practice chanter needs for a year - Roughly five times the price of a cane set - Drone reeds are a matter of taste, and pipers argue about them endlessly Around $94 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gAyYwN) ## Above $2,000, you are paying for decoration This is the part of the price ladder that is easiest to misread, and one maker’s order form settles it. On Dunbar’s silver-mounted model, the option to have the projecting mounts in plain silver rather than imitation ivory is **+$3,300**. A full silver bulb mouthpiece is +$525. A silver sole on the chanter is +$500. Meanwhile, upgrading the pipe chanter itself — the part that produces every note the instrument plays — from polypenco to African blackwood is +$140. Wallace Bagpipes makes the same point by accident. Its catalog runs eight specifications, from Standard 1 with plain-turned blackwood and nickel ferrules up to Classic 5 with combed and beaded wood and engraved nickel throughout. Every rung adds mounts, ferrules, ring caps, engraving or slides. Every rung, from the cheapest to the dearest, ships with the same poly pipe chanter. That is not a criticism of the expensive sets. Combing and beading is hand work, silver is silver, and a set of pipes is an heirloom that gets handed down. But the money above about $2,000 buys craftsmanship and appearance, not tone, and a piper who wants to sound better should spend $140 on the chanter and $135 on drone reeds before spending $3,300 on metal. ## Why the base price is what it is Three things, none of them mysterious. The wood is African blackwood, which is dense, slow-growing, expensive, and needs seasoning before it can be cut — Wallace describes its stock as moisture free, matured and fully prepared before machining, which is a supply chain measured in years rather than weeks. The bores have to be right to a few thousandths of an inch across five separate turned pieces that must agree with each other acoustically. And the market is tiny, so there is no factory anywhere making these by the ten thousand. Polypenco removes the first of those and none of the others, which is why a poly set costs roughly half a blackwood one and not a tenth. It is also, on its own terms, the better material for a beginner: it does not split, does not swell, does not care about the trunk of a car in February, and needs no playing-in regime. A poly set is not a compromise instrument. Several grade one bands compete on them. ## The hundred-dollar bagpipes Search for bagpipes and the first two pages are full sets at $104 to $349, in rosewood, with tartan covers, silver-look mounts and a tutor book thrown in. They are real objects and they arrive. The question is what they are, and three things answer it. **The wood is wrong.** Every maker named above builds in African blackwood or polypenco. Rosewood is softer, more open-grained and moves with moisture, and no maker of competition instruments uses it for drones. It is the material of decorative pipes. **The ratings say so.** Full sets in that price band cluster between 2.7 and 3.2 stars out of five. That is an unusual pattern — cheap instruments in other families rate perfectly respectably — and it happens because a bagpipe has to be airtight and in tune with itself before it will make any sound at all, so the failure is total rather than gradual. **No maker who builds pipes sells a set there.** McCallum lists practice chanters and nothing else. Wallace and Dunbar list nothing at all. The only instrument these makers put in front of a beginner is the chanter, which is exactly what they say a beginner should buy. If the goal is a wall ornament or a costume prop, a $130 set is a $130 set and no harm done. If the goal is to play, the money is better spent on a $90 chanter and a year of free band lessons, and the pipes bought properly at the end of it. ## Used pipes: cheaper than new, but not by as much as you think Good Highland pipes last generations, so the used market is genuine and worth using. It is not, however, a bargain basement. Used sets from named Scottish makers list around £1,300 — more than a new polypenco set costs. Blackwood does not depreciate the way a laminated guitar does. A well-kept old set is a working instrument rather than a worn-out one, and the drones are the part that ages least. What makes used pipes expensive is the refurbishment. Makers offering restoration list the same replacement items every time: bag, cover, cords, drone reeds and chanter reed. Price those from the tables above and it is $400 to $650 in parts before anyone charges for labor, and it applies whether the pipes cost you $200 at an estate sale or $1,300 for a well-regarded used set. Add rehemping the joints and matching a chipped mount, and neither of the two makers offering restoration publishes a labor rate at all — both quote per job after inspection. So the used-pipes rule is straightforward. Never buy a set you or someone you trust has not had in their hands, budget several hundred dollars of parts on top of whatever you pay, and check the wood for warping and cracks — run a loose ring of fingers along each drone section and feel for anything that has gone oval rather than round. A crack can be repaired; a warp usually means the section gets replaced. ## Renting, borrowing and rent-to-buy Renting bagpipes commercially is rare, and for a sound reason: the bag is fitted to the player and the whole instrument spends its life full of the previous owner’s breath. What exists instead is loan and rent-to-buy through institutions. The National Piping Centre runs an access scheme for its community piping clubs offering subsidised or free places, travel subsidies and instrument loan or rent-to-buy, and American pipe bands frequently have a spare set that a promising learner is handed for as long as they need it. The practical version of this is that the band route removes almost every cost here except the chanter. Free lessons, a loaned set when you are ready, and people who will tell you which reed to try before you have bought four wrong ones. ## The fifteen dollars that makes the ninety worth spending Bagpipe music is not notated like other music. The melody notes are the easy part; the technique is in the gracenotes, doublings, grips, taorluaths and birls written above them, and those are impossible to work out from a recording because they happen too fast to hear individually. A tutor book is not optional on this instrument in the way it is on a guitar. № 4 · The cheapest thing on the list ### Hal Leonard Bagpipe Method - By Ron Bowen and Sarajane Trier - Written for the Great Highland bagpipe - Notation, technique, gracenoting and embellishments in order - Diagrams, photographs and practice tips - Online audio and video access code included - ~$15 It starts where a beginner starts — on the practice chanter, with the scale — and introduces the embellishments in the order the Scottish syllabus introduces them, which is not an accident and is the reason to prefer a modern method to a hundred-year-old tutor as a first book. The access code matters more than it sounds: a doubling written on a page tells you which notes, and only a recording tells you how fast. Against a $90 chanter and possibly $400 of lessons, fifteen dollars for the book that tells you what to do with them is the least contested purchase a piper makes. **Pros**- Written for beginners on the instrument, not adapted from another one - Audio and video included, which fixes the timing problem - Cheaper than a single lesson anywhere **Cons**- A method, not a repertoire book — you will want tunes soon after - No substitute for somebody watching your fingers Around $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hdW3Vh) ## So what should you actually spend? Spend about **$140** and stop there: an extended practice chanter, a spare reed and a method book. Find a pipe band, because in the United States they will very likely teach you for nothing, and give it a year. If you are still playing at the end of that year, a polypenco set built by a maker who tests what leaves the workshop costs about $1,200 complete, and there is no meaningful reason for a first set of pipes to cost more than that. The one thing not to do is buy the instrument you are aiming at before you can play the one you are on. A set of pipes bought in month one sits in its box for the year you spend on a chanter, and the people who abandon piping almost always abandon it in that year. **Year one:** chanter, spare reed, tutor book — around $140 **Year two, if you are still playing:** poly set, complete — around $1,200 **The thing that costs most:** lessons, unless a band gives them to you ## More on bagpipes - [Best bagpipes for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-bagpipes-for-beginners/) — what a first full set involves - [How long does it take to learn the bagpipes?](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-bagpipes/) — Scotland publishes the hours - [Types of bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-bagpipes/) — the four decisions that separate one from another - [Why are bagpipes played at funerals?](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bagpipes-played-at-funerals/) - [Woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) — the family the chanter belongs to **Categories:** Bagpipes --- ### [Types of Bagpipes: What Separates Them, and Which One to Learn](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-bagpipes/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bagpipes/ "Bagpipes")› Types of Bagpipes: What Separates Them, and Which One to Learn Every bagpipe ever built is the same four things: a bag, a melody pipe called the chanter, one or more drones that hold a single note, and something to fill the bag with air. The Bagpipe Society, which has been documenting the instrument since 1986, counts over a hundred distinct types still played. What separates them is not nationality. It is four mechanical decisions, and those decisions are what determine whether the instrument is loud or quiet, whether it plays nine notes or two octaves, and whether you can practice it in a flat. Where everybody starts### McCallum Extended Practice Chanter Nobody’s first bagpipe is a bagpipe. Highland pipers spend six months to a year on a practice chanter first, and the fingering it teaches carries straight over to Scottish smallpipes and Border pipes as well. Made in Scotland from polypenco, which does not split or swell, and supplied with a tested reed — which on this instrument is most of what you are paying for. Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45Xdxjk) **With moisture control:** R.G. Hardie Twist Trap, extended length, around $90 **For a child of ten or under:** R.G. Hardie junior length, around $80 **The tutor to go with it:** *Hal Leonard Bagpipe Method*, around $15 ## The four things that separate one bagpipe from another ### Mouth or bellows The older design blows into the bag through a blowpipe. The newer one straps a bellows under the right arm and pumps. This is the single most consequential difference on the list, and it is not mainly about effort. Breath is wet. A mouth-blown reed lives in a permanently damp instrument, so it has to be cut thick enough to survive that, and a thick reed needs pressure to sound. A bellows sends dry air, which lets the maker pare the cane much thinner — Na Píobairí Uilleann, the Irish pipers’ association, describe the result as a mellower and considerably wider response. Dry air is why the bellows-blown pipes can be soft, expressive and played indoors, and why the mouth-blown Highland pipe cannot. ### Open chanter or closed A Highland chanter is open at the bottom and never stops sounding. You cannot play a rest, so every articulation has to be made with grace notes flicked between the melody notes — the entire ornamentation system exists because silence is unavailable. A Northumbrian chanter is sealed at the bottom and played with only one hole uncovered at a time, so it stops dead between notes and the music is completely staccato. The uilleann chanter is the clever one: it is open, but the player rests its end on the thigh, so it can be either. That is the whole reason the Irish pipes can do things no other bagpipe can. ### Conical bore or cylindrical A chanter bored as a cone gets louder and brighter as it widens, which is where the Highland pipe’s carrying edge comes from. A cylindrical bore of even width sounds softer and rounder. Scottish smallpipes are cylindrical and Border pipes are conical, which is why two instruments that finger identically and are both pitched in A do not sound remotely alike. ### How many notes Most bagpipes have nine notes or fewer, one octave and a bit, with no accidentals and no way to change key. The uilleann pipes have two full octaves and are chromatic. The French musette de cour was fully chromatic over an octave and a half. Northumbrian pipes get their extra notes from keys on the chanter rather than from holes. ## The five with living traditions you can join These are the bagpipes with teachers, tutor books, competitions and makers taking orders. Everything else on earth is played by fewer people than live on one street. AirChanterNotesVolumeFingering**Great Highland**MouthOpen, conical9Outdoors onlyHighland**Scottish smallpipes**Usually bellowsOpen, cylindrical9Quiet, indoorHighland**Border pipes**BellowsOpen, conical9Loud but sociableHighland**Northumbrian smallpipes**BellowsClosed, keyedKeys extend itVery quietClosed, its own**Uilleann**BellowsOpen or closed at willTwo octavesModerateIts own ### Great Highland bagpipe Three drones over the left shoulder, a blowpipe, an open conical chanter, and nine notes running from low G to high A in a mixolydian scale with a flattened seventh. It is the instrument everyone pictures, and it spread through the world in the nineteenth century on the back of the British Army rather than by anyone choosing it. It does not play in tune with anything else, and the gap is widening. The pipe’s low A has always sat above concert pitch, but a chanter recorded in 1885 measured 441 Hz, by the middle of the twentieth century the figure was around 460, and modern chanters tune between 476 and 486 Hz — drifting past concert B flat and still climbing. The practical consequence is that a Highland pipe plays with other Highland pipes and with drums, and with almost nothing else. It is also a high-pressure instrument requiring a genuinely stiff blow, which is worth knowing before you assume that nine notes makes it the easy one. ### Scottish smallpipes A modern instrument, built in the 1980s from eighteenth-century examples surviving in museums. Cylindrical bore, drones in a single stock lying across the chest, and the same nine-note scale and the same fingering as the Highland pipe at a fraction of the volume. They come in A or D, the keys fiddlers and guitarists actually use, which is the point of them — this is a bagpipe you can take to a session. Most are bellows-blown, though not all: McCallum’s are mouth-blown, and they build a four-drone combination set that covers both keys. Some makers add a second thumb hole so the chanter can play in a minor mode as well. ### Border pipes, also called Lowland pipes Played across the Scottish Lowlands and the north of England from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, gone for most of the twentieth, and now back. Bellows-blown, pitched in A, three drones in a common stock across the chest, nine notes, Highland fingering. The conical bore keeps the Highland pipe’s skirl while the bellows and the smaller reed bring the volume down far enough to play alongside other acoustic instruments. Its repertoire has a documented source most traditions would envy: the William Dixon manuscript of 1733, the earliest surviving collection of bagpipe tunes in Britain. Border pipes and Scottish smallpipes are not two sizes of one instrument. They share a key, a scale and a fingering system, and the bore does the rest: the smallpipe’s cylinder is lilting and soft, the Border pipe’s cone still carries across a field. ### Northumbrian smallpipes The odd one out among British bagpipes, and the only one whose chanter is closed at the far end. It probably descends from the French musette de cour rather than from anything Scottish. Bellows-blown, up to four drones across the chest, and a row of keys along the chanter that add notes above and below the natural scale and supply the accidentals. Because only one hole is uncovered at a time, the instrument stops between notes, and the sound is crisp and detached in a way no other bagpipe manages. It is quiet enough to play in a room with someone reading in it. ### Uilleann pipes Pronounced *ill-un*. The Irish pipes emerged in the first half of the eighteenth century and reached their modern form over the following fifty or sixty years, developing out of the pastoral or union pipes played across Britain at the time. The chanter has a conical bore, ten note holes with the top one under the thumb, and a double reed — the nearest orchestral instrument to it in design and sound is the oboe. It plays two full octaves, and a third has been demonstrated. The player sits, rests the open end of the chanter on the right thigh, and lifts it or presses it down to switch between the sustained style of an open chanter and the staccato of a closed one. Then there are the regulators. A full set has three of them lying across the lap: keyed pipes, silent until the player’s right wrist presses a key, at which point they sound chords under the melody. One player, playing accompaniment to themselves. Nothing else in the bagpipe family does this, and it is the reason the uilleann pipes take as long as they do. ## The other hundred Bagpipes are not a Celtic instrument that spread. They are a European and West Asian instrument that the Scots happened to export. The Bagpipe Society’s country index runs from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The **Bulgarian gaida** keeps the most striking construction of any of them. The bag is an entire goat, peeled off in one piece rather than cut, with the chanter tied into the neck, the blowpipe and drone into the two forelegs, and the rear end tied off. The hide is never tanned — it is turned fur-inwards so the wool absorbs the moisture, and dressed occasionally on the outside with lanolin. The **Swedish säckpipa** is mouth-blown with a single free-standing drone at A and single reeds throughout. Its chanter has six finger holes and a thumb hole giving an A minor scale, and each hole sits in a deep scooped depression, so a finger that lands anywhere near the hole falls into it. In tone it is closer to a harmonica than to anything Scottish. The **musette de cour** was the aristocrat’s bagpipe, refined in France from the end of the sixteenth century, largely by the Hotteterre family, who added a second chanter to extend its range. Its drone is a short cylinder containing four or more reeds and a set of sliders that select which notes sound. Part of the reason it was made bellows-blown was social: it was considered unseemly for a woman to play any instrument she had to put in her mouth. Beyond those, the **gaita** of Galicia and Asturias remains a mainstream popular instrument in northern Spain; Hungary’s **duda** carries a drone running parallel to the chanter in the same piece of wood; and the Estonian **torupill**, the Majorcan **xeremias**, the Greek **tsambouna** and the Italian **zampogna** are all still made and played. Most were revived in the last fifty years by a handful of people each. ## Which one can you actually learn? The honest answer has less to do with the instruments than with supply. The Highland pipe is the one with infrastructure. There are pipe bands in most large towns in the English-speaking world, teachers attached to them, a tutor book industry, and a graded body of music. You can start tonight for the price of a chanter. The uilleann pipes are at the other extreme, and the numbers are worth stating plainly. Na Píobairí Uilleann’s directory of pipe makers lists around fifty workshops in the entire world, fifteen of them in Ireland and the rest scattered from Vermont to Queensland. Most are one person. There is an old joke among pipers that the instrument takes twenty-one years to master, of which the first seven are spent saving up for a set — which is a joke about the waiting list. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Border pipes, Scottish smallpipes and Northumbrian pipes sit in between: real makers, real teachers, small numbers, and nothing you will find in a shop by accident. The practical consequence is a piece of luck. A Highland practice chanter teaches the fingering used by the Highland pipe, the Border pipes *and* the Scottish smallpipes — three of the five, on one $90 instrument. It teaches you nothing about the uilleann pipes, which have a fingering system of their own, or the Northumbrian, which uncovers one hole at a time. So if the Scottish family is where you are heading, the first purchase is settled and it is the same purchase either way. ## What to buy first A practice chanter is a chanter with a mouthpiece and no bag and no drones. It uses a smaller, softer reed, so it is quiet and takes almost no air, and it exists so you can learn the fingering and the grace notes without also fighting the bag. Experienced pipers keep one for learning new tunes. Two things decide which one to get. The first is material. Polypenco, an acetal plastic, does not absorb moisture, swell or crack, and every serious maker uses it for practice chanters; R.G. Hardie line the inside of their blackwood models with plastic for exactly that reason, because the top of a wooden chanter splits. The cheap rosewood chanters have no such protection and are the ones buyers rate around three stars while the Scottish-made plastic ones sit above four and a half. The second is length. Makers offer three: junior, standard and long, sometimes called extended. R.G. Hardie puts the junior at children aged ten and under. The long one matches the profile of a real pipe chanter, so the hole spacing your fingers learn is the spacing they will meet on the pipes — which is why it is the one to buy if the plan is to end up on a full set. № 1 · The one to buy ### McCallum Extended Length Practice Chanter - Extended length, matching pipe chanter spacing - Polypenco body - Scottish reed included and tested - Made in Kilmarnock, Scotland - Also sold in standard and junior lengths - ~$90 McCallum builds in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and makes the pipe chanters that championship-winning bands compete on as well as the practice ones — which says more about the tolerances than any description of a practice chanter can. The extended chanter is the adult default: the tube is close to the length of the pipe chanter you are working toward, so when you eventually pick up a full set your hands already know where the holes are. The reed is the part that matters and it is the part cheap chanters skimp on. A practice chanter reed has to speak at low pressure, hold its pitch as it warms and stay balanced from bottom hand to top, and there is nothing a beginner can do to fix one that will not. It ships with a tested Scottish reed rather than whatever was in the box. Polypenco is the right material here rather than the cheap one. It ignores the damp that a mouth-blown instrument lives in permanently, so it will not swell, crack at the top or shift its bore over a winter of practice. **Pros**- Finger spacing matches a real pipe chanter - Reed supplied is tested rather than whatever was in the box - Polypenco will not split or swell in a wet instrument - From a maker whose pipe chanters win world championships **Cons**- Roughly six times what a rosewood chanter costs - The extended length is a stretch for small hands — get the junior instead - No moisture trap, so it wants separating to dry after playing Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45Xdxjk) № 2 · If damp reeds are the problem ### R.G. Hardie Extended Length Practice Chanter, Twist Trap - Extended length - Twist Trap moisture trap in the top joint - Delrin / polypenco body - Counter-sunk finger holes - Reed included - Made in Glasgow, Scotland - ~$90 The same money as the McCallum, from a Glasgow workshop founded in a garden shed in 1950 and now run by a former Pipe Sergeant of Field Marshal Montgomery. One design difference is worth understanding. The Twist Trap is a moisture trap built into the top of the chanter and it is R.G. Hardie’s own — nobody else fits one. Condensation collects there instead of running down onto the reed. Whether that matters depends on you. Some players flood a reed in twenty minutes and some never do, and it is not something you can predict before you start. A soaked reed goes flat, then sharp, then stops, and a beginner has no way to tell that from their own playing being wrong — which is the actual case for the trap. The finger holes are counter-sunk, slightly dished, so the fingertip finds the edge without looking. On an instrument where you are trying to build muscle memory rather than aim, that is more useful than it sounds. **Pros**- Moisture trap keeps the reed dry through a long session - Counter-sunk holes make the hand position easier to learn - Same price as the plain Scottish-made chanters - Made in Glasgow by a firm that has been building pipes since 1950 **Cons**- The trap is another part to unscrew and empty - If you are not a player who floods reeds, you are paying for a part you will never need - Same stretch as any extended chanter for a small hand Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cfABNS) № 3 · For a child ### R.G. Hardie Junior Length Practice Chanter, Twist Trap - Junior length, closer hole spacing - Twist Trap moisture trap - Delrin / polypenco body - Reed included - Made in Glasgow, Scotland - ~$80 R.G. Hardie specifies the junior length for children aged ten and under, and the reason is simply reach: the holes are closer together, so a small hand can seal all of them without the fingers splaying. A child on an adult chanter learns to compensate, and the compensation has to be unlearned later. It is the same body material, the same moisture trap and the same reed quality as the adult chanter, and it costs about ten dollars less. The only thing being given up is that the spacing does not match a full-size pipe chanter — which is irrelevant for several years, and by the time it matters the child has grown into a standard one anyway. **Pros**- Hole spacing a small hand can actually cover - Same build and reed as the adult chanters - Cheaper than the full-length version **Cons**- Will be outgrown, so it is a bridge rather than a purchase for life - Spacing does not prepare the hand for a pipe chanter - Still $80 for a child who may last three weeks Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wR7qIo) ### And a book Bagpipe music is not written like other music. The grace notes are the technique, they are notated in a shorthand of their own, and no amount of general musical literacy tells you what a taorluath is. A tutor is not optional in the way it is on a guitar. The [Hal Leonard Bagpipe Method](https://amzn.to/4wOTA9j) by Ron Bowen and Sarajane Trier is written specifically for people starting on the Great Highland bagpipe and costs around $15. It covers the notation, the grace-noting and the embellishments in order, with diagrams and photographs, and the current edition includes an access code for the recorded examples and video demonstrations online — which for ornaments is worth more than the printed page, because you cannot tell from a diagram how fast a doubling is supposed to be. For the Irish side, H. J. Clarke’s [*The New Approach to Uilleann Piping*](https://amzn.to/4gVhxXQ) is the Ossian tutor, around $27 with a CD, and it takes an absolute beginner through to the regulators. Read it before you commit to the instrument rather than after: it is the cheapest way to find out what those twenty-one years are actually made of. ## Common questions ### Which type of bagpipe is easiest to play? Fewest notes and physically easiest are two different questions, and the Highland pipe wins the first and loses the second. Nine notes is as simple as a scale gets, but the Highland pipe is a high-pressure instrument that needs a stiff, sustained blow, and getting a steady tone out of one is a physical skill that takes months. A bellows-blown smallpipe removes the blowing from the problem entirely and plays on a fraction of the pressure. In practice the deciding factor is not the instrument. It is whether there is anyone within driving distance who plays one, and for most people that answer is Highland. ### What is the difference between Irish and Scottish bagpipes? The Irish uilleann pipes are bellows-blown, sit on the lap, play two chromatic octaves, and carry three keyed regulators that let the player accompany themselves. The Scottish Great Highland pipe is mouth-blown, played standing, has nine notes and no accidentals, and is loud enough to be an outdoor instrument. They are about as different as two bagpipes can be, and Scotland also has two quieter bellows-blown pipes of its own. ### How many types of bagpipe are there? Over a hundred still played, by the Bagpipe Society’s count, spread across Europe, North Africa and West Asia. The number depends on where you draw the line between a distinct instrument and a regional variant — central France alone has half a dozen names for closely related pipes. ### Do I have to start on a practice chanter? For the Highland pipes, yes, and every teacher will insist on it. The bag, the drones and the chanter are three problems, and the chanter is the one carrying the music. Six months to a year is the usual stretch before a first set of pipes, and the chanter stays in the case afterward for learning new tunes. ### Are bagpipes a woodwind instrument? Yes. The chanter is a reed pipe — a double reed on the Highland and uilleann chanters, a single reed on the drones and on some Continental pipes — and the bag is only an air reservoir. Na Píobairí Uilleann describe the uilleann chanter as a woodwind whose nearest orchestral relative is the oboe. ## Related reading - [Best bagpipes for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-bagpipes-for-beginners/) — what a first full set involves - [How much do bagpipes cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-bagpipes-cost/) — from a chanter to a competition set - [How long does it take to learn the bagpipes?](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-bagpipes/) — chanter first, then the bag - [Why are bagpipes played at funerals?](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bagpipes-played-at-funerals/) — where the Highland pipe’s association with mourning comes from - [Woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) — the family the chanter belongs to **Categories:** Bagpipes --- ### [How Long Does It Take to Learn the Bagpipes? Scotland Publishes the Hours](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-bagpipes/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bagpipes/ "Bagpipes")› How Long Does It Take to Learn the Bagpipes? Scotland Publishes the Hours Six months to a year on a practice chanter before you touch a bag, and roughly two to three years before you are a competent solo piper. That is the answer everybody gives, and it is right — but it is usually offered as a shrug. It does not have to be. Scotland’s national qualification framework grades piping the way it grades welding or accountancy, and it publishes the number of learning hours each grade takes. The first two levels are on a practice chanter and are 40 hours each. The third is the first one played on actual bagpipes, and it is 80. So the framework’s own arithmetic says 80 hours of chanter work to get through the beginner grades, and another 80 on the pipes after that — which, at half an hour a day, lands almost exactly on the six-months-then-six-months figure the pipers were giving you all along. What that first 80 hours happens on### McCallum Extended Practice Chanter The chanter is not a stepping stone you discard. It is where every beginner grade is examined, and it is still the assessed instrument for exercises and sight-reading three grades later, once you are playing pipes. Buying a good one is about ten cents an hour over the time you will actually spend on it. Made in Kilmarnock from polypenco, in the same factory as the pipe chanters it is preparing you for. Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cYEpTU) **The tutor:** *Hal Leonard Bagpipe Method*, around $15 **The thing nobody buys:** Korg MA-2 metronome, around $20 **For a child of ten or under:** R.G. Hardie junior chanter, around $80 ## The timeline, in hours somebody actually counted The Piping and Drumming Qualifications Board runs Scotland’s piping certificates through the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Every grade is a unit with a code, a syllabus and a stated number of learning hours, and the unit specifications are public. The performance units run like this. LevelPlayed onPerformance unitTheory unitWhat is new**SCQF 2**Practice chanter40 hours40 hoursScale, gracenotes, strikes, doublings, throw on D. Two tunes from memory**SCQF 3**Practice chanter40 hours40 hoursGrips, birls, taorluaths, tachums. Compound time**SCQF 4****Bagpipes**80 hours40 hoursSlow air, two marches, strathspey and reel, on the pipes**SCQF 5**Bagpipes80 hours40 hoursSight-reading, tuning drones and chanter, marching**SCQF 6**Bagpipes80 hours40 hoursPiobaireachd**SCQF 7–8**Bagpipes80 hours each40 hours eachAdvanced repertoire. Level 8 leads to a music degree These are notional learning hours rather than practice hours. The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework defines a credit point as ten hours of learning time and says it “covers everything you have to do to achieve a qualification, including assessment” — so lessons, home practice and the exam itself all come out of the same budget. That is the honest way to read the table, and it still gives you a real number to divide. Half an hour a day, six days a week, is three hours a week. Level 2 lands at about three months, Level 3 at six, so you are picking up a bag somewhere around the half-year mark. Two levels further — sight-reading, tuning your own drones, marching in time while doing both — is another year at the same rate. Fifteen minutes a day doubles all of it. ## Why the first six months are on a chanter and not on pipes The usual explanation is that the pipes are too loud for a house, which is true and is not the reason. The syllabus gives the real one in a single word. At Level 2 each tune is marked against five criteria: rhythm, tempo, technique, melody and musical expression, and mistakes. At Level 4, the first level played on bagpipes, there are six. The one that has been added is **blowing**. That is the whole difficulty of this instrument in one extra row. Everything you learned on the chanter still has to be right, and now it has to stay right while you keep a bag at constant pressure with an arm and a lung working against each other. A bagpipe has no volume control and no way to stop a note, so any wobble in the pressure is audible as the pitch moving. Learning the fingers and learning the bag at the same time means doing neither, which is why the qualification framework spends two whole grades on the fingers before it will let the bag into the room. The other half of it is the embellishments. Highland piping has no dynamics and no rests — you cannot get louder and you cannot stop — so every note is separated from the next by a grace note, a doubling, a grip, a birl or a taorluath. Those are the technique, not decoration on top of it. Level 2 alone asks for the scale, gracenotes into F, C and D, GDE groupings, all the strikes, thumb gracenotes, the throw on D and seven doublings. That list is why a tutor book is not optional here in the way it is on a guitar. ## The chanter never leaves This is the part most timelines get wrong, and it changes what you should buy. A practice chanter is described everywhere as the thing you use until you get pipes. It is not. At Level 4 — a bagpipe grade — the first of three study areas is still exercises played on the practice chanter. At Level 5, the sight-reading test says outright that you must play the unseen piece on the practice chanter. At Level 6 the piobaireachd movements are examined on it too. The guidance for tutors at Levels 4 through 7 describes the aim as proficiency “on the Practice Chanter and Bagpipes”, in that order, every time. So a chanter bought in your first week is still the instrument you are being examined on four grades later, and it is the one you will use for the rest of your life to learn a new tune indoors without assembling a set of pipes. Twenty-five dollars against ninety looks like a saving on something temporary. It is not something temporary. № 1 · The instrument the first year happens on ### McCallum Extended Length Practice Chanter - Extended length, matching pipe chanter finger spacing - Polypenco body - Tested Scottish reed included - Made in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire - Also sold in regular and junior lengths for a little less - ~$90 The extended length is the one to buy if the plan is to end up on a full set, because the hole spacing is close to a real pipe chanter’s. The muscle memory you spend eighty hours building transfers instead of having to be rebuilt, and given how much of the syllabus is fingers, that is worth more here than on almost any other instrument. The reed is where cheap chanters save their money and it is the part a beginner cannot fix. A practice chanter reed has to speak at low pressure, hold pitch as it warms up over a session and stay balanced between the top hand and the bottom. A bad one goes flat and then stops, and a learner has no way to tell that from their own playing being wrong — which is a genuinely discouraging thing to spend a month on. This one ships with a tested Scottish reed rather than whatever was in the box. Polypenco rather than rosewood, for a mouth-blown instrument that lives permanently damp. It will not swell, split at the top or move its bore over a winter. **Pros**- Finger spacing carries over to the pipe chanter - Tested Scottish reed supplied - Polypenco ignores the damp - Built in the same factory as the pipe chanter you are working toward **Cons**- Roughly three times what a generic rosewood chanter costs - Too long a stretch for a small hand - No moisture trap, so it wants separating to dry after playing Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cYEpTU) R.G. Hardie, building in Glasgow since 1950, publishes the size rule plainly: junior length “is designed for children aged 10 years and younger, whereas a standard or long chanter can be played by all ages”. A child put on an adult chanter learns to splay their fingers to reach, and the compensation has to be unlearned later. Their junior chanter is the same body, reed and moisture trap as the adult version, about ten dollars cheaper. № 2 · If the piper is ten or under ### R.G. Hardie Junior Length Practice Chanter - Junior length, specified by the maker for ages 10 and under - Twist Trap moisture control - Polypenco body, reed included - Made in Glasgow - ~$80 Hole spacing a child can actually seal without their fingers splaying, which matters more in the first eighty hours than anything else about a chanter. The Twist Trap catches the moisture that floods a reed over a long session — the failure a beginner is least equipped to diagnose, because a drowned reed sounds like bad playing. It will be outgrown, and the spacing does not prepare the hand for a pipe chanter. Both are fine: by the time a full set is in the picture the child has grown into a standard length anyway, and the alternative is a first year spent fighting the instrument’s dimensions. **Pros**- Sized by the maker for the age it is meant for - Moisture trap removes the most confusing beginner failure - Same build and reed quality as the adult chanters [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- A bridge rather than a purchase for life - Spacing does not match a pipe chanter - Still eighty dollars for a child who may last a month Around $80 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/46Mn7pr) ## Can you teach yourself the bagpipes? Formally, yes, and the qualification board says so: the unit specifications note the material can be delivered “using computer-based distance learning programmes for personal study”, and provide sample papers “for candidates who wish to take the assessments direct”. You do not need a school to sit the exams. Practically, the same documents keep pointing at a teacher. Every unit tells the learner to ask their tutor. Every practical component has to be observed in person by an assessor. And the one criterion you cannot self-mark is the one that matters most early: gracenotes are the difference between a tune and a smear, and they are too fast to hear yourself do badly. A weekly lesson for the first six months costs less than the chanter does and is the single biggest lever on the timeline in this article. Whichever way you go, the syllabus is built on tutor books — it names the College of Piping and National Piping Centre books and the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association manuals as the supporting material behind every grade. Bagpipe notation is not general music notation. The embellishments are written in a shorthand of their own, and no amount of reading music tells you what a taorluath looks like on the page or how fast a doubling is meant to be. № 3 · The book for the first two levels ### Hal Leonard Bagpipe Method - Ron Bowen and Sarajane Trier - Notation, technique, grace-noting and embellishments in order - Diagrams, photographs and practice tips - Audio and video access code included - ~$15 The topics it covers — bagpipe notation, technique, grace-noting, embellishments — are the Level 2 and Level 3 syllabus almost item for item, which is the useful test to apply to a beginner method rather than page count. It is built for someone working alone or alongside a teacher, and it works either way. The audio access is the part worth having. Ornaments are the thing a diagram cannot teach: a doubling drawn on the page tells you the notes and nothing about the speed, and speed is the entire difference between a doubling and a mistake. Hearing one played correctly forty times is worth more than any written description of it. **Pros**- Covers the beginner-grade requirements in the order they are examined - Recorded examples for ornaments, which is where print fails - Cheapest thing in this article by a factor of six **Cons**- A method, not a repertoire book — you will want tunes soon after - No substitute for someone watching your fingers Around $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4A0w9Ni) ## The twenty dollars that shortens the timeline most Nobody buys a metronome for the bagpipes. The syllabus assumes you have one from the first day. One of Level 2’s three study areas is nothing but rhythm: you tap or clap four monotone exercises chosen by the examiner, with accurate note values and accurate rests, in 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. Level 3 adds compound time, Level 4 adds 6/8 and 9/8, and Level 5 asks for the same thing in six time signatures. Separately, **tempo is one of the five criteria every tune is marked against**, at every level, from the very first exam. This matters more on a bagpipe than on most instruments for the same reason blowing does. There are no rests and no dynamics, so rhythm carries the entire musical shape of a tune — a 2/4 march that drifts in tempo has nothing else to fall back on. And if you ever join a pipe band, playing in time with everyone else is the whole job. № 4 · The accessory the syllabus assumes you own ### Korg MA-2 Digital Metronome - 30–252 bpm, tap tempo - Beat range 0–9, with triplet and sixteenth subdivisions - Two AAA cells, about 400 hours on alkalines - 100 × 60 × 16 mm, 68 g - ~$20 Korg’s own specification gives a beat range of 0 to 9 and triplet subdivisions, which is what the compound-time work at Levels 3 and 4 needs — a 6/8 or 9/8 march divides in threes, and a metronome that only clicks quarter notes is no help with either. Tap tempo is the feature that gets used most. It lets you take the speed of a recording, or of the tune as your tutor played it, and set the metronome to it without guessing a number — then walk it down twenty beats and build back up, which is how the ornaments actually get clean. **Pros**- Subdivides in threes, which the 6/8 and 9/8 work needs - Tap tempo - Costs a fifth of the chanter and does more for the timeline **Cons**- Not loud enough to hear over a full set of pipes outdoors - Nothing bagpipe-specific about it Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yp47cI) ## What age can you start? At the young end, seven. The National Piping Centre in Glasgow runs its community piping clubs for ages 7 to 17, and R.G. Hardie builds a chanter specifically for ten-and-unders, so the trade has settled on roughly primary-school age as the point at which a hand can cover the holes and an attention span can survive an ornament drill. At the old end there is no end. Nothing in the qualification framework mentions age at any level. The entry requirement for Level 2 is “an aptitude for playing music on the Practice Chanter” and nothing else, and Levels 3 and 4 ask only for the certificate below them. The instrument does want a functioning pair of lungs once you get to the bag, and it is worth knowing that an adult starting at fifty is on exactly the same eighty-hour ladder as a child starting at nine. The real age variable is hours per week rather than years on the clock, and children usually get fewer of them than they appear to. The Piping Centre’s clubs run four eight-week terms an academic year at forty-five minutes a session — thirty-two lessons, about twenty-four hours. That is not even one 40-hour unit. Whatever the age, the practice at home is where the timeline is actually set. ## When you move to the pipes, and what changes The threshold has a name in the trade even where it is not being examined. The Piping Centre’s own course catalogue sorts its programs by it: its youth pipe band is for anyone under 25 “who can hold a steady tone on the pipes”, its immersive courses are for “adults who have progressed to the pipes”. Holding a steady tone, not playing a tune, is the line. What Level 4 asks for once you are over it is a slow air, a 3/4 or 4/4 march, a 6/8 or 9/8 march, a strathspey and a reel — two parts of each, from memory, on the pipes. That is a real repertoire, and it is the point at which a method book runs out and you need tunes. № 5 · For when the method book runs out ### Logan’s Complete Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe - Revised by Captain John MacLellan, MBE - Marches, quicksteps, laments, strathspeys, reels and country dances - Instruction and repertoire in one volume - Spiral-bound, so it lies flat on a stand - ~$15 The forms it collects are the Level 4 and Level 5 exam list almost exactly, which is the reason to reach for this one rather than a general tune collection. Marches in both simple and compound time, strathspeys and reels are what you are asked to play; a book organized around them lets you work the requirement rather than hunt for it. MacLellan was Chief Instructor at the Army School of Piping at Edinburgh Castle, which is the credential that matters on a tutor of this vintage — the revisions come from someone who spent a career watching beginners get the same things wrong. **Pros**- Instruction and real tunes in the same volume - Covers the traditional forms in the order they are examined - Spiral binding stays open on a music stand **Cons**- An older book, with no recordings to check yourself against - Assumes you already read pipe notation, so it is a second book and not a first Around $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/468lmmk) ## So how long, really Half an hour a day gets you a first tune in a few weeks, off the chanter and onto a bag somewhere around six months, and playing a march, a strathspey and a reel on pipes at about eighteen months. Two to three years puts you at the level the framework calls SCQF 5 and 6 — tuning your own drones, reading a tune you have never seen, marching while you play it, and starting on piobaireachd. Level 8 leads to a music degree, so the ladder keeps going long after any of that. But the useful thing to notice is where the hours are: 80 of the first 160 are spent on an instrument that costs ninety dollars, alone in a room, doing gracenote exercises. The bag comes later and it is not the hard part. The fingers are the hard part, and you can start on them this week. ### More on bagpipes - [Types of bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-bagpipes/) — the four decisions that separate one from another, and which fingering transfers - [Best bagpipes for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-bagpipes-for-beginners/) — what a first full set involves - [How much do bagpipes cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-bagpipes-cost/) — from a chanter to a competition set - [Why bagpipes are played at funerals](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bagpipes-played-at-funerals/) **Categories:** Bagpipes --- ### [Flute vs. Recorder: Which to Start On, and What Each Really Costs](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/) **Published:** March 29, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Flute vs. Recorder: Which to Start On, and What Each Really Costs Both are woodwinds, both play a melody, and there the resemblance ends. One costs about the same as lunch and makes a sound the first time you blow into it. The other costs the better part of a thousand dollars and will not make a sound at all for a week or two. That gap settles the question more often than tone or repertoire does. The short answer### The recorder, unless the destination is a school band For a child under about nine, or an adult who is not yet certain, the recorder is a properly tuned instrument for under ten dollars that speaks on the first day. Buy the Yamaha YRS-24B, with Baroque fingering. If the plan is concert band, orchestra or jazz, the recorder is a detour — go straight to the flute, and rent one rather than buy a cheap one. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Uepezn) **Adult starting from scratch:** alto recorder, not soprano **Headed for band:** rent, about $20–40 a month **Child of 6 to 8 set on flute:** curved headjoint **Never:** a flute under about $150 ## The differences that decide it RecorderFlute**How it is held**Vertically, blown into the endSideways to the right, blown across a hole**Time to a first clean note**ImmediatelyDays to a few weeks**Cost of one worth playing**$8–35, and that is the end of it$450–1,300 new, ~$250–400 reconditioned, $20–40 a month rented**Range**A little over two octavesThree octaves**Loud and soft**Barely — blowing harder raises the pitchFull control, and the main expressive tool**Air required**Very little, but very steadyA great deal**Youngest realistic start**About 5About 9, or 6–8 on a curved headjoint**Where it is played**Early music, folk, classrooms, at homeBands, orchestras, jazz, pop, film scores**Upkeep**Swab it out, wash it occasionallyPads, springs and a technician about once a year ## One instrument shapes the air for you; the other makes you do it A recorder has a fipple — a plug in the mouthpiece with a narrow slot cut through it that aims your breath at a sharp edge. The instrument does the hard part. Cover the holes, blow gently, and a note of the correct pitch comes out, the first time and every time. A flute has no fipple. There is a hole in the side of the headjoint and a sharpened rim on the far side of it, and the player has to form the airstream and aim it there, the way you get a note out of a bottle. Nothing is fixed for you: the width of the stream, its angle, how much of the hole is covered by your lip. A first flute lesson is usually spent on the headjoint alone. That single design difference relocates all the difficulty. On the recorder it sits at the far end — the top octave, F sharp, fast forked fingerings in flat keys. On the flute it is all at the beginning, in the first fortnight, before there is any music to show for it. ## What each one costs before you play a note The recorder has essentially one price. Eight dollars buys the instrument a teacher would hand you — correctly tuned, double holes at the bottom for the semitones, three-piece ABS — and thirty-five buys the best plastic recorder anyone makes. There is no meaningful tier below that range and nothing above it you need until wood becomes a considered second purchase years later. The flute has three honest routes and one bad one. - **Rent**, roughly $20–40 a month. Servicing is included, and most programs credit the rent against a later purchase. For a child whose interest is unproven this is the sensible option, and it is what most band directors will suggest. - **Buy reconditioned**, around $250–400 for one that has actually been overhauled. A twenty-year-old Gemeinhardt or Yamaha with fresh pads plays better than anything new at the same money. - **Buy new**, around $450–1,300 for a student flute from Yamaha, Gemeinhardt, Pearl or Jupiter. The Yamaha YFL-222 is the reference point and sits near the top of that range. This is the instrument that will still be fine in eighth grade. ### The bad route is the ninety-dollar flute Lazarro, Glory, Mendini, Cecilio and Eastar all sell silver-colored flutes for under $150, and the published lists of flute brands to avoid name most of them. Plenty of school programs will not accept one. Neither will many repair shops — several publish the brands they refuse outright, on the grounds that spare parts cannot be sourced and the next thing breaks a month after the first repair. The damage is subtler than a bad tone. A beginner cannot tell a leaking pad from an embouchure that has not formed yet. When a note comes out airy on a flute that seals properly, that is information — something the player can fix. When it comes out airy on a flute that does not, it is noise, and a month of it teaches a child that they have no aptitude. The recorder has no equivalent trap, which is a large part of why it works as a first instrument. An eight-dollar Yamaha is in tune. Anything that sounds wrong is the player, and that is useful. ## The flute has a physical entry requirement; the recorder does not A flute is played across the body with the right arm extended and the head turned left. A small child cannot reach the keys without hunching or twisting, and posture learned that way is hard to undo. Most teachers put the threshold around nine, though arm length and hand span matter far more than the birthday — a tall seven-year-old may be ready and a small nine-year-old may not. For roughly six to eight there is a curved headjoint, which folds the tube back on itself and brings the keys several inches closer to the body. Most student flutes can be bought with one, or with both headjoints, and the straight one goes on when the child grows into it. A soprano recorder asks for none of this. It is held in front of the chest, it weighs a few ounces, and its holes are spaced for small hands — which is exactly why every elementary school in the country reaches for one. ## If you buy a recorder, the model number matters more than the brand Recorders come in two fingering systems. Baroque, also called English, is what published music assumes, what a teacher will teach, and what the chart in the back of every method book shows. German fingering is a 1920s simplification that makes one note easier and every key with a sharp in it harder. Yamaha encodes it in the model number: an even number ending in B is Baroque, an odd number is German. The YRS-24B is the one to buy; the YRS-23 sitting next to it in the same search results is the same recorder with the fourth hole widened. Nothing printed on the instrument says which is which, and the two are frequently confused. If one is already in the house, the physical check is the fourth hole: smaller than the fifth means Baroque, larger means German. There is more on this, including the Aulos numbering, in our [Aulos versus Yamaha comparison](/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/). ## An adult should start on the alto, not the soprano The soprano recorder is pitched in C, an octave above written pitch, and sized for a nine-year-old. The alto — treble, in F — sits a fifth lower, has a rounder and quieter tone, and spaces its holes for adult hands. It is also the instrument the repertoire was written for. Telemann, Handel and Bach wrote their recorder solos for the treble; the soprano’s literature is mostly ensemble parts and teaching material. The American Recorder Society recommends the alto for adult beginners, and an adult who starts there generally skips the stage of wondering why the instrument sounds shrill. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The trade is that alto fingerings differ from soprano ones — the same finger pattern gives a different note — so learning both means learning both. Starting on the alto and adding the soprano later is easier than the reverse. ## What actually transfers if you switch Not the fingerings. The flute uses the Boehm system, a nineteenth-century mechanism built around keys and rods; the recorder covers open holes with fingertips. The charts do not map onto each other, and the left hand only looks similar. What does carry over is reading music, steady breath support, independent fingers, and the habit of practicing. That last one is worth most. A year of recorder is a cheap way to find out whether a child will sit down with an instrument four times a week, and that question costs a great deal more to answer on a rented flute. It is not a prerequisite, though. Plenty of flute players never touched a recorder, and a nine-year-old who wants to play the flute should be allowed to play the flute. ## Where each one runs out The recorder’s limit is dynamics. Volume and pitch are tied together, so blowing harder sharpens the note before it makes it much louder. Players get expression out of articulation, vibrato and shaded fingerings instead, and it works, but a recorder cannot swell through a phrase the way a flute can and cannot compete with a modern ensemble that expects it to. That, rather than its range, is why the transverse flute displaced it in the eighteenth century. The flute’s limits are physical and financial. It wants a lot of air, which is tiring at first and genuinely difficult for a small child. Its lowest notes are quiet and hard to control, so the first year lives in the middle register. It needs a technician roughly once a year, and a mishandled pad job costs more than a recorder. And it is loud in a small apartment in a way a recorder, for all its reputation, is not. ## What to buy № 1 · The one to buy ### Yamaha YRS-24B soprano recorder - Baroque fingering - Double holes, low C♯ and D♯ - Three-piece ABS - Key of C - ~$8 The recorder handed out in more American classrooms than any other, and correctly tuned at a price that makes the decision trivial. The B is the part to check: the YRS-23 alongside it is the German-fingering version, which will not match the chart in the method book. **Pros**- Right fingering, double holes and honest intonation for eight dollars - The same instrument the teacher will be holding - Washable, unbreakable, replaceable **Cons**- Straight windway — the dearer models speak more evenly at the top - Plain white plastic Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Uepezn) № 2 · Worth the step up ### Yamaha YRS-302B soprano recorder - Baroque fingering - Arched windway - Rottenburgh model - Double holes - ~$22 The arched windway is the difference: the top octave speaks more evenly and takes less careful breath to hold in tune, which is where a beginner on a cheaper recorder starts to struggle in the second year. Sensible if the recorder is the destination rather than a trial. **Pros**- Rottenburgh voicing, mellower and better centered than the ABS entry models - Easier top octave - ABS, so it needs no oiling or drying out **Cons**- Nearly three times the price of a recorder that is already good enough for a first year - More back-pressure than a beginner may want in the first months Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qTyYLV) № 3 · For an adult ### Yamaha YRA-28B alto recorder - Baroque fingering - Key of F - Three-piece ABS - Adult hole spacing - ~$22–25 A fifth lower than the soprano and considerably rounder, with the holes spaced for a full-sized hand. It is also the instrument Telemann and Handel were writing for, so the good repertoire opens up immediately rather than after a change of instrument. **Pros**- Tone most adults prefer within about a minute of playing one - Comfortable reach for adult hands - The key the Baroque solo repertoire is written in **Cons**- Fingerings differ from the soprano — the same grip gives a different note - The YRA-302B is the better instrument for about a third more Around $22–25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S2n99e) ### A flute has to be set up before it will play A recorder is a sealed piece of molded plastic and arrives the same however it gets to you. A flute is a mechanism of a hundred and fifty parts that has to be regulated before it will seal, and the difference between a good one and a bad one is largely the technician who set it up. Two flutes that look identical in a photograph can be a working instrument and an unplayable one. It is also where the Yamaha YFL-222 gets complicated. It is the right student flute and has been for thirty years, but the listing carrying it here is an International Version — gray-market stock intended for another country, sold with a soft case instead of the hard one and with no US warranty behind it. Yamaha covers instruments bought from its authorized US dealers, and warranty work on the rest has to go back through the country it was sold in, so the model that is right on paper is the wrong purchase in that form. № 4 · If it is going to be bought online anyway ### Jean Paul FL-220 student flute - Closed hole, offset G - Split E mechanism - Silver-plated cupronickel - Semi-hard case - ~$250 Every one is set up and play-tested by a NAPBIRT-certified technician before it ships, which is the single thing separating it from the hundred-dollar flutes it sits beside in the search results. Closed hole, offset G and a split E are exactly the configuration a beginner wants, and there is a real company behind it with a one-year warranty and spare parts. **Pros**- Regulated by a certified band-instrument technician rather than shipped as assembled - Warranty and parts actually exist - Split E at a fraction of what the reference student flutes cost **Cons**- A committed student will outgrow it in a few years - A year of rental puts a better instrument in the same hands for similar money Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wsTXX1) ## Common questions ### Is the recorder easier than the flute? At the start, by a wide margin — the fipple produces the note for you, so there is nothing to learn before the first tune. Later the gap narrows. A recorder’s top octave and its forked fingerings in flat keys are genuinely awkward, and playing one well is not a small thing. ### Do I have to learn the recorder before the flute? No. The fingering systems are unrelated, so nothing mechanical carries across. Reading, breath control and practice habits do, which makes the recorder a cheap trial run rather than a required step. ### Which one can my six-year-old start? The recorder, comfortably. A six-year-old who is set on the flute needs a curved headjoint, and even then arm length and hand span decide it rather than age — have a teacher watch them hold one before you commit. ### Can a recorder play in a band or orchestra? Not in the ordinary sense. It appears in early music groups, recorder consorts and the occasional modern score, but concert bands and orchestras have no recorder chair. If school band is the goal, the flute is the instrument. ### Is a wooden recorder better? Not to begin with. A good plastic recorder outplays a cheap wooden one, survives a school bag, and can be washed. Wood is a later decision — see our guide to [wooden recorders](/best-wooden-recorders/) when you get there. ### How much air does a flute really need? Much more than a recorder, because most of the airstream misses the hole by design. Expect a beginner to run out of breath mid-phrase for the first few months; it is a matter of efficiency rather than lung capacity, and it settles. If the recorder is where you have landed, the next decisions are [which plastic recorder](/best-plastic-recorder/) and, for adults, [which alto](/best-alto-recorder/). If it is the flute, we have written on [what flutes cost](/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) and how it compares with the [clarinet](/clarinet-vs-flute/) and the [piccolo](/piccolo-vs-flute/). The rest of the family sits under [woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Flute, Recorder, Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Best Alto Recorder: The One Adults Should Actually Own](https://promusicvault.com/best-alto-recorder/) **Published:** October 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Recorder Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/recorder-reviews/ "Recorder Reviews")› Best Alto Recorder: The One Adults Should Actually Own The alto is the recorder the instrument’s own literature was written for. Yamaha puts it plainly in its instrument guide: “the type most frequently used for solos is the alto recorder, and Baroque period solo sonatas and concertos as well as the majority of contemporary sonatas are written for the instrument.” The American Recorder Society is blunter still — “we recommend that you begin on the alto recorder.” Every alto worth owning costs between about twenty-five and about fifty dollars, and there are only two makers who matter at that money. What follows is which of their models differ, how, and which one to buy. If you want one answer### Yamaha YRA-302B — arched windway, key of F, around $30 Yamaha’s 300 series alto, modeled on the Rottenburgh bore, with double holes on the low F/F♯ and G/G♯ so the semitones are in tune rather than approximate. It takes a steadier column of air than a school soprano and gives you far more back for it. This is the instrument the rest of the page is measured against. Around $30 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Te1ewf) **Cheapest that is still a real alto:** Yamaha YRA-28B, ~$22–25 **Best voice:** Aulos 509B Symphony, ~$38 **Easiest on the hands:** Aulos 209B Robin, ~$27 **Plant-based plastic:** Yamaha YRA-402B, ~$35 ## The alto is in F, and that is the whole cost of moving up Cover every hole on a soprano and you get C. Cover every hole on an alto and you get F. The grips are the same shapes in the same order; the note names underneath them have all moved. So a soprano player picking up an alto is not transposing, and is not learning a new instrument either — they are relearning which written note goes with which grip, and it takes a few weeks of deliberate work rather than an afternoon. What you get for that is the rest of the family. The recorder splits into two fingering groups: the C instruments, where the soprano sits with the tenor and the great bass, and the F instruments, where the alto sits with the sopranino and the bass. Learn alto fingering and the bass costs you nothing extra. Learn soprano fingering only and the entire solo repertoire stays shut. There is no shortcut worth taking here. Alto fingering charts printed for soprano players exist, and so does the habit of reading alto music an octave out and pretending. Both leave you unable to play with anyone else. ## Nobody makes a German-fingered alto On sopranos, the fingering system is the trap: the same recorder is sold in German and Baroque versions under model numbers one digit apart, and the German one plays out of tune above the basic scale. On altos the question does not arise, and the makers settle it themselves. Yamaha’s specification tables list fourteen alto models — six in ABS resin, eight handcrafted in wood — and every one of them reads *System: Baroque*. Aulos lists each of its sopranos in a German (G) and an English (E) version, and its five altos in (E) only. Nineteen alto models between the two of them, and not one German-fingered. If a listing tells you an alto is German-fingered, it is wrong about its own product. ## Straight windway or arched, and why it costs more The windway is the slot the breath travels down before it hits the edge, and it is the single design choice that separates a cheap recorder from a good one. Yamaha describes the two shapes in its own words: a straight windway is “easy to play with a soft pure tone … ideal for beginners”; an arched windway “has a slight resistance when you play for better breath control which gives greater tonal expressiveness and projection.” That resistance is the point and it is also the catch. An arched windway pushes back, which is what lets you shade a note instead of just sounding it — and it is real work for somebody who has never played anything. Yamaha builds its 20 series alto straight and everything from the 300 series up arched. Aulos curves the windway on every alto it makes, including the cheapest. Double holes are the other thing worth paying for. The two lowest positions are drilled as pairs, so that covering one of the pair gives a true semitone instead of an approximation. Yamaha notes that the two are not the same size as each other, and that their combined area matches the single hole they replace — which is the whole trick. Yamaha specifies double holes across its 300 series, so every alto from the YRA-302B up has them. ## It is half again as long as a soprano, and that is a hand problem Aulos publishes lengths for its whole range. Its sopranos run 32.4 to 33.2 cm; its altos run 47.3 to 48.7 cm. The holes are spread across that extra fifteen centimeters, the instrument is heavier, and it hangs further out from the body. Nothing about an alto is hard for an adult hand, but it is a genuine reach for a small one, and it is why the alto is an adult’s instrument rather than a child’s. Two things make it fit better, and both are free. Every alto here is a three-piece instrument, and Yamaha points out what that is for: “the foot joint can be rotated, offering the advantage of being able to adjust this section to reposition the tone hole so that it can be more easily reached by the little finger of the right hand.” Twist the bottom joint until the lowest hole falls under your finger rather than beside it. Most people never do this and then blame the instrument. The second is the thumb rest, which takes the weight off the right hand so the fingers can move. Aulos includes an adjustable one in the bag with every recorder it sells. Yamaha’s accessory list is a cotton case, a fingering chart, cream and a cleaning rod, and no thumb rest — so if your right thumb aches after twenty minutes on a Yamaha, that is the part you are missing. ModelWindwayLengthThumb restPrice**Yamaha YRA-28B**Straight—No~$22–25**Aulos 209B Robin**Curved47.8 cmYes, adjustable~$27**Yamaha YRA-302B**Arched, Rottenburgh—No~$30**Aulos A309A Bel Canto**Curved47.7 cmYes, adjustable~$32**Yamaha YRA-402B**Arched, Rottenburgh—No~$35**Aulos 509B Symphony**Curved47.3 cmYes, adjustable~$38**Yamaha YRA-312B / 314B**Arched, Rottenburgh—No~$45–50 Yamaha publishes no lengths for its recorders, which is why that column is half empty. Every instrument in the table is ABS resin, in the key of F, with Baroque fingering and three joints. ## The picks № 1 · The alto to buy ### Yamaha YRA-302B Alto Recorder - Key of F - Baroque fingering - Arched windway, Rottenburgh model - Double holes, three-piece ABS - Cotton case, chart, cream, cleaning rod - ~$30 Yamaha’s own claim for the 300 series is that these instruments are “fully competitive with more expensive wooden models,” and on the alto that is closer to true than it has any right to be. The arched windway is what you are paying for over the 20 series: it resists the breath slightly, so dynamics and articulation actually do something instead of the note simply appearing at one volume. It is the standard adult step-up alto and has been for years, which matters practically as well as musically — teachers know it, and it is the instrument every method book was written next to. The plain brown finish is the same body as the rosewood- and ebony-look versions fifteen dollars above it. If you have never played a wind instrument at all, this will feel like more work than a school recorder for the first fortnight. That is the resistance, and it is the reason to own it. **Pros**- Arched Rottenburgh windway at the bottom of the price range that has one - Double holes on both low semitones - The reference instrument — every method assumes it **Cons**- No thumb rest in the box - Harder work than a soprano for an outright beginner - Plain brown plastic Around $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Te1ewf) № 2 · The cheapest one that is still a real alto ### Yamaha YRA-28B Alto Recorder - Key of F - Baroque fingering - Straight windway - Three-piece ABS - Yamaha 20 series - ~$22–25 The 20 series exists to be a first instrument, and Yamaha specifies the straight windway for exactly that: an easy, even response with very little back-pressure. On an alto that is a fair trade, because the size of the instrument is already giving a beginner enough to think about without the breath fighting back too. It gets you the things that decide whether an alto is an alto — the F tuning, Baroque fingering, three joints and a foot joint that rotates — for about the price of two coffees over a school soprano. What it does not get you is the top of the range: above the octave it thins out sooner than the 302B, and it will not shape a note the way an arched windway will. Buy it if the alto is an experiment, or if you are coming to it with no wind-playing behind you at all. It is a real instrument and it stays useful as a knock-about second recorder afterward. **Pros**- Cheapest genuine alto from either serious maker - Straight windway is the forgiving one to start on - A rotating foot joint even at the bottom of the range [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Less control at the top of the range than the 302B - Little tonal shading — it plays at one color - No thumb rest in the box Around $22–25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cY1TbK) № 3 · Easiest on the hands ### Aulos 209B Robin Alto Recorder - Key of F, English (Baroque) fingering - Curved windway - 47.8 cm, three-piece ABS - Concave bell at the foot joint - Adjustable thumb rest included - ~$27 The Robin is Aulos’s entry alto and it undercuts Yamaha’s mid-range while including the thing Yamaha leaves out. The adjustable thumb rest sounds like a trinket and is not: on an instrument this long, the right thumb carries the weight, and being able to slide the rest to where your thumb actually sits is the difference between practicing for an hour and putting it down after twenty minutes. Aulos curves the windway on everything it builds, so even at this price you get some of the resistance that Yamaha reserves for its 300 series. The Robin’s patented cavity-wall head gives it a softer, rounder voice than a Yamaha of the same money — less focused at the top, warmer in the middle. The Robin and the A309A Bel Canto are sold as two options of the same product, five dollars apart, so check the selected option reads 209B before you order. **Pros**- Adjustable thumb rest in the box - Curved windway at the cheapest Aulos price - Rounder, warmer voice than the equivalent Yamaha **Cons**- Less focused at the top than a Rottenburgh-bore Yamaha - Sold as one option among several on a shared listing - Comes in a soft bag rather than a case Around $27[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4crOW9Y) № 4 · The best-sounding plastic alto ### Aulos 509B Symphony Alto Recorder - Key of F, English (Baroque) fingering - Curved windway - 47.3 cm — the shortest here - Three-piece ABS - Adjustable thumb rest included - ~$38 Aulos calls the Symphony “the finest AULOS model in our line-up,” and the claim it makes for it is about control rather than volume: “using different breath pressures, various expressions can be realized.” That is the difference you are buying — a bore that responds to how hard you blow instead of only to which holes you cover. It is also, at 47.3 cm, the shortest alto on this page, half a centimeter under the Robin and well over a centimeter under Aulos’s Haka models. That is not a reach the way it is on a tenor, but on an instrument you hold out in front of you it is not nothing either. Against the YRA-302B it is eight dollars dearer and rounder and louder; the Yamaha is tighter and better behaved at the top. Neither is the better instrument in the abstract. If you want the recorder to sing, take the Aulos; if you want it to be exact, take the Yamaha. **Pros**- The most expressive plastic alto either maker builds - Adjustable thumb rest included - Shortest body here, so the least stretch **Cons**- Dearer than the Yamaha it competes with - Rewards breath control you may not have yet - Soft bag rather than a case Around $38[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gCAKxu) № 5 · If the plastic bothers you ### Yamaha YRA-402B Ecodear Alto Recorder - Key of F - Baroque fingering - Arched windway, Rottenburgh model - Plant-derived Ecodear plastic - Three-piece, double holes - Cloth bag, chart, cream, cleaning rod - ~$35 Ecodear is Yamaha’s plant-derived resin, and the 402B is the 300 series alto built out of it. Yamaha describes the body design as “based on the popular Yamaha 300-series recorders” with an arched windway that “gives experienced players more control,” which is the 302B’s specification in different words and a different material. It comes finished in pale wood tones rather than plain brown. Musically it is very close to the 302B and costs about five dollars more, so this is a decision about material rather than about sound. Buy it if that matters to you; if it does not, the 302B is the same instrument for less. One thing it does not change: a plant-based plastic is still a plastic. It wants the same wipe-out after playing and it is just as indifferent to being left in a cold car as the ABS models, which is the whole reason to own a plastic recorder in the first place. **Pros**- The 300 series instrument in a partly plant-derived material - Arched Rottenburgh windway and double holes - Nicer color than the plain brown 302B **Cons**- Around five dollars more than the 302B for the same playing - No thumb rest in the box - Still a plastic recorder, with all that implies Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yl6QUm) ## The wood-look versions are the same instrument Yamaha’s YRA-312B and YRA-314B are, in Yamaha’s words, “identical body and design as the YRA-302B, but with an added coating to give the appearance of Rosewood” — or of Makassar ebony on the 314B. The current-generation YRA-322B and YRA-324B are the same idea again. Same bore, same windway, same tuning, fifteen dollars more for the coating and rather more again for the current-generation pair. They are worth buying if you would rather look at rosewood than brown plastic, and worth nothing at all if you are hoping the coating does something to the sound. It does not. Real [wooden recorders](/best-wooden-recorders/) are a separate decision and start at a different price. Also worth a lookWhat it isPrice**Yamaha YRA-312B**The 302B with a simulated rosewood coating~$45[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xevAg5)**Yamaha YRA-314B**The 302B with a simulated ebony coating~$50[Check price](https://amzn.to/4ylk9Eq)**Aulos A309A Bel Canto**Between the Robin and the Symphony; clear and even~$32[Check price](https://amzn.to/3UXH9L7) ## Get the music before you get the second recorder The relearn described at the top of this page is the thing that decides whether an alto gets played, and it is not something to work out from a fingering chart taped to a music stand. A method written for the alto starts from F and puts the grips in the order the instrument wants rather than the order a soprano player expects. The one accessory that matters### The Sweet Pipes Recorder Book — Alto, Book 1 Burakoff and Hettrick’s alto method — a book written for the alto from its own bottom note rather than a soprano book with a chart added, which is what most people improvise for themselves and why most people stall. Around $9 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gBtOR9) Beyond that, an alto needs almost nothing. The cleaning rod comes in the box, and the joints want a smear of the supplied cream once a season so they do not bind. ## Two things that go wrong in the first month **The lowest note jumps an octave.** Almost always one of two causes, and Yamaha names both. Either the thumb hole is not quite sealed — check whether your left hand shifts slightly when the right hand comes onto the instrument — or you are blowing too hard. Low F needs a slow, unhurried column of air, and blowing at it makes it worse. **It plays sharp against everything else.** Yamaha voices its resin recorders to A=444 Hz, and you bring them down to concert pitch by pulling the head joint out a little. If your recorder reads consistently sharp on a tuner straight out of the bag, it is not faulty; it has not been pulled out yet. ## Questions people actually ask ### Can I start on an alto with no experience at all? Yes, and the American Recorder Society recommends it. The instrument is bigger and takes more air than a soprano, but you learn one set of fingerings instead of two and you land straight in the repertoire. The only real barrier is hand size, which is why this is an adult’s answer rather than a child’s. ### I already play soprano. How long is the switch? A few weeks of deliberate practice with an alto method. The grips are already in your fingers; what has to change is the note names attached to them, and that is a reading problem rather than a technique one. Working through it properly is faster than the years people spend half-guessing. ### Plastic or wood? Plastic, for a first alto. The American Recorder Society puts it as “we recommend that you play on a quality plastic recorder rather than on a poorly made wood recorder,” and at these prices that is the actual choice. A plastic alto also survives being carried around, washed and left alone for a month, which a wooden one does not. Our [plastic recorder guide](/best-plastic-recorder/) covers the range across all sizes. ### Is a treble recorder the same thing? Yes. Treble is the British name and alto the American one for the same instrument in F, which is why Aulos labels several of its listings “Alto/Treble.” A page that lists both as separate sizes is confused. ### What comes after the alto? For most people, nothing — the alto is the size the music is written for and one good one lasts. If you want to play in a quartet, the tenor is the usual next instrument, and there the deciding factor is reach rather than tone; see [tenor recorders for small hands](/best-tenor-recorder-for-small-hands/). The sopranino and the bass use alto fingering, so both cost you nothing new to learn. If you are still choosing between the two brands rather than between sizes, [Aulos against Yamaha](/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) goes through it model by model. And if you have not settled on the recorder at all, [the recorder against the flute](/flute-vs-recorder/) is the comparison most people are really making. **Categories:** Recorder Reviews --- ### [Best Lyre Harps: Four Picks, and How Many Strings You Need](https://promusicvault.com/best-lyre-harps/) **Published:** August 4, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Lyre Harps: Four Picks, and How Many Strings You Need One number decides most of this purchase, and it is not the price. Sixteen-string lyres cost about eighty dollars, cover two octaves, and play most of the music you would want to play on one. Seven-string lyres cost about thirty-five, sound lovely, and cannot play most tunes at all. Everything else — the wood, the brand, the carving on the soundhole — matters far less than which of those two you buy. Our pick for most people### Donner DLH-003, 16-String Lyre Harp Two octaves of range, a mahogany body with a proper resonance box, and a kit that includes the tuning wrench, a spare string set and a gig bag. It is the standard 16-string lyre done carefully, and the kit is the fullest here: spare strings, an instruction book, picks and a cloth as well as the wrench and bag. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DeEZev) **If you want to amplify it:** AKLOT 16-string — around $80, pickup included **Cheapest worth owning:** AKLOT 7-string — around $35 **For the object itself:** Mid-East 8-string rosewood — around $220 ## The four at a glance Lyre harpStringsRangePrice bandBest for[Donner DLH-003](https://amzn.to/3DeEZev)16G3–A5~$100Almost everyone[AKLOT 16-String](https://amzn.to/3SkgbfZ)16G3–A5~$80Playing through an amp[AKLOT 7-String](https://amzn.to/3XJ4m02)7One pentatonic octave~$35Children, gifts, ambient playing[Mid-East 8-String](https://amzn.to/3wwhOZp)8One octave~$220Buyers who want solid rosewood ## The picks in full № 1 · Best for most people ### Donner DLH-003, 16-String Lyre Harp - 16 metal strings - G3–A5, tuned to C major - Mahogany, hollow resonance box - Copper saddle - Wrench, spare strings, gig bag, manual - ~$100 This is the instrument most people picturing a lyre harp actually want. Sixteen strings is the full standard range, the body is hollow rather than a solid slab so it projects instead of merely making a noise, and the copper saddle passes string vibration into the soundboard cleanly. The kit covers everything you need on day one, including the spare set you will want the first time a string goes. The tone is bright and metallic — closer to a zither than to the soft wash people imagine when they hear the word harp. That is what steel strings on a small box sound like, and it is true of every lyre here, but it is worth knowing before it arrives. Donner also sells 7- and 10-string versions of the same kit. The 10-string saves about twenty dollars, costs you six strings and a third of the range, and is the only model in the line owners rate poorly — 3.9 stars against 4.5 for the other two, with a run of reports of strings snapping during tuning. It is the worst trade on this page. We went through the range in more detail in our [Donner lyre harp review](/donner-lyre-harp-review/). **Pros**- Full two-octave range at the entry price - Hollow body — louder and longer-sustaining than slab-built rivals - Accessories in the box are the ones you actually need **Cons**- Bright, zither-like tone rather than a classic harp sound - Steel strings are hard on bare fingertips at first Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DeEZev) № 2 · If you want to plug it in ### AKLOT 16-String Lyre Harp - 16 metal strings - G3–A5, tuned to C major - Mahogany, maple saddle - Note names engraved at every peg - Piezo pickup included - Wrench, spare strings, gig bag - ~$80 Specification for specification this is the Donner’s twin, and it is twenty dollars cheaper, so choosing between them on tone alone would be splitting hairs. What settles it is the box: AKLOT includes a clip-on piezo pickup with a quarter-inch jack. A lyre is a quiet instrument, and if you intend to record it, run it through an amp or add reverb to it, that pickup saves you buying one separately and is the reason to take this over the Donner. It also has every string’s note cut into the wood above its peg, which sounds trivial and is not: sixteen steel strings look identical, and beginners spend a fortnight counting from the bottom to find middle C. AKLOT builds the same instrument in a plain dark mahogany without the markings for the same money — take the marked one unless you much prefer the darker finish. Our [AKLOT lyre harp review](/aklot-lyre-harp-review/) covers the range in full, and there is more on getting a signal out of a harp in our guide to [amplifying one](/how-to-amplify-a-harp/). **Pros**- Pickup included — genuinely useful, rarely bundled - Note names engraved at every peg - Same range and price as our top pick **Cons**- A thinner accessory kit than the Donner’s - Same bright, steel-strung tone Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SkgbfZ) № 3 · The cheapest one worth owning ### AKLOT 7-String Lyre Harp - 7 metal strings - Pentatonic tuning - Mahogany, bone saddle - Wrench and gig bag - ~$35 Thirty-five dollars buys a real wooden instrument rather than an ornament, which is more than can be said for most of what sits below it. Seven strings in a pentatonic tuning means there is no wrong note to play: run a thumb across the strings and it sounds intentional. For a child, a gift, or something to keep on a desk and pick up between tasks, that is exactly the right design. Understand the limit before you buy. A pentatonic octave will not play written melodies — no semitones, no full scale, and nothing from a tutor book. This is an instrument for improvising pleasant sounds, not for learning repertoire. If you want to play actual tunes, spend the extra forty-five dollars on a 16-string and do not look back. **Pros**- Solid mahogany build at an impulse-buy price - Impossible to make it sound bad - Light and small enough for young children **Cons**- Pentatonic — most written music is off the table - No spare string set in the box Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XJ4m02) № 4 · If the object matters more than the range ### Mid-East 8-String Lyre Harp, Rosewood - 8 metal strings - Solid rosewood body - Lacewood soundboard - About 17″ × 10″ - ~$220 Every other lyre on this page is a generic import badged by a reseller. This one is made by Mid-East, an actual instrument manufacturer, from solid rosewood with a lacewood soundboard, and it feels like it: denser, better finished, and warmer-sounding than anything else here. Its list price runs to around three hundred dollars, so the figure above is not an inflated one. Say the awkward part plainly, though. It is roughly three times the price of our top pick for half the strings. Nothing about eight strings gets easier because the wood is nicer, and a beginner who wants to play tunes will run out of notes just as fast on rosewood as on mahogany. Buy this because you want this particular object in your house and will enjoy owning it; do not buy it expecting the money to buy you more music. **Pros**- The only genuinely hardwood, maker-built lyre in this price range - Warmer and better finished than the imports - Holds its tuning better than the budget field **Cons**- Eight strings at three times the price of a sixteen - Too limited for anyone working through a tutor book [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $220[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wwhOZp) ## What actually separates one lyre from another Scroll the listings and the same instrument comes round over and over: a mahogany frame, sixteen metal strings, a copper or bone saddle, a tuning wrench and a black gig bag, sold under a dozen brand names within a few dollars of each other. The photographs look alike because the instruments are alike. Choosing between them on brand is mostly guesswork. Choosing on the four things below is not. ### String count is range, and range decides your repertoire Sixteen strings covers G3 to A5 — a little over two octaves, diatonic, tuned to C major out of the box. That is enough for hymns, folk tunes, film themes and most of what beginners want to play. Ten strings gives an octave and a bit, which handles simple melodies but runs out mid-tune more often than you would like. Seven strings is usually a pentatonic scale: pleasant, impossible to play a wrong note on, and unable to play most written music at all. Buy sixteen unless the instrument is for a small child or you specifically want the no-wrong-notes experience. ### A lyre harp has no levers, so changing key means retuning A lever harp carries a small flip lever above each string that raises it a semitone, so the player can change key in seconds. A lyre harp has none. Its strings are held by tapered zither pins driven into the wood and turned with a wrench, much as on a hammered dulcimer, and the only way into another key is to sit down and retune the strings that need to move. In practice you pick a key and stay in it, which is fine — the music written for these instruments assumes exactly that. It also means a listing advertising levers on a lyre is describing something else. ### The tuning pins are what you will end up fighting Friction pins hold by being wedged into the wood, and on the cheapest instruments they slip. New strings also stretch for the first week or two whatever you pay, so a fortnight of daily retuning is normal and not a fault; a pin that will not hold once the strings have settled is. Two things help. Press the wrench gently toward the body as you make the final turn, so the tapered pin seats deeper and grips. And use a [clip-on chromatic tuner](/best-harp-tuner/) rather than tuning by ear — our [guide to tuning a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the order to work in. A spare [set of tuning pins and a wrench](https://amzn.to/4qNkInS) costs about seven dollars and saves an instrument if a pin ever strips. ### Hollow body or solid slab Some lyres are a solid piece of wood with strings stretched across it. Others have a hollow resonance box behind the strings, and those are noticeably louder with more sustain. Listings rarely say which in plain words — look for “resonance box” or “hollow body” in the description, and look at the back of the instrument in the photographs. When two otherwise identical lyres are twenty dollars apart, this is usually the difference, and it is worth the twenty dollars. ### Metal strings, and what they sound like Nearly every lyre at this price ships with steel strings, which on a soundbox this small is the right call — they are bright and they carry, where nylon on a body this size sounds muted. The trade is that steel is hard on bare fingertips for the first few weeks, and the tone sits closer to a zither than to the soft wash people picture when they think of a harp. Nylon sets exist if you want the gentler sound and will accept losing volume for it. Either way, keep a [spare 16-string set](https://amzn.to/4ybk4D1) in the bag — a broken string with no replacement is a silent instrument for a week. Our walkthrough on [changing a harp string](/changing-harp-strings/) applies here too. ## What a lyre harp costs Forty to two hundred dollars covers this whole category. Below about fifty you are buying an ornament that makes noises. Between roughly seventy and a hundred and thirty sits nearly everything worth owning. Above two hundred you have left the lyre market and are into small [lever harps](/best-harps-for-beginners/), a different instrument with a different technique. Concert harps are the ones that [get genuinely expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). ## Playing one The lyre is held upright against the chest or rested on a knee, and plucked with the fingers of both hands from either side of the strings. It is one of the easiest stringed instruments to get a pleasant sound out of on the first day — running a thumb across the strings is already music — and recognisable tunes come within the first few sessions. Most of these instruments ship with a booklet of numbered tab rather than staff notation: each string has a number, and you read the numbers in order, so you do not need to read music to start. Getting genuinely good is harder, because two octaves in one key is a narrow space to be expressive in. Ten minutes a day for a few weeks is enough to be playing tunes. For a sense of the longer arc, we looked at [how long the harp takes to learn](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/). ## Questions people ask ### Is a lyre harp the same as a harp? No. On a harp the strings run into a hollow body at one end and are free at the other; on a lyre they stretch across an open frame between a yoke and a soundboard, and the hands play from either side. Posture, technique and repertoire all differ, and time on a lyre does not transfer to harp lessons. We set the two side by side in [lyre vs. harp](/lyre-vs-harp/). ### How many strings should a beginner get? Sixteen. It is the standard size, it costs barely more than the small ones, and it is the only common configuration with enough range to play most written tunes without rearranging them first. ### What key is a lyre harp tuned to? C major, almost always, on both the 16-string and 10-string sizes. Seven-string lyres usually arrive in a pentatonic tuning instead. You can retune to another key by hand with the wrench, but there is no quick way to switch part-way through a piece. ### Do lyre harps hold their tuning? Once the strings have finished stretching — one to two weeks of daily retuning from new — a decent lyre holds well enough to need a touch-up before a session rather than during one. Temperature and humidity swings move it, as they do any wooden instrument. ### Can a child play one? Yes, and it is one of the better first instruments for a young child: light, quiet, nothing sharp to catch a finger on, and rewarding straight away. Steel strings are hard on very small hands, so for under-sevens the lower tension of a 7-string is kinder than a full 16. We keep a separate list of [harps for kids](/harps-for-kids/). ### How do I look after it? Keep it in its bag away from radiators and direct sun, wipe the strings down after playing to slow corrosion, and leave it at tension — these are built to stay strung. Replace a broken string promptly so the frame stays evenly loaded. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Donner Lyre Harp Review: DLH-003 vs DLH-002 vs DLH-001](https://promusicvault.com/donner-lyre-harp-review/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Donner Lyre Harp Review: DLH-003 vs DLH-002 vs DLH-001 Donner builds three lyre harps. They look almost identical in a listing photograph, they sit about twenty dollars apart, and the number in the model code is the only thing that really separates them: seven strings, ten strings, sixteen strings. That number decides what you can play on the instrument for the rest of its life, and it is not a question of how serious you are. Buy the sixteen. It is the dearest of the three, by about twenty dollars a rung, and it is the only one that plays two full octaves. The seven-string is a genuinely good instrument for a different purpose. The ten-string is the one to walk past. The one to buy### Donner DLH-003, 16 strings Two full octaves of C major, G3 up to A5, on a hollow mahogany box with a bronze saddle. Ships with a gig bag, a tuning wrench, a spare set of strings and a beginner’s songbook. It is the highest-rated of the three and the only one that will still be enough in a year. $80–100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yl3hxs) **For a child, or for drifting rather than playing tunes:** Donner DLH-001, 7 strings — around $60 **If you want to plug it in:** AKLOT 16-string, pickup included — around $80 **Skip:** Donner DLH-002, 10 strings — see below ## The three at a glance ModelStringsTuningSaddleOwner ratingPrice band[DLH-003](https://amzn.to/4yl3hxs)16 steelG3–A5, two octaves of C majorBronze4.5 stars, 670 ratings$80–100[DLH-001](https://amzn.to/3UBfYpj)7 steelD4 E4 G4 A4 B4 D5 E5, pentatonicBone4.5 stars, 616 ratings~$60DLH-00210 steelG3–B4, C majorBone3.9 stars, 243 ratings$70–80 All three are what Donner calls box-type: a mahogany soundboard over a hollow shell, rather than a solid slab with strings across it. Donner makes the distinction itself in its own product photographs, and it is worth knowing when you compare these against the unbranded lyres at the same money, most of which are the solid kind. A hollow body is louder and the note lasts longer. ## What the string count actually decides A lyre has no levers, no pedals and no fingerboard. Every string is one note and stays that note, so the set of strings *is* the set of notes you own. Adding strings is not a matter of comfort or ambition. It is the difference between tunes you can play and tunes you cannot. The seven-string is tuned D4 E4 G4 A4 B4 D5 E5. There is no C and no F anywhere on it, and no two adjacent strings are a semitone apart — that is what pentatonic means. Nothing you play on it can sound wrong, which is lovely, and no melody with a half-step in it can be played at all, which rules out most songs anyone knows. It is an instrument for improvising, not for learning pieces. The ten-string fills in the C and the F and runs G3 up to B4 — a full C major scale, but it stops just short of a second octave. You get roughly an octave and a third, which covers simple melodies and runs out on anything with a wide range. The sixteen-string starts on the same G3 and carries on to A5: G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A, two complete octaves. That is where a lyre stops feeling like a toy, because you can play a melody and put something underneath it at the same time. None of the three has any sharps or flats, so all of them are locked to the white notes. That is normal at this price and it is one of the real limits of the instrument — there is more on what a lyre can and cannot do in [our comparison of lyres and harps](/lyre-vs-harp/). ## The three models № 1 · The one to buy ### Donner DLH-003, 16 strings - 16 steel strings, plain on top, wound at the bottom - G3–A5, two octaves of C major - Hollow mahogany body with an oval hand hole - Curved bronze saddle - Carbon steel zither pins - Gig bag, wrench, spare strings, songbook - $80–100 Sixteen strings is the point at which a lyre becomes an instrument rather than a novelty. Two octaves is enough to play a tune with a bass note under it, enough for almost anything in a beginner’s book, and enough that you are not constantly finding the note you want is not there. It is also the only one in the line with a bronze saddle instead of bone — the strings cross a curved metal bar rather than a straight white one on their way to the anchor eyelets. Do not read too much into that. Donner sells bronze as the upgrade here and bone as the upgrade on the ten-string, which tells you the saddle is not what separates these instruments. Owners rate it 4.5 stars across roughly 670 ratings, the best in the range, and the complaints that recur are the ones every lyre in this bracket attracts: it takes a while to settle, and it wants retuning often at first. **Pros**- Two full octaves — the only model here that has them - Hollow box body, so it is louder and rings longer - Best-rated of the three by a clear margin - Songbook in the box, which the others do not have **Cons**- Bright and metallic, closer to a music box than a harp - Plain zither pins, so tuning is fiddly and drifts for the first month - No sharps or flats, so you are stuck in C $80–100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yl3hxs) № 2 · For children and for drifting ### Donner DLH-001, 7 strings - 7 steel strings - D4 E4 G4 A4 B4 D5 E5, pentatonic - Hollow mahogany body - Bone saddle - Gig bag, wrench, spare strings, picks, cloth - ~$60 Buy this one on purpose or not at all. Seven strings with no semitones between them means every combination sounds consonant, which is why it works so well for a child, for someone with no musical background, or for anyone who wants to make a pleasant noise without learning anything first. Put your thumb across all seven and it is a chord. What it will not do is play a song. There is no C and no F on the instrument, so the great majority of tunes are simply unavailable, and no amount of practice changes that. If the person you are buying for wants to work through a book of melodies, this is the wrong instrument and the step up to the sixteen is the whole answer. Within its purpose it is well made — 4.5 stars over roughly 616 ratings, with owners consistently describing it as feeling more expensive than it is. Fewer strings also means fewer things to tune, which on a lyre is a real advantage. **Pros**- Everything you play on it sounds right — ideal for children - Only seven strings to tune and keep in tune - Cheapest way into the range - Rated as highly as the sixteen-string **Cons**- Pentatonic, so most recognizable melodies cannot be played on it - Small body, so it is quiet even by lyre standards - No songbook included Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UBfYpj) № 3 · The one to walk past ### Donner DLH-002, 10 strings - 10 steel strings - G3–B4, C major - Waisted mahogany body, hollow - Bone saddle - Gig bag, wrench, spare strings, picks, cloth - $70–80 The ten-string is squeezed from both sides. It costs meaningfully more than the seven and only a little less than the sixteen, so it gives you neither the price of the one nor the range of the other. Ten strings is an octave and a third: enough for a simple melody, not enough to accompany one. The bigger problem is that it is the only model in the line that owners are unhappy with. It sits at 3.9 stars against 4.5 for both of its siblings, and the pattern in the complaints is specific rather than general — a run of owners describe strings snapping while they were tuning up to the pitch Donner itself specifies, and describe the tuning pins backing out of the wood as soon as the wrench comes off. Some of them report it happening again with the spare set from the same box. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) One correction while we are here: the ten-string has a bone saddle, not a copper one. Donner’s own labelled photograph of this model shows a straight white bone bar, and their own listing says so. The curved metal saddle belongs to the sixteen-string. We are not linking this one. If you want ten strings rather than seven, the honest answer is that the sixteen is barely dearer and does a great deal more. **Pros**- Full C major scale, unlike the seven-string - Same accessory kit as the rest of the line **Cons**- Lowest rated of the three by a wide margin - Repeated owner reports of strings breaking during tuning - Costs nearly as much as the sixteen and plays six fewer notes ## Tuning is the part people underestimate Every Donner lyre uses plain zither pins — short steel posts driven straight into the wood, turned with the L-shaped wrench in the box. There are no gears. A guitar machine head turns the string maybe fifteen times for one turn of your hand; a zither pin turns it once. That is the whole reason these instruments have a reputation for being hard to tune, and it is not a fault in any particular unit. Two things follow. The first is that a new lyre will not hold pitch for a couple of weeks while fresh steel stretches, and you should expect to touch it up every time you pick it up. The second is that overshooting is how strings get broken, because with no gearing between your wrist and the string it is very easy to go past the note before you have heard it. That is the argument for a clip-on chromatic tuner, and it is the one accessory worth buying alongside any of these. None of them comes with one. A tuner clipped to the frame reads the note off the wood as you turn, so you stop at the note instead of past it. We go through the options in [our guide to harp tuners](/best-harp-tuner/), and there is a step-by-step in [how to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/). What to addWhyPrice bandSnark ST-2 clip-on tunerReads the note through the wood, so you stop before you overshoot. Not included with any Donner lyre.~$22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qYsQSz)Spare set of 16 ball-end stringsThe box holds one spare set. Snapped strings are the most common thing that goes wrong, and Donner’s warranty does not cover them.~$8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4r34FT6) Changing a broken string on a lyre is easier than on most instruments — the string has a ball end that sits in an eyelet at the foot, and the other end winds onto the pin. [Our guide to changing harp strings](/changing-harp-strings/) covers the technique. ## What Donner covers Donner lists the lyre harp by name in its warranty policy: twelve months from delivery, twenty-four in the EU, on the same terms as its guitars and ukuleles. There is no authorized-dealer condition, which is unusual and in the buyer’s favor. Strings are explicitly excluded as consumables, alongside batteries and bulbs, and so is anything they class as transport damage — scratches, dents and marks to the finish. So the one part of a lyre harp most likely to fail is the one part the warranty will not replace, which is the practical reason to keep a spare set in the bag rather than to rely on the cover. ## The obvious alternative AKLOT builds a sixteen-string in the same wood, tuned to the same two octaves, and it sits at about eighty dollars all the time rather than moving between eighty and a hundred. It rates slightly lower than the Donner — 4.3 stars against 4.5, over rather more ratings — and the tone is much the same, because a small mahogany body with steel strings across it sounds like a small mahogany body with steel strings across it. What decides it is the box. The AKLOT arrives with a stick-on transducer pickup and a quarter-inch lead. A lyre is a quiet instrument, so if you have any intention of recording it, putting reverb on it or playing it through an amp, that pickup is worth more than the rating difference. If you are going to play it in a chair with nobody listening, the Donner is the better-rated instrument and comes with a songbook instead — and if the two are level on price when you look, that is the Donner at the bottom of its range rather than the AKLOT at the top of its. If you want to amplify it### AKLOT 16-String Lyre Harp Same two octaves, same mahogany, and a transducer pickup and lead in the box. Note the color selector on this listing spans several different instruments, including a seven-string and a fifteen-string nylon harp — the sixteen-string is the mahogany option at around eighty dollars. Around $80 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4d1FbQ1) We go through the AKLOT range on its own in [our AKLOT lyre harp review](/aklot-lyre-harp-review/), and set both brands against the rest of the field in [the lyre harp buying guide](/best-lyre-harps/). ## Common questions ### Is a Donner lyre harp good for a complete beginner? Yes, with one caveat. There is nothing to learn before you get a sound out of it — no bow, no embouchure, no fretting hand — so a first note takes about a second. The learning curve is entirely in reading which string is which and in keeping the thing in tune. Take the sixteen-string unless the player is a young child. ### Which Donner lyre harp is best for a child? The seven-string. It is the smallest and lightest, there are only seven strings to keep track of, and the pentatonic tuning means a child cannot play a wrong note. If the child is old enough to want to play actual songs, the sixteen is the better present. [Our guide to harps for children](/harps-for-kids/) covers the wider choice. ### Can you play sharps and flats on one? No. There are no levers and no half-pedals, so every string stays at the note you tuned it to. All three Donner models are laid out on the white notes of a piano. You can retune individual strings by hand to reach another key, but it takes minutes rather than seconds and it is not something to do mid-piece. ### How loud is it? Quiet. Steel strings on a body the size of a hardback book do not move much air, and the note dies away quickly. That is fine in a room and useless in a group. If you need it to carry, you need a pickup, which is the case for the AKLOT above and is covered properly in [amplifying a harp](/how-to-amplify-a-harp/). ### Is it a lyre or a harp? Strictly a lyre: the strings run across the face of the body rather than out from a curved neck, and they are the same length as each other rather than getting progressively shorter. The name lyre harp is what everybody sells them under, so it is not worth fighting, but the distinction matters when you are comparing prices. [The full comparison is here](/lyre-vs-harp/). ## The short version Sixteen strings for anyone who wants to play music, seven for a child or for making an atmosphere, and nothing in between. Add a clip-on tuner whichever you choose, because the pins have no gearing and that is the only part of owning one of these that is genuinely difficult. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Best Left-Handed Ukuleles: 3 Worth Buying, and How to Tell If You Need One](https://promusicvault.com/best-left-handed-ukuleles/) **Published:** July 1, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Left-Handed Ukuleles: 3 Worth Buying, and How to Tell If You Need One Before you spend anything, check one thing. Kala — the largest ukulele maker in the United States — publishes a support article on exactly this question, and its answer is that most ukuleles convert: “Yes, in many cases, a right handed ukulele can be converted rather easily to be left handed, you will just need to place the strings in reverse order.” It then names the four things that stop it working. If your ukulele has none of them, you do not need a left-handed instrument at all. If it has one of them, or you are buying from scratch and would rather have the side dots facing the right way, the shelf is small. Three left-handed ukuleles are worth buying today, and the two brands that make them charge the same for a lefty as for a righty. The one to buy### Ranch Left Handed Concert Ukulele, 23″ A properly mirrored build — sapele top, back and sides over an okoume neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge, Aquila strings from the factory, a padded gig bag in the box. No cutaway, no electronics, a straight saddle. It is the best-reviewed left-handed ukulele of the lot by a wide margin, and Ranch’s own list price for it sits below several of its right-handed concerts rather than above them. Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DeoDCH) **If you want a cutaway:** Donner DUC-100L — around $70, full kit **Bigger, wider frets:** Ranch 26″ lefty tenor — around $73 **The book that actually helps:** Hal Leonard Method, Left-Handed Edition — around $15 **If your ukulele converts:** leave it alone and buy nothing ## Table of Contents - [Kala's four-point test](#kalas-fourpoint-test) - [There is no lefty tax, and two makers prove it](#there-is-no-lefty-tax-and-two-makers-prove-it) - [The shelf is thin, and the guitar world shows how thin](#the-shelf-is-thin-and-the-guitar-world-shows-how-thin) - [The three at a glance](#the-three-at-a-glance) - [The three picks](#the-three-picks) - [The other route: buy the good right-handed one and reverse the strings](#the-other-route-buy-the-good-righthanded-one-and-reverse-the-strings) - [The thing that actually removes the friction](#the-thing-that-actually-removes-the-friction) - [One accessory, and it is not optional](#one-accessory-and-it-is-not-optional) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [Should a left-handed person learn to play right-handed?](#should-a-lefthanded-person-learn-to-play-righthanded) - [Can I just flip a right-handed ukulele over?](#can-i-just-flip-a-righthanded-ukulele-over) - [Which ukuleles cannot be converted?](#which-ukuleles-cannot-be-converted) - [Do left-handed ukuleles cost more?](#do-lefthanded-ukuleles-cost-more) - [Do I need left-handed strings?](#do-i-need-lefthanded-strings) - [What size should a left-handed beginner start on?](#what-size-should-a-lefthanded-beginner-start-on) - [Is a left-handed ukulele harder to resell?](#is-a-lefthanded-ukulele-harder-to-resell) - [The short version](#the-short-version) ## Kala’s four-point test This is the whole of it, in Kala’s own words: “An instrument with built-in electronics, an angled bridge, a compensated saddle, or a cutaway cannot be easily converted to be left handed.” Two of the four you can check without touching the instrument, because Kala prints them as spec rows on every ukulele it makes. The KA-15C, its standard concert, reads **cutaway: none** and **electronics: N/A**. Most makers publish the same two facts somewhere on the product page, and a cutaway is visible in any photograph anyway — it is the scoop cut out of the upper body where the neck joins. The other two you check by looking at the bridge. An **angled bridge** sits skewed across the top rather than square to the strings, so that the string furthest from your face has a fractionally longer run than the nearest one. A **compensated saddle** does the same job in a smaller space: instead of one straight white strip, it has steps or notches cut into it, each string’s contact point set slightly forward or back. Both are there to correct intonation for a specific string in a specific position, and reversing the strings puts every one of those corrections on the wrong string. On the KA-15C the saddle is a plain straight strip sitting square in a tie-bar bridge, which is what most laminate ukuleles under $150 have. Kala names one cost even when the conversion works: “the side dot position markers will be facing away from view after this modification has been done.” The dots on the edge of the fingerboard — the ones you glance at to find the fifth and seventh frets — end up on the underside. The dots on the face of the fingerboard are still there and still in the right places. One more thing to expect. Ukulele nut slots are cut to fit the string that belongs in each one, and a standard ukulele set is not in thickness order — the third string is the fat one. Reverse the set and a couple of strings will sit in slots cut for a different gauge. Sometimes that is fine and sometimes it buzzes or binds, and the fix is the same nut work that is part of any setup. Budget $40 to $75 if it comes to that, which on a $60 ukulele is enough money to change the decision. ## There is no lefty tax, and two makers prove it A left-handed ukulele does not cost more than the right-handed version of the same model, and that is checkable in two makers’ own published prices. Kala lists three left-handed ukuleles under $500 and a right-handed version of each. The prices are identical to the cent. Kala modelRight-handedLeft-handedPacific Walnut Concert$149$149Pacific Walnut Tenor$159$159Satin Mahogany Baritone with EQ$219$219 Ortega says it outright. Its left-handed program covers 60 models across “guitars, ukuleles, acoustic basses, mandolins, and banjos specifically designed for the wide variety of left-handed players” — and it sells them, in its own words, “without the typical ‘lefty upcharge’!” What limits the choice is how few of these get built at all. ## The shelf is thin, and the guitar world shows how thin Count what each maker actually builds and the picture is consistent. **Fender** publishes 85 acoustic guitars and 232 electrics, of which 18 are left-handed — the Player II Telecaster and Stratocaster, the California Redondo, the CD-60S, the Kurt Cobain Jaguar and others. It publishes 11 ukuleles, of which **none** is left-handed. **Córdoba** carries a *Lefty* heading in its guitar navigation and has no equivalent anywhere in its ukulele range. **Enya** lists 79 products and not one left-handed instrument. **Kala**, out of 590 catalog items, builds three left-handed ukuleles under $500 and three Revelator Nautilus models at $1,899 to $2,199. **Oscar Schmidt**‘s current ukulele line runs to 31 models, exactly one of which — the OU7T Lefty, a spalted mango tenor — is left-handed; its own description says the model “is specifically made for left-handed players.” That is the useful shape of the market. The same companies that will sell a left-handed guitar in six finishes have not extended it to the ukulele, which is why the left-handed range runs out at around $75 and does not resume until about $500. It is also why Kala’s conversion article matters more here than it would on a guitar page: on this instrument, converting is not a compromise you settle for, it is what most left-handed players end up doing. ## The three at a glance UkuleleSizeBodyCutawayIn the boxPrice band[Ranch lefty concert](https://amzn.to/3DeoDCH)23″ concertSapele, arched backNoPadded gig bag~$70[Donner DUC-100L](https://amzn.to/3XATLED)23″ concertMahogany**Yes**Bag, tuner, spare strings, picks, cloth~$70[Ranch lefty tenor](https://amzn.to/4x4n5nB)26″ tenorSapele, arched backNoPadded gig bag~$73 ## The three picks 1. Best left-handed ukulele ### Ranch Left Handed Concert Ukulele, 23″ - 23″ concert, built left-handed rather than restrung - Sapele top, back and sides, arched back - Okoume neck and headstock, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Aquila strings fitted at the factory - Straight saddle, no cutaway, no electronics - 10mm padded gig bag included - Around $70 - 4.6 stars across more than 400 ratings, far more than anything else here - Aquila strings from new, which is the first upgrade most people make anyway - Ranch’s own list price for it is below several of its right-handed concerts - Concert is the size most adults get on with - No tuner in the box - Ranch publishes no nut width, so you cannot compare it on paper - Laminate rather than solid wood, as everything is at this money Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DeoDCH) Ranch’s own catalog is the clearest evidence that a left-handed build at this money is not a compromised special order. It lists the left-handed concert at $64.95 and the left-handed tenor at $72.95, in the middle of a right-handed range running from about $60 to $160 — below several of the right-handed models beside them, not above any of them. The description is the same five lines as its right-handed instruments, word for word. It is the same ukulele, made the other way round. 2. The one with a cutaway ### Donner DUC-100L Left-Handed Concert Ukulele - 23″ concert, cutaway body - Mahogany body and neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Bone nut and saddle - 18 brass frets, markers at 5, 7, 9 and 12 - Aquila strings, geared chrome tuners - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, spare strings, picks and cloth in the box - Around $70 - Bone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic, which is the part that decides whether a cheap ukulele plays in tune - The cutaway is the case Kala’s test rules out, so a left-handed build is the only way to get one - Everything a beginner needs is in the box, tuner included - Geared chrome tuners rather than friction pegs [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) - Fewer than half the Ranch’s ratings - A cutaway on a concert ukulele buys access to frets most players never use - The bundled accessories are the cheap versions of each thing Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XATLED) 3. If you want the bigger size ### Ranch 26″ Left Handed Tenor Ukulele - 26″ tenor, built left-handed - Sapele top, back and sides, arched back - Okoume neck and headstock, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Aquila strings fitted - Straight saddle, no cutaway, no electronics - 10mm padded gig bag included - Around $73 - Wider fret spacing, which suits adult hands and large fingers - Ranch’s own list price matches its right-handed tenors of the same size - Identical specification to the concert, so the choice is purely size - Only 35 ratings against the concert’s 400-plus - No tuner in the box - A tenor is the size least likely to be handled before you buy it Around $73 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x4n5nB) Our [concert versus tenor comparison](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) goes through the size decision properly. It applies unchanged here, because nothing about being left-handed changes which size fits your hands. ## The other route: buy the good right-handed one and reverse the strings If you are buying a first ukulele and you would rather have better hardware than a mirrored body, this is the honest alternative and it is not a downgrade. The Kala KA-15C passes all four of Kala’s own tests — no cutaway, no electronics, a straight saddle sitting square in a plain tie-bar bridge — and it is the instrument Kala had in mind when it wrote that article. The convertible one ### Kala KA-15C Satin Mahogany Concert Ukulele - Concert, 14.875″ scale, 24.25″ overall, 18 frets - 1.39″ at the nut, 1.77″ at the neck joint - Laminated mahogany top, back, sides and neck - Rosewood fingerboard, satin finish - **Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle** - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - Cutaway: none. Electronics: N/A. Straight saddle. - Around $85 - NuBone nut and saddle, which is better hardware than any left-handed ukulele at this price - Kala’s own spec rows answer two of the four conversion questions for you - Reversing the strings costs a set of strings and half an hour - Resells easily, because it is right-handed again the moment you restring it - The side dots end up underneath, which Kala says plainly - A couple of strings may need the nut easing, and that is a $40 to $75 job - Fifteen dollars more than the left-handed builds - Nothing in the box — no bag, no tuner Around $85 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x6neqC) One thing that catches people out on the way in. A standard ukulele is re-entrant: the string nearest your face is tuned *higher* than the two below it, not lower. Reversing the string order preserves that, because the string that was nearest a right-handed player’s face ends up nearest yours. What you are reversing is the physical order, not the tuning. It stays gCEA and every chord chart still applies. ## The thing that actually removes the friction Whichever route you take, the instrument is the easy half. Every chord diagram ever printed is drawn for a right-handed player, and a left-handed beginner spends the first month mentally flipping each one before their fingers move. Two books fix that by printing the diagrams the right way round, and they cost less than a set of strings. Start here ### Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1 — Left-Handed Edition - 48 pages, by Lil’ Rev - Every chord diagram and every tab drawn left-handed - 46 audio tracks, streamed or downloaded with the code in the book - PLAYBACK+ player — slow the audio without changing pitch, set loop points, change key - Tuning, music reading, melody, chords, strumming, scales, tremolo - Around $15 - The same method book most ukulele teachers start people on, mirrored - The slow-down player is the single most useful thing in it for a beginner - Cheap enough that it is not a decision - 48 pages goes quickly if you practice - Notation and tablature together, which some people find dense Around $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ycNCQO) If you want more of it ### Left-Handed Ukulele — The Complete Method - 104 pages, by Barrett Tagliarino and John R. Nicholson - Chords, melody, standard notation, tablature, scales - Hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, fingerpicking - Online audio included with the code in the book - Around $18 - More than twice the length of the Method book for three dollars more - Goes past chords into fingerpicking and technique - Written as a left-handed book rather than adapted into one - Steeper if the ukulele is your first instrument - No audio slow-down player, unlike the Method book Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xHD4cy) ## One accessory, and it is not optional Neither Ranch comes with a tuner, and a new ukulele goes out of tune several times a day for the first couple of weeks while the strings stretch. A clip-on reads the vibration through the headstock and does not care which way round the instrument is, so there is no left-handed version to hunt for. Buy it at the same time ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner - Clips to the headstock, reads vibration rather than sound - Full-color display, rotates to any angle - Calibrated for ukulele - Around $18 - Works in a noisy room, unlike a phone app - Rotates, so it faces you whichever shoulder the ukulele is on - 4.7 stars across more than 7,000 ratings - The Donner kit already includes a tuner, so skip it there - The clip loosens over a year or two Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x4nrdV) ## FAQs ### Should a left-handed person learn to play right-handed? Plenty do, and it is a defensible choice, because on a ukulele the fretting hand is doing the harder work and that hand is your dominant one if you play right-handed. But it is a choice, not a rule, and a left-handed instrument costs no more and no less. If you have never played anything, try holding a ukulele both ways for a minute before you order. Whichever way feels less like a puzzle is the right answer. ### Can I just flip a right-handed ukulele over? Turning it over without changing the strings leaves them in the wrong order — you would be fretting and strumming a set arranged upside down. What Kala describes is taking the strings off and putting them back on in reverse order, which takes about half an hour and a fresh set. Do that and the instrument behaves normally. ### Which ukuleles cannot be converted? Kala’s list is built-in electronics, an angled bridge, a compensated saddle, or a cutaway. Electronics and a cutaway you can see; the bridge and saddle need a photograph of the bridge, where you are looking for a strip that sits square and straight rather than skewed or notched. Anything with a pickup and a preamp panel in the side is out, which rules out most acoustic-electric models. ### Do left-handed ukuleles cost more? No. Kala’s left-handed Pacific Walnut concert and tenor and its left-handed satin mahogany baritone are priced identically to the right-handed versions — $149, $159 and $219 across all three pairs. Ortega describes its 60-model left-handed range as being sold “without the typical ‘lefty upcharge’.” The scarcity is real; the premium is not. ### Do I need left-handed strings? There is no such thing. A ukulele set is four strings of different gauges, and they go on in whichever order the instrument needs. Our [ukulele strings guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) covers the materials and which sets suit which size, and every word of it applies whichever way round you play. ### What size should a left-handed beginner start on? Concert, for the same reasons as anyone else — it is big enough for adult fingers and small enough to be a ukulele. That is also where the left-handed shelf actually is: two of the three instruments above are 23-inch concerts, and no maker currently builds a left-handed soprano worth recommending. Our [guide to choosing a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) goes through the sizes in full. ### Is a left-handed ukulele harder to resell? Yes, and it is the one real cost of choosing one. The buyers are the same small fraction of the market that made the shelf thin in the first place. A converted right-handed instrument does not have this problem, because reversing the strings again takes it straight back. ## The short version Look at the bridge of any ukulele you already own or already want. If the saddle is a straight strip sitting square, and there is no cutaway and no pickup, reverse the strings and you are done — that is the maker’s own advice, and the [Kala KA-15C](https://amzn.to/4x6neqC) at around $85 is the best instrument you can do it to. If you want it built the right way round, the [Ranch left-handed concert](https://amzn.to/3DeoDCH) at around $70 is the one, with the [Donner DUC-100L](https://amzn.to/3XATLED) alongside it if you want a cutaway and a full kit. Either way, spend the fifteen dollars on the [left-handed edition of the Hal Leonard method](https://amzn.to/4ycNCQO). Flipping every chord diagram in your head is the part that actually makes this harder, and it is the part a book solves outright. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [How to Choose a Ukulele: Size, Build and the Parts That Decide](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) **Published:** March 22, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ukulele/ "Ukulele")› How to Choose a Ukulele: Size, Build and the Parts That Decide There is one decision that changes how a ukulele feels in your hands, and it is the size. Everything else — the timber, the finish, the badge on the headstock — moves the sound around at the margins. Get the size wrong and no amount of practice fixes it. Three of the four sizes are the same instrument with the frets spread further apart. The fourth, the baritone, is tuned differently and is not really a ukulele size at all in the way the other three are. That is the whole map, and the rest of this page is what to do with it. If you want one answer### Concert, and the Kala KA-15C at around $85 A concert is a soprano with an inch and a bit more neck, which is enough room that adult fingers stop landing on two frets at once. Kala fits a Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle and Aquila strings from the factory — the two parts that decide whether a cheap ukulele plays in tune, and the two most people end up paying a shop to sort out. Buy the soprano instead if it is for a child or you want the classic jangle, and the tenor if your hands are large or you intend to fingerpick. Around $85 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UsZBv1) **For a child, or a purist:** Kala KA-15S soprano — around $70 **Large hands, or fingerpicking:** Kala KA-15T tenor — around $110 **Coming from guitar:** Kala KA-15B baritone — around $130, tuned DGBE **Buy it with the ukulele:** a clip-on tuner, around $18 ## The four sizes, measured by one maker Size charts on the web mostly quote total lengths, which vary by an inch or two between brands and tell you nothing useful. The number that matters is the scale length — nut to saddle — because that is what sets how far apart the frets sit. Córdoba publishes full dimensions for its 15 series and for its baritone, so the figures below were all measured by one maker rather than assembled out of four brands’ marketing copy. SopranoConcertTenorBaritone**Scale length**343mm (13½”)375mm (14¾”)432mm (17″)508mm (20″)**Body length**241mm (9½”)280mm (11″)298mm (11¾”)349mm (13¾”)**Nut width**35mm (1⅜”)35mm (1⅜”)38mm (1½”)38mm (1½”)**Neck thickness**17mm at the 1st fret, 20mm at the 9th — identical on all four**Frets in total**17181819**Frets to the body**12141414**Standard tuning**G-C-E-AG-C-E-AG-C-E-A**D-G-B-E****Do chord charts transfer?**YesYesYesNo — guitar shapes do**Factory strings**Aquila 4UAquila 7UAquila 10UAquila 21U Read across the scale-length row and the whole size question falls out of it. A tenor’s frets sit 26 percent further apart than a soprano’s; a baritone’s, nearly half again. Over the first three frets, where a beginner spends every minute of the first month, that is roughly two and an eighth inches of neck on a soprano against two and three quarters on a tenor. ## Bigger is about the frets, not about the neck The usual advice is that people with larger hands need a bigger ukulele. That is right, and the reason given for it is usually wrong. The neck does not get thicker: Córdoba’s is 17mm at the first fret and 20mm at the ninth on the soprano, the concert, the tenor and the baritone alike. The hand that wraps around the back cannot tell them apart. Across the neck, the change is smaller than it sounds. The nut goes from 1⅜ inches to 1½ at the tenor and stays there for the baritone — an eighth of an inch, shared between four strings — and plenty of tenors, Kala’s KA-15T among them, stay at 1⅜ anyway. So a wide nut is a property of the model, not of the size, and it is worth checking on the specific instrument rather than assumed from the word tenor. What genuinely changes is the distance along the neck. If your fingertips keep landing on two frets at once, or the chord you are aiming for buzzes however hard you press, the fix is a longer scale, and it is the only fix. That is the case for the concert over the soprano for most adults, and for the tenor over the concert if you have large hands or you are picking single notes rather than strumming chords. One thing goes the other way. A soprano joins the body at the twelfth fret where the larger sizes join at the fourteenth, so it gives you fewer notes to reach as well as less room to reach them in. If you can already see yourself playing melody rather than chords, that is a reason to skip it. Our [concert against tenor comparison](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) goes through the two middle sizes in more detail. ## The baritone is tuned like a guitar This is the one thing on this page that will genuinely catch somebody out. Soprano, concert and tenor are all tuned G-C-E-A, so every chord chart, every song sheet and every YouTube lesson works on all three. A baritone is tuned D-G-B-E — the top four strings of a guitar — and Córdoba states it outright on its spec sheet, and Kala fits its own with wound D and G strings, which is the same thing said in hardware. It is why a baritone sounds like a small guitar rather than a large ukulele. The consequence is simple and rarely spelled out. Ukulele chord charts do not transfer to a baritone, and guitar chord shapes do. If you already play guitar, that makes the baritone the fastest instrument in the family to get a tune out of — the shape you know as G is a G. If you do not, it means the beginner material you find online will be for the other three sizes, and you will be translating from day one. A baritone can be strung and tuned up to G-C-E-A with the right set, which makes it a very deep-sounding standard ukulele. That is a legitimate thing to do and it is a second purchase, not a default. ## One instrument, four sizes Kala’s KA-15 range is the cleanest way to settle the size question, because it removes every other variable. All four are laminate mahogany top, back, sides and neck, satin finish, rosewood fingerboard, a Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle and Aquila B-Blacks strings fitted, plant-based at the factory. Kala’s own list prices run $69, $89, $109 and $129 across the four. Sixty dollars separates the smallest from the largest, and every cent of it buys size. Soprano · For a child, or for the sound ### Kala KA-15S - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 13⅝” scale, 1⅜” at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 12 frets to the body - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - ~$70 The soprano is the ukulele everybody pictures, and it is the right one for two readers: anybody buying for a child, and anybody who wants the bright, quick, jangly voice the instrument is famous for. It is also the lightest and the cheapest way into a properly specified instrument. Against it: twelve frets to the body and thirteen and a half inches of scale is a tight neighborhood for adult fingers, and the first month is where that hurts most. If you are buying for yourself and you are grown, read the concert entry below before you decide the smaller one is charming. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle where most instruments at this price get molded plastic - Aquila strings from new, so the usual first upgrade is already done - The classic ukulele voice, which the bigger sizes trade away - Light, small and the cheapest of the four **Cons**- Tightest fret spacing of any size - Twelve frets to the body, so the least range - Laminate, so it will not open up with age - Nothing in the box but the ukulele Around $70[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4602IwZ) Concert · The one to buy ### Kala KA-15C - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 14⅞” scale, 1⅜” at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 18 frets - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - ~$85 About fifteen dollars over the soprano buys an inch and a quarter of extra scale and two more usable frets, and for an adult it is the best fifteen dollars on this page. The frets move about nine percent apart, which does not sound like much and is the difference between a fingertip landing behind a fret and landing on top of it. Everything else — the woods, the nut, the saddle, the strings — is the soprano’s exactly. It is still a laminate instrument, which means it will sound the same in ten years as it does in the first week, and it does not care what the humidity in your house does. At this money that is a fair trade and arguably the right one. **Pros**- Enough room between the frets for adult hands - Same NuBone hardware and Aquila strings as the rest of the range - Fourteen frets to the body rather than twelve - Barely more than the soprano **Cons**- 1⅜” at the nut, so no more string room than the soprano - Laminate throughout — nothing improves with age - Nothing in the box but the ukulele - Bigger than the shape most people picture Around $85[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UsZBv1) Tenor · Large hands, or fingerpicking ### Kala KA-15T - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 17″ scale, 1⅜” at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 18 frets - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - ~$110 Seventeen inches of scale is about a quarter more room than Kala’s soprano and about 14 percent more than their concert, and it is the size to buy if you have already tried something smaller and found your fingers crowding each other. It is also the only size on which a wound low G string works properly, which matters if you want a bass note under your chords. The reservation is the nut: Kala keeps the tenor at 1⅜ inches, the same as the soprano, so the extra room is entirely in the fret spacing and none of it is across the strings. If it is string spacing you are after rather than reach, a tenor from a maker who specifies 1½ inches is the thing to look for — we go through the options in the [tenor shortlist](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/). **Pros**- The most fret room of any standard-tuned size - The only size a wound low G works properly on - Fuller and louder than the smaller two - Same hardware and strings as the rest of the range **Cons**- 1⅜” nut is narrow for a tenor - Heaviest of the three standard-tuned sizes - Laminate, so it will not open up with age - Around forty dollars more than the soprano Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xwz2U8) Baritone · If you already play guitar ### Kala KA-15B - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - Tuned D-G-B-E, not G-C-E-A - Aquila Super Nylgut with wound D and G - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Truss rod — Kala lists one here and on none of the smaller sizes - ~$130 The baritone completes the range and is the odd one out in it. Kala lists a truss rod on this one and on none of the smaller three, because there is enough string tension over a twenty-inch scale to want an adjustable neck. The wound D and G are what give it the low, woody voice that people who find the ukulele too chirpy are usually looking for. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Buy it knowing what it is. If you play guitar, the shapes you already know transfer intact and this is the quickest instrument here to make music on. If you do not, most of the beginner material you will find is written for the other three sizes and you will be converting every chart you open. **Pros**- Guitar chord shapes transfer exactly - Deepest voice in the family by a distance - Truss rod, so the neck stays adjustable - Same NuBone hardware and Aquila strings as the rest **Cons**- Ukulele chord charts do not work on it - Dearest of the four - Too big for a child - Laminate, so it will not open up with age Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gHRAto) ## Solid, laminate, or plastic A solid-wood ukulele is cut from single pieces of timber. A laminate one is built from thin layers glued together. Solid wood is more responsive, gets better as it ages, and costs more; laminate is stiffer, cheaper, and ignores the weather. Below about $200 almost everything is laminate, and the honest position is that at beginner money a well-built laminate with good hardware beats a badly-built solid top every time. Laminate also has a running-cost advantage nobody mentions. A solid top wants a case and a room that does not swing from bone dry to steaming, because that is what cracks a soundboard. Laminate does not care. If your house is dry in winter or you intend to leave the thing on a stand by a radiator, that is a real argument and not a consolation prize. Which timber, once construction is settled, moves the sound around a good deal less than the internet suggests. We have gone through what each one actually does in our guide to [ukulele tonewoods](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/). ### Plastic is not automatically a toy Every buying guide tells you to avoid plastic ukuleles. That is good advice about the eighteen-dollar things in gift shops and bad advice as a rule, because Kala builds a plastic one on purpose and fits it with Aquila strings from the factory just as it does on its wooden instruments. Kala sells it to schools, which is the strongest possible statement about how much handling it survives. The exception · Beach, classroom, camping ### Kala Recycled Waterman soprano - Recycled ABS composite body, neck and fingerboard - Water-resistant, matte finish - Aquila B-Blacks strings fitted, plant-based - Soprano scale; Kala also builds it as a concert - Kala builds it in a dozen finishes - ~$59 Kala’s own description sells it on being durable, water-resistant, easy to clean and suitable for school programs, which is a maker being honest about what its instrument is for. It goes in a rucksack, it goes on a boat, and a child can drop it. Kala fits Aquila strings here exactly as it does on instruments costing twice as much. It is not a substitute for a wooden ukulele if you intend to sit and play seriously — the voice is thinner and it will never develop. As a second instrument you can be careless with, or a first one for a household with children in it, it is the right answer and the received wisdom about plastic is simply wrong here. We have written it up at length in our [Waterman review](https://promusicvault.com/kala-waterman-ukulele-review/). **Pros**- Weather, water and drops are a non-issue - Aquila strings from the factory, not novelty hardware - Cheaper than the wooden soprano - Built for classroom use, so it survives children **Cons**- Thinner voice than any of the wooden four - Will never open up with age - Soprano scale, so the tightest fret spacing - Not the instrument to learn seriously on Around $59[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x3OJB7) ## The three parts that decide whether it plays Under about $150 the specification that matters is not the timber. It is three small components, and they are the ones the marketing copy skips. **The nut and the saddle.** The nut is the slotted strip at the top of the fingerboard; the saddle is the strip the strings cross at the bridge. On cheap instruments both are molded plastic, and a nut cut a fraction too high makes the first three frets play sharp no matter how carefully you tune. A bone or bone-substitute nut — Graph Tech’s NuBone is the common one — is the single component most worth having, and it is why the Kalas above are worth their money against a similar-looking ukulele at half the price. **The strings.** Most ukuleles leave the factory with whatever was cheapest on the reel, and replacing them is the first thing anybody tells you to do. An instrument that arrives with Aquilas on it has had that job done already, which is worth about ten dollars and an evening. If yours did not, our guide to [ukulele strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) covers what to buy. **The tuners.** Geared tuners turn several times for one turn of the string and hold where you put them. Friction pegs — a bare tapered shaft with a button — rely on being tight enough not to slip, and on a beginner instrument they slip. Check the photographs for a gear housing on the side of the headstock. If the listing does not show one, assume friction, and if you are wondering why the thing will not stay in tune, that is usually where to look — along with the fact that new nylon strings stretch for the first week and need tuning several times a day until they settle. ## What it should cost BudgetWhat it buysWorth it?**Under $40**Laminate body, molded plastic nut and saddle, unnamed strings, sometimes friction pegsOnly as a toy. A setup costs more than the instrument**$50–75**Laminate mahogany, a real nut and saddle, geared tuners, Aquila strings, often a bag and tunerYes — this is where a ukulele starts being an instrument**$75–150**The same, in whichever size actually fits you, from a brand that has not changed the model in yearsYes. Most people should buy here and stop**$150–350**A solid top, better tuners, sometimes a pickupOnce you know you will keep playing**Over $350**All-solid, hand-finished, often Hawaiian koaA second instrument, not a first one The number that reframes the bottom of that table is the cost of a setup — easing the nut slots, leveling the frets, adjusting the action — which runs $40 to $75. Spend $35 on a ukulele and you have bought something that needs a $40 to $75 job doing to it. Spend $70 on one that arrives with the nut, the saddle and the strings already right and you have bought the setup as part of the price. That is the whole argument against the cheapest tier, and it is arithmetic rather than snobbery. If the budget genuinely will not stretch, our [cheap ukulele shortlist](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) works out where the line falls. ## The one accessory to buy with it A ukulele that is out of tune sounds wrong in a way a beginner cannot diagnose, and new nylon strings go out of tune constantly for the first week while they stretch. A phone app works in a quiet room. A clip-on reads the vibration through the headstock, so it works in a room with other people in it, and it costs less than a set of strings. Buy it in the same order as the ukulele ### Snark SN6X clip-on ukulele tuner - Clips to the headstock, reads vibration not sound - Full-color display that swivels - Ukulele-specific version of the SN5X - ~$18 It clamps to the headstock and reads the instrument through the wood, so a noisy room, a television or somebody else practicing in the same house makes no difference to it. That is the whole reason to own one rather than using a phone. The display swivels, which sounds trivial until you are holding a soprano and trying to read something pointing at the ceiling. It runs on a coin cell, which arrives fitted with a pull tab in it, and it is the cheapest thing on this page by a distance. The clip and the swivel joint are the parts owners report breaking, so it is worth not leaving it clamped to the headstock in a bag. **Pros**- Works in a noisy room where an app will not - Swivels so you can read it while holding the instrument - Costs less than a set of strings - Nothing to set up **Cons**- Owners report the clip and the swivel joint breaking inside a couple of months - Opinion on battery life is genuinely split - Coin cell rather than rechargeable Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45TJol3) A strap is the other thing worth having early, and only for a reason nobody gives: it stops you gripping the instrument with your fretting arm, which is what makes chord changes slow. We have been through the [straps worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/), including the ones that need a button fitting first. ## FAQs ### What size ukulele should a beginner buy? A concert, for most adults. It has enough room between the frets that chords come out cleanly from the first week, and it is only a few dollars more than a soprano from the same maker. Buy a soprano for a child under about ten, or if you specifically want the bright classic ukulele voice. ### Is a bigger ukulele easier to play? Easier to fret, yes, because the frets are further apart. Not easier in any other way — the neck is the same thickness, the chords are the same shapes and the strings are no further apart across the fingerboard unless the specific model says so. If your problem is fingers landing on two frets at once, a longer scale fixes it. If your problem is anything else, it will not. ### How much should I spend on a first ukulele? Between $60 and $130. Below about $50 you are buying something that needs a $40 to $75 setup before it plays properly, which makes the cheap instrument the expensive one. Above about $150 you are paying for a solid top and better tuners, which are real but are improvements a beginner cannot yet hear. ### Can I play ukulele chords on a baritone? Not as written. A baritone is tuned D-G-B-E rather than G-C-E-A, so a shape that gives you C on a soprano gives you G on a baritone. Guitar chord shapes transfer to it exactly, which is why it suits guitarists and catches out everybody else. Baritone-specific chord charts exist, and so do string sets that let you tune one up to standard ukulele pitch. ### Solid wood or laminate for a first ukulele? Laminate, at a beginner budget. Solid wood is genuinely better and gets better with age, but a solid top under $200 usually means the maker has economized somewhere you will notice more — the nut, the saddle or the tuners. A laminate instrument with good hardware plays better on the day it arrives and does not mind what your central heating does to the humidity. ### Does the tonewood matter on a cheap ukulele? Much less than the listing suggests. On a laminate body the outer veneer is a fraction of a millimeter thick and most of what you hear is the glue and the plies underneath it. Mahogany, koa and spruce laminates from the same factory sound far more like each other than like their solid-wood equivalents, so at this money pick the size and the hardware and treat the timber as a color choice. ## Where to go next Once the size is settled, the shortlist for it is the next stop: [sopranos](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/), [concerts](https://promusicvault.com/best-concert-ukuleles/), [tenors](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) or [baritones](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/). If you would rather start from the maker, we have ranked [the brands worth trusting](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) and put together a [beginner shortlist](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) that cuts across all four sizes. And if you are still weighing the instrument itself against something with six strings, [ukulele against guitar](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) is the honest comparison. **Categories:** Ukulele --- ### [Mandolin vs Ukulele: The Real Differences, and Which to Learn First](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-ukulele/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Mandolin vs Ukulele: The Real Differences, and Which to Learn First A mandolin has eight steel strings in four pairs, a scale length of 13⅞ inches, and violin tuning — G, D, A, E. A concert ukulele has four nylon strings, a scale of about 15 inches, and is tuned G, C, E, A. Put the two fretboards side by side and they are within an inch of each other. The string tension is not close: a medium mandolin set pulls about 181 pounds against the neck, and a concert ukulele set pulls about 33. That gap explains almost everything about how the two feel under the fingers. It should not be what decides which one you buy. The mandolin is built to play the tune; the ukulele is built to sit underneath a voice. Work out which of those you actually want to do and the choice mostly makes itself. If you want one answer### The ukulele — unless you want to play the melody It costs less, it is kinder to untrained fingertips, and you can accompany a song with one finger on the first day, which is the single biggest predictor of whether a beginner is still playing in six months. The Córdoba 15CM is the concert-sized one to beat: mahogany, Aquila strings from the factory, and a neck wide enough that your fingers are not fighting each other. If you want to play fiddle tunes rather than songs, stop reading and buy the mandolin — the ukulele will not do that job. Around $130 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zmagHQ) **Cheapest way in:** Donner DUC-1 concert — around $75 **If you want to play tunes:** Donner DML-1 mandolin — around $100 **Play fiddle already?** The mandolin is the same tuning **Play guitar already?** The ukulele is a capo away ## Side by side MandolinUkulele**Strings**8 steel, in 4 pairs4, nylon or fluorocarbon**Standard tuning**G–D–A–EG–C–E–A**Intervals**Fifths throughout, same as a violinA fourth, a major third, a fourth**Scale length**13⅞”13⅝” soprano, 14¾–15″ concert, 17″ tenor, 20″ baritone**Nut width**About 1⅛”About 1⅜”**Total string tension**About 181 lbAbout 33 lb**Lowest note**G below middle CMiddle C**Range**About three octavesUnder two octaves on a soprano, just over two on a concert**Played with**A stiff pick, 1mm and upFingers, or a felt pick**Bridge**Floating — held on by string tension aloneGlued to the top**What it mostly does**Carries the tuneAccompanies a voice**Realistic entry price**~$100 laminate, ~$400 carved~$65 laminate, ~$130 for a good one**Setup**$60–125, and it usually needs one$40–75, and often it does not ## One plays the tune, the other plays underneath it This is the choice, and everything else is detail. The mandolin is a melody instrument that can also play chords. The ukulele is a chord instrument that can also pick out a melody, badly. The reason is range. A ukulele in standard tuning has fewer than two octaves on a soprano and a little over two on a concert, and its lowest note is middle C. Most of the tunes people want to play — [bluegrass](/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) breakdowns, Irish session sets, old-time fiddle tunes, anything written for a violin — spend half their time below middle C. On a ukulele those notes do not exist. You can move the tune up an octave, and it will sound thin and wrong, because it was written for the register you have just left. The mandolin covers about three octaves from the G below middle C, which is the same bottom note as a violin and the reason a mandolin can play a fiddle tune exactly as written. That is what the instrument is for. Its chords are perfectly good — the bluegrass chop is a mandolin chord and nothing else sounds like it — but the chords exist to support a band that also has a guitar in it. Run it the other way and the ukulele wins as decisively. Four nylon strings under low tension, a wide neck, and chord shapes that need one or two fingers make it the better instrument to sing over. A C major on a ukulele is one finger. A C major on a mandolin is three fingers holding down six steel strings, and you will not be singing while you find it. ## A hundred and eighty-one pounds against thirty-three A standard medium mandolin set — the phosphor bronze gauge nearly everyone ends up on — pulls 181 pounds across the eight strings. A concert ukulele set pulls about 33 across its four. That is five and a half times the tension on a fretboard of almost identical length, and it is the whole physical story of these two instruments. In practice it means three things. Steel at that tension cuts into untrained fingertips, and the first fortnight on a mandolin genuinely hurts; two to three weeks of short daily sessions is the usual price of the calluses. Every note is two strings, so you are pressing a pair into the board at once and a lazy finger buzzes audibly. And barre chords are a real effort rather than a technique problem — you are levering eight steel strings flat with one finger. Nylon at 33 pounds does none of that. Beginners on a ukulele get sore fingers for a few days and then stop noticing. This is not a small difference dressed up: it is the reason ukuleles are handed to seven-year-olds and mandolins are not. It also decides how much the instrument moves after you buy it. All that tension pulls the neck and presses down on a [mandolin’s floating bridge](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/), which is held in place by nothing but the strings. A ukulele’s bridge is glued to the top and stays where it was put. ## Almost the same fretboard, half the strings A mandolin’s scale length is 13⅞ inches. A soprano ukulele’s is 13⅝, and a concert’s is about 14¾. The fretting hand is doing its work over the same few inches on any of them, and the frets near the top of the neck are cramped on all three. The necks are where they part company. A mandolin nut is about 1⅛ inches wide and carries eight strings. A ukulele nut is about 1⅜ inches and carries four. So the mandolin fits twice as many strings across a quarter-inch narrower space, which is why a mandolin fingerboard looks fussy in a way the numbers alone do not suggest, and why players with wide fingertips find the mandolin harder than the tension alone would explain. Worth knowing if you have large hands: the ukulele has a way out and the mandolin does not. Move up to a [tenor ukulele](/best-tenor-ukuleles/) and you get a 17-inch scale with the same four strings and the same tuning, so nothing you have learned is wasted. Mandolins are built at one scale length. The [octave mandolin and the bouzouki](/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/) are longer, but they are different instruments in a different register rather than a bigger version of the same one. ## Fifths, fourths, and the string that runs backward A [mandolin is tuned](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) G–D–A–E, a fifth between each course, exactly as a violin is. A ukulele is tuned G–C–E–A, which is a fourth, then a major third, then a fourth. Those are not the same idea, and they are not interchangeable — no chord shape and no scale pattern survives the move from one to the other. The mandolin’s uniform fifths make its fretboard unusually logical. One scale shape works on every pair of courses and at every position; learn a shape in one place and you have learned it everywhere. The ukulele’s major third between C and E breaks that pattern in the middle of the neck, exactly as a guitar’s B string does, so shapes change depending on which strings they cross. The ukulele pays for that with chords that need almost nothing from the fretting hand. Most of the chords in a beginner songbook take one or two fingers. So the mandolin is more consistent to learn and harder to play, and the ukulele is the reverse — which, if you are choosing an instrument to be able to accompany yourself by the weekend, is a straightforward argument for the ukulele. Then there is the fourth string. On a ukulele in standard tuning, the G is not the lowest string — it is pitched above the C and the E, a tone below the A. Strum downward and you go high, low, middle, high rather than low to high. This is called re-entrant tuning, it is what gives the instrument its bright, chiming strum, and it is also why the ukulele has no bass end to speak of. A [low-G string set](/best-ukulele-strings/) fixes it, drops the bottom note to the same G a mandolin starts on, and makes the instrument noticeably better at melody and slightly less characterful at strumming. Most players who move toward fingerpicking end up there eventually. ## If you already play something, one of these is nearly free A [violin or fiddle](/mandolin-vs-violin/) player already knows the mandolin. It is the same four notes in the same order at the same pitches, and every finger pattern transfers intact. You are learning a pick, frets and eight strings instead of four — a few weeks of adjustment against years of fingerboard knowledge you keep. For a fiddler, choosing the ukulele over the mandolin means throwing that away for no reason. A [guitar](/mandolin-vs-guitar/) player is most of the way to a ukulele. Put a capo on the fifth fret of a guitar and the top four strings sound G, C, E and A — the ukulele’s four notes, in the ukulele’s order. Every chord shape you know for those strings works on a ukulele unchanged; you just call it by a different name, because the shape you play as a D on a guitar is a G on a ukulele. The one surprise is that re-entrant fourth string sitting above the C rather than below it, which takes a few days to stop tripping up your fingerpicking. If you play neither, none of this applies and the melody-or-songs question is the one that matters. ## What each one costs to get playing The sticker price is the smaller half of the gap. A [mandolin costs more to make usable](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) than a ukulele does, because there is more on it that can be wrong. MandolinUkulele**Instrument**~$100 to start, ~$400 for a carved top~$65 to start, ~$130 for a good one**Strings**~$10 a set, changed every few months~$12 a set, changed once or twice a year**Clip-on tuner**~$22, and the same one does both jobs**Gig bag**~$45~$30**Setup**$60–125, usually needed$40–75, often skippable**Realistic first-year total**$240–310$180–265 The setup line is where the real difference sits, and it is worth understanding rather than budgeting blindly. A mandolin has a floating bridge that is positioned by ear and a tuner rather than fixed at the factory, nut slots cut for steel, and 181 pounds pulling the neck into whatever shape it wants. Get any of that wrong and the instrument plays sharp up the neck or the action is high enough to be exhausting. A ukulele has a glued bridge, a third of the tension and nothing to position, so a mediocre factory setup is an annoyance rather than a barrier — on a laminate ukulele under $150 the setup can cost a third of the instrument and is rarely worth paying for. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) One thing that softens the mandolin’s disadvantage: at the bottom of the market both instruments arrive as kits. The Donner mandolin and the Donner ukulele below both come with a tuner, a bag and picks, so the accessory column only really applies when you buy the Córdoba, which comes with nothing but the instrument and a good set of strings already on it. If you choose the ukulele ### Córdoba 15CM Concert - 14¾” concert scale, 1⅜” at the nut - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 18 frets, 14 to the body - Aquila strings fitted at the factory - ~$130 Concert is the size to buy if you are only buying one. A soprano is cheaper and more traditionally Hawaiian, but its 13⅝-inch scale crowds adult fingers at exactly the frets beginners live on, and the concert’s extra inch fixes that without changing anything you have to learn. The 15CM is laminate, which is the right choice here rather than a compromise — it ignores dry winters and hot cars, and under about $250 a solid top on a ukulele buys you less than the label suggests. The Aquila strings are the reason it sounds better than its price out of the box; on most instruments at this money the factory strings are the first thing to throw away. Córdoba builds the same instrument in four sizes and the model number is how you tell them apart — 15SM soprano, 15CM concert, 15TM tenor. It is the CM you want unless you have specifically decided otherwise. **Pros**- Aquila strings from new - Wide enough neck for adult hands - Laminate, so humidity is a non-issue - Sounds considerably better than $130 suggests **Cons**- No tuner, bag or strap in the box - Laminate will not open up with age - Dearer than the Donner by half again Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zmagHQ) If you choose the mandolin ### Donner DML-1 A-Style - 13⅞” scale, A-style body - Laminate mahogany, f-holes - Adjustable truss rod and bridge - Tuner, gig bag, spare strings and picks included - ~$100 The cheapest mandolin worth handing a beginner. The action is low enough out of the box that you are not fighting the strings, and the tuners hold, which is more than can be said for most of what sits below it. It is a laminate instrument and it will sound the same in ten years as it does today — you are buying it to find out whether you like the mandolin, not to keep. Two things to know before it arrives. The bridge is not attached to anything; it is held on by string tension and its position sets the intonation, so if the instrument plays in tune open and sharp at the twelfth fret, the bridge needs moving rather than the mandolin needs returning. And the factory strings are the weakest part of it. A [medium phosphor bronze set](https://amzn.to/3Spj0wi) costs about $10 and is the single cheapest improvement available to it. If you already know the mandolin is what you want long-term, the money is better spent going straight to a [carved solid top at around $400](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/). **Pros**- Playable straight out of the box - Tuner, bag, picks and spare strings included - Adjustable truss rod at the price - Holds tune better than most at this money **Cons**- Laminate top will never improve - Factory strings want changing immediately - F-holes on a laminate top give you the bluegrass look without the bluegrass tone Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x8rsPu) If $130 is more than you want to risk on finding out, the [Donner DUC-1 concert](https://amzn.to/3S6AugJ) is around $75 and arrives with a bag, strap, tuner and picks. It is a plainer instrument than the Córdoba and the strings on it are ordinary, but it is a genuine concert-scale ukulele rather than a toy, and swapping them for an [Aquila Super Nylgut set](https://amzn.to/4gfWn5d) at about $12 closes most of the gap — that is what the Córdoba wears from the factory. Whichever you pick, two things are worth buying at the same time. A [clip-on chromatic tuner](https://amzn.to/3Z3hzkA) at around $22 does both instruments and matters more on the mandolin, where four pairs have to be brought into tune with each other as well as with concert pitch — an out-of-tune pair sounds like a broken instrument rather than a wrong note. And a case, because both of these are small enough to get knocked off a sofa: a [padded A-style mandolin bag](https://amzn.to/4wpkc0l) runs about $45, and a [foam-padded concert ukulele bag](https://amzn.to/3RXkVYK) about $30. Ukulele bags are cut to one size each, so a concert instrument needs a concert bag — a soprano one will not close over it. For learning material, the Hal Leonard methods are the default on both instruments and cost less than a single lesson — the [Mandolin Method](https://amzn.to/4xaxWg8) teaches tablature and standard notation together, which suits an instrument you will eventually want to read fiddle tunes on, and the [Ukulele Method](https://amzn.to/4qLZarD) gets you strumming songs in the first few pages, which is the correct priority for that instrument. ## The sizes and shapes each one comes in Ukuleles come in four sizes, all tuned G–C–E–A apart from the baritone. [Soprano](/best-soprano-ukuleles/) is the original and the smallest at a 13⅝-inch scale. [Concert](/best-concert-ukuleles/) adds about an inch of scale and a little more body, which is why it is the usual recommendation for an adult. [Tenor](/best-tenor-ukuleles/) at 17 inches is louder and roomier and is what most performing players use. [Baritone](/baritone-ukuleles/) is the odd one out — a 20-inch scale tuned D–G–B–E, which is a guitar’s top four strings with no capo, so ukulele chord shapes do not transfer to it. [Mandolins vary by body shape rather than size.](/types-of-mandolins/) The A-style is the plain teardrop and the sensible buy. The F-style has the scroll and the two points, costs more on hand-built instruments and nothing extra on factory ones, and sounds no different either way — the scroll is solid wood outside the sound chamber. Bowl-backs are the original Neapolitan design and are now mostly a classical and antique instrument. Whichever shape, the scale length and the tuning are the same, so unlike the ukulele there is no size decision to get wrong. Both instruments belong to the [lute family](/mandolin-vs-lute/), in the sense that both have a neck attached to a resonating box with strings running the length of it. That covers the guitar and the banjo as well, and it predicts nothing about how either one plays. ## So which one Buy the ukulele if you want to accompany singing, if you want to be playing recognisable songs within a fortnight, if you are buying for a child, or if the instrument has to survive being carried around. Buy the mandolin if you want to play tunes rather than songs, if bluegrass or Irish or old-time is the reason you are here, or if you already play the fiddle. Starting on the ukulele and moving to the mandolin later only works if the ukulele is something you want to play in its own right. Nothing you learn on one transfers to the other: different tuning, different intervals, different right hand, no shared chord shapes. A year of ukulele buys you calluses, a sense of rhythm and the habit of practicing, and that is all. If the mandolin is what you actually want, the sore fingertips and the setup money are a better investment than a detour through an instrument you did not want. ## FAQs ### Which is easier to learn, mandolin or ukulele? The ukulele, clearly. It has half the strings at a fifth of the tension, its chords take one or two fingers, and you can play a song on it the first afternoon. The mandolin’s fretboard is more logical once you are past the first month, but getting past the first month takes calluses the ukulele never asks you to grow. ### Can I tune a mandolin like a ukulele? Not usefully. Mandolin string gauges are cut to reach G–D–A–E at 13⅞ inches, and getting to G–C–E–A means dropping the top course a full fifth, which leaves it slack enough to buzz and rattle against the frets. The instrument is designed around fifths. If you want ukulele tuning, buy a ukulele. ### Can I use the same pick for both? No, and it is not a small mismatch. A mandolin needs a stiff pick — 1mm and up, often 1.5 — because a thin one flexes instead of driving two steel strings at once. That same pick on nylon ukulele strings is harsh and clicky, and its edge will mark a soft ukulele top. Ukuleles are played with the fingers or with a felt pick. ### Do mandolin and ukulele chords use the same shapes? None of them. A mandolin is tuned in fifths and a ukulele in a fourth, a major third and a fourth, so no chord shape and no scale pattern carries across. Learning one gives you general musicianship and nothing instrument-specific. ### Which is louder? The mandolin, by a wide margin. Steel strings at 181 pounds of tension drive the top far harder than nylon at 33, and a carved-top mandolin is designed to cut through a band with a banjo in it. A ukulele struggles to be heard next to an acoustic guitar. ### What is the sound difference? The mandolin is bright, percussive and short — notes decay fast, which is why tremolo picking exists as a way of sustaining them. The ukulele is warm, soft-edged and quiet, with a chiming quality that comes from the re-entrant high G putting the highest string next to the lowest one in a strum. ### How many strings does each one have? A [mandolin has eight](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/), arranged as four pairs tuned in unison, so it is fingered as though it had four. A ukulele has four, and a handful of specialist models add doubled courses. ### Which is better for singing along? The ukulele, and it is not close. Its chords need almost nothing from the fretting hand, which leaves attention free for the words, and it is quiet enough to sit under a voice rather than compete with it. A mandolin accompanying a singer generally wants a guitar in the room doing the actual harmonic work. ### Is a mandolin more expensive than a ukulele? Yes, at every level. A playable mandolin starts around $100 against about $65 for a ukulele, the first instrument genuinely worth keeping is around $400 against roughly $250, and the mandolin needs a $60–125 setup that the ukulele usually does not. ### Should I start on the ukulele and switch to the mandolin later? Only if you want to play the ukulele too. Nothing transfers between them technically, so a year of ukulele first is a year of ukulele — worth doing for its own sake, and not a shortcut to the mandolin. If the mandolin is the goal, start there. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Ukulele Wood Types: Which Tonewood Is Actually Worth Paying For](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) **Published:** June 17, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ukulele/ "Ukulele")› Ukulele Wood Types: Which Tonewood Is Actually Worth Paying For Under about $150, the wood named on the label is a picture of that wood. Budget ukuleles are laminate — thin plies pressed together under a decorative outer veneer — so a $70 “koa ukulele” has koa on the outside and whatever was cheap underneath. It sounds like a cheap ukulele, not like koa. Past roughly $250 the label starts telling the truth, and the differences below become ones you can actually hear. If you want one answer### Mahogany, concert size — and don’t pay extra for “solid” Mahogany is the most forgiving tonewood there is: warm, mid-heavy, and hard to make sound bad. The **Cordoba 15CM** is the one to beat — laminate mahogany, Aquila strings, abalone rosette, and a build that punches well above its money. Laminate also shrugs off dry winters and hot cars, which solid wood does not. Around $130 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UqdHwY) **Cheapest wooden one:** Donner DUC-1 concert — around $75 **Cheapest real solid top:** Enya EUC-25D — around $90 **Solid wood done properly:** Kala KA-SMH-C — around $300 **The Hawaiian one:** Kala KA-KOA-T koa tenor — around $370 ## The tonewoods at a glance WoodWhat it sounds likeWhere you meet itTypical price**Mahogany**Warm, mid-focused, evenAlmost every beginner uke ever made$50–300**Koa**Warm like mahogany but livelier on topHawaiian-made and premium models$350+ for the real thing**Acacia**Near-identical to koaSold as the koa alternative$150–400**Spruce**Bright, loud, fast attackTops only, paired with other back woods$150–400**Cedar**Warm and soft, responds to a light touchRarely — a guitar wood visiting$300+**Maple**Clear and tight, few overtonesBack and sides, for looks as much as tone$200+**Mango**Between mahogany and koaMid-price Hawaiian-styled ukes$150–250**ABS / plastic**Thin but genuinely musicalBeach, travel and children’s ukes$50–70 ## Four things that change the sound more than the species does ### 1. Solid or laminate This is the whole ballgame, and it outranks every wood name on this page. A solid top is one piece of timber that vibrates freely, so notes bloom, sustain longer and gain complexity as the wood ages. A laminate top is plywood: stiffer, deader, and largely indifferent to what species the outer sheet happens to be. Two ukuleles both labeled mahogany, one solid and one laminate, sound less alike than a solid mahogany and a solid koa do. Laminate is not a swindle, though. It is tougher, cheaper, and far less bothered by central heating, which is why nearly every school and travel ukulele is laminate and why our [budget picks](/best-cheap-ukuleles/) mostly are too. ### 2. Where the wood is The top does most of the audible work. Back and sides color the result but they do not set it, so “koa back and sides” on a spruce-topped instrument is a spruce ukulele wearing koa. When a listing names two woods, the top is the one that decides how it sounds — and it is usually the cheaper claim to make, so read carefully. ### 3. Body size Soprano, concert, tenor and baritone differ more from each other than any two tonewoods do. A bigger box means more air, deeper resonance and longer sustain, and it changes the instrument’s character far more than swapping mahogany for mango ever will. Settle the size first — our [concert vs tenor comparison](/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) is the usual sticking point, and there are dedicated guides to [sopranos](/best-soprano-ukuleles/), [concerts](/best-concert-ukuleles/), [tenors](/best-tenor-ukuleles/) and [baritones](/baritone-ukuleles/). ### 4. Strings and setup Factory strings on a budget ukulele are usually the cheapest part of it, and swapping them is the single biggest improvement available for around ten dollars. A $60 uke with good fluorocarbon strings and the action filed down will beat a $120 uke straight out of its box. If you take one thing from this page other than the laminate rule, make it [a fresh set of strings](/best-ukulele-strings/). ## The woods, one by one ### Mahogany — the default, and rightly so Warm, woody and mid-forward, with fewer overtones than koa, which is exactly why it flatters beginners: strummed chords come out solid instead of jangly, and mistakes are less exposed. It is also the cheapest decent tonewood, so it spans the entire market from $50 to $500. Three worth knowing at three prices. The [Donner DUC-1 concert](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1L6OSX?th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=6434a3c75008e489e36e201b48e4f609&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) at around $75 is the cheapest wooden one that is unambiguously a musical instrument rather than a toy. The [Cordoba 15CM](https://amzn.to/3UqdHwY) at around $130 is the sweet spot, and the one most people should stop at. And the [Kala KA-SMH-C](https://amzn.to/4c2AFR5) at around $300 is all-solid mahogany — top, back and sides — which is what the real thing costs. If you want a solid top without the $300, the [Enya EUC-25D](https://amzn.to/4zaHJol) is around $90 with a genuine solid mahogany top and fluorocarbon strings already fitted. Check the action and the fret ends the day it arrives — but the tone for the money is hard to argue with. ### Koa — the Hawaiian one, and the expensive one Koa is the wood the ukulele was born on, and on a good instrument it earns the reputation: mahogany’s warmth with a brighter, more complex top end that opens up further as it is played in. The grain is spectacular, which is half of why people want it. It only grows in Hawaii, it is slow-growing and tightly controlled, and that is why real koa starts around $350 and climbs hard. The [Kala KA-KOA-T tenor](https://www.amazon.com/Kala-Brand-Music-Co-Collection/dp/B0B99DHKYQ?crid=2054B9OK0YJIF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._MIYYS7RyyNARV6x9Dg_SnsLSVO1gzQ150TWoEs2B64o0rleFGDVd42kP5muMdnHMev-9jvGtcaAux9h35cBOimeTEx6OyuGUm9wKJYqcctojspcsISmrCjafIwZZiw2DI4Di6oq5soSFUeJWGailSXxkyqejtzdCtbEs8Dn6H_XFv5MfnasfNb8lPB6O5gNqqEOar8oV_doF1JnPGofmhZVoSwERvDBxfBw9Xt8iWMmaWfdnWZfy1Pp-lc7mGJKOrbEqi9IAfTNRizJ1r3pHcaMePTvVA3bQu5wYEkgSmw.3anM4LH3EEpWgtx6UktEqGyFiCrRB6HnMCOyLpMBn1w&dib_tag=se&keywords=Kala+koa&qid=1745372095&sprefix=kala+koa%2Caps%2C176&sr=8-6&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=19bbd5122f9efc18ed993e842756cbbf&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) sits around $370 with koa top, back and sides, and is about as cheap as an honest all-koa instrument gets. Anything advertised as koa for under $150 is koa-look laminate. That is not necessarily a bad ukulele, but you are buying the photograph. ### Acacia — koa’s cousin, and not the bargain it is sold as Acacia is the same genus as koa — koa *is* an acacia — grown outside Hawaii, and it looks and sounds close enough that most people could not pick them apart blind. The marketing writes itself: koa tone at a fraction of the price. Except the fraction keeps shrinking. [Kala’s solid acacia tenor](https://amzn.to/4qukSAx) lands around $400 — above the koa tenor above it, not below. Where acacia genuinely wins is lower down the range, on $150–250 instruments that give you the figured Hawaiian look without inventing a koa claim. At the top of the range, buy on grain and price, and ignore which of the two names is on the label. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### Spruce — the loud one Spruce is a top wood, effectively never used for backs and sides. It is stiff and light, which makes it efficient: more volume, faster attack, a brighter and more cutting voice. If you play with other people or sing over your own strumming, spruce carries. The [Cordoba 24S](https://www.amazon.com/Cordoba-24S-Spruce-Soprano-Ukulele/dp/B08FFLGL7G?crid=3O59S67XLP6US&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.eAFaX50kwuvxDZPj5U7Ef1MnDHcyiqooNAOnDgVsm6QbdLmHPjhGCLmQjzLEI6WsAE5OTjzqbFmKO7Lecybja3EyOt-2E4MIaJ6IS2o-z6DgSiWFYddgKBKvGAGGmS50wAKOsIZHlxiWiPSTIKdesgV6D4eWMJ-ANSDuOAo-eaTU9ypUYkcfQnvJXlmn8H2X9i81hhRdzUbaY11M1eZ_l5buge8npdvkQ0zxxjyzwngrLfnM8aMCVyPQjFPSg7OIE6RrAbDBd61yL4WJ70zMh8ehi7FyJTNEydmlXidwA90.WertE6awnByC_xRye1rkvl3IzD8kzK7nrkp3WdOzZoU&dib_tag=se&keywords=cordoba%2Bspruce%2Bukulele&qid=1745372472&s=musical-instruments&sprefix=cordoba%2Bspruce%2Bukulele%2Cmi%2C87&sr=1-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=6422386ab3455c19cfc2489ab667959e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), around $220, is the clearest demonstration of the top-versus-back rule on this page: solid spruce top, spalted maple back and sides. It is a soprano that projects like something larger, and the maple is doing the looking while the spruce does the talking. The trade-off is honesty. Spruce is unforgiving — it reproduces a clumsy strum as faithfully as a clean one, which is the opposite of what most beginners want. ### Cedar — soft-spoken, and rare here Cedar is spruce’s warmer relative: darker, rounder, and unusually responsive to a light touch, which fingerpickers love and heavy strummers find muddy. It is primarily a classical guitar top wood and only occasionally visits the ukulele, almost always on expensive instruments, so it is rarely a decision a first-time buyer has to make. ### Maple — for the eyes, mostly Maple is bright, tight and low on overtones — a wood that reports what you played without adding much of its own. Flamed and spalted maple are visually spectacular, and on ukuleles that is usually the actual reason it is there. It shows up on backs and sides far more than on tops, as on the Cordoba 24S above. ### Mango — the underrated one Mango sits between mahogany’s warmth and koa’s sparkle, with wild, unpredictable figuring that no two instruments share. It is a genuine Hawaiian tonewood with none of koa’s scarcity premium, which makes it the value pick if you want that island look and sound without $400. [Kala’s curly mango long-neck soprano](https://amzn.to/4gtwv6b) is around $190 — a soprano body on a concert neck, so it keeps the bright soprano voice while giving adult hands room to move. ### Plastic — not a joke Molded ABS ukuleles are thinner and simpler-sounding than wood, and completely immune to humidity, heat, sand, rain and being trodden on. For a beach, a tent, a boat or a seven-year-old, that is the correct trade. The [Kala Waterman](https://amzn.to/4x4vsQQ) at around $60 is the one everybody means, and it is a real instrument rather than a novelty — we went through it in detail in our [Waterman review](/kala-waterman-ukulele-review/). ## How to tell solid from laminate before you pay Listings are slippery about this, and not always by accident. The word “solid” is worth real money, so it gets attached loosely — sometimes in a marketing bullet while the specification table beside it just says “mahogany”. Three checks that settle it: - **Look into the soundhole at the edge of the top.** Solid wood shows one continuous grain running through the cut edge. Laminate shows stripes — the layers, in cross-section. This is decisive and takes two seconds. - **Check the grain matches inside and out.** On solid wood the pattern on the inside face lines up with the outside. On laminate the inner ply is plain, cheap and unrelated. - **Trust the price.** A solid top under about $70 is unlikely, and all-solid construction under about $250 is very unlikely. When a $60 instrument claims all-solid exotic hardwood, the claim is the thing that is wrong. “Solid top” and “all solid” are also different products at different prices. Solid top with laminate back and sides is the value sweet spot: most of the tonal gain, most of the durability, none of the premium. ## So which should you buy? **Around $60–80.** Stop thinking about species and buy a well-made laminate mahogany, or plastic if it is going outdoors. The [Donner DUC-1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1L6OSX?th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=6434a3c75008e489e36e201b48e4f609&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) or the [Kala Waterman](https://amzn.to/4x4vsQQ). Spend the difference on strings. **Around $130.** The [Cordoba 15CM](https://amzn.to/3UqdHwY), and quite possibly for good. This is where ukuleles stop having anything obviously wrong with them. **Around $200.** Now the species is a real choice. [Mango](https://amzn.to/4gtwv6b) for warmth and figure, or the [solid-spruce Cordoba 24S](https://www.amazon.com/Cordoba-24S-Spruce-Soprano-Ukulele/dp/B08FFLGL7G?crid=3O59S67XLP6US&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.eAFaX50kwuvxDZPj5U7Ef1MnDHcyiqooNAOnDgVsm6QbdLmHPjhGCLmQjzLEI6WsAE5OTjzqbFmKO7Lecybja3EyOt-2E4MIaJ6IS2o-z6DgSiWFYddgKBKvGAGGmS50wAKOsIZHlxiWiPSTIKdesgV6D4eWMJ-ANSDuOAo-eaTU9ypUYkcfQnvJXlmn8H2X9i81hhRdzUbaY11M1eZ_l5buge8npdvkQ0zxxjyzwngrLfnM8aMCVyPQjFPSg7OIE6RrAbDBd61yL4WJ70zMh8ehi7FyJTNEydmlXidwA90.WertE6awnByC_xRye1rkvl3IzD8kzK7nrkp3WdOzZoU&dib_tag=se&keywords=cordoba%2Bspruce%2Bukulele&qid=1745372472&s=musical-instruments&sprefix=cordoba%2Bspruce%2Bukulele%2Cmi%2C87&sr=1-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=6422386ab3455c19cfc2489ab667959e&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) for volume and bite. **$300 and up.** All-solid, and now the wood name means what it says. [Solid mahogany](https://amzn.to/4c2AFR5) is the safe, warm choice; [koa](https://www.amazon.com/Kala-Brand-Music-Co-Collection/dp/B0B99DHKYQ?crid=2054B9OK0YJIF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._MIYYS7RyyNARV6x9Dg_SnsLSVO1gzQ150TWoEs2B64o0rleFGDVd42kP5muMdnHMev-9jvGtcaAux9h35cBOimeTEx6OyuGUm9wKJYqcctojspcsISmrCjafIwZZiw2DI4Di6oq5soSFUeJWGailSXxkyqejtzdCtbEs8Dn6H_XFv5MfnasfNb8lPB6O5gNqqEOar8oV_doF1JnPGofmhZVoSwERvDBxfBw9Xt8iWMmaWfdnWZfy1Pp-lc7mGJKOrbEqi9IAfTNRizJ1r3pHcaMePTvVA3bQu5wYEkgSmw.3anM4LH3EEpWgtx6UktEqGyFiCrRB6HnMCOyLpMBn1w&dib_tag=se&keywords=Kala+koa&qid=1745372095&sprefix=kala+koa%2Caps%2C176&sr=8-6&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=19bbd5122f9efc18ed993e842756cbbf&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) is the one people dream about and it does deliver. Still deciding on the instrument itself rather than the timber? Start with [how to choose a ukulele](/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/), or go straight to the [beginner shortlist](/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) and [the brands worth trusting](/best-ukulele-brands/). ## FAQs ### What is the best wood for a ukulele? Koa, if money is not the question — it is the traditional wood and on a good instrument it sounds like it. For almost everyone else, mahogany, because it is warm, forgiving and available at every price. But a solid mahogany top beats a laminate koa one every time, so decide construction before species. ### Does ukulele wood really affect the sound? Yes, but less than the marketing suggests and much less than solid-versus-laminate, body size or strings. On a laminate instrument the species is close to cosmetic; on a solid one it is clearly audible. ### Is solid wood better than laminate? It sounds better — richer, louder, more sustain, and it improves with age. It is also more expensive and it can crack in dry air or sudden temperature swings. For a first ukulele, a school ukulele or one that travels, laminate is the more sensible instrument. ### What wood should a beginner buy? Mahogany, in concert size. It is the most forgiving voice, the most widely available and the cheapest to get right. Fit decent strings and you will have an instrument you can keep after you outgrow beginner status. ### Is acacia the same as koa? Effectively, yes — koa is a species of acacia that grows only in Hawaii. Acacia from elsewhere looks and sounds very close, and the difference in a blind listen is small. The price gap between them is narrower than the marketing implies, so judge each instrument on grain and build rather than on the word. ### Why is my “koa” ukulele so cheap? Because it is koa-patterned laminate, or a koa veneer over other timber. Genuine all-koa construction starts around $350. A cheap koa-look ukulele can still be perfectly good — just do not expect it to sound like the wood it is named after. **Categories:** Ukulele, Ukulele Comparisons --- ### [Best Concert Ukuleles: Six Picks and the One Spec That Separates Them](https://promusicvault.com/best-concert-ukuleles/) **Published:** June 29, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Concert Ukuleles: Six Picks and the One Spec That Separates Them A concert ukulele is a fifteen-inch scale in a box about two feet long, and it is the size most adults should own. It is also the most crowded size on the market: between forty dollars and a hundred and thirty, nearly every concert ukulele is laminated mahogany with a rosewood fingerboard and Aquila strings, and they are all described in much the same words. One specification actually separates them, one maker publishes it for every model it builds, and it is not the one most people shop on. Nor do three of the six below have the solid top they are widely credited with. Our pick### Kala KA-15C The concert everything else on this page gets measured against. Laminated mahogany, a 14.875″ scale and eighteen frets, and — the part that matters — a Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic, which is the component that decides whether a cheap ukulele plays in tune with itself. Nothing comes in the box, which is the only real reason to look elsewhere. Around $85 [Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079P7ZTQJ?tag=sjj363-20) **Everything in the box:** Donner DUC-1 — around $75, bone nut and the whole kit **Cheapest worth owning:** Ranch UK-23 — around $69, sapele with an arched back **Only real solid top:** Enya EUC-25D — around $90, solid mahogany, maker’s own word **Leave it anywhere:** Enya Nova U — around $95, carbon fiber, 1.25 lb ## The six at a glance Every figure below is the maker’s own, from its published record for that model. The third column is the one to read first, and the blanks in it are as informative as the entries. UkuleleBodyNut & saddleIn the boxPrice band[Kala KA-15C](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079P7ZTQJ?tag=sjj363-20)Laminated mahogany**Graph Tech NuBone**Nothing~$85[Donner DUC-1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1L6OSX?tag=sjj363-20)Mahogany**Bone**, per DonnerBag, tuner, strap, strings, picks, cloth~$75[Ranch UK-23](https://amzn.to/3j3OnKW)Sapele, arched backNot publishedBag, tuner, strap, strings, picks~$69[Enya EUC-25D](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDRHRFD2?tag=sjj363-20)**Solid** mahogany topNot publishedBag, strap, capo, picks, strings~$90[Enya Nova U](https://amzn.to/3WLvTwQ)Carbon fiber compositeNot publishedCase, strap, capo, spare strings~$95[Córdoba 15CM](https://amzn.to/3wvnnqN)Laminated mahoganyCompositeNothing~$130 ## A concert is not a soprano with a longer neck The usual description of the size is that it adds an inch or so of scale, which is true and undersells it. Take one maker’s two models, measured the same way by the same company. Kala’s KA-15S soprano is a 13.625″ scale, 21 1/16″ overall, with **twelve frets**. Their KA-15C concert is 14.875″, 24 1/4″ overall, with **eighteen**. An inch and a quarter of scale buys half again as much fingerboard. That is the real difference, and it is why the concert is the size that stops being a limitation after a few months: on a twelve-fret soprano the top of the neck simply runs out, and a great deal of ordinary ukulele repertoire lives above it. What does not change much is the string spacing. Kala publishes 1.375″ at the nut for the soprano and 1.39″ for the concert — fifteen thousandths of an inch, which nobody has ever felt. The concert fixes fret spacing, not finger room. If your hands are the problem rather than the frets, that is an argument for a [tenor](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) or a wide-necked model, and our [concert versus tenor comparison](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) is the page that settles it. ## The nut and the saddle is the row that moves At this size and this money, almost nothing else does. Set two of Kala’s own concert models side by side and the point makes itself. The Makala MK-C and the Kala KA-15C share the top, the back and sides, the neck, the fingerboard, the finish, the headstock, the strings and the strap button, row for row in Kala’s published specification. The Makala’s nut and saddle read **Plastic**. The Kala’s read **Graph Tech NuBone**. That is the entire difference, and Kala lists them four dollars apart. The nut is the slotted strip the strings pass over at the top of the neck, and the saddle is its equivalent at the bridge. Between them they set the string height and the effective length of every string. A molded plastic nut is soft and cut to a nominal depth rather than to the instrument, which is why a cheap ukulele so often plays sharp at the first three frets and cannot be tuned out of it. Replacing one costs more than the four dollars and involves filing slots to a thousandth of an inch. It is the part to buy right rather than fix. Two things follow. The first is that the Makala concert has no case for existing at what the two of them actually cost: they arrive at the same number, so the plastic nut is not buying anything. If you want a Makala, want it for one of the shapes the KA-15 line does not build — and our [Makala MK-S review](https://promusicvault.com/makala-mk-s-review/) works through the same comparison at soprano size, where the line does hold. The second is more awkward. Córdoba’s 15CM, the prettiest instrument here and the dearest at around $130, specifies a **composite** nut and saddle. Kala fits NuBone at $85. On the one component that decides whether a beginner’s ukulele plays in tune, forty-five extra dollars buys you the cheaper part. ## Only one of these has a solid top Solid wood is the upgrade people look for, and the word gets attached loosely to instruments that do not have it. Three of the six here are routinely described as solid. Only one is, and the makers themselves settle it. Ranch’s own catalogue describes the UK-23 as “premium sapele construction — the top, back, and sides are crafted from sapele wood,” and never uses the word solid about it. Ranch does build a solid-top model, the UK-23-S, and prices it about twenty dollars higher. The company reserves the word for the instrument it charges more for, which is as clear a statement as you will get. Córdoba’s product record for the 15CM gives its construction as **Layered**, in a field where the company’s other options are “Solid Top” and “All Solid Woods.” So it is a laminate. There is nothing wrong with that — it is the right build at the price and it shrugs off dry winters — and Córdoba does build solid-top ukuleles, in the 20 series, at around $200. The EUC-25D is the one where solid is the maker’s own word: Enya’s catalogue lists the model as “25D Solid Mahogany” and builds it in soprano and concert. At around $90 it is the cheapest genuine solid top in this size, and it is the only instrument on this page where paying more buys a different kind of construction rather than a nicer version of the same one. [What the species actually does](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) is a separate question, and a smaller one than laminate versus solid. ## The six picks № 1 · The one to buy ### Kala KA-15C Satin Mahogany Concert - Laminated mahogany top, back and sides - 14.875″ scale, 24 1/4″ overall, 18 frets - 1.39″ at the nut - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings, one strap button - Satin finish, nothing in the box - ~$85 Kala’s mahogany series is as close as the ukulele has to a default, and the concert is the model the rest of the range exists around. It is competent everywhere and bad nowhere, and the two components a beginner would otherwise end up replacing — the nut and saddle, and the strings — are already the good ones. Aquila Super Nylguts are what most people put on a cheap ukulele anyway, and they are fitted at the factory. The instrument is plain. Satin brown mahogany, no binding, no rosette worth the name, one strap button at the tail so a strap has to tie at the headstock. It has been built to the same specification for two decades, which is why every ukulele teacher has handled one and why parts and setup advice for it are everywhere. Kala lists it at $89 and it usually sells for a little under. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle, not molded plastic - Aquila strings fitted from new - Eighteen frets against a soprano’s twelve - Laminate, so humidity is a non-issue - The most widely known instrument in the size **Cons**- Nothing in the box — no bag, no tuner - Plain to look at next to the Córdoba - Laminate, so it will not open up with age - One strap button Around $85[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079P7ZTQJ?tag=sjj363-20) № 2 · Everything in the box ### Donner DUC-1 Concert Ukulele Kit - Mahogany body and neck - 23″ concert, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Bone nut and saddle, per Donner - Aquila strings fitted, plus a spare set - Chrome guitar-style geared tuners - Padded backpack gig bag, strap, clip-on tuner, picks, cloth - ~$75 Donner sells direct and prices accordingly, and the DUC-1 is what that buys. A bone nut and saddle at seventy-five dollars is better hardware than several brands fit at twice the money — bone is harder than NuBone and denser than anything molded — and the kit around it is not the usual token bag. The gig bag is padded with backpack straps, the tuner is a working clip-on, and there is a spare set of Aquilas in there. What you give up is consistency and documentation. Donner publishes no scale length, no nut width and no fret count, so there is nothing to check before it arrives, and unit-to-unit variation is wider than Kala’s — some arrive needing the action taking down, some do not. The finish is thicker than the Kala’s satin. Against that, it has more owner feedback behind it than anything else in this size by an order of magnitude, and if the alternative is spending the same money on the instrument alone, this is the more sensible purchase. **Pros**- Bone nut and saddle, per Donner — better than NuBone on paper - Aquila strings fitted and a spare set included - Bag, tuner, strap and picks in the box - Enormous body of owner feedback **Cons**- No published scale, nut width or fret count - More variation between individual instruments - Thicker finish than the Kala or the Córdoba - Bundled tuner is the cheap kind Around $75[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1L6OSX?tag=sjj363-20) № 3 · Cheapest worth owning ### Ranch UK-23 23″ Concert Ukulele - Sapele top, back and sides, arched back - 23″ concert, 18 frets with position marks at 5, 7, 10, 12, 15 and 17 - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Chrome die-cast sealed tuners - Aquila strings fitted - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, strap, spare strings, picks - ~$69 Sixty-nine dollars is roughly where a concert ukulele stops being a toy, and this is the instrument that clears the line. Sapele rather than the usual mahogany, and an arched back rather than a flat one, which gives it more volume and a slightly woodier voice than a flat-backed box the same size. Aquila strings are fitted at the factory, which is worth ten dollars and an evening on its own, and the rest of the kit is genuinely the reason to buy it. Ranch publishes no nut width and no nut or saddle material, which on the argument this page is built around is the reservation — you cannot check the component that matters most before it arrives. Nor is it solid sapele, whatever you may read: Ranch’s own catalogue keeps that description for the UK-23-S, about twenty dollars dearer. Take it as a well-made laminate with a good back shape, which is what it is, and it is a lot of instrument for the money. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Arched back gives it more volume than flat-backed rivals - Aquila strings fitted - Everything needed to start, in the box - Cheapest instrument here that is unambiguously a real one **Cons**- No published nut width, nut or saddle material - Not solid sapele — Ranch keeps that for a dearer model - Fret ends less consistently dressed than the Kala’s - Bundled tuner is the cheap kind Around $69[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j3OnKW) № 4 · The only real solid top ### Enya EUC-25D Concert - Solid mahogany top, laminated back and sides - 23″ concert body - Matte finish - Enya fluorocarbon strings fitted - Gig bag, strap, capo, picks and spare strings included - 1-year warranty from Enya, 30-day returns - ~$90 The one instrument here where paying more buys a different kind of construction. A solid top is a single piece of wood rather than plies under a veneer, and it is the part of a ukulele that does most of the work of making the note — so it responds more to a light touch, has more overtone above the fundamental, and unlike everything else on this page it will change over years of playing. Under $100 that is unusual. Enya does not publish a nut or saddle material, which is the gap in an otherwise strong specification. The fluorocarbon strings are a real choice rather than a cost saving — brighter and more focused than nylon, quicker to settle — and there is a capo in the box, which almost nothing else at this price includes. The trade for the solid top is care: a solid soundboard reacts to humidity where a laminate ignores it, so this is the pick that does not want to live in a hot car. **Pros**- Genuinely solid mahogany top, stated by the maker - Capo, bag, strap and spare strings included - Fluorocarbon strings fitted from new **Cons**- Nut and saddle material not published - A solid top needs more humidity care than a laminate - Matte finish shows wear at the strumming point - Dearer than the Kala for a plainer set of hardware guarantees Around $90[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BDRHRFD2?tag=sjj363-20) № 5 · Nothing to warp ### Enya Nova U Concert - One-piece carbon fiber composite body, not wood - 23″ concert body, side soundhole - 1.25 lb - Ni-Zn round-head frets - Enya fluorocarbon strings - Padded case, strap, capo and spare strings included - ~$95 Molded rather than built, and it does not care about anything. Humidity, a tent, a beach, the back of a car in August, a child — none of it applies, because there is no glue joint to open and no soundboard to move. At a pound and a quarter it is lighter than any wooden instrument here, and the side soundhole throws the sound at the player rather than at the room, which is a small thing that makes practice more pleasant. The voice is the trade. Composite gives a bright, even, slightly synthetic tone with less warmth and less complexity than mahogany, and it will never develop. It also looks and feels like what it is. If the ukulele is going to sit on a stand indoors, the Kala is the better instrument for ten dollars less. If it is going to live in a rucksack, nothing else here is a serious contender. Our [review of Kala’s plastic Waterman](https://promusicvault.com/kala-waterman-ukulele-review/) covers the cheaper end of the same idea. **Pros**- Immune to humidity, heat and knocks - 1.25 lb, with a padded case and capo included - Side soundhole aimed at the player **Cons**- Brighter and plainer than mahogany - Nut and saddle material not published - Will never open up, because there is nothing to open up - Dearer than the Kala and the Donner Around $95[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WLvTwQ) № 6 · The one to look at ### Córdoba 15CM - Layered mahogany top, back and sides - 375mm (14 3/4″) scale, 35mm (1 3/8″) at the nut - Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge, 18 frets, 14 to the body - Fan bracing, dowel neck joint - Composite nut and saddle - Abalone rosette, cream ABS binding, satin polyurethane - Aquila New Nylgut Concert 7U strings, nothing else in the box - ~$130 The best-looking instrument in this size and the one most people end up wanting. The abalone rosette and the cream binding on both the body and the fingerboard are the sort of detail that usually starts at twice the money, the pau ferro board is a step up from rosewood in feel, and Córdoba publishes more about it than anyone else here — bracing pattern, neck joint, frets to the body, string spacing at the nut, country of origin. It is also the one place on this page where the money does not track the specification. The construction is layered rather than solid, and the nut and saddle are composite where the $85 Kala fits NuBone. What the extra forty-five dollars actually buys is appearance, a fingerboard upgrade and fourteen frets clear of the body. Those are real, and if you are going to keep the instrument in a room where you can see it they may well be the right things to buy. Just do not buy it expecting solid wood or better hardware. **Pros**- Abalone rosette and cream binding at this price - Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge - Fourteen frets clear of the body - The most fully published specification here **Cons**- Composite nut and saddle on the dearest instrument here - Layered mahogany, not solid - Nothing in the box - Forty-five dollars over the Kala for cosmetics and a fingerboard Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wvnnqN) ## Two more worth knowing about The [Luna Tattoo Concert](https://amzn.to/3XYqTWE) at around $99 is the same class of instrument as the Kala with a laser-etched Hawaiian design across the top and matching shark-tooth fret markers. Luna specifies an all-eastern-mahogany body and a walnut fingerboard, and a gig bag comes with it. Luna’s own list is $129, so it usually sells well under. Buy it for the look, which is the honest reason anyone does. The [Kala KA-C](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00172YM40?tag=sjj363-20) at around $99 is the KA-15C with cream binding around the body and fingerboard, same NuBone hardware, same mahogany, same eighteen frets. Fourteen dollars for binding. It is not a better instrument and Kala does not claim it is, but if the plainness of the KA-15C is what is putting you off, this is the version of it that is not plain. Below about sixty dollars the specification stops being published at all. There are perfectly serviceable concert ukuleles at forty — Caramel’s CAM48 is the usual one — but no maker in that tier states a nut material, a saddle material or a nut width, and several have no website to state it on. That is not a claim that they play badly. It is that at that price you are buying without being able to check the one thing that decides it, and the Ranch is thirty dollars away. ## What to budget beyond the instrument A ukulele that arrives on its own needs two things and no more. A [clip-on ukulele tuner](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H74YXNQ?tag=sjj363-20) is about $18, and a ukulele-specific one tracks nylon strings better than a general chromatic model does. A [padded concert gig bag](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008V8OTD2?tag=sjj363-20) is about $30. Strings are already the right ones on every pick above. That makes the bundle arithmetic easy to check. Kala sells the [KA-15C with a bag, tuner, strap, spare strings and a cloth](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BC684Y9?tag=sjj363-20) for around $115 against $85 for the instrument alone — a thirty-dollar premium for about thirty dollars of accessories. That is a fair price rather than a bargain, and it is worth taking if you would rather it all arrived at once. The Donner and the Ranch include the same kit inside the price of the instrument, which is most of what makes them good value. Everything else is optional and can wait. A [strap](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) matters more on a concert than a soprano because there is more instrument to hold, and note that Kala fits a single strap button at the tail, so a strap has to tie at the headstock unless you have a second button fitted. A [stand](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-stands/) is the accessory that most reliably increases how often an instrument gets picked up. ## Which one Buy the **Kala KA-15C** unless something specific on this page describes you. It has the best hardware at the price, the specification is published in full, and it is the instrument every teacher and every repair shop already knows. Buy the **Donner DUC-1** if you want the accessories included and seventy-five dollars is the number. Buy the **Ranch UK-23** if the budget is firmer than that. Buy the **Enya EUC-25D** if a solid top is the thing you care about, and the **Nova U** if the ukulele is going somewhere a wooden one should not. Buy the **Córdoba 15CM** if you want to look at it, and know that you are paying for that rather than for the build. If the size itself is still open, [choosing a ukulele size](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) lays out all four, with [sopranos](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/), [tenors](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) and [baritones](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/) covered separately. If the budget is the constraint rather than the size, the [cheap end](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) is its own page, and [who makes what](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) goes through the companies behind these names. ## FAQs ### Is a concert ukulele good for a beginner? For an adult, it is usually the right first ukulele. The fret spacing suits full-sized fingers, the eighteen frets mean the instrument does not run out after a few months, and it is tuned identically to a soprano so every chart and every lesson applies unchanged. Sopranos are the traditional starting point because they are cheapest and they fit children. ### How big is a concert ukulele? Around a 14 3/4 to 15-inch scale and about 24 inches overall. Kala’s KA-15C measures 14.875″ at the scale and 24 1/4″ end to end; Córdoba’s 15CM is 375mm, or 14 3/4″. That is roughly three inches longer than a soprano and two shorter than a tenor. ### How is a concert ukulele tuned? gCEA, the same as a soprano and a tenor. The lower-case g means the fourth string sits above the third in pitch rather than below it, which is what gives the ukulele its characteristic sound. Low-G sets exist for concert scale but the size is short enough that a wound low G is a compromise; that is properly a tenor thing. ### Does a concert sound different from a soprano? A little fuller and a little longer in sustain, because the body is bigger and the strings are under more tension. It is a smaller difference than the size gap suggests, and it is not the reason to choose the size — the fingerboard is. ### What strings does a concert ukulele take? Concert sets, which are gauged for a 15-inch scale. Soprano strings will physically fit but sit under the wrong tension, which costs you tone and intonation. Check that the set says GCEA rather than ADF#B, because a few sets are still sold in the older D tuning. Our [ukulele strings guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) goes through the materials. ### Why does my cheap ukulele play out of tune up the neck? Almost always the nut. If the slots are cut too shallow the strings sit high at the first fret and go sharp when you press them, and no amount of tuning fixes it because the error grows with each fret. It is the reason the nut and saddle material is the specification worth reading, and the reason a $69 instrument with a stated nut is a better buy than a $45 one without. ### Is a solid top worth it at this price? At around $90 for the Enya, yes, if you want the instrument to change over time. Under that, no — laminate is tougher, ignores humidity and is the correct engineering choice for a ukulele that lives on a sofa. The one thing not worth paying for is a laminate described as solid. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Soprano Ukuleles: Six Picks, and the Twelve Frets Nobody Mentions](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) **Published:** June 27, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Soprano Ukuleles: Six Picks, and the Twelve Frets Nobody Mentions A soprano ukulele is about thirteen and a half inches of string and, on most of them, twelve frets. The scale is the reason to want one — it is the original size, it is where the bright, boxy sound comes from, and it is the only ukulele that fits in a daypack. The fret count is the part nobody prints on the box, and it is what separates the sopranos below from one another far more than the wood does. Our pick### Kala KA-15S All mahogany, a rosewood fingerboard, and the two parts that decide whether a cheap ukulele plays in tune — a Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic, and Aquila strings from the factory. Kala’s own price list has held this model at the same figure for years while the rest of the line moved, and it is the soprano everything else on this page gets measured against. Around $69 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cphVv8) **Large hands, or more than twelve frets:** Kala KA-SLNG long neck — around $119 **The shape, at no extra cost:** Kala KA-P pineapple — around $89 **Seventeen frets for less:** Córdoba 15SM — around $100 **Cheapest one worth owning:** Makala Dolphin — around $59 ## The six on one screen UkuleleScaleFretsNut & saddleBodyPrice band[Kala KA-15S](https://amzn.to/4cphVv8)13.625″12Graph Tech NuBoneLayered mahogany, 7″ bout~$69[Kala KA-SLNG long neck](https://amzn.to/3SrO7Y6)**15.125″****18**Graph Tech NuBoneLayered mahogany, 6 7/8″ bout~$119[Kala KA-P pineapple](https://amzn.to/4gHhXzJ)13.5″12Graph Tech NuBoneLayered mahogany, no waist~$89[Córdoba 15SM](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00846UG1U?tag=sjj363-20)13.5″**17** (12 to the body)CompositeLayered mahogany, fan braced~$100[Makala Dolphin](https://amzn.to/45WyNpv)13.625″12PlasticWood top, composite body~$59[Enya Nova U Mini](https://amzn.to/4zPAPp3)21″ overallNot publishedNot publishedCarbon fiber composite~$65 ## A soprano is thirteen and a half inches, and twelve frets ### The scale is what you came for Kala publishes a measurement block for every model, and read across the sizes it says something most buying advice gets backwards. The soprano’s fingerboard is 1.375″ wide at the nut. The concert’s is 1.39″. That is fifteen thousandths of an inch — less than the thickness of a business card — so the strings are not meaningfully closer together on a soprano. What changes is the distance between the frets: 13.625″ of scale against the concert’s 14.875″, so every fret sits about eight percent nearer its neighbor. That matters because the two complaints people have about sopranos are different problems with different fixes. If your fingers land on two frets at once, that is the scale, and a wider nut will not help. If the strings feel crowded side to side, no ukulele size will fix it, because they are all within a sixteenth of an inch of each other until you reach a baritone. Our [guide to choosing a ukulele](/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) covers the sizes in full; the short version is that soprano is a fretting-hand decision. ### Twelve frets is the ceiling Kala’s spec sheet gives the KA-15S twelve frets. The same field reads eighteen for the concert and eighteen for the tenor, so it is counting the whole fingerboard rather than the frets clear of the body, and the photograph agrees: the board stops flush where the neck meets the box, with nothing carried over the top toward the soundhole. Twelve frets gets you exactly one octave above the open A string and no further. For strumming chords that is plenty, and it is why the size has survived a century without anyone minding. It becomes a real limit the moment you want to pick a melody line, play something written above the twelfth fret, or use a capo — clamp at the second fret and a twelve-fret soprano has ten left. Nothing on the instrument warns you, and the listings almost never state the number. Two of the sopranos here answer that. Córdoba states both figures for the 15SM — twelve frets to the body, seventeen in total — which is the traditional arrangement, the fingerboard continuing over the soundboard on a raised extension. And Kala builds a size specifically for it. ### The long neck is the way out Kala’s catalog lists three separate soprano sizes, and the third one is the most useful instrument on this page. A Long Neck Soprano is a soprano body with a much longer neck on it, and the numbers show exactly what that buys. Body length: 9.5″ on the KA-15S, 9.5″ on the long neck. Lower bout: 7″ against 6 7/8″. Depth: within five hundredths of an inch. It is the same box. The neck is not. Scale goes from 13.625″ to 15.125″ and the fret count from twelve to eighteen, which is a quarter-inch more scale than Kala’s own concert model, on a body an inch and three-quarters shorter and an inch and three-eighths narrower than that concert. If a soprano sounds right to you and feels cramped, this is the answer, and almost nobody knows the size exists. ### The pineapple costs nothing extra A pineapple ukulele is a soprano with the waist left out — an oval body instead of a figure eight. It is worth knowing that Kala’s measurement block for the pineapple has no waist row and no upper-bout row at all, because there is nothing to measure, and that its lower bout is 6 11/16″ against the figure-eight soprano’s 7″. The pineapple is not a bigger body. It is a fuller one with less cut away, which is where the rounder, slightly louder sound comes from. It costs the same. Kala’s bound Satin Mahogany line lists the pineapple and its conventionally shaped sibling at the identical figure, so the shape is free and the twenty dollars over the KA-15S buys the cream binding around the edge. That is not nothing — binding protects the most vulnerable joint on a ukulele — but it is worth knowing that is what you are paying for. ## The six worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### Kala KA-15S Satin Mahogany Soprano - Layered mahogany top, back, sides and neck - 13.625″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 12 frets - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - Satin finish, one strap button - Around $69 The soprano to buy unless one of the others below describes you specifically. What makes it the default is not the mahogany — every ukulele in this price range is layered mahogany — but the nut and the saddle. Kala fits Graph Tech NuBone where nearly everything cheaper uses molded plastic, and those two small pieces are what a badly intonated ukulele usually needs replacing. Aquila strings from the factory are the other component owners of cheaper instruments end up buying anyway. The reservation is the twelve frets, and it is the same reservation as most of this page. If you only ever want to strum chords you will never find the end of the fingerboard. If you have any intention of picking out tunes, read the long neck entry below before you buy this one. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle, not molded plastic - Aquila strings fitted from new - Layered wood, so humidity is a non-issue - The cheapest instrument here from a maker that publishes a full spec sheet **Cons**- Twelve frets, and no fingerboard extension - No binding at the edges — the $89 models in the same line have it - Nothing in the box but the ukulele - Satin finish marks more readily than gloss Around $69[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cphVv8) № 2 · Large hands, or more than twelve frets ### Kala KA-SLNG Mahogany Long Neck Soprano - Layered mahogany, gloss finish, cream binding - **15.125″ scale** — longer than Kala’s concert, on a soprano body - Rosewood fingerboard, **18 frets** - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - 22 3/4″ overall, 9 1/2″ body - Around $119 The most interesting instrument on this page and the one hardly anyone considers, because the size barely appears in ukulele buying advice at all. Kala’s own measurements make the case better than any description: the body is the same length as the KA-15S to the tenth of an inch and the bout is an eighth narrower, so it sounds like a soprano and packs like one. The neck is not: an inch and a half more scale and six more frets, and at 15.125″ it is a quarter of an inch longer in the string than Kala’s own concert. If you came to the soprano because you liked the sound and left because your fingers would not fit between the frets, this is what you were looking for. It is also the honest answer for anyone arriving from guitar. The gloss finish and cream binding are why it costs fifty dollars more than the KA-15S rather than the extra fretwire. **Pros**- More fret spacing than a concert, without a concert-sized body - Eighteen frets against the usual twelve - NuBone nut and saddle, Aquila strings - Bound edges and a gloss finish at this price **Cons**- Nearly twice the price of the KA-15S - Gloss shows fingerprints in a way satin does not - Fewest ratings of anything here, because the size is obscure - Takes concert strings, not soprano ones — measure the scale before you reorder Around $119[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SrO7Y6) № 3 · The shape, at no extra cost ### Kala KA-P Satin Mahogany Pineapple - Layered mahogany, satin finish, cream binding - 13.5″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 12 frets - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - 6 11/16″ across the lower bout, no waist - Around $89 Kala files this under its own size heading — Pineapple Soprano — and prices it identically to the conventionally shaped model from the same bound line, which settles the only real question about it. The oval shape is a free choice, not a novelty surcharge, and the twenty dollars over the KA-15S buys the cream binding that both of the $89 models carry. What it actually does: with no waist cut out of the sides, more of the soundboard is free to move, and the result is rounder and a little louder than a figure-eight soprano of the same size. Whether that is better is a taste question. Whether it is different is not. It is also easier to hold against your body without a strap, which on an instrument this small is worth more than it sounds. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Same price as the equivalent figure-eight model - Rounder, fuller voice than a waisted soprano - NuBone nut and saddle, cream binding - Sits against the body more comfortably than a small figure eight **Cons**- Twelve frets, like the KA-15S - Twenty dollars more than the KA-15S for binding you may not want - Narrower lower bout than the figure-eight soprano, not wider - The shape divides people, and you cannot try it first Around $89[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gHhXzJ) № 4 · Seventeen frets for less ### Córdoba 15SM Soprano - Layered mahogany top, back and sides - 13 1/2″ scale, 1 3/8″ (35 mm) at the nut - Pau ferro fingerboard, **17 frets, 12 to the body** - Composite nut and saddle - Fan bracing, abalone rosette, cream binding - Made in China, per Córdoba’s own spec sheet - Around $100 The cheapest way onto a soprano fingerboard that does not stop at the body. Córdoba states the two fret figures separately — twelve clear of the box, seventeen altogether — so the board runs on over the soundboard on a raised extension in the traditional way, and the top five frets are there if you want them. Against the long neck it saves twenty dollars and keeps true soprano fret spacing, which is the right trade if the frets were never the problem. The unflattering part is the nut and the saddle. Córdoba’s own spec sheet says composite for both, where the Kala thirty dollars cheaper says Graph Tech NuBone. Those are the parts that hold your intonation, and it is an odd place for the dearer instrument to save money. Worth adding that Córdoba records this model’s construction as layered, so the description of a mahogany top means a mahogany veneer, the same as everything else at this price. **Pros**- Seventeen frets, the most of any true soprano here - Pau ferro board and an abalone rosette at the price - Córdoba publishes a full spec sheet down to the bracing pattern - Bound top and back **Cons**- Composite nut and saddle on a $100 instrument - Layered, despite descriptions that read as solid mahogany - Thirty dollars more than the Kala for worse hardware - Nothing in the box Around $100[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00846UG1U?tag=sjj363-20) № 5 · Cheapest one worth owning ### Kala Makala Dolphin Soprano - Wood top over a composite body - 13 5/8″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 12 frets - Plastic nut and saddle - Geared tuners, dolphin bridge, gig bag included - Around $59 Kala’s budget label, and the line where the company draws its own boundary in writing: the Makala models get a plastic nut and saddle where the KA-15 line gets NuBone. Ten dollars separates them. That is the clearest statement anyone in this market makes about what the cheap end costs you, and it comes from the maker rather than from us. Below this the sopranos stop being instruments, so treat the Dolphin as the floor rather than a bargain. It has geared tuners, which is the single thing that decides whether a beginner’s ukulele stays in tune, and the gig bag is included. It comes in a dozen colors, which is not a serious reason to buy one and is the reason most people do. Our guide to [ukuleles for kids](/best-ukuleles-for-kids/) goes further into the choice at this end. **Pros**- Geared tuners at under sixty dollars - Gig bag in the box - Kala’s spec sheet, warranty and parts behind it - Colors, which matter more than adults admit **Cons**- Plastic nut and saddle — the KA-15S is ten dollars away - Composite back and sides - Twelve frets - Kala’s own records disagree about the top wood, so treat any claim about it carefully Around $59[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45WyNpv) № 6 · The one you can leave anywhere ### Enya Nova U Mini - Carbon fiber composite, one piece - 21″ overall — soprano length - 0.9 lb - Case, strap, capo and spare strings included - Nut and saddle material not published - Around $65 Not a wooden ukulele and not pretending to be. The whole body is a carbon fiber composite, which means no seasonal cracking, no re-tuning after a temperature swing, and no reason to be careful with it. At under a pound it is the lightest thing here by a distance, and the case, strap, capo and spare set are in the box rather than on a separate receipt. The trade is tone. A composite soprano is brighter and more even than a mahogany one and has less of the woody rattle that people like sopranos for in the first place, so if the sound is why you are here, buy the Kala. If the ukulele is going in a rucksack, on a boat, or somewhere with a radiator, this is the only sensible answer on the page. Enya publishes no nut or saddle material, which is the one specification worth knowing and the one they leave out. **Pros**- Genuinely weatherproof — no humidity or temperature care at all - Under a pound - Case, strap, capo and spare strings included - Best-reviewed instrument on this page by a wide margin **Cons**- Brighter and less woody than mahogany - Nut and saddle material unpublished - Fret count unpublished - Composite instruments hold their look but not their resale Around $65[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zPAPp3) ## The one thing to buy with it Buy it whatever else you buy ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner A soprano is the ukulele most likely to be somebody’s only instrument, which means there is nothing else in the house to tune it against. It is also the size fitted with the lightest strings, and a new set of Aquilas stretches for a fortnight before it settles — expect to tune it several times a day at first and then hardly ever. The SN6X reads the vibration through the headstock rather than listening, so it works in a room with other people in it. Around eighteen dollars, and the alternative is a phone app that needs silence and a free hand. Around $18[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H74YXNQ?tag=sjj363-20) ## Questions worth settling first ### Is a soprano the right size for an adult? Usually, yes. The soprano is the original ukulele and most of the recorded ukulele music you have ever heard was played on one. The size is not a children’s version of anything. Where it genuinely does not work is for large hands playing chords high up the neck, and the fix for that is the long neck above rather than a concert. If you want the comparison in full, our [beginner guide](/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) takes the sizes one at a time. ### How is a soprano tuned? G-C-E-A, with the G an octave up, so the strings do not run low to high — that re-entrant top string is where the sound comes from. There is one trap when you buy strings: a small number of soprano sets are still made for the old A-D-F♯-B tuning a tone higher, and D’Addario states it plainly on the packet for the ones that are. Fitted to a ukulele in standard tuning they sit slack and buzz. Our guide to [ukulele strings](/best-ukulele-strings/) covers which sets are which. ### How much should a first soprano cost? Between sixty and seventy dollars, and the reason is specific rather than general: that is the band in which Kala’s own spec sheets change from a plastic nut and saddle to Graph Tech NuBone. Below it you are buying an instrument whose intonation you will eventually pay someone to fix. Above about $120 a soprano stops getting better and starts getting prettier, unless what you are buying is the long neck, which is a different instrument rather than a nicer one. If your ceiling is lower, our [cheap ukulele guide](/best-cheap-ukuleles/) works out what the money buys under $75. ### Pineapple or figure eight? On price, it makes no difference — Kala charges the same for both in its bound line. On sound, the pineapple is rounder and slightly louder because there is no waist taken out of the soundboard. On playing, the pineapple sits against your ribs more securely, which on an instrument this light is a genuine advantage. Pick the one you would rather look at. ### Does a new soprano need a setup? Rarely, at these prices, and less often than the internet suggests. What a cheap ukulele actually needs is a decent nut and saddle, which is why they are the specification worth chasing — a properly cut NuBone saddle is most of what a setup would have bought you. If a soprano frets sharp everywhere above the fifth fret, that is the saddle, and on an instrument costing $60 it is usually cheaper to have bought the one with the better parts. ### Which brand? Kala, for one reason that has nothing to do with tone: they publish the whole spec sheet, including the nut material, the fret count and the body dimensions, for every model they build. Most of this page was written out of that document. Córdoba does the same and goes further on the fret count. Everyone else in this price range publishes marketing copy, and that is a real difference between a company you can hold to something and one you cannot. Our [brand guide](/best-ukulele-brands/) takes it further. ## Where to land Buy the [Kala KA-15S](https://amzn.to/4cphVv8) at around $69 unless one thing on this page has already changed your mind. If your hands are large, or you can see yourself picking melodies rather than strumming chords, spend the extra on the [long neck](https://amzn.to/3SrO7Y6) and get eighteen frets and more room between them than a concert, without a bigger box. If the ukulele is going to live in a bag rather than on a stand, take the [Enya](https://amzn.to/4zPAPp3). And if what you want is the shape, the [pineapple](https://amzn.to/4gHhXzJ) costs the same as the round one, which is the last thing most people expect. Once you have one, our [strumming guide](/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) is the next thing, and the [concert and tenor comparison](/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) is there for when you decide you want a second. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [How Much Does a Sousaphone Cost? The Real Numbers, From Public Records](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-cost/) **Published:** January 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Sousaphone](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/sousaphone/ "Sousaphone")› How Much Does a Sousaphone Cost? The Real Numbers, From Public Records Nearly everyone who asks this is playing a sousaphone that belongs to a school. That changes the question. The instrument is not your cost — it is the district’s, and the district’s own purchase records are public, which is the most reliable answer anywhere to what a sousaphone is worth. The number### About $4,600 for fiberglass and about $8,700 for silver-plated brass, and those are the tendered prices a school district pays A 2025 school district bid tabulation put a Yamaha YSH-301WC fiberglass sousaphone with case at **$4,608 to $6,199** across eleven competing bids, most of them clustered between $4,608 and $4,930. A second district’s tabulation for a silver King 2350WSP with case drew four bids between **$8,666 and $9,425**. Those are the two ends of the school market, bought at the keenest price an institution can obtain. **Fiberglass, new:** ~$4,600–$5,000 **Brass, lacquer:** ~$5,400–$6,400 **Brass, silver:** ~$8,700–$9,400 **Used, playable:** ~$2,500–$2,900 **What a player actually spends:** ~$225 ## Table of Contents - [The price ladder, and where each figure comes from](#the-price-ladder-and-where-each-figure-comes-from) - [The $475 sousaphones are a different object](#the-475-sousaphones-are-a-different-object) - [Fiberglass saves money twice and costs it once](#fiberglass-saves-money-twice-and-costs-it-once) - [Almost nobody rents one](#almost-nobody-rents-one) - [Buying used, and what the discount really is](#buying-used-and-what-the-discount-really-is) - [What a sousaphone player actually spends](#what-a-sousaphone-player-actually-spends) - [Cases, bags and the thing everyone loses](#cases-bags-and-the-thing-everyone-loses) - [The running cost, once you own one](#the-running-cost-once-you-own-one) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [Why does a sousaphone cost more than a tuba?](#why-does-a-sousaphone-cost-more-than-a-tuba) - [Is a fiberglass sousaphone worth buying?](#is-a-fiberglass-sousaphone-worth-buying) - [Can I get a decent sousaphone for under $1,000?](#can-i-get-a-decent-sousaphone-for-under-1000) - [Do I need a special sousaphone mouthpiece?](#do-i-need-a-special-sousaphone-mouthpiece) - [How much does it cost to maintain a sousaphone each year?](#how-much-does-it-cost-to-maintain-a-sousaphone-each-year) - [Should I buy one at all?](#should-i-buy-one-at-all) - [Related](#related) ## The price ladder, and where each figure comes from Sousaphones are awkward to price because the two makers who dominate American band rooms — Yamaha and Conn-Selmer, whose sousaphones carry the King name — publish full specifications and no prices at all. Both sell through dealers. So the usual trick of reading a list price off the manufacturer does not work here. Two sources fill the gap, and both are better than a shop window. School districts put band instrument purchases out to competitive bid and publish the tabulations, which show several vendors quoting the same model on the same day. And Wessex Tubas, a maker that does publish, prices its own sousaphone line openly. InstrumentBodyPriceSource**Yamaha YSH-301WC** with caseFiberglass and ABS$4,608–$6,199District bid tabulation, July 2025, eleven bidders**Wessex SP30**Fiberglass bell and body$3,549Maker’s own catalog**Wessex SP28**, four-valve E♭Brass, 0.03″ wall$3,642Maker’s own catalog**Wessex SP23**Brass$4,437Maker’s own catalog**Levante LV-MB4705** with ABS caseBrass~$4,400Current asking price**Eastman EPH495S** with caseBrass, silver plated$5,422–$6,442District bid tabulation, four bidders**King 2350WSP** with caseBrass, silver plated$8,666–$9,425District bid tabulation, four bidders The real range is narrower than it looks: a sousaphone a school would actually buy costs between about $3,500 and about $9,400, and most of them are bought near the bottom of that. Nothing a band director would issue exists below about $3,500 new. The other thing the table shows is that the sousaphone is the more expensive of the two instruments, which surprises people who assume the marching version is the cheap one. In the same district tabulation, the Eastman EB♭534 silver tuba drew bids of $5,059 to $6,011 while the Eastman EPH495S silver sousaphone drew $5,422 to $6,442; King’s 2341W tuba drew $7,020 to $7,659 against the 2350WSP sousaphone’s $8,666 to $9,425. Wessex says the same thing in its own catalog — a four-valve B♭ concert tuba at $3,637 against a brass sousaphone at $4,437. Same maker, same day, three separate comparisons, all pointing the same way. A 26-inch bell is a lot of metal to spin. ## The $475 sousaphones are a different object There is a whole tier of sousaphones between $475 and $1,800, and it makes every figure above look like a rip-off. They are not the same instrument, and the specification says so in one number. Every marching sousaphone built by a maker who publishes specifications has a bell of **26 inches** and a bore of about **0.73″**. Yamaha’s YSH-301 is 26⅛″ and .728″; its brass YSH-411 is 26″ and .728″. King’s KSP411 and KSP412 are both 26″ and .730″. Wessex’s SP30 is 26″ and 0.73″. Four models, three makers, one set of numbers. The cheap ones state their bell in their own titles, and it is **22 inches**. A $699 example describes itself as a “22-inch white brass B♭ sousaphone tuba”; a $475 one says 22 inches too. The next rung up, around $1,100 to $1,800, is mostly 25 inches. These are handmade import instruments, and most of them say so in their own descriptions. The tell is the bell measurement, which the cheap ones state and the real ones do not need to. A four-inch difference in bell diameter is not a trim level. It changes what the instrument sounds like in the open air, which is the only place a sousaphone is ever played, and it is why band directors do not buy them. ## Fiberglass saves money twice and costs it once King is refreshingly blunt about what the fiberglass model is for. The feature line on the KSP411F reads: *“White fiberglass bell and branches reduce weight and cost and increase durability.”* Cost is in the sentence, from the manufacturer, second word. Yamaha builds the same pair — a fiberglass YSH-301 and a brass YSH-411 — and Wessex prices its fiberglass SP30 at $3,549 against $4,437 for the brass SP23, a saving of about 20%. It saves weight as well. Wessex publishes 20.5 lb for the fiberglass SP30; Yamaha publishes 12.5 kg, about 27.6 lb, for the brass YSH-411. Seven pounds on a shoulder for three hours of a parade is the whole argument, and it is why most high schools buy fiberglass. The cost lands later, and it shows up in an unexpected place. Repair shops publish price lists, and brass sousaphones sit on them at a fixed figure — a full-service clean runs about $235 to $315 depending on finish and valve count. One shop’s card lists *Tuba/Sousaphone $275.00* and then, on the line directly beneath it, *Fiberglass Sousaphone: Estimate*. It is the only instrument on the whole list with no price against it. The reason is that fiberglass cannot be worked the way brass can. A dented brass bell is rolled and burnished back out at a shop rate of $75 to $100 an hour. A cracked fiberglass bell is replaced. So the instrument that is cheaper to buy and lighter to march is the one nobody will quote a repair price on, and if you are buying rather than being issued one, that belongs in the arithmetic. ## Almost nobody rents one Rental is the standard answer for an expensive school instrument, and on a sousaphone it mostly is not available. Rental companies publish full rate cards — every instrument in a band room, with a monthly figure, a deposit and a rent-to-own term. The sousaphone is not on them. One such card runs to more than thirty instruments and prices a marching baritone and a marching mellophone at $65 a month each, and a tuba at $150 a month with a $500 deposit and ownership after 45 months. There is no sousaphone line. A second company’s list has a tuba and no sousaphone either. Both list the mellophone, the marching baritone and the marching euphonium, so it is not that they avoid marching brass. What that means in practice is that the choice is not rent or buy. It is play the school’s, or buy one. A tuba rental is the nearest substitute — same key, same part, same mouthpiece — and worth doing the arithmetic on before you sign: $150 a month for the full 45-month term comes to $6,750, which is well above what a maker who publishes prices charges for a full-size B♭ concert tuba. Rent for a season and it is good value; rent to own and it is not. ## Buying used, and what the discount really is A used sousaphone from a name worth having — a Conn 20K, a King fiberglass — in playing condition sits around $2,500 to $2,900. Against roughly $4,600 for a new fiberglass one, that is a saving of a third to a half, and it is a genuine one if the instrument is sound. Where it goes wrong is that a sousaphone has spent its whole life being carried by teenagers and put down on grass. The published repair rates put a number on the risk: a full clean is $235 to $315, dent work is billed on top at $75 to $100 an hour with a $25 minimum charge, and valve work runs about $55 a valve. A replacement neck is not cheap either — one district’s bid tabulation prices a silver King 2350 sousaphone neck at $86 to $195 depending on the vendor. Add a clean and a few hours of dent work to a $2,500 instrument and you are at $3,000 or more, which is most of the way to a new fiberglass one with a warranty and a case. The used buy is only a saving if the instrument does not need the work, so the condition inspection is the whole transaction, not a formality before it. ## What a sousaphone player actually spends If you play sousaphone in a school or college band, the instrument is not yours and never will be. Your real spend is the short list of things that are yours, and it comes to about $225 — a mouthpiece, a shoulder pad, a cradle pad and a pouch to keep the loose parts in. Add a stand and a bag if the instrument comes home with you and it is nearer $600. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Two of those are not comfort items. The cradle pad and the stand both exist to stop the two things that generate the dent bill described above, so they pay for themselves the first time. \#1 — The one thing that is genuinely yours ### Conn 120S Helleberg tuba mouthpiece - Silver plated - Helleberg profile - Fits tuba and sousaphone alike - ~$100 This is the mouthpiece Conn packs with the 20K sousaphone, and it is the largest single sum most sousaphone players ever spend on the instrument. A hundred dollars for a piece of metal reads badly until you set it against the $4,600 horn it goes into, at which point it is two percent of the instrument and the only part of it you will still own in ten years. There is no such thing as a sousaphone mouthpiece as distinct from a tuba one. Yamaha ships the same BB-67C4 to its YSH-411 sousaphone and its concert tubas; Conn files the 120S under tuba mouthpieces. Anything sold to you as sousaphone-specific is a tuba mouthpiece with a different word on the box. **Pros**- Moves with you between the school sousaphone and any tuba you sit behind - A professional default rather than a student compromise - Silver plate wears far better than the school mouthpiece it replaces **Cons**- A deep cup takes some adjusting to if you have been on a small student piece - The dearest single item on this page bar the cases Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gIF8tz) \#2 — The one that decides whether you enjoy the season ### Neotech sousaphone shoulder pad - Neoprene, removable inner insert - Non-slip backing - Made in Bozeman, Montana - ~$55 Twenty to twenty-eight pounds rests on one shoulder for the length of a parade, through a uniform jacket, on a bare metal or fiberglass bow. Fifty-five dollars against that is not really a purchase decision. Note that this is the sousaphone pad specifically. Neotech builds a separate one for marching and convertible tubas, shaped for a different bow, and the two are not interchangeable — check the title says sousaphone before ordering. The insert comes out if you want it thinner, which matters because the right thickness depends on your build and on the jacket. **Pros**- Adjustable thickness rather than one fixed pad - Non-slip backing, so it stays where you put it while marching - Fits the school instrument without modifying it, and comes off at the end of the year **Cons**- Easily confused with the marching tuba pad, which is a different shape - Neoprene gets warm in August Around $55[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gRzLZg) \#3 — The one that stops the repair bill ### Neotech sousaphone cradle pad - Ballistic nylon over padding - Wraps the bottom bow - ~$53 The bottom bow is the lowest point of the instrument and the part that meets the ground, the bleacher step and the bus doorway. It is where sousaphones get dented, and dent work is charged by the hour on top of a clean that already costs $235 to $315. Fifty-three dollars against a shop rate of $75 to $100 an hour means this has paid for itself before the first hour is billed, and on a school instrument it is also the difference between handing the horn back in June and having a conversation about it. It straps on and comes off; nothing is glued or drilled. **Pros**- Protects the exact spot that generates the bills - Costs less than one hour of a repair technician’s time - Fits over the bow without altering the instrument **Cons**- Does nothing for the bell, which is the other casualty - Pointless if the sousaphone never leaves a stand Around $53[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Uwajkm) \#4 — For the sousaphone that comes home ### Hercules DS551B sousaphone stand - Folding yoke with locking pin - Foam-coated yokes and backrest - Load capacity 66 lb - ~$120 A sousaphone has nowhere to sit. Leaned against a wall it slides; laid on the floor it gets stepped on. The 66 lb rating is comfortably more than double any sousaphone made, which is the point — the load is not the weight but the leverage of a 26-inch bell hanging off the top. This is the sousaphone-specific stand, not the tuba one. The tuba and euphonium stand from the same maker is around $110 and will not hold a sousaphone; if you play both instruments you need both, which is one of the hidden costs of the doubling that band programs ask for. **Pros**- Removes the commonest way a sousaphone gets damaged at home - Folds down for transport - Foam-coated everywhere it touches the finish **Cons**- Expensive next to what it physically is - No use at all if the instrument stays in the band room Around $120[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3V6sBsA) ## Cases, bags and the thing everyone loses A new sousaphone from Yamaha, King or Wessex arrives with a case, usually wheeled ABS or a molded shell. A used one very often does not, and a sousaphone case is a serious purchase in its own right — Wessex prices its own wooden sousaphone case at $471 and its gig bag at $325, which puts the market in context. WhatWhyPrice**Protec sousaphone storage pouch (A209)**Padded sleeves for the neck, the bits, the mouthpiece and the valve oil — the four things that go missing from a school instrument, and the reason a horn comes back in June unplayable~$17[Check price](https://amzn.to/4clyCaN)**Protec deluxe sousaphone gig bag**Ballistic nylon over a plush lining, with a shoulder strap. The realistic option for a sousaphone that travels in a car rather than a truck~$256[Check price](https://amzn.to/4ipZMBl)**SKB sousaphone case**Molded hard case. Roughly what Wessex charges for its own, and the answer if the instrument flies, ships or goes in a trailer~$685[Check price](https://amzn.to/44OIH9s)**Rubank Elementary Method — E♭ or BB♭ Bass**The book American band programs teach low brass out of. Its own cover reads *(Tuba – Sousaphone)*, because there is nothing to put in a sousaphone method that is not already in it~$9[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wZ6CB2) ## The running cost, once you own one Published repair rates are consistent enough across shops to quote as a market range. A full-service clean on a three-valve brass sousaphone runs about $235 to $305, and a four-valve about $255 to $315, with silver plate at the top of each band. Minor dent and solder work is usually included in that; major dent work is billed separately at $75 to $100 an hour with a minimum shop charge of around $25. Valve work runs about $55 a valve. Set against a $4,600 instrument, an annual clean is around 5% of the purchase price, which is a normal running cost for a large brass instrument. Set against a $475 import, it is more than half the instrument — which is the real reason nobody in a band program buys one. ## Common questions ### Why does a sousaphone cost more than a tuba? Mostly the bell. A concert tuba’s bell is 14⅜ to 20 inches; every sousaphone built by a major maker has one of 25½ to 26⅛ inches. Spinning and finishing that much more metal is the difference, and it holds across brands: within one bid tabulation, King’s tuba drew $7,020–$7,659 and King’s sousaphone $8,666–$9,425, and Eastman’s pair split the same way. ### Is a fiberglass sousaphone worth buying? For marching, yes, and most high schools choose it. It is around 20% cheaper and about seven pounds lighter than the brass equivalent, and King says in its own product copy that the fiberglass bell is there to reduce weight and cost. The trade is that a damaged fiberglass bell is replaced rather than repaired, and repair shops will not quote a fixed price on one. ### Can I get a decent sousaphone for under $1,000? Not new. Everything at that price has a 22-inch bell where a real sousaphone has 26, and the makers who publish specifications do not build anything in that bracket at all. Used is a different matter — a sound second-hand instrument from a known maker starts around $2,500, and below that you are buying a repair project. ### Do I need a special sousaphone mouthpiece? No. It is a B♭ tuba, and it takes a tuba mouthpiece. Yamaha ships the same BB-67C4 to its sousaphone and its tubas, and Conn’s Helleberg 120S is listed as a tuba mouthpiece and packed with a sousaphone. If you switch between the two instruments, one mouthpiece covers both. ### How much does it cost to maintain a sousaphone each year? An annual full-service clean is about $235 to $315. Valve oil and slide grease are a few dollars. The variable is dent work, which is billed at $75 to $100 an hour and is entirely a function of how the instrument is carried and stored — which is why a cradle pad and a stand are the cheapest maintenance you will ever buy. ### Should I buy one at all? Only if you are playing outside a school program and need your own. Sousaphones are institutional instruments: districts buy them by competitive tender, two at a time, and issue them. If you are in a band that owns them, spend the $225 on the parts that are yours and let the district pay for the horn. ## Related [Tuba vs. sousaphone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) covers what actually differs between the two, and [how much a sousaphone weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-weigh/) has the figures on the part that decides whether you enjoy marching one. For the money on the concert instrument, see [what a tuba costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/), and [euphonium vs. tuba](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) for the rung below. The [brass instruments guide](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) puts the whole family in order. **Categories:** Sousaphone --- ### [Tuba vs. Sousaphone: What Actually Differs, and What Doesn't](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Tuba vs. Sousaphone: What Actually Differs, and What Doesn’t Most people asking this have just been handed one of them by a band director and want to know what they have. The short version is that a sousaphone is a tuba. Not a relative of one — a B♭ tuba, taken apart and wrapped a different way so the weight lands on a shoulder instead of a lap. If you want one answer### Look at the bell. Everything else about the two instruments is either identical or close enough not to matter Across Yamaha and Conn-Selmer, every current sousaphone is B♭ with a bell of 25½ to 26⅛ inches, pointing forward. Every concert tuba in the same catalogues has a bell of 14⅜ to 20 inches, pointing up. The bore — the number people reach for — does not separate them at all: King build a .687″ sousaphone and a .687″ tuba. **Key:** B♭ on both **Bell:** 14⅜–20″ up vs 25½–26″ forward **Bore:** .658–.728″ vs .687–.734″ **Part, clef, fingerings:** the same ## Table of Contents - [Tuba vs. sousaphone, side by side](#tuba-vs-sousaphone-side-by-side) - [The bore is not the difference. The bell is](#the-bore-is-not-the-difference-the-bell-is) - [Weight: the numbers, and why they are the wrong question](#weight-the-numbers-and-why-they-are-the-wrong-question) - [Same key, same part, same mouthpiece](#same-key-same-part-same-mouthpiece) - [Valves: three or four, on both](#valves-three-or-four-on-both) - [Which is easier?](#which-is-easier) - [Where each one came from](#where-each-one-came-from) - [What you actually buy](#what-you-actually-buy) - [Three more, for the marching season](#three-more-for-the-marching-season) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [Is a sousaphone a tuba?](#is-a-sousaphone-a-tuba) - [Can a sousaphone play tuba music?](#can-a-sousaphone-play-tuba-music) - [Which one is heavier?](#which-one-is-heavier) - [Do sousaphones come in other keys?](#do-sousaphones-come-in-other-keys) - [Why is the sousaphone bell so much bigger?](#why-is-the-sousaphone-bell-so-much-bigger) - [Should a beginner start on one rather than the other?](#should-a-beginner-start-on-one-rather-than-the-other) - [Related](#related) ## Tuba vs. sousaphone, side by side Concert tubaSousaphone**Key**B♭, C, E♭ or FB♭ on essentially every model**Tubing length in B♭**About 18 feetAbout 18 feet**Bell diameter**14⅜″–20″25½″–26⅛″**Bell direction**Up, or forward on marching modelsForward, over the left shoulder**Bore**.658″–.728″.687″–.734″**Valves**Three on student models, four upward, five or six on small F tubasThree, or four**Weight, full size**23–30 lbAbout 20 lb in fiberglass, 25–28 lb in brass**Where the weight goes**Your lap, or a standYour left shoulder**Body material**BrassBrass, or fiberglass and ABS**Reads**Bass clef at concert pitchBass clef at concert pitch — the same part**Mouthpiece**The same one. Yamaha ships a BB-67C4 to its YBB-321 tuba and its YSH-411 sousaphone**Where it lives**Orchestra, concert band, brass quintetMarching band, parade, New Orleans brass band ## The bore is not the difference. The bell is Bore is the diameter of the tubing at the valves, and it is the number that decides how much air an instrument wants and how heavy it feels to blow. If a sousaphone really were a bigger, coarser cousin of the tuba, that is where it would show. It does not. King’s school sousaphone, the 2350, is specified at .687″. King’s four-valve concert tuba, the 2341W, is specified at .687″. Same maker, same catalogue, same number to three decimal places. Yamaha does the same thing from the other direction: their YBB-201 tuba and their YSH-301 and YSH-411 sousaphones are all .728″. Conn’s 20K sousaphone is a large-bore instrument at .734″, but so is any large-bore tuba, and Conn’s own 5JW concert tuba is *narrower* than either of the King instruments at .658″. The bell is a different story, and it is not close. Concert tuba bells in the current Conn, King, Holton and Yamaha ranges run from 14⅜ inches on a three-quarter-size student instrument up to 20 inches on a full-size four-valve. Every sousaphone any of them build has a bell of 25½ or 26 inches. Across those catalogues the smallest sousaphone bell is five and a half inches wider than the largest concert tuba bell. That bell is doing a job. It points at the audience rather than at the ceiling, which is the entire reason the instrument exists, and Yamaha says so plainly in its own copy for the YSH-301: the bell-front design is there to enhance projection. A tuba’s upright bell throws sound at the roof and lets it come down over the band, which is what you want indoors and useless in a parking lot. ## Weight: the numbers, and why they are the wrong question Very few makers publish a weight for a tuba, which is why the figures floating around are so vague. Two do. Wessex lists one for nearly every model, and Yamaha gives one for its brass sousaphone. Wessex’s full-size B♭ concert tubas come in at 23.1 lb for the Overture, 26 lb for the four-valve Dragon, 27¾ lb for the five-valve Viverna and 29 lb 12 oz for the 6/4 Grand. Yamaha’s brass sousaphone, the YSH-411, is 12.5 kg — 27.6 lb. That lands squarely in the middle of the tuba range, not above it. The gap opens up only when the sousaphone is not made of brass. Wessex’s SP30, with a fiberglass body and an ABS bell, is 20.5 lb, and their own selling point for it is exactly that: the fiberglass bell keeps the instrument lighter than a brass one for long parades. Yamaha’s YSH-301 has the same construction and the same pitch — lightweight, balanced, durable, weather resistant. This is why school sousaphones are white plastic. It is not a cost-cutting exercise; it is seven pounds off a fourteen-year-old. Even so, weight is not really what separates them. Where the weight sits is. A tuba’s twenty-six pounds rest on your thigh and the floor, and you can let go of them. A sousaphone’s rest on your left shoulder and collarbone for as long as you are wearing it, and there is nowhere to put it down. Wessex says it outright in their own copy for the E♭ sousaphone: balanced on the shoulder it is more comfortable and better for the back than using a tuba when you are marching. That is the whole argument for the shape. ## Same key, same part, same mouthpiece A B♭ tuba and a sousaphone are built from the same eighteen feet of tubing. They have the same range, the same fingerings and the same fundamental. Both read bass clef at concert pitch, which means neither transposes and a written C is a C on both. So there is no such thing as a sousaphone part. There is a tuba part, and whoever is holding a sousaphone plays it. The method books do not distinguish either. Rubank’s elementary book — the one most American low brass players start on — prints *E♭ or BB♭ Bass (Tuba – Sousaphone)* across its cover and then teaches one instrument. The mouthpiece is the same too, and this is the detail that settles the argument better than any of the measurements. Yamaha fits a BB-67C4 to their YBB-321 concert tuba, their YCB-822 professional CC tuba and their YSH-411 sousaphone. Conn ships the 120S Helleberg with the 20K sousaphone and lists it in its catalogue under *tuba mouthpiece*. If you switch instruments, the mouthpiece in your case comes with you and nothing about your playing changes. ## Valves: three or four, on both Three valves is the standard sousaphone, and for most of the instrument’s life it was the only sousaphone. That is no longer true. Conn builds the four-valve 40K, King the four-valve KSP412, and Wessex their four-valve E♭. Three-valve models are still the norm in schools because they cost less, but the fourth valve is a current catalogue item from every major maker. What the fourth valve buys is the bottom of the range. With three valves there is a gap between the lowest note you can finger normally and the fundamental below it, and the notes just above that gap sit sharp. Conn describe their 40K in exactly those terms — improved intonation in the low register, and an extended lower range. King say the same about the KSP412. It is the same fourth valve for the same reason on a concert tuba. Concert tubas go further because they can. Student models have three, most intermediate and professional B♭ and C tubas have four or five, and small F tubas — the ones orchestral players use for high solo work — go to five or six. Wessex builds a six-valve rotary F tuba that weighs 20 lb 9 oz, which makes it lighter than a brass sousaphone and built from about a third less tubing. ## Which is easier? Neither, because the playing is identical. Same mouthpiece, same air, same fingerings, same notes on the same page. A tuba player handed a sousaphone is playing it competently inside ten minutes; the adjustment is entirely about where the thing sits and where the valves have ended up under your hand. What differs is holding it. Sitting still with a tuba is easy and walking with one is not. Walking with a sousaphone is easy and sitting with one for a two-hour rehearsal is genuinely unpleasant, because the load never comes off your shoulder and you cannot lean back. Every complaint sousaphone players have is about the shoulder, the collarbone and the neck, and that is the problem the accessories below exist to solve. In practice the question rarely comes up, because you do not choose. The band does. If you play low brass in an American school you will be on a concert tuba indoors and a sousaphone on the field, and it will be the same you playing the same part on both. ## Where each one came from The tuba is the older instrument by half a century. Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Moritz patented the bass tuba in Berlin in 1835, which gave the brass section a bass that could play every note instead of an ophicleide approximating one. The word is Latin for trumpet, which is what the Romans called their straight ceremonial horn and has nothing to do with the instrument we mean. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The wrap-around idea is older than the sousaphone as well. The helicon was built in Central Europe from the 1840s: the same tuba tubing coiled to sit around the body, with the bell aimed sideways. It is still played across Austria and the Balkans and is essentially extinct in American bands. John Philip Sousa was modifying a helicon when he asked for what became the sousaphone. J.W. Pepper built the first one in 1893; C.G. Conn built his own version in 1898 and got most of the credit, and Conn’s descendant of that instrument is still the 20K. What Sousa actually wanted was a bell pointing straight up, so the sound spread over the band rather than at whoever was standing behind him. The forward-facing bell everybody pictures came later, once bands were marching in front of crowds rather than playing to them from a bandstand. ## What you actually buy Almost nobody buys either instrument. Schools own them, and a student sousaphone or tuba runs into four figures new. What players buy is the small number of things that are theirs rather than the school’s, and on these two instruments the list is short and identical at the top. \#1 — The one book that covers both ### Rubank Elementary Method — E♭ or BB♭ Bass (Tuba–Sousaphone) - Bass clef, concert pitch - Tuba and sousaphone - Rubank Educational Library No. 36 - ~$9 The book American band programs have taught low brass out of for decades, and the clearest illustration of the point this whole page is making. Its own cover, Rubank Educational Library No. 36, is headed *E♭ or BB♭ Bass (Tuba – Sousaphone)*. Rubank does not publish a sousaphone method, because there is nothing to put in one that is not already in this. N. W. Hovey’s course is described on the cover as a fundamental one for individual or like-instrument class instruction, which is exactly how a school uses it — a section works through it together at whatever pace the director sets. If you are on either instrument and do not already own it, it is the first nine dollars to spend. **Pros**- Works on the tuba and the sousaphone without any adjustment - The book most directors already teach from - Costs less than a set of valve oil **Cons**- Bass clef only — correct for these instruments, but check before ordering - Dry. It is a method book, not a songbook Around $9[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yab5SL) \#2 — The part that is yours, on either instrument ### Conn 120S Helleberg tuba mouthpiece - Silver plated - Helleberg profile - Tuba and sousaphone - ~$100 This is the mouthpiece Conn pack with the 20K sousaphone, and the one they file in their catalogue under tuba mouthpieces. That is not an oversight: their own description of it is “Helleberg 120 standard tuba mouthpiece”, and they sell it on an organ-like tone and volume. The Helleberg profile is a professional default on B♭ and C tubas as much as on a sousaphone — a big, dark sound that sits underneath an ensemble rather than on top of it. School instruments come with whatever mouthpiece survived the last decade in the cupboard, usually dented and often the wrong size. Replacing it is the single change that makes the most difference to a low brass player, and because the shank is the same it moves between the concert tuba in the band room and the sousaphone on the field. **Pros**- One mouthpiece for both instruments, so nothing changes when you switch - The professional default rather than a student compromise - Deep cup helps the low register, where three-valve instruments struggle **Cons**- Not cheap for a piece of metal, and it is the largest single spend on this page - A big cup takes a while to get used to if you have been on a small student mouthpiece Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y4n18e) \#3 — For the concert tuba ### Hercules DS552B tuba and euphonium stand - Tripod, heavy-duty - Extended supports, adjustable - Tuba and euphonium - ~$110 A tuba is the one instrument in the room with nowhere to go. Laid on its side it gets stood on; propped against a chair it slides and lands on the bell. A stand holds it upright at playing height, so you pick it up rather than haul it off the floor twenty times a rehearsal, and the rim stays off the concrete. Hercules builds the DS552B as one compact unit with extended supports sized for different instruments, on tripod legs, and it takes a euphonium as well — which matters if you double or if the low brass section shares it. Worth having if the horn comes home with you; less urgent if it lives in the band room on a rack built for it. **Pros**- Stops the two most common ways a tuba gets dented - Folds down small - Doubles for a euphonium **Cons**- Expensive next to what it is - No use for a sousaphone, which needs its own stand Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UZQodF) \#4 — For the sousaphone ### Hercules DS551B sousaphone stand - Folding yoke with locking pin - Foam-coated yokes and backrest - Holds 66 lb - ~$120 The tuba stand will not take a sousaphone, and that is not a detail — it is the shape difference made concrete. A sousaphone has no flat base and no upright bell to balance on. Left on the ground it rests on the bottom bow, which is the part that dents, and getting it back onto a shoulder from there takes two people. This one holds it in foam-coated yokes against a backrest, so every contact point is padded, and the folding yoke drops out of the way on a locking pin when you want to climb into the instrument rather than lift it. Hercules rates it to 66 lb, which is twice what any sousaphone weighs. If the horn comes home with you rather than living at school, this is the accessory to buy first. **Pros**- Solves a problem the instrument genuinely has and nothing else solves - Protects the bottom bow, which is where sousaphones get damaged - Folds for transport **Cons**- The dearest thing on this page - Pointless unless the sousaphone comes home with you Around $120[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46reH6L) ### Three more, for the marching season All three from Neotech, and all three aimed at the part of the job that hurts. ProductWhat it doesPrice**Neotech Sousaphone Cradle Pad**Ballistic nylon over the bottom bow, 29″ × 8½″, so the instrument can be set down on grass or asphalt without taking a dent. Stays on inside the case.~$53[Check price](https://amzn.to/4isSNaA)**Neotech Convertible/Marching Tuba Shoulder Pad**Neoprene with a removable memory foam insert, hook-and-loop onto the shoulder bow of a marching or convertible tuba. This is the tuba pad; the sousaphone bow is a different shape and takes the one below.~$48[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wWPvA3)**Neotech Sousaphone Shoulder Pad**The same idea shaped for a sousaphone, with a removable insert so the thickness can be set to your build and your jacket. Twenty to twenty-eight pounds sits on one shoulder for the length of a parade.~$55[Check price](https://amzn.to/46yW157) ## Common questions ### Is a sousaphone a tuba? Yes. Same key, same tubing length, same range, same mouthpiece, same written part. It is a B♭ tuba with the tubing routed around the player instead of stacked in front of them. ### Can a sousaphone play tuba music? All of it. Both instruments read bass clef at concert pitch and neither transposes, so a tuba part goes on the stand and gets played as written. ### Which one is heavier? A brass sousaphone and a full-size B♭ tuba are within a couple of pounds of each other, both in the mid to high twenties. A fiberglass sousaphone is around twenty. The real difference is that a tuba’s weight goes through your lap or the floor and a sousaphone’s goes through your left shoulder. ### Do sousaphones come in other keys? Barely. Yamaha, Conn and King build B♭ and nothing else. Wessex makes an E♭ model, which is the only current alternative worth knowing about. Concert tubas, by contrast, are made in B♭, C, E♭ and F, and orchestral players in America usually work on a C. ### Why is the sousaphone bell so much bigger? Because it has to throw sound across a football field into the open air, and it is pointing at the crowd rather than at a ceiling. Indoors a tuba’s smaller upright bell lets the sound spread and blend before it reaches anybody, which is what an orchestra wants and a parade cannot use. ### Should a beginner start on one rather than the other? It makes no difference to the playing, and the decision is normally made for you. Schools start low brass on a concert tuba because that is what is in the band room in September, and hand out sousaphones when marching season arrives. Whichever comes first, the other one takes an afternoon to get used to. ## Related [The brass family](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) puts both of these in context alongside the helicon and the rest of the low brass. Below the tuba’s register there is nothing; above it, [euphonium vs. tuba](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) and [tuba vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/) cover the step up, and [mellophone vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) deals with the other pair of marching instruments people mix up. For the money side, see [what a tuba costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/) and [what a sousaphone costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-cost/), and for the full figures, [how much a tuba weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-weigh/) and [how much a sousaphone weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-weigh/). If the question is which ensemble you are heading for, [orchestra vs. band](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) is the place to start. **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Tuba vs. Baritone: An Octave and Twenty Pounds Apart](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Tuba vs. Baritone: An Octave and Twenty Pounds Apart Both are B♭ brass instruments with the bell pointing up, both sit in the low brass row, and a band director will happily move a student from one to the other. What separates them is not really the sound, and it is not the fingerings, which are identical. It is scale. A baritone is a five-and-a-half pound object you carry to school in one hand. A BB♭ tuba is twenty-six pounds of the same idea, built at twice the length. If you want one answer### Start on the baritone. Everything you learn on it transfers to the tuba an octave down, and nothing you learn on the tuba is easier to learn there first Both are pitched in B♭, both read bass clef written in C, and the same valve combinations give the same notes on each — one octave apart. So the baritone is not a detour. It is the same instrument at a fifth of the weight, on a mouthpiece a child can actually seal, at a price a family can actually pay: makers who publish list prices put a student baritone at about $670 and a full-size B♭ tuba near $2,900. **Key:** B♭ on both **Pitch:** the tuba an octave lower **Weight:** 5½ lb vs 26 lb **Fingerings:** the same ## Table of Contents - [Tuba vs. baritone, side by side](#tuba-vs-baritone-side-by-side) - [Same key, one octave, twice the tube](#same-key-one-octave-twice-the-tube) - [Five and a half pounds against twenty-six](#five-and-a-half-pounds-against-twentysix) - [The bore and the bell tell the same story](#the-bore-and-the-bell-tell-the-same-story) - [The mouthpieces are not related](#the-mouthpieces-are-not-related) - [The tuba gets one book. The baritone gets two](#the-tuba-gets-one-book-the-baritone-gets-two) - [What the word baritone means depends who is saying it](#what-the-word-baritone-means-depends-who-is-saying-it) - [What each one does in the band](#what-each-one-does-in-the-band) - [Which is harder](#which-is-harder) - [What they cost, and who actually buys one](#what-they-cost-and-who-actually-buys-one) - [Where they came from](#where-they-came-from) - [What you actually buy](#what-you-actually-buy) - [If you land on the baritone](#if-you-land-on-the-baritone) - [If you land on the tuba](#if-you-land-on-the-tuba) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [Is a baritone just a small tuba?](#is-a-baritone-just-a-small-tuba) - [Can a baritone player switch to tuba?](#can-a-baritone-player-switch-to-tuba) - [Do a tuba and a baritone use the same mouthpiece?](#do-a-tuba-and-a-baritone-use-the-same-mouthpiece) - [Which is heavier?](#which-is-heavier) - [Which should a beginner start on?](#which-should-a-beginner-start-on) - [Does a baritone read treble or bass clef?](#does-a-baritone-read-treble-or-bass-clef) - [Is the baritone in my school band actually a baritone?](#is-the-baritone-in-my-school-band-actually-a-baritone) - [Is three valves enough?](#is-three-valves-enough) - [Related](#related) ## Tuba vs. baritone, side by side BaritoneTuba**Key**B♭BB♭ in American school bands; also C, E♭, F**Tubing length**About nine feetAbout eighteen feet in BB♭**Sounds**The tenor voiceAn octave below the baritone**Bore**.503″–.562″.661″–.770″**Bell**8″–9½″, but see below14⅜″–19″**Weight**About 5½–6 lb23–26 lb full size**Valves**Three, or four on a compensating hornThree on student horns, four to six above that**Mouthpiece**Small shank, 25.40 mm cupTuba shank, 32.10 mm cup**Reads**Bass clef or treble clef — two separate booksBass clef only**How it sits**In your lapOn a chair, a stand or your knee**New, from**About $670About $1,600 for a junior horn, $2,930 full size ## Same key, one octave, twice the tube A brass instrument’s pitch comes from how far the air has to travel. Yamaha puts the air path of a B♭ tuba at approximately 5.40 meters with no valves down — near enough eighteen feet — stretching to about 9.60 meters with all of them depressed. A B♭ baritone is half of that, about nine feet, which is exactly what an octave costs. Same key, half the tube, an octave up. The practical consequence is that the fingerings do not change. Open is B♭ on both. First and third is F on both. A student who moves from baritone to tuba is not learning a new instrument in any sense a beginner would recognize; they are learning to move more air through a bigger one, and to hear their own part an octave lower than they are used to. This is the same relationship the euphonium has with the tuba, and [euphonium vs. tuba](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) goes further into how the two read each other’s music. ## Five and a half pounds against twenty-six Two makers build both instruments and publish weights for both, which is the only way to compare them honestly — the same company, the same scales, the same idea of what counts as the instrument. Besson lists the Sovereign baritone at 5 lb 8 oz and the four-valve Prestige baritone at 5 lb 15 oz. The same company’s Sovereign BB♭ tuba is **26 lb**, and its E♭ International is 20 lb 8 oz. Wessex lands in the same place from the other direction: a compensated baritone at 5.4 lb, a four-valve British baritone at 6 lb, against 23.1 lb for the smallest full-size BB♭ concert tuba it builds and 26 lb for its four-valve model. Yamaha’s own guide agrees on the top end, putting the heaviest B♭ tuba at nine to ten kilograms. So a baritone is a five-and-a-half to six pound object however it is built — Wessex’s lightest is 5.4 lb and its heaviest 6 lb — and a full-size tuba is four to five times that. Nothing else on this page matters as much for a twelve-year-old. The baritone rests in the lap and a small player can hold it through a rehearsal; the tuba has to be supported, and most school players end up with it braced on a chair or on one knee rather than actually held. There is a middle rung, incidentally, that band rooms rarely stock. Wessex builds a three-quarter-size junior BB♭ tuba at 14 lb and an E♭ children’s tuba at 6½ lb with a 9″ bell and a .51″ bore — which is to say a tuba built to baritone dimensions. If a student wants the bass part and cannot carry the bass instrument, those exist. ## The bore and the bell tell the same story Across the makers that publish specifications, baritones are bored between .503″ and .562″. Conn’s CBH301 is .503″ behind an 8.25″ bell; Yamaha’s YBH-301 is .504″ behind 8⅜″; Besson’s Sovereign is .543″ behind 9.25″; Wessex’s compensated model is .51″ behind 9.5″. One outlier is worth naming because it is the naming problem in miniature. King’s Diplomat 627, sold as a baritone, is .562″ behind an *11″* bell — larger than the 9½″ that usually marks the line, and closer to euphonium proportions. That is the American use of the word doing exactly what the section below describes, and it is a reason to read the bell figure rather than the label. Tubas start where baritones stop. Yamaha’s three-quarter-size YBB-105 is .661″ behind 14⅜″, its full-size YBB-201 is .728″ behind 17½″, Besson’s Sovereign BB♭ is .730″ behind 19″, and Wessex’s Overture is .770″ behind 18″. There is no overlap at all, and the bell roughly doubles. One caution about reading too much into bore, and it comes from Yamaha rather than from us: on a tuba the bore figure describes the diameter of the valve slides, and where those slides sit along the taper depends on whether the horn is top action, front action or rotary. Two tubas of the same pitch and the same bell can therefore quote different bores and sound equally big. Comparing a baritone’s bore to a tuba’s is fair, because the gap is enormous and the instruments are different sizes. Comparing one tuba’s bore to another’s is not. ## The mouthpieces are not related This is the one place where a student switching instruments actually gets stuck, and every maker settles it the same way. Conn ships its CBH301 baritone with a Bach 6½AL small shank. King ships the Diplomat 627 with its own 6-1/2AL, also small shank. Yamaha fits the YBH-301 with an SL45C2-12C, again a trombone-family size. Wessex packs a 6½A with its compensated baritone. Those same makers pack something else entirely with a student tuba: Conn a Bach 24AW, Holton a Bach 18, Yamaha its own 67. A Bach 18 tuba mouthpiece measures 32.10 mm across the cup against 25.40 mm on a 6½AL, and the shank is a different diameter again, so neither will physically seat in the other instrument. Nothing about the model name warns you — a Bach 6½AL exists in small and large shank with an identical cup, and the L refers to the throat and backbore rather than the fitting. The part number is what carries it: Bach’s 350 series is small shank and the 341 series is large. The useful half of that is what the baritone shares. A trombone player already owns the right mouthpiece for a baritone, which is why band directors move trombonists across without ceremony. A tuba player owns nothing that fits. ## The tuba gets one book. The baritone gets two The tuba reads bass clef, written in C, sounding an octave lower than a euphonium or baritone reading the same line. That is the only convention it has. The baritone has two, and a student who orders the wrong one will open a book of notes in the wrong places. Hal Leonard’s catalogue shows it plainly: *Essential Elements for Band* Book 1 runs one product number per instrument, and three of them sit consecutively — Baritone B.C., Baritone T.C., then Tuba. Two baritone editions of the same book, one tuba edition. Which clef a baritone player reads is a decision the band program makes, usually according to where the student came from: a former trumpet player reads treble, a former trombone player reads bass. Ask before you buy the book. [Euphonium vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) covers why that convention exists in the first place. ## What the word baritone means depends who is saying it The instrument the American school system calls a baritone is often not one. Yamaha states it directly: in the U.S., a euphonium with the bell and pistons facing forward may be called a baritone to distinguish it from a true euphonium. A real baritone has noticeably thinner tubing than a euphonium and a brighter, more strident tone, and the bell measurement is what settles it — under about 9½″ is a baritone, 10″ or more is a euphonium. The confusion is older and wider than American band rooms. Yamaha again: what Britain and Japan call a baritone, German-speaking countries call a tenor horn, and what Germany calls a baritone is close to what everyone else calls a euphonium. The British tenor horn, meanwhile, is the instrument Americans call an alto horn. It is worth knowing only because a search for advice will return all of these under one word. The tuba has the opposite problem — several instruments under one name, but at least they are all tubas. Yamaha lists four pitches, B♭, C, E♭ and F, and says the B♭ is the one widely used in brass bands and orchestras; it is also what an American school program will hand you. The wrapping is regional too: top-action pistons in Britain and France, front-action in the United States, rotary valves in Germany, Austria and Russia. ## What each one does in the band The tuba is the bottom of the ensemble and it is a job with no substitute. Nothing else in a concert band plays that register, so the tuba section is rarely idle and rarely doubled by anything. A marching band converts the same role to the sousaphone, which [tuba vs. sousaphone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) covers. The baritone is the tenor voice, sitting between the trombones and the tuba, and it spends much of its time doubling — the trombone line, the cello line in a transcription, sometimes the melody an octave down. That has two consequences worth knowing before you choose. Baritone parts are often more tuneful than tuba parts, and the instrument gets solo lines in a way the tuba does not. But the baritone is also the part a band can survive without, and in a British-style brass band it is a specific, well-defined chair while in an American concert band it is frequently written as an alternative to something else. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Which is harder The baritone, on balance, is the easier start, and for reasons that are physical rather than musical. Its mouthpiece is a size a young player can seal without a developed embouchure. It weighs a fifth of a tuba. And a three-valve baritone covers its useful range without the low-register compromises that make a three-valve tuba awkward. The tuba’s difficulties are specific, and air is the smaller of them: Yamaha’s own guide says the tuba needs more lung capacity than a clarinet or a trumpet but “pales in comparison to the flute”, and that anyone with normal lung capacity should try it — there are professional tuba players of small stature. Timing is the real one. The instrument holds so much air that the note takes measurably longer to speak, and the previous note keeps ringing; a tuba player has to release a note early and start the next one early to line up with everybody else. That becomes automatic, but it is a genuine skill that no baritone player has to learn. The fourth valve is the other thing. On a three-valve horn in either size, the 1+3 and 1+2+3 fingerings at the bottom of the range run sharp, and a fourth valve replaces them with a properly in-tune alternative. Student tubas and student baritones both usually have three. It matters more on the tuba, because the tuba spends more time down there. ## What they cost, and who actually buys one Most makers in this family — Yamaha, Conn-Selmer, Besson — publish no prices at all and sell through dealers. Wessex publishes a full ladder for both instruments, and it is the clearest picture available of what the gap actually is: a student baritone at about $670, a marching baritone at about $880, a compensated baritone at about $930, and a four-valve British compensated baritone at about $1,730. Its tubas start at about $1,600 for the junior BB♭, reach about $2,930 for the smallest full-size concert horn, and run past $8,000. That ratio explains the thing nobody says out loud about this choice. Families buy baritones. Schools own tubas. A baritone is a normal instrument purchase in the same range as a decent trumpet or clarinet, and it fits in a car. A full-size tuba costs two to four times as much, needs a case the size of a small refrigerator, and is the instrument most likely to stay in the band room and be shared. If you are choosing partly on what you can take home, that is a real difference and not a small one. [How much does a tuba cost](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/) goes into the tuba end of it. ## Where they came from The tuba has a date. Wilhelm Wieprecht, a German military bandmaster, and the instrument maker Johann Moritz filed the patent for the basstuba on 12 September 1835. Moritz named it for the Latin word for tube, adding “bass” because it played lower than the instruments already called tubas. Three years later he built a tenor version, and a fellow German, Ferdinand Sommer, thickened and tapered its tubing into what he called the euphonium. The baritone comes from somewhere else entirely. While Sommer was working in Germany, Adolphe Sax was building his saxhorn family in Paris, and Yamaha credits Sax’s baritone saxhorn as the direct prototype of the modern baritone — an instrument it describes as indispensable in British-style brass bands. So the two instruments on this page are not parent and child. They are a German bass instrument and a French tenor one that ended up in the same row of the same band, in the same key, an octave apart, by convergence rather than descent. ## What you actually buy Whichever instrument you land on, the horn itself is usually the school’s and the mouthpiece is yours. That is the first thing to get right, because it is the one part where these two genuinely do not interchange. ### If you land on the baritone \#1 — The baritone mouthpiece ### Bach 6½AL Small Shank Mouthpiece - Small shank (Bach 350 series, model 3506HAL) - 25.40 mm cup, medium-deep, medium-wide rim - Correct on baritone, trombone and small-shank euphonium - ~$72 Conn packs a Bach 6½AL with its own student baritone and King packs its equivalent with the Diplomat, so this is the size the makers themselves choose to voice the instrument. It is also the standard small-shank trombone size, which is why a trombone player can be handed a baritone at the start of a rehearsal and simply play it. Check the part number, not the name. Bach sells a 6½AL in large shank too, with an identical cup, and the model name does not distinguish them — 350 is the small one and 341 is the large. If the baritone is a school horn, pull the mouthpiece that came in it and compare the shank before ordering anything. **Pros**- The size the makers fit at the factory - Also correct on a small-shank trombone, so it travels with you - A sensible depth for a student rather than a specialist cup **Cons**- Wrong for a large-shank euphonium, and the name will not warn you - Will not fit a tuba at all - Expensive for a small piece of metal Around $72[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zMG0WI) Then the book, in whichever clef the program uses. Ask the director before ordering — these are two different books and only one of them will match the part on the stand. If your part is inBuyPrice**Bass clef**Essential Elements Book 1 — Baritone B.C.~$12 · [Check price](https://amzn.to/4cjtRyv)**Treble clef**Essential Elements Book 1 — Baritone T.C.~$13 · [Check price](https://amzn.to/4xcVnp6) ### If you land on the tuba \#2 — The tuba mouthpiece ### Bach 18 Tuba Mouthpiece - Tuba shank - 32.10 mm cup diameter - Medium-deep cup, medium-wide rim - ~$110 Holton packs a Bach 18 with its Collegiate student BB♭ tuba and Conn packs a Bach 24AW with its own, so the 18 sits exactly where a school player belongs — big enough to fill the instrument, not so deep that a beginner disappears into it. Set beside the baritone mouthpiece above, the difference is obvious the moment you hold both: 32.10 mm across the cup against 25.40 mm, on a fitting that is not the same diameter. If a student is moving up from baritone, this is the single biggest physical change in the switch, and it is worth having their own from the first week rather than borrowing whatever is loose in the case. **Pros**- What Holton packs with its own student BB♭ tuba - Middle-of-the-road depth, which is right for a student - The one part of a school tuba that can be yours **Cons**- The dearest item on this page - A big jump if you have come off a baritone size - Useless on a baritone — it is not the same fitting Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gLf5So) \#3 — The book ### Essential Elements Book 1 — Tuba - Bass clef, the only edition published - Book with online audio and video - The method most American programs run on - ~$13 One edition, no clef decision, no way to order the wrong one. That is the whole of what the tuba’s reading conventions ask of you, and it is a genuine simplification over the baritone. Hal Leonard prints the same book per instrument across the whole band, so a tuba player works through the same page numbers as the flutes and can be taught in the same room. **Pros**- No clef trap — there is only one tuba edition - Almost certainly what the program already uses - Cheap, and the online audio is included **Cons**- A classroom method, not a solo book - Newer printings of the series exist alongside this one Around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zRN5W3) \#4 — Only if the tuba comes home ### Hercules DS552B Tuba and Euphonium Stand - 36″–42.3″ adjustable height - 66 lb load capacity - 10 lb, folds to 21″ - ~$109 Yamaha’s own guidance on setting a tuba down is to rest it bell-down on a desk or a chair and to expect trouble if you do not — a knocked bell on an instrument this size is not a small repair. A stand solves that for a tuba that lives at home, and it is the reason this is a tuba item and not a baritone one: a baritone goes in its case on the floor and nothing happens to it. If the tuba is the school’s and never leaves the band room, skip this. It is a hundred dollars against a risk that belongs to somebody else. **Pros**- Removes the one way a school tuba usually gets damaged - Height range covers a full-size BB♭ horn - Folds small enough to carry to a concert **Cons**- Expensive for what it is - Ten more pounds to carry - Pointless if the instrument stays at school Around $109[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qRebbK) One thing is the same on both instruments and there is no decision in it. Piston valves want oiling roughly every second rehearsal, and [Al Cass Fast valve oil](https://amzn.to/4ddPYXk) at about $7 is what most band rooms keep on the shelf. A bottle lasts a term. ## Common questions ### Is a baritone just a small tuba? Not by descent. The tuba came from Wieprecht and Moritz’s 1835 basstuba; the baritone came from Adolphe Sax’s baritone saxhorn. They ended up in the same key an octave apart by convergence. Functionally, though, a baritone behaves like a tuba an octave up: same fingerings, same clef, same written conventions. ### Can a baritone player switch to tuba? Yes, and it is the usual route. The fingerings transfer exactly. What has to be relearned is the mouthpiece — 32.10 mm across against 25.40 mm — the amount of air, and the timing, since a tuba speaks later than a baritone and has to be started earlier. ### Do a tuba and a baritone use the same mouthpiece? No, and they physically cannot. A baritone takes a small-shank trombone-family mouthpiece; a tuba takes a tuba shank, which is a different diameter. Every maker checked packs a 6½AL-size piece with its baritones and a Bach 18, 24AW or Yamaha 67 with its tubas. ### Which is heavier? The tuba, by a factor of four to five. Besson publishes 5 lb 8 oz for its Sovereign baritone and 26 lb for its Sovereign BB♭ tuba; Wessex’s figures for its own baritones and tubas land in the same ratio. ### Which should a beginner start on? The baritone, unless the program specifically needs a tuba and has one to lend. It is lighter, cheaper, takes an easier mouthpiece, and everything learned on it applies to the tuba later. Starting on tuba is not a mistake — it is just a harder first year for no advantage. ### Does a baritone read treble or bass clef? Either, depending on the program, which is why the method book is published in two editions. The tuba reads bass clef and only bass clef. ### Is the baritone in my school band actually a baritone? Quite possibly not. American programs often use the word for a forward-facing euphonium. Measure the bell: under about 9½″ is a baritone, 10″ or more is a euphonium. ### Is three valves enough? For a beginner on either instrument, yes. A fourth valve fixes the sharp 1+3 and 1+2+3 fingerings at the bottom of the range and extends it downward. It matters more on the tuba, which lives down there. ## Related [Euphonium vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) is the harder version of the naming question, and [euphonium vs. tuba](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) is the same octave relationship with a wider horn at the top. [Tuba vs. sousaphone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) is the marching form of the bass part, and [mellophone vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) covers the other pair a marching program will offer you. For where all of these sit in the family, see [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/). **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Rocket Ukulele Review: What It Was, and What $27 Buys Instead](https://promusicvault.com/rocket-ukulele-review/) **Published:** July 27, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Rocket Ukulele Review: What It Was, and What $27 Buys Instead Rocket Ukulele was a membership website that sold a “learn ukulele in 30 days” video course for $27. It stopped working in 2022. The domain lapsed, was re-registered by someone else, spent a year on a domain broker’s for-sale page, and today has no DNS record at all — so the “lifetime access” it sold ended with the hosting bill. Anyone still being pointed at it is being pointed at nothing. The good news is that the material it charged $27 for is a book, and the book is about ten dollars. Buy this instead### Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1, with online audio Written by Lil’ Rev, 48 pages, and it covers the ground Rocket Ukulele advertised: tuning, chords, strumming, reading melody in both notation and tab, scales, tremolo. The access code inside gets you 46 audio tracks with a player that slows a track down without dropping its pitch and loops a bar you keep fumbling. Hal Leonard lists it at $14.99. It costs about ten dollars, and nobody can switch it off. Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i1l3AV) **If you actually wanted video:** Hal Leonard Deluxe Beginner Edition — around $20, book, audio and video lessons **For the songs:** Easy Songs for Ukulele — around $10, 20 of them **The thing you genuinely cannot do without:** a clip-on tuner — around $18 ## Rocket Ukulele was a website, not a ukulele There is no instrument called a Rocket. No maker builds one, and searching for one returns beginner ukuleles from Kala, Donner, Enya and a dozen unbranded importers. The name belonged to rocketukulele.com, a membership site whose front page read “Learn Ukulele in 30 Days” and whose footer, right to the end, read “© 2012 RocketUkelele.com” — with the instrument’s name misspelt in the company’s own copyright line. If you are here because you want an instrument rather than a course, the [cheap ukuleles guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) is the place to start, and [how to choose a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) covers the size question first. ## What it sold, and what it charged The membership page listed hundreds of step-by-step videos, a 30-day beginner series, three further programs headed “become a better ukulele player”, “being a ukulele master” and “play ukulele by ear”, more than a hundred song tutorials, a forum staffed by “ukulele professionals”, browser tools including a virtual ukulele and flashcards, and over a thousand sheets of music. One payment, no renewal: “ONE TIME FEE – LIFETIME ACCESS”, and “your membership never expires, and there are no additional fees ever”. The price was $27, struck through from $79.97. Checkout went through ClickBank — the site told buyers their card would appear on the statement as “ClickBank/Keynetics” — and the FAQ promised a 60-day no-questions refund. That refund window is the only part of this that ever protected anyone, and it closed years ago. ## The three-day sale that ran for seven years Above that $27 sat a banner reading “3 Day Sale! Promo ends on…”, and beside each payment option, “1 Day Left! Offer Ends”. Archived copies of the join page from 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2020 all carry the same banner, always with the same day left. In the 2016 copy the arithmetic had moved rather than the urgency: “Normally $27, special offer of ONLY $1”. That tells you what the $79.97 was for. It was never a price anyone paid; it was there to make $27 look like a rescue. Ninety-five different affiliate tracking codes turn up in archived copies of the site, each one a person paid a commission to send traffic at it, which is why the web still has so many enthusiastic reviews of a course that no longer exists. ## The promise its own FAQ contradicted The sales page sold speed. It said its techniques “cut down learning time by about one tenth”, offered “absolutely no boring repetitive practice”, and told readers they could “start a hugely successful career playing the ukulele within months” after which “bands will line up for your services”. Two clicks away, the FAQ answered the question “how long and how often will I have to practice?” like this: “We recommend that you practice at least an hour a day, 5 days a week.” That is around twenty-two hours inside the thirty days — an ordinary beginner’s practice load, honestly stated, and the exact opposite of the sentence on the front page. The seller knew what learning an instrument costs and priced the marketing separately. The testimonials tell on themselves in a smaller way. One from “Alexandria Albert, Los Angeles California” appears twice on the same site, word for word, except that in one version she had tried to learn *ukulele* as a kid and in the other she had tried to learn *guitar*. The same paragraph was doing duty for more than one instrument. ## What happened to it It had been fragile for a while. Archived crawls found the hosting account suspended in 2015, and again repeatedly between September 2019 and January 2020 — the site simply not answering for weeks at a stretch. It came back each time. The last archived copy of a working Rocket Ukulele is dated 21 February 2022. By 26 May 2022 the address was serving a registrar holding page: “This domain was recently registered at Namecheap.com. Please check back later!” — which means the registration had been allowed to lapse and picked up by a stranger. By March 2023 it was listed for sale on a domain broker. In August 2026 it has no DNS record whatever, so a browser cannot even find a server to fail against. Every member’s lifetime access ended somewhere in early 2022, without notice, because the thing they bought was a login rather than a copy. ## What the $27 bought, and what the same thing costs to own What Rocket Ukulele advertisedWhat does the same jobPriceStep-by-step beginner lessons[Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1](https://amzn.to/4i1l3AV), with 46 audio tracks~$10Hundreds of video lessons[Deluxe Beginner Edition](https://amzn.to/4wRXQEX) — book, audio and video together~$20100+ song tutorials[Easy Songs for Ukulele](https://amzn.to/4xro3LI) — 20 songs, easiest first~$10Online tuning tools[Snark SN6X clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4iy59y7), which works away from a screen~$18A forum of “ukulele professionals”Nothing sold here replaces it—Lifetime accessPaper, which does not have a renewal date— The book on its own is under half what the course charged, and it is the part that mattered. The rest is optional and adds up to less than a beginner ukulele. ## The four worth buying № 1 · Start here ### Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1, with online audio - By Lil’ Rev, 48 pages, 9″ × 12″ - Access code inside for 46 audio tracks, download or stream - Player slows audio without changing pitch, loops passages, changes key - Tuning, chords, strumming, melody in notation and tab, scales, tremolo - Blues, folk, children’s songs and a section on where the instrument came from - Hal Leonard list price $14.99 - ~$10 This is the book most ukulele teachers hand a new pupil, and it is the reason a $27 video course was never good value. It starts before you can hold the thing — which end is which, how the four strings are named, how to get them in tune — and finishes with you reading a melody off a stave. The audio matters more than it sounds: hearing a strum at half speed with the pitch intact is the single most useful thing a beginner can do on their own, and it is what a book alone cannot give you. What it will not do is entertain you. It is a method book, laid out in order, and it expects you to work through it rather than skip to a song you like. If that sounds joyless, buy the songbook below alongside it and alternate. **Pros**- Under half the price of the course it replaces - Audio with a proper practice player, not just backing tracks - Teaches notation and tab rather than chord shapes alone - Book 2 and the songbook continue from it **Cons**- Dry, and deliberately so - No video - Assumes you will find someone to check your left hand eventually [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i1l3AV) № 2 · If video is what you wanted ### Hal Leonard Ukulele Method: Deluxe Beginner Edition - Same method, same author, with video lessons added - One access code covers both the audio examples and the video - Same practice player — half speed, loop points, key change - Hal Leonard list price $19.99 - ~$20 Rocket Ukulele’s whole pitch was video, and this is the honest version of it: the same course as the book above, with someone demonstrating the strumming patterns rather than leaving you to decode a rhythm diagram. Twenty dollars, once, and the video lives behind an access code printed on page one rather than behind a login on a rented domain. It is the pricier choice, and if you have a teacher or you read music already the plain book does everything you need for half the money. Buy this one if watching a hand is how you learn, which for strumming it very often is. **Pros**- Video and audio in one purchase, no subscription - Demonstrations of the strumming patterns, which is where diagrams fail - Costs exactly what the publisher lists it at, so the video is not a premium **Cons**- Twice the price of the book for the same syllabus - Streaming access depends on the publisher keeping the site up - Very few owner reviews so far Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wRXQEX) № 3 · For the songs ### Easy Songs for Ukulele - Companion volume to the method above, same author - 20 pop, folk, country and blues songs - Melodies, lyrics and chord diagrams - Ordered by difficulty, simple rhythms first - The Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Simon & Garfunkel - 48 pages · list price $12.99 · ~$10 A hundred song tutorials that arrive at a rate of one a week is a retention device. Twenty-three songs you already know the tune of, printed in order of difficulty, is a practice plan. The ordering is the point — the early ones move between two or three chords on a straight beat, and by the end you are picking notes above the fifth fret. It teaches nothing on its own. There is no instruction in it beyond chord boxes, so it is worth buying alongside the method rather than instead of it. Get it second, once the first few chords have stopped hurting. **Pros**- Real songs by named writers, properly licensed - Graded, so you can see progress rather than guess at it - Cheap enough to buy alongside the method **Cons**- No teaching content at all - Twenty-three songs is a few months, not a library - The song list is fixed and firmly mid-century Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xro3LI) № 4 · Buy this before any of the above ### Snark SN6X clip-on ukulele tuner - Clips to the headstock and reads the vibration, so a noisy room does not matter - Frequency range set for the ukulele rather than a general chromatic range - Full-color display, rotates a full turn so it reads the same left- or right-handed - Runs on a replaceable battery - ~$18 No course can do this part for you, and it is the part that decides whether anyone carries on. A new set of nylon strings stretches for a fortnight and goes flat several times a day, and a beginner who cannot yet hear that will practice against an out-of-tune instrument, conclude they have no ear, and stop. Eighteen dollars removes the commonest reason people give up. A ukulele-specific tuner tracks nylon better than a general guitar one, which matters most on the low, slack strings where a chromatic tuner hunts. If a tuner already came in the box with your instrument, use that one first and spend the money on the book. **Pros**- Reads vibration, so it works with other people in the room - Tuned to the ukulele’s range rather than a guitar’s - Cheap, and it will outlast a first instrument **Cons**- The clip is what fails, and owners report it breaking within months - Battery life gets mixed reports, some of them poor - Bulky on a soprano headstock - Redundant if your ukulele arrived as a kit Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iy59y7) ## What thirty days of ukulele actually looks like Take the seller’s own number rather than its slogan. An hour a day, five days a week, for a month is about twenty-two hours. That is enough to have four or five chords under your fingers without looking, to change between two of them in time, and to play along with a slow song from beginning to end. It is not enough to read fluently, to strum anything syncopated, or to have your left hand stop aching. Nearly all of the first fortnight is spent on things nobody advertises: pressing hard enough and no harder, keeping a finger off the string next to it, and retuning constantly because the strings have not settled. If that retuning is still happening after two or three weeks, something else is wrong, and [a ukulele that will not stay in tune](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) works through what. The ukulele is genuinely one of the quickest instruments to get a tune out of — [how easy it is to learn](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) goes into why, and [against a guitar](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) the gap is real. Thirty days is a reasonable target for playing a song. It was never a reasonable target for anything a band would line up for. ## Questions people actually ask ### Is Rocket Ukulele a scam? It was a real product with real lessons behind it, sold through a mainstream payment processor with a 60-day refund policy. The marketing was the 2012 hard-sell in full — a permanent three-day sale, a struck-through price nobody paid, testimonials recycled between instruments — and the front page made claims its own FAQ contradicted. The honest verdict is overpriced and oversold rather than fraudulent. It is also gone, which settles the question in practice. ### I paid for lifetime access and cannot log in. Can I get a refund? Almost certainly not. The guarantee was 60 days from purchase through the payment processor, and the site stopped answering in early 2022, so both the window and the seller are long gone. If your purchase is within the last few months it did not come from Rocket Ukulele, because there has been nothing there to buy from — check what the charge on your statement actually says. ### Is there a ukulele called a Rocket? No. No maker builds one under that name. If you are shopping for a first instrument rather than a course, the [beginners’ guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) is the right page, and [the brands worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) covers who actually makes what. ### Can you really learn the ukulele in 30 days? You can learn to play a song in thirty days, comfortably, at an hour a day. You cannot learn the instrument in thirty days, and no course, book or teacher changes that. Any product that leads with the number is selling the number. ### Are online ukulele courses worth paying for at all? The thing to check is what you own afterward. A subscription or a login can be withdrawn, and this page is what that looks like when it happens. A book with an access code, a downloaded set of audio files or a video you can keep are all yours regardless of who owns the domain next year. Where an app genuinely earns its place is in practice tools rather than teaching — [the ukulele apps guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-apps/) covers those. ### What else do I need beyond the book? A tuner, and eventually a decent set of strings — the ones fitted to a cheap instrument are usually the corner that was cut, and [a twelve-dollar set](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is the biggest single improvement available. A strap only matters if you play standing, which [the straps guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) covers. Nothing else is urgent. ## Where that leaves you Rocket Ukulele charged $27 for a login and then took the login away. The syllabus it was selling has been in print since 2005, costs about ten dollars, and comes with the audio. Buy the [method book](https://amzn.to/4i1l3AV), buy a tuner if you do not have one, and put the change toward a better instrument than the one you were about to settle for — [under seventy-five dollars](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) buys more than it used to. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Is the Ukulele Easy to Learn? What the First Month Actually Looks Like](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) **Published:** December 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ukulele/ "Ukulele")› Is the Ukulele Easy to Learn? What the First Month Actually Looks Like Yes, and there is a better answer than an opinion. Kala, which makes some of the most-sold first ukuleles in the United States, publishes its beginner course free. The path from never having held one to playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is **eleven videos** — how to hold it, how to tune it, the common chords, the song. That is the whole syllabus, and it is the shortest distance to a finished song that any fretted instrument offers. What eleven videos does not mean is eleven sittings. It means there is no *material* standing between a beginner and a song — no scales to grind first, no calluses to grow, no barre chord in chapter one. Everything after that is repetition. The one that will not fight you### Kala KA-15C Satin Mahogany Concert Laminated mahogany, rosewood fingerboard, Aquila Super Nylgut strings from the factory, and a **Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle** rather than molded plastic. The nut is where a beginner’s fingers meet the instrument, and it is the one part that decides whether the first fret is comfortable or sore. A 14⅞″ scale gives adult fingers more room between frets than a soprano does. Around $85 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SAKWxf) **Smaller and cheaper:** Kala KA-15S soprano — around $69 **Buy it at the same time:** clip-on tuner — around $18 **The syllabus in print:** Hal Leonard Method Book 1 — around $10 **Lessons cost nothing:** Kala’s beginner course is free ## Table of Contents - [The first hour is tuning, and then one finger](#the-first-hour-is-tuning-and-then-one-finger) - [What the published beginner courses actually cover](#what-the-published-beginner-courses-actually-cover) - [Where it stops being easy](#where-it-stops-being-easy) - [The right hand, not the left](#the-right-hand-not-the-left) - [The E chord, which the guitar gives away for free](#the-e-chord-which-the-guitar-gives-away-for-free) - [The fourth string runs backward](#the-fourth-string-runs-backward) - [The one thing that makes it harder than it needs to be](#the-one-thing-that-makes-it-harder-than-it-needs-to-be) - [So how long, honestly](#so-how-long-honestly) - [What to buy to start](#what-to-buy-to-start) - [Questions people actually ask](#questions-people-actually-ask) - [How long before I can play a song?](#how-long-before-i-can-play-a-song) - [Is the ukulele easier than the guitar?](#is-the-ukulele-easier-than-the-guitar) - [Do I need calluses?](#do-i-need-calluses) - [What is the hardest thing about learning the ukulele?](#what-is-the-hardest-thing-about-learning-the-ukulele) - [Can a child learn it?](#can-a-child-learn-it) - [Do I need to read music?](#do-i-need-to-read-music) - [Should I start on a cheap ukulele and upgrade?](#should-i-start-on-a-cheap-ukulele-and-upgrade) - [The short version](#the-short-version) ## The first hour is tuning, and then one finger Two things happen in the first hour, and only one of them is playing. The first is tuning, which is the only skill on the instrument that is a prerequisite for everything else. A ukulele that is out of tune sounds wrong no matter how well it is played, and a beginner cannot tell whether the noise is the instrument or their hands. A clip-on tuner removes the question in about four seconds, which is why it is the one accessory worth buying with the ukulele rather than later. The second is C major, and it takes one finger. On a ukulele tuned G–C–E–A, three of the four open strings are already chord tones of C; the only note missing is another C, and it sits on the third fret of the bottom string. Press there, strum, and it is a chord. A minor is one finger too, on the fourth string. F major is two. There is no other common fretted instrument where the first three chords cost four fingers between them. That is the whole basis for the ukulele’s reputation, and it is real. Where it runs out is the interesting part. ## What the published beginner courses actually cover Opinions about difficulty are cheap. What a publisher will put its name to is not, because a method book that overshoots gets returned. Here is what the makers’ and publishers’ own beginner material contains. CourseFromAimed atWhat it gets you toSize**Learn To Play: Beginner’s Path**KalaAny age, brand newHolding, tuning, common chords, and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”11 videos, free**Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1**Hal LeonardSelf-teaching or lessonsTuning, reading music, melody, chords, strumming, scales, tremolo48 pages, 46 audio tracks**Easy Songs for Ukulele**Hal LeonardStraight after Book 120 songs sequenced by difficulty, ending “with chords and notes up the neck”48 pages**Ukulele for Kids**Hal LeonardChildren, with a parent or teacherSeven chords: C, F, C7, Am, G, B♭, GmBook plus online audio**Ukuleles on Board!**Hal LeonardElementary general music classesField-tested in **grades 2–4**; suggested for grades 2–5Teacher collection The last row is the strongest single answer to the question. A major publisher sells a classroom collection built on the National Standards for Music Education, and it says the material has been field-tested with **seven- to nine-year-olds**. Nobody publishes that for the violin. One detail in that table is worth more than the rest of it. Hal Leonard’s children’s book lists the chords it teaches, and B♭ is among them. B♭ on a ukulele is a partial barre — the index finger lies flat across two strings at the first fret while two more fingers stack above it. A barre chord in a children’s book is not a mistake. It is the publisher saying that on this instrument, a barre arrives early and is survivable, because there are only four strings under the finger instead of six. The chord that is *not* in that list is E. ## Where it stops being easy ### The right hand, not the left The fretting hand is the easy one, and it is the one the ukulele’s reputation is built on. The strumming hand is exactly as hard as it is on any instrument, because rhythm is not an instrument-specific skill. Kala’s own tutorial library says so by how it is organized. It splits into chord *shapes*, chord *transitions*, and playing styles — and transitions get a category of their own. Forming a chord is a photograph. Moving between two chords in time, without the strumming hand stopping to wait, is the actual skill, and it is where the first month goes. A beginner who can hold C, F and G cleanly and still cannot play a song has not hit a wall in their fingers; they have hit the gap between the hands. [Strumming patterns](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) are the part to practice slowly. ### The E chord, which the guitar gives away for free E major is the ukulele’s notorious chord, and the reason is arithmetic anyone can check on the fretboard. E major needs the notes E, G♯ and B. On G–C–E–A, the tidy shape is the fourth fret of the top three strings with the second fret of the bottom one — three fingers stacked inside one fret, or a barre, high enough up the neck that the string is stiff. The common alternative spreads a hand across the first and fourth frets instead, which is a stretch rather than a squeeze. Neither is a beginner shape. What makes it worth knowing is the symmetry with the guitar. The two instruments swap their hardest and easiest common chords exactly. ChordOn a ukuleleOn a guitar**C major**One fingerThree fingers**F major**Two fingers**Full six-string barre** — the chord beginners quit on**E major****Four-fret stretch or a barre** — the chord beginners avoidThree fingers, taught in week one**G major**Three fingersThree fingers So the ukulele does not remove difficulty; it moves it somewhere that arrives later. F is in every second song and it is free here. E turns up when the key moves to A, or when a song borrows a chord from outside the key, and that is usually a few months in rather than a few days. By then the hand is ready for it. The [full comparison with the guitar](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) covers what else carries across. ### The fourth string runs backward A standard ukulele is re-entrant: the string nearest your face is tuned *higher* than the two below it, not lower. This is why chords sound full inside a tiny hand span, and it is genuinely part of what makes the instrument easy — every one of those one-finger chords depends on it. It also confuses anyone who tries to pick out a melody early, because a scale played across the strings jumps octaves in the middle instead of climbing. Nothing is broken. It is worth knowing before you decide you are bad at it. ## The one thing that makes it harder than it needs to be It is the instrument, and it is cheaper to fix than most people expect. Kala publishes a thirteen-row specification for the Makala MK-S, its budget soprano, and a thirteen-row specification for the KA-15S one rung up. Twelve rows are identical. The thirteenth is the nut and saddle — molded plastic against Graph Tech NuBone — and the two instruments are **four dollars apart**. That is one maker putting a price on the single component a beginner notices most, because the nut sets how high the strings sit over the first few frets, which is exactly where a new player spends every minute. The [Makala review](https://promusicvault.com/makala-mk-s-review/) goes through the full row-by-row comparison. Below the Makala there is a floor, and under it the instrument starts working against the person holding it: strings that will not fret cleanly, a nut cut too high, tuners that slip so the thing drifts out of tune inside a song. A beginner cannot diagnose any of that and reasonably concludes the problem is them. This is the single most common reason people decide the ukulele is hard, and it is not a fact about the ukulele. Around **$65 to $90** buys an instrument that simply behaves, and [what to look for](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) is a short list. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) One genuine exception: a brand-new ukulele will not hold its tuning for the first week or two while nylon strings stretch, however good it is. That is normal and it stops. If it is still happening after three weeks, [something else is wrong](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/). ## So how long, honestly Nobody can put a date on it, because it depends on how often somebody picks the thing up. What the published material does establish is the *shape* of the curve. A first song — two or three chords, strummed, sung over — is a first-week goal rather than a first-month one, because Kala’s free path reaches a named song in eleven videos and Hal Leonard’s beginner songbook is only 48 pages. The plateau comes next, and it is a rhythm plateau: the chords are known, the changes are late, and the song falls apart in the same bar every time. Everyone hits it. It is the reason Hal Leonard’s classroom method devotes space in *Book 1* to teaching students how to practice — the publisher has decided the limiting factor is the practice habit, not the instrument, and on the ukulele that is right. Past that, the instrument stops being the thing you are learning. You are learning music, at which point the ukulele’s advantage is over and its ceiling starts to matter instead: [what people do with it](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-players/) at the top end is a long way from four chords. ## What to buy to start An instrument that behaves, something to tune it with, and a syllabus. The lessons themselves are free. The instrument ### Kala KA-15C Satin Mahogany Concert Ukulele - Concert, 14⅞″ scale, 18 frets, 24¼″ overall - Laminated mahogany top, back, sides and neck - Rosewood fingerboard, satin finish - **Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle** - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted at the factory - 1.39″ at the nut, one black strap button - Around $85 - The frets sit further apart than on a soprano, which suits adult fingers in the first weeks - NuBone nut and saddle rather than plastic — the part a beginner feels - Good strings already on it, so the usual first upgrade is not needed - Kala’s free beginner course is built around this size - Nothing in the box — no bag, no tuner - A little large for a child under about eight - Laminated, not solid, so it will not open up with age Around $85 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SAKWxf) Smaller, and the traditional sound ### Kala KA-15S Satin Mahogany Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 13⅝″ scale, 12 frets, 21-1/16″ overall - Same mahogany, same rosewood fingerboard, same satin finish - **Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle** - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1⅜″ at the nut - Around $69 - The size a child can actually hold, and the classic ukulele sound - Identical build to the concert, so nothing is given up but reach - Four dollars over the Makala, and the four dollars are the nut - 12 frets against the concert’s 18 - Tight between the frets for large adult hands - The neck is barely narrower — the difference is fret spacing, not string spacing Around $69 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iH1XjK) Buy it at the same time ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner - Clips to the headstock, reads the vibration rather than the sound - Works in a noisy room, which a phone microphone does not - Around $18 - Removes the one thing a beginner cannot judge for themselves - Stays clipped on, so tuning takes seconds rather than a decision - Useful for the whole life of the instrument, not just the first month - Coin cell rather than rechargeable - Owners report the clip and the swivel joint breaking, so it is worth unclipping it rather than leaving it on in a bag Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i6yyPZ) The syllabus ### Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1, with online audio - Written by Lil’ Rev · 48 pages - Tuning, reading music, melody playing, chords, strumming, scales, tremolo - Standard notation and tablature side by side - **46 audio tracks** for demonstration and play-along - Publisher’s list price $14.99 - Around $10 - A finite, ordered path — the thing free videos do not give you - The player slows the audio without changing the pitch and loops a bar, which is how the rhythm plateau gets crossed - Costs less than a set of strings - Reading notation is optional for a strummer and takes up part of the book - A paperback does not lie flat on a music stand; the spiral-bound edition costs about twice as much Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4guOo5E) What to play once the chords are there ### Easy Songs for Ukulele - The songbook that follows Method Book 1 · 48 pages - 20 songs — pop, folk, country and blues — sequenced by difficulty - Lyrics and chord diagrams, so it works for strumming and singing - Includes Yesterday, Eight Days a Week, I Walk the Line, The House of the Rising Sun - Publisher’s list price $12.99 - Around $10 - Real songs people recognize, which is what keeps a beginner practicing - Ordered from simple rhythms up to notes played higher on the neck, so the progression is decided for you - Works on its own if the method book feels like schoolwork - This edition has no audio — a dearer one does - Assumes the basic chords are already in the hand Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xEKEos) The lessons are the part not to spend money on. Kala’s Learn To Play courses are free and so is its tuner app, and there are [other free apps](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-apps/) that do the same job. A paid beginner course is selling something the maker of the instrument gives away. ## Questions people actually ask ### How long before I can play a song? A two- or three-chord song, strummed slowly, is a first-week thing for most people. Kala’s free beginner path takes eleven videos to reach “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from a standing start. Playing it in time, without a pause at every chord change, takes considerably longer and is the real first milestone. ### Is the ukulele easier than the guitar? Yes, in the first months, and by a wide margin. Four strings instead of six, at roughly a fifth of a steel-string’s tension, with chords that take one or two fingers where the guitar equivalents take three or four and a barre. The gap narrows steadily after that. Our [side-by-side comparison](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) has the makers’ own numbers. ### Do I need calluses? Not in the way a steel-string guitar demands them. Nylon strings under low tension are soft, and fingertips get tender rather than sore. Most people play comfortably from the first session and stop noticing within a couple of weeks. ### What is the hardest thing about learning the ukulele? Changing between chords in time without the strumming hand stopping to wait. Individual chord shapes are easy on this instrument; the transitions are not, and they are the same difficulty on every fretted instrument. The E major chord is the hardest single shape, and it can be avoided for months. ### Can a child learn it? Yes, and the publishers treat it as settled. Hal Leonard sells a classroom collection field-tested in grades 2 to 4, and a beginner book written for children around seven chords. A soprano is the size that fits; there is more on [ukuleles for children](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-kids/). ### Do I need to read music? No. Chord diagrams are pictures of the fretboard and take about a minute to understand. Method books teach notation because it is worth having later, but nothing in the first year requires it. ### Should I start on a cheap ukulele and upgrade? Start on one that plays properly, which costs less than people assume. The gap between an instrument that behaves and one that fights back is a few dollars at the bottom of the range, and it decides whether the first month is encouraging or discouraging. There is no reason to spend more than about $90, and [good cheap options](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) exist below that. ## The short version The ukulele is the easiest fretted instrument to start and it is not a trick. The first chords take one and two fingers, the strings are soft, and the maker of the most-sold beginner ukulele will take you to a finished song in eleven free videos. The difficulty has been moved rather than removed. It sits in the strumming hand, in the chord changes, and eventually in an E major chord that the guitar hands out for nothing. Buy something that plays in tune with itself, tune it before every session, and the instrument will not be the thing standing in your way. That is more than most instruments offer, and it is the honest version of easy. **Categories:** Ukulele --- ### [Best Ukulele Stands: What Fits a Ukulele, and What Does Not](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-stands/) **Published:** July 27, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukulele Stands: What Fits a Ukulele, and What Does Not A ukulele in a case on top of a wardrobe is a ukulele you do not play. Getting it out where you can reach it is the whole job, and that makes the question not which stand is best but where the instrument should live — wall or floor — and how to avoid the one purchase most people make first. That purchase is a guitar stand. It is cheap, it is everywhere, and on most models a ukulele will not reach the yoke. The numbers are further down. Our pick for most rooms### String Swing CC01UK-BW Ukulele Wall Hanger A pivoting padded steel cradle on a block of North American hardwood, made in Wisconsin and covered by a lifetime structural warranty. It costs less than any floor stand here, takes no floor space, and puts the ukulele somewhere nothing can kick it over. Two screws and the toggles are in the box. Around $19 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qUBtxC) **Best floor stand:** Hercules UKS100B — around $42 **Cheapest that is built for a ukulele:** Stagg SUVM-A100BK — around $25 **Two ukuleles:** Onmiwod walnut pair — around $18 ## At a glance StandTypeFitsWhat it needsPrice band[String Swing CC01UK-BW](https://amzn.to/4qUBtxC)Wall hangerSoprano to baritoneTwo screws in a wall~$19[Hercules UKS100B](https://amzn.to/3SkeKOE)Tripod floor standSoprano to baritoneA square foot of floor~$42[Stagg SUVM-A100BK](https://amzn.to/3R5Af0o)Folding A-frameUkulele, mandolin, violinNothing~$25[Hercules USP10WB](https://amzn.to/461Zby8)Wall hanger, auto-gripUkulele, mandolinTwo M4 screws~$21[Onmiwod walnut, 2-pack](https://amzn.to/4debXgR)Wall hangersSoprano to baritoneScrews in a wall~$18 the pair[Donner Wood A-Frame](https://amzn.to/4xAsuEc)Folding A-frameUkulele, mandolin, violinNothing~$25 ## Wall or floor A wall hanger is cheaper, takes no floor, and removes the failure mode that actually destroys ukuleles, which is a foot or a chair leg catching the stand. It costs you two holes in a wall and about ten minutes. A floor stand costs nothing to install and can move between rooms, and it puts a light instrument on three thin legs at ankle height. If you rent and cannot drill, that decides it. If you can drill, hang it. The one case for a floor stand over a hanger is a ukulele you take down and put back several times an evening — reaching up to a hook gets old, and a stand at hip height does not. ## The picks № 1 · Best for most rooms ### String Swing CC01UK-BW Ukulele Wall Hanger - Black walnut block - Pivoting padded steel cradle - Made in Wisconsin - Lifetime structural warranty - Hardware included - ~$19 The cradle pivots, so the yoke turns to meet the headstock instead of forcing the ukulele to hang at whatever angle the hook happens to point. That is the difference between an instrument that sits flat against the wall and one that hangs slightly twisted and eventually walks off the hook. String Swing updated the cradle depth specifically to hold a ukulele more vertically than its guitar hangers do. The block is North American hardwood, cut and finished in Wisconsin by Amish woodworkers, and it comes in cherry, oak, ash and black walnut at the same price. String Swing rates the mounting hardware for 15 pounds, many times over what a ukulele asks of it, and backs the whole thing with a lifetime structural warranty. At nineteen dollars it is the cheapest good answer on this page and also the best-made one, which does not happen often. **Pros**- Cheapest thing here and the best built - Pivoting cradle keeps the ukulele hanging straight - Screws and wall toggles are in the box - Four hardwoods, same price - Lifetime structural warranty **Cons**- Two holes in a wall, permanently - Nothing to grip the neck — it hangs on the headstock - Wood grain varies, so two will not match exactly Around $19[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qUBtxC) № 2 · Best floor stand ### Hercules UKS100B Auto Grip Ukulele Stand - 22.6–32.1″ adjustable - 1.8 lb - 8.8 lb capacity - Folds to 18.7 × 3.5 × 3.1″ - Locking yoke - ~$42 The yoke closes on the neck under the instrument’s own weight and will not release until you lift the ukulele out. Every other floor stand on this page holds the instrument by leaning it somewhere; this one holds it. On a heavy guitar that is a nicety; on a ukulele it is the whole point, because a light instrument is the one a slammed door will move. Hercules specifies the height range as 22.6 to 32.1 inches, which brackets the full ukulele family — Kala’s own figures put a soprano at 21 inches end to end and a baritone at 30.25 — and the clutch changes it in a second with no tools. It folds to eighteen and a half inches and weighs under two pounds, so it goes in a case pocket. The warranty is limited lifetime through KHS America, with the pads, foam and springs excluded as wear parts. The objection is the price. Forty-two dollars is a real fraction of a first ukulele, and if that is the trade you are making, buy the wall hanger instead and put the difference into strings. **Pros**- Only stand here that actively locks the instrument in - Covers soprano through baritone on one stand - Folds small enough to travel - Limited lifetime warranty **Cons**- Twice the price of anything else on the page - Still a tripod at ankle height - Wear parts are not covered Around $42[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SkeKOE) № 3 · Cheapest that is built for a ukulele ### Stagg SUVM-A100BK Foldable A-Frame - Steel - 7.5 × 8.3 × 11.8″ - 1.8 lb - Two cradle hooks and a back rest - Locking hinge - ~$25 An A-frame takes the ukulele across the bottom edge of the body and leans it back against a padded rest, so there is no yoke height to get wrong and nothing to adjust. Stagg builds this one for ukuleles, mandolins and violins rather than selling a guitar frame and hoping — the arms are spaced for a small body, and all three contact points are rubber-covered. It is steel rather than the folded aluminum most stands at this price use, it weighs the same 1.8 pounds as the Hercules, and the hinge locks open so it cannot fold up under the instrument. Twelve inches tall and eight inches deep folded flat means it lives under a sofa. The limitation is inherent to the design: nothing holds the ukulele in, it simply rests there, so a knock takes it off. If you would rather have wood than black steel for the same money, Donner’s [wooden A-frame](https://amzn.to/4xAsuEc) does the same job in the same way. **Pros**- Sized for a ukulele body, not a guitar’s - Steel, with a hinge that locks open - Folds flat and weighs 1.8 lb - Nothing to adjust or get wrong **Cons**- The instrument only rests in it - Black steel in a living room is what it is - Lowest thing on this page for a foot to find Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3R5Af0o) № 4 · For a ukulele you take down every day ### Hercules USP10WB Auto Grip Ukulele Hanger - Auto-swivel AGS yoke - 3.9″ arm - 8.8 lb capacity - Wood base - Two M4 × 1¾” screws supplied - ~$21 The same auto-grip mechanism as the floor stand, on a wall plate. The yoke swivels to meet the headstock as the instrument goes on and closes around the neck under its weight, which means you can hang a ukulele one-handed without lining anything up — the thing that makes the difference between a hook you use twenty times a day and one you stop bothering with. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It is two dollars more than the String Swing and the trade is honest: you get a mechanism instead of a lifetime-warranted block of hardwood. Hercules rates it at 8.8 pounds and supplies two 45 mm screws. Note the maker’s own exclusion — it is not suitable for banjos with planetary tuners, which matters if you were planning to share the wall. **Pros**- Self-locking yoke, hang it one-handed - Swivels, so the instrument sits flat whatever the angle - Limited lifetime warranty through KHS America **Cons**- More mechanism than a wall hook needs - Wear parts excluded from the warranty - Will not take a banjo with planetary tuners Around $21[Check current price](https://amzn.to/461Zby8) № 5 · If there is more than one ukulele ### Onmiwod Black Walnut Wall Hanger, 2-Pack - Two hangers - Black walnut - Rotating U-shaped yoke - 3.5″ from the wall - Drywall and concrete anchors - ~$9 each Two walnut hangers for less than one String Swing, and the yoke rotates, so it meets a slanted headstock the same way the dearer hangers do. The cradle stands 3.5 inches off the wall, the U-shape stops the instrument sliding sideways, and the pack includes four screws with both drywall and concrete anchors — enough to mount both without a trip to a hardware store. Buy these to fill out a wall you have already started; buy the String Swing for the ukulele you actually play. **Pros**- Half the price per hanger of anything else here - Rotating yoke, so slanted headstocks sit flat - Anchors for drywall and concrete in the box **Cons**- No published weight rating - No warranty, no stated country of manufacture - Wood color varies piece to piece by design Around $18 the pair[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4debXgR) ## Why the guitar stand in the cupboard will not work It is the obvious economy and it fails on one number: the minimum height of the neck yoke. Hercules builds ukulele stands and guitar stands in the same factory and publishes both. Its ukulele stand adjusts from 22.6 to 32.1 inches. Its guitar tripods start at 37.4 and 37.8 inches. Kala puts its longest ukulele, the baritone, at 30.25 inches end to end — so a guitar stand at its lowest setting is reaching for a neck that ends seven inches below it. Not every guitar stand is that tall. On-Stage’s XCG-4, which the company calls its best-selling guitar stand, adjusts from 19.25 inches, which is low enough for anything with four strings. On-Stage also specifies it, in its own product data, as holding one guitar, and says nothing about a ukulele anywhere. So the rule is not that guitar stands are too big — it is that you have to read the minimum height against your own instrument, and that most of them fail it. What you can ignore is load capacity, which is the number these stands are usually sold on. Hercules rates its ukulele stand and hanger at 8.8 pounds and every guitar stand in the same catalog at 33 pounds — and a ukulele is nowhere near either figure. Nothing on this page is going to be over-loaded. The only thing you are buying is fit. ## A stand is not a case, and the room becomes the case The moment the ukulele lives out in the open, the humidity of the room is doing to it what a case used to prevent. A case humidifier only works inside a closed case, so it is no help at all to an instrument on a wall. What replaces it is knowing what the room does. How much this matters depends on what the ukulele is made of. A laminate top — which is most ukuleles under about $200 — barely notices, because plywood does not move the way a single plate of spruce or mahogany does. A solid top in a house that runs at 45 percent humidity in the afternoon and 20 percent overnight with the heating on is the one that cracks, and the swing is what does it, not the reading you happen to take. The thirteen dollars that protects a solid top ### AcuRite Digital Indoor Thermometer and Hygrometer - Room temperature and relative humidity - Records the daily high and low of both - Stands, hangs or sticks to metal - ~$13 The high-and-low memory is the feature, not the current reading. It tells you the size of the overnight swing, which is the thing you cannot see and the thing that moves wood. If the answer turns out to be a ten-point drift, hang the ukulele and forget about it. If it is thirty, the solid-top instrument goes back in a case at night and the laminate one stays on the wall. Around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4h4XRAQ) If the room turns out to be hostile, the answer is a case rather than a different stand — our [ukulele cases guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-cases-for-travel/) covers what to look for. And if you are still choosing the instrument, [what the tonewoods actually do](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) is where the laminate-or-solid decision gets made. ## Common questions ### Will hanging a ukulele by the headstock damage the neck? No. The neck already carries far more load from the strings than from the weight of the instrument, in the same direction, every hour of its life — and a ukulele is both lighter and slacker than the guitars that have hung on walls for decades. Hercules rates its ukulele hanger at 8.8 pounds, which no ukulele comes close to. ### Do I need a different stand for a soprano and a tenor? Not for a hanger or an A-frame — both take the whole family. Kala’s own measurements run from 21 inches for a soprano to 30.25 for a baritone, and a hook does not care. A tripod stand does: check its adjustment range covers your instrument’s overall length. The Hercules here is specified from soprano to baritone. ### Can the hanger go into drywall without a stud? String Swing supplies plastic toggles for exactly that and rates the mounting at 15 pounds, which is generous for a one-pound instrument. Into brick or concrete, use masonry screws instead of what is in the box. A stud is still better if there is one where you want the ukulele. ### Is a $42 stand worth it over a $25 one? Only for the locking yoke. If the ukulele lives somewhere with children, dogs or a doorway, that mechanism is the difference between a knock and a repair. In a quiet corner of a study, the A-frame does the same job for less, and the wall hanger does it better than either for under twenty dollars. ## Where this leaves you Drill the wall if you can. The [String Swing](https://amzn.to/4qUBtxC) is the cheapest, best-made and safest of everything here, and a ukulele on a wall is a ukulele you walk past and pick up. If you cannot drill, the [Stagg A-frame](https://amzn.to/3R5Af0o) is twenty-five dollars and built for the instrument. The [Hercules](https://amzn.to/3SkeKOE) earns its price only where something is going to knock into it. Still buying the ukulele itself? Start with the [best ukuleles for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/), or [how to choose a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) if the size is not settled. Once it arrives, a stand and a [strap](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) are the two things that decide how often it comes off the shelf. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Cheap Ukuleles Under $75: What the Money Actually Buys](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) **Published:** May 26, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Cheap Ukuleles Under $75: What the Money Actually Buys Everything under seventy-five dollars is laminated wood or molded composite, has a scale length around thirteen and a half inches, and measures 1 3/8 inches across the nut. The tonewood printed on the box is not what separates them. Two components do: the nut and the saddle, and whether the strings fitted at the factory are worth keeping. Both are on the specification sheet, both cost the maker a few dollars, and both decide whether the instrument plays in tune. Our pick### Kala KA-15S The soprano other cheap ukuleles get measured against, and the reason is the parts list rather than the badge. Kala fits a Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle and Aquila Super Nylgut strings from the factory — the two things most people end up paying a shop to change in the first month. Nothing comes in the box, which is the honest catch: budget another ten or fifteen dollars for a bag and a clip-on tuner. Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gErVmC) **Cheapest worth owning:** Donner DUS-1 — around $70, bone nut and saddle and the whole kit **Same money, more room:** Donner DUC-1 concert — around $75, two inches longer **Worth stretching for:** Enya EUS-25D — around $88, the only solid top **For a child:** Makala Dolphin — around $60, gloss colors and a bag ## The shortlist at a glance UkuleleSizeBodyNut & saddleIn the boxPrice[Kala KA-15S](https://amzn.to/4gErVmC)SopranoMahogany, laminatedGraph Tech NuBoneNothing~$70[Donner DUS-1](https://amzn.to/3Dbbuu3)SopranoMahoganyBoneBag, strap, tuner, spare Aquilas, picks~$70[Donner DUC-1](https://amzn.to/4qATNLR)ConcertMahoganyBoneThe same kit~$75[Enya EUS-25D](https://amzn.to/4gFp5xM)SopranoSolid mahogany top, laminated back and sidesNot publishedBag, tuner, strap, capo, picks~$88[Makala Dolphin](https://amzn.to/4gnqh7y)SopranoWood top, composite back and sidesPlasticGig bag~$60[Enya Nova U Mini](https://amzn.to/4cPV8bT)SopranoCarbon fiber compositeNot publishedCase, strap, capo, spare strings~$65[Everjoys kit](https://amzn.to/3HwiVhP)SopranoNot publishedNot publishedBag, tuner, strap, picks, spare strings~$40 ## What the extra thirty dollars buys ### The nut and the saddle Kala publishes this for every model, and their own catalogue makes the point better than any argument. The Makala soprano lists at $65 with a plastic nut and saddle. The KA-15S lists at $69 with Graph Tech NuBone. Four dollars, and it is the only difference in the specification. The nut is the slotted strip at the top of the fingerboard; the saddle is the strip the strings cross at the bridge. Between them they set how high the strings sit and how much of their vibration reaches the body. Molded plastic is soft, and the slots get cut to a tolerance nobody is checking closely — a nut cut a fraction too high makes the first three frets play sharp, which is the usual reason a cheap ukulele sounds wrong even after it has been tuned correctly. Which makes the sixty-dollar Donner the awkward one on this page. It has a bone nut and saddle — a better material than the ukulele we have put at the top, for ten dollars less. ### The strings Kala fits Aquila Super Nylgut across the range, including the fifty-nine-dollar Dolphin. Donner supplies Aquilas and put a spare set in the box. Enya fits its own fluorocarbon. The forty-dollar kits list “strings” and stop there, and that is the tell: unnamed nylon stretches for weeks, never quite settles, and gives a dull, slack note that beginners reasonably blame on themselves. A set of [proper ukulele strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) costs about twelve dollars and is the largest single improvement available at this price. ### Soprano is the small one Every soprano here is the same size, and Kala publishes the numbers: a 13 1/2 to 13 5/8 inch scale, twelve frets, and 1 3/8 inches across the nut on the KA-15S, the Makala and the Dolphin alike. That is four strings inside an inch and three-eighths. It is the traditional ukulele and it is the bright, plinky sound most people have in their heads — and for an adult with broad fingers it is genuinely cramped above the third fret. A [concert](https://promusicvault.com/best-concert-ukuleles/) adds about two inches of scale and spreads the frets accordingly. The concert costs a few dollars more than the soprano, which is not enough to decide anything — so if you are buying for adult hands, take the concert. If you are unsure which size suits you, [work through the sizes first](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/); it changes more about how the instrument feels than anything else on this page. ## The seven worth buying № 1 · Best overall ### Kala KA-15S — soprano - Mahogany top, back and sides, satin finish - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - 13 5/8″ scale, 12 frets, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - One strap button fitted - ~$70, instrument only Kala has been building this soprano since the mid-2000s and the specification has barely moved, which is most of the reason to buy it: enough people have owned the same instrument for long enough that the reputation means something. NuBone at the nut and saddle and Aquilas on it from new are the two jobs you would otherwise be paying for, and they are the two that decide whether the thing plays in tune. Nothing else comes with it. No bag, no tuner, no strap beyond the single button. Against a Donner soprano that costs about the same and arrives with the whole kit, that looks like poor value on paper, and if what you need is a ukulele plus everything to go with it, buy the Donner. What the Kala gives you instead is a neck and a fret job finished more carefully and more consistently, which is the part you cannot fix later with twelve dollars of strings. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic - Aquila Super Nylgut fitted from new - Unchanged for two decades, so the reputation is earned - The same 15 series runs up to concert and tenor **Cons**- Nothing in the box at all - Dearer than the Donner for a smaller instrument and less hardware - Soprano spacing is tight for large hands Around $70[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gErVmC) № 2 · Cheapest worth owning ### Donner DUS-1 — soprano - Mahogany body and neck - Rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Bone nut and saddle - Aquila strings, plus a spare set - Chrome sealed geared tuners - Backpack-style padded gig bag, strap, clip-on tuner, picks, cloth - ~$70 Bone at the nut and saddle at this price is better hardware than most brands specify at twice the money, and it is not a marketing word — bone is denser and holds a cut slot far better than molded plastic, which is exactly what you want from the two components that set string height. The strings are Aquila as well, with a spare set thrown in. What suffers is finish and consistency rather than function. The fret ends are less carefully dressed than the Kala’s, the lacquer is heavier, and two of these can arrive playing noticeably differently from each other. That is the trade at this price and it is a fair one, because everything the money went into is structural. **Pros**- Bone nut and saddle at the price - Bag, strap, tuner, picks and spare strings included - Geared tuners that hold pitch properly - Same price as the concert if you would rather have that **Cons**- Fret ends less consistently finished - More variation between individual instruments - Heavier finish than the Kala Around $70[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Dbbuu3) № 3 · Best for adult hands ### Donner DUC-1 — concert - Mahogany body and neck - Rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Bone nut and saddle - Aquila strings, plus a spare set - 23″ concert body, longer scale and wider fret spacing - Same gig bag, strap, tuner, picks and cloth - ~$75 The same instrument as the DUS-1 in the size most adults end up wanting, for a few dollars more. A concert is roughly two inches longer in the scale, which pushes the frets further apart and gives the body enough air to sound fuller and less clipped. Nothing is lost except a little of the soprano’s characteristic chirp. The reason to take the soprano instead is if the player is a child, or if the small bright sound is specifically what you are after — those are real reasons, and they are the only ones. On price, hardware and playability this is the better buy of the two, and it is the ukulele to pick if you are choosing for yourself and have no strong feeling about size. **Pros**- Costs the same as the soprano - Wider fret spacing, easier for adult fingers - Bone nut and saddle, Aquila strings - Fuller, rounder tone than any soprano here **Cons**- Too big for a small child - Same finish inconsistencies as the soprano - Less of the bright soprano character some people are buying a ukulele for Around $75[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qATNLR) № 4 · The only solid top, and over this page’s budget ### Enya EUS-25D — soprano - Solid mahogany top; laminated mahogany back and sides - 17 brass frets with markers at 5, 7, 9 and 12 - 18:1 die-cast geared tuners - Enya fluorocarbon strings - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, strap, capo and picks - ~$88 This is the one instrument here that costs more than the seventy-five dollars this page is about, and the reason is on the spec sheet: a solid top is what the extra money buys, and nothing under the ceiling has one. Laminate is three thin layers glued crosswise; a solid top is one piece of wood, free to move as a single membrane, and it is the one construction difference at this price that changes what the instrument sounds like rather than how it is put together. It also means the tone opens up over a few years instead of staying exactly where it started. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Everything else is ordinary. Enya does not publish what the nut and saddle are made of, which at this money usually means plastic, and the back and sides are laminate like everything else here. Buy it for the top, and be clear that is what you are buying — a well-set-up laminate instrument with better hardware will feel nicer under the hands. **Pros**- Solid mahogany top, which nothing else here has - 17 frets, more than the twelve most sopranos give you - Geared 18:1 tuners - Bag, tuner, strap, capo and picks included **Cons**- Nut and saddle material not published - Around $88 — over this page’s budget, and the only pick that is - A solid top needs more care about humidity than a laminate Around $88[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gFp5xM) № 5 · Best for a child ### Kala Makala Dolphin — soprano - Wood top over a composite body - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - Graphite dolphin-shaped bridge - Plastic nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - Gloss finish, sold in several burst colors - Makala gig bag included - ~$60 Kala’s answer to the ukulele that gets carried around by an eight-year-old. The back and sides are composite rather than wood, which sounds like a compromise and is in fact the point — it will not split when the instrument gets left on a radiator or dropped off a bunk bed. It still gets Aquila strings, which is a remarkable thing to find at fifty-nine dollars, and the bag comes with it. The nut and saddle are plastic, so this is the specification the KA-15S is four dollars away from improving on. For an adult buying one ukulele that is the wrong end of the trade. For a child who wants a purple one and is going to treat it like a toy for the first six months, it is exactly right, and the sound is better than the price and the dolphin bridge suggest. Worth a look alongside the other [ukuleles built for children](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-kids/). **Pros**- Composite back and sides shrug off knocks and dry air - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - Gig bag in the box - Bright gloss colors children actually want **Cons**- Plastic nut and saddle - Only the top is wood - The KA-15S is a better instrument for ten dollars more Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gnqh7y) № 6 · Nothing to warp ### Enya Nova U Mini — soprano - One-piece carbon fiber composite body, not wood - Arched back, radiused fingerboard, cutaway - 21″ soprano, 0.9 lb - Waterproof; unaffected by humidity and temperature - Padded case, strap, capo and spare strings - One-year warranty - ~$65 Molded from composite rather than built from wood, which removes an entire category of problem. It does not crack when the heating comes on in October, it does not care about a beach or a tent or the boot of a car, and it weighs under a pound. If the ukulele is going to be carried around rather than kept on a stand, this is the one that will still be playable in five years. The cost is tone. Composite gives a bright, even, slightly hard voice with less warmth than mahogany, and unlike a wooden instrument it will never open up with age — what you hear on the first day is what you get. Bought to live in a living room, the Donner DUS-1 at about five dollars more is the better instrument. Bought to travel, it is not a close contest. **Pros**- Cannot crack, warp or mind the weather - Under a pound, with a padded case included - Radiused fingerboard and cutaway, unusual at the price - The only one here that can live in a car, a tent or a rucksack **Cons**- Harder, less warm tone than wood - Will never mature the way a wooden body does - Nut and saddle material not published Around $65[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cPV8bT) № 7 · Cheapest that is not junk ### Everjoys soprano kit - 21″ soprano - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, strap, picks and spare strings - Sold in a range of colors and string colors - Body, fingerboard, nut and string materials not published - ~$40 Forty dollars buys a playable soprano and a bag full of the things you would otherwise buy separately, and for a present, a holiday instrument or a “will I even like this” purchase that is a reasonable way to spend the money. More people have reviewed it than anything else on this page, and the verdicts are consistent enough to be worth something. What you are not buying is a published specification. Everjoys does not say what the body is, what the fingerboard is, or what the strings are, and at forty dollars the safe assumption on the last one is plain nylon. That is the thing to change: put a set of Aquilas on it and it stops sounding like a forty-dollar ukulele for about a quarter of what it cost. **Pros**- Everything you need to start, for forty dollars - Geared tuners, not friction pegs - Enormous number of consistent owner reviews - Colors, which matters more than it should for a gift **Cons**- No published specification of any kind - Strings almost certainly need replacing - Fret ends and setup are luck of the draw Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HwiVhP) ## One other worth knowing about The [Kmise soprano kit](https://amzn.to/3JgSKgA), around $45, sits between the Everjoys and the Donner and publishes more than either about what it is: a mahogany body, a walnut fretboard and sealed 18:1 geared tuners, with a bag, strap, tuner and spare strings. The 18:1 gearing is the useful part — it takes eighteen turns of the button to turn the post once, so small corrections are actually possible. It says nothing about the nut and saddle, which at this price usually means plastic. ## The twelve-dollar upgrade If you buy at the bottom of this range, the strings are where the corner was cut. Unnamed nylon takes weeks to stop stretching, sits slack under the fingers and gives a dull note that beginners tend to blame on their own playing. A set of [Aquila Super Nylgut soprano strings](https://amzn.to/4qWgrOX) costs around twelve dollars and is exactly what Kala fits at the factory across their whole soprano range, from the fifty-nine-dollar Dolphin upward. Fitting them takes about twenty minutes and the only skill involved is tying the knots at the bridge. Expect to retune several times a day for the first week whatever you fit — new strings stretch, and that stretching is behind most of the reasons a [ukulele will not stay in tune](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/). ## Questions worth answering first ### How much do you actually have to spend? About forty dollars is the floor for something with geared tuners, a straight neck and frets that will not shred a finger. Sixty gets you a published specification, decent hardware and a bag. Seventy gets you a maker with a reputation to protect and parts chosen for the player rather than the price sheet. Above about eighty a solid top stops being the exception, which is a different conversation. ### Is a cheap ukulele actually worse, or does it just look worse? Worse in two specific ways, both fixable and both worth knowing before you spend. The strings are usually the cheapest available, and a plastic nut cut a little too high makes the first few frets play sharp no matter how carefully the open strings are tuned. Neither has anything to do with the wood. The strings are a twelve-dollar fix. The nut is a job for a shop, and at $40 to $75 a setup costs as much as a forty-dollar ukulele — which is the real argument for spending sixty or seventy in the first place and getting the hardware right in the box. ### Does the tonewood matter at this price? Barely. Almost everything under seventy-five dollars is laminated — thin layers of wood glued crosswise — and a laminated top is stiff enough that the species on the outside is mostly a decision about color. The Enya’s solid top is the exception on this page. If tonewood is the part you want to understand, [what the woods actually do](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) is worth reading before you spend more chasing a name. ### Soprano or concert? Concert, for most adults. A soprano is 1 3/8 inches across the nut with twelve frets in about thirteen and a half inches, and broad fingers run out of room quickly. A soprano is right for a child, and right if the small bright sound is specifically what you want. Everything else being equal — and with Donner charging the same for both — the extra couple of inches is free. ### Which brands are worth trusting down here? Kala, Donner and Enya are the three on this page that publish specifications, keep models in the catalogue long enough for opinions to form, and can be held to what they say. The bundle brands are not dishonest, they are simply anonymous — the instrument changes without notice and nothing is documented. There is more on [which ukulele brands are worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) and what a name actually buys you. ## Where to land Seventy-five on the Donner concert buys the most instrument per pound anywhere in this range — the bigger size, the better nut, and everything you need to start already in the box — and if the decision has to be made quickly that is the one to make. Five dollars less on the Kala buys none of the accessories and a better-finished neck, from a maker that has kept the same soprano on sale for twenty years. Forty on the Everjoys plus twelve on a set of Aquilas gets someone playing this week, which is the only thing that actually matters at the start. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Ukuleles for Kids: Four Picks, and Why Age Barely Changes the Size](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-kids/) **Published:** June 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukuleles for Kids: Four Picks, and Why Age Barely Changes the Size Kala groups its catalogue into collections, and one of them is called *Perfect for Kids*. Seventeen instruments are in it, and sixteen of them are sopranos. The one exception is a concert. That is the maker who sells more children’s ukuleles than anybody else answering the question most parents arrive with — what size for a five-year-old, what size for a ten-year-old — and the answer is that it is the same instrument either way. What does change with age is everything else: whether the thing survives being left on a trampoline, whether a child can get it back into tune without help, and whether the nut is good enough that the first three frets play in tune at all. Those three cost between $40 and $69 to solve, and they are what the picks below are chosen on. If you want one answer### Kala Makala Dolphin Soprano Kala’s own children’s ukulele, and the only instrument here whose maker states in writing that it has geared tuners rather than friction pegs. Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted from the factory, a composite body that shrugs off knocks, a gig bag in the box, and a gloss color a child will actually want to pick up. Around $59, which is Kala’s own list price. Around $59 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SBUTdR) **Under six, or outdoors:** Kala Recycled Waterman — around $59 **If they have stuck with it:** Kala KA-15S — around $69 **Tightest budget:** Hola! HM-21 color series — around $40 **Buy it whatever else you buy:** Snark SN6X tuner — around $18 ## Table of Contents - [The size question has one answer](#the-size-question-has-one-answer) - [The three parts that decide whether it gets played](#the-three-parts-that-decide-whether-it-gets-played) - [Geared tuners, and the spec nobody publishes](#geared-tuners-and-the-spec-nobody-publishes) - [The nut and saddle, and where Kala draws its own line](#the-nut-and-saddle-and-where-kala-draws-its-own-line) - [The strings, which are already worth ten dollars](#the-strings-which-are-already-worth-ten-dollars) - [The four on one screen](#the-four-on-one-screen) - [The four worth buying](#the-four-worth-buying) - [The two things to buy with it](#the-two-things-to-buy-with-it) - [What about a toy ukulele?](#what-about-a-toy-ukulele) - [Questions worth settling first](#questions-worth-settling-first) - [What age can a child start the ukulele?](#what-age-can-a-child-start-the-ukulele) - [What size ukulele should I buy for a five-year-old? An eight-year-old? A twelve-year-old?](#what-size-ukulele-should-i-buy-for-a-fiveyearold-an-eightyearold-a-twelveyearold) - [Is the ukulele easier for a child than the guitar?](#is-the-ukulele-easier-for-a-child-than-the-guitar) - [Is a starter kit better value than the instrument on its own?](#is-a-starter-kit-better-value-than-the-instrument-on-its-own) - [How often will I have to tune it?](#how-often-will-i-have-to-tune-it) - [Does a child’s ukulele need a setup?](#does-a-childrsquos-ukulele-need-a-setup) - [Which color?](#which-color) - [Where to land](#where-to-land) ## The size question has one answer A soprano ukulele is 20⅞″ long overall, with a 13½″ string length, twelve frets and a body 9-5/16″ long and 2⅜″ deep — Kala’s published measurements for the Dolphin, and near enough the figures for every soprano ever built. A four-year-old can get an arm over that. So can a twelve-year-old. The reason a bigger ukulele is not the natural next step for an older child is that the size names describe the *string length*, not the neck. Kala measures its KA-15 line at 1⅜″ across the nut on the soprano and 1.39″ on the concert and the tenor — about a hundredth of an inch across two sizes. Going up a size does not give small fingers more room between the strings. It spreads the frets further apart, which is what an adult with wide fingertips wants and what a child, whose reach is the constraint, does not. This is the opposite of the advice on [choosing a ukulele for yourself](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/), where a concert is usually the right call. For a child under about twelve the soprano wins for the same reason it loses for an adult: the frets are close together. Below soprano there is nothing worth buying. The makers do not build a smaller fretted ukulele that stays in tune — anything shorter than about thirteen inches of string is either a toy with painted-on frets or a novelty that needs retuning between songs. If a child is too small for a soprano, they are too small for a stringed instrument, and the answer is to wait six months. ## The three parts that decide whether it gets played ### Geared tuners, and the spec nobody publishes A friction peg is a tapered pin held in the headstock by nothing but pressure. On a cheap instrument it slips, usually within an hour, and it takes a firm hand to move accurately. A geared tuner turns the string four or five times for every turn of the button, which is what makes fine tuning possible for someone with a child’s grip. This is the single most common reason a first ukulele ends up under a bed: it is out of tune, the child cannot fix it, and an instrument that sounds wrong is not fun. It is also the specification hardest to check. Kala publishes a spec table for every model it makes, with rows for the top, the back and sides, the binding, the neck, the finish, the fingerboard, the headstock, the nut and saddle, the strings and the electronics. There is no tuner row on any of them. The Dolphin is the exception only because Kala mentions geared tuners in the paragraph of prose on its retail listing. So on most ukuleles at this price the answer has to come from the photograph: a geared tuner has a visible gear housing and a screw into the side or back of the headstock, and a friction peg is a bare shaft with a button on the end. ### The nut and saddle, and where Kala draws its own line The nut is the slotted strip the strings cross at the top of the neck. Cut a fraction too high and every note in the first three frets plays sharp, however carefully the open strings are tuned — which sounds exactly like a child who cannot press hard enough, and is not. Kala’s own product records put the whole thing in one row. Dolphin: plastic. Shark: plastic. Ukadelic: plastic. Makala soprano: plastic. KA-15S: **Graph Tech NuBone**. That is $59 against $69, and the ten dollars buys the part that decides whether the instrument plays in tune, from the maker that builds both. It is the clearest statement anybody in this market makes about where the line falls, and it is why the step up below is the pick for a child who has already stuck with it for a year. ### The strings, which are already worth ten dollars Every instrument on this page arrives strung with Aquila — Super Nylgut on three of them, B-Blacks on the Waterman. A set costs about $10 to buy separately, so a $40 ukulele with Aquila on it has already had a quarter of its price spent on the one component most likely to be rubbish. Anything cheaper than the four picks here almost certainly has unbranded nylon on it, and [the strings do more for the sound than the wood does](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) at this end of the market. ## The four on one screen Every figure is the maker’s own. The nut column is the one to read first. InstrumentBodyNut & saddleStringsIn the boxBest forPrice**Makala Dolphin**Wood top, composite back and sidesPlasticAquila Super NylgutGig bagRoughly 5 to 10~$59**Kala Recycled Waterman**Recycled ABS throughout, fingerboard includedABS compositeAquila B-BlacksTote bag, quick-start guideUnder 6, or outdoors~$59**Kala KA-15S**Laminated mahogany, rosewood fingerboardGraph Tech NuBoneAquila Super NylgutNothingA child who is sticking with it~$69**Hola! HM-21**Maple, walnut fingerboard and bridgeNot statedAquila Super NylgutTote bag, strap, picksTightest budget~$40 ## The four worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### Kala Makala Dolphin Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 13½″ scale, 12 frets - Wood top, composite back and sides, gloss finish - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - Geared tuners — stated by Kala - Plastic nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1⅜″ at the nut, 20⅞″ overall - Makala gig bag included, around $59 The Dolphin has been the default children’s ukulele for two decades and it deserves it. The body is an injection-molded composite with a wood top, which means it takes the knocks that end a laminated instrument — and unlike a solid-wood ukulele it does not care about a bedroom radiator in January. The gloss colors are the point rather than an apology: a child who chose the purple one picks it up. What makes it the pick over the twenty near-identical $50 ukuleles on the market is that Kala states the two things that matter. Geared tuners, in writing, in Kala’s own description. And Aquila Super Nylgut fitted at the factory, which is the set most people would have bought anyway. The nut and saddle are plastic, and that is the honest limit of the instrument — but a competently cut plastic nut from a maker with a reputation is a different object from an unbranded one, and $59 is Kala’s own list price for it. Twelve frets is a real ceiling, not a marketing one: the neck joins the body there and the top few are awkward anyway. For strumming and singing, which is what a child does for the first two years, it does not come up. **Pros**- Geared tuners, stated by the maker rather than guessed - Aquila Super Nylgut fitted from new - Composite body ignores knocks and dry air - Gig bag in the box, at Kala’s own list price **Cons**- Plastic nut and saddle — the KA-15S is $10 better here - Twelve frets - The gloss shows fingerprints immediately Around $59[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SBUTdR) № 2 · Under six, or outdoors ### Kala Recycled Waterman Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, all-plastic construction - Body, neck *and fingerboard* in recycled ABS composite - ABS composite nut and saddle - Aquila B-Blacks strings, plant-based - Matte finish, water-resistant - Tote bag and quick-start guide included - Around $59 The Waterman is the answer to a question the wooden ukuleles cannot address: what happens when a five-year-old takes it in the paddling pool. Kala builds the whole instrument from Global Recycled Standard plastic — not just the body, but the neck and the fingerboard too — so there is no glue joint to fail and no wood to swell. Kala’s own copy describes it as water-resistant rather than waterproof, and calls it “an excellent choice for school music programs, classrooms, and shared instruments”, which is the real recommendation: it is the ukulele that survives thirty children. It wipes clean, it weighs almost nothing, and it costs the same $59 as the Dolphin. The strings are Aquila’s B-Blacks, made from plant-based material rather than the Super Nylgut on the rest of the range — a slightly warmer, quieter set, which on a plastic body is no bad thing. The trade is tone. A plastic top does not do what a wood top does, and a musical child of nine will hear it. Kala does not publish a tuner specification for this model. Take it for a small child, a beach house, a caravan or a classroom, and take the Dolphin for a bedroom. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Genuinely survives water, sand and being dropped - Plastic fingerboard too — nothing to warp - Aquila B-Blacks fitted - Tote bag included, at Kala’s own list price **Cons**- Thinner, flatter sound than the wood-topped Dolphin - No published tuner specification - Water-resistant, not waterproof — do not leave it in the pool Around $59[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ciGf1J) № 3 · If they have stuck with it ### Kala KA-15S Satin Mahogany Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 13⅝″ scale, 12 frets - Laminated mahogany top, back and sides - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1⅜″ at the nut, 21″ overall - Around $69 Same size, same string length, same twelve frets as the Dolphin. What the extra ten dollars buys is the NuBone nut and saddle, and a wood body instead of a composite one. For a child who has had a ukulele a year and is still playing it, that is the upgrade worth making, and it is a much better use of the money than moving up to a concert. NuBone is Graph Tech’s bone substitute, and its job is to have slots cut to the right depth so the first three frets play in tune. On plastic that is a lottery. This is also the instrument every adult ukulele guide ends up recommending, so it will not be outgrown — a child of eleven who takes it seriously is holding the same thing a hobbyist adult would buy, which matters more than it should. Nothing is in the box: no bag, no tuner, no strap. Budget another $20 for the tuner below and something to carry it in. If the child is under about eight and hard on their things, the Dolphin is still the better purchase — the nut is the weaker part but the body is the tougher one. **Pros**- Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle at $69 - The instrument adults get recommended, in a child’s size - Aquila Super Nylgut fitted - Sells at Kala’s own list price **Cons**- Empty box — no bag, no tuner, no strap - Laminated wood dents where the Dolphin’s composite shrugs - Plain satin brown, which sells nothing to a seven-year-old Around $69[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xqgu86) № 4 · Tightest budget ### Hola! Music HM-21 Color Series Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 21″ - Maple body, walnut bridge and fingerboard - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - Nut and saddle material not stated - Canvas tote bag, strap and picks included - Around $40 Forty dollars, in pink or one of half a dozen other colors, with the good strings on it and a bag. If the child in question has asked for a ukulele the way they asked for a keyboard last year, this is the sensible amount to risk, and it is a real instrument rather than a toy — maple body, walnut fingerboard, Aquila Super Nylgut. What you give up is consistency. Across six thousand owners the reports split down the middle on whether it holds its tuning — some say it is fine, others say it will not stay put. That spread is what $40 buys: the parts list is right and the assembly is a lottery. Hola does not state what the nut and saddle are made of, either. The Dolphin costs $19 more and Kala tells you what is in it. Take this one if the budget genuinely stops at $40 or if you strongly suspect the interest will not outlast the summer. Do not take it as the cheap way to get a color — the Dolphin comes in colors too. **Pros**- Aquila Super Nylgut fitted at $40 - Maple body and walnut fingerboard, not unnamed hardwood - Tote bag, strap and picks in the box - Colors, which is half the battle with a child **Cons**- Owners split on whether it holds its tuning - Nut and saddle material unstated - No tuner specification either Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x1ClSe) ## The two things to buy with it A child will not tune by ear and should not be asked to. Everything above except the KA-15S comes with a bag; none of them comes with a tuner worth using. The accessory ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner - Clips to the headstock, reads string vibration - Ukulele-specific — no mode to get wrong - Full-color display, rotates to any angle - Around $18 It clips on, it lights up green, and a six-year-old can use it without being taught. Because it reads vibration through the headstock rather than sound through a microphone, it works in a room with a television on, which is where tuning actually happens. The SN6X is the ukulele version, so there is no instrument setting to select wrongly — the commonest way a clip-on tuner produces a confidently wrong answer. Eighteen dollars on a fifty-nine dollar instrument feels disproportionate and is not. An out-of-tune ukulele is the reason children stop. Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gw3CaF) The book ### Ukulele for Kids — The Hal Leonard Ukulele Method - Chad Johnson, Hal Leonard, 32 pages - Softcover with online audio, demonstration and play-along tracks - Sixteen songs, including Yellow Submarine and This Land Is Your Land - Covers C, F, C7, Am, G, B♭ and Gm - Hal Leonard’s list price is $16.99 Almost every ukulele method is written for an adult and then relabeled. This one is not: Hal Leonard describes it as designed so that “the clean, simple page layouts ensure their attention remains focused on one concept at a time”, and it is meant to be worked through with a parent or teacher rather than alone. It starts with how to hold the thing and reaches seven chords, which is more songs than a child will exhaust in a year. The online audio matters more than it sounds. A child who can play along with a track practices; a child reading chord boxes in silence stops after a week. Hal Leonard’s own list price is $16.99, and that is what it goes for. Around $17[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i1CYaI) ## What about a toy ukulele? There is a real category here and it is worth being straight about. Wooden toy ukuleles — Hape’s is the one most people find, rated by its maker for three years and up — are built to be handled by a toddler, not tuned. They have nylon strings and simple pegs, the fingerboards are usually unfinished, and they will not hold a pitch through a song. For a two- or three-year-old who wants to make a noise, that is fine and the right thing. For anyone who is going to be shown a chord, it is not, because the instrument cannot reward the effort. The gap between a toy and the Dolphin is about thirty dollars, and it is the difference between an object that makes a sound and an object that plays a song. If the child is old enough to ask for a ukulele by name, skip the toy. ## Questions worth settling first ### What age can a child start the ukulele? Around five, for most children, and it depends on hand size rather than birthday. The test is whether they can hold a finger down hard enough behind a fret to get a clean note without the string buzzing. Nylon strings at ukulele tension are soft enough that most five-year-olds manage it and most three-year-olds do not. Schools that teach it typically start in the third or fourth grade, which is eight or nine, but that is a class-management decision as much as a physical one. ### What size ukulele should I buy for a five-year-old? An eight-year-old? A twelve-year-old? Soprano, soprano, and soprano. There is no half-size or three-quarter-size ukulele the way there is for a violin or a guitar, because the soprano already is the small one. A twelve-year-old with adult-sized hands can move up to a concert if they want more room between the frets, and the [difference between the larger sizes](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) is worth reading at that point — but nothing forces it, and plenty of adults play soprano by choice. ### Is the ukulele easier for a child than the guitar? Considerably, and for three reasons that have nothing to do with it being smaller. Four strings instead of six, so a chord shape has fewer fingers in it. Nylon strings at low tension instead of steel, so it does not hurt. And the common chords fall under the hand in easy shapes — C major is one finger. A child can play a song on day one, which is not true of the guitar. [The full comparison](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) goes into what transfers between the two later. ### Is a starter kit better value than the instrument on its own? Only if the tuner in it is any good, and it usually is not. Three of the four picks here already include a bag, so the kit premium is really being paid for a clip-on tuner and a handful of picks. Where a bundle costs less than about $15 over the bare instrument, take it; where it costs $30 or more, buy the ukulele and the [tuner separately](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) and you will get a better tuner for the same money. ### How often will I have to tune it? Every day for the first fortnight, then most times it is picked up. New nylon strings stretch a great deal before they settle, which catches out parents who conclude in week one that they have bought a dud. Give it two weeks of daily retuning before judging the instrument. After that, a soprano with geared tuners should hold a tuning through an afternoon. ### Does a child’s ukulele need a setup? No, and it would cost more than the instrument. What the money buys instead is the nut — which is the part a setup would adjust — and that is why the KA-15S at $69 is a genuinely different proposition from a $40 ukulele rather than a badge upgrade. If a cheap ukulele plays sharp at the first three frets, that is the fault, and it is cheaper to have bought better than to have it fixed. ### Which color? Whichever one they choose, and this is not a joke. The single best predictor of whether a child’s instrument gets played is whether the child feels it is theirs. Kala builds the same $59 soprano as the Dolphin, the Shark and the Ukadelic — different tops and finishes, the same hardware and the same strings — specifically so there is one a given seven-year-old wants. Let them pick. ## Where to land Buy the [Makala Dolphin](https://amzn.to/3SBUTdR) for a child between about five and ten, and let them choose the color. Buy the [Recycled Waterman](https://amzn.to/4ciGf1J) if they are younger than that, if it is going outdoors, or if several children will share it. Buy the [KA-15S](https://amzn.to/4xqgu86) when they have had one a year and are still playing. Buy the [Hola!](https://amzn.to/4x1ClSe) if forty dollars is the number. And whichever it is, add the [tuner](https://amzn.to/4gw3CaF) — it is the cheapest thing on this page and it decides more than the instrument does. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Ukuleles for Beginners: Six Picks, and When the Kit Is Worth It](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) **Published:** April 22, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukuleles for Beginners: Six Picks, and When the Kit Is Worth It Almost every ukulele aimed at a beginner is sold twice: once bare, and once as a “starter kit” with a bag, a tuner, a strap and a few picks in the box. Kala sells the same instrument both ways and publishes both prices, so for once the premium is not a guess — and it turns out to be worth paying in exactly one size out of three. That is most of the money on this page. The instruments themselves, between about $69 and $130, are more alike than the marketing suggests: laminated mahogany, eighteen frets, Aquila strings, a neck about an inch and three-eighths across. What actually separates them is the nut and saddle, the size, and what arrives in the carton. If you want one answer### Kala KA-15C Satin Mahogany Concert Concert is the size most adults settle on, and this is the cheapest one with hardware worth having: a Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle, Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted at the factory, a 14⅞″ scale and eighteen frets. It sells for a little under Kala’s own list price, and nothing else here beats it on parts per dollar. Add a clip-on tuner and you are done. Around $85 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/463I7b5) **Best value overall:** Kala KA-15T tenor bundle — around $115 **Cheapest proper one:** Kala KA-15S soprano — around $69 **Widest neck:** Córdoba 15TM tenor — around $130 **Everything in the box:** Donner DUC-1 concert — around $75 ## Table of Contents - [The six on one screen](#the-six-on-one-screen) - [The kit costs $40, and it is worth $6 to $31](#the-kit-costs-40-and-it-is-worth-6-to-31) - [The six worth buying](#the-six-worth-buying) - [The one thing to buy with it](#the-one-thing-to-buy-with-it) - [Questions worth settling first](#questions-worth-settling-first) - [What size ukulele should a beginner buy?](#what-size-ukulele-should-a-beginner-buy) - [Is a starter kit better value than the instrument on its own?](#is-a-starter-kit-better-value-than-the-instrument-on-its-own) - [How much should a first ukulele cost?](#how-much-should-a-first-ukulele-cost) - [Does a beginner ukulele need a setup?](#does-a-beginner-ukulele-need-a-setup) - [Which brand should I trust?](#which-brand-should-i-trust) - [Should I get one with a pickup?](#should-i-get-one-with-a-pickup) - [The short version](#the-short-version) ## The six on one screen Every figure below is the maker’s own. The last two columns are the ones worth reading first. InstrumentSizeScaleNut widthNut & saddleIn the boxPrice**Kala KA-15C**Concert14⅞″1.39″**Graph Tech NuBone**—~$85**Kala KA-15T bundle**Tenor17″1.39″**Graph Tech NuBone**Bag, tuner, strap, strings, cloth~$115**Kala KA-15S**Soprano13⅝″1⅜″**Graph Tech NuBone**—~$69**Córdoba 15TM**Tenor17″**1½″**Composite—~$130**Enya Nova U**Concert23″ bodyNot publishedNot publishedCase, strap, capo, strings~$95**Donner DUC-1**Concert23″ bodyNot publishedBone, per DonnerBag, tuner, strap, strings, picks, cloth~$75 If the size question is not settled yet, [the four sizes measured side by side](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) is the page for that, and it will take about a minute. Everything below assumes you already know roughly how big an instrument you want. ## The kit costs $40, and it is worth $6 to $31 Kala builds the KA-15 in three sizes and sells each of them two ways: on its own, or as a bundle adding a gig bag, a clip-on tuner, a strap, a spare set of strings, an instructional DVD and a polishing cloth. On Kala’s own price list the bundle is a flat $40 in every size — $69 against $109 for the soprano, $89 against $129 for the concert, $109 against $149 for the tenor. The bundles are discounted, and unevenly. Priced today, the same three pairs look like this. SizeInstrument aloneWith the kitWhat the kit costsSoprano~$69~$100~$31Concert~$85~$115~$30**Tenor**~$109~$115**~$6** Identical contents, three very different answers. Thirty dollars is roughly what the two useful items cost separately: a decent clip-on tuner is about $18 and a padded bag about $12, so on the soprano and the concert the kit is a fair price and no kind of bargain. The DVD, the picks and the cloth are worth nothing at all. Six dollars is a different proposition entirely, and it is why the tenor bundle is the best-value instrument on this page. The general rule that falls out of it: a kit is worth taking when it costs less than a tuner. Beyond that, buy the instrument you want and pick the tuner yourself, because the tuner is the one accessory that gets used every single time and the free one is usually the weakest thing in the box. ## The six worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### Kala KA-15C Satin Mahogany Concert Ukulele - Concert, 14⅞″ scale, 18 frets - Laminated mahogany top, back and sides - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1.39″ at the nut, 24¼″ overall - Around $85 The KA-15 has been Kala’s entry instrument for two decades and the concert is the version most adults should own. Eighteen frets against a soprano’s twelve, an inch and a quarter more string, and a body big enough to hear yourself over your own strumming — without the tenor’s bulk or price. What makes it the pick rather than one of a hundred lookalikes is the nut and the saddle. Graph Tech’s NuBone is a bone substitute, and it is the component that decides whether the first three frets play in tune once the open strings are right. A molded plastic nut cut a fraction high will make a new instrument sound out of tune no matter how carefully you turn the pegs, and it is the single most common reason a first ukulele gets put down. Kala fits NuBone here and plastic on its cheaper Makala line, which is the clearest statement anyone in this market makes about where the line falls. It arrives strung with Aquila Super Nylgut, which is the set most people would have bought anyway. That is worth about ten dollars and an evening you do not have to spend. Laminated mahogany means the tone will not open up with age the way solid wood does — but nothing at this price is solid, and [the timber matters far less than the marketing implies](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) down here. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle where most of this price bracket uses plastic - Aquila strings fitted from new - Sells a little under Kala’s own list - The size most adults keep **Cons**- Laminated throughout - Nothing in the box — no bag, no tuner - Plain to look at next to the Córdoba Around $85[Check current price](https://amzn.to/463I7b5) № 2 · Best value here ### Kala KA-15T Tenor Ukulele Bundle - Tenor, 17″ scale, 18 frets - Laminated mahogany, rosewood fingerboard - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1.39″ at the nut, 26″ overall - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, strap, spare strings, cloth - Around $115 The same instrument as the pick above, two inches longer in the string and with the kit thrown in for about six dollars. That is the arithmetic from the section above in one product: the tenor on its own is around $109, and this is around $115. Tenor is the size to take if you have large hands, if you intend to fingerpick, or if you already play guitar. The neck is no wider — Kala measures 1.39″ at the nut on both the concert and the tenor, a difference of a hundredth of an inch — but the frets are further apart, which is what people actually mean when they say a bigger ukulele suits big fingers. It is also louder and deeper, and it is what most performing players use. [The two sizes compared properly](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) covers the rest. Against it: a tenor is a bigger thing to hold, a child will struggle with it, and the tuner in the box is a basic one you may replace. Take the bundle at this price anyway — the bag alone justifies it on an instrument this size. **Pros**- The kit adds about six dollars over the bare tenor - Same NuBone hardware and Aquila strings as the KA-15C - Longest scale and biggest voice of the six - Gig bag included, which a tenor needs **Cons**- Too big for most children - Bundled tuner is the cheap kind - Laminated throughout Around $115[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iFo0r6) № 3 · Cheapest proper one ### Kala KA-15S Satin Mahogany Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 13⅝″ scale, 12 frets - Laminated mahogany, rosewood fingerboard - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1⅜″ at the nut, 21″ overall - Around $69 The soprano is the original ukulele and the sound most people have in their head when they picture one: bright, short, chirpy, gone almost as soon as you strum it. The KA-15S is the cheapest instrument on this page with the good nut and saddle on it, and at around $69 it is the sensible floor for an adult who is not sure they will stick with it. Twelve frets is the honest limitation. Anything written above the twelfth is unreachable, and since the body joins the neck there, the top few are awkward regardless. For strumming and singing that is irrelevant; for melody playing it is a wall you meet within months. The other limit is physical — the fingerboard is only a fraction narrower than the concert’s, but the frets are a good deal closer together, so an adult with wide fingertips will be muting the string next door. It is also the right instrument for a child, and the size a classroom buys by the dozen. If that is the purchase, [the ukuleles for children](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-kids/) page goes into the age question properly. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle at $69 - Aquila strings fitted - The traditional soprano voice - Small and light enough for a child [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Only 12 frets - Cramped for large hands - Quietest of the six - Nothing in the box Around $69[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zKWO0g) № 4 · The widest neck ### Córdoba 15TM Tenor Ukulele - Tenor, 17″ scale, 18 frets, 14 to the body - Layered mahogany top, back and sides - Mahogany neck, pau ferro fingerboard and bridge - Composite nut and saddle - Aquila New Nylgut strings fitted - **38mm (1½″) at the nut** - Around $130 Córdoba came out of Spanish classical guitar building, and the guitar heritage shows in one measurable place: the tenor is a full inch and a half across the nut, an eighth of an inch more than the Kalas, spread over four strings. If you fingerpick, or if you keep damping the next string with the side of a finger, that eighth of an inch is the entire reason to spend the extra forty-five dollars. Nothing else on this page offers it. Be precise about which model you are buying, because the width is only on the tenor. Córdoba’s concert, the 15CM, measures 1⅜″ (35 mm) at the nut over a 14¾″ scale — within a rounding error of the Kala KA-15C, which costs about forty-five dollars less and has the better nut and saddle. At concert size the Córdoba buys you an abalone rosette and cream binding, and they are lovely, and they are cosmetic. Two things worth correcting on the specification. Córdoba’s own product record lists the construction as layered and the nut and saddle as composite, which is a step down from the Kala’s NuBone at a step up in price; and the fingerboard and bridge are pau ferro, not the rosewood the shorter descriptions claim. Buy this one for the neck. **Pros**- 1½″ nut, the widest here by an eighth of an inch - Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge - Aquila strings fitted - Abalone rosette and bound body **Cons**- Composite nut and saddle at the highest price here - Layered body, despite descriptions saying solid - Nothing in the box - The wide neck is on the tenor only Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SIVvOF) № 5 · For anywhere a wooden one cannot go ### Enya Nova U Concert Ukulele - Concert, 23″ body, carbon fiber composite - 1.25 lb, side soundhole - Ni-Zn frets, Enya fluorocarbon strings - Padded case, strap, capo and spare strings included - Around $95 Not wood, and not pretending to be. The Nova U is molded from a carbon fiber composite, weighs a pound and a quarter, and does not care about humidity, heat or a wet deck. A laminated mahogany ukulele left in a car in August or a dry apartment in January will move; this one will not, and that is the whole argument for it. It also happens to be a good instrument rather than a novelty. It sells at Enya’s own list price of $94.99, which makes it the second-dearest instrument here; the side soundhole aims the sound at the player, and the tone is bright and clean in a way that suits strumming better than fingerstyle. Enya does not publish a nut width or a nut material, which is a real gap on a page like this one, so it goes below the Kalas rather than above them. The included kit is oddly assembled: a padded case, a strap, a spare set of strings and a capo — and no tuner, which is the one item a beginner genuinely needs and a capo very much is not. Budget for the tuner at the end of this page. **Pros**- Unaffected by humidity and temperature - 1.25 lb, the lightest here - Case, strap and spare strings in the box - Sells at Enya’s own list price, not over it **Cons**- No published nut width or nut material - A capo instead of a tuner - Bright and hard-edged next to mahogany - Looks and feels like plastic, because it is a composite Around $95[Check current price](https://amzn.to/402Msag) № 6 · Everything in the box ### Donner DUC-1 Concert Ukulele Kit - Concert, 23″ body, mahogany - Rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Bone nut and saddle, per Donner - Aquila strings fitted - Gig bag, strap, tuner, spare strings, picks, cloth - Around $75 If the budget is firm below eighty dollars and you want to open one carton and start, this is the one. Donner puts a backpack-style padded bag, a strap, a clip-on tuner, a spare set of Aquilas, four picks and a cloth in with a concert-sized mahogany instrument, for less than the bare Kala concert costs. Donner specifies a bone nut and saddle, which if accurate puts it ahead of the Córdoba on the component that matters most, at little more than half the price. Treat that as the maker’s claim rather than an independently established fact — the same sentence appears word for word across every size Donner builds, and shared copy is a weaker kind of evidence than a specification that changes model by model. What you give up against the Kala is consistency. Donner is a large volume brand and the instruments vary more from one to the next; the Kala is the same instrument every time, which is why school programs buy them. If you would rather push the budget lower still, [the shortlist under $75](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) works through what happens below this line. **Pros**- Complete kit for less than a bare Kala concert - Aquila strings fitted - Backpack-style padded bag, not a thin sleeve - Bone nut and saddle claimed **Cons**- More variation between instruments than the Kala - Bone claim is shared marketing copy across the range - No published scale length or nut width - Bundled tuner is basic Around $75[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gvoZbZ) ## The one thing to buy with it A ukulele leaves the factory with strings on it and needs nothing else to make a noise. It does need tuning, several times a day for the first week, because new nylon and Nylgut strings stretch for days before they settle. Doing that by ear on an instrument you cannot yet play is how people conclude the thing is broken. The accessory ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner A clip-on tuner reads the vibration of the instrument rather than the sound in the room, so it works next to a television or in a class of twenty. The SN6X is the ukulele-specific version, it costs about eighteen dollars, and it is the difference between an instrument that sounds right and one that quietly convinces a beginner they have no ear. Buy it with the instrument, not later. Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iEvt9N) After that, nothing is urgent. A strap only matters if you play standing. A spare set of [strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) matters when you break one, and on a ukulele that is rare. Everything else in a starter kit is packaging. ## Questions worth settling first ### What size ukulele should a beginner buy? Concert, for most adults. Soprano for a child, or for anyone who specifically wants the traditional sound. Tenor if you have large hands, fingerpick, or already play guitar. The necks are almost the same width across all three — Kala measures 1⅜″ on the soprano and 1.39″ on both the concert and the tenor — so what you are really choosing is how far apart the frets sit. ### Is a starter kit better value than the instrument on its own? Only when it costs less than a tuner. Kala charges a flat $40 for its bundle across all three sizes, and discounting turns that into roughly $31 on the soprano, $30 on the concert and about $6 on the tenor. At thirty dollars you are paying a fair price for a bag and a tuner you could choose yourself; at six you are being given them. ### How much should a first ukulele cost? Between about $69 and $130. Below roughly $50 you get a molded plastic nut and saddle and unnamed strings, and a setup to fix it costs more than the instrument. Above about $150 you are buying cosmetics and neck width rather than better hardware, at least until solid koa and hand building start several hundred dollars further up. ### Does a beginner ukulele need a setup? Not usually, at these prices and from these makers. What it needs is a week of frequent retuning while the strings stretch, and a check that the notes at the first three frets are in tune once the open strings are. If they are sharp, the nut is cut too high, and that is a job for a repairer — which is precisely the cost the NuBone and bone instruments above are protecting you from. ### Which brand should I trust? Kala, on the evidence here: better hardware for less money, a model that has barely changed since 2005, and the same instrument in four sizes if the first one turns out wrong. [The five brands worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) goes through the others, including which of the Hawaiian names are worth the money and when. ### Should I get one with a pickup? No. A pickup adds nothing to an unplugged instrument and typically thirty to sixty dollars to the price, and a first ukulele is not going through a PA. If it eventually does, [amplified ukuleles are their own decision](https://promusicvault.com/best-electric-ukulele/). ## The short version Buy the [Kala KA-15C](https://amzn.to/463I7b5) if you want one answer and no thinking. Buy the [KA-15T bundle](https://amzn.to/4iFo0r6) if you have big hands or play guitar, because it is the same instrument in a larger size with the accessories thrown in for almost nothing. Buy the [KA-15S](https://amzn.to/4zKWO0g) if the budget is $70 or the player is a child. Buy the [Córdoba 15TM](https://amzn.to/3SIVvOF) if you fingerpick and want the wide neck. Buy the [Enya Nova U](https://amzn.to/402Msag) if it is going to live somewhere a wooden instrument should not. Buy the [Donner DUC-1](https://amzn.to/4gvoZbZ) if you want the whole kit under eighty dollars. And whichever you pick, add the [tuner](https://amzn.to/4iEvt9N). **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Makala MK-S Review: Kala's $65 Soprano, and the Four Dollars That Change It](https://promusicvault.com/makala-mk-s-review/) **Published:** December 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Makala MK-S Review: Kala’s $65 Soprano, and the Four Dollars That Change It The Makala MK-S is Kala’s cheapest wooden soprano and one of the most-sold first ukuleles in the United States. It is a laminated mahogany instrument with geared tuners and Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted at the factory, and at around $65 it is a genuinely competent thing rather than a toy with strings on it. The interesting part is what happens when you put Kala’s published specification for the MK-S next to its published specification for the KA-15S, the soprano one rung up its own ladder. Thirteen rows. Twelve of them are identical, word for word. The thirteenth is the nut and saddle, and it costs four dollars. The one to buy### Kala KA-15S Satin Mahogany Soprano Same laminated mahogany top, back, sides and neck. Same rosewood fingerboard, same satin finish, same twelve frets, same 1-3/8″ nut width, same Aquila Super Nylgut strings, same single black strap button. The one thing Kala changes is the nut and saddle — Graph Tech NuBone instead of molded plastic — and it is the part that decides whether a new ukulele plays in tune with itself. Four dollars. Around $69 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xwzqSy) **The one this review is about:** Makala MK-S — around $65 **Nothing comes in the box:** soprano gig bag — around $30 **Buy it at the same time:** clip-on tuner — around $18 **The accessory you can skip:** strings, already fitted ## Table of Contents - [What the MK-S actually is](#what-the-mks-actually-is) - [The MK-S and the KA-15S, row by row](#the-mks-and-the-ka15s-row-by-row) - [What a plastic nut and saddle costs you](#what-a-plastic-nut-and-saddle-costs-you) - [Twelve frets, and what a soprano can do with them](#twelve-frets-and-what-a-soprano-can-do-with-them) - [This ukulele has been quietly re-specified twice](#this-ukulele-has-been-quietly-respecified-twice) - [Nothing else comes in the box](#nothing-else-comes-in-the-box) - [Buy a tuner](#buy-a-tuner) - [Buy a bag](#buy-a-bag) - [Skip the strings](#skip-the-strings) - [A strap needs a lace, not a second button](#a-strap-needs-a-lace-not-a-second-button) - [Who should buy which](#who-should-buy-which) ## What the MK-S actually is Makala is Kala’s budget label, not a separate company. The MK-S is the plain soprano in that line — the Dolphin, the pineapple and the colored sopranos are its siblings — and Kala describes the family as “modeled after the simple mahogany ukuleles made over 100 years ago.” That is a fair description of the shape and a fair description of the ambition. Two things on it are better than the price suggests. The strings are **Aquila Super Nylgut**, fitted at the factory — a set on its own costs $10 to $12, so a sixth of what you paid is already the strings, and they are the strings most people would have bought as their first upgrade anyway. And the tuners are geared machine heads, with the buttons on the side of the headstock, rather than the friction pegs that turn up on instruments at this money and slip under a beginner’s hands. Kala does not print a tuner row in its specification for either the MK-S or the KA-15S, but the hardware is visible on both and it is the same hardware. The instrument in question ### Makala MK-S Classic Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 13-1/2″ scale, 12 frets, 20-7/8″ overall - Laminated mahogany top, back, sides and neck - Rosewood fingerboard, satin finish - Plastic nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings fitted - 1-3/8″ at the nut, 6-13/16″ across the lower bout - One black strap button, at the tail - Around $65 - Real laminated mahogany rather than unnamed “wood” - Geared tuners, not friction pegs - Good strings already on it - Kala sells it at its own list price - Molded plastic nut and saddle - Twelve frets, so the top of the neck is unreachable - Nothing else in the box — no bag, no tuner - One strap button, so a strap has to tie at the headstock Around $65 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wrRXl9) ## The MK-S and the KA-15S, row by row Every figure below is Kala’s own, from its specification block for each model, so both instruments were measured the same way by the same company. Bold marks the rows where they differ at all. Makala MK-SKala KA-15S**Nut & saddle****Plastic****Graph Tech NuBone****Price****Around $65****Around $69**TopMahoganyMahoganyBack & sidesMahoganyMahoganyNeckMahoganyMahoganyFingerboardRosewoodRosewoodFinishSatinSatinStringsAquila Super NylgutAquila Super NylgutStrap buttonOne, blackOne, blackFrets1212Nut width1-3/8″1-3/8″Width at neck joint1-11/16″1-11/16″Body depth2-3/8″2-3/8″**Scale length**13-1/2″**13-5/8″****Lower bout**6-13/16″**7″****Body length**9-5/16″**9-1/2″****Overall length**20-7/8″**21-1/16″** The four dimensional differences are all in the same direction and all tiny: the KA-15S is an eighth of an inch longer in the scale and about three sixteenths bigger in the body. You would not hear that across a room and you would not feel it under your hands. It is not the reason to spend the four dollars. The nut and saddle is. ## What a plastic nut and saddle costs you The nut is the slotted bar at the top of the fingerboard that sets how high the strings sit over the first fret. The saddle is the strip in the bridge that sets the height at the other end. Between them they fix the string height along the whole neck, and the nut in particular fixes what happens in the first three frets — which is the only part of the neck a beginner uses. Molded plastic is soft and it is molded rather than cut, so the slot depths are whatever the mold gave them. Cut a fraction too high and every note in the first position goes sharp, because pressing the string down to the fret stretches it. The ukulele is then in tune on its open strings and out of tune the moment you play a chord. Nothing about that reads as a hardware problem to somebody who has owned the instrument for a week; it reads as their own playing, and it is the commonest reason a first ukulele stops being picked up. Graph Tech’s NuBone is one of the two formulations — TUSQ is the other — that the company sells its own replacement ukulele nuts and saddles in, which tells you what the part is for: it is the aftermarket upgrade people fit to a cheap instrument to replace exactly the sort of molded piece the MK-S ships with. Graph Tech’s claim for its nuts and saddles is that they increase “harmonic content and richness.” That tonal argument is the small one. The consistency argument is the big one, and it is why Kala fits NuBone all the way up its own range and plastic only on the Makala label. That is the clearest statement anyone in this market makes about where the line falls, and Kala is making it about its own two instruments. It shows up in what MK-S owners report, too, and it shows up split down the middle: some find it holds its tuning perfectly and others find it drifts out easily. That is what a molded part looks like in aggregate. A machined one is not better on its best day; it is better on its worst one. None of this makes the MK-S a bad instrument. Plenty of them plainly arrive fine — that is the half of the owner feedback that says it holds its tuning — and a nut cut a little high is twenty minutes of work for anyone who sets up instruments. It makes it a four-dollar gamble against a sure thing, which is a strange gamble to take. ## Twelve frets, and what a soprano can do with them A 13-1/2″ scale over twelve frets is the original ukulele and the sound most people have in their head when they picture one: bright, chirpy, and gone almost as soon as you strum it. The body is small enough to be genuinely portable and small enough to be quiet. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Twelve frets is the honest limitation, and it is a limitation of the soprano rather than of this instrument. The neck meets the body at the twelfth fret, so anything written above it is unreachable and the top two or three are awkward even where they exist. For strumming chords and singing over them that costs you nothing at all. For playing melody lines up the neck it costs you a great deal, and the answer is a concert or a tenor rather than a better soprano — our [guide to choosing a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) works through what the sizes actually change, and the [concert against tenor comparison](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) covers the step above this one. The nut width is worth knowing before you assume a bigger ukulele would suit big hands. Kala measures the KA-15 line at 1-3/8″ across the nut on the soprano and 1.39″ on the concert and the tenor — a hundredth of an inch apart. The strings are no further apart on a tenor. What a longer scale buys is more space *between the frets*, not more space between the strings, so the complaint a bigger instrument fixes is cramped fingers along the neck rather than fingers landing on two strings at once. ## This ukulele has been quietly re-specified twice The MK-S has been in production long enough that descriptions of it written at different times describe different instruments, and the older ones are still in circulation. Two changes matter. **The body used to be agathis.** Agathis is a cheap, soft, plain-grained softwood that was the default budget tonewood for years. Kala’s own specification has said mahogany throughout — top, back, sides and neck — on every version of its published spec sheet going back at least to 2020. If you read that the MK-S has an agathis body, you are reading copy that predates the current instrument. **The fingerboard used to be laurel.** This one is more recent and easier to miss. Kala’s specification for the MK-S said *Laurel* in late 2020 and *Rosewood* by mid-2023, with every other row unchanged. Both woods are real and neither is a scandal — laurel is the usual substitute where rosewood is restricted — but a used MK-S from that era genuinely has a different fingerboard from a new one, and a description quoting laurel is not wrong so much as old. Neither change affects the comparison above, because Kala re-specified the KA-15S in step: the two instruments have moved together and still differ in one row. If you are buying used, though, check what the seller says the fingerboard is, and take mahogany rather than agathis if you have the choice. ## Nothing else comes in the box Kala lists no case, no bag and no tuner with either the bare MK-S or the bare KA-15S. Budget for two things and skip the third. ### Buy a tuner On an instrument with a molded nut, a tuner is not an accessory, it is the thing that tells you whether the problem is the ukulele or you. Nylon-family strings also stretch for the first week or two, so a new ukulele needs retuning several times a day at the start and a clip-on that lives on the headstock is the difference between doing that and not bothering. Buy it with the ukulele ### Snark SN6X Clip-On Ukulele Tuner - Clips to the headstock, reads the vibration through the wood - Full-color display, rotates through 360 degrees - Works left- or right-handed - Around $18 It reads the instrument through the body rather than through a microphone, so it works in a room with other people in it. The 360-degree display is the part that matters on a soprano, where the headstock is close enough to your face that the angle is awkward. Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gwQFNF) ### Buy a bag The MK-S is 20-7/8″ long overall, so it wants a soprano bag rather than a concert one — a concert bag will swallow it and let it move around. Ten millimetres of foam is the point at which a bag stops being a dust cover and starts protecting the instrument from being leaned against something. The bag it needs ### Gator GBE-UKE-SOP Soprano Ukulele Gig Bag - Sized for soprano ukuleles — the MK-S is 20-7/8″ overall - 10 mm internal padding - Reinforced at the headstock - Exterior pocket and adjustable backpack straps - Around $30 The headstock reinforcement is the part worth paying for. A ukulele in a bag gets dropped on its end, and the headstock is where the break happens. Gator publishes the padding thickness and the size the bag is cut for, which is more than most of this market will tell you. Around $30 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/46yP04e) There are cheaper and much dearer answers to the same question — our [ukulele cases and bags comparison](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-cases-for-travel/) runs the padding depths and weights side by side. ### Skip the strings The MK-S already has Aquila Super Nylgut on it. That is the set most beginner ukuleles get upgraded to, and buying a spare set on day one is spending $12 to replace strings with the same strings. Leave it for six months, and when the time does come, our [ukulele strings comparison](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) covers what changing them actually changes. One thing to check when you do buy a set: soprano sets are still sold in the old **ADF#B** tuning as well as in standard GCEA, and the packet says *soprano* either way. Fitted to a ukulele in standard tuning, a D set sits a whole tone below what it was gauged for — slack, dull and prone to buzzing. Check the tuning on the packet, not just the size. ## A strap needs a lace, not a second button Kala fits one strap button to the MK-S, at the tail, and that is the whole hardware. A guitar-style strap needs two anchors, so on this instrument a strap either ties round the headstock at the top and pins to the tail button at the bottom, or hooks into the soundhole and uses no button at all. Both work; neither needs a hole drilled in a $65 ukulele. [Our ukulele strap comparison](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) sorts them by how they attach. ## Who should buy which **Buy the KA-15S** if you want the plain satin brown soprano and you have $69 rather than $65. That is almost everybody reading this. You get the identical instrument with the nut and saddle done properly, and four dollars is less than the strings that are already on it. **Buy the MK-S** if $65 is genuinely the ceiling, or if what you actually want is one of the Makala shapes the KA-15 line does not build — the pineapple body, or the [Dolphin in a gloss color](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-kids/) that a seven-year-old will pick up. Those only exist on the Makala label, plastic nut included, and for a child who is going to outgrow the instrument in two years the trade is a reasonable one. **Buy neither** if you already know you want to play melodies rather than chords. Twelve frets will frustrate you inside a month, and a concert costs about twenty dollars more than either of these. The [beginner shortlist](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) lays the sizes out against each other, and [the cheap ukulele comparison](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) covers what else is buyable under $80. What none of that changes is that the MK-S is a real instrument. It is laminated mahogany rather than unnamed plywood, it has geared tuners rather than friction pegs, and it arrives with strings on it that a lot of people pay extra for. At $65 there is very little else you can say that about. It is only unlucky in having a nearly identical sibling four dollars away. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Ukulele Cases for Travel: What Fits in an Overhead Bin](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-cases-for-travel/) **Published:** August 4, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukulele Cases for Travel: What Fits in an Overhead Bin No ukulele case made meets a standard carry-on size limit. Delta caps an individual carry-on dimension at 22 inches; the shortest ukulele bag Gator publishes measurements for is 22.6 inches long, and the tenor version is 27.6. Every one of them is over on length and comfortably under on total volume. That sounds like a problem and is not one, because a ukulele does not board under the sizer rule. It boards under a federal regulation written specifically for instruments, and the only condition that regulation puts on you is that there is still room in the bin when you get on. So the case you buy is not deciding whether you can fly with your ukulele. It is deciding what happens on the one flight where the bin is full and someone asks you to hand it over at the door. Our pick for most travelers### Gator GBE-UKE Foam Padded Ukulele Gig Bag Ten millimeters of padding, a reinforced headstock, backpack straps, and a published weight of about a pound. Gator states the interior length for every size, so you can check it against your instrument before you buy, and backs the bag with a limited lifetime warranty. Nothing else at thirty dollars tells you that much. Around $30, any size [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xs2dI0) **If you might get gate-checked:** Gearlux polyfoam case — around $40–60 **Thickest padding in a bag:** Protec CF218 — around $57 **Cheapest that is not junk:** Hot Seal 10mm bag — around $22 ## At a glance CaseTypePaddingWeightSizesPrice band[Gator GBE-UKE](https://amzn.to/4xs2dI0)Gig bag10 mm0.94–1.13 lbSoprano, concert, tenor~$30[Gearlux Polyfoam](https://amzn.to/4yfhMCV)Soft-shell casePolyfoam shellNot publishedSoprano, concert, tenor~$40–60[Protec CF218 Gold Series](https://amzn.to/4y6ejGO)Gig bag25 mm2.6 lbTenor~$57[Hot Seal 10mm](https://amzn.to/3DehL8k)Gig bag10 mmNot publishedSoprano, concert, tenor~$22[Crocodile-pattern hard case](https://amzn.to/3Yqw568)Wood hard caseFoam and plushNot publishedSoprano, concert, tenor~$60–68[MusicNomad Humilele](https://amzn.to/3UyhNDo)Humidifier——All~$10 ## The rule that gets a ukulele into the cabin Since January 2015, US carriers have been bound by 14 CFR Part 251, written under 49 U.S.C. § 41724. Section 251.3 is four lines long and it is the one that matters: a covered carrier “shall permit a passenger to carry a violin, guitar, or other small musical instrument in the aircraft cabin, without charging the passenger a fee in addition to any standard fee that carrier may require for comparable carry-on baggage,” provided the instrument “can be stowed safely in a suitable baggage compartment in the aircraft cabin or under a passenger seat” and “there is space for such stowage at the time the passenger boards the aircraft.” Read the two conditions carefully, because between them they contain the whole travel problem. The first is about fitting in an overhead bin, which a ukulele in any case does easily — a bin runs along the length of the cabin, so a 27-inch bag lies in it without anyone noticing. The second is about timing. The airline owes you nothing if the bin filled up before you reached it. Delta says the same thing in plainer English on its own instrument page: guitars and smaller instruments are accepted as your free carry-on item, and your instrument “must easily fit in the overhead bin or other approved storage locations, in the cabin, based on available space at the time of boarding.” The sentence after that is the one to plan around — “if overhead bin space is limited or if you prefer, you may check your instrument at the gate.” So the practical advice is not about the case at all. Board in the earliest group you can get, and put the ukulele in the bin above your own row rather than walking past empty space. Do that and a thirty-dollar gig bag is enough. If you routinely board last, buy for the gate-check. ### Why you should not simply check it The regulation permits it. Section 251.5 says a carrier must accept an instrument as checked baggage as long as the outside dimensions add up to 150 linear inches or less and the whole thing weighs under 165 pounds, which a ukulele clears by a wide margin. The standard the airline expects that case to meet is the problem. Delta asks passengers to use “a case that meets the Air Transport Association (ATA) 300 required standard,” and notes that Category I cases “are designed to withstand a minimum of 100 round trips.” That is a flight-case specification: molded shell, foam interior, recessed latches, and generally several hundred dollars for a ukulele-sized one. Nothing on this page comes close, and nothing that costs less than the ukulele will. Gator is explicit about where the line falls — its lifetime warranty covers manufacturing defects and specifically excludes “damage caused by airline or freight company mishandling.” A gate-check is a different and much better bet than a bag drop. The instrument goes down the jetway stairs, into the hold last, and comes back up at the door on arrival, which is one loading cycle rather than a conveyor system. A rigid case survives that comfortably. A soft bag usually does too, and occasionally does not. ## Measure your ukulele, not its size name Cases are sold as 21 inch, 23 inch and 26 inch, and buyers assume those are lengths. They are not. They are the traditional size names, and only one of them is close to the instrument’s actual length. Kala publishes measured dimensions for its whole mahogany range, and on the KA-15 line a soprano is 21.06 inches end to end, a concert is **24.25** inches, a tenor is 26.06 and a baritone is 30.25. The concert is the one that catches people out: it is sold as a 23-inch ukulele and it is well over 24 inches long. Someone who measures theirs, gets 24 and a bit, and then hunts for a 24-inch case is looking for something nobody makes. The way through it is to ignore the size name on the case and read the interior length, which is why the Gator is the recommendation on a page about travel. Gator states an interior overall length of 21.9 inches for the soprano bag, 25 for the concert and 26.9 for the tenor — each one comfortably past the instrument it is named for, with room for a strap knot at the tail. Most brands publish nothing you can check. The other dimension worth measuring is depth, and it only bites on one type of instrument. A KA-15 soprano and concert are both 2.37 inches deep; the tenor is 3.12. A ukulele with a pickup and a preamp, or a cutaway, or an arched back, can be half an inch more, and a snug soft-shell case is where that half inch turns into a lid that will not close. If yours is anything other than a plain flat-backed acoustic, buy the bag rather than the molded case. ## What a case adds to what you are carrying A concert ukulele weighs somewhere around a pound and a half. Here is what four ways of protecting it cost you on your back, using the makers’ own published figures: - **Gator gig bag** — 0.94 lb soprano, 1.03 lb concert, 1.13 lb tenor - **Gator Transit bag** — 2.2 lb soprano - **Protec Gold Series** — 2.2 lb soprano, 2.6 lb tenor - **Gator wooden hard case** — 3.93 lb concert The wooden case more than doubles the load, and it does it for a threat — something heavy landing squarely on the instrument — that a bin and a jetway do not really present. It earns its weight when the ukulele lives in a car trunk under other luggage, or gets stacked in a van with band gear, or spends six months in a closet. It does not earn it on a plane. The step that does pay on a plane is padding thickness, and the range is wider than the prices suggest. Kala’s basic gig bag has 8 mm of it. Gator’s is 10 mm, and so is nearly every unbranded bag on the market. Protec’s Gold Series is 25 mm, which is two and a half times the standard and the reason that bag weighs what it does. ## The picks № 1 · Best for most travelers ### Gator GBE-UKE Foam Padded Ukulele Gig Bag - 10 mm internal padding - Nylon exterior, reinforced headstock - Backpack straps and accessory pocket - Interior length 21.9″ / 25″ / 26.9″ - 0.94–1.13 lb - Limited lifetime warranty - ~$30 This is the bag to buy unless you have a specific reason not to. The padding is the industry-standard 10 mm, the headstock end is reinforced — which is where a ukulele actually breaks — and the straps are real backpack straps rather than a single shoulder sling, so both hands stay free for a boarding pass and a bag. What separates it from a dozen identical-looking bags is that Gator publishes an interior overall length, an exterior size and a weight for every model, so you can check your instrument against the numbers instead of hoping. It is also the same $30 in all three sizes, where most brands charge by size, and it carries a limited lifetime warranty against manufacturing faults. Buy the size that matches your instrument’s measured length, not the number on its label. **Pros**- The only bag here with published interior and exterior dimensions - About a pound, so it disappears on your back - Reinforced at the headstock - Same price in every size - Limited lifetime warranty **Cons**- 10 mm of foam is protection against knocks, not crushing - No baritone version - Plain black, and that is the whole styling range Sizes: [soprano, for a 21-inch instrument](https://amzn.to/4ycI88u) · [concert, up to 25 inches](https://amzn.to/4xs2dI0) · [tenor, up to 26.9 inches](https://amzn.to/4xquaQu). Around $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xs2dI0) № 2 · If you might get gate-checked ### Gearlux Polyfoam Ukulele Case - Rigid polyfoam shell - Plush interior with neck slot - Exterior pocket and shoulder strap - Soprano, concert and tenor - ~$40 soprano, ~$45 concert, ~$60 tenor A polyfoam case is a compressed-foam shell with a fabric skin: it holds its shape when something leans on it, but it weighs a fraction of what plywood does. That is exactly the right compromise for the flight where you board in the last group and a gate agent asks for your ukulele at the door. In the bin it does nothing a gig bag would not do. Under a roller bag on a jetway cart, it does everything. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The neck slot is the part that matters and the part people miss. A ukulele in a soft bag pivots around its own body when the case is jolted, and the headstock takes the load. Locating the neck stops that, and it is the single design feature separating a case from a padded envelope. Gearlux publishes no weight and no dimensions, which is the reason this is second rather than first. It is heavier than the Gator in your hand and lighter than anything wooden, and that is as precise as anyone can honestly be about it. **Pros**- Rigid enough to survive a gate-check - Far lighter than a wooden case - Neck slot locates the instrument properly - Made in all three common sizes **Cons**- No published weight or dimensions - Tenor costs half again what the soprano does - Tight on a cutaway or a preamp-equipped body Around $45 (concert)[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yfhMCV) № 3 · The most padding you can get in a bag ### Protec CF218 Gold Series Tenor Ukulele Gig Bag - 25 mm padding - 600D nylon, molded zippers - Adjustable neck support block - Reinforced headstock and lid - Exterior 30.5″ × 12″ × 5.5″ - 2.6 lb - ~$57 Two and a half times the foam of a standard gig bag, with an adjustable block under the neck that does the job the polyfoam case’s neck slot does, in something that still folds and still goes on your back. If you want one thing to carry a tenor across a summer of travel, this is it. The cost is real and it is not only money. Protec states the bag’s own weight as 2.6 pounds and its exterior as 30.5 inches long, so you are carrying about a pound and a half more than the Gator and taking up noticeably more of the bin. Two interior organizer sleeves and molded rubber feet on the base are the sort of detail that shows up on the fourth trip rather than the first. Protec makes soprano and concert versions of the same bag at $51 and $54. **Pros**- 25 mm padding, the thickest here by a wide margin - Adjustable neck support block - Full published dimensions and weight - Sells at Protec’s own list price **Cons**- Nearly twice the Gator, for one size - 2.6 lb, and 30.5 inches of bin - Still a bag, so it will not resist crushing Around $57[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y6ejGO) № 4 · Cheapest that is not junk ### Hot Seal 10mm Ukulele Case - 10 mm cotton padding - Water-repellent fabric, double metal zipper - Backpack straps and leather handle - Large accessory pocket - Five colors, three sizes - ~$22 The same 10 mm of padding as the Gator, backpack straps, a proper zipper and a pocket big enough for a tuner, a capo and a spare set of strings, for about two thirds of the price. If the ukulele you are protecting cost sixty dollars, this is the sensible amount to spend on protecting it. What you give up is the numbers. Nothing is published about the weight, the exterior size or the tolerances, and the fabric is cotton rather than the ballistic nylon on the bags above, which matters over years rather than months. There is also no warranty behind it worth the name. **Pros**- 10 mm of padding at the price of a set of strings - Real backpack straps, not a sling - Genuinely large accessory pocket - Colors, if that matters to you **Cons**- Cotton shell rather than nylon - No published dimensions to check against your instrument - No meaningful warranty Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DehL8k) № 5 · For the car, not the plane ### Crocodile-Pattern Wood Hard Case - Wood shell with leather covering - Foam and plush interior - Storage compartment under the neck - Key lock and hard handle - Soprano, concert and tenor - ~$60–68 A genuine hard case — wooden shell, leather skin, a lock, and a compartment under the neck for strings and picks — at roughly a third of what a wooden case from a name brand costs. If the ukulele travels in the trunk of a car with luggage stacked on it, or lives somewhere it can be sat on, this is the one that stops it being a repair. It is the wrong case for flying, and worth being clear about why. It gives up the backpack straps, so you are carrying it in one hand through an airport; Gator’s comparable wooden concert case weighs 3.93 pounds, which is more than twice the instrument inside it; and it still would not satisfy the flight-case standard an airline expects if you checked it. The protection it adds is against a threat that the cabin does not contain. **Pros**- Actually rigid, unlike everything above it - Locks, which matters for storage rather than security - Interior compartment for strings and tools - Cheap for a wooden case **Cons**- Heavy, and carried by hand - Nothing published about weight or interior dimensions - Overkill in an overhead bin Sizes: [soprano, around $60](https://amzn.to/3ZWhl09) · [concert, around $66](https://amzn.to/3Yqw568) · [tenor, around $68](https://amzn.to/3jNiC9k). Around $66[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Yqw568) ## The thing that actually damages a ukulele in transit It is not impact. It is a week in a hotel room in Denver in February. MusicNomad puts the manufacturers’ recommended range at 40 to 55 percent relative humidity. A heated room in a dry climate sits well below 20, and a solid wood soundboard responds by shrinking across the grain while the braces glued to it do not, which is how a top cracks. The instrument does not have to be dropped or even bumped. It just has to be dry for long enough. This applies to a solid top and to nothing else. A laminate ukulele — which is almost everything under about $200 — is plywood, with the grain running in alternating directions, and it does not care. A plastic or carbon-composite one such as the [Kala Waterman](https://promusicvault.com/kala-waterman-ukulele-review/) cares even less, which is a real argument for owning one if you travel constantly. If you are not sure which you have, our guide to [solid and laminate ukulele woods](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) covers how to tell. № 6 · If your ukulele has a solid top ### MusicNomad Humilele Ukulele Humidifier (MN302) - Sits between the strings in the soundhole - Sponge holds 10× its weight in water - Anti-drip material - Fits all ukulele soundholes - ~$10 Ten dollars against a cracked soundboard on an instrument that cost several hundred. It rests across the strings rather than hanging into the body, so it cannot fall in, and the sponge is held in an anti-drip carrier — which matters, because the classic way to ruin a ukulele with a humidifier is to put a wet one inside it. Wet it, squeeze it out properly, drop it in, close the case. Check it every few days on the road and re-wet it when it goes stiff. On a laminate instrument you can skip all of this. **Pros**- Cheap insurance on an expensive instrument - Cannot drop into the body - Anti-drip carrier - Fits any size **Cons**- Adds nothing at all to a laminate ukulele - Needs re-wetting every few days - Only works inside a closed case Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UyhNDo) ## Questions people actually ask ### Does a ukulele count as my carry-on or my personal item? Your carry-on. Delta’s instrument policy says so outright — instruments of this size are “accepted as your free carry-on bag item.” A personal item has to fit under the seat in front of you, and even a soprano case is a couple of feet long, so that is not happening. Plan on the ukulele being the one bag you put in the bin, and everything else fitting under the seat. ### What if the crew tells me it will not fit? If the bins genuinely have no space left, the regulation is on their side, not yours — § 251.3 requires space “at the time the passenger boards.” The answer is to board earlier next time rather than to argue. If you are told before boarding that instruments are not allowed at all, that is a different matter and worth politely naming the rule. ### Can I buy the ukulele its own seat? You can, and § 251.4 sets out exactly how: an instrument too large for a bin must be carried in the cabin if it is cased, weighs under 165 pounds, stows legally and you have bought an extra ticket for it. It is written for cellos and double basses. For a ukulele it is a waste of a fare. ### Should I loosen the strings before flying? Not for a ukulele in the cabin. The advice comes from guitars in unpressurized cargo holds and from wooden instruments under a hundred pounds of steel-string tension. Nylon strings on a ukulele pull a fraction of that, the cabin is pressurized and heated, and a detuned instrument is one you cannot pick up and play when you land. Leave it in tune. It will drift a little with the temperature change, which is normal — see [why a ukulele will not stay in tune](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) if it drifts more than that. ### Is a case with backpack straps worth it? On any trip involving an airport, yes, and it is close to the only feature worth insisting on. You will be carrying a boarding pass, a bag and probably a coffee, and a single shoulder sling slides off exactly when your hands are full. Every bag on this page has them; the hard case does not, which is one of the reasons it is the wrong choice for flying. ## Where to go next - [How to choose a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) — the size decision, which also decides your case - [Best ukuleles for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) — several come with a bag already - [Kala Waterman review](https://promusicvault.com/kala-waterman-ukulele-review/) — the plastic ukulele built for exactly this problem - [Best ukulele straps](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) — the other accessory worth packing - [Concert vs tenor](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) — if you are still deciding which size to own **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Tenor Ukuleles Under $400: Six Picks and the Two Specs That Decide It](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) **Published:** July 19, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Tenor Ukuleles Under $400: Six Picks and the Two Specs That Decide It 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. Our pick### 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. Around $115 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bQVoan) **Cheapest honest one:** Ranch 26″ Sapele — around $75, with everything in the box **Widest neck:** Cordoba 15TM — around $130, 1 1/2″ at the nut **Leave it anywhere:** Enya Nova U Pro — around $148, carbon fiber **First solid wood:** Cordoba 20TM — around $210, solid mahogany top ## The six at a glance UkuleleTopBack & sidesNut widthFingerboardPrice band[Kala KA-15T](https://amzn.to/4bQVoan)Laminate mahoganyLaminate mahogany1 3/8″Rosewood~$115[Ranch 26″](https://amzn.to/4x2pUpr)SapeleSapele, arched backNot publishedRosewood~$75[Cordoba 15TM](https://amzn.to/4gvNmWZ)Laminate mahoganyLaminate mahogany1 1/2″Pau ferro~$130[Enya Nova U Pro](https://amzn.to/4gAxTow)Carbon fiber compositeCarbon fiber composite1 1/2″Composite~$148[Cordoba 20TM](https://amzn.to/4qmhN5i)**Solid** mahoganyLaminate mahogany1 3/8″Pau ferro~$210[Kala KA-KOA-T](https://amzn.to/45vH7fz)**Solid** koa**Solid** koa1 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 standardized 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](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) 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](https://amzn.to/4qkLvHJ) 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 № 1 · The one to buy ### Kala KA-15T - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 17″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Rosewood 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 molded 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. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle, not molded plastic - Aquila strings from the factory - Gig bag and tuner included at this price - Laminate, so humidity is a non-issue **Cons**- Narrower nut than the Córdoba 15TM at a similar price - Laminate will not open up with age - Satin finish marks more readily than gloss Around $115[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bQVoan) № 2 · Cheapest honest one ### Ranch 26″ Sapele Tenor Ukulele - Sapele top, back and sides, arched back - 26″ overall, tenor scale - Okoume neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Chrome die-cast tuners - Aquila strings fitted - Gig bag, tuner, strap and online lessons included - ~$75 Seventy-five dollars is where tenors start being real instruments rather than toys, and this is the one that clears the bar. Sapele rather than the usual laminated mahogany, an arched back that gives it noticeably more volume than a flat-backed instrument of the same size, and Aquila strings fitted at the factory — which is worth about ten dollars and an evening on its own. The rest of the box is most of the reason to buy it: a padded bag, a clip-on tuner and a strap would come to half the price of the instrument bought separately. What you are giving up against the Kala is documentation and refinement rather than function. Ranch publishes no nut width and no nut or saddle material, so you cannot check the component that matters most before buying; the fretwork is less consistently dressed; and the finish is thicker. None of that stops it doing the job, and it has more owner feedback behind it than anything else here. If the budget is firm under $100, this is the answer. **Pros**- Sapele with an arched back at seventy-five dollars - Aquila strings fitted - Everything needed to start, in the box - More owner feedback than anything else here **Cons**- No published nut width, nut or saddle material - Fret ends less consistently finished than the Kala - Thicker finish than the instruments above it - Bundled tuner is the cheap kind Around $75[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x2pUpr) № 3 · Leave it anywhere ### Enya Nova U Pro - Carbon fiber 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 - ~$148 Not wood at all, and that is the point. A carbon fiber 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. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) 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, both laminate ukuleles here are the better buy and cost less. **Pros**- 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 **Cons**- Brighter and plainer than mahogany, and dearer than either laminate here - Nothing to gain with age - Composite fingerboard feels different under the hand Around $148[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gAxTow) № 4 · Widest neck in wood ### Córdoba 15TM - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 17″ scale, 1 1/2″ at the nut - Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge, 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: Córdoba does not fit a bone or NuBone nut and saddle down here, where Kala does at fifteen dollars less, and nothing comes in the box — no bag, no tuner. 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. **Pros**- 1 1/2″ nut — the widest wooden neck here - Aquila strings fitted - Genuinely handsome for the money - Laminate, so it tolerates being ignored **Cons**- No NuBone nut and saddle at this price, where the Kala has both - Laminate throughout, so nothing opens up with age - Nothing included — no bag, no tuner Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gvNmWZ) № 5 · First one with solid wood ### 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. **Pros**- 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 **Cons**- Narrower at the nut than the cheaper 15TM - Needs a case and stable humidity - Nothing included at the price Around $210[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qmhN5i) № 6 · The top of the budget ### 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. **Pros**- 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 **Cons**- 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 Around $369[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45vH7fz) ## If you need to plug in None of the six has a pickup, and retro-fitting one means paying for the part and the labor 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](https://amzn.to/4wPv8Vz) 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](https://promusicvault.com/best-electric-ukulele/) 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](https://amzn.to/3KhqBX1) at around $18 tracks nylon strings better than a general chromatic tuner does. The Kala and Ranch 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](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-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](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) 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](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) 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. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Ukulele Brands: Five Worth Buying, and What the Name Actually Buys You](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) **Published:** July 30, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukulele Brands: Five Worth Buying, and What the Name Actually Buys You Five brands are worth your money at beginner prices — Kala, Donner, Enya, Córdoba and Islander — and the reasons have very little to do with where the instrument is built. Every one of those five has its ukuleles made in Asia, and they say so themselves. What separates them is which parts they specify, who checks the instrument before it ships, and whether the model will still be on sale in three years so that anyone’s opinion of it means anything. Our pick### Kala The brand to buy if you are buying one ukulele and want to stop thinking about it. The KA-15S soprano has been in the catalogue since 2005, which is the whole argument: a model that stays still long enough for a decade of owners to agree on it. Kala fits a GraphTech NuBone nut and saddle and Aquila Super Nylgut strings from the factory — the two components most people end up replacing on a cheap ukulele — and the same 15 series runs up through concert and tenor if the soprano turns out to be too small. Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S2CTZT) **Cheapest worth owning:** Donner DUC-1 — around $75, with a bone nut and the whole kit **Hardest to damage:** Enya Nova U — around $95, carbon fiber rather than wood **Widest neck:** Córdoba 15TM — around $130, 1 1/2″ at the nut **The step up:** Islander MC-4 — around $105, Kanile’a’s design at a fifth of the price ## The brands at a glance BrandBasedWhere the instruments are builtKnown forEntry modelPrice band[Kala](https://amzn.to/3S2CTZT)Petaluma, CaliforniaChina, Indonesia, Portugal, Vietnam, IndiaThe default. Good parts, stable catalogueKA-15S soprano~$70[Donner](https://amzn.to/46ajf1i)ChinaChinaMost instrument per dollar under $75DUC-1 concert~$75[Enya](https://amzn.to/4xPGREq)ChinaChinaCarbon fiber bodies that ignore weatherNova U concert~$95[Islander](https://amzn.to/4wIggYR)Kāne’ohe, Hawai’iChina, on Kanile’a’s own production linesHawaiian design, imported buildMC-4 concert~$105[Córdoba](https://amzn.to/3kGjgFZ)California (Yamaha Guitar Group)ChinaThe widest necks at the price15TM tenor~$130 ## What a ukulele brand actually controls ### Almost none of them own a factory The brands say this plainly if you ask them. Kala, whose address is in Petaluma, California, states that its models are designed in California and built by teams in China, Indonesia, Portugal, Vietnam and India, and that only the Revelator Nautilus USA and California U•BASS lines are made in the United States. Córdoba prints the country of origin on the specification sheet for each model; the 15 series says China. Ohana designs in California, builds in China and brings the instruments back to Long Beach to be checked. Kanile’a is the most direct of all: Islander instruments are “manufactured in China at a highly respected facility responsible for producing instruments for many globally recognized brands”, on production lines Kanile’a keeps for itself. That last phrase is the useful one, because it tells you what a sub-$150 ukulele market looks like from the inside. A handful of large factories build for most of the names on the shelf. The body wood, the finish and the general shape of a $70 ukulele are much the same whoever’s logo is on the headstock. ### The parts are where brands differ, and the price does not predict them What a brand does choose is the small hardware, and this is where the money either shows up or does not. The nut and saddle are the two pieces that decide whether a ukulele plays in tune as you go up the neck, and they cost a manufacturer very little to get right. Kala fits GraphTech NuBone and Aquila strings on a $70 soprano. Donner fits a bone nut and saddle on a $75 concert. Córdoba, at roughly twice the money, fits composite at both ends across the whole 15 series — you are paying for the abalone rosette, the cream binding, the pau ferro fingerboard and an unusually wide neck, not for better hardware. That is not an argument against the Córdoba, which earns its price a different way. It is an argument against assuming the dearer brand has specified the better parts. ### A brand that keeps a model alive is worth more than a brand with a good name The KA-15S has been the same instrument since 2005. The Córdoba 15 series and the Enya Nova U have both been around long enough for the design to settle. That continuity is worth real money to a beginner, because it means the opinions you can find about the instrument are opinions about the instrument you will actually receive. Plenty of ukulele names do the opposite: a model number appears, sells for a season on a bundle of free accessories, and is replaced by a slightly different one with the same name. Nothing about those instruments is necessarily bad. But there is no accumulated knowledge about them, and for a first ukulele that is most of what you are buying a brand for. ## The five brands worth buying № 1 · The default ### Kala — KA-15S soprano - Mahogany top, back and sides, satin finish - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard - 13 5/8″ scale, 12 frets, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - One strap button fitted - ~$70, no case Kala is a Californian company that has been putting the same soprano out since 2005, and it has become the instrument other beginner ukuleles are measured against. The reason is the parts list rather than anything exotic: NuBone at the nut and saddle instead of molded plastic, and Aquila strings rather than whatever was cheapest. Both are jobs you would otherwise be paying a shop to do in the first month. The soprano is the small one — a 13-inch scale, twelve frets, tight spacing — and that is the honest reservation. It is the traditional ukulele sound and it suits smaller hands, but adults with wide fingers often find it cramped. The same 15 series runs to concert and tenor if that describes you, and the concert is the size most adults settle on. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle, not molded plastic - Aquila strings fitted from new - Unchanged since 2005, so the reputation is earned - Same series continues into concert and tenor **Cons**- Soprano spacing is tight for large hands - No case or tuner in the box - Dearer than the Donner for a smaller instrument Around $70[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S2CTZT) № 2 · Cheapest worth owning ### Donner — DUC-1 concert - Mahogany body and neck - Rosewood fingerboard and bridge - 18 brass frets - Bone nut and saddle - Aquila strings - Padded backpack gig bag, strap, clip-on tuner, spare strings, picks, cloth - ~$75 Donner sells directly and prices accordingly, and the DUC-1 is the clearest example of what that buys. A bone nut and saddle at this price is better hardware than brands charging twice as much specify, and bone is the component that most affects whether a cheap ukulele stays in tune above the fifth fret. The strings are Aquila, again at a price where nobody would expect them. What you give up is finish quality rather than function. The fret ends are less carefully dressed than the Kala’s, the polish is thicker, and the instrument-to-instrument consistency is not as tight — two DUC-1s can arrive playing noticeably differently. It is still a concert-scale ukulele with good bones, and it arrives with a bag, a strap and a tuner, which the Kala soprano does not at five dollars less. **Pros**- Bone nut and saddle at the price - Concert scale, which suits adult hands better than a soprano - Everything needed to start is in the box - Aquila strings fitted **Cons**- Fret ends less consistently finished - More variation between individual instruments - Thicker finish than the Kala or Córdoba Around $75[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46ajf1i) № 3 · Hardest to damage ### Enya — Nova U concert - Carbon fiber composite body, not wood - 23-inch concert size - Side sound hole - 1.25 lb - Waterproof, unaffected by humidity or temperature - Padded case, strap, capo and spare strings included - Two-year manufacturer warranty - ~$95 Enya’s contribution to the ukulele is a body molded from carbon fiber composite instead of built from wood, and it solves a problem that wooden instruments spend their lives losing to. It does not crack when the heating comes on, it does not mind a beach or a tent or the back of a car, and it weighs a pound and a quarter. If the ukulele is going to travel, or live somewhere that swings between damp and bone dry, this removes an entire category of worry. The trade is tone. Composite gives a bright, even, slightly hard voice with less warmth and less complexity than mahogany, and it will never open up with age the way wood does. Bought to sit on a stand in a living room, the Kala or the Donner is the better instrument and costs less. Bought to be carried around, this one is not close. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Humidity and temperature are simply not a factor - 1.25 lb, with case, strap and capo included - Two-year warranty, which is unusual at the price - Concert scale **Cons**- Brighter and plainer than mahogany - Costs more than either wooden concert here - Tone will not improve with age - Composite feels different under the fretting hand Around $95[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xPGREq) № 4 · The step up ### Islander — MC-4 concert - Mahogany top, back and sides - Okume neck, rosewood fingerboard, 17 frets - 38mm (1 1/2″) mycarta nut - Rosewood bridge, ABS dot inlays - Satin finish, natural - ~$105 Islander is Kanile’a’s other company. Kanile’a has built solid koa ukuleles in Kāne’ohe on Oahu since 1998 and charges four figures for them; Islander is the same firm’s designs and specifications built in China, on lines Kanile’a keeps for its own work. That is a genuinely different proposition from a trading company picking instruments out of a catalogue, and it shows up in the details — a 38mm nut on a concert is wide, and wide is what most adults want and rarely get at this price. Whether it is worth fifty dollars over the Kala is a real question and the answer is not automatic. You are buying a better-considered neck and the quality control of a company whose reputation rests on instruments costing ten times as much. You are not buying a Hawaiian-built ukulele, and it would be easy to read the name and think you were. **Pros**- 38mm nut — wide for a concert, and a real comfort difference - Designed and specified by a Hawaiian builder - Rosewood fingerboard and bridge at a sane price - Steps up from the beginner instruments without leaving the price bracket **Cons**- Built in China, not Hawaii, despite the name - Half again the price of the Kala for a first ukulele - Nothing included — no bag, no tuner Around $105[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wIggYR) № 5 · Widest neck ### Córdoba — 15TM tenor - Layered mahogany top, back and sides - Mahogany neck, pau ferro fingerboard and bridge - 17″ tenor scale, 18 frets, 14 to the body - 38mm (1 1/2″) at the nut - Aquila New Nylgut strings - Abalone rosette, cream binding, satin polyurethane - ~$130 Córdoba came out of Spanish classical guitar making in 1997 and is now part of Yamaha Guitar Group, and the ukuleles show the guitar heritage in the one place it counts: the necks are wider than almost anything else at the price. The 15TM is 1 1/2 inches across the nut, which is an eighth of an inch more than most, spread over four strings. If you fingerpick, or if you have been muting the string next door with the side of a finger, that eighth of an inch is the entire reason to spend the extra. Against it, the hardware is the plainest of the five. Composite nut and saddle where the Kala has NuBone and the cheaper Donner has bone, and nothing in the box. The rosette and binding are lovely and they are cosmetic. Buy this one for the neck, or buy the Kala. **Pros**- 1 1/2″ nut, the widest here - Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge, not composite - Tenor scale, so the frets are further apart too - Aquila strings fitted **Cons**- Composite nut and saddle at twice the Donner’s price - Layered throughout, so nothing opens up with age - No case, bag or tuner included Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kGjgFZ) ## The Hawaiian builders, and when they start to matter Three companies in Hawai’i build ukuleles from solid Hawaiian koa in their own workshops, and they are the top of the instrument in a way no imported ukulele reaches. Kamaka has been on South Street in Honolulu since 1916, still run by the founding family. KoAloha was started in 1995 by Alvin “Pops” Okami and works out of Kona Street in Honolulu. Kanile’a has designed, built and assembled in Kāne’ohe since 1998. Kanile’a’s own instruments start around $1,500 and run well past $4,000, and the other two sit in the same territory. The difference is audible: solid koa moves in a way laminate cannot, the instruments get better over years rather than staying still, and the fit and finish are on a different plane. They are also completely unnecessary for a first ukulele, and a beginner who spends that money before knowing whether they like the instrument has bought an expensive lesson. The sensible order is a $70 ukulele, a year, and then a decision. One thing worth knowing if you go looking: a Hawaiian brand name on the headstock does not mean the instrument was built in Hawai’i. [Koa](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) appears on a great many imported ukuleles as a veneer or a laminate, and Islander — a genuinely good instrument — is a Hawaiian company’s design built in China. The way to tell is to look for solid koa and a stated build location, not for the word Hawaiian. ## The names that come up and shouldn’t **Fender, Epiphone and the other guitar names.** They make ukuleles, they are competently built, and you pay a premium for a headstock logo that means nothing on this instrument. Fender’s ukulele necks are guitar-influenced in a way that is genuinely nice, but at the money you are into Córdoba and Islander territory with better specifications. **Mahalo, Lohanu, Kmise, Hricane and the rest of the bundle brands.** These sell on the accessories thrown in rather than the instrument, and the model numbers turn over fast enough that a review of one is not a review of the one you will get. Some are perfectly serviceable. The problem is that you cannot tell which from the outside, and at $50 to $70 you are within a few dollars of instruments where you can. **Anything sold only as a “beginner bundle” with no model number at all.** If the listing will not tell you the model, there is nothing to look up and nothing to compare, and the instrument is being sold on the strap and the picks. Spend the same money on a [cheap ukulele with a name](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/). ## What to budget beyond the ukulele A clip-on tuner is around $18 and is not optional — a new ukulele goes out of tune constantly for the first fortnight while the strings stretch, and that is the single most common reason people give up. A padded gig bag is around $30 if one did not come in the box. [A set of good strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is $10 to $15, and on any instrument that did not arrive with Aquila or similar it is the cheapest improvement available. A professional setup — filing the nut slots, leveling the frets, adjusting the action — runs $40 to $75 on a ukulele. On a $60 instrument that is a strange amount of money and most people skip it. On anything above $150 it is worth doing once, and it will make more difference than the next $100 of instrument would. ## FAQs ### Which ukulele brand is best for beginners? Kala, for the reasons above: good hardware, a model that has not changed since 2005, and a range that continues into [concert](https://promusicvault.com/best-concert-ukuleles/) and [tenor](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) sizes if the soprano is too small. Donner is the answer if the budget is firm under about $80, and it is a genuinely good instrument rather than a compromise. ### Are expensive ukulele brands worth it? Between $60 and $150, mostly not — the instruments are more alike than the prices suggest, and the extra buys cosmetics and neck width more often than better hardware. Above about $700, where solid koa and hand building start, the difference is real and obvious. The gap in the middle is the least rewarding place to spend. ### Is Kala better than Córdoba? They answer different questions. Kala fits better hardware for less money. Córdoba builds a wider neck, which matters enormously if you have large hands or you fingerpick, and not at all if you do not. Hands decide it, not the badge. ### What ukulele brands do professional players use? Overwhelmingly the Hawaiian builders — Kamaka, KoAloha and Kanile’a — plus a small number of independent luthiers. Kala’s higher lines and Córdoba’s solid-wood series turn up on stage too. None of this should influence a first purchase; a professional’s instrument is chosen for a recorded tone and a touring life, neither of which applies yet. ### What is the difference between Islander and Kanile’a? Same company, two build locations. Kanile’a instruments are designed, built and assembled in Kāne’ohe, Hawai’i, from solid koa, and start around $1,300. Islander instruments use Kanile’a’s designs and specifications but are built in China on production lines the company reserves for its own work, and start around $100. ### Does the brand matter more than the size? No. Size is the decision that changes how the instrument feels in your hands, and brand is the decision that changes how well it was put together. Get the [size right first](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) — most adults are happier on a concert than a soprano — and then pick from the brands above within that size. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Kala Waterman Ukulele Review: The Plastic Uke, Measured Against Kala's Wooden One](https://promusicvault.com/kala-waterman-ukulele-review/) **Published:** June 10, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Kala Waterman Ukulele Review: The Plastic Uke, Measured Against Kala’s Wooden One Kala builds the Waterman out of molded plastic on purpose, fits it with the same Aquila strings it puts on its wooden instruments, and sells it to schools. It is the ukulele you take to a beach, a boat, a campsite or a classroom of eight-year-olds, and the only one on Kala’s list that does not care what the weather does. What almost nobody writing about it does is put it next to a wooden ukulele from the same maker, measured the same way. Kala publishes the numbers for both. Do that and the answer changes depending on which size you were about to buy. The one to buy### Kala Recycled Waterman Concert The concert is the Waterman with a body big enough to make a noise — 8-5/16″ across the lower bout and 2-1/2″ deep, which is fractionally larger in both directions than Kala’s own wooden concert. Eighteen frets, a 14-13/16″ scale, geared open-gear tuners, Aquila B-Blacks strings fitted at the factory, and a body and neck molded from recycled plastic. Ten dollars more than the soprano, and it is the ten dollars that decides whether you enjoy playing it. Around $69 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gtRnvb) **Smaller and cheaper:** Recycled Waterman soprano — around $59 **Gloss and see-through:** Sea Glass Waterman soprano — around $59 **Plastic that sounds better:** Enya Nova U concert — around $95 **Buy it with the ukulele:** a clip-on tuner — around $18 ## Table of Contents - [The Waterman is now two different ukuleles](#the-waterman-is-now-two-different-ukuleles) - [Kala’s numbers, plastic against wood](#kalarsquos-numbers-plastic-against-wood) - [The soprano has a small box; the concert does not](#the-soprano-has-a-small-box-the-concert-does-not) - [What it sounds like, without the flattery](#what-it-sounds-like-without-the-flattery) - [It will not hold pitch for the first week, and that is normal](#it-will-not-hold-pitch-for-the-first-week-and-that-is-normal) - [The concert has the narrowest neck in the range](#the-concert-has-the-narrowest-neck-in-the-range) - [What is in the box, and what is not](#what-is-in-the-box-and-what-is-not) - [The three Watermans, and what else to spend on](#the-three-watermans-and-what-else-to-spend-on) - [The two things to buy with it](#the-two-things-to-buy-with-it) - [Where the plastic ukulele came from](#where-the-plastic-ukulele-came-from) - [Who should buy one](#who-should-buy-one) ## The Waterman is now two different ukuleles Kala has rebuilt this line more than once, and the model codes are the only reliable way to tell which one is in front of you. The original run was the **Classic Waterman**: KA-SWB and KA-CWB in flat solid colors, KA-SWF in fluorescents, KA-SWG in glow-in-the-dark, KA-SWT in clear. ABS composite throughout, Aquila Super Nylgut strings. Around 2022 the same instrument was renamed the **Beach Collection** and the codes became KA-WMS and KA-WMG, with the colors given names — Black Sand, Sea Foam Green, Sunset Orange, Pink Dusk. What Kala builds today is two collections side by side: - **The Recycled Waterman** (KA-R-WMS and KA-R-WMG), soprano and concert. Kala’s own description is that “the ukulele body and neck for each are made using 100% Global Recycled Standard sourced plastic and they are strung with Aquila’s B-Blacks Strings made from renewable plant sources.” - **The Sea Glass Waterman** (KA-WMT), soprano only. Transparent, gloss finish, ABS composite, Aquila Super Nylgut. Kala lists the nut and saddle on these as ABS composite too. So the two current Watermans do not have the same strings on them, which matters more than it sounds. Aquila’s B-Blacks are a patented Italian bioplastic made from renewable plant material rather than fossil-derived polymer, in thinner gauges than Nylgut — .65, .82, .97 and .70 mm for a soprano or concert set. Aquila’s claim for them is a faster, more powerful response than fluorocarbon and a richer tone than Nylgut. Super Nylgut is the string Kala fits to almost everything else it builds, including the wooden KA-15 line. One thing to clear up, because it is in the search results and not in Kala’s catalog: there has never been a Waterman color called *Chalkboard Black*. The instrument people mean by that is the flat black one — KA-CWB-BK when this line started, and Black Sand today. ## Kala’s numbers, plastic against wood Every figure here is Kala’s own, taken from its measurement block for each model, so the four instruments were measured the same way by the same company. Waterman sopranoWaterman concertKA-15S (wood)KA-15C (wood)**Body**Recycled plasticRecycled plasticLaminate mahoganyLaminate mahogany**Scale length**13-11/16″14-13/16″13-5/8″14-7/8″**Frets**12181218**Lower bout**6-1/4″**8-5/16″****7″**8-1/4″**Body depth**2-1/4″**2-1/2″**2-3/8″2-3/8″**Nut width**1-3/8″**1-5/16″**1-3/8″1.39″**Nut & saddle**CompositeComposite**Graph Tech NuBone****Graph Tech NuBone****Strings**Aquila B-BlacksAquila B-BlacksAquila Super NylgutAquila Super Nylgut**Price**~$59~$69~$69~$85 Two rows in that table decide almost everything about how the instrument behaves, and neither of them is the one people look at. ## The soprano has a small box; the concert does not The Waterman soprano and Kala’s wooden KA-15S soprano are within a sixteenth of an inch of each other on scale length, so they play at the same size and take the same strings. Their bodies are not the same size at all. The plastic one is **6-1/4″ across the lower bout against the wooden one’s 7″**, and shallower with it — three quarters of an inch narrower on an instrument that only has six or seven to begin with. That is a real reduction in the air the soundboard is pushing, and it is the most likely reason the Waterman soprano gets described as thin and quiet more often than the concert does. It is a molded shape rather than a bent one, and Kala evidently kept it tight. The concert goes the other way. At 8-5/16″ across and 2-1/2″ deep it is *fractionally larger in both directions than Kala’s own wooden concert*, which is the only place in the range where the plastic instrument has the bigger body. If you are buying a Waterman to actually play rather than to keep in a rucksack, that is the whole argument for spending the extra ten dollars. ## What it sounds like, without the flattery Quieter and simpler than wood, with a short decay and not much bloom under a strum. Owners who like theirs are consistent about the terms: it is fun, it is cheap, and it is the one they hand to a child or take on a kayak. Owners who do not like theirs are equally specific — one describes it as sounding like elastic bands on a shoebox, with no resonance and very little volume, while conceding the body is sturdy and does exactly what it claims about water. Amazon’s own summary of the review body is that buyers find it a great value for beginners while sound quality and tuning retention get mixed reactions. Both of those are describing the same instrument accurately. Plastic is stiff and light, it does not have wood’s internal damping, and a molded box does not develop the way a wooden one is supposed to. The Waterman is not a cheap version of a wooden ukulele. It is a different instrument that happens to cost about the same as Kala’s cheapest wooden one, and it is better than that one at exactly one thing. Which is worth saying plainly: if the ukulele is going to sit on a stand in a living room and get picked up for half an hour a night, buy [a wooden one](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/). The Waterman earns its place when the alternative is not taking an instrument at all. ## It will not hold pitch for the first week, and that is normal The single most common complaint about the Waterman is that it will not stay in tune. Almost all of it is new strings rather than the instrument. Aquila’s synthetic ukulele strings stretch for several days after they go on, and every ukulele shipped with a fresh set does this — the Waterman just gets bought by more first-time players, who have nothing to compare it against and reasonably conclude the ukulele is faulty. Tune it three or four times a day for the first week and it settles. What genuinely does not help is the hardware: the tuners are proper geared open-gear machines rather than friction pegs, which is the right call at this money, but the nut and saddle are molded composite rather than the Graph Tech NuBone that Kala fits to its wooden KA-15 line, and plastic nut slots are more prone to binding a string than a hard synthetic bone is. If a string jumps sharp when you bend it up to pitch, that is the nut, not the tuner. A clip-on tuner is not optional on this instrument for the first fortnight. It is also the cheapest thing on this page. ## The concert has the narrowest neck in the range This one runs against every instinct. Bigger ukulele, more room for your fingers — except the Waterman concert measures **1-5/16″ at the nut against the soprano’s 1-3/8″**, and against 1.39″ on Kala’s wooden concert. The plastic concert is the tightest fingerboard of the four instruments in the table. What the concert buys you is not width but *length*: an inch and an eighth more scale, so the frets are further apart and a first-position chord stops feeling cramped. Eighteen frets against the soprano’s twelve is the other half of it — the soprano simply runs out of fingerboard where the neck meets the body, which is fine for song accompaniment and a hard stop for anything else. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) If you have large hands and the string spacing is what worries you, no Waterman is the answer and [a wider-necked instrument in a bigger size](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) is. ## What is in the box, and what is not Kala includes a logo tote bag and a mini quick-start guide. The tote is a drawstring sack, not a case: it keeps dust and sand off and will do nothing at all if the instrument is sat on. On a wooden ukulele that would be a problem worth solving. On this one it mostly is not, which is the point of the instrument — a school teacher buying a class set has bought something that survives being handled by thirty children, and the bag is beside the point. **There is no strap button.** Kala lists one on its wooden KA-15 line and lists none on any Waterman, and the tail of the instrument is bare in every photograph of it. So an ordinary strap will not fit, and the choice is a soundhole hook strap or drilling a hole in a $69 instrument. The usual objection to hook straps is that the whole weight of the ukulele ends up hanging off the edge of the soundhole, which is worth thinking about on a thin solid-wood top with a finish you care about. On a molded plastic soundboard it is a non-issue — the Waterman is the one ukulele where the cheapest attachment method is also the correct one. [The three ways a strap gets onto a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) covers the other two if you are curious. Kala publishes no weight for the Waterman, so any figure you see quoted for one is a shipping weight with the carton in it. ## The three Watermans, and what else to spend on № 1 · Best Waterman### Kala Recycled Waterman Concert — Black Sand - Concert — 14-13/16″ scale, 18 frets, 1-5/16″ nut - 8-5/16″ lower bout, 2-1/2″ deep — larger than Kala’s wooden concert - Body and neck from 100% Global Recycled Standard plastic - Aquila B-Blacks strings, geared open-gear tuners - Logo tote bag and mini quick-start guide included The Waterman worth owning. It costs ten dollars more than the soprano and is a materially bigger instrument for it — more scale, six more frets, and the only body in the range that is not smaller than the wooden equivalent. Black Sand is the flat black finish this instrument has been sold in since the beginning; Kala also builds it in Sea Foam Green, Sunset Orange, Pink Dusk, and two that glow in the dark. #### Pros - Bigger body than Kala’s own wooden concert - Eighteen frets, so the neck does not run out - Geared tuners, not friction pegs - Rain, sand, heat and humidity are all irrelevant to it - Sells at Kala’s own list price #### Cons - Narrowest nut of any ukulele in this comparison - Composite nut and saddle rather than NuBone - Quieter and plainer than laminate wood at the same money - No strap button Around $69 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gtRnvb) № 2 · If it is for a child### Kala Recycled Waterman Soprano - Soprano — 13-11/16″ scale, 12 frets, 1-3/8″ nut - 20-3/4″ overall, 6-1/4″ lower bout - Same recycled build and Aquila B-Blacks as the concert - Six colors including two glow-in-the-dark finishes Ten dollars cheaper, four inches shorter overall, and a genuinely smaller box — which is the trade. For a five-year-old, for a rucksack, or for a classroom where thirty of them have to fit in a cupboard, the soprano is the right one and the reduced volume is a feature. For an adult who wants to sit and play it, it is not. #### Pros - Small and light enough for a young child - Wider at the nut than the concert - Cheapest way into the line - Wipes clean, which is why schools buy them #### Cons - Body is three quarters of an inch narrower than Kala’s wooden soprano - Twelve frets and no more - The quietest instrument on this page Around $59 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cm9L6I) № 3 · The clear one### Kala Sea Glass Waterman Soprano - Soprano — same 13-11/16″ scale and 12 frets - ABS composite top, back, sides, fingerboard, nut and saddle - Gloss transparent finish — jade green, frosted, red, purple, amber - Aquila Super Nylgut strings, nickel-plated open gear tuners The same soprano in translucent gloss rather than matte solid, and with Kala’s standard Super Nylgut strings instead of the plant-based B-Blacks. It is the version children pick up first and the version that shows fingerprints. Kala publishes the full specification on this one, which is how we know the nut and saddle across the Waterman line are composite — nothing here is NuBone. #### Pros - Gloss transparent finish nothing else at this price matches - Full published specification, unlike the recycled models - Super Nylgut, the string Kala fits to its wooden ukuleles - Same price as the recycled soprano #### Cons - Soprano only — there is no concert Sea Glass - Same small body as the recycled soprano - Gloss marks more visibly than matte Around $59 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gEY8ul) № 4 · Plastic that sounds better### Enya Nova U Concert - Concert, 23″ body, carbon fiber composite - 1.25 lb, side soundhole, Ni-Zn frets - Padded case, strap, capo and spare strings in the box - Enya’s own list price is $94.99 The obvious comparison, and the one Waterman owners themselves make. Carbon fiber composite rather than molded plastic, a stiffer and thinner shell, and a noticeably fuller voice for it — plus a padded case, a strap and a capo included, which closes some of the gap the extra twenty-six dollars opens. If the reason you want a plastic ukulele is that you travel with it rather than that you want to spend $60, this is the better instrument. #### Pros - The best-sounding weatherproof ukulele at anything near this money - Case, strap, capo and spare strings included - Light — a pound and a quarter - Enormous body of buyer feedback behind it #### Cons - Around 38% more than the Waterman concert - Enya publishes no nut width or nut material - The side soundhole aims the sound at the player, not the room Around $95 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zQLzDq) ## The two things to buy with it WhatWhy, on this instrument specificallyPrice **Snark SN6X clip-on tuner**New Aquila strings stretch for about a week and the Waterman is bought by people who have never tuned anything. Clips to the headstock and reads the vibration, so a noisy room does not matter.~$18[Check price](https://amzn.to/4ci9aDc)**Double J-hook soundhole strap**There is no strap button on any Waterman. Two hooks over the soundhole rim, nothing to install, and the plastic soundboard makes the usual objection to hook straps irrelevant.~$16[Check price](https://amzn.to/4x5GSDo) ## Where the plastic ukulele came from Kala’s own description of the Waterman says it pays homage to the Maccaferri ukuleles of the 1950s, and the debt is real. Mario Maccaferri was already famous for something else entirely: in 1931 he ran a new guitar department for Selmer in France and designed the guitar Django Reinhardt made his name on. He moved to New York, went into plastics, and in 1949 launched the Islander — a ukulele molded from Dow Styron in eight separate parts, its shape based on a Martin Style 0 soprano, sold for $5.95. Arthur Godfrey pushed it on television without taking a cent for doing so, and the thing went off like a rocket. By March 1950 the factory was finishing a ukulele every thirty seconds — about 2,500 a day — and then went to 6,000 a day to clear the backlog. Maccaferri sold the plastic-instrument business in 1969, by which point more than nine million of them had gone out the door. That is the reason a plastic ukulele is not a novelty and a plastic violin would be. It has been the mass-market instrument of this family for seventy-five years, and the Waterman is a straightforward descendant — molded body, molded neck, molded fingerboard, and a price that means nobody has to be careful with it. What Kala changed was the strings: an Islander shipped on whatever nylon was cheap, and a Waterman ships on the same Aquila sets Kala puts on instruments costing three times as much. ## Who should buy one Buy the concert if you want one plastic ukulele and you intend to play it. Buy the soprano if it is for a child under about seven, or for a class set, or for something that lives permanently in a bag. Buy the Sea Glass if the look is what sold it and you do not need eighteen frets. Do not buy any of them as your only ukulele if you are learning seriously and it will live indoors. At $69 the concert Waterman costs the same as Kala’s wooden soprano and sixteen dollars less than its wooden concert, and the wooden ones have a NuBone nut and saddle, a bigger sound and somewhere to go. The Waterman’s case is that a wooden ukulele cannot come to the beach, and it does not need any other case than that. [What the body is made of](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) is the fork this whole decision sits on. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Is the Piano a String Instrument? Yes — It Is a Zither With Keys](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/) **Published:** February 2, 2023 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Piano](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/piano/ "Piano")› Is the Piano a String Instrument? Yes — It Is a Zither With Keys Yes. A piano makes its sound with 230-odd steel strings stretched over a soundboard, and every formal classification of musical instruments in use puts it in the string family for exactly that reason. The hammers do not move it out. Neither does the keyboard. The question feels unsettled because the four words most people learned — strings, woodwind, brass, percussion — are not a classification of instruments at all. They are a description of how an orchestra is staffed, and the piano is not a standing member of any of the four. ## Table of Contents - [The number that spells out the answer](#the-number-that-spells-out-the-answer) - [One caveat the number carries, which is worth knowing](#one-caveat-the-number-carries-which-is-worth-knowing) - [A piano is a zither, not a violin](#a-piano-is-a-zither-not-a-violin) - [Why the question feels unsettled](#why-the-question-feels-unsettled) - [What is actually inside a piano](#what-is-actually-inside-a-piano) - [The things called "piano" that really are not string instruments](#the-things-called-piano-that-really-are-not-string-instruments) - [Whether you actually want the strings](#whether-you-actually-want-the-strings) - [The two cheap ones](#the-two-cheap-ones) - [Read next](#read-next) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [Why do people say the piano is a percussion instrument?](#why-do-people-say-the-piano-is-a-percussion-instrument) - [How many strings does a piano have?](#how-many-strings-does-a-piano-have) - [Is a digital piano a string instrument?](#is-a-digital-piano-a-string-instrument) - [Is the piano part of the string section of an orchestra?](#is-the-piano-part-of-the-string-section-of-an-orchestra) - [Is the harpsichord a string instrument?](#is-the-harpsichord-a-string-instrument) - [Is the piano the largest string instrument?](#is-the-piano-the-largest-string-instrument) ## The number that spells out the answer Museums and organologists file instruments by the Hornbostel–Sachs system, revised in 2011 by the MIMO consortium of European instrument museums. It sorts by one thing only: what physically vibrates. Its top-level class 3, chordophones, is defined as instruments in which “one or more strings are stretched between fixed points.” A piano’s number is usually written **314.122-4-8**, and it decomposes like this: - **3** — chordophone. A string instrument. - **31** — a simple chordophone, or zither: a string bearer, with a resonator that could be detached without destroying the sound-producing apparatus. - **314** — a board zither. The string bearer is a board. - **314.122** — with a resonator box. - **-4** — sounded by hammers or beaters. - **-8** — with keyboard. The two suffixes are where the hammers and the keys are recorded, and the scheme is explicit that they are secondary. They describe how the instrument is operated, after the question of what makes the noise has already been settled by the digits in front of them. The clearest demonstration of that is the harpsichord, which MIMO gives as **314.122-6-8**. One digit apart from the piano, and the digit is -6, plucked with a plectrum, against -4, struck with hammers. Two instruments that look alike, feel alike and sit in the same rooms differ in the classification by precisely the thing the argument about the piano is supposed to be about — and it changes nothing about which family either one is in. ### One caveat the number carries, which is worth knowing MIMO’s revision carries a note under 314.122: “This is true of the early piano only; modern pianos have no bottom and are board zithers. Harpsichords and some clavichords are box zithers.” So the box in *box zither* describes Cristofori’s instrument and the harpsichord it grew out of, and a modern grand — open underneath, its soundboard exposed — is filed as a plain board zither instead. It is a detail about the case, not about the family. The 3, the -4 and the -8 do not move. ## A piano is a zither, not a violin The more interesting thing the number gives you is where the piano sits *inside* the string family, because it is nowhere near the instruments most people picture when they hear “strings.” A violin and a guitar are both 321.322 — necked box lutes. Strings running over a neck, stopped against a fingerboard, so one string gives many notes. A piano has no neck and nothing to stop the strings against: each string is stretched end to end and gives one note. That is a zither, and the piano’s actual relatives are the concert zither, the Japanese koto, the Chinese qin and the hammered dulcimer, all of which MIMO lists in the same class alongside it. InstrumentWhat vibratesHow it is set goingClass**Piano**Steel strings, one note eachFelt hammers, from keysChordophone — zither**Harpsichord**Strings, one note eachPlectrum on a rising jack, from keysChordophone — zither**Hammered dulcimer**Strings, one note eachHand-held hammers, no keysChordophone — zither**Violin**Strings stopped against a fingerboardA bowChordophone — lute**Guitar**Strings stopped against a fingerboardFingers or a plectrumChordophone — lute**Celesta**Metal barsFelt hammers, from keysIdiophone — not a string instrument**Fender Rhodes**Metal tinesHammers, from keys; a pickup listensElectrophone — not a string instrument**Digital piano**NothingKeys trigger a recordingElectrophone — not a string instrument Hammers and keys turn up on both sides of that line. Strings only ever turn up on one. ## Why the question feels unsettled Strings, woodwind, brass and percussion is a plan of an orchestra. It answers “who sits where and gets paid for what,” and it has never been a scheme for classifying instruments — which is why a saxophone made of brass counts as a woodwind, and why the group called percussion holds everything left over. The piano is not a permanent seat in an orchestra. Scores call for one occasionally, the way they call for a harp. Look at how an orchestra actually lists its own players and the piano turns up on its own line: the New York Philharmonic’s roster runs Timpani, then Percussion, then Harp, Harpsichord, Piano and Organ, each a separate heading, with the pianist holding a named piano chair. Not inside the strings. Not inside the percussion. A job of its own. So the four families give no answer about the piano because a piano was never one of the four. Reason from the hammers and you land on percussion; reason from the strings and you land on strings; and a question that has one answer starts looking like it has two. The fault is in the list, which was a staffing chart all along. ## What is actually inside a piano Yamaha publishes the numbers for its own instruments, and they make the case better than any argument does. A piano carries roughly **230 steel strings** in about twenty different gauges. Each one is under about **90 kilograms of tension**, and the total across the instrument runs to **16 to 20 tons** — enough that the cast iron frame holding it exists for no other reason. The bass strings are copper-wound and run one or two to a note; the tenor and treble notes get three bare steel strings each, and the three are deliberately not identical, because the hammer meets each at a slightly different point and the resulting disagreement is what gives a piano its shimmer. One end of every string rests on a bridge glued to the soundboard. Yamaha describes the strings alone as producing only a soft sound “full of metallic jangling noises”; the spruce soundboard both amplifies the low frequencies and cuts the high ones off, which is why it is wood and not metal. That is the same job the body of a violin does, done at a larger scale. The detail that settles it, though, is from the factory floor. Yamaha strings a piano before the keyboard and action go in, and gives it a first tuning at that stage by **plucking the strings directly**. Before it becomes a machine you play from keys, a piano is a large zither somebody tunes with their fingers. The keyboard and the hammers are a mechanism laid on top of that — an assembly Yamaha counts at around 5,500 precision parts per instrument, capable of repeating a note up to fifteen times a second. It is the most elaborate way anybody has built to touch a string. It is still a way to touch a string. ## The things called “piano” that really are not string instruments This is where the classification earns its keep, because several instruments share the name and only some of them share the family. A **Fender Rhodes** or a **Wurlitzer electric piano** has hammers and a keyboard and no strings at all — the hammers hit metal tines or reeds, and a pickup turns their vibration into a signal. MIMO files both as *electro-acoustic idiophones*: the metal is the instrument, so they are in the same top-level class as a cymbal. Meanwhile the Yamaha Electric Grand, which has real strings with pickups on them, is filed as an *electro-acoustic chordophone*. Same word on the lid, two different families, and the strings decide it. A **digital piano** is further away still. Yamaha states it plainly: “the digital piano has no strings. Each key is a switch to produce a specific sound, so to speak.” What comes out of the speakers is a recording of an acoustic grand — Yamaha samples its own CFIIIS concert instrument for the P-145, and Donner’s DEP-20 uses a sound source sampled from a concert grand as well. Under Hornbostel–Sachs that is class 5, an electrophone, generated electronically and delivered through a loudspeaker. Yamaha’s digital pianos still contain hammers. They are not there to strike anything; they are there so the key pushes back the way a piano’s key does, and so the instrument can measure how hard you hit it. The strings are gone and the hammers stayed. That is the exact inverse of the argument that the hammers are what make a piano percussion. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Whether you actually want the strings Knowing a piano is a chordophone turns into a real decision the moment you go to buy one, because the strings are the expensive half and they are optional. Twenty tons of tension does not sit still. Yamaha’s own guidance is a tuning at least once a year whether the instrument is played or not, and twice in the first year, because new strings stretch. Add the weight, the floor space, the fact that it cannot be turned down, and the strings start looking less like the point and more like the bill. What a digital piano keeps is the action — the hammers, the graded weight, the way the key resists your finger — and what it drops is the part that needs a technician. For a beginner, and for most people who are not committed to owning an acoustic instrument for decades, that is the right trade. The one specification to insist on is **88 keys with hammer action**, ideally graded so the bass end is heavier than the treble, because that is what an acoustic piano feels like under the hand and it is what a teacher means by “weighted.” Best first piano for most people### Yamaha P-145BT 88 keys on Yamaha’s GHC graded hammer action, so the bass end pushes back harder than the treble, and the piano voice is a recording of Yamaha’s own CFIIIS concert grand. Light enough to carry with one arm, and there is no tuning bill behind it, ever. A music rest and a sustain footswitch are in the box; a stand is not, and it is the first thing to add. Around $470 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cmmtm5) **Cheaper way to the same trade:** Donner DEP-20, 88 hammer-action keys — around $310 **To start playing:** Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course, Level One — around $8 **For a classroom wall:** Sproutbrite instrument-family posters — around $19 ProductWhat it isWhy it is herePrice**Yamaha P-145BT**88 keys, GHC graded hammer actionThe acoustic piano’s touch without its strings or its tuning billAround $470[Check price](https://amzn.to/4cmmtm5)**Donner DEP-20**88 keys, hammer actionThe same trade, about a third cheaperAround $310[Check price](https://amzn.to/4qPtL7K)**Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course, Level One**Method book, 88 keys assumedThe cheapest thing that turns a keyboard into playingAround $8[Check price](https://amzn.to/4y7QuhK)**Sproutbrite music posters**Six charts, 11.5 x 16 inchesThe four families on the wall — and the gap this page is aboutAround $19[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xxAlm0)**The Piano Book**, Larry Fine244-page reference, 4th editionHow the machine is built, if the strings are what interested youAround $10[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xBY9oS) The one to buy### Yamaha P-145BT Yamaha’s entry hammer action, and the reference point the rest of the price bracket is measured against. Graded Hammer Compact puts a pivoting hammer behind every one of the 88 keys and makes the bass heavier than the treble, which is the specification a piano teacher actually cares about. The piano voice is sampled from Yamaha’s CFIIIS concert grand, with 64-note polyphony — enough for the whole beginner repertoire and a limit you would only meet with the sustain pedal down through dense writing. - 88 keys, GHC graded hammer action, matte black keytops - Yamaha CFIIIS grand piano sample, 64-note polyphony - Bluetooth audio, USB to host, headphone jack - Music rest, sustain footswitch and power adapter included **Pros**- Graded action, so the touch transfers to a real piano - Light enough to move alone, and slim enough to store upright - Headphones mean it can be practiced at any hour **Cons**- No stand, bench or triple pedal unit in the box - 64-note polyphony where dearer models give 192 - Two speakers cannot do what a soundboard does Around $470 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cmmtm5) The value option### Donner DEP-20 Full-size hammer action on all 88 keys at a price that undercuts everything else offering it, and a grand piano sample behind it. Donner specifies hammer action and touch response and claims no grading, where Yamaha names the graded action on every model that has one, so expect an even weight from bottom to top rather than a bass end that pushes back harder. The case and keys feel like what they cost. Against that it has a sustain pedal in the box, a far larger owner base than most instruments at this money, and it does the one job that matters: it builds the fingers an acoustic piano will later ask for. - 88 full-size keys, hammer action with adjustable touch response (no graded weighting specified) - DREAM sound source sampled from a concert grand, 128-note polyphony - Sustain pedal, music rest and power adapter included - Under 25 pounds **Pros**- Hammer action across the full 88 for around $310 - 128-note polyphony, twice the Yamaha’s - Sustain pedal included rather than a footswitch **Cons**- No grading claimed, so the bass end will not push back the way an acoustic’s does - 238 voices and 200 rhythms nobody learning piano will use - Build quality is the thing the money came off Around $310 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qPtL7K) ### The two cheap ones An instrument without a book is a piece of furniture. **Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course, Level One** is the standard adult starting point, around $8, and it assumes a full keyboard from the first page — which is the practical reason to have bought 88 keys. If you came here from a classroom, the **Sproutbrite** six-poster set lays out strings, woodwind, brass and percussion with labeled instruments, around $19 for six 11.5 by 16 inch charts. It is a good wall, and it also makes this page’s point for you: there is no piano on any of the four, and a student who asks why has found the interesting question on their own. And if what caught you was the twenty tons rather than the classification, Larry Fine’s **The Piano Book** is the standard reference on how the machine is built and what to look for inside a used one. Be clear about what it is, though: the fourth edition dates from 2000, so its brand-by-brand verdicts are a period piece and its prices are meaningless. The chapters on construction, inspection and what actually wears out are why it still sells. ## Read next - [Keyboard instruments](https://promusicvault.com/keyboard-instruments/) — every instrument played from keys, sorted by what makes the sound behind them - [String instruments](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) — the whole family, from the zithers to the lutes to the harps - [Piano vs harpsichord](https://promusicvault.com/piano-vs-harpsichord/) — the two instruments one digit apart, and what a plectrum changes - [Percussion instruments](https://promusicvault.com/percussion-instruments/) — why percussion is a job in an ensemble rather than a classification - [Types of instruments](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/) — the five classes, and what the four families get wrong ## FAQs ### Why do people say the piano is a percussion instrument? Because the strings are struck rather than plucked or bowed, and because “percussion” in an orchestra means the section that hits things. Both are true and neither changes the family. Hornbostel–Sachs records the striking as a suffix — the -4 in the piano’s number — after the class has already been decided by what vibrates. If hammers moved an instrument out of the string family, the hammered dulcimer would have to leave too. ### How many strings does a piano have? Around 230 on a standard 88-key instrument, in roughly twenty gauges. Tenor and treble notes get three strings each, the middle bass gets two, and the lowest notes get a single thick copper-wound string. The exact count varies by model, which is why makers give it as a rough number rather than a specification. ### Is a digital piano a string instrument? No. Yamaha puts it flatly: a digital piano has no strings, and each key is a switch. The sound is a recording of an acoustic instrument played back through speakers, which makes it an electrophone — a class Hornbostel–Sachs had to add, because none of it existed in 1914. The hammers inside a digital piano are there to reproduce the touch, not to hit anything. ### Is the piano part of the string section of an orchestra? No, and it is not part of the percussion section either. Orchestras that keep a pianist on the payroll list the position on its own, alongside the harp, harpsichord and organ, rather than inside one of the four sections. On stage a piano is often placed near the percussion, which is a matter of where the instrument physically fits. ### Is the harpsichord a string instrument? Yes, and by the same reasoning. Its classification number differs from the piano’s in one digit, which records that a plectrum plucks the string instead of a hammer striking it. The harpsichord came first, and the piano is what happened when Bartolomeo Cristofori swapped that plucking mechanism for a hammer around 1700 so the player could control the volume. ### Is the piano the largest string instrument? By almost any measure, yes. A concert grand carries more strings than any other instrument in the family, under a combined tension of 16 to 20 tons, on a range of 88 notes from 27.5 Hz to 4,186 Hz that no other single instrument comes close to. That range is not an accident of engineering: the extra notes a wider keyboard would add fall outside what the ear can usefully separate as pitch. **Categories:** Piano --- ### [How Much Does a Bassoon Weigh? About Seven Pounds](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh/) **Published:** December 27, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bassoon](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bassoon/ "Bassoon")› How Much Does a Bassoon Weigh? About Seven Pounds A full-size German-system bassoon weighs **six and a half to nearly nine pounds** — three to four kilograms. That is the figure Guntram Wolf gives, and it is the only bassoon maker publishing one at all. The kilogram of spread between the bottom and the top of that range is almost all keywork. A student instrument carries sixteen keys; a professional one carries twenty-eight, each of them a silver-plated piece of metal with a post, an axle and a spring. But the number is not what the question is really about. Seven pounds is about what a triple French horn weighs and a third of what a tuba player carries, and neither of those players complains the way bassoonists do. The reason is where it lands: on the index finger of the left hand, for the whole rehearsal, because that is where the instrument balances against a strap ring fitted near its bottom end. ## Table of Contents - [What a bassoon weighs](#what-a-bassoon-weighs) - [Why the figure you found was too low](#why-the-figure-you-found-was-too-low) - [The keywork is what moves the number](#the-keywork-is-what-moves-the-number) - [Wall thickness, and why heavier is sometimes deliberate](#wall-thickness-and-why-heavier-is-sometimes-deliberate) - [Where the weight lands, which is the real question](#where-the-weight-lands-which-is-the-real-question) - [The third fix costs nothing, and the fourth is a part](#the-third-fix-costs-nothing-and-the-fourth-is-a-part) - [Seven pounds is too much to hold through a rehearsal](#seven-pounds-is-too-much-to-hold-through-a-rehearsal) - [What you actually carry: add the case](#what-you-actually-carry-add-the-case) - [How that compares with everything else in the section](#how-that-compares-with-everything-else-in-the-section) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [How much does a bassoon weigh in kg?](#how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh-in-kg) - [How much do a bassoon and its case weigh together?](#how-much-do-a-bassoon-and-its-case-weigh-together) - [Is a bassoon too heavy for a ten-year-old?](#is-a-bassoon-too-heavy-for-a-tenyearold) - [Is a polypropylene bassoon heavier than a maple one?](#is-a-polypropylene-bassoon-heavier-than-a-maple-one) - [How much does a contrabassoon weigh?](#how-much-does-a-contrabassoon-weigh) - [Why does my left index finger hurt after twenty minutes?](#why-does-my-left-index-finger-hurt-after-twenty-minutes) - [Does a heavier bassoon sound better?](#does-a-heavier-bassoon-sound-better) - [How much does a bassoon weigh for shipping?](#how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh-for-shipping) - [Where to go next](#where-to-go-next) The short answer### Three to four kilograms — six and a half to nearly nine pounds — and almost none of it should be resting on you. Seated, the whole weight goes through a seat strap into the chair, and your hands only steer. Yamaha says so itself, and every Renard bassoon leaves the Fox factory with a strap in the case. If yours went missing, this is the one to replace it with. Around $34 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cTZPBz) **In kilograms:** 3–4 kg for the instrument, roughly 6–7 kg for the outfit you carry **Buying for a ten-year-old:** the child-sized instruments are 0.35–1.2 kg, and they are real instruments **Your left index finger hurts:** that is a balance problem, not a weight problem, and it has three fixes **On size rather than mass:** [how long a bassoon is](/how-long-is-a-bassoon/) covers the 260 cm of bore folded into it ## What a bassoon weighs Almost nobody publishes this. Yamaha puts out a full specification for the YFG-811 and YFG-812 — fingering system, auxiliary keys, trill keys, body wood, key alloy, bocals, case — with no weight row. So do Fox, Heckel, Amati, Moosmann and Püchner. The exception is Guntram Wolf of Kronach, and the reason it publishes the figure is that it builds a bassoon designed around it. InstrumentLengthWeightWolf Fg 8 octave bassoon63 cm0.35 kg · 12¼ ozWolf Fg 5 quint bassoon (in G)84.5 cm0.95 kg · 2.1 lbWolf Fg 4 quart bassoon (in F)92.5 cm1.2 kg · 2.6 lbWolf LT lightweight mechanism~135 cm2.3 kg · 5.1 lb**Ordinary full-size bassoon**~135 cm**3–4 kg · 6.6–8.8 lb** Wolf states the ordinary figure flatly, in a sentence about its own lightweight model: a normal bassoon weighs between three and four kilograms. The LT mechanism, which is patented and which Wolf says is barely distinguishable from a conventional one by eye, brings a fully equipped instrument down to about 2,300 grams. Nothing is removed to get there. The keys are all still on it. ## Why the figure you found was too low The range quoted almost everywhere is three and a half to seven and a half pounds. The top of it is right. The bottom of it is not a bassoon. Three and a half pounds is 1.6 kg, and no full-size instrument comes near that. What does weigh that little is a *fagottino* — a child’s bassoon pitched a fourth or a fifth above the real thing, 84 to 92 cm long instead of 135. Wolf builds four of them and gives the weights above. They are proper instruments with proper keywork, and Wolf records that the youngest quint-bassoon pupil it knows of was three and a half years old. They are not, however, what an orchestra means by a bassoon, and a figure taken from one and printed as the answer makes the instrument sound like a clarinet. The French *basson* genuinely does sit at the lighter end, because it kept the older, sparser keywork when the German instrument went the other way, and Yamaha notes that its bore is narrower than the German bassoon’s as well. It is also rare outside France, so it is very unlikely to be the instrument in front of you. ## The keywork is what moves the number In the eighteenth century a bassoon had three or four keys. By the end of it, six. Carl Almenräder’s improvements in the early nineteenth century started from an eight-key instrument and went upward from there, and everything played today descends from that work. Amati’s current catalog shows where it ended up. Their student model has sixteen keys. Their Artist model has twenty-five keys and nine rollers. Their Conservatoire has twenty-eight keys, eleven rollers and six trill keys. Every one of those is silver-plated nickel silver on a post, and the difference between the bottom and the top of that list is roughly the difference between three kilograms and four. Wolf is blunt about the trend. Ever more extensive key fittings, it writes, have made instruments many times heavier over the last few decades — extra physical strain, and a less free feeling under the hands. Its answer was not fewer keys but lighter ones, which is the whole point of the LT. ### Wall thickness, and why heavier is sometimes deliberate The other variable is how much maple is left around the bore, and makers change it on purpose. Yamaha builds the YFG-811 with standard walls and the YFG-812 with thick ones, and describes the difference in its own guide: a standard-wall instrument is flexible and song-like, while a thick-walled one has a solemn, dark quality suited to orchestral playing, at the cost of needing more power from the player. Fox’s professional chart runs the same way, listing thin wall, thick wall and hybrid across the line. Every Renard student model, by contrast, is thin wall. So the lightest bassoons and the cheapest bassoons overlap, and the extra kilogram at the top of the range is partly something the buyer chose. ## Where the weight lands, which is the real question Yamaha puts it more plainly than any player will. Because the strap ring sits towards the bottom of the instrument, it is impossible to avoid the weight of the bassoon resting on the index finger of the left hand — and if you slouch forward, more of it goes there. That is one finger, in one fixed position, holding up a seven-pound object for ninety minutes, and it is why the answer to “how much does a bassoon weigh” is never really a number. Three things move that load, and they cost between nothing and about eighty dollars. № 1 · Seated, which is nearly always### Neotech Bassoon Seat Strap - Cup and strap; fastens to the chair leg - 5-inch square seat pad, non-skid backing - Adjusts 25–38 inches - Made in the USA **Good**- Cup fits any boot cap, hole or no hole - Chair-leg attachment stops the pad sliding out from under you - 13 inches of adjustment covers any chair the room has **Less good**- Does nothing at all if you play standing - The cup is bulkier in a case than a plain hook strap A seat strap does not reduce the weight. It changes what is holding it up: instead of the instrument hanging from a ring and being steadied by your left hand, it stands on the strap and your hands only guide it. Fox ships one with every Renard bassoon it builds, which tells you what the maker expects you to do with the thing. The one detail worth getting right is the attachment. Fox’s factory strap is *hook style*, which needs a hole through the end of the boot cap; if your bassoon has no hole and no ring there, a hook strap will not attach to it at all. A cup, like this one, wraps round the outside of the boot cap and does not care. If you do not know which your instrument has, the cup is the safe answer. Around $34 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cTZPBz) № 2 · Standing, or when the neck is the problem### Protec A317 Deluxe Padded Bassoon Harness - Shoulder harness, universal size - 1680D ballistic nylon, padded mesh lining - Quick-adjustment pull tabs, wear-and-remove clip - Open metal hook **Good**- Spreads the load across both shoulders and the back rather than the neck - Works standing, which a seat strap cannot - The clip means you can get out of it without unthreading anything **Less good**- More to put on and take off than a strap - Universal sizing is a compromise on a very small or very large frame A plain neck strap is the thing most beginners are handed, and on a seven-pound instrument it is the worst of the three options: the whole load goes through the cervical spine at the point where it is least able to take it. A harness takes the same hook and puts the load on the shoulders instead. If you play standing at all — a recital, a pit with no room, a wind ensemble that stands — this is the piece of kit that makes it possible. Around $32 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xrRaP7) ### The third fix costs nothing, and the fourth is a part Sitting up is free. Yamaha’s own instruction is that slouching forward transfers more of the instrument onto the left hand, so a straight back is worth more than any accessory and costs nothing to try tonight. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The part is a **balance hanger**. It is a small extension that attaches to the existing strap ring and moves the hooking point up towards where the instrument actually balances, and Yamaha names it as the standard solution for playing standing. Fox makes one and prices it at about $215, plus a bushing that has to be fitted into the top of the boot joint first. Amati fits a balance holder as standard on everything above its student model, and Marcus Bonna cuts a hole in its cases so the hanger does not have to come off to pack up. It is a fitted part rather than something to order casually, and the fitting is the reason: get the position wrong and you have moved the problem rather than solved it. A **hand rest**, or crutch, is the right-hand equivalent, and most bassoons already have one — Fox fits a plastic one to every Renard and every polypropylene Fox. Replacing it is where people come unstuck, because the stem is not a standard size. Fox’s own plastic rest has a 3/16-inch stem, 4.8 mm, and Fox sells three different brackets for three different stems. The generic crutches sold online are commonly 5/32 inch, 4.0 mm, and several are sold as the crutch alone with no bracket and no screws. Measure the stem on the one you have before ordering anything. ## Seven pounds is too much to hold through a rehearsal Even with the weight on a strap, there are the bars you are not playing, and the twenty minutes at the end of a lesson, and the break. A bassoon cannot simply be laid down: water condenses at the lowest point of the bore, which on a bassoon is the metal U-tube in the boot, and Yamaha is explicit that this is harmless while the instrument is upright and a problem the moment it is horizontal, because the moisture soaks into the wood. № 3 · Somewhere to put it down### Hercules DS561B Bassoon and Bass Clarinet Stand - Folding tripod, swivel legs with locking pins - Base rest adjusts for bassoon or bass clarinet - Retractable floor peg - Load capacity 15 kg / 33 lb **Good**- Holds the boot upright so the U-tube drains rather than soaks - Base rest turns to face towards or away from the stand - Folds small enough to go in a bag **Less good**- One more thing to carry, on an instrument that is already the heaviest thing in the room - The rated capacity is far beyond anything a bassoon needs The 15 kg capacity is four times what any bassoon weighs; the figure is there because the same stand takes a bass clarinet, which is a heavier instrument. What matters here is that it puts a seven-pound object down safely and upright, in the position the wood needs, in about two seconds. Around $80 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gyjkk4) ## What you actually carry: add the case The instrument is not the heavy part of getting a bassoon to rehearsal. BAM publishes weights for its own, and its Hightech bassoon cases — the light end of the market, not the heavy end — run from **6 lb 9 oz to 7 lb 9 oz**. That is another three to three and a half kilograms, which is to say the case weighs roughly as much as the bassoon inside it. Add reeds, a swab, a strap and a bocal or two and the whole outfit is somewhere between fourteen and seventeen pounds. Nobody else publishes a figure: Protec, Fox and Marcus Bonna all give none, and Gator, which lists a weight for every clarinet and flute case it makes, does not build a bassoon case at all. № 4 · If the carry is the problem### Protec PL252 Bassoon Gig Bag, Platinum Series - 20 mm high-density foam, wood panel supports at stress points - Padded backpack straps plus removable shoulder strap - Dedicated double bocal section, modular interior blocks - Water-resistant ballistic nylon, three exterior pockets **Good**- Backpack straps put a fifteen-pound carry on both shoulders instead of one hand - Modular blocks let you pack a standard or compact cut snugly - Sheet-music pocket means one fewer thing in the other hand **Less good**- Foam and panels, not a shell — it will not survive an airline hold - Costs a serious fraction of a student instrument’s rental year A soft case is the only way the total comes down much, because the instrument’s own weight is fixed and the case is the only variable you control. Protec lists this at $294; it does not sell for that. Around $180 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qPq0PG) ## How that compares with everything else in the section Every figure below is the maker’s own, which is the only way a table like this is worth anything — retail listings quote shipping weights and count the box. InstrumentWeightHeld how?Concert flute, silver~440 g · 15½ ozThree points, both arms upB♭ clarinet656–866 g · 1.4–1.9 lbRight thumb, one small restFrench horn, double5½–6 lb · 2.5–2.7 kgBell on the thigh, seated**Bassoon****6.6–8.8 lb · 3–4 kg****Seat strap; left index finger steadies**Bass clarinet5.5–10 lb · 2.5–4.5 kgFloor peg takes the weightEuphonium~10.5 lb · 4.8 kgRests on the lap, seatedBB♭ tuba23–30 lb · 10.5–13.5 kgStands on the chair or a stand Read down the third column and the pattern is clear enough. The bassoon is not the heaviest instrument in the room and it is not close, but it is the heaviest one whose weight passes through a finger. A tuba stands on something. A bass clarinet stands on a peg. A bassoon hangs from a ring set in the wrong place, which is why makers invented a part whose only job is to move that ring. ## Common questions ### How much does a bassoon weigh in kg? Three to four kilograms for a full-size German-system instrument. A lightweight-mechanism model comes in at about 2.3 kg, and child-sized bassoons run from 0.35 kg to 1.2 kg. ### How much do a bassoon and its case weigh together? Around fourteen to seventeen pounds, six to eight kilograms. The case is roughly half of it: BAM, the one case maker publishing figures, put their light bassoon cases at 6 lb 9 oz to 7 lb 9 oz. ### Is a bassoon too heavy for a ten-year-old? Seven pounds is not the obstacle, because a seat strap takes it. Reach is: the instrument is 135 cm tall and the left thumb has to cover as many as ten keys. That is what the child-sized instruments exist for, and Wolf’s quart bassoon in F is a fourth-transposing instrument at 1.2 kg and 92.5 cm. Amati takes the other route on its student model, fitting a short-reach mechanism and a detachable extension tube. Both are aimed at hands, not at weight. ### Is a polypropylene bassoon heavier than a maple one? Nobody publishes enough to answer it. Fox builds the Renard 41 and 51 in polypropylene and the 220, 222 and 240 in maple, and gives a weight for none of them. What its own chart does say is that all five are thin wall, so the wall thickness is not the difference between them. Anyone quoting you a firm figure either way is guessing. ### How much does a contrabassoon weigh? No maker publishes it, and it is worth noticing what they do instead: Fox sells a dedicated contrabassoon stand alongside its bassoon stand. The contra is not an instrument you hold up at all. Its weight rests on a stand or the floor, and the player sits behind it. ### Why does my left index finger hurt after twenty minutes? Because the instrument is leaning on it. Check the three things in order: are you using a seat strap at all, is the strap short enough that the bassoon is standing on it rather than hanging from you, and are you sitting up. If all three are right and it still hurts, a balance hanger is the next step, and it is a fitting job rather than a purchase. ### Does a heavier bassoon sound better? It sounds different, and one maker sells you both answers. Yamaha’s thick-walled YFG-812 is described in their own words as darker and more solemn, better suited to an orchestra, and harder to drive. Their standard-walled YFG-811 is the flexible, singing one. Meanwhile Wolf’s lightweight instrument keeps all the wood and takes the weight out of the mechanism instead, on the argument that a lighter instrument plays more freely. Weight is a variable makers move deliberately, in both directions, and neither end is the better bassoon. ### How much does a bassoon weigh for shipping? Far more than the instrument, and the number a courier quotes is not a specification. A bassoon ships in its case inside a box with packing around it, so budget on twenty to twenty-five pounds and expect dimensional weight to be what you are actually billed on, because the box is long. ## Where to go next If the size rather than the mass is what you were after, [how long a bassoon is](/how-long-is-a-bassoon/) covers the 260 cm of bore folded into a 135 cm instrument and what that does to cases and reach. [What a bassoon costs](/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/) runs the ladder from renting to a Heckel, and [why bassoons are so expensive](/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/) explains where the money goes — a good deal of it into the same twenty-eight keys that account for the weight. [Bassoon against oboe](/bassoon-vs-oboe/) is the other double reed, and [the woodwind family](/woodwind-instruments/) puts the whole section in order. For the instrument at the other end of the weight table, [how much a clarinet weighs](/how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh/) is a pound and a half through one thumb. **Categories:** Bassoon --- ### [Mellophone vs. Baritone: Which to Play, and Which One You Keep All Year](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) **Published:** October 21, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Mellophone vs. Baritone: Which to Play, and Which One You Keep All Year Almost nobody arrives at this question owning both instruments. A director has put you in a section, or handed you a horn out of the storage room, and you want to know what you have been given and whether to argue about it. The horn belongs to the school either way. Day to day the two are unalike in most of the ways that matter. The mellophone is pitched in F, weighs about three and a half pounds, and reads treble clef off a French horn part. The baritone is in B♭, weighs about five and a half, and will hand you either clef depending on which book your director ordered. The difference that decides most cases is a calendar one. A baritone player plays baritone in November and again in March. A mellophone player plays mellophone until the last competition and then puts it away and picks up something else, because concert band does not have a mellophone part. If you want one answer### Baritone, unless you already play trumpet or horn The baritone is one instrument across the whole school year, its part is written for it in both seasons, and the skills you build in the fall are the skills you use in the spring. The mellophone is a marching instrument that exists so horn and trumpet players have something bell-front to carry, and it is the better choice precisely when you already play one of those — the fingerings are the ones you know, and you have somewhere to go in December. **Playing weight:** 3.5 lb vs 5.5 lb **Key:** F vs B♭ **Concert season:** you switch vs you don’t **Already play trumpet:** mellophone, easily ## Table of Contents - [Mellophone vs. baritone, side by side](#mellophone-vs-baritone-side-by-side) - [The mellophone stops when the season does](#the-mellophone-stops-when-the-season-does) - [Two pounds, and what they cost you](#two-pounds-and-what-they-cost-you) - [What you read is the part that surprises people](#what-you-read-is-the-part-that-surprises-people) - [What you already play decides most of this](#what-you-already-play-decides-most-of-this) - [Which one is harder](#which-one-is-harder) - [What you actually buy](#what-you-actually-buy) - [Check the shank before you order a baritone mouthpiece](#check-the-shank-before-you-order-a-baritone-mouthpiece) - [The mellophone's mouthpiece depends on what else you play](#the-mellophones-mouthpiece-depends-on-what-else-you-play) - [Buy the book that matches your clef](#buy-the-book-that-matches-your-clef) - [If you are buying a horn yourself](#if-you-are-buying-a-horn-yourself) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Mellophone vs. baritone, side by side MellophoneBaritone**Key**FB♭**Clef**Treble, alwaysBass or treble, depending on the book**Part it reads**The French horn partIts own, in both seasons**Playing weight**About 3.5 lbAbout 5.5 lb**Bore**.462″–.468″.500″–.571″**Bell**10″, bell front10″ marching, ~8⅔″ upright for concert**Mouthpiece**Deep, trumpet-sized rimTrombone-sized, small or large shank**Fingerings match**TrumpetTrumpet, in treble clef**Where it plays**Marching band and drum corpsMarching band, concert band, brass band**Concert season**You move to horn or trumpetYou stay put ## The mellophone stops when the season does The mellophone was designed to solve one problem: a French horn points backward, sits in the player’s lap, and is close to useless on a football field. The mellophone takes the horn’s part, its key and its written pitch, and puts them into a bell-front instrument you can march with and hear from the stands. That is the whole of its job, and it means the instrument has no concert repertoire of its own. When marching season finishes, the mellophone section disperses — horn players go back to horn, trumpet players go back to trumpet, and anyone who came to the mellophone from neither has to be found a seat somewhere. Choosing mellophone is choosing to play two instruments, and it is worth knowing which the second one will be before you agree to the first. The baritone has no such gap. A marching baritone and a concert baritone are different horns — bell front against upright, .571″ bore against .504″ on Yamaha’s pair — but they are the same instrument in the sense that counts. Same key, same fingerings, same part, same player. Nothing you learn in the fall is set down in December. It also carries further than school. Baritone and its wider-bore sibling the euphonium have a real body of concert and brass band literature behind them, which is the difference between an instrument you played and an instrument you play. We go into where that line falls in [euphonium vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/). ## Two pounds, and what they cost you Yamaha puts the YMP-204M mellophone at about 3.5 lb playing weight and the YBH-301M marching baritone at 2.5 kg, which is 5.5 lb. Jupiter’s equivalents land in the same place — 3.3 lb for the JMP1000M mellophone, 5.5 lb for the JBR1000M baritone. So the gap is right around two pounds, and it is consistent across makers rather than a quirk of one model. Two pounds sounds like nothing written down. It is not nothing held out in front of you at chest height for a nine-minute show, in August, having already run the drill four times. Both instruments are carried on the arms with no harness, and the fatigue is in the shoulders and the left hand rather than the back. What it actually changes is your drill. Mellophone parts in competitive marching tend to carry more of the moving material — countermelodies, runs, the lines that have to be visible as well as heard — and the sections are usually written into the faster sets. That is not unrelated to the weight. If you are being asked to cover ground quickly while playing sixteenths, the lighter horn is the one you want, and directors staff accordingly. More on the physical side in [how much a baritone weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-baritone-weigh/). ## What you read is the part that surprises people The mellophone is straightforward here. It is in F, it reads treble clef, and it reads the same written notes a French horn reads. A horn player can be handed a mellophone part and play it without translating anything. The baritone is where it gets complicated, because the instrument is published in two clefs and they are not interchangeable. Baritone B.C.Baritone T.C.**Clef**BassTreble**Written pitch**Concert — what is written is what soundsAn octave and a major second above concert**Reads like**Trombone, tubaTrumpet**Fingerings**Learned freshIdentical to trumpet**Method book**Marked *Baritone B.C.*Marked *Baritone T.C.* The treble clef version exists so that a trumpet player can move to baritone without learning bass clef or a new set of fingerings. Written a major ninth above concert pitch, a T.C. baritone part puts the same dots in the same spaces for the same three valves. It is a conversion trick, and it works. Which one you get is your director’s decision, and it is worth asking on day one rather than day thirty. Buy the wrong book and none of it lines up — a B.C. player working out of a T.C. book is reading everything in the wrong clef and the wrong key at once. Marching arrangements are usually printed with both parts, so the section can be split down the middle without anyone noticing until the method books arrive. There is a long-run consideration too. Bass clef is what the concert and brass band repertoire is written in, and it is what a trombone or tuba part will ask of you later. Treble clef gets you playing this month and costs you the transition eventually. If you have a choice and no trumpet background, take bass clef. ## What you already play decides most of this If you playThe natural moveWhy**French horn**MellophoneSame key, same written part, no translation. The embouchure is the adjustment, not the reading.**Trumpet**Mellophone, or baritone T.C.Fingerings transfer to both. The mellophone keeps you in a similar register; the baritone drops you an octave.**Trombone**Baritone B.C.Same clef, same pitch, same range. You are swapping slide positions for three valves.**Tuba**Baritone B.C.Bass clef already, and a related fingering pattern an octave up.**A woodwind**BaritoneThe larger mouthpiece is more forgiving to a new brass embouchure than the mellophone’s is.**Nothing yet**BaritoneOne instrument, one part, both seasons. The horn-to-mellophone move deserves a caveat, because it is the one that goes wrong. The reading is free but the mouthpiece is not: a mellophone takes something close to a deep trumpet mouthpiece, and a horn player’s embouchure is built for a rim roughly two thirds the width. Switching back and forth across a week is a real problem, and the mouthpiece adapter that came in the case is the fix. Trumpet players have the easier time and tend to overplay it. The fingerings are yours, but the mellophone is pitched in F, so the note that comes out is not the note your ear expects from that valve combination. The pattern transfers; the pitch map has to be rebuilt. We cover that switch in more detail in [mellophone vs. trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/), and the horn comparison in [mellophone vs. French horn](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-french-horn/). ## Which one is harder Different questions, different answers. The baritone is easier to make a good sound on and harder to march with. The mellophone is easier to march with and harder to play in tune. The baritone’s advantage is its mouthpiece. A wide, deep cup is forgiving — the note centers readily, a beginner’s first week produces something that sounds like the instrument, and the low register comes almost free. Its difficulty is air. A .500″ to .571″ bore takes a genuine quantity of it, and building the capacity to fill the horn and march at the same time is the first month. The mellophone’s difficulty is intonation, and it is the instrument’s known weakness. Its partials sit close together in the middle register in the way a trumpet’s do, but the horn is shorter and more open than its bell suggests, and the notes will let you place them in several slightly wrong positions without protest. Players coming from horn tend to sag flat in the staff. Players coming from trumpet tend to push sharp. Both need the ear to do work that the instrument will not do for them. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Neither of these is a reason to choose or avoid either horn. They are what your first semester will consist of. ## What you actually buy The horn is the school’s. What is yours is the mouthpiece, the book and the oil, and of those the mouthpiece is the one that changes how you sound. A school horn arrives with whatever mouthpiece has been in the case since 2009, sized by nobody in particular, and having your own is both more hygienic and the cheapest real improvement available to a marching brass player. ### Check the shank before you order a baritone mouthpiece This is the one thing on the page most likely to cost you money. Baritone mouthpieces come in two shank diameters, small and large, and the same model number is sold in both. A Bach 6½AL exists as a small shank and as a large shank with an identical cup, throat and backbore — the only difference is the end that goes into the horn, and the wrong one either falls in or will not seat. You cannot infer it from the model name or from whether the horn is a marching one. Yamaha’s YBH-301M marching baritone is large shank and ships with a 48L. Jupiter’s JBR1000M marching baritone is small shank and ships with a 65AL. Both are B♭ marching baritones, both weigh 5.5 lb, and they take different mouthpieces. Yamaha’s own concert baritone, the YBH-301S, is small shank again. So pull the mouthpiece that came with your horn, take it to the band room, and match it — or ask your director, who will know. Then buy that shank. Baritone · the standard small-shank choice ### Bach 6½AL Trombone/Baritone Mouthpiece — small shank - Small shank - Bach part 350-6HAL - 25.40 mm cup - Medium-deep cup - G throat, 420 backbore - ~$72 This is the mouthpiece most American school baritone and trombone players end up on, and it is a sensible default for a student moving off whatever came in the case. The cup is deep enough to give the low register some body without making the top of the staff hard work, which is the balance a marching part wants. What you want is the small shank version, Bach’s part number 350-6HAL. If your horn takes a large shank — as Yamaha’s YBH-301M does — the equivalent is 341-6HAL: the same cup on a fatter stem. The part number is the only thing that settles it, because the model name is identical across both shanks and the “AL” suffix refers to the throat and backbore rather than the shank, so a 6½AL is the standard *small* shank however it reads. Match whatever is already in your case. **Pros**- The size directors expect, so it matches what everyone else in the section is on - Medium-deep cup works across the whole marching range - Forgiving low register for a first year on the instrument **Cons**- Small shank only — wrong for a large-shank horn like the YBH-301M - The shank lives in the part number, not the model name, so it is easy to order the wrong one Around $72[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S6D7iD) ### The mellophone’s mouthpiece depends on what else you play A mellophone mouthpiece is an odd object — a rim about the width of a trumpet’s with a cup far deeper than any trumpet player would tolerate. That combination is what gives the instrument its round sound at marching volume, and it is why a plain trumpet mouthpiece in an adapter sounds thin and bright. If the mellophone is your only instrument this season, use a proper mellophone mouthpiece and stop thinking about it. If you are a horn player going back to horn two evenings a week, the calculation changes: both Yamaha and Jupiter ship their mellophones with a mouthpiece adapter for exactly this reason, and running your own horn mouthpiece through it keeps one embouchure instead of two. The cost is real — a horn cup is deep enough on a mellophone to unsettle the upper register and drag the pitch down — but it is usually the lesser problem compared with rebuilding your embouchure twice a week. Mellophone · the one King ships ### King KME Marching Mellophone Mouthpiece - Trumpet shank - Very deep cup - Conn-Selmer, King line - Ships in the KMP411 - ~$80 The KME is what comes in the case with Conn-Selmer’s King KMP411, which makes it a maker’s own match rather than a guess. Trumpet-width rim, unusually deep cup — the combination that lets a mellophone sound round rather than shrill when a section is playing at competition volume. If you are on mellophone for the season and nothing else, this is the uncomplicated answer. The very deep cup is the whole point of it, and it is why a trumpet mouthpiece pushed into a mellophone never sounds right — the note comes out bright and thin and sits badly under a horn line. It costs a few dollars more than the Bach above, so if you are buying one mouthpiece this season, buy the one that matches the instrument you are actually playing. **Pros**- A maker’s own match for a current mellophone - Deep cup keeps the tone round at marching volume - No shank ambiguity, unlike the baritone side **Cons**- The very deep cup takes adjusting to if you have come off trumpet - Wrong choice if you are switching back to French horn midweek — use the adapter and your own horn mouthpiece Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SKPzF1) ### Buy the book that matches your clef Nearly every American school band program runs on *Essential Elements*, and it is printed as a separate book per instrument and per clef. Baritone players need to know which clef before ordering, mellophone players want the F horn edition — the mellophone is in F and reads the horn part, so the book lines up. If you playBuyPrice**Baritone, bass clef***Essential Elements* Book 1 — Baritone B.C.~$12[Check price](https://amzn.to/4g8o3ZG)**Baritone, treble clef***Essential Elements* Book 1 — Baritone T.C.~$13[Check price](https://amzn.to/4ibB3Ag)**Mellophone***Essential Elements* Book 1 — French Horn~$10[Check price](https://amzn.to/4bU2ivn) Two things left, and neither is interesting. Valves need oiling roughly every second rehearsal, and [Al Cass Fast valve oil](https://amzn.to/4hBN8P3) at about $7 is what most band rooms have on the shelf. A [low brass cleaning kit](https://amzn.to/3S59UVf) at around $20 adds slide grease and the brushes, which the baritone needs and the mellophone mostly does not. ## If you are buying a horn yourself Mostly you are not, and it is worth being clear about why. A [Yamaha YMP-204MS mellophone](https://amzn.to/464EqBO) runs around $2,700 and a [YBH-301M marching baritone](https://amzn.to/4gcr3UN) around $3,600 — the same prices the brass dealers charge, so the listings are honest ones. These are institutional purchases. Schools and corps buy them a dozen at a time and amortise them over a decade of students, and no parent needs to be in that market to get a child through a marching season. If a family does want an instrument at home, the baritone is the one that makes sense, and a concert model rather than a marching one — an upright-bell horn like Yamaha’s YBH-301S is the thing you can actually practice with, play in concert band, and keep using. The route to it is a rental from a band dealer, which usually carries credit toward a purchase. Marching mellophones almost never make sense to own privately, because the instrument is only ever used three months a year and the school already has one. ## FAQs ### What is the difference between a mellophone and a baritone? The mellophone is pitched in F, weighs about 3.5 lb, reads treble clef off the French horn part, and exists only for marching. The baritone is in B♭, weighs about 5.5 lb, reads bass or treble clef depending on the edition, and plays in concert band and brass band as well as on the field. ### Is a mellophone the same as a French horn? No, though it is built to substitute for one. Both are in F and read the same written part, so a horn player needs no translation. But the mellophone points forward, is played with the right hand on the valves, and takes a deep trumpet-sized mouthpiece rather than the horn’s much narrower one. The mouthpiece is the real adjustment. ### Which is heavier, a mellophone or a baritone? The baritone, by about two pounds. Yamaha rates the YMP-204M mellophone at 3.5 lb playing weight and the YBH-301M marching baritone at 2.5 kg, or 5.5 lb. Jupiter’s pair land in the same place. Both are carried on the arms without a harness. ### Does a baritone read treble clef or bass clef? Both exist and your director decides which your program uses. Baritone B.C. is bass clef at concert pitch and reads like a trombone part. Baritone T.C. is treble clef written a major ninth above concert, so trumpet fingerings and note positions transfer exactly. Method books are printed separately for each, so ask before buying one. ### Can you play the mellophone in concert band? There is no mellophone part in standard concert band writing, so in practice you move to French horn or trumpet when marching season ends. Choosing mellophone means choosing a second instrument for the rest of the year, which is worth settling before you commit to the first. ### Is a mellophone or a baritone easier to play? The baritone is easier to get a good sound out of, because its wide, deep mouthpiece centers notes readily. Its demand is air. The mellophone is easier to carry and march with, and harder to play in tune — its partials sit close together and it will accept a note placed slightly wrong without complaint. ### Do a mellophone and a baritone use the same mouthpiece? No, and they are not close. A mellophone mouthpiece has a trumpet-sized rim with an unusually deep cup. A baritone mouthpiece is trombone-sized and comes in two shank diameters, small and large, which are not interchangeable between horns. Check which shank your baritone takes before ordering one. **Also Read:** - [Mellophone vs. Trumpet (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) - [Mellophone vs. French Horn (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) - [Euphonium vs. Baritone (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) - [Tuba vs. Baritone (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/) - [How Much Does a Baritone Weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-baritone-weigh/) - [Brass Instruments: The Whole Family](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Mellophone vs. French Horn: Same Part, Different Instrument](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) **Published:** January 10, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Mellophone vs. French Horn: Same Part, Different Instrument Most people reading this have been handed a mellophone and told it is what horn players march with. That is true, and it is also the beginning of the confusion, because the two instruments are related in a way that sounds simpler than it is: they are both in F, they read the same written notes, and almost nothing else about playing them is shared. A French horn is a rotary-valve instrument about five and a half pounds heavy, played with the left hand on the valves and the right hand inside a bell that points behind you. A mellophone is a three-piston instrument of three and a half pounds, played with the right hand, through a bell that points at the audience. The part on the stand is the same part. The short version### The mellophone is the field instrument, and the reading transfers for free Both are pitched in F and sound a fifth below what is written, so a horn player can be handed a mellophone part and play the right notes on sight. What does not transfer is everything physical — the fingerings are trumpet fingerings, the mouthpiece has a trumpet-width rim, and the right hand comes out of the bell and goes on the valves. Marching bands and drum corps use it because a bell-front horn can be heard from the stands and a French horn cannot. **Key:** both in F **Written part:** identical **Fingerings:** trumpet vs. horn **Weight:** 3.5 lb vs ~5.5 lb **Right hand:** on the valves vs. in the bell ## Table of Contents - [There are three instruments in this question, not two](#there-are-three-instruments-in-this-question-not-two) - [The same written part, and why that matters](#the-same-written-part-and-why-that-matters) - [Why the mellophone is easier to hit](#why-the-mellophone-is-easier-to-hit) - [The right hand, and what you give up](#the-right-hand-and-what-you-give-up) - [So why do most programs use mellophones?](#so-why-do-most-programs-use-mellophones) - [What you actually buy](#what-you-actually-buy) - [A mellophone takes a trumpet-shank mouthpiece](#a-mellophone-takes-a-trumpetshank-mouthpiece) - [If you are playing horn the same week, use an adapter](#if-you-are-playing-horn-the-same-week-use-an-adapter) - [The book is the French horn book](#the-book-is-the-french-horn-book) - [If you are buying an instrument](#if-you-are-buying-an-instrument) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## There are three instruments in this question, not two “French horn” means two different things depending on whether the person saying it is standing on a field. The concert horn is the one in the orchestra: a double horn in F and B♭, rotary valves, bell pointing back over the player’s shoulder. The marching French horn is a separate instrument built to put something close to that sound out of a forward-facing bell, and it is pitched in B♭ with piston valves. The mellophone competes with the second of those, not the first. Nobody chooses between a mellophone and an orchestral double horn, because they are not for the same job. MellophoneMarching French hornConcert French horn**Key**FB♭F/B♭ double**Valves**3 pistons3 pistons4 rotors**Bell**10″, forward10⅛″, forward~12⅛″, back**Bore**.462″.472″.472″**Playing weight**3.5 lb3.5 lbAbout 5.5 lb**Right hand**On the valvesOn the valvesIn the bell**Fingerings**TrumpetThe horn’s B♭ sideHorn, both sides**Mouthpiece**Trumpet shank, very deep cupHorn mouthpieceHorn mouthpiece**Reads the horn part**UnchangedTransposed for B♭—**Typical price**$1,800–$2,700$2,900–$3,200See [horn prices](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/) The figures for the marching pair are Yamaha’s, for the YMP-204M mellophone and the YHR-302M marching horn, and the pattern holds across Jupiter and King as well. Note the weights: they are the same. The mellophone’s advantage over a marching horn is not that it is lighter. ## The same written part, and why that matters A horn in F sounds a perfect fifth below what is written. So does a mellophone in F. That single fact is the reason the mellophone exists in the shape it does: a director can hand the horn section its own parts, unaltered, and the section can march them. It is worth being precise about what transfers, because “the same part” gets heard as “the same instrument”. What transfers is the printed page — the notes, the key signature, the transposition you already have in your head. The fingerings are described everywhere as trumpet fingerings, which is true and slightly misleading if you already play horn. A good deal of the mellophone overlaps with what your hand already knows: the major third from A♭ up to C is fingered the same as on horn, and so are F, F♯ and G outside the bottom two notes. What is genuinely new is the stretch from C♯ to E, in both octaves. That is the practicing, and it is a weekend rather than a season. The marching French horn goes the other way. Its physical technique is much closer to the concert horn — same mouthpiece, same embouchure, the B♭ side of the fingerings you already use — but it is pitched in B♭, so the F horn part on your stand is not the part it plays. That either means transposing at sight or waiting for the arranger to print a B♭ part, and in a school band it usually means the former. Trumpet players hitting the mellophone have the mirror-image problem. The fingerings are the ones in your hands already, and the note that comes out is a fourth away from the one your ear is expecting. The pattern is free; the pitch map has to be rebuilt. We go through that switch in [mellophone vs. trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/). ## Why the mellophone is easier to hit The F horn is roughly twelve feet of tubing. The F mellophone is about six — half the length, with an overtone series an octave above the horn’s. Both sound the same written pitches, but they reach them from completely different places in the harmonic series. On the horn, the notes in the middle of the staff sit high in the series, where the available partials are packed close together. The player’s lip, not the valve, chooses between them, and a small error picks the neighboring note instead. This is the whole of the horn’s reputation for difficulty, and it is a matter of physics rather than of the player. The mellophone reaches the same pitches from low in its own series, where the partials are as far apart as a trumpet’s. Missing a note takes real carelessness. That is the trade the instrument makes, and it is why a director can put a trumpet player on mellophone in August and hear something respectable by September. What the mellophone gives back is intonation. Wide partials mean the horn will accept a note placed slightly wrong without complaining, and the instrument has no strong opinion about where the center is. Horn players tend to sit flat on it and trumpet players sharp. The accuracy is free; the tuning is work. ## The right hand, and what you give up On a concert horn the right hand sits inside the bell, and it is not there to hold the instrument. It shades the tone, corrects pitch a few cents in either direction, and produces stopped notes when pushed in fully. It is a real part of the technique, learned over years. On a mellophone the right hand is on the valves and the bell is open to the field. Everything that hand used to do is gone: no shading, no hand-corrected pitch, nothing to lean on when a note sits badly. A horn player’s first week on mellophone is often spent discovering how much of their intonation was being fixed by a hand they no longer have free. This is also why a mellophone sounds brighter than the horn it stands in for. Some of the horn’s darkness is the bell facing away from the listener and the hand partly closing it. Point that bell forward and open it up, and you get an instrument that carries a hundred yards in open air — which is the entire design brief, and the reason drum corps settled on it. ## So why do most programs use mellophones? The marching French horn is the option that keeps a horn player’s embouchure and technique intact for the fall, which sounds like it ought to win. In practice, the mellophone has taken over almost everywhere, and the reasons stack up in one direction. MellophoneMarching French horn**Volume on the field**Louder, cuts throughQuieter, blends away outdoors**Who can play it**Horn and trumpet players bothHorn players, realistically**Part it needs**The F horn part as printedA B♭ part, or transposition**Section tuning**Easier to match across a lineHarder**Price**$1,800–$2,700$2,900–$3,200 The staffing point is the decisive one for most school programs. A horn section of four cannot fill a mellophone line of ten, and the shortfall is made up with trumpet players, who can be on a mellophone in a week and on a marching horn in considerably longer than a season. Add that the mellophone is louder and cheaper and the choice makes itself. The marching horn keeps a place in programs with deep horn sections and directors who want the darker sound, and it is a genuinely better instrument for a horn player who intends to keep playing horn. If your band owns them, that is a reasonable thing to be glad about. ## What you actually buy The instrument belongs to the school. What is yours is the mouthpiece, and on this particular switch the mouthpiece is not a detail — it is the whole physical difference between the two instruments, and getting it wrong is what makes a horn player’s marching season miserable. ### A mellophone takes a trumpet-shank mouthpiece The receiver on a modern marching mellophone is trumpet-sized. A French horn mouthpiece will not go in it, and this catches out horn players who assume that an instrument reading their part will take their equipment. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) What fits is an object that looks like a contradiction: a rim about as wide as a trumpet’s on top of a cup as deep as a flugelhorn’s. The width is what makes the fingering-and-register side feel trumpet-like; the depth is what stops the instrument sounding shrill when ten of them are playing at competition volume. A plain trumpet mouthpiece will physically fit and will sound thin and bright, which is the most common mistake made here. The default mellophone mouthpiece ### King KME Marching Mellophone Mouthpiece - Trumpet shank - Deep mellophone cup - Conn-Selmer, King line - Ships in the KMP411 - ~$80 This is the mouthpiece Conn-Selmer puts in the case with its King KMP411 mellophone, which makes it a reference piece rather than a guess — a maker chose it as the match for an instrument it built. It is also one of the very few genuine mellophone mouthpieces sold on their own, which matters more than it should: trumpet 3C and 7C sets and plain French horn pieces are both routinely labelled mellophone. Coming off trumpet, the cup depth is the adjustment and it takes a fortnight. Coming off horn, the rim width is, and it takes longer. Neither is a reason to buy something else, because both are the mellophone rather than the mouthpiece. **Pros**- A maker’s own match for a current mellophone - Deep cup keeps the sound round at marching volume - Trumpet shank, so it seats with no adapter **Cons**- The deep cup takes adjusting to off trumpet - Wrong answer if you are switching back to horn mid-week — use an adapter instead Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xqQ9Xr) ### If you are playing horn the same week, use an adapter This is the situation the page is really for: marching band on Tuesday and Thursday, orchestra or concert band on Wednesday, and an embouchure being asked to do two different jobs on two different rim widths. That is a genuine way to lose a year of horn playing. An adapter is a short tapered sleeve that lets your own horn mouthpiece sit in the mellophone’s trumpet-sized receiver. Yamaha and Jupiter both include one with the instrument for exactly this reason, so check the case before buying anything — it is a small brass part that goes missing from school inventory long before the horn does. It is a compromise rather than a free lunch. A horn cup is deep enough on a mellophone to soften the top of the register and pull the pitch down, and the extra join is one more place for the taper to seat imperfectly. Set against relearning your embouchure twice a week, most horn teachers take that trade without much argument. For horn players marching a season ### Selmer 195M French Horn to Mellophone Adapter - Horn mouthpiece → mellophone receiver - Silver-plated brass - Knurled collar - About 3½″ long - ~$15 A plain tapered sleeve that takes your own horn mouthpiece and lets it seat in the mellophone’s trumpet-sized receiver. There is not much to one, which is the point — at around $15 it is the cheapest way to get through a marching season without asking your embouchure to learn a second rim width, and it means the mouthpiece you play horn on is the mouthpiece you play everything on. [Yamaha’s own mellophone adapter](https://amzn.to/4gkFN4f) is the exact part that ships in a YMP-204M case, and it runs about $49. Buy it if replacing the original with the identical component matters to you. It is not three times the adapter the Selmer is, and on a school horn nobody will be able to tell. **Pros**- One embouchure instead of two across the week - Keeps the mouthpiece your horn playing is built on - Costs a fraction of a second mouthpiece **Cons**- A horn cup drags the mellophone’s pitch down and softens the top - One more taper to seat, and a poor fit is audible Around $15[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gfTMrU) ### The book is the French horn book Because the mellophone is in F and reads the horn part, method books line up without any thought: buy the F horn edition and it works on either instrument. There is no separate mellophone book to look for, and no clef question of the kind that catches out baritone players. What you wantBuyPrice**School band method***Essential Elements for Band* Book 1 — French Horn~$10[Check price](https://amzn.to/3SA7XAk)**Scales and technique**Parès *Scales for French Horn, E♭ Alto or Mellophone*~$9[Check price](https://amzn.to/4zjwGJA) One last thing, and it catches horn players every year: the oil in your case is the wrong oil. A French horn has rotary valves and takes a thin rotor oil applied to the bearings and linkages. A mellophone has three pistons, and those want a piston valve oil — [Al Cass Fast](https://amzn.to/463Wigd), at about $7, is what most band rooms keep on the shelf. Rotor oil on a piston is too light to hold a seal, and the valves will feel sticky within a week. ## If you are buying an instrument Mostly you are not, and it is worth saying why. A marching mellophone runs $1,800 to $2,700 and a marching B♭ horn $2,900 to $3,200 — institutional prices, bought a dozen at a time by schools and corps and written off over a decade of students. A mellophone is also used three months a year and has no concert repertoire of its own, so owning one privately makes sense for almost nobody. The instrument a horn family should be thinking about buying is a horn. A single F horn is the standard starting point — lighter, simpler and cheaper than a double, and enough instrument for several years — and the usual route to one is a rental from a band dealer with credit toward a purchase. What that costs, at each level, is laid out in [how much a French horn costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/). ## FAQs ### What is the main difference between a mellophone and a French horn? Both are pitched in F and read the same written part, but the mellophone has a forward-facing bell, three piston valves worked with the right hand, and trumpet fingerings. A French horn points its bell backward, uses rotary valves under the left hand, and has the right hand inside the bell. The mellophone exists so that horn parts can be marched. ### Is a mellophone easier to play than a French horn? It is easier to hit the right note. The mellophone’s tubing is half the length of an F horn’s, so it plays low in its harmonic series where the partials are widely spaced, much like a trumpet. The horn plays high in its series where they are packed together and the lip has to choose between them. Tuning is the other way round — the mellophone will let you play a note slightly wrong without protest. ### Do a mellophone and a French horn read the same music? Yes. Both are in F and sound a perfect fifth below written pitch, so an F horn part can be played on a mellophone with nothing changed. The fingerings are different — the mellophone uses trumpet fingerings — but the printed page is the same, which is why method books for French horn work for mellophone players. ### Can I use my French horn mouthpiece on a mellophone? Only with an adapter. A marching mellophone’s receiver is trumpet-sized, so a horn mouthpiece will not seat in it directly. Yamaha and Jupiter both supply an adapter with the instrument, so look in the case first. Running your own horn mouthpiece through one is the usual solution for a player who is still playing horn during marching season, at the cost of a slightly flat and softer upper register. ### What is the difference between a mellophone and a marching French horn? The marching French horn is pitched in B♭ and takes a normal horn mouthpiece, so it keeps a horn player’s embouchure and roughly their fingerings, but it needs a transposed part. The mellophone is in F, reads the horn part unchanged, takes a trumpet-shank mouthpiece and uses trumpet fingerings. Both weigh about 3.5 lb. The mellophone is louder outdoors and cheaper, which is why most programs use it. ### Is the mellophone used in orchestras or concert band? No. There is no mellophone part in orchestral or concert band writing — that music is written for French horn. In practice a mellophone player moves to horn or trumpet when marching season ends, so choosing mellophone means choosing a second instrument for the rest of the year. ### Will playing mellophone hurt my French horn playing? The risk is the mouthpiece rather than the instrument. A mellophone rim is roughly trumpet-width against a horn rim about two thirds of that, and alternating between them across a week is what unsettles an embouchure. Playing your own horn mouthpiece through the mellophone’s adapter removes most of the problem. The other adjustment is the right hand, which comes out of the bell and takes some of your intonation habits with it. ### Which is heavier, a mellophone or a French horn? A concert double horn is heavier, at around 5.5 lb against the mellophone’s 3.5 lb — the latter being Yamaha’s own rating for the YMP-204M. The bigger difference is how the weight is carried: a horn rests on the leg or the body, while a mellophone is held out on the arms for the length of a show. A marching French horn also weighs 3.5 lb, so on the field there is no weight advantage either way. **Also Read:** - [Mellophone vs. Trumpet (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) - [Mellophone vs. Baritone: Which to Play](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) - [How Much Does a French Horn Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/) - [English Horn vs. French Horn](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-french-horn/) - [Brass Instruments: The Whole Family](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Mellophone vs. Trumpet: The Switch Every Marching Band Makes](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Mellophone vs. Trumpet: The Switch Every Marching Band Makes Almost nobody comes to this question cold. It gets asked in August, by a trumpet player who has been handed a mellophone for marching season and wants to know how much trouble they are in. The answer is unusual, and it is worth stating before anything else: the fingerings and the reading transfer for free, and your ear does not. If you want one answer### Same fingering chart, same clef, and a note a fourth lower than the one you are expecting A B♭ trumpet sounds a tone below what is written. An F mellophone sounds a fifth below. The valve pattern is identical — open is written C on both — so a trumpet player can be handed a mellophone part on the first day of band camp and play the right notes without learning anything. What comes out of the bell is a fourth below what your ear has spent years associating with those fingers, and that is the whole adjustment, along with a mouthpiece that is trumpet-width on top of a much deeper cup. **Fingerings:** identical **Key:** F vs B♭ **Bore:** .462″ vs .459″ **Bell:** 10″ vs 4⅞″ ## Table of Contents - [Mellophone vs. trumpet, side by side](#mellophone-vs-trumpet-side-by-side) - [The fingerings really are free](#the-fingerings-really-are-free) - [What is not free is your ear](#what-is-not-free-is-your-ear) - [The mouthpiece is the real work](#the-mouthpiece-is-the-real-work) - [The two instruments are closer in the middle than they look](#the-two-instruments-are-closer-in-the-middle-than-they-look) - [Intonation, and why both makers built a handle onto the slide](#intonation-and-why-both-makers-built-a-handle-onto-the-slide) - [Which one should you own?](#which-one-should-you-own) - [The trumpet worth owning at the bottom of the range](#the-trumpet-worth-owning-at-the-bottom-of-the-range) - [If you are the one buying the mellophone](#if-you-are-the-one-buying-the-mellophone) - [Two small things that make the first fortnight easier](#two-small-things-that-make-the-first-fortnight-easier) - [Going back to trumpet in November](#going-back-to-trumpet-in-november) - [So which is it](#so-which-is-it) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Mellophone vs. trumpet, side by side MellophoneTrumpet**Key**FB♭**Sounds**A fifth below writtenA tone below written**Part it reads**The French horn part, treble clefIts own, treble clef**Fingerings**The same three-piston chart on both**Bore**.462″ Yamaha, .468″ King.459″ on the school standard**Bell**10″123 mm (4⅞″)**Playing weight**About 3.5 lb, Yamaha’s own figureLighter, but no school-market maker publishes a figure**Mouthpiece**Trumpet shank, deep V cupTrumpet shank, shallow bowl cup**Where it plays**Marching band and drum corps, and nowhere elseEverything**Roughly**$1,200–2,500 new$250 budget, ~$890 school standard ## The fingerings really are free Both instruments have three piston valves and both have their open harmonic series starting on a written C. Every combination means the same written note on one as on the other. Written G is open, written F is first valve, written low D is first and third — the chart a trumpet player learned in sixth grade is the chart, unchanged. There is no transposing to do in your head and no second fingering system to memorize. The reading is free for the same reason but by a different route. Yamaha states the convention plainly in its own instrument guide: horn music is written in the key of F. A mellophone is in F, so it takes the horn part off the stand and plays it as written. That is why programs put mellophones on the field in the first place — the horn book already exists, and the players reading it can be trumpet players. ## What is not free is your ear Put the valves down on a trumpet and the note that comes out is a tone below the one on the page. Do exactly the same thing on a mellophone and it is a fifth below. So the same fingers, on the same written note, produce a pitch a fourth lower than the one you have spent years expecting. On paper this changes nothing, because the part was written for the instrument and you are reading it correctly. In practice it undoes three habits at once. Playing by ear stops working. Tuning to a note somebody calls out stops working, because concert B♭ is not your written C any more — it is your written F. And the internal pitch map that lets a good trumpet player hear a phrase and find it is now wrong by a consistent interval, which is more disorienting than being wrong at random. It goes away, and the honest timescale is a couple of weeks of playing rather than a season. The fix is to stop trying to convert and start reading — the part in front of you is right, and the moment you accept that the fingers are correct and the ear is out of date, the problem is over. Trying to transpose in your head is what makes it last until October. ## The mouthpiece is the real work A marching mellophone takes a mouthpiece with a trumpet-sized shank and a trumpet-width rim, sitting on top of a cup far deeper than any trumpet mouthpiece — Yamaha describes its own mellophone piece as a relatively large inner rim matched to a V-shaped cup. The width is why it feels familiar. The depth is why the instrument sounds round rather than shrill with ten of them playing at competition volume. Two mistakes follow from that, and they are the ones worth naming. The first is using your trumpet mouthpiece. It will go in, and it will feel fine for a minute, and it will sound thin and bright and sit badly under a horn line for the rest of the season. A shallow bowl on an instrument voiced around a deep V is not a preference, it is the wrong part. The second is buying a French horn mouthpiece because somebody said a mellophone is a marching horn. A horn mouthpiece is a narrow funnel and it will not seat in a mellophone at all without an adapter — Yamaha, Selmer and Faxx all sell one, and every one of them is titled French horn *to* mellophone, which tells you which direction the mismatch runs. Coming off trumpet you do not want that adapter. It exists so that a horn player who is also playing horn midweek can keep one embouchure; it is the wrong purchase for a trumpet player, and it will cost you the top of your range. One thing to watch when you go looking. The word mellophone gets printed on a lot of mouthpieces that are not mellophone mouthpieces — trumpet 3C and 7C sets, and plain French horn pieces, are both routinely sold under it. A real one names a mellophone model number, and there are not many of them. The one thing you should actually buy ### King KME Marching Mellophone Mouthpiece - Trumpet shank - Deep mellophone cup - Conn-Selmer, King line - Ships in the KMP411 - ~$80 This is the mouthpiece Conn-Selmer puts in the case with its King KMP411 mellophone, which makes it a reference piece rather than a guess — a maker chose it as the match for an instrument they built. It is also one of the very few genuine mellophone mouthpieces you can buy on its own without ending up with a trumpet piece wearing the word. Coming off trumpet, the cup depth is the entire adjustment. Give it a fortnight of playing before you decide anything about it: the first three days feel like the top of your range has gone, and then it comes back and the sound is the one the arranger wrote for. **Pros**- A maker’s own match for a current mellophone - Trumpet shank, so it seats properly with no adapter - Deep cup keeps the section round at marching volume - The one personal item on an instrument the school owns **Cons**- The deep cup costs you a few notes at the top for a fortnight - More than a trumpet mouthpiece of the same rim size - Wrong answer if you are also playing French horn midweek Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ydTCJ2) ## The two instruments are closer in the middle than they look The standard line is that the trumpet is cylindrical and bright and the mellophone is conical and mellow, which is true about the overall shape and misleading about how the two feel to play. Look at the number the makers publish for the tubing at the valves. Yamaha bores the YTR-2330 trumpet at ML 11.65 mm, or .459″, and their YMP-204M mellophone at .462″. Conn-Selmer’s King KMP411 mellophone is .468″. Eastman and Blessing both build theirs at .462″. Three to nine thousandths of an inch. A trumpet player stepping up to Jean Paul’s TR-430 goes from .459″ to .465″ and stays on the trumpet. So the air at the valves is essentially the air you know, and the reason a mellophone takes so much more of it is not the bore — it is the tube being a third longer and opening into a ten-inch bell, and it is that deep mouthpiece cup, which is where most of the resistance you are used to went. That is why the characteristic first-week mistake is overblowing. The horn takes the air without pushing back, so a trumpet player who is used to leaning on a note leans and goes sharp. Playing quieter than feels right is usually the fix, and it is worth knowing before the first tuning note rather than after the first sectional. ## Intonation, and why both makers built a handle onto the slide Valves are an approximation on every brass instrument. Yamaha says so about its own trumpets: pressing the valves “does not necessarily produce the right note”, and the player has to correct with their mouth or the slides. A trumpet player already does this without noticing — low D and C♯ are sharp on every trumpet ever built, which is what the third valve ring is for. On a mellophone the same problem is larger and the correction is less automatic, and you can read that straight off what the makers thought worth engineering. Yamaha rewrote the first and third valve slide lengths on the 204M specifically to improve intonation. Conn-Selmer fits the KMP411 with a saddle on the first valve slide for fine-tuning and notches the main tuning slide. Two makers, two different mechanisms, both aimed at the same thing. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The practical version for a trumpet player: find the first valve slide with your left hand early, and treat it the way you treat the third valve ring on a trumpet — something you use in the middle of a phrase, not something you set at the start of a show. The notes that need it will announce themselves within a week. ## Which one should you own? For nearly everybody this is not a real choice, and it is worth saying plainly rather than dressed up as a comparison. The trumpet is the instrument you own. The mellophone is the instrument the program owns and hands you in August, and there is a straightforward reason for that: a school-standard trumpet is around $890 and a marching mellophone from a maker with a repair route behind it starts around $1,200 and runs past $2,400. It is two to three times the money for an instrument that plays for three months of the year and has no part written for it the rest of the time. So the honest answer to “which should I buy” is the trumpet, every time, unless you are equipping a program. It goes to concert band in December, it goes to jazz band, it holds its value, and every repair shop in the country has the parts. Then buy your own mellophone mouthpiece, because that is the piece of the school’s mellophone that is genuinely yours and the piece that decides how the thing sounds. ### The trumpet worth owning at the bottom of the range The trumpet to own ### Jean Paul TR-330 Student B♭ Trumpet - B♭, medium bore - Two-piece yellow brass bell - Stainless steel valves - 7C mouthpiece and case - ~$250 The reason to name this one rather than something cheaper is not the tone, it is the parts list. Jean Paul publishes its whole catalogue with prices — a main tuning slide about $25, a second valve slide $50, a valve rebuild kit $16 — so a repair tech can order the piece rather than fabricate it. Below about $250 that stops being true, and a clean and service costs $100 to $160 whatever the instrument cost. It plays like a $250 trumpet. It is stuffier above the stave than the school-standard horns and a player still going in four years will want out of it, which is the correct arc for a first instrument rather than a complaint. **Pros**- Spare parts published and sold individually - Play-tested in the US before shipping - Warranty to the original buyer - A quarter the price of the school standard **Cons**- One-year warranty, the shortest of the school-market makers - Stuffy in the upper register next to a Yamaha or a Bach - Outgrown within a few years by anyone who sticks with it Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yd6LC6) ### If you are the one buying the mellophone The field standard ### Yamaha YMP-204M Marching Mellophone - Key of F, .462″ bore - 10″ yellow brass bell - Gold brass leadpipe - About 3.5 lb - ~$2,460 lacquer This is the mellophone most American programs standardize on, and Yamaha is not shy about why — it cites the Cadets among the corps using it. The 204M is the generation where they reworked the bracing and moved the balance toward the hands, then rewrote the first and third valve slide lengths to fix the intonation the instrument is known for. It ships with the MP-14F4 mouthpiece, a case and a mouthpiece adapter for anyone coming from horn. At two and a half times a school-standard trumpet it is a program purchase rather than a student one, and it is priced as an instrument that will be issued to a different player every year for a decade. The silver-plated 204MS is about $250 more and changes nothing mechanical. **Pros**- The model most directors and repair shops already know - Slide lengths reworked specifically for intonation - Balance shifted toward the hands, which matters over a nine-minute show - Mouthpiece, case and horn adapter included **Cons**- Two to three times a school-standard trumpet - Nothing to play on it once marching season ends - John Packer and Eastman build one for a good deal less Around $2,460[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4lBbhVn) ## Two small things that make the first fortnight easier The mellophone reads the F horn part, so an F horn method book is a mellophone method book. The Rubank is the one that says so on its own cover rather than leaving you to work it out. WhatWhy it earns its placeRoughly **Rubank Elementary Method — French Horn in F or E♭ and Mellophone** Rubank Educational Library No. 37, Skornicka. The cover reads “French Horn, E♭ Alto or Mellophone”, so this is not an F horn book being repurposed. It is graded studies in the key the instrument actually reads, which is the fastest way to stop converting in your head. ~$9 [Check price](https://amzn.to/4wZnRlW) **Al Cass Fast valve oil** A school mellophone comes out of the closet in August after nine months of nothing, and its pistons will be slower than the ones on the trumpet you have been playing all year. Oil is a dollar-a-month problem that reads as a broken instrument. ~$7 [Check price](https://amzn.to/3T64dXx) ## Going back to trumpet in November This is the part of the switch nobody warns you about, and it is a smaller problem than it feels like in week one. Three months on a deeper cup with a similar rim does not rebuild your embouchure — the rim is what your face is set to, and that has barely moved. What you lose is a little of the top and some of the fine control that comes from resistance, and both come back inside a couple of weeks of normal trumpet practice. The ear resets faster than that, oddly, because it is going back to the map it had for years rather than learning a new one. What is genuinely worth avoiding is the split week — mellophone Tuesday, trumpet Wednesday, back to mellophone Thursday, all season. If your schedule is going to look like that, say so to your director in August rather than in October. ## So which is it If you have been handed a mellophone: take it, and stop worrying. Your fingers and your reading are already right and the ear catches up in a fortnight. Buy the mouthpiece, leave your trumpet piece in its case, and use the first valve slide. If you are choosing which to own: the trumpet, unless you are buying for a program. It plays all year, it costs a fraction as much, and the mellophone will be waiting in the equipment room in August either way. ## FAQs ### Is the mellophone the same as a trumpet? No. It uses the same three-valve fingering chart and its bore is within a few thousandths of an inch of a student trumpet’s, but it is pitched in F rather than B♭, its bell is 10″ against the trumpet’s 4⅞″, and it takes a much deeper mouthpiece. It reads the French horn part and exists for marching band and drum corps. ### Can a trumpet player play the mellophone? Yes, and with less relearning than any other switch in the brass section. The fingerings are identical and the part is in treble clef. The two adjustments are a deeper mouthpiece cup and the fact that the same fingering sounds a fourth lower than it does on trumpet, which unsettles your ear for a couple of weeks and nothing else. ### Do a mellophone and a trumpet use the same fingerings? Yes, exactly. Both have three pistons and both have an open series starting on written C, so every valve combination means the same written note on either instrument. What differs is the pitch that written note produces: a fifth below on the mellophone, a tone below on the trumpet. ### Can I use my trumpet mouthpiece on a mellophone? It will fit, because a marching mellophone takes a trumpet shank, and it is still the wrong part. A trumpet mouthpiece has a shallow bowl cup where the mellophone was voiced around a deep V, and the result is thin and bright under a horn line. A French horn mouthpiece is the opposite problem — it will not seat at all without an adapter. ### Is a mellophone harder to play than a trumpet? Harder to play in tune, easier to get a sound out of. It takes more air for less resistance, so a trumpet player’s instinct to lean on a note pushes the pitch sharp. Both Yamaha and Conn-Selmer build intonation adjusters into their mellophones — reworked slide lengths on one, a first valve slide saddle on the other — which tells you where the difficulty is. ### Will playing mellophone ruin my trumpet playing? No. The rim is close to a trumpet’s, which is the part your embouchure is set to, so a marching season costs you a little at the top of the range and some fine control, and both return within a couple of weeks. Alternating between the two several times a week all season is harder on a player than doing one for three months. ### How much does a marching mellophone cost? From about $1,200 for a John Packer or an Eastman up to about $2,460 for the Yamaha YMP-204M that most American programs standardize on, with King and Blessing in between. That is two to three times a school-standard trumpet, which is why mellophones are almost always program property rather than student purchases. **Also Read:** - [Mellophone vs. French Horn (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) - [Mellophone vs. Baritone: Which to Play](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) - [Trumpet Fingering Chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) - [How Much Does a Trumpet Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) - [Trumpet Brands to Avoid](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/) - [Brass Instruments: The Whole Family](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) **Categories:** Brass Comparisons, Mellophone, Trumpet --- ### [English Horn vs. French Horn: Two Wrong Names and One Real Connection](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-french-horn/) **Published:** April 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› English Horn vs. French Horn: Two Wrong Names and One Real Connection One of these is a coil of brass you buzz your lips into. The other is a straight wooden tube with two shaved pieces of cane tied to a bent metal tube at the top. They are not related, they sit on opposite sides of the stage, and nobody who plays one plays the other. The confusion is entirely the fault of the names, and both names are wrong. The French horn is not French in any sense its makers recognize, and its own professional body recommended dropping the word in 1971. The English horn is neither English nor a horn — it is the alto member of the oboe family. What the two instruments genuinely share is one thing, and it is the reason the mix-up survives in band rooms rather than only in trivia. The short answer### The French horn is brass and the English horn is a woodwind. They share exactly one thing: both are in F, and both sound a perfect fifth below what is written Look at how the sound starts. Lips buzzing into a cup mouthpiece on a coiled brass tube is a French horn. Two pieces of cane vibrating against each other on the end of a curved metal crook, feeding a straight black tube with a bulb on the bottom, is an English horn. Everything else follows from that. **French horn:** brass, lip-blown, ~12 ft of tubing **English horn:** woodwind, double reed, alto oboe **Both:** pitched in F, sound a fifth lower than written **Start on:** the horn — nobody makes a student English horn ## Table of Contents - [Telling them apart in one look](#telling-them-apart-in-one-look) - [The one thing they actually share](#the-one-thing-they-actually-share) - [Why neither name means anything](#why-neither-name-means-anything) - [The horn is not French, and the players have said so officially](#the-horn-is-not-french-and-the-players-have-said-so-officially) - [The English horn is not English, and nobody is certain why it is called that](#the-english-horn-is-not-english-and-nobody-is-certain-why-it-is-called-that) - [Different families, because the sound starts differently](#different-families-because-the-sound-starts-differently) - [Why the English horn is a fifth longer, and a fifth of the reason it sounds different](#why-the-english-horn-is-a-fifth-longer-and-a-fifth-of-the-reason-it-sounds-different) - [Which one you can actually start on](#which-one-you-can-actually-start-on) - [Which is harder](#which-is-harder) - [What to buy for either one](#what-to-buy-for-either-one) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [Is the English horn just a big oboe?](#is-the-english-horn-just-a-big-oboe) - [Do French horn players double on English horn?](#do-french-horn-players-double-on-english-horn) - [Which one is lower?](#which-one-is-lower) - [Why is a brass instrument in the woodwind quintet?](#why-is-a-brass-instrument-in-the-woodwind-quintet) - [What is the bulb on the end of an English horn for?](#what-is-the-bulb-on-the-end-of-an-english-horn-for) - [Where to go next](#where-to-go-next) ## Telling them apart in one look Two details settle it from across a concert hall. The French horn player’s right hand disappears inside the bell, which no other brass player does. The English horn player’s instrument ends in a bulb rather than a flare, and the reed arrives on a curved metal tube bent back toward the mouth. French hornEnglish horn**Family**BrassWoodwind — the oboe family**How the sound starts**Your lips buzzing in a cup mouthpieceTwo shaved pieces of cane beating against each other**Body**Yellow brass, sometimes gold brass or nickel silverGrenadilla; resin on the cheaper models**Shape**Coiled, bell facing backward and to the rightStraight tube, bulb bell, curved metal crook at the top**Right hand**Inside the bellOn the keys, like any woodwind**Pitched in**FF**Sounds**A perfect fifth below writtenA perfect fifth below written**Tube length**360 cm on the F side, 270 cm on the B♭ sideHalf again an oboe’s**Weight**3.8 lb for a student single, 6 lb for a full doubleNot published — the makers give keywork, not dimensions**Where it sits**Brass, behind the woodwindsWoodwinds, next to the oboes**Valves or keys**Three rotors on a single, four on a doubleConservatory keywork, five trill keys ## The one thing they actually share Both instruments are in F, and both sound a perfect fifth lower than the note on the page. Write a C for either one and an F comes out. That is not a coincidence dressed up as a connection — it is a real, load-bearing similarity, and it is why the two get muddled by people who read music rather than by people who look at instruments. Yamaha states both halves of it plainly. Horn music, the company says, “is written in the key of F,” which is why a player on the B♭ side of a double horn transposes. And the cor anglais, on the oboe side of the same guide, is “the F woodwind … pitched a perfect fifth lower” than the C oboe. A part headed *in F* on a stand tells you the transposition and nothing at all about the instrument. The similarity stops at the transposition. The horn has, in Yamaha’s words, “the widest tonal range of all brass instruments,” and it reaches well below anything an English horn can produce. The old idea that a horn could cover an English horn part in an emergency does not survive contact with either range or either timbre. ## Why neither name means anything ### The horn is not French, and the players have said so officially The instrument descends from the *trompe de chasse*, the big hooped hunting horn that took shape in France around 1650 and spread across Europe from the French court. English speakers called it the French horn to separate it from the plainer local hunting horns, and the label stuck to an instrument that has since been built almost entirely in Germany and Austria. Yamaha traces the word itself no further than the animal: German *Horn*, French *cor*, Italian *corno*, all of them originally meaning the horn of a beast, because that is what the first ones were. There is no nationality in the instrument’s own vocabulary. The players settled the question among themselves. At its first general meeting, on 15 June 1971 in Tallahassee, the International Horn Society resolved that “HORN be recognized as the correct name for our instrument in the English language.” Fifty-odd years later the resolution has largely won in Europe and largely lost in American school programs, which is why every catalog still says French horn and every player says horn. ### The English horn is not English, and nobody is certain why it is called that *Cor anglais* is simply French for English horn, so the two names are the same claim in two languages, and both are false. The instrument came together in central Europe around 1720, most likely in Silesia, by putting a bulb bell on the curved *oboe da caccia*. Two explanations circulate for the “English” part, and they are not equally good. - **Angelic, misread as English.** The curved *oboe da caccia* looked like the horns angels are shown playing in medieval religious painting, and in German-speaking Europe it picked up the name *engellisches Horn*. Middle High German *engellisch* meant both angelic and English. Translate the wrong sense and you get English horn. - **Angled, misspelled as English.** The other story is that *cor anglais* is a corruption of *cor anglé*, angled horn, after the instrument’s bend. It is the tidier story and the weaker one: *anglé* is not the ordinary French word for angled, and the name would have had to travel through a language the instrument did not come from. The “horn” half is easier. Early tenor and alto oboes were curved and leather-covered, and looked far more like a hunting horn than like the straight oboe that eventually replaced them. That shape is gone; the name is not. ## Different families, because the sound starts differently Instrument families are not sorted by material, whatever the words brass and woodwind suggest. They are sorted by what vibrates first. Yamaha’s own classification puts it in one line: clarinets and saxophones are single reeds, flutes and recorders are air reeds, and “trumpets, horns, and so forth” are *lip reeds*. The oboe and the English horn are double reeds, and Yamaha is explicit that the oboe “is a cousin of the bassoon, not of the flute or clarinet.” So the French horn’s vibrating element is the player. The English horn’s is a consumable made of cane, and that difference runs all the way down to what each instrument costs to keep. A horn has no reeds, no pads and no strings; an English horn is fed by an object that professional players usually make themselves, because finished reeds are rarely the thickness or shape they want. Yamaha puts a reed’s working life at “somewhere between 10 minutes and a week.” There is one place the two worlds genuinely touch, and it is chamber music. The standard woodwind quintet is flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn — four woodwinds and a brass instrument. Yamaha’s explanation is historical rather than acoustic: wind ensembles took shape before anyone drew a firm line between woodwind and brass, the trumpet belonged to the court and the trombone to the church, and “the horn has been the only brass instrument within reach of the common people.” An oboist and a horn player have been sharing a music stand for two centuries. They are still not playing related instruments. ## Why the English horn is a fifth longer, and a fifth of the reason it sounds different The English horn is an oboe scaled up by a fixed ratio, and Yamaha publishes the arithmetic. Doubling a pipe drops it an octave, so dropping a perfect fifth needs a pipe 1.5 times as long. A second design law says the cross-sectional area scales with the length, which makes the bore radius the square root of 1.5 — about 1.22 times — that of an oboe. An oboe’s bore is roughly 4 mm across at the top. An English horn’s is nearer 5 mm. That extra length is why the reed cannot sit directly in the instrument. It goes on a *bocal* or crook, a curved metal tube that both bridges the gap and angles the reed back to a mouth that is not directly above the tone holes. The crook is a real component with a real price: Howarth’s own crooks run from about £235 for a standard one to £375 gold-plated, and they come in different lengths and bend angles — 15 and 20 degrees — so the choice changes both how the instrument sits in tune and where the reed meets the mouth. Players own several. The bulb bell gets more credit than it deserves. Yamaha’s own guide says the muffled, covered tone is usually put down to the egg shape when in fact “there is a greater relationship with the different tapering” of the bore. The bulb is part of it. The taper is more of it. The horn goes the other way. Its F side holds 360 cm of tubing — close to twelve feet — and its B♭ side 270 cm, and a double horn carries both with a thumb valve to switch. That is why a horn is a coil rather than a tube, and why it weighs six pounds where a woodwind weighs ounces. ## Which one you can actually start on This is the part that decides the question for anyone asking it as a player rather than as a listener, and the makers answer it without being asked. Fox, in Indiana, builds both. Its oboe catalog is split into **student, intermediate and professional** models — ten of them. Its English horn catalog is split into **intermediate and professional** — five, and no student tier at all. The company that would sell you a beginner English horn if one existed does not list one. Howarth, in London, builds the same two instruments and publishes a full price list. Its cheapest new oboe is the Junior at about £1,595. Its cheapest new cor anglais is the S40C at about £8,395, described in the maker’s own words as a “graduate model … suitable for advanced students and professionals alike.” There is no junior cor anglais and nothing in the line below that price. The professional instruments from Lorée, Marigaux, Buffet Crampon, Mönnig and Fox list between about £10,000 and £12,800. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) And Yamaha, which builds more woodwinds than anyone, lists fifteen oboe models in the United States and not one English horn. Set that against the horn, where the entry point is a real thing: about $700 buys a scaled-down single from a maker with a published warranty, a price list and a repair route, and about $1,400 buys the full-size version. [What a French horn costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/) goes through the whole ladder. So the honest answer to “which should I learn” is that only one of them is a starting instrument. Nobody begins on an English horn. Oboists take it up after the oboe, usually because an orchestra needs the part covered, and Yamaha is careful to say that it is not simply a bigger oboe — the taper differs, the tone is “more nasal and softer,” and “it can be considered a separate instrument with a different feel.” ## Which is harder Both are hard, and they are hard at different points, which is worth knowing before choosing. On the horn the difficulty is landing the note. The instrument plays high in its harmonic series, where the available notes sit close together, and a lip that is slightly off finds the wrong one. Yamaha’s own guide tells a joke against the instrument — a conductor asks a substituting trombonist to “play slightly out of tune, like a horn” — and then says what the joke means: “this shows how often horns are out of tune and how hard they are to play well.” A maker publishing that about its own product is not marketing. On the oboe side the difficulty is the reed, and it never goes away. Yamaha calls the oboe “one of the more difficult woodwind instruments to play,” notes that “it first takes some time until the player can even produce a sound,” and adds the detail that decides it: the instrument’s pitch cannot be adjusted by pulling a joint the way a clarinet’s barrel or a flute’s headjoint can. There is nothing to pull. The reed is the tuning slide, so a player who cannot make or adjust reeds is at the mercy of whatever arrives in the mail. The consolation on the oboe side is physical. Against its reputation as an instrument for big lungs, the roughly 4 mm bore means the player’s problem is an excess of breath rather than a shortage, and Yamaha states outright that “there is no handicap for people with small bodies” and that with compact keys “people with small hands even have an advantage.” The horn is the opposite: six pounds held out at arm’s length for a rehearsal is why three-quarter-size horns exist. ## What to buy for either one Four things, and which ones apply depends entirely on which side of the stage you are on. The one of the two you can start on ### John Packer JP165 Single F French Horn - Single F horn, three rotary valves - Yellow brass bell, 310 mm - Full size, not a scaled-down child’s wrap - Reads horn-in-F music with no transposition - 2-year warranty through an authorized dealer - Lists at $1,782; sells for around $1,400 F is the key horn music is written in, and a single F horn is the version of the instrument with nothing extra to learn: three rotors, one set of tubing, and the note on the page is the note you finger. The trade is that F is the harder side to pitch accurately in the upper register, which is the whole reason double horns exist — but a double is a four-valve instrument at roughly twice the money, and it is not where anyone begins. The reason to name this maker rather than a cheaper marketplace horn is that it publishes a price list, a warranty and a service route, and this sells for nearly $400 under its own $1,782 list. Under $1,000 the horn market is full of unbranded instruments with no company behind them, and a rotary valve is the one part of a brass instrument that a bad repair kills permanently. **Pros**- Full-size instrument from a maker publishing a warranty, a list price and spare parts - F is the written key, so nothing has to be transposed - Sells for nearly $400 under the maker’s own published list - Roughly half what a school-brand single costs for the same three valves **Cons**- No B♭ side, so the high register stays insecure - A full-size horn is a lot of instrument for a player under about twelve - Warranty runs to the original buyer only and excludes finish and lacquer - A double horn is where most players end up, so this is a stage rather than a destination Around $1,400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UoVoIM) Because the right hand lives in the bell ### Protec L234 Leather French Horn Hand Guard - Leather outer, velvet backing, non-porous lining - Adjustable hook-and-loop strap - Fits most double horns - Around $20 The horn is the only brass instrument played with a hand inside the bell, and that hand is not just holding the thing up — it is part of the tuning. Yamaha calls it “the biggest mystery of the horn” and traces it to hand-stopping, the eighteenth-century technique of adjusting pitch by closing off the bell to varying degrees, which is still notated and still used. The practical consequence is that skin sits against lacquered brass for hours a week. Sweat and hand acid take the lacquer off the inside of the bell throat first, and a guard is a twenty-dollar answer to a re-lacquer that costs several hundred. It is the single cheapest thing on this page and the one most horn players own. **Pros**- Protects the part of the bell that wears first - Adjustable, so it fits a growing player - Costs a fraction of a re-lacquer **Cons**- Sized for double horns, so it can sit loose on a small single - Changes the feel of the hand position slightly, which takes a week to get used to Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gGFHUJ) The English horn’s actual running cost ### Jones JR301AMS Artist Model English Horn Reed, Medium Soft - Cane double reed, wound onto a brass staple - Artist model, machine-profiled and hand-finished - Medium soft — the easier strength to blow - Around $25 each This is the part of an English horn that decides whether it plays. A double reed is a consumable with a working life measured in hours, and it is also the instrument’s tuning mechanism, because there is no barrel or headjoint to pull. Buy the wrong strength and the instrument feels broken. Medium soft is the sensible default for anyone arriving from the oboe or coming back after a break; harder reeds give more control and cost more air. Professional players end up making their own, which is why the maker catalogs sell cane, gouging machines and shaper tips alongside the finished article. Getting there takes years, and in the meantime a stock of three or four working reeds is the difference between an instrument and an ornament. **Pros**- Consistent enough between examples to be a fair baseline - Medium soft is the forgiving strength for a doubler - Cheap enough to keep several in rotation, which is how the instrument is meant to be played **Cons**- A commercial reed is a compromise, and advanced players will want to adjust it - Lifespan is short by the standards of any other instrument’s consumables - Strength is personal — medium soft suits most people arriving from the oboe, not all Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i50dRi) Because it is half again the length of an oboe ### Neotech C.E.O. Comfort Strap - Neoprene neck pad, fully adjustable - Coated metal hook, or a polyurethane tab for a thumb rest with no ring - Junior, Regular and X-Long lengths - Made in the USA - Around $20 An oboe is light enough to hang off a right thumb. An English horn, with half again the tube and a metal crook on top, is not, and the thumb is where players feel it first. Neotech’s own copy names clarinet, English horn and oboe players as the people it is for, and offers the thumb-rest tab precisely because many instruments have no strap ring to hook onto. It sells for a couple of dollars under the maker’s published list price, which is not always true of accessories at this end of the market. Get the length right — Regular suits most adults, X-Long anyone tall or playing seated at a low music stand. **Pros**- Takes the instrument’s weight off the right thumb, which is the joint that complains - Two attachment options, so it works on instruments with no strap ring - Sells under the maker’s own list price **Cons**- Three lengths, so ordering the wrong one means sending it back - A neck strap is a compromise — players who spend hours on the instrument move to a floor peg Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4chycSP) **For a child under twelve:** [John Packer JP161 single B♭](https://amzn.to/4xqMPeV), a small-wrap horn listing at $850 and selling around $700 **Reading the part:** [Essential Elements F Horn Book 1](https://amzn.to/3T0UlhI), about $10 ## Common questions ### Is the English horn just a big oboe? Close, and the makers resist the shorthand. It is the alto of the oboe family, an F instrument a perfect fifth below the C oboe, built to the same 1.5-to-1 scaling law. But the taper differs, the bulb bell changes the tone, and Yamaha says the result “can be considered a separate instrument with a different feel.” [English horn vs. oboe](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-oboe/) takes that comparison further. ### Do French horn players double on English horn? No. The instruments have nothing in common mechanically, and the embouchures are opposites — one buzzes, the other controls a cane reed between the lips. English horn parts are covered by oboists, and horn players double on the Wagner tuba, which despite its name is played and fingered like a horn. ### Which one is lower? The French horn, comfortably, and it is also the wider-ranging of the two — Yamaha calls it the brass instrument with “the widest tonal range.” It is not, however, the lowest brass instrument in an orchestra; trombones and tubas sit well below it. ### Why is a brass instrument in the woodwind quintet? History rather than acoustics. Wind ensembles formed before the woodwind and brass sections were firmly separated, and the horn was the brass instrument ordinary players had access to while the trumpet belonged to courts and the trombone to churches. The name of the ensemble stuck after the categories hardened. ### What is the bulb on the end of an English horn for? It is part of what produces the covered, slightly nasal tone the instrument is known for, but a smaller part than its shape suggests. Yamaha attributes more of that character to the way the bore tapers along its length than to the bell. ## Where to go next - [How much a French horn costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/) — the full ladder, and what a workshop charges - [Mellophone vs. French horn](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) — the marching-band instrument that plays the same part - [English horn vs. oboe](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-oboe/) — the comparison that matters if you already play one - [Oboe vs. clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/) — double reed against single, and which is harder - [Brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) and [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) — the two families in full **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Concert vs Tenor Ukulele: What the Extra Two Inches Actually Change](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Ukulele Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ukulele-comparisons/ "Ukulele Comparisons")› Concert vs Tenor Ukulele: What the Extra Two Inches Actually Change A concert ukulele has a scale length of about 15 inches and is roughly 24 inches of instrument. A tenor is 17 inches of scale and about 26 inches overall. The tuning is the same, the chord shapes are the same, both carry eighteen frets, and at the two makers who build the identical instrument in both sizes the price is the same or within twenty dollars. Córdoba and Kala both publish full dimensions for their own matched pairs, which makes this an unusually settleable argument. Two things genuinely change between the sizes: the frets move about 15 percent further apart, and the body gets roughly half again as big. Almost everything else that gets listed as a difference — the neck, the fret count, the nut width, the price — does not reliably change at all. If you want one answer### Tenor, if you are an adult and this is the only ukulele you will own The frets are about 15 percent further apart, which is the fix if your fingers keep landing on two at once, and it is the only size a wound low G string works properly on. The Córdoba 15TM is the one to beat: mahogany, Aquila strings fitted at the factory, and an inch-and-a-half nut that is the widest string spacing you will find near this money. Buy the concert instead if you want something lighter to hold, brighter in tone, or you are buying for a child. Around $130 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gvBqVr) **The matching concert:** Córdoba 15CM — same instrument, same money **Everything in the box:** Kala KA-15C or KA-15T — around $115 either size **Small hands or a child:** Concert, without hesitating **Want a bass note:** Tenor, and buy a low-G set with it ## Side by side ConcertTenor**Scale length**14¾–15″17″**Overall length**23–24¼”About 26″**Frets to the body**1414**Frets in total**1818**Nut width**1⅜” (1.39″ at Kala)The same, unless the model says otherwise**Neck thickness**17mm at the 1st fret, 20mm at the 9thIdentical — 17mm and 20mm**Body depth**2.37″ — the same as a soprano3.12″**Lower bout**8¼”9¼”**Standard tuning**gCEAgCEA**Chord shapes**IdenticalIdentical — every chart transfers**Total string tension**About 33 lbAbout 44 lb**Factory low-G sets**None from D’AddarioTwo from D’Addario, plus Aquila’s 15U**Voice**Brighter, quicker decayDeeper, more sustain**What you actually pay**~$85–130~$110–130 ## Two and a quarter inches of scale, and where they go Córdoba’s concert scale is 375mm — 14¾ inches — and their tenor is 432mm, or 17. Kala publishes 14.875 and 16.968 for the same two sizes. Since both instruments lay eighteen frets over that scale, every fret on the tenor sits about 15 percent further from its neighbor. Over the first five frets, where beginners spend all their time, that adds a little over half an inch of room for the fretting hand. Half an inch spread across five frets sounds like nothing and is not. It is roughly the difference between a fingertip landing cleanly behind a fret and landing on top of it, which is the single most common reason an adult beginner’s chords buzz. If you have already tried a soprano or a concert and found your fingers crowding each other, the tenor is the specific fix for that problem, and no amount of practice on a smaller instrument replaces it. What the extra scale does not buy you is more instrument to play. Both sizes carry eighteen frets and both join the body at the fourteenth, so the tenor gives you the same notes with more space between them. It also does not make the neck bigger in your hand: Córdoba’s neck is 17mm thick at the first fret and 20mm at the ninth on the soprano, the concert and the tenor alike. The hand that wraps around the back cannot tell the sizes apart. ## The concert is a soprano with a longer neck. The tenor is a bigger box Kala publishes every dimension of the KA-15 range, and read across the four sizes it says something the size charts do not. Their soprano and their concert have the *same body depth* — 2.367 inches, to the thousandth. The concert’s body is an inch and a quarter wider across the lower bout and half an inch longer, but front to back it is a soprano. Almost all of the three extra inches of instrument is neck. The tenor is where the box changes. It is 3.121 inches deep — a third more than either of the smaller sizes — an inch wider across the lower bout at 9¼, and a little over half an inch longer in the body. Multiply those three together and the tenor is holding roughly half again as much air as the concert. That is the honest explanation for the difference in voice, and it is a better one than scale length. A bigger, deeper box resonates lower and holds a note longer, which is why a tenor sounds warm and sustained where a concert sounds bright and quick. It is also why the step from soprano to concert changes the *feel* far more than the sound, while the step from concert to tenor changes both. ## A third more tension, and what it does to the sound Longer strings at the same pitch have to be pulled tighter, and D’Addario publishes the figures for its own sets. Their standard nylon concert set totals about 33 pounds across the four strings; the tenor version of the same set totals about 44. The gauges are within a thousandth or two of each other, so nearly all of that third is the scale length doing it. Forty-four pounds is still a very small number — a mandolin pulls about 180 — so this is not a difficulty you will notice in your fingertips. What you notice is response. A tighter string is harder to push out of tune when you fret it, holds pitch better when you strum hard, and drives the top with more force, which is where the tenor’s extra volume and sustain actually come from. It is also why a tenor rewards fingerstyle playing: the notes hang around long enough to overlap into something like a melody with an accompaniment underneath. The concert’s lower tension gives up sustain and gets back the bright, quick, percussive attack that most people mean when they picture a ukulele. Strummed under a voice in a room full of people, that is arguably the more useful sound. Neither is better; they are pointed at different jobs. ## A tenor does not automatically give you a wider neck String spacing is a separate specification from fret spacing, and only one of the two comes with the size. Fret spacing runs along the neck and follows the scale length, so it is fixed the moment you choose concert or tenor. Nut width runs across the neck and follows nothing at all — the maker picks a number, model by model. Both makers prove it inside their own catalogues. Kala’s published figure is *1.39 inches at the nut on the concert and 1.39 inches on the tenor* — the same number, and only sixteen thousandths of an inch more than their soprano. Buying the bigger Kala buys you no extra string room whatsoever. Córdoba is less consistent rather than more helpful: their 15TM tenor is 38mm, a genuinely roomy inch and a half, while their 20TM — a better instrument in every other respect, at around $200 — is back to 35mm, exactly what both of their concerts measure and exactly what their soprano measures too. Spend more inside that range and the string spacing gets narrower. So if the problem you are solving is fingers muting the string next door rather than fingers crowding the frets, the size on the label will not tell you whether you have solved it. Look up the nut width for the specific model. Where it is not published, assume 1⅜ inches, because that is the default across almost everything under $200 in both sizes. Our [guide to tenor ukuleles](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) lists the figure for each pick, and it does not rise with price. ## Low G is the one thing only a tenor does properly Standard ukulele tuning is gCEA, and the lower-case g is doing real work: it means the fourth string is tuned *above* the third rather than below it. That is called re-entrant tuning, it is why a strummed ukulele chord sounds like a chime rather than a guitar, and it means the instrument has no bass note at all. Written with a capital G, GCEA, the fourth string drops an octave and the instrument becomes linear — chords get a root underneath them and melody lines stop falling off the bottom of the neck. It takes a specific wound string; you cannot get there by slackening the one already fitted. Both sizes are sold in gCEA and both take the same chord shapes, so nothing about the tuning separates them on paper. What separates them is that a low G needs scale length behind it to speak. On a concert it tends to sound slack and thuddy; on a tenor’s 17 inches it rings. The makers say so with their catalogues rather than their marketing: D’Addario’s ukulele range runs to more than twenty sets, and exactly two of them are low-G. Both are tenor sets. There is no concert low-G set in the line. If solo fingerstyle arrangements or jazz are what you are picturing, that settles the size question on its own, and it is worth budgeting the thirteen dollars for the strings at the same time as the instrument — almost every tenor ships in high G, so the thing the size is best at is not what comes out of the box. Our [ukulele strings guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) covers the materials. ## The size is not what you are paying for A tenor uses more wood than a concert, so it ought to cost more. Against the two makers who sell the identical instrument in both sizes, it barely does. Córdoba’s 15CM concert and 15TM tenor carry the same price, around $130 each. Their solid-top pair, the 20CM and the 20TM, are ten dollars apart at around $200. Kala’s own list prices for the KA-15 series step from $89 for the concert to $109 for the tenor, and their bundled versions with a bag and tuner land at about $115 whichever size you pick. That last figure is the one worth acting on. The concert bundle costs about thirty dollars more than the bare concert; the tenor bundle costs about six dollars more than the bare tenor. If you want the gig bag, the strap and the tuner — and a first ukulele needs all three — the tenor is where that package is close to free. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Where the money genuinely changes the instrument is construction, not size. Everything under about $150 in both sizes is laminate mahogany — thin plies under a veneer, which is tough, ignores humidity and will sound the same in ten years as it does this afternoon. Córdoba reserve the word solid for their 20 series, where a solid top arrives at around $200 and is the first upgrade that changes the sound rather than the specification. Our [tonewood guide](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) goes through what each species contributes once construction is settled. ## The four to buy Tenor · The one to buy ### Córdoba 15TM - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 17″ scale, 1½” (38mm) at the nut - Pau ferro fingerboard, 18 frets, 14 to the body - Aquila New Nylgut 10U strings fitted at the factory - Satin polyurethane finish, abalone rosette - ~$130 The widest string spacing you will find anywhere near this price, on an instrument that is otherwise a straightforward, well-made laminate mahogany tenor. An inch and a half at the nut is three millimeters more than almost everything else here, spread over four strings, and it is the difference between fingerpicking cleanly and muting the string next door. If you are choosing a tenor because of your hands, this is the one that actually delivers on that. The Aquila strings fitted at the factory are worth more than they sound — the cheap ukulele’s usual first upgrade is already done, so the instrument arrives sounding like itself. The reservation is that it is laminate, so it will never open up with age; a solid top is the answer to that, and in Córdoba’s range it arrives in the 20 series at around $200 — with the nut back to 1⅜ inches. **Pros**- 1½” nut — the roomiest string spacing at this money - Aquila strings fitted from new - Same price as the matching concert - Laminate, so humidity is a non-issue **Cons**- Laminate will not improve with age - Nothing in the box but the ukulele - Ships in high G, so low-G playing costs another $13 Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gvBqVr) Concert · The one to buy ### Córdoba 15CM - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 14¾” scale, 1⅜” (35mm) at the nut - Pau ferro fingerboard, 18 frets, 14 to the body - Aquila New Nylgut 7U strings fitted at the factory - Satin polyurethane finish, abalone rosette, ivoroid binding - ~$130 The same ukulele as the 15TM in every respect the maker publishes except the two that define the size, which makes it the cleanest way to buy a concert without wondering what you gave up. Same wood, same finish, same fingerboard, same tuners, same neck profile, same eighteen frets, same money. You are choosing a scale length and a nut width and nothing else, which is exactly how this decision ought to work. In the hand it is the size most people mean when they say ukulele: light enough to hold against you without a strap, bright and quick under a strum, and small enough to go in a bag without thinking about it. The mahogany is laminate — Córdoba’s specification sheets reserve the word solid for the 20 series, and that is the honest reading of what $130 buys in either size. **Pros**- A genuine like-for-like against the tenor at the same price - Aquila strings fitted from new - Light and easy to hold without a strap - Bright, quick attack — the classic ukulele voice **Cons**- 1⅜” at the nut, so no more string room than a soprano - Laminate will not improve with age - Nothing in the box but the ukulele Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hXpBbG) Either size · Everything in the box ### Kala KA-15C and KA-15T bundles - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - Concert 14.875″ scale, 24¼” overall / tenor 16.968″ scale, 26″ overall - 18 frets on both - 1.39″ at the nut — the same figure on both - GraphTech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - Gig bag, clip-on tuner and polishing cloth included - ~$115, either size Kala’s KA-15 series is the closest thing the ukulele world has to a default, and it is the other maker that sells the identical instrument in both sizes. The parts a cheap ukulele usually skimps on are the ones Kala fits properly: a NuBone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic, and Aquila strings rather than whatever was on the reel. Those are the two components owners of cheaper instruments end up replacing first. The bundle is the reason to look here rather than at the Córdoba. A bag and a tuner are not optional on a first ukulele, and buying them separately costs most of the difference. Kala is also the maker who publishes every dimension, so you can check before you buy rather than after — including the fact that both sizes measure 1.39 inches at the nut. If string spacing is your problem, this range will not solve it whichever size you pick. **Pros**- NuBone nut and saddle, not molded plastic - Aquila strings from the factory - Bag and tuner included at the price - Same price either size, so the choice costs nothing **Cons**- 1.39″ at the nut in both sizes — the tenor buys no extra string room - Laminate, so it will not open up with age - Satin finish marks more readily than gloss Around $115[Concert — check price](https://amzn.to/4xsSTni) [Tenor — check price](https://amzn.to/4xnxZ8X) Tenor only · The upgrade that changes the instrument ### Aquila 15U low-G tenor set - Nylgut, with a wound fourth string - Gauges .02425″, .0305″, .0365″, .02675″ - Tuned GCEA — linear, not re-entrant - Made in Italy - ~$13 The thing a tenor can do that a concert cannot, in an envelope. Swapping the re-entrant high G for a wound low G drops the range a fifth, puts a root under every chord and gives melody lines somewhere to go below middle C. It takes about twenty minutes to fit and it changes the instrument more than the next $150 of budget would. Check the packet says Tenor and Low G — the standard tenor set looks almost identical in the picture and only the fourth string differs. A wound string on a nut cut for plain nylon can sit slightly high, which on a cheap instrument is worth a look before you decide the strings are at fault. **Pros**- The cheapest change that genuinely alters what the instrument can play - Wound fourth, so the low G actually speaks - Twenty minutes to fit **Cons**- Tenor only — it will not work properly on a concert - Gives up the chiming re-entrant sound the ukulele is known for - May need the nut slot easing on a budget instrument Around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cFPg52) ## Which one, in one line each - **Adult, first ukulele, no strong feelings.** Tenor. The fret spacing helps more than the extra size costs, and it leaves low G open later. - **Your fingers keep landing on two frets at once.** Tenor. This is the specific problem it solves. - **Your fingers keep muting the string next door.** Check the nut width, not the size. The Córdoba 15TM at 1½ inches is the one to look at. - **Buying for a child.** Concert, or a [soprano](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) if they are under about ten. - **It has to live in a rucksack.** Concert. Three inches sounds trivial until it has to fit in something. - **You want the chiming, bright, unmistakably ukulele sound.** Concert. - **You want to play arrangements rather than accompany singing.** Tenor, with a low-G set. - **You already play guitar.** Tenor, and look at a [baritone](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/) too — it is tuned to the top four guitar strings. ## FAQs ### Do concert and tenor ukuleles use the same chords? Yes, exactly the same. Both are tuned gCEA, so every chord shape, every chart and every lesson transfers between them without a single change. Nothing you learn on one size has to be relearned on the other. ### Is a tenor harder to play than a concert? No, and for most adults it is easier. The strings are about a third tighter, but the numbers involved are small enough that fingertips do not notice. What they do notice is the extra 15 percent of space between the frets, which makes clean chord shapes easier rather than harder. The stretches that get genuinely longer are the wide ones high up the neck, and beginners do not play those. ### Does a tenor sound better than a concert? It sounds deeper and it sustains longer, which suits fingerstyle and solo playing. A concert is brighter with a faster decay, which suits strumming under a voice. Blind, in a room, most people would not call either one better — they would just describe them differently. ### Can I put a low G string on a concert ukulele? You can, and it is a common enough experiment, but it is not what the size is built for. The shorter scale leaves the wound fourth string slack, so it tends to sound dull and go sharp when you fret it. The clearest evidence is what the string makers offer: D’Addario’s ukulele line has more than twenty sets and the only two low-G sets in it are tenor sets. ### Which size is better for small hands? Concert, but not for the reason usually given. The neck is not thinner — Córdoba’s is 17mm at the first fret on every size they build — so it is not about what your hand can wrap around. It is that the frets are closer together, so a shorter reach covers the same chord shape, and the body is easier to hold against you without a strap. ### Is a tenor ukulele bigger than a guitar? Not remotely. A tenor is about 26 inches overall against roughly 40 for a full-size acoustic guitar, and its 17-inch scale is a little over two thirds of a guitar’s 25½. It is the largest common ukulele apart from the baritone, and it is still a small instrument. ### What do the capital and lower-case G mean in ukulele tuning? The case tells you which octave the fourth string is in. Lower-case, as in gCEA, means the high G of standard re-entrant tuning, where the fourth string sits above the third. Capital, as in GCEA, means the low G an octave down, which needs a specific wound string. Kala states it that way round on their own tuning guide, and it is worth getting right before you order strings. ### What about soprano and baritone? A [soprano](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) is 13½ inches of scale, the traditional size, the cheapest and the right answer for children. A [baritone](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/) is 20 inches and tuned DGBE like the top four strings of a guitar, so it is a different instrument in practice — none of your gCEA chord shapes carry over. Concert and tenor are the two sizes most adults are actually choosing between, which is why they are the ones worth comparing carefully. If you have settled on a size, the full lists are here: [concert ukuleles](https://promusicvault.com/best-concert-ukuleles/), [tenor ukuleles](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/), and [the cheap end of both](https://promusicvault.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) if the budget is under $75. Our guide to [ukulele brands](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) covers who is worth buying from once the size is decided. **Categories:** Ukulele Comparisons --- ### [Ukulele vs. Guitar: Which to Learn First, and What Carries Over](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) **Published:** December 7, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Ukulele vs. Guitar: Which to Learn First, and What Carries Over Put a capo on the fifth fret of a guitar, play only the top four strings, and you are playing a ukulele. Not something like one — the same four notes, in the same order, taking the same shapes. That is the honest starting point for this comparison, and almost nothing else about the two instruments follows from it. Where they part company is tension, range and what the fourth string is doing. A concert ukulele pulls about 33 pounds against its neck. A steel-string guitar pulls about 160. That single ratio explains the sore fingers, the volume difference, and why one instrument gets handed to seven-year-olds. The short answer### Ukulele if you want to be playing songs this month. Guitar if you want an instrument that never runs out. The ukulele gets you to a real song faster than any other fretted instrument: four soft strings, one- and two-finger chords, and no calluses to grow first. What you give up is the bottom octave and a half of the music — a standard ukulele has no bass note at all, and a soprano covers under two octaves in total. The guitar asks for three or four fingers from day one and a fortnight of sore fingertips, and in exchange it plays essentially anything. If you already play one, the other is a few days’ work rather than a fresh start. **Strings:** 4 nylon vs. 6 **Total pull:** ~33 lb vs. ~86 lb nylon, ~160 lb steel **Scale:** 14⅞″ concert vs. 25″–259⁄16″ **Sensible entry:** ~$85 vs. ~$190 nylon ## The numbers, from the makers’ own spec sheets Ukulele figures are Kala’s, for its KA-15 series in all four sizes. Guitar figures are Yamaha’s, for the C40II nylon-string classical and the FG800J steel-string dreadnought. String tensions are D’Addario’s published figures for its own sets, so every row below was measured by the company that made the thing. UkuleleGuitar**Strings**Four, nylon or fluorocarbonSix, nylon on a classical and steel on everything else**Standard tuning**gCEA on soprano, concert and tenor; DGBE on a baritoneEADGBE**Lowest note**Middle C. A baritone reaches the D ten semitones below itE2, another ten semitones below that again**Scale length**135⁄8″ soprano, 14⅞″ concert, 17″ tenor, 201⁄16″ baritone25″ on the FG800J, 259⁄16″ on the C40II and most FG dreadnoughts**Frets**12 on a soprano, 18 on the concert, tenor and baritoneEnough to clear three full octaves on the top string**Nut width**1⅜″ soprano, 1.39″ concert and tenor, 1½″ baritone111⁄16″ on the FG line, 21⁄16″ on a nylon-string classical**Overall length**21″ soprano, 24¼″ concert, 26″ tenor, 30¼″ baritone393⁄16″ classical, 40½″ dreadnought**Total string tension**About 33 lb concert, 44 lb tenor, 48 lb baritoneAbout 86 lb nylon-string, about 160 lb steel-string in a light gauge**Chord shapes**The guitar’s top-four shapes, renamed up a fourthThe same shapes, plus everything that uses the two bass strings**First chord**C major is one fingerE minor is two; the first barre chord usually arrives by chapter three**Sensible entry price**~$85~$190 nylon, ~$260 solid-top steel ## A ukulele is a guitar’s top four strings, capoed at the fifth fret The top four strings of a guitar sound D, G, B and E. Move all four up a perfect fourth — five frets — and they sound G, C, E and A. Those are a ukulele’s four notes, in a ukulele’s order. Nothing has been rearranged; the whole instrument has just been transposed. Kala says the same thing from the other end. A baritone ukulele is tuned DGBE, which the company describes as “identical to the bottom 4 strings of a guitar’s standard tuning,” and it tells baritone players that “by placing a capo on the 5th fret of a baritone, you will directly mimic the Standard Tuning” of the smaller sizes. Guitar to baritone is a straight transfer; baritone to standard ukulele is five frets. Chain the two together and you have the guitar. What this means in practice is that a guitar player already knows every ukulele chord shape and none of their names. Strip a shape down to the top four strings and it survives the move intact, but it comes out a fourth higher, so it answers to a different letter. Every shape in the left-hand column below is fingered identically on both instruments. On a guitarOn a ukuleleGCCFDGADEAEmAmAmDm The four-chord progression a guitarist plays as G–D–Em–C is, on a ukulele, C–G–Am–F. Both of those are the standard four chords of their instrument, and they are the same four shapes in the same order. A guitarist can be strumming songs on a borrowed ukulele in an afternoon. Going the other way is less generous. A ukulele player moving to guitar knows the shapes for four of the six strings and has to learn what the other two do, which is where the barre chords and most of the difficulty live. ## Thirty-three pounds against a hundred and sixty D’Addario publishes the tension of every string it makes. Its standard nylon concert ukulele set totals about 33 pounds across the four strings. The same company’s normal-tension nylon classical guitar set totals about 86 pounds, and its light-gauge phosphor bronze acoustic set about 160. A steel-string guitar therefore pulls nearly five times what a concert ukulele does. Three things follow, and they cover most of what people actually mean when they call one instrument easier. **Fingertips.** Steel at that tension cuts into untrained fingertips, and the first two or three weeks on a guitar genuinely hurt. Nylon at 33 pounds does not. Ukulele beginners get sore fingers for a couple of days and then stop noticing. If sore fingers have already ended one attempt at the guitar, that is the fact to weigh, and a nylon-string classical at 86 pounds sits usefully between the two. **Volume.** Tension is what drives the soundboard, and a dreadnought has a much larger one to drive. A ukulele next to an acoustic guitar in the same room is inaudible. If the plan is to play with other people who own guitars, that matters more than anything else on this page. **Chord effort.** Fewer strings at lower tension means less hand. A C major on a ukulele is one finger on one string. The nearest guitar equivalent is three fingers across five strings, and it is the one that beginners quietly give up on. ## The fourth string is the highest one, and it costs you the bass Standard ukulele tuning is written gCEA with a lower-case g, and the lower case is doing real work. Kala puts it plainly: “Re-entrant tuning means that the strings aren’t in pitch order. The fourth, or G string, on the ukulele is tuned to a high G.” D’Addario’s own tension chart for its concert set names the notes A4, E4, C4 and G4 — that fourth string sits above the third and the second. Strum downward on a ukulele and the notes go high, low, middle, high rather than climbing from the bottom. That is where the bright, chiming sound comes from, and it is the reason a ukulele chord does not sound like a small guitar chord. It is also why the instrument has no bass end at all: the lowest note on a standard ukulele is middle C, and a guitar’s bottom string is more than an octave and a half below that. For a guitar player this is the one genuine surprise. Thumb-on-the-bass habits produce nothing useful, alternating bass patterns fall apart, and fingerpicked arrangements that rely on a root note underneath the melody simply do not work. A wound low-G string fixes it and turns the tuning linear, at the cost of the chime everyone bought the instrument for. There is more on where that swap makes sense in [our guide to ukulele strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/). ## What the ukulele cannot do A soprano ukulele has twelve frets. From its lowest note to its highest is under two octaves. A concert or tenor has eighteen and reaches a little past two. A guitar covers more than three. Most songs written for a voice sit inside two octaves, so a ukulele accompanies perfectly well — but arrangements that carry a melody and an accompaniment at once run out of room, and any tune that goes below middle C has to be moved. The repertoire gap is larger than the range gap. Essentially all popular music is written and taught with a guitar in mind, and the teaching tradition behind it is centuries deep on the classical side alone. Ukulele arrangements exist in quantity, and the instrument has real players doing serious things with it, but the material is a fraction of the size and much of it is a transcription of something written for six strings. None of that argues against starting on a ukulele. It argues against the idea that a ukulele will eventually do everything a guitar does, which is a thing people talk themselves into and then feel cheated by two years later. ## What the guitar cannot do It cannot get you playing a song this week, for most people, and it cannot be carried around casually. A concert ukulele is 24¼ inches end to end and weighs almost nothing. A dreadnought is 40½ inches and needs a case, a stand and somewhere to put it. The guitar is also the harder instrument to hand to a child. A full-size classical has a nut two and a sixteenth inches wide with six strings across it and a 259⁄16-inch scale, which is a long reach for small hands, and the fractional-size versions are a compromise rather than a proper instrument. A soprano ukulele is not a compromise; it is the size the instrument was invented at. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Two instruments that are both If the choice will not resolve, there are two instruments sitting in the gap, and each answers a different version of the question. A **baritone ukulele** is tuned DGBE, so it is a guitar’s top four strings at pitch. Every shape a guitarist knows keeps its own name. Kala’s baritone has a 201⁄16-inch scale and a 1½-inch nut, it takes a set with the two lowest strings wound in metal like a guitar’s, and it pulls about 48 pounds — still barely a third of a steel-string. It sounds noticeably deeper than the other sizes and is the obvious ukulele for anyone with guitar in their hands already. A **guitalele** is the other answer: a whole six-string guitar built at ukulele size and tuned up a fourth to A, D, G, C, E, A. Kala describes it as “like a guitar in standard tuning, with a capo on the fifth fret,” and Yamaha’s own spec sheet gives its GL1 a 17-inch scale — identical, to within a hundredth of an inch, to a tenor ukulele’s. Look at what that tuning does to the top four strings and they come out G, C, E, A: a low-G ukulele, with two bass strings added underneath. You keep the ukulele’s size and gain back the octave the ukulele threw away. ## What to buy If you go ukulele ### Kala KA-15C Concert - Concert size — 14⅞″ scale, 18 frets - Mahogany top, back, sides and neck; rosewood fingerboard - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - 1.39″ nut; 24¼″ overall - Aquila Super Nylgut strings from the factory - ~$85 Concert rather than soprano is the call for adult hands. It is the same instrument with the frets spread further apart — an inch and a quarter more scale, six more frets, and no change to the tuning or the chord shapes — and over the first three frets, where the whole first month happens, that extra room is what stops fingers crowding each other. The KA-15 line is Kala’s entry mahogany series, and the NuBone nut and saddle are the part that matters at this price: a plastic nut with badly cut slots is the usual reason a cheap ukulele will not play in tune at the first fret. If a soprano is what you actually want, the KA-15S is the same instrument two sizes down, and [choosing a ukulele size](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) lays out all four. Around $85[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4chpHXV) If you go guitar ### Yamaha C40II - Full-size nylon-string classical - 259⁄16″ scale, 21⁄16″ nut, flat fingerboard - Spruce top, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - 393⁄16″ overall - About 86 lb of string tension, against 160 on a steel-string - ~$190 For anyone arriving at the guitar from a ukulele question, nylon is the right first guitar. It is the gentlest thing you can put under untrained fingertips, the two-and-a-sixteenth-inch nut gives each finger far more room than a steel-string does, and the flat fingerboard suits chord shapes that need a finger lying across several strings. The trade is volume and sound. This is not the instrument for strumming over a room, and it will not make the bright ringing noise most people picture when they think of an acoustic guitar. If that sound is the point, the steel-string in the runners-up below is the one, and the fingertips are the price. [Banjo vs. guitar](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-guitar/) weighs the same two Yamahas against a different instrument again. Around $190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xrIOa7) If you cannot decide ### Yamaha GL1 Guitalele - Six nylon strings, tuned A–D–G–C–E–A - 17″ scale — the same as a tenor ukulele - 1⅞″ nut, 27½″ overall - Spruce top, rosewood fingerboard - Gig bag included - ~$130 This is the instrument that makes the whole comparison concrete. It is a guitar in every respect except size, pitched up a fourth so that its six strings land where a capo at the fifth fret would put them. Its top four strings are a low-G ukulele. Its bottom two are the octave a ukulele does not have. Two things to know before it arrives. Everything is small — six strings across an inch and seven-eighths is tighter than either instrument it sits between, so wide fingertips will find it fussy. And because it is pitched up a fourth, a chord shape you play as G sounds as C, so guitar chord charts need transposing or the whole thing treated as its own instrument. Replacement strings are a half-size classical set; D’Addario sells one specifically for the guitalele. Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xycjHB) If you already play guitar ### Kala MK-B Makala Baritone - Tuned DGBE — a guitar’s top four strings, at pitch - 201⁄16″ scale, 18 frets, 1½″ nut - Mahogany top, back, sides and neck - Aquila Super Nylgut strings from the factory - About 48 lb of pull on a standard baritone set - ~$120 Every chord shape you already know keeps its own name on this, which is the entire argument for it. It is also the deepest-sounding ukulele, close enough to a small nylon-string guitar in voice that it works as an accompaniment instrument for a singer in a way a soprano does not. Two caveats. Standard ukulele tab and chord charts are written for gCEA and will not transfer — you either capo the fifth fret or learn the baritone’s own voicings. And a baritone needs its own string set; a tenor set fitted to one arrives slack and useless. Kala’s KA-15B in the runners-up below is the identical instrument with a NuBone nut and saddle instead of plastic, and there is more on the size in [our baritone ukulele guide](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/). Around $120[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wWRsw8) Buy it whichever way you go ### Snark ST-2 Chromatic Tuner - Chromatic — reads any note, so it works on either instrument - Vibration sensor or built-in mic - Full-color display, rotates 360° - Rechargeable over USB — no cell to replace - Calibration 415–466 Hz - ~$22 Get a chromatic one rather than a ukulele-specific one, because you may well end up owning both instruments and a chromatic tuner also handles a baritone, which most dedicated ukulele tuners will not. Nylon strings stretch heavily for the first week and need retuning several times a session until they settle, so this is not an optional extra on a new ukulele. A vibration-sensing clip-on works in a noisy room where a phone app does not, which is the whole reason to spend twenty-odd dollars rather than nothing. Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ydb40m) **Yamaha FG800J** — solid spruce top steel-string dreadnought, 25″ scale, the sound most people picture. ~$260 [Check price](https://amzn.to/4ckOnic) **Kala KA-15B** — the same baritone as the Makala with a NuBone nut and saddle. ~$130 [Check price](https://amzn.to/3Uw54kD) **Kala KA-15S** — the soprano, for a child or for the traditional sound. ~$70 [Check price](https://amzn.to/4zFKJcG) ## FAQs ### Is the ukulele easier than the guitar? Yes, and the makers publish the numbers that make it so. Four strings instead of six, at about a fifth of the tension of a steel-string, with chords that take one or two fingers where the guitar equivalents take three or four. The gap is largest in the first month and narrows steadily after that. [How easy the ukulele actually is](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) goes through what the first weeks look like. ### Will learning ukulele help me learn guitar later? More than most instrument pairings. Strumming, rhythm, chord changes and fretboard familiarity all carry across, and the shapes themselves transfer to the guitar’s top four strings. What does not carry is the two bass strings, which is where the barre chords live, so the hard part of the guitar is still waiting. ### Can I just put a capo on the fifth fret and play my guitar as a ukulele? For chord shapes, yes — capo at five, strum the top four strings only, and you are getting a ukulele’s notes. What you will not get is the sound, because the ukulele’s fourth string is tuned above its third and a guitar’s is not. That re-entrant fourth string is most of what makes a ukulele chord chime rather than ring. ### Which is better for singing along? The ukulele, at the start, because the chords take so little hand that you can find them without stopping singing. The guitar, in the long run, because it can put a bass note under the voice and because it is loud enough to carry a room. If you want one instrument to sing over for the next ten years, that is the guitar. ### Can I put guitar strings on a ukulele? No. Steel guitar strings pull several times what a ukulele is built to take and will bow the neck or lift the bridge off. Nylon classical strings are the right family but are gauged for a 25-inch scale and six different pitches, so on a 13- to 17-inch ukulele the tension lands nowhere useful. Buy a set made for the size you own. ### Which one should I buy for a child? The ukulele, almost without qualification. A soprano is 21 inches long, weighs next to nothing, has four soft strings and was designed at that size rather than shrunk down to it. A fractional-size guitar is a compromised version of a full-size instrument; a soprano ukulele is not a compromised version of anything. ### What is the difference between a baritone ukulele and a small guitar? Two strings. A baritone is tuned to the guitar’s top four — D, G, B and E — so it has no bottom E or A. It also pulls about 48 pounds against a guitar’s 86 or 160, which is why it feels like a ukulele under the fingers even though it answers to guitar chord names. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Vangoa Banjo Review: Which One, and Is It Worth It?](https://promusicvault.com/vangoa-banjo-review/) **Published:** March 18, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Vangoa Banjo Review: Which One, and Is It Worth It? Vangoa sells most of their banjos as complete kits, and the two that sell in any volume look almost identical in a photograph. One is 38 inches long and costs around $185. The other is 26 inches and costs around $125. They are not the same instrument in two sizes, and picking the cheaper one because it is cheaper is the mistake this page exists to prevent. What the money buys is a real Remo head, a detachable resonator and a box with everything else already in it. What it does not buy is the last hour of the build. Every Vangoa arrives with the nut slots cut high, which makes the first few frets play sharp and the action stiff, and that is fixable for less than the price of the strings you will eventually want. The short version### Buy the full-size one, and put $50 to $100 aside for a setup At around $185 the 38-inch Vangoa is a mahogany resonator banjo with a genuine frosted Remo head and 24 brackets, and the resonator unbolts so it plays open back for clawhammer. That is a lot of specification for the money. It is also about $50 more than two rivals with the same spec sheet, and the difference is the accessory kit — which is worth having if you would rather not assemble one, and worth nothing if you already own a tuner and a strap. Around $185 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UNVjhL) **For a child, or for travel:** the 26-inch, around $125 **Left-handed:** Vangoa makes one, which is rare under $200 **Budget for:** a setup, roughly $50–100 **Buy something else if:** you want bluegrass volume — none of these has a cast tone ring ## The two sizes are two different decisions Twelve inches of overall length is not a trim. On the 26-inch banjo it comes out of the scale, which is the part that decides where the frets sit and how hard the strings pull. The result is an instrument a nine-year-old can hold comfortably and an adult cannot really learn on — the frets near the body are close enough together that ordinary fingers start covering two at once. It also weighs 2.8 pounds against the full-size banjo’s 6.2, which is the whole argument for it. If the banjo is going in a car boot, on a bike, or into the hands of a child, that difference matters more than anything on the spec sheet. If it is going to sit on a stand in a living room while an adult learns to play, it is the wrong purchase at any price. 38-inch full size26-inch**Price**~$185~$125**Weight**~6 lb2.8 lb**Strings**5, steel5, bronze-wound**Head**RemoRemo**Brackets**2412**Resonator**DetachableDetachable**Suits**Teens and adultsChildren, travel The bracket count is the line worth reading twice. Brackets are what hold the tension in the head, and twelve of them spread around a rim cannot pull it as evenly as twenty-four. On the small banjo that shows up as a head that goes slack faster and a tone that dulls off within a few months of ordinary playing. ## What “needs a setup” actually means A banjo leaves a budget factory with the nut slots deliberately cut shallow. Cutting them deep is a one-way operation, so the factory leaves margin and the last pass is meant to happen somewhere else. On a Vangoa it has not happened. The strings therefore sit high off the first fret, and pressing them down that far stretches them sharp — so the instrument tunes perfectly on open strings and then plays out of tune with itself for the first five frets. This is the single most common complaint about these banjos and it is not a fault in the sense of something being broken. It is an hour of a technician’s time: nut slots taken down, bridge placed by ear against the twelfth-fret harmonic, head brought up to tension, truss rod adjusted. A shop that knows banjos charges $50 to $100 for it, and it turns a frustrating instrument into a genuinely decent one. Budget for it the way you would budget for strings. The bridge is worth a word on its own, because it is not glued down — it is held in place by string tension alone, and it ships loose in the box. Where you stand it decides whether the banjo plays in tune above the fifth fret. If you are doing nothing else yourself, learn to set the bridge; our guide to [tuning a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers the harmonic method that positions it. ## The Vangoa range, and which one to buy № 1 · The one to buy ### Vangoa 5-String, 38 inch - 5 strings - Resonator, detachable - 24 brackets - Remo head - ~$185 Mahogany neck, sides and back, a frosted Remo Weatherking head, and 24 chrome brackets holding the tension in it. The Remo is the part that matters most: it is the same head brand fitted to banjos costing five times this, and a generic plastic head is the first thing that makes a cheap banjo sound cheap. The tuners run a 14:1 gear ratio, which is enough to land on a note rather than swing past it. The resonator comes off with an Allen key, which makes it two banjos. Bolted on it is louder and pushes the sound forward, which is what bluegrass wants. Off, it is lighter and softer against the body, which is what clawhammer and old-time want. At this price nothing else lets you defer that choice — and most beginners genuinely do not know yet which one they are going to play. It arrives with a gig bag, clip-on tuner, strap, picks, spare strings, a pickup and the wrenches. The tuner is the part you will replace first. **Pros**- Genuine frosted Remo head, not a generic plastic one - 24 brackets, where 16 is common at this price - Plays as a resonator or an open back - Nothing else to buy on day one [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Wants a setup before it plays in tune up the neck - About $50 dearer than rivals with the same spec - No tone ring, so it will not carry a bluegrass jam Around $185[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UNVjhL) № 2 · For a child or for travel ### Vangoa 5-String, 26 inch - 5 strings - Resonator, detachable - 12 brackets - 2.8 lb - ~$125 A short-scale five-string light enough for a child to hold on a strap without complaint, and small enough to go in hand luggage. It has the same Remo head as its bigger sibling, which is more than most instruments at this size and price can say. Buy it for the reasons above and it is good value. Buy it because it is the cheap Vangoa and it will not do what you want: the short scale puts the frets too close together for adult hands past the fifth fret, and the twelve brackets cannot hold head tension the way twenty-four can. It is a real instrument for a small player, not a budget version of a full-size banjo. **Pros**- Light enough for a child to hold properly - Remo head at this size is unusual - Genuinely portable **Cons**- Too cramped for adult hands - Twelve brackets — the head loosens sooner - Short scale changes the string tension a beginner learns on Around $125[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wwGv87) № 3 · If you play left-handed ### Vangoa Left-Handed 5-String - 5 strings - Resonator, detachable - 24 brackets - Geared fifth tuner - ~$190 Properly left-handed rather than a right-handed banjo strung backward: the neck, the fifth-string peg and the armrest are all built the correct way round. That matters more on a banjo than on most instruments, because the fifth string is a drone that starts partway up the neck, and reversing the strings on a right-handed body puts it under the wrong thumb. Mahogany, a Remo Weatherking head and 24 brackets, the same as the right-handed full-size banjo, plus a sealed geared fifth peg — and it costs slightly less than that banjo does. Left-handed beginner banjos are genuinely scarce below a few hundred dollars, so for a left-handed beginner this is close to the only sensible option at the price. **Pros**- A real left-handed build, not a reversed one - Armrest fitted on the correct side - Very little competition at this price **Cons**- Wants the same setup as the others - Full size only — there is no small left-handed one for a child Around $190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UwzGm2) If you already know you want to plug in, Vangoa also builds the same full-size banjo with a pickup and a volume knob fitted rather than the stick-on transducer that comes in the standard kit. It is the [VBJ-4E](https://amzn.to/4gCs2xP), it costs about the same as the acoustic one, and it saves you doing the job later with double-sided tape. ## Where a Vangoa loses The [Jameson 5-string](https://amzn.to/3V3ZV3q) sits at the same specification for about ten dollars less: 24 brackets, a closed back and a geared fifth tuner for around $175. It does not arrive with the pile of accessories, so if you already own a tuner and a strap the Vangoa’s advantage mostly evaporates. The larger point is the one the weight gives away. A resonator banjo built for bluegrass volume carries a cast bronze tone ring and weighs ten to twelve pounds. No Vangoa comes near that, and the six-pound full-size one tells you there is no heavy ring under the head — which is true of everything at this price, whatever the marketing calls the hoop the head sits on. What you get instead is a light, bright, quiet instrument that is perfectly good for learning on and will be outgunned the first time you sit in a circle with a guitar and a fiddle. That is not a Vangoa failing — it is what the whole category is — but it is worth knowing before you expect otherwise. Our guide to [banjos under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) covers the same ground from the other direction. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a Vangoa banjo good for a complete beginner? Yes, with the setup. Unset up, it will teach a beginner that they cannot play in tune, which is the fastest way to put the instrument back in its bag for good. Set up, the full-size one is a perfectly reasonable first banjo and there is nothing on it that will hold back a first year of playing. ### Is the Vangoa a tenor banjo? No. Every banjo in the range covered here has five strings, including the short 26-inch one. A tenor banjo has four and is tuned differently; if that is what you are after, see [plectrum versus tenor](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/). ### Can you take the resonator off? Yes, on both sizes — it unbolts, and the Allen key is in the box. That converts the banjo from the loud, forward voice bluegrass uses to the softer one that suits clawhammer. The difference is bigger than most people expect; [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes through it. ### What will I need to buy on top? The setup, and eventually strings — the factory set is the cheapest part of the instrument. The bundled clip-on tuner works but is slow and imprecise, and a better one costs less than a set of strings. See [banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/) and [banjo tuners](/best-banjo-tuner/). ## So, is it worth it? The 38-inch Vangoa at around $185 plus $50 to $100 for a setup lands at roughly $250 for a banjo that plays properly, comes with everything, and covers both bluegrass and clawhammer while you work out which one you want. That is fair rather than remarkable — the same money buys a [better-built banjo with nothing in the box](/best-banjo-for-beginners/), and which way you go depends on whether you would rather have the instrument or the kit. The 26-inch is worth it for a child or a traveler and a poor buy for anyone else. Neither is worth it if you skip the setup, which is the one thing on this page that applies to every Vangoa equally. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Types of Mandolins: Body Shapes, Soundholes and the Whole Family](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-mandolins/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/mandolin/ "Mandolin")› Types of Mandolins: Body Shapes, Soundholes and the Whole Family There are three separate questions hiding inside “what type of mandolin is this”, and the answers are independent of one another. What shape is the back — a deep bowl, a flat plate, or a carved arch? What is cut into the top — one oval hole, or two f-holes? And where does the instrument sit in the family — mandolin, mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello? Get those three straight and every mandolin you meet sorts itself. A carved-top A-style with f-holes and a carved-top F-style with f-holes sound close to identical, because the only thing separating them is the outline. A carved-top A-style with an oval hole sounds like a different instrument. If you want one answer### A carved-top A-style — f-holes if you play bluegrass, an oval hole for anything else The A-style body is the same instrument as the F-style with the scroll and points left off, and the scroll never reaches the sound. What it costs depends on who carves it: nothing at all on a CNC-cut factory instrument, and hundreds by hand. Spend on the top rather than the outline. Then pick the soundhole by the music: f-holes bark and cut through a band, an oval hole is warmer, longer-sustaining and blends. Bowl-backs are for Baroque and Neapolitan repertoire specifically. Mandolas, octave mandolins and mandocellos are second instruments, not first ones. Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Y1efpR) **The back:** bowl, flat, or carved arch **The soundhole:** oval = warm, f-holes = bark **A vs F:** the same instrument, different outline **The family:** mandolin, mandola, octave, mandocello ## The mandolin family at a glance InstrumentTuningScale lengthSits whereWhat it does**Mandolin**G–D–A–E13⅞–14″SopranoMelody. The one everybody means.**Mandola**C–G–D–A15½–17″AltoA fifth below the mandolin — the viola of the family.**Octave mandolin**G–D–A–E, an octave down19–24″, usually ~21″TenorChord backing and Irish tune-playing.**Mandocello**C–G–D–A, an octave below the mandola24¾–27″BassThe bottom of a mandolin orchestra.**Mandobass**E–A–D–G, single strings~42″ContrabassAlmost nothing. Effectively a museum piece. All of them are tuned in fifths and all of them take a pick, so the fingering patterns transfer whole. Learn the mandolin and you can play a mandocello badly the same afternoon. ## The back is where the real division is Three constructions, three completely different instruments, and they are separated by centuries rather than by taste. ### Bowl-back, or Neapolitan The original. A deep back built from a dozen or more thin ribs bent and glued into a bowl, a soundboard that is creased rather than flat, and an oval soundhole. This is the mandolin Beethoven wrote for, and it is still what a classical mandolin orchestra plays. It sounds sweet, complex and quiet, with a fast decay that makes tremolo essential rather than decorative. It is also awkward: the bowl has no flat surface anywhere on it, so the instrument slides off your leg and has to be held rather than rested. That, plus the fact that it is quiet, is why it lost North America to the carved archtop and never got it back. Buying one is the hard part. A bowl-back is fiddly to build and the market for it is small, so the mainstream retailers carry nothing worth owning — what turns up there is unbranded imports with no track record behind them. Go to an early-music or classical-mandolin specialist and expect four figures for something good, or take your chances on the second-hand market, where Suzukis and older German-built instruments come up regularly. ### Flat-back A genuinely flat back and a flat or lightly-braced top, built like a small guitar. Usually an oval or round soundhole, often a wider fingerboard. These are the “Irish” or “folk” mandolins, and they are the ones you see in a session rather than on a bluegrass stage. The sound is open, woody and sustaining, with much less attack than a carved top — good for playing long streams of notes, poor at cutting through a banjo. Trinity College, Gold Tone and Ashbury are the names to look for. The same construction scales up: most octave mandolins and nearly every [Irish bouzouki](/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/) is a flat-back. ### Carved archtop Top and back each carved from a solid block of wood and arched like a violin’s, with the thickness graduated by hand across the plate. Orville Gibson patented this in 1898 and it is the reason American mandolins sound the way they do: an arched, graduated plate under string pressure is far louder and more responsive than a flat one. Every A-style and F-style mandolin is this construction, which makes “flat-back” a poor label for an A-style — its back is arched too. The genuinely flat one is the folk mandolin above, and it is a different instrument. Under about $200 the arch is pressed into a sheet of laminate rather than carved from a block, which gets you the shape without the acoustics. That is not automatically wrong — it is a perfectly reasonable way to find out whether you like the instrument — but it will sound the same in ten years as it does on day one. Solid tops open up with playing. Laminate ones do not. The cheapest way in ### Rogue RM-100A - A-style, f-holes - Pressed laminate top - Adjustable bridge - ~$130 A laminate A-style at about the price of a decent pair of headphones, and the standard answer to “I want to try this without committing”. It arrives needing its bridge positioned and its action lowered, and it will never develop, but it is a real mandolin with real intonation once set up. Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JfU5E8) Where carved starts ### The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek - A-style, f-holes - Hand-carved solid spruce top - Maple back & sides - Ebony bridge, bone nut - ~$400 The Loar builds 1920s-style carved instruments at prices that do not need a 1920s income, and this is the bottom of that range. The top is carved and graduated rather than pressed, which is the whole difference between a solid top that works and a solid top that is merely solid. The finish is plain satin and the fingerboard is padauk rather than ebony — the right places to have saved the money. Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/40lFugP) ## A-style and F-style: the same instrument, different outline An A-style is a teardrop. An F-style has a carved scroll curling off the upper bass side and two points on the body. Both were Orville Gibson’s designs, both use the same carved construction, and on two instruments from the same maker at the same level the difference in sound is small enough that it disappears against the variation between individual instruments. What the scroll changes is the price, and by how much depends entirely on whether a machine or a person is cutting it. A CNC router does not care that the outline has a curl in it, so on factory instruments the scroll is close to free — The Loar prices its LM-110 and LM-310F identically at around $400, same top, same woods, same shop. Where a person carves and binds the scroll by hand it is slow, skilled work and the premium is large: Kentucky lists its Standard A-model at $825 and its Standard F-model at $1,795. The scroll does one practical thing: it gives you somewhere to hook the instrument against your leg when you play sitting down. Some players find that alone worth the money. The other reason F-styles dominate bluegrass is Bill Monroe, who played a 1923 Gibson F-5 and made it the shape the music is pictured in. So the advice depends on the budget. Under about $500 the scroll costs you nothing and you should buy whichever shape you prefer — at $400 The Loar will sell you a hand-carved top in either body. Above roughly $700 the money that would have gone into the scroll goes into the instrument instead, and the A-style is the better buy for anyone who does not specifically want the shape. If you want the F-style shape ### Ibanez M522S - F-style, f-holes - Solid spruce top - Flamed maple back & sides - ~$350 The least you can spend and still get a solid top in the scrolled body. Ibanez builds to a price with machine precision rather than hand work, so the top is pressed to a uniform thickness rather than graduated — brighter and more even than a hand-carved instrument, and less characterful. It is the sensible answer for someone who wants the F-style outline and is not willing to pay $700 for it. Around $350[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wvrpiZ) There is more on the two shapes in [A-style vs F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). ## The soundhole is the choice that changes the sound Two f-holes or one oval hole. This is a bigger tonal decision than A versus F, and it is not really about the holes — it is about where they force the bridge to sit. F-holesOval hole**Tone**Dry, focused, percussive — the “bark”Warm, woody, more low end**Sustain**Short. Notes stop when you stopNoticeably longer**Projection**Directional. Cuts through a bandSpreads out. Blends into one**Neck joins the body at**The 15th fretThe 12th fret**Belongs in**Bluegrass, old-time, countryIrish, Celtic, folk, classical, mandolin orchestra**Typical body**Carved archtop, A or FCarved archtop, flat-back, or bowl-back An f-hole instrument has its bridge further down the body, leaving a long narrow strip of soundboard free to vibrate. That favors the upper mids and gives the chop its edge. An oval hole sits where the fingerboard ends, so the bridge moves up and the vibrating area becomes shorter and wider, which favors the bottom end. The knock-on effect is the neck: an f-hole mandolin gives you fifteen frets clear of the body, an oval-hole one gives you twelve. If you play high up the neck, that is not a small thing. *Whatever the shape, it is tuned G–D–A–E from the bass side, the same as a [violin](/mandolin-vs-violin/). A clip-on chromatic like the [D’Addario Micro](https://amzn.to/3IIvxSw) at around $20 handles every instrument on this page, and a spare set of [D’Addario EJ74s](https://amzn.to/3EkbMz8) at around $10 is worth having before you need it.* ## Mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello Same instrument, bigger, lower. All three are tuned in fifths and played with a pick, and every shape you know on a mandolin is the same shape here — it just names different notes on the mandola and the mandocello, which start on C rather than G. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Scale length is what actually separates them, and it is the number to check when a listing is vague about what it is selling. A mandolin is around 14 inches from nut to bridge. A mandola is 15½ to 17. An octave mandolin is 19 to 24, most often around 21. A mandocello is 24¾ to 27 — guitar territory. The naming is a genuine trap, because Britain and America use different words for the same instruments. What Americans call a **mandola**, the British call a tenor mandola. What Americans call an **octave mandolin**, the British call an octave mandola. British “tenor mandolin” means something else again. Read the tuning and the scale length in the specification, not the name on the headstock. Of the three, the octave mandolin is the one most people end up wanting. It fills the same role in Irish and folk music that a rhythm guitar fills elsewhere — big open chords underneath, with enough definition left to take a tune — and it sits between the mandolin and the bouzouki without being either. Push the scale past about 24 inches and add a longer neck and you have crossed into [bouzouki](/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/) territory. The mandola is the family’s least-loved member: too close to the mandolin to feel like a new instrument, not low enough to do the octave mandolin’s job. It earns its place in a mandolin orchestra and rarely anywhere else. The mandocello has a beautiful voice and almost no repertoire outside ensembles, and it costs about what a good F-style costs. Neither is a first instrument, and both are built in small enough numbers that you will usually be ordering rather than choosing from a shelf. The one worth owning second ### Gold Tone OM-800+ - Octave mandolin, G–D–A–E an octave down - 21″ scale - Solid spruce top, mahogany back & sides - Case included - ~$1,100 Octave mandolins barely exist at the budget end, so the realistic choice is between this and building a relationship with a luthier. It is a flat-back with an oval hole, which is the right construction for the job — the sustain is what you want under a tune. It ships with a case, which softens the price a little, and it will want a setup out of the box like everything else here. Around $1,100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ws0yB5) ## Electric mandolins Two different things get sold under this heading and they are not interchangeable. An **acoustic-electric** is an ordinary acoustic mandolin with a pickup fitted under the bridge. Unplugged it is exactly the instrument it was; plugged in it is louder. This is what almost everyone actually needs — the same mandolin works at home and through a PA — and it adds very little to the price. A [Vangoa A-style](https://amzn.to/4cjIdyX) lands around $145 with a pickup fitted; the listing sells acoustic and acoustic-electric versions side by side, so choose the acoustic-electric option rather than assuming. A **solid-body electric** is a different instrument. There is no soundbox, so it is nearly silent unplugged, and through an amp it behaves like an electric guitar: sustaining, compressed, happy with distortion and effects, with none of the acoustic bark. Four-string and five-string versions exist, the five adding a low C. It is a tool for rock, blues and country lead playing, not a quieter way to practice. Solid-body electric ### Gold Tone GME-4 - Solid body, four strings - Dual-rail mini humbucker - Volume and tone controls - 13⅞” scale, standard G–D–A–E - ~$610 Standard mandolin scale and tuning, so nothing you have learned goes to waste, with a guitar’s controls bolted on. The humbucker is quiet enough to sit in front of a loud amp without howling, which is the thing cheap piezo-equipped electrics get wrong. A gig bag is included. Around $610[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46375r5) ## What they are made of, and what it changes Spruce for the top, almost universally — it is stiff along the grain and light, which is the combination an arched soundboard needs. Maple for the back and sides on carved instruments, because it is hard and reflective and pushes the sound forward; mahogany or sapele on cheaper ones, which is warmer and softer-edged. Ebony or rosewood for the fingerboard and bridge on anything decent, and dyed hardwood standing in for them further down. Three things are worth more than the wood species when you are comparing instruments. - **Solid or laminate.** A laminate top is thin veneer over plywood. It works, it is stable, and it stops improving the day it is built. A solid top gets better for years. - **Carved or pressed.** Both are “solid” tops. A pressed one is a flat sheet bent into an arch under heat; a carved one is cut from a thick block and graduated so the thickness varies across the plate. Carved is the one that gives you the chop, and around $400 is where it starts. - **The bridge.** A mandolin bridge is not glued down — it is a floating two-piece bridge held in place by string tension, with thumbwheels for adjusting the action. If it is one solid piece with no adjustment, the instrument cannot be set up properly. Whatever you buy will need a setup before it plays well, and on cheaper instruments that matters more than anything in the specification. Budget for it, or learn to do it. Our guide to [what your money actually buys at each price](/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) goes into where the jumps are. *Most mandolins ship without a case. [This padded gig bag](https://amzn.to/3SEcZf4), around $45, is cut to take either an A-style or an F-style — most bags are shaped for one or the other, and an A-style bag will not close over a scroll.* ## Where the shapes came from The mandolin is a descendant of the lute, by way of the small Baroque mandolino. Its modern form starts in Naples: Gaetano Vinaccia is credited with a bowl-back prototype around 1744, and four generations of Vinaccias refined it from there. The decisive change came in 1835, when Pasquale Vinaccia deepened the bowl, extended the fingerboard to seventeen frets, fitted geared tuning machines in place of friction pegs, and strung the instrument in steel. Louder, brighter, in tune, and with a range worth writing for — that is the Neapolitan mandolin that traveled. It reached America sideways. A Spanish student ensemble called the Estudiantina Fígaro opened at Booth’s Theatre in New York in February 1880 and was a sensation. They were playing bandurrias, not mandolins — but the two look alike, the press called them mandolins, and Italian-American musicians who owned actual mandolins formed imitation troupes to meet the demand. The instrument was fashionable in America before most Americans had seen one. Orville Gibson, working in Kalamazoo, Michigan, patented the answer to the bowl-back in 1898: carve the top and back from solid wood and arch them like a violin’s. The result was dramatically louder, and it held its shape. He drew it in two outlines — the plain teardrop and the scrolled one — and those became the A-style and the F-style. The last piece was Lloyd Loar, Gibson’s acoustic engineer from 1919 until December 1924. He replaced the oval hole with violin f-holes, moved the bridge down the body, lengthened the neck and floated the fingerboard clear of the top. The F-5 that came out of it went into production in 1922, and Loar personally signed and dated every one built until he left. Bill Monroe bought a 1923 example, built bluegrass around its chop, and fixed the sound and the silhouette of the American mandolin for the next century. ## So which type do you want Bluegrass, country or old-time: a carved archtop with f-holes, A-style unless you have the budget to spare. Irish, folk or singer-songwriter: an oval hole, either carved or flat-back, and consider an octave mandolin instead if you mostly want to accompany. Classical, Baroque or Neapolitan repertoire: a bowl-back, bought from a specialist. Not sure yet: a laminate A-style for around $130, and decide once you know. Whichever you land on, [our beginner picks](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) go through the instruments themselves, and [tuning](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) is the first thing to sort out once it arrives. ## FAQs ### How many types of mandolin are there? Three body constructions — bowl-back, flat-back and carved archtop — and two soundhole types, oval and f-hole, which combine freely. Separately, the mandolin family contains five pitched instruments: mandolin, mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass. ### What is the difference between an A-style and an F-style mandolin? The outline, and sometimes the price. An F-style has a carved scroll and two body points; an A-style is a plain teardrop. Construction, soundholes and sound are otherwise the same. On factory instruments the scroll adds almost nothing to the price; on hand-carved ones it adds hundreds. ### Do f-holes or an oval hole sound better? Neither — they are different jobs. F-holes give a dry, percussive attack with short sustain that cuts through a bluegrass band. An oval hole gives a warmer tone with more low end and longer sustain that blends in a folk or classical setting. ### How many strings does a mandolin have? Eight, in four pairs. Each pair is tuned in unison and picked as one string, which is where the ringing, chorused quality comes from. [More on the courses here](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/). ### What is a bowl-back mandolin used for? Classical, Baroque and Neapolitan repertoire, and classical mandolin orchestras. It is the original Italian form, sweeter and quieter than an American archtop, and it is not the instrument for bluegrass or session playing. ### Is a mandola the same as an octave mandolin? No. A mandola is tuned C–G–D–A, a fifth below the mandolin, on a 15½ to 17 inch scale. An octave mandolin keeps the mandolin’s G–D–A–E an octave lower, on a 19 to 24 inch scale. British usage calls the mandola a tenor mandola and the octave mandolin an octave mandola, which is where most of the confusion comes from. ### Which type of mandolin is best for a beginner? An A-style archtop. It is the cheapest way to a well-built instrument, it is lighter and easier to hold sitting down than an F-style, and at any given budget more of the money has gone into the parts that make sound. ### What does a mandolin cost? Around $130 for a pressed-top laminate, $200 to $350 for a well-built solid top, and $400 upward for a hand-carved instrument. [Full price breakdown here](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/). **Categories:** Mandolin --- ### [Recorder vs Flutophone: The Octave That Decides It](https://promusicvault.com/recorder-vs-flutophone/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Recorder vs Flutophone: The Octave That Decides It A flutophone plays one octave and a note. A soprano recorder plays two octaves and a note. Almost everything else worth knowing about the two instruments follows from that one line. They are easy to confuse in a supply catalogue. Both are plastic, both are about a foot long, both are blown down a whistle mouthpiece with the fingers covering holes in the same order. The flutophone has a flared bell and raised rims around its finger holes; the recorder is straight-sided with the holes drilled flush. That is how you tell them apart. It is not why you would choose one. If you want one answer### Yamaha YRS-24B soprano recorder — Baroque fingering, about $8 It costs half what a flutophone does, plays twice the range, and is what the method books, the fingering charts and the school programs are all written for. There is one narrow case for a pre-band instrument instead, and it is about the size of a child’s hands rather than the size of the budget. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g2xc7i) **For small hands:** Suzuki Precorder, raised holes and a short reach, ~$14 **Method book:** Essential Elements Book 1, ~$7 **Careful:** the YRS-23 is the German-fingered twin **Tonette, song flute:** effectively gone from retail ## The flutophone stops an octave short A flutophone is pitched in C and covers C5 to D6 — nine notes, chromatic throughout, with a small extra hole for the low C sharp that the older tonette and song flute never had. Grover-Trophy’s own description promises a full chromatic scale, and it delivers one. Inside those nine notes. A soprano recorder starts on the same C5 and reaches D7. It climbs into the upper octave by uncovering a sliver of the thumb hole and pushing slightly harder. The flutophone has a thumb hole too and does not go up there; nine notes is the whole instrument. Nine notes is enough for the first term. It is enough for *Hot Cross Buns*, *Mary Had a Little Lamb*, *Ode to Joy* and most of what a class plays before Christmas. It runs out somewhere in the second year, and it runs out permanently — there is no technique that extends it. A recorder in the same hands is still finding new music five years later. Soprano recorderFlutophone**Range**C5–D7 — two octaves and a noteC5–D6 — one octave and a note**Chromatic**ThroughoutWithin those nine notes**Holes**Seven front, one thumb, doubled at the bottom two for the low chromaticsSeven front, one thumb, plus a small vent for low C♯**Hole rims**Drilled flush with the bodyRaised, so a finger finds and seals them without looking**Finger spacing**StandardShorter**Tuning**Pull the head joint out a fractionSlide the mouthpiece**Fingering system**Baroque or German — you want BaroqueOne system, close enough to Baroque to transfer**Method books in print**Dozens, in every school catalogueA handful, mostly homeschool and church**Price**About $8About $16 ## What the raised holes are actually for This is the flutophone’s real advantage, and it is worth taking seriously because it solves the exact thing that goes wrong with a first recorder. A recorder squeaks when a hole is not fully covered. A small finger laid across a flat, drilled hole leaves a gap the child cannot see and cannot feel, and the note comes out as a shriek. The flutophone’s holes sit inside raised rims, so the fingertip drops into a socket and the edge tells it when it is home. The finger spacing is shorter as well, which matters when the hand is small enough that reaching the bottom hole pulls the top ones out of position. Grover-Trophy rate the instrument from age three. So: a child of three to six, or an older child with fine motor difficulty, will get a clean note out of a flutophone sooner and with less frustration. What it costs is tone. The flutophone’s mouthpiece is a plain whistle and it sounds like one — bright, thin and unforgiving at the top of its range, where a recorder is rounder and quieter. It also holds its pitch less reliably, which is why the mouthpiece slides. ## The flutophone is not the budget option The flutophone was sold to American schools from 1943 onward partly on price, and that reputation has outlived the fact. The Yamaha YRS-24B is about $8. The flutophone is about $16. The instrument with half the range costs twice as much. So if cost is what was pushing you toward a flutophone, it is not a reason any more. Raised holes and a short reach are worth real money to a small pair of hands, and they are the only thing here worth paying a premium for — Suzuki’s Precorder does that job for less than a flutophone costs. Otherwise buy the recorder and get twice the instrument for half the price. ## The two worth buying № 1 · The default answer ### Yamaha YRS-24B Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - C5–D7 - Double holes, low C/C♯ and D/D♯ - 3-piece ABS, washable - ~$8 The recorder most American classrooms hand out, and cheap enough that the decision barely deserves the thought. Intonation is genuinely good for the money, the doubled bottom holes mean the low chromatic notes play in tune rather than approximately, and it survives a school bag. Read the fingering before you check out. The YRS-23 is the same recorder with German fingering, it sits one click away in the same variant picker, and it is a dollar more. German fingering makes F easier and everything with a sharp in it worse, and English-language method books print Baroque charts. **Pros**- Twice the range of a flutophone for less money - Every method book and fingering chart assumes it - Baroque fingering, so it matches what the class is taught **Cons**- Flat holes are harder for a very small hand to seal - One digit from the YRS-23, which is the German-fingered version Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g2xc7i) № 2 · For hands that are not ready yet ### Suzuki PRE-1B Precorder - Pitched in C, chromatic - C5–D6 - Raised finger holes, short spacing - Doubled lowest two holes, low C♯ and D♯ - ABS, with bag, strap and chart - ~$14 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The pre-band instrument to buy for a small hand, and it is not the flutophone. Suzuki’s Precorder is the newest member of the same family and does the same job — raised hole rims a soft fingertip can find and seal, holes set close enough together for a three- or four-year-old’s span, and the same nine notes from C5 to D6. Where it improves on the older design is at the bottom: both of the lowest holes are doubled, so low C♯ and low D♯ are proper fingerings rather than a cross-fingering and a half-hole. Buy it for the hands and no other reason. At about $14 it still costs nearly twice the recorder that outplays it, and a child who takes to it will have exhausted the range inside a couple of years. The end is open, so it sounds like a quiet, breathy recorder rather than like the sealed tonette it superficially resembles. **Pros**- Raised holes and short reach genuinely suit small hands - Both low chromatics have real fingerings - Fingering transfers straight onto a recorder afterward **Cons**- Half the range, permanently - Dearer than the recorder that outplays it - Thin tone next to either a recorder or a tonette Around $14[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SVAZum) *\[Either way, [Essential Elements Recorder Book 1](https://amzn.to/4cVexZ5) is about $7 and is the method most classrooms work from — 130 tunes, rhythm drills and a fingering chart in the back. Its early tunes stay inside the flutophone’s range too.\]* ## Buying them by the box Buying for a whole class makes the fingering question the important one. Recorders come in Baroque and German, the two differ by a digit in the model number, and one German-fingered instrument in a room of Baroque ones puts that child on different notes from everyone else — for months, before anyone works out why. Order the same model throughout, plus a couple of spares, because they get lost. Both instruments wash, which is the question that actually comes up. Lukewarm water and a drop of dish soap, air dry, never hot water and never a dishwasher — heat distorts the joints on a recorder and the mouthpiece fit on a flutophone. The recorder comes apart into three pieces and the flutophone into two. ## Where the flutophone came from American schools spent the middle of the twentieth century teaching wind playing on instruments that no longer exist anywhere else. The tonette arrived in the late 1930s, invented by Ziegner Swanson; the song flute followed, from Elver J. Fitchhorn; Trophy Music Co. added the flutophone in 1943 and claim over fifty million sold since. Cheap plastic recorders arrived in quantity in the 1980s and took the classroom, because they cost about the same and played twice as much music. The tonette is out of production entirely. The song flute survives under Conn-Selmer. The flutophone is still made by Grover-Trophy and still sold by the case to elementary schools, which is a longer run than most instruments manage. ## FAQs ### Is a flutophone just a cheap recorder? No. It is a separate American instrument with its own history, half the range, raised finger holes and a shorter reach. A cheap recorder is a recorder — same range, same fingering charts, same repertoire — and at eight dollars it is not expensive. ### Can a child move from flutophone to recorder? Yes, and it is the reason the flutophone existed. Left hand on top, right hand below, holes released from the bottom up in the same order — the first octave transfers almost directly. Two things are new: sealing a flat hole without a rim to guide the finger, and pinching the thumb hole for the upper octave. ### Which one is easier to play? The flutophone, in the first few lessons. It asks for less breath control and its holes are far more forgiving. The gap closes quickly, and by the point a child is playing in more than two keys the recorder is the easier instrument, because it has the notes. ### Why does my flutophone sound out of tune? The mouthpiece slides, and that is the adjustment — push it in to sharpen, pull it out to flatten, then leave it. Beyond that, a plastic whistle mouthpiece is simply less stable than a recorder’s voicing, and blowing harder to reach the top of the range pushes those notes sharp. Warming the instrument in your hands before playing helps more than it sounds like it should. ### Can you play real music on a flutophone? Anything that fits in nine notes, in any key, since it is chromatic across its range. That covers a great deal of folk song, hymn tune and beginner repertoire. What it cannot do is anything that needs the octave above, which arrives early in written music. ### What happened to the tonette and the song flute? The tonette is no longer manufactured and is a second-hand item now. The song flute is still catalogued by Conn-Selmer. Both share the flutophone’s C5–D6 range and neither has its extra hole for low C sharp. Suzuki’s Precorder is the one of the family still in general circulation, and it doubles both of the lowest holes, so it has real fingerings for low C sharp and low D sharp where the flutophone has one and the older two have none. ### Do schools still use flutophones? Some do, mostly with the youngest classes and often as a year of preparation before recorders in third or fourth grade. Recorders have the classroom, but Grover-Trophy still sell flutophones by the hundred, so the practice has not died out. If you have settled on a recorder, the next decision is the brand and the fingering — we have gone through both under [Aulos vs Yamaha](/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) and across the [plastic recorder picks](/best-plastic-recorder/). For the neighboring comparisons, see the recorder against the [flute](/flute-vs-recorder/), the [penny whistle](/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/) and the [tonette](/tonette-vs-recorder/), or the wider family under [woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Orchestra vs Symphony vs Philharmonic: What Each Word Means](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/) **Published:** February 13, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Orchestra vs Symphony vs Philharmonic: What Each Word Means An orchestra is a group of musicians. A symphony is a piece of music written for one. **“Philharmonic” is neither — it is a word in an orchestra’s name, and it tells you nothing about the ensemble.** The Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are the same kind of organization, the same size, playing the same repertoire to the same standard. Only one of the three words on this page describes a real category, and it is not the one most people are asking about. ## The three words at a glance WordWhat it actually isFromTells you about the ensemble?**Orchestra**The ensemble itself — the group of playersGreek *orkhēstra*, the floor in front of a stageYes — it is the thing**Symphony**A multi-movement piece of music written for an orchestraGreek *symphōnia*, “sounding together”In a name, no**Philharmonic**A name, usually inherited from the society that founded the orchestraGreek *philharmonikos*, “music-loving”No**Chamber orchestra**A genuinely smaller orchestra, 15–40 playersMusic played in a “chamber” — a room, not a hallYes — this one is real ## A symphony is a piece of music, not a group of people This is the distinction that does real work. A symphony is a composition — an extended piece for orchestra, conventionally in four movements, with a brisk opening, a slow movement, something dance-derived, and a finale. Haydn wrote more than a hundred of them, Mozart forty-one, Beethoven nine. The form settled into that shape in the second half of the eighteenth century and composers have been stretching it ever since. How it differs from the other two things an orchestra plays is a matter of who is on the platform: see [symphony vs. concerto vs. sonata](https://promusicvault.com/symphony-vs-concerto-vs-sonata/). So a symphony orchestra is an orchestra large enough to play symphonies. It is not a “type” of orchestra in the way a string quartet is a type of ensemble, and it spends plenty of its year on music that is not symphonies at all — concertos, overtures, opera, ballet, film scores and choral works. The useful way to hold it: **the orchestra is who, the symphony is what.** An orchestra can play a symphony the way a band can play a song. Neither word is a subset of the other. ## Philharmonic means music-loving, and that is the whole of it The word comes from Greek — *philos*, loving, and *harmonia*. It was never a description of an ensemble’s size or instrumentation. It was the name that music-loving *societies* gave themselves, and those societies are where a lot of today’s orchestras came from. London’s Royal Philharmonic Society was founded in 1813 to put on concerts. The Philharmonic Society of New York followed in 1842, started by a group of local musicians led by Ureli Corelli Hill, giving a handful of subscription concerts a year from a rented hall. In each case the society was the organization — the fundraisers, the subscribers, the committee — and the orchestra was what it paid for. Over time the name slid from the society onto the players, and it stuck. That is the entire content of the word. It records how an orchestra was founded, not how it sounds. ## Why one city ends up with both If the two words meant different things, no city could field one of each. London has five major orchestras and the names simply record the order they arrived in: the London Symphony Orchestra (1904), the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1930), the London Philharmonic (1932), the Philharmonia (1945) and the Royal Philharmonic (1946). Vienna has the Vienna Philharmonic, founded 1842 and based at the Musikverein, and the Vienna Symphony, founded 1900 and based at the Konzerthaus. Found a new orchestra in a city where “Symphony” is taken, and you call yourself the Philharmonic. That is the whole mechanism. It is a naming problem, not a musical one. ## The New York Philharmonic settles the question The clearest evidence that the two words are interchangeable is that one orchestra carries both. The Philharmonic Society of New York spent the 1920s absorbing its rivals — the National Symphony Orchestra in 1921, the City Symphony in 1923, and in 1928 the Symphony Society of New York. The merged body has been legally named **the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York** ever since. Everyone calls it the New York Philharmonic. But its actual name has both words in it, joined by a hyphen, because when a Philharmonic and a Symphony merged there was nothing to reconcile. If the terms denoted different kinds of ensemble, that merger would have had to pick one. ## The chamber orchestra is the one that is really different Here the label tracks something you can hear. A full symphony orchestra runs 60–100 players. A chamber orchestra runs 15–40, and the reduction is not uniform: the strings shrink most, the brass and percussion may be small or absent entirely, and the winds often go down to one player per part. Fewer players means individual lines stay audible instead of blending into a section, which is why Baroque and early Classical repertoire — Bach, Handel, early Haydn and Mozart — sits better on a chamber orchestra than on a hundred-piece one. Some chamber orchestras play without a conductor, taking their lead from the first violinist, though plenty of them have a conductor like anyone else. One thing worth separating: a chamber orchestra is not the same as chamber *music*. Chamber music means one player per part — a string quartet is four people playing four lines. A chamber orchestra still doubles its string parts, it just doubles them less. ## Other names that are also just names Once you know the pattern, the rest of the concert listings stop being confusing. None of these indicate a different species of ensemble: - **Philharmonia** — the same Greek root, chosen because “Philharmonic” was already taken locally. - **Sinfonia** — Italian for symphony. **Sinfonietta** is the diminutive, and usually does signal a smaller group. - **Concertgebouw** — Dutch for “concert building”. The Amsterdam orchestra is named after its hall. - **Staatskapelle** — a German court or state chapel ensemble, a name inherited from an aristocratic employer. - **Academy**, as in the Academy of St Martin in the Fields — named for the church the group first recorded in. Size and repertoire are the things that vary. The word on the poster is heritage. ## What is actually in an orchestra Whatever it calls itself, a full orchestra is built from four families. Bowed strings make up more than half the players, which is why an orchestra sounds like an orchestra and a wind band does not. FamilyTypical instrumentsRoughly how many[Strings](/string-instruments/)Violin (first and second), viola, cello, double bass; harp when scored50–60[Woodwind](/woodwind-instruments/)Flute, piccolo, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon8–16[Brass](/brass-instruments/)French horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba8–14[Percussion](/percussion-instruments/)Timpani, snare, bass drum, cymbals, tuned percussion2–5[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A piano, organ or celesta joins when a score calls for it rather than sitting in the orchestra permanently — our guide to [keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/) covers where they fit. For the wider map of how these families are classified, see [types of instruments](/types-of-instruments/), and for how an orchestra differs from the school band most people actually encounter, [orchestra vs band](/orchestra-vs-band/) works through that comparison. ## “Orchestra” also means where you sit If a ticket site offers you orchestra seats, that is a different sense of the word and nobody is being careless. In ancient Greek theaters the *orkhēstra* was the flat semicircular floor between the audience and the stage, where the chorus sang and danced. The name migrated twice: first to the musicians who later occupied that space, and separately to the ground-floor seating that now sits there. So “orchestra” can mean the players or the best seats in the house, and context does all the work. ## Learning to listen properly Knowing that “philharmonic” is only a name is worth about thirty seconds. Being able to follow what an orchestra is doing while it does it is worth rather more, and it is a skill rather than a fact. № 1 · Start here ### Aaron Copland — What to Listen For in Music - Paperback, around 300 pages - Written by a composer, not a critic - Builds from rhythm, melody, harmony and tone color - Around $8 Copland takes the position that most people listen to music passively and can be taught not to, then spends the book showing how. He works up from the four elements to musical form, so by the end a symphony’s four movements read as a structure you can follow rather than twenty minutes of undifferentiated orchestra. For a reader who has just sorted out what a symphony is, that is the natural next thing to know. It first appeared in the 1930s and it reads like it — the tone is formal and the listening examples assume a record collection nobody has any more. Neither matters much, because the framework is the part that lasted and the pieces he points at are all a search away. At around $8 it is the cheapest thing on this page and the one most likely to change how you hear a concert. **Pros**- Costs less than a coffee and a pastry - Explains musical form, which is what makes long pieces navigable - Still in print after eighty-odd years for a reason **Cons**- Dated prose and dated examples - Assumes you will go and listen — it is not a book to read passively Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4h2Q0Ul) № 2 · For the wall ### Instruments of the Orchestra poster - 22 × 34 inches - Published by Hal Leonard - All four families laid out by section - Around $8 The four families are far easier to absorb as a picture than as a list, and this puts every instrument in one view at the size it is actually seen from a seat in the hall. It is the obvious thing for a practice room, a classroom wall or a child who has started asking which one is the cor anglais. Set expectations honestly: it is a poster. It labels instruments and groups them, and it does not explain anything. It is also a thinly reviewed listing — the ratings that exist are good, but there are not many of them, which is worth knowing before ordering at any price above this one. Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gFhpul) № 3 · If a child is asking ### A Child’s Introduction to the Orchestra - Hardcover, revised and updated edition - Instrument-by-instrument tour with audio to stream - Includes a pull-out poster - Around $13 This covers the same ground as the section above — what the four families are and who sits where — at a length and a reading level that suits roughly seven to twelve. The audio is the reason to prefer it to a plain book: hearing an oboe immediately after reading about one is what makes the family names stick. It is genuinely a children’s book and an adult should buy the Copland instead. As a way of answering a curious eight-year-old without improvising, it does the job well and it is cheap enough not to think about. Around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qNim8w) For the composers rather than the music, Michael Steen’s [The Lives and Times of the Great Composers](https://amzn.to/4xCpmry) runs to nearly a thousand pages of biography and social history, Handel through to the late nineteenth century. It is a hardcover at around $60, so it is a reference-shelf commitment rather than an impulse buy, and it answers a different question from the three above — who these people were, not how to listen to them. ## Common questions ### What is the difference between a symphony and a philharmonic? As orchestra names, none. Both describe a full-size orchestra of roughly 60–100 players covering the same repertoire. The difference is only in which word the founders chose. As ordinary nouns they are not alike at all: a symphony is a piece of music, while “philharmonic” is only ever part of a name. ### Is a philharmonic better than a symphony orchestra? No. Quality varies enormously between orchestras and not at all between the two words. The Berlin Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are both world-class; a community philharmonic and a community symphony are both community orchestras. ### Why is it called a philharmonic? Because a music-loving society founded it, or founded the concert series it grew out of. The word means “music-loving” in Greek, and it belonged to the organization before it belonged to the players. ### How many musicians are in an orchestra? A full symphony or philharmonic orchestra is 60–100 players, and the exact number changes piece by piece — a Mozart symphony needs far fewer bodies on stage than a Mahler one. A chamber orchestra is 15–40. ### What is the difference between a symphony orchestra and a chamber orchestra? Size, and it is a real difference rather than a naming one. A chamber orchestra’s 15–40 players give a clearer, lighter texture suited to Baroque and early Classical music, and it may have little or no brass and percussion. ### Can an orchestra play music that is not a symphony? Most of what it plays is not a symphony. Concertos, overtures, tone poems, opera and ballet scores, choral works and film music all take an orchestra, and the name over the door does not restrict any of it. ### Does a philharmonic orchestra have a conductor? Yes, exactly as a symphony orchestra does. Conductorless playing turns up occasionally among chamber orchestras, where a group small enough to hear itself can be led from the first violin instead. **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [Mandolin vs Bouzouki: Greek, Irish, and Which to Learn First](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Mandolin vs Bouzouki: Greek, Irish, and Which to Learn First A mandolin has eight steel strings in four pairs, a scale of about fourteen inches, and violin tuning — G, D, A, E. A bouzouki has six or eight strings, a scale nearer twenty-six inches, and a tuning that depends entirely on which bouzouki you are holding. That last part is the whole comparison. Two instruments answer to the word bouzouki. The Greek one is a bowl-backed instrument from Athens tuned C–F–A–D, and next to a mandolin it is a stranger. The Irish one is a flat-backed instrument built in Britain and Ireland since 1972, tuned G–D–A–D, and it is close enough to a mandolin that the fingering transfers almost intact. Which one you mean decides everything that follows. If you want one answer### Start on the mandolin, whichever bouzouki you are eyeing A playable mandolin costs about a hundred dollars. The cheapest Irish bouzouki worth owning costs ten times that, and a Greek one has to be ordered from a maker. The mandolin also teaches you the tuning you will use later — a bouzouki in G–D–A–D or G–D–A–E is a mandolin an octave down, so every chord shape and every scale pattern you learn now still works when you move across. Going the other way teaches you nothing about the mandolin’s close frets. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wtjqPS) **Scale:** 14″ vs 24–27″ **Tuning:** GDAE vs GDAD (Irish) or CFAD (Greek) **Back:** flat or arched vs a ribbed bowl **Cost to start:** ~$100 vs ~$1,000 ## Three instruments, side by side MandolinIrish bouzoukiGreek bouzouki**Strings**8, in 4 pairs8, in 4 pairs6 in 3 pairs (trichordo) or 8 in 4 (tetrachordo)**Standard tuning**G–D–A–EG–D–A–DC–F–A–D, or D–A–D on a trichordo**Intervals**Fifths throughout, same as a violinFifths, then a fourth at the topFourth, third, fourth — guitar logic, not violin**Pairs tuned**UnisonUsually unison on all fourOctaves on the lower courses, unison above**Scale length**About 14″24–27″26–27″**Back**Flat, or carved and archedFlat, or gently stavedA deep ribbed bowl**Where it came from**Naples, 18th centuryIreland and Britain, from 1972Athens and Piraeus, 1920s onward**What it mostly does**Carries the tunePlays underneath the tuneBoth — lead lines and accompaniment**Realistic entry price**$100 laminate, $400 carvedAbout $1,000$300–500 imported, $1,500+ from a maker ## Only one bouzouki is a mandolin an octave down A mandolin is tuned G–D–A–E in fifths, the same four notes as a violin. The Irish bouzouki’s standard tuning is G–D–A–D: the bottom three courses are the mandolin’s bottom three, an octave lower, and the top course drops from E to D. Some players do use G–D–A–E, and on those instruments the relationship is exact — a mandolin, one octave below, with a neck twice as long. The Greek bouzouki is somewhere else entirely. The four-course tetrachordo is tuned C–F–A–D, which is a fourth, a major third and a fourth — the interval pattern of a guitar’s top four strings rather than a violin’s. Nothing you know about a mandolin fingerboard survives the move. The older three-course trichordo is tuned D–A–D, and that one at least shares the fifth-plus-fourth shape, which is why the Irish players who adopted the instrument gravitated toward G–D–A–D. This is also why the two families need different strings. A set cut for an Irish bouzouki in G–D–A–D will sit at the wrong tension on a Greek instrument expecting C–F–A–D, and Greek sets are built with an octave pair on the lower courses where Irish sets give you two of the same. [D’Addario’s EJ81 set](https://amzn.to/4zSgaRm) is the standard answer for the Irish instrument — check the packet says Irish bouzouki before you buy, because the Greek sets look almost identical on the shelf. ## Fourteen inches against twenty-six Scale length — nut to bridge — is the difference your hands notice first, and it is the one that decides whether an instrument suits you. A mandolin runs about fourteen inches, so the frets sit close enough together that one hand position covers several of them without moving. That is what makes fast bluegrass runs and tremolo possible, and it is also why a mandolin is unforgiving of a heavy hand: the margin between in tune and slightly sharp is a couple of millimeters. A bouzouki neck is nearly double that. Irish instruments run 24 to 27 inches, Greek ones 26 to 27, which puts the frets at roughly guitar spacing. If you already play guitar, that will feel normal and the mandolin will feel cramped. If you have small hands, the reverse. What surprises people is that the extra length does not mean heavier strings. A standard medium mandolin set runs .011, .015, .026 and .040. The standard Irish bouzouki set runs .011, .016, .028 and .040 — within a thousandth or two of the same wire, stretched over twice the distance. The bouzouki is lower because it is longer, not because it is strung like a bass. [The EJ74 mandolin set](https://amzn.to/4qV0Pve) at those gauges is the one most players end up on, and it is worth knowing that only half of it is phosphor bronze: the G and D courses are wound, the A and E courses are plain steel. ## The back of the instrument tells you which tradition built it A Greek bouzouki has a deep bowl back, built from thin staves bent and glued edge to edge, the same construction as an oud or a Renaissance lute. It is light for its size, loud, and it slides off your lap given the slightest chance. That bowl is where the instrument’s sharp, ringing top end comes from. An Irish bouzouki has a flat or lightly arched back, because it was designed for a different job. When Johnny Moynihan brought a Greek bouzouki into Irish music in the mid-1960s he retuned it and used it for accompaniment, and by 1972 the luthier Peter Abnett was building purpose-made instruments — the first for Dónal Lunny, with a partly staved back rather than a bowl. Lunny also swapped the octave pairs on the low courses for unison pairs, which is why an Irish bouzouki sounds like a wall of one note and a Greek one shimmers. Mandolins come both ways, which confuses the picture. The old Neapolitan bowl-back is a direct cousin of the Greek instrument’s construction; the flat-backed and carved-top mandolins that took over in America are not. [The mandolin family’s own shapes](/types-of-mandolins/) divide along exactly the same line. ## One plays the tune, one mostly plays underneath it In bluegrass, old-time and Irish session music the mandolin is a melody instrument. It takes the tune, it plays it fast, and in bluegrass it also supplies the chop — a clipped chord on the offbeat that does the job a snare drum does elsewhere. The Irish bouzouki was invented to fill the opposite role. It plays open, droning chords under a fiddle or a flute, with enough sustain to hold a bar and enough definition that it never turns to mush. It can take a tune, and plenty of players do, but that is not why it exists. The Greek bouzouki does both, and the lead playing is the reason it is famous. Manolis Chiotis, who added the fourth course in the 1950s, was a virtuoso soloist, and the rapid tremolo lines on any Greek recording you have heard are bouzouki lead. The instrument carries rebetiko and laïkó the way a fiddle carries a reel. ## Where the two came from The mandolin is Italian and about three hundred years old. It grew out of the small treble lutes of the Renaissance, took its modern eight-string, fifths-tuned form in 18th-century Naples, and reached America with Italian emigration in the 1880s, where Gibson’s carved archtops turned it into the instrument bluegrass would later use. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The bouzouki’s line runs through the long-necked lutes of the eastern Mediterranean — the tambourás and its relatives — and the instrument as anyone would recognize it today dates from the 1920s, when refugees arriving from Anatolia met the urban music of Piraeus and rebetiko took shape around a three-course bouzouki tuned D–A–D. The four-course version came thirty years later. Neither instrument descends from anything ancient: the mandolin is Baroque and the bouzouki is a twentieth-century instrument. ## What each one costs The mandolin is the cheap one by a wide margin. Around $100 buys a laminate A-style that plays in tune once it is set up; around $400 is where carved solid tops begin and where the instrument starts to sound like the recordings. Budget $60 to $125 on top for a setup at a shop, because on a cheap mandolin the setup matters more than anything in the specification. [What your money buys at each price](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) goes through the rungs in detail. Bouzoukis start much higher and the reason is volume, not greed — nobody builds them by the container-load. A Greek bouzouki from a workshop import runs roughly $300 to $500, and a hand-built one from a Greek maker starts around $1,500 and climbs steeply. Irish bouzoukis are mostly built one at a time by luthiers, so there is very little under a thousand dollars, and what there is tends to be a long-scale octave mandolin with a bouzouki label on it. The one production Irish bouzouki ### Gold Tone BZ-500 - 26¼” scale, tuned G–D–A–D - All four courses in unison - Solid spruce top, mahogany back and sides - Bridge transducer pickup, hardshell case included - ~$1,000 Almost every Irish bouzouki is a one-off from a luthier’s bench. This is the rare one built in production numbers, and it follows Lunny’s pattern — flat back, unison pairs throughout, no octave strings — so it gives you the modern Irish sound rather than a Greek one. The bridge pickup means it works in a session that has gone electric. Gold Tone’s list price is a little over a thousand and they hold it, so treat anything advertised well under that as a different instrument rather than a bargain. Buy from an authorized dealer if the warranty matters to you. Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xNHaj6) ## Which one to learn first The mandolin, and not only because it is cheaper. Its tuning is the one the Irish bouzouki borrowed, so the work transfers: learn your chord shapes and your scale patterns on fourteen inches and they are the same shapes on twenty-six, just further apart. There are teachers and tutorials for the mandolin everywhere, and almost none for either bouzouki outside a handful of specialists. The honest case against it is the frets. A mandolin’s are close together and its strings are doubled, which means fretting cleanly takes more finger pressure than a guitar and rewards accuracy you do not yet have. [It is not a hard instrument](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/), but the first fortnight is fiddly in a way a bouzouki’s roomier neck is not. If you already play guitar and only want to accompany singers, going straight to a bouzouki is a defensible choice — you would just be paying about a thousand dollars to skip a hundred-dollar step. If what you actually want is the low, chordal sound without the bouzouki price, the instrument in between is the octave mandolin — G–D–A–E, a scale around 21 inches, and a good deal easier to find. [Where it sits in the family](/types-of-mandolins/) is worth reading before you commit either way. ## What to buy alongside either one Less than you would think. Beginner mandolins are usually sold as bundles, and the Donner above arrives with a gig bag, a clip-on tuner, spare strings and picks, so there is nothing else to order on day one. The Gold Tone comes with its hardshell case. What is worth buying separately is a tuner you can trust, because both instruments have eight strings that all move and a bundled tuner is usually the weakest thing in the box. A [Snark ST-2 clip-on chromatic](https://amzn.to/4h3uL4I), around $22, reads either instrument and any tuning you put on it, and charges over USB rather than taking a coin cell. After that: a spare set of strings, and a setup. [Tuning eight strings in pairs](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) takes a little practice, and doing it against a bad tuner takes considerably more. ## FAQs ### Is a bouzouki just a big mandolin? An Irish bouzouki nearly is — same four courses, same fifths, roughly an octave down. A Greek bouzouki is not, because its C–F–A–D tuning uses a different interval pattern and its bowl back is a different instrument’s construction. The two share a name and not much else. ### Can I tune a bouzouki like a mandolin? An Irish one, yes — G–D–A–E an octave below the mandolin is a recognized tuning and some players prefer it. A Greek bouzouki, no. It is built for the tension of C–F–A–D and its scale is fixed, so retuning it to fifths puts the strings either slack or dangerously tight depending on which way you go. ### How many strings does a bouzouki have? Six or eight. The older Greek trichordo has six in three pairs; the tetrachordo Manolis Chiotis introduced in the 1950s has eight in four, and so does every Irish bouzouki. A [mandolin always has eight](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/). ### Which is louder? The bouzouki, comfortably — it has a far bigger body and longer strings. But the mandolin cuts through better in a mixed group, because its range sits above most other instruments rather than competing with a guitar for the same space. ### What is the difference between an Irish bouzouki and an octave mandolin? Scale length, mostly, and the tuning that follows from it. An octave mandolin is about 21 inches and tuned G–D–A–E; an Irish bouzouki is 24 inches or more and usually G–D–A–D. Past about 24 inches the top E gets slack and awkward, which is why the longer instrument drops it to D. Makers are not consistent about the labels, so read the scale length rather than the name on the headstock. ### Do the same techniques work on both? The picking hand transfers directly — both are plectrum instruments and the tremolo is the same motion. The fretting hand does not, in either direction. Twenty-six inches of neck means one finger per fret and real stretches; fourteen inches means several frets under one hand and very little margin for a finger landing off-center. ### Is a bouzouki harder to play than a mandolin? Physically it is easier, if anything. The frets are guitar-spaced and the strings are further apart, so clean fretting comes sooner. What is harder is everything around it: less written material, fewer teachers, and a much larger sum to spend before you know whether you like it. ### Can I play Greek music on an Irish bouzouki? You can play the notes, but it will not sound Greek. The octave pairs on the lower courses are most of that shimmer, and Irish instruments are strung in unison. You would also be retuning to C–F–A–D on an instrument built around G–D–A–D tension, which is possible with the right gauges and not ideal. ### Which should I buy if I want to play in Irish sessions? Both belong there, doing different jobs. If you want to play the tunes, the mandolin. If you want to back other people playing them, the bouzouki — and start on a mandolin anyway while you save for one, because the tuning is the same and nothing you learn is wasted. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Lyre vs. Harp: What's the Difference, and Which to Learn First](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/) **Published:** September 15, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Harp Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/harp-comparisons/ "Harp Comparisons")› Lyre vs. Harp: What’s the Difference, and Which to Learn First Look at where the strings meet the wood. On a harp they stand away from the soundboard at close to a right angle and pass straight through it. On a lyre they lie flat across the face of the instrument and cross a bridge, the way they do on a guitar. That one difference in geometry produces every other difference between the two — the shape, the weight, the volume, the price, and what you are able to play. The $80 wooden instrument sold online as a “lyre harp” is a lyre. It is a good buy at the price, and it is not a small harp. If you are choosing between them### Buy a lyre for the object, a harp for the music A lyre is $35–$100, weighs a couple of pounds, sounds lovely within an hour, and is stuck in one key until you retune it string by string. A lever harp starts around $600, gives you three chromatic-ish octaves and a repertoire that runs from Irish airs to Debussy, and asks for lessons. Time spent on a lyre does not shorten the road to the harp — the hand position, the damping and the reading are all different. **Strings:** harp 22–47, lyre 7–19 **Weight:** harp 11–80 lb, lyre 2–4 lb **Key changes:** levers or pedals vs. a tuning wrench **Entry price:** ~$600 vs. ~$80 ## Lyre vs. harp, side by side HarpLyre**How the strings attach**Knotted through the soundboard itself, one hole per stringStretched from a yoke or top arm, over a bridge or saddle resting on the soundboard**String plane**Perpendicular to the soundboard — the strings rise away from itParallel to the soundboard — the strings lie across its face**Which way the tension pulls**Upward, lifting the soundboard; needs a pillar to resist itDownward, pressing the bridge into the soundboard, as on a guitar**Shape**Closed triangle: soundbox, neck, pillarOpen frame with two arms and a crossbar, or an asymmetric single arm**Strings**22–38 on a lever harp, 47 on a concert pedal harp7, 10, 16, 19 or 21 on modern instruments; 4–10 on ancient ones**Range**3 octaves on a small lever harp, 6½ on a pedal harpOne octave on a 7-string, two on a 16-string**Playing in another key**Flip levers, or move pedals mid-pieceRetune the affected strings with a wrench**String material**Nylon, gut or wireSteel on almost everything sold today**Tone**Warm, long sustain, fills a room unamplifiedBright and metallic, short decay, quiet enough to need a pickup on stage**Weight**11 lb for a 22-string lever harp; about 80 lb for a concert grand2–4 lb — you hold it against your chest**Price**~$600 entry lever harp; $15,500 and up for a pedal harp~$35 for a 7-string, ~$80 for a 16-string**Hands**Both hands, thumbs uppermost, playing from either side of the string planeOne hand plucks or strums the face; the other damps from behind ## The bridge is the whole story A harp string is knotted, threaded through its own hole in the soundboard, and pulled tight against a pin in the neck above. Nothing sits between the string and the board. The string leaves the soundboard at a steep angle, so as it comes up to pitch it tries to lift the board away from the body. Multiply that by 47 strings and the load is enormous: a concert pedal harp carries roughly 2,000 pounds of tension, about a ton, all of it trying to fold the instrument in on itself. That is why a harp is a closed triangle. The third side — the pillar, the column at the front — exists to stop the neck being dragged down onto the soundbox. Take the pillar away and the harp collapses within a week. A lyre never has that problem, because its strings run in the same plane as the soundboard and cross a bridge on the way. The bridge presses down into the board rather than pulling up on it, exactly as a guitar’s does, and the frame only has to resist the strings trying to shorten the distance between the yoke and the tailpiece. A slab of mahogany you can hold in one hand is stiff enough for that. It is also why the two instruments sound nothing alike: on a harp the string drives the board directly, on a lyre the energy has to travel through a bridge first, and it arrives thinner and dies sooner. ### The pillar arrived surprisingly late Harps existed for four thousand years before anyone put a third side on one. The instruments in Sumerian and Egyptian art from around 3000 BCE are *arched* harps — a curved neck springing out of a soundbox, held in tension by the strings alone, which limits how tight those strings can be pulled. Plenty of arched harps are still played today, from the Burmese *saung* to West African instruments. The triangular frame harp is a northwest European invention, and the earliest surviving images of one are carved on Pictish stones in Scotland: the Nigg Stone, dated to the 790s, and the harper on the Dupplin Cross from around 800. That pillar is what allowed string tension to climb, and higher tension is what gave the harp its volume, its range and eventually its expense. The instrument on the Irish coat of arms and on a pint of Guinness is a descendant of those carvings. ## What you can actually play on each Both instruments are diatonic. Strings are laid out like the white notes of a piano, so there is no obvious way to reach a sharp or a flat, and every harp built in the last few centuries has some mechanism for solving that. On a lever harp there is a small metal lever at the top of each string. Flipping it shortens the string by a semitone. You set them before you start playing, which gives you comfortable access to perhaps four or five keys and lets you flip a lever mid-tune if you have a spare hand. On a pedal harp seven foot pedals each control every string of one letter name across the whole instrument, in three positions — flat, natural, sharp — which makes it fully chromatic while both hands stay busy. We take the two apart in [lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). A lyre has none of this. A 16-string lyre tuned to C major plays in C major and A minor, and reaching any other key means loosening pins with a wrench and tuning them back afterward. For the ambient, modal, improvised music most lyre players gravitate toward that is no obstacle at all. For playing along with anyone else, it is a hard ceiling. Range compounds it. A 7-string lyre covers a single octave, which rules out most melodies before you start. Sixteen strings gets you roughly G3 to A5 — two octaves, enough for folk tunes, hymns and film themes. A 22-string lever harp runs C3 to C6 with a left hand free for accompaniment, which is the point at which the instrument stops being a novelty and starts being a harp. There is more on how string count maps to repertoire in [how many strings a harp has](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ## “Lyre harp” is a shop label Every instrument sold under that phrase is a lyre. The word *harp* in the product title is doing marketing work, not describing the build: the strings cross a saddle glued to the soundboard, which makes it a lyre by the only definition that has ever mattered. The rest of the vocabulary is worth having straight, because the same instrument turns up under several names. Name you will seeWhat it isLyre harpA modern steel-strung lyre, 7 to 21 strings, $35–$100Celtic harp, folk harp, Irish harp, lever harpAll the same thing — a frame harp with sharping leversLap harpA small lever harp played on the knees, or sometimes a fretless zither, depending on the sellerConcert harp, pedal harp, orchestral harpThe 47-string instrument with seven pedalsKinderharp, children’s lyreA Waldorf-school pentatonic lyre, usually gut or nylon strungAnglo-Saxon or Germanic harpA lyre, despite the name — see below Lap harp is the slipperiest of those: it covers two unrelated instruments, and which one you get depends on the seller. Our guide to [lap harps](/best-lap-harps/) sorts them out. A lyre is not a lute either, though the two get shelved together — that one is [lute vs. lyre](/lute-vs-lyre/). ## Where each one came from Neither instrument descends from the other. Arched harps appear in Mesopotamian and Egyptian art from about 3000 BCE. Lyres show up a few centuries later, most famously the ones excavated from the Royal Cemetery at Ur and dated to around 2500 BCE, with bull’s-head decoration and a bridge across the soundbox. They spread across the eastern Mediterranean as parallel traditions. Greece went with the lyre. The *chelys* was built on a tortoise shell, which the Homeric Hymn to Hermes says the infant god hollowed out and strung with gut, then handed to Apollo to settle the matter of some stolen cattle. Apollo, Orpheus and Sappho are all pictured with lyres or the larger concert kithara. Harps existed in Greece too — the *trigonon* was played on the lap — but the lyre is the instrument the culture built its education and its poetry around. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The clearest illustration of how easily the two are confused comes from Sutton Hoo. The Anglo-Saxon ship burial excavated in 1939 contained a fragmented stringed instrument from around 625 CE, and the first reconstruction, published in 1948, presented it as a small quadrangular harp. It was rebuilt correctly as a six-stringed lyre in 1970, and that rebuild is what established the lyre — not the harp — as the standard instrument of early Germanic music. Old translations of *Beowulf* still say harp; the object in the ground was a lyre. ## Which is easier to learn? The lyre, comfortably, and not only because it is smaller. Sixteen strings tuned to one key means every note you play belongs, so a beginner sounds musical on the first evening. There is no lever technique, no pedal choreography, no left-hand accompaniment to coordinate, and nothing to sight-read beyond a string-number chart. Most people are playing recognisable tunes inside a week. The harp asks more, and pays it back. The first hurdle is physical — placing four fingers, keeping thumbs up, and damping strings that would otherwise ring on top of each other. The second is that you are reading two staves at once, like a pianist. Expect a few months before pieces sound finished, and a teacher or a structured method to get there; our notes on [how long the harp takes](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) go into the timeline properly. A lyre is not a stepping stone. Nothing about holding one, plucking it or reading for it transfers to harp lessons, and a teacher will start you from scratch regardless. Buy a lyre because you want a lyre. ## So which should you buy? If you want the lyre ### Donner DLH-003, 16-String Lyre Harp - 16 steel strings - G3–A5, tuned to C major - Mahogany, hollow resonance box - Copper saddle - Tuning wrench, spare strings and gig bag included - ~$100 Sixteen strings is the number to buy. Two octaves covers most of the folk tunes, hymns and film themes people pick a lyre up to play, where a 7-string tops out after one. The body here is a hollow box rather than a solid slab, which is the difference between an instrument that projects and one that merely makes a noise, and the copper saddle passes the strings’ energy into the soundboard cleanly. The tone is bright and metallic — nearer a zither than the soft wash the word harp suggests. That is what steel on a small box sounds like, and it applies to every lyre at this price. The [full lyre harp comparison](/best-lyre-harps/) puts it against the AKLOT alternatives, and there is a closer look at the range in our [Donner lyre harp review](/donner-lyre-harp-review/). Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DeEZev) If you want the harp ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings with Chelby Levers - 22 DuPont hard nylon strings - C3–C6, three full octaves - Full Chelby sharping levers on every string - About 36 inches tall, 11 lb - Spare string set, tuning wrench and play book included - ~$600 This is roughly the cheapest instrument that behaves like a real harp. Three octaves is enough for a melody and a left hand underneath it, the nylon strings are kind to beginners’ fingertips, and levers on all 22 strings mean you are not locked into C — the cheaper Roosebecks come with levers only on the F and C strings, which sounds like a small saving until the first piece that needs a B flat. Chelby levers engage the string from the side rather than clamping over it, so the string is less inclined to lift off the bridge pin and go sharp. At 11 pounds it moves between rooms in one hand. The price is the going rate for the instrument rather than a premium on it, and the bundled spare string set matters more than it sounds — a new harp will eat a string or two while the wood settles. We line it up against the alternatives in [best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/), and if you want more range for study there is the 29-string [Minstrel](/minstrel-harp-review/). Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2) If $80 is still more than you want to risk on a curiosity, the [AKLOT 7-string](https://amzn.to/3XJ4m02) is about $35 and makes a good gift, as long as everyone understands it plays one octave. For children specifically, see [harps for kids](/harps-for-kids/). ### The two things to buy alongside either one A **clip-on tuner**, because both instruments arrive out of tune and the lyre in particular drifts for its first few weeks while the strings stretch. The [Snark ST-2](https://amzn.to/4h2gvcz) is around $22, charges over USB, and reads by vibration, which is what you want on an instrument where plucking one string sets several others humming. Clip it to the tuning key rather than the frame — the reasoning, and four alternatives, are in [our tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/). Then see [how to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/). A **method book**, if you have gone the harp route. Mel Bay’s [Basic Harp for Beginners](https://amzn.to/4cnrAlX) by Laurie Riley is about $20 and 80 pages, covers hand position, tuning and technique before it gets to the folk solos, and works on a harp with or without levers. More options in [beginning harp music books](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/), and general orientation in [learning to play the harp](/learn-to-play-the-harp/). ## FAQs ### What is the main difference between a lyre and a harp? How the strings meet the soundboard. A harp’s strings pass through the soundboard at close to a right angle, so the tension pulls the board upward and the instrument needs a pillar to survive it. A lyre’s strings lie across the face of the soundboard and cross a bridge, pressing down on it like a guitar. Size, volume, range and price all follow from that. ### Is a lyre harp a real harp? No. Everything sold as a “lyre harp” is a lyre: the strings cross a saddle on the soundboard instead of entering it. It is a genuine instrument and a fine thing to own for $80, but it is not a small harp and does not play harp music. ### Which is easier to learn, the lyre or the harp? The lyre, by a wide margin. It is tuned to one key so every note sounds right, it needs no lever or pedal technique, and most people play recognisable tunes within a week. A harp needs hand position, damping and two-stave reading, and takes months before pieces sound finished. ### Can you play harp music on a lyre? Very little of it. A 16-string lyre covers two octaves in a single key, so anything that changes key or wants a bass line under a melody is out of reach. Simple folk tunes and hymns transfer; almost nothing written for lever or pedal harp does. ### How many strings should each one have? Sixteen on a lyre — a 7-string covers one octave and runs out of notes fast. Twenty-two on a first harp, with levers on every string rather than just the F and C strings. ### Which came first? The harp, narrowly. Arched harps appear in Mesopotamian and Egyptian art around 3000 BCE; the earliest surviving lyres, from the Royal Cemetery at Ur, date to about 2500 BCE. Neither descends from the other. The triangular frame harp people picture today is far younger — the earliest images of one are 8th-century Pictish carvings in Scotland. ### Are lyres still played today? Yes. The Ethiopian *krar* and *begena* and the East African *nyatiti* are living traditions, Waldorf schools teach children on pentatonic lyres, and there is an active revival of Anglo-Saxon and Norse lyre playing. The steel-strung instruments sold online are a modern design rather than a reconstruction of any of those. ### Why are harps so expensive? The pillar and neck have to hold up to a ton of string tension for decades without moving, which means seasoned hardwood and joinery that cannot be rushed, and a pedal harp adds an action of over 1,500 parts on top of that. We break down the costs in [why harps are so expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). ## The short version A harp is a triangle whose strings pass through the soundboard, and the pillar is there because a ton of tension has to go somewhere. A lyre is an open frame whose strings run across the soundboard over a bridge, which is why it can weigh two pounds and cost eighty dollars. If you want to sit down and make a pleasant sound this weekend, the [Donner 16-string](https://amzn.to/3DeEZev) does that. If you want to play the harp, start on a [22-string lever harp](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2) and skip the detour. **Categories:** Harp Comparisons --- ### [Irish Flute vs. Tin Whistle: The Difference, and Which to Start On](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Irish Flute vs. Tin Whistle: The Difference, and Which to Start On Your fingers do the same thing on both. Six holes, three fingers of each hand, left hand nearest your face, and a fingering chart that works for either instrument. What changes is what your mouth is doing, and that single difference decides how long it takes to get a note, how loud you end up, and which octave you are playing in. It also decides the money, by a factor of about forty. The short answer### Start on a D tin whistle The whistle makes a note the moment you blow, the fingering is the one the flute uses, and nothing you learn on it has to be unlearned later. A whistle with a tutor book is the whole outlay — this Feadóg pack is a brass D whistle, a book of tunes and a fingering chart, which is everything a first month needs. About $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U84QQy) **Cheapest good one:** Walton’s D, made in Ireland, about $14 **Most forgiving to blow:** Clarke Sweetone, about $20 **Closest to a flute’s tone:** Clarke Original, about $30 **You want the flute’s low octave:** a low D whistle, around $250 ## The differences that matter Tin whistleIrish flute**How the sound starts**You blow into a mouthpiece; a duct aims the air at a sharp edge for youYou blow across a hole in the side; your lips aim the air**How you hold it**Straight out in frontOut to the right, along your shoulder**Finger holes**SixSix, plus four to eight keys on a keyed flute**Fingering**The same simple system on both — a chart for one works for the other**Lowest note**D5D4, an octave lower**Range**About two octavesAbout two octaves, and more on a keyed flute**Bore**A straight tube, or tapered on a ClarkeCylindrical head, conical body narrowing to the foot**Material**Brass, tinplate, nickel or aluminum with a plastic or wooden mouthpieceAfrican blackwood or rosewood, sometimes Delrin or PVC**Volume**Fixed, and it carries whether you want it to or notMuch louder at the top, and you control it**First note**ImmediatelyDays to weeks**What a good one costs**$14–40Several hundred dollars and up ## The whistle does half the job for you Put the tip of a whistle between your lips, seal it with the upper one, and blow gently. The mouthpiece — the fipple — contains a narrow duct that carries your breath to a sharp edge cut into the tube, and the air splitting on that edge is what makes the note. The instrument has already solved the hard part. Your only job is to blow steadily and not too hard. The Irish flute has no duct and no edge waiting for the air. There is a hole cut in the side of the tube, and you have to form the airstream yourself: lips flattened into a narrow slot, the air directed across the hole so that roughly half of it goes in and half of it goes over. If you have ever got a note out of a bottle top you have done it once. Doing it on demand, in tune, for a whole tune, takes most players a fortnight of daily attempts. That work buys something. Because the airstream is yours, you shape every note with it — loud, soft, breathy, hard-edged, bent slightly flat and back up again. A whistle gives you almost none of that; blow harder and you go up an octave rather than getting louder. It is the reason a flute holds its own in a noisy session and a whistle above a certain number of players simply disappears. ## Both are in D, an octave apart Cover all six holes on a standard tin whistle and you get D5, the second D above middle C. Cover all six on an Irish flute and you get D4, an octave below that. Same name, same fingering, same key signature on the page — and the flute lives in the register underneath. This is worth knowing before you buy, because it is usually the sound people are really after. The dark, breathy, low tone in Irish music is the flute’s bottom octave. A standard D whistle cannot go there, and no amount of practice will take it there. What can go there is a [low D whistle](https://promusicvault.com/best-low-d-whistle/): the same fipple mouthpiece and the same fingering on a tube roughly twice the length, pitched exactly where the flute is. It is a genuine third option, and the reason so many flute players carry one. The catch is the stretch. A low D is around 22 inches, the holes are spaced for it, and most players cover the lower ones with the pads of their fingers rather than the tips. Small hands struggle, and it is not the instrument to learn the fingering on. ## Everything you learn on the whistle transfers The six-hole simple system is the same on a tin whistle, a low whistle, an Irish flute and a [fife](https://promusicvault.com/fife-vs-flute/). Not similar — the same. All six covered is D, lift the bottom finger for E, and so on up a D major scale. Sharps and flats come from cross-fingerings and half-covered holes on all of them, and those fingerings carry across too. So does the repertoire and everything around it. Irish tunes sit overwhelmingly in D, G and A, which is precisely why the D instrument became standard for both. The ornaments — cuts, taps, rolls, crans — are finger movements, and a roll learned on a whistle is a roll on a flute. Sessions call tunes at the same pitch for both. What does not transfer is the embouchure, and that is the only thing the flute asks you to start from nothing on. Starting on the whistle means arriving at the flute with the fingers, the tunes and the ornaments already in place, with one problem left to solve instead of four at once. The traffic runs the other way as well. Flute players almost all keep a whistle, for quiet practice, for the high register, and because a tune worked out on a whistle in a kitchen is a tune learned. ## Which whistle to buy Get a D. C whistles exist and have their uses, but D is what the music is in and what every tutor assumes. Beyond that, the differences between the good cheap whistles are real but small, and none of them will hold you back for a year. № 1 · The one to start with ### Feadóg D whistle and tutor pack - Key of D - Brass body, plastic mouthpiece - Tutor book and CD included - Fingering chart included - About $15 Feadóg is an Irish maker and this is its standard brass whistle bundled with the book that teaches it. Bright, clear and a little strident at the top, which is the classic Irish whistle sound rather than a fault. Buying the tutor separately would cost more than the pack does, and the tunes in it are the ones you will actually be asked to play. **Pros**- Whistle, book and chart for the price of a whistle - Straightforward to blow — no knack required - The tune selection is standard session repertoire **Cons**- Brighter and harder-edged than a Clarke - Not tunable, so it is fixed at whatever pitch it left the factory About $15[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U84QQy) № 2 · Cheapest whistle worth owning ### Walton’s Irish tin whistle in D - Key of D - Black-finished metal body - Made in Ireland - Instruction leaflet included - About $14 Walton’s have been making these in Ireland for over a century and they are what a great many Irish children are handed first. Tonally it sits between the Feadóg and the Clarke — not as bright as one, not as breathy as the other. If you want to spend as little as possible without buying something that will put you off, this is it. **Pros**- Made in Ireland rather than badged - The most middle-of-the-road tone here, which is a virtue in a first whistle - Cheap enough to keep one in a bag and one in the house **Cons**- A leaflet rather than a tutor book - Unit-to-unit variation is real at this price — a second one may not play quite like the first [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) About $14[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x9Gft8) № 3 · The most forgiving to blow ### Clarke Sweetone in D - Key of D - Tapered tin body - Molded ABS mouthpiece - Pouch and fingering chart included - About $20 Clarke’s tapered body gives a softer, rounder tone than a straight brass tube, and the molded mouthpiece makes the Sweetone the most consistent of the cheap whistles — it takes less breath at the bottom and does not shriek if you overblow the top. If a child or a nervous adult is going to be the one playing it, this is the one that behaves. **Pros**- Gentlest response of the whistles here - Conical bore gives a warmer tone than a parallel tube - Consistent from one whistle to the next **Cons**- Costs half again what the Walton’s does for a comparable instrument - Quieter, which tells against it in a room full of players About $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iiE69Y) № 4 · Closest thing to a flute tone ### Clarke Original in D - Key of D - Rolled tin body, tapered - Wooden fipple block - Made in the UK - About $30 The design Robert Clarke started selling in 1843, and still the only common whistle with a wooden block in the mouthpiece. That block is what gives it the airy, woody, half-flute tone people buy it for. It is also the reason it divides players: it wants more breath, it is less tolerant of a sloppy seal, and a damp block takes a while to settle. Worth having as a second whistle rather than a first. **Pros**- The breathy tone that makes people want a flute in the first place - Wooden fipple, still made the original way - Holds its character in a recording where brighter whistles glare **Cons**- Takes more air and more control than a Sweetone - The block needs warming and drying, so it is fussier - Twice the price of the Walton’s About $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3V3ZJkI) № 5 · Once you play with other people ### Tony Dixon Trad D whistle - Key of D - Nickel body - Tunable ABS head - Made in England - About $40 The head slides on the body, so you can pull it out a few millimeters to drop the pitch when the room warms up or the fiddle beside you is sitting flat. On a fixed whistle you have no answer to that at all. Everything else about it — a clean, even, unfussy tone across both octaves — is what you would expect at three times the price of a beginner whistle, and it is the point at which a whistle stops being a starter instrument. **Pros**- Tunable, which fixed whistles are not - Even response top to bottom, with no weak notes - Enough instrument to keep for good **Cons**- Nothing here a beginner will notice in the first few months - Nickel body is heavier in the hand than tin or brass About $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iCKAAC) ## An Irish flute is a hand-made instrument A keyless simple-system flute in D is turned and reamed one at a time, usually from African blackwood, by makers who work under their own names — Eamonn Cotter, Martin Doyle, Hammy Hamilton, Terry McGee. The conical bore has to be reamed to a profile and the six holes undercut and tuned by hand, because on an instrument with no keys the hole positions *are* the tuning. Several hundred dollars is the floor, waiting lists are normal, and a polymer flute from the same makers costs the same to have made and simply survives being carried around better. The wooden flutes offered at forty to ninety dollars are a different product wearing the same name. They are turned to a pattern with the holes drilled rather than cut and voiced, and the consequence is not a slightly worse tone — it is an instrument whose second octave will not sit in tune with its first. On a flute with no keys that fault is in the geometry of the tube, so there is no adjustment and no setup that repairs it. So the flute is a decision to make after the fingers are trained, not before. In the meantime, the low D whistle is the honest way to get that register. № 6 · The flute’s octave, the whistle’s mouthpiece ### MK Kelpie low D whistle - Key of low D, sounding where the flute does - 565 mm long, about 22 inches - CNC-machined aluminum, non-tunable - Made in Glasgow - Around $250 MK have been making low whistles in Scotland for over twenty-five years and the Kelpie is their entry model, machined rather than rolled so the bore is the same on every one. It plays in the flute’s register with the fingering you already know and a mouthpiece that makes the note for you — which is either exactly what you wanted or an admission that you want a flute. Reach is the thing to be honest about: the holes are spread for adult hands and covered with the pads of the fingers, not the tips. **Pros**- The low register without the embouchure - Machined bore, so it is consistent and repeatable - Made by the people who designed it **Cons**- The stretch defeats small hands - Non-tunable at this price - Wrong instrument to learn the fingering on Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gPCTWt) ## One book covers both Because the fingering is shared, so is the teaching. Grey Larsen’s [Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle](https://amzn.to/4zOxQgs) is the reference that treats them as one subject, and it is unusually good on the thing tutors skip: ornamentation written out properly, with a notation system for cuts, strikes, rolls and crans that actually distinguishes them, and transcriptions of how particular players phrase particular tunes. Around $45, and it is the book you keep after the beginner tutor has been outgrown — whichever of the two instruments you end up on. ## Common questions ### Is the tin whistle easier than the Irish flute? To start, enormously. The whistle makes a note the first time you blow it; the flute takes days or weeks before it makes one reliably. After that the two converge, because the difficulty moves into the fingers — ornamentation, speed, breath control — and that part is the same on both. ### Can I play the same sheet music on both? Yes. Neither transposes, so a tune written for one is played with identical fingerings on the other. It comes out an octave lower on the flute, which for session playing is a feature rather than a problem. ### Is an Irish flute the same as a concert flute? No. A concert flute is Boehm’s design — cylindrical body, sixteen tone holes, a key for every semitone. An Irish flute is the older design Boehm replaced: conical body, six open holes under the fingers, keys added only for the notes outside the scale. A Boehm player can produce a sound on one immediately, because the embouchure is the same, and then has to learn the fingering from scratch. A whistle player has the opposite problem. ### Does it have to be a D whistle? For Irish music, effectively yes. The repertoire sits in D, G and A, tutors are written for D, and a session will not change key for you. A C whistle is a useful second instrument for playing along with songs in flat keys, and a poor first one. ### I am left-handed. Does that matter? Less than you would think, and it is worth settling early. Neither a whistle nor a keyless flute has any mechanism forcing a hand order, so a beginner genuinely can reverse them. Almost nobody does, because every chart, tutor and video assumes left hand on top, and any keyed flute later on will be built that way. Learn it the standard way and the handedness stops mattering by the second week. ### Why does my whistle sound shrill? Usually too much air. The bottom octave of a D whistle wants very little breath, and pushing harder does not make it louder, it makes it sharp and then jumps it to the octave above. If it persists on a whistle you have blown gently, a tapered Clarke will be kinder to you than a straight brass tube. ## Also worth reading - [Best low D whistles](https://promusicvault.com/best-low-d-whistle/) - [Penny whistle vs. recorder](https://promusicvault.com/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/) - [Fife vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/fife-vs-flute/) - [Flute vs. recorder](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/) - [Piccolo vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/piccolo-vs-flute/) - [How much does a flute cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [How to Tell How Old a Banjo Is: Start With the Stamp Inside the Rim](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tell-how-old-a-banjo-is/) **Published:** March 20, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How to Tell How Old a Banjo Is: Start With the Stamp Inside the Rim Almost every banjo carries its age somewhere on the inside of the pot — a stamped number on the wooden rim, a mark burned into the dowel stick, a paper label glued inside the resonator, or a figure punched into the back of the peghead. Find that mark first. Everything else is guesswork by comparison. What the mark gives you depends on who built the instrument. A few makers ran real serial numbers you can decode to a month. Most did not, and a great many banjos were built by factories that never put a name on anything. For those you date the instrument by its parts, which gets you to a decade rather than a year — and that is usually as close as anyone can honestly get. The short answer### Take the resonator off, read the number inside the rim, then match the maker Four thumbscrews hold a resonator on. Underneath it you will find either a stamped number, a maker’s stamp on the dowel stick, or nothing at all. A number plus a brand name usually dates the banjo within a year or two. A brand with no number narrows it to a production run. Nothing at all means you date it from the tuners, the tone ring, the head and the string count — which still gets you to a decade. The awkward part is reading a shallow stamp inside a dark rim. A cheap endoscope camera on a bendable cable goes in through the back, lights the inside and puts the number on your phone screen where you can enlarge it — on a resonator banjo it saves taking anything apart at all. Around $25 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hEPWer) **First place to look:** inside the rim **Second:** the dowel stick **Third:** back of the peghead **No number:** date it from the parts ## Where the mark is hiding On an open-back banjo you can see most of this by turning the instrument over and looking through the back. On a resonator banjo the number is behind the resonator, and the resonator comes off with the four thumbscrews around the flange — no tools, no disassembly of anything that matters. Loosen them, lift it away, and put them somewhere you will find them again. WhereWhat you are looking forWho did this**Inside the wooden rim**Stamped or pencilled digits, sometimes with a letter prefixGibson, Vega, most American factories**The dowel stick**A maker’s stamp or brass plate, often with the number beside itFairbanks, Vega, Cole, Stewart — the older open-backs**Back of the peghead**Digits punched into the wood above the tunersGibson, and modern makers’ neck numbers**Inside the resonator**A paper or white plastic label, or chalk writingDeering, later Vega, most modern brands**On the coordinator rod or tailpiece**Patent numbers and datesHardware makers, not the banjo maker Those last two rows are worth separating. A patent date stamped on a tailpiece tells you when the *tailpiece design* was registered, not when your banjo was built — the part stayed in production for decades afterward. It sets an earliest possible date and nothing more. Old stamps are shallow and the inside of a pot is dark. A small mirror on a telescoping handle with a light in it will read the inside of the rim without taking anything apart at all, which matters if the thumbscrews are seized or the instrument is fragile enough that you would rather not handle it more than once. The cheap way to read a dark rim ### Frienda LED Telescoping Inspection Mirror - Two mirrors in the pack - Extending handle - Lit mirror head - Bendable neck - around $12 If the resonator is already off, or the banjo is an open-back, this is all the tool the job needs. The head lights the inside of the rim and angles into the curve, which is where stamped numbers sit and where a flashlight held in the other hand never quite reaches. The neck bends, so you can get the mirror flat against the rim wall rather than looking at the stamp edge-on. Stamped digits on hundred-year-old maple are shallow and often filled with a century of grime. Raking the light across them from the side rather than straight on is what makes them legible, and a mirror on a bendable neck is the cheapest way to control that angle. **Pros**- Costs less than a set of strings - Bendable neck sets the light angle that makes shallow stamps readable - Extends far enough to reach across a resonator banjo’s pot **Cons**- You are reading mirror-reversed digits, which takes a moment - No way to photograph what you find Around $12[Check current price](https://amzn.to/468OREu) ## The makers whose numbers actually decode ### Deering, and anything Deering has owned Deering is the easy case, because the number is a date. The serial is on a white tag inside the resonator, or on a smaller tag inside the rim on an open-back, and it runs somewhere between six and twelve digits. **The first two digits are the month. The last two before the dash or space are the year.** The digits in the middle count that model since the system began in 1987, and the four digits after the dash are the neck number, which should match a number on the back of the peghead. So `0534599-7362` is May 1999. Deering formalised the system in 1987, having tracked instruments with hash marks from the company’s founding in 1975, so a Deering with no decodable serial is an early one. If you have only the peghead number, Deering will place it within about six months of a year from their own records. ### Gibson, where the number is usually not a serial number Gibson did not build a banjo before 1918, so that is your hard floor for anything with that name on the peghead. What you find inside is generally a **factory order number** rather than a serial number, and the difference matters: a serial number was applied at shipping, while a factory order number was assigned when a batch entered production. Instruments then sat unsold at the factory for months and sometimes years, so a factory order number dates the build and not the sale. The model code is often more informative than the number. Gibson’s prefix letters name the instrument outright: PrefixInstrumentExample styles**RB**Regular banjo — the five-stringRB-1, RB-3, RB-4, RB-Granada**TB**Tenor banjo, four stringsTB-1, TB-2, TB-3, TB-6**PB**Plectrum banjo, four stringsPB-1, PB-3, PB-4**MB**Mandolin-banjoMB-1, MB-2, MB-3**GB**Guitar-banjoGB-1, GB-3**UB**Ukulele-banjoUB-1 to UB-4 Two Gibson features date themselves without any number at all. The **Mastertone** marking moved from the peghead to an engraved pearl block at the end of the fingerboard in mid-1925, so where that word sits splits early 1925 from everything after it. And the flange — the ring joining rim to resonator — was a two-piece tube-and-plate assembly until the one-piece cast flange arrived on some models in late 1929 and spread through the line in the early thirties. The tone ring moved too. Gibson’s 1925 and 1926 Mastertones used a ball-bearing ring; a solid raised-head ring, the one collectors call the archtop, came in during 1927 and gained forty drilled holes by the end of that year; the flathead ring followed around the turn of the decade as an option on the upper styles. ### Vega and Fairbanks, where the stamp beats the number Vega bought A.C. Fairbanks in 1903 and went on marking banjos with the Fairbanks name for years afterward, so a Fairbanks stamp on a dowel stick does not mean the banjo predates the sale. The serial is engraved on the inside of the wooden rim, and often on the dowel stick as well — matching numbers on both are a good sign the banjo is still the instrument it left the factory as. You do not need the number to get within about a decade, because the way the dowel stick is marked changed in steps: Marking on the dowel stickRoughly whenA metal A.C. Fairbanks nameplateFrom the late 1890s to about 1910A stamp reading both “Fairbanks Banjos” and “Made By The Vega Co”About 1910 to 1921A “Vega” stamp, Fairbanks droppedFrom 1922 to the late 1950sA yellow stick-on labelLate 1950s onward After that the name changed hands repeatedly, and each owner is a date range of its own. Martin bought Vega in 1970 and built and imported under the name until 1979; Galaxy Trading took it and sold imports only; Deering acquired it in the mid-1980s and builds Vegas in California today. A Vega is therefore a Boston instrument, a Pennsylvania one, an Asian import or a Californian one depending entirely on where it falls in that sequence, and they are not remotely the same thing. ## Dating a banjo that has no number anywhere This is the common case. Enormous numbers of banjos were built for mail-order catalogues and music shops with no maker’s mark of any kind, and the instrument in the attic is far more likely to be one of those than a named brand. You can still place it, because the parts changed on a schedule. What you seeWhat it means**Four strings, resonator, heavy pearl inlay**Almost certainly 1918–1935. Tenor and plectrum banjos were the dance-band instrument of the twenties and collapsed with the arrival of the amplified guitar**Five strings, no resonator, friction pegs, thin wooden rim**Pre-1920s. This is the older shape, before the banjo was rebuilt to be loud**An adjustable truss rod in the neck**Not before late 1922 — Gibson filed the patent in 1921 and fitted it from late 1922. Other makers came later, most of them much later**Geared planetary tuners**1920s onward. Friction pegs came first and stayed on cheap instruments for decades**A plastic head**The *head* was fitted in 1957 or later. It says nothing about the pot — see below**Just a country name, no other English**Imported between 1891 and 1914**“Made in” plus a country**Imported in 1914 or later**A closed back with the strings running through a tunnel**A zither banjo — British, and mostly 1880s to the 1930s The country-of-origin rows are the most reliable thing on the list, because they are law rather than fashion. American tariff legislation required imported goods to be marked with their country of origin in English from March 1891, and a further act in 1914 required the words “Made in” alongside it. A bare “Germany” therefore brackets an instrument into a 23-year window on its own. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) For later cheap imports the country is a rough decade marker in itself: Japan through the 1960s and 1970s, Korea through the 1980s and 1990s, China from the 1990s onward. It is a tendency rather than a rule, and it will not survive contact with an unusual instrument, but on a budget banjo it is normally right. The string count deserves its own note, because it is the single fastest read in the room. If you are holding a four-string banjo with a resonator and a lot of decoration, you are almost certainly holding a 1920s instrument — that is when they were made, in enormous numbers, for a style of music that stopped being played. [Plectrum versus tenor](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) tells you which of the two you have, and [the full banjo family](/types-of-banjos/) covers the rest. ## The head is not the banjo, and neither are the tuners Remo’s Mylar drumheads arrived in 1957 and took over the banjo within a few years, so a plastic head is a genuine post-1957 marker. What it marks is the head. Heads are consumables that get replaced every few years by anyone actually playing the instrument, so a plastic head on an 1890s pot means the banjo has been played, not that it is modern. It does not run the other way either: skin heads are still manufactured and still fitted, and plenty of old-time players prefer them, so a skin head proves nothing at all about a banjo’s age. Extend that principle to everything that wears out or gets upgraded. Tuners, tailpieces, bridges, armrests, nuts and necks all get swapped. An old banjo that has been in use for a century is frequently several ages at once, and the honest answer to “how old is it” is often a date for the pot and a shrug for the rest. The most consequential version of this is deliberate. Gibson built far more tenor banjos than five-strings in the twenties and thirties, and when bluegrass created demand for five-strings that Gibson was no longer building, people fitted five-string necks to prewar tenor pots. Those conversions are valuable instruments in their own right and they are everywhere in the vintage market. If your prewar Gibson has a five-string neck, look hard at whether the neck and the pot have the same history — because the pot is the part that carries the value. ## Age and value are different questions Dating a banjo and valuing one are separate exercises, and the date is the smaller half. Maker, model, originality and condition do nearly all of the work. The spread is brutal. An original prewar Gibson five-string flathead Mastertone is one of the most valuable fretted instruments in the world, changing hands in the tens of thousands and, for the top styles in original condition, well beyond. A no-name tenor banjo from the same decade — and there are vastly more of those — is a few hundred dollars, sometimes less than the cost of making it playable. They are the same age. One was built by a famous shop in small numbers and one was built by the thousand for a catalogue. So an instrument being old is not, by itself, good news, and it is worth knowing that before you spend money on restoration. Our guide to [what banjos cost](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) covers the modern market, and [why banjos are expensive](/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/) explains what the money buys in a new instrument, which is much the same thing that made an old one worth building well. ## The reference books that answer this properly Everything above will place a banjo in a decade. Getting to a year, for a named American maker, means looking the number up in a table, and the tables live in print. The reference that turns a number into a year ### Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars — Gruhn & Carter - Hardcover - American makers - Serial number lists - Banjos, mandolins and guitars - around $30 Despite the title this is the standard identification reference for American fretted instruments generally, banjos included, and it is the book the dating advice on every forum is ultimately quoting. Model-by-model specifications, dates of manufacture, the feature changes that separate one production run from the next, and the serial number tables you need to convert a number into a year. What makes it worth owning rather than searching for is the identification keys. You work down a list of features — tone ring, flange, inlay, hardware — and arrive at a model, which is the hard part when the instrument carries no name. A number is easy to look up once you know whose number it is; establishing whose it is takes a book. **Pros**- Serial and factory order number tables for the major American makers - Identification keys that work from features when there is no name on the peghead - Covers the whole fretted family, so it keeps earning after the banjo is dated **Cons**- Guitars get far more of the page count than banjos do - The current edition dates from 2010, so recent production is outside it - Dense small type, organized as a reference rather than a read Around $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bWp1Hd) For the history behind the instrument ### Bob Carlin — Banjo: An Illustrated History - Hardcover - Heavily illustrated - West African origins to now - Also on Kindle - around $35 Not a dating manual, and it will not decode a serial number — but if working out what you are holding has made you curious about where it came from, Carlin is a banjo player and researcher rather than a collector cataloguing prices, and the book traces the instrument from its West African ancestors through minstrelsy, the classic era, the jazz-age four-strings and the bluegrass revival. The photographs are the reason to own it in print. Seeing a run of instruments from each era side by side does more for your eye than any list of features, and an eye for period is what dating a nameless banjo actually depends on. **Pros**- Period photographs that train the eye better than a feature list - Written by a player and researcher, not a price guide compiler - Covers the whole arc, including the eras most banjo books skip **Cons**- No serial number data — it will not date your instrument - Costs more than the reference book that will Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Uq9lpP) ## When it is worth asking an expert Three situations justify a professional opinion. You are insuring the instrument, you are selling it, or the features do not agree with each other — a flathead tone ring in a rim that should have an archtop, a neck that does not match the pot, a number that decodes to a year the parts contradict. Those disagreements are exactly where money is made and lost, and they are also where an amateur reading is least reliable. Most of the people who can do this will give you an opinion from clear photographs: the front and back of the peghead, the whole neck, the inside of the rim with the number visible, the tone ring from above with the head off if you can manage it, and the tailpiece. Send those and you will usually get an answer without paying for a formal appraisal, which is the thing to buy only once you know the instrument is worth appraising. ## If you are going to play it An old banjo that has sat in a case for forty years usually needs a new head, new strings and a bridge before anyone can judge how it sounds, and none of that is expensive or irreversible. Do not sand anything, do not refinish anything and do not replace original hardware — on a banjo with any value, originality is most of the value, and a tidy-up can remove a large fraction of it in an afternoon. Strings first, since they are the cheapest thing that changes how an instrument plays: our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers gauges, and a very old neck is happier with a light set than the medium gauge a modern banjo expects. Then [tune it](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) and find out what you have. Sometimes the verdict is that it is not worth reviving. A catalogue banjo with a bowed neck and no truss rod can cost more to make playable than it will ever be worth, and there is no shame in hanging it on a wall and buying something built this century — our guide to the [best banjos for beginners](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) covers what the money buys now, and [banjos for folk music](/best-banjo-for-folk-music/) if the old one has given you a taste for the repertoire. ## Common questions ### My banjo has no serial number at all. Is that unusual? No, it is the norm for older instruments. Serial numbers were a warranty and inventory tool, and the factories building banjos by the thousand for catalogue sale had no use for them. Date it from the parts instead, using the table above. ### Does a skin head mean my banjo is antique? No. Skin heads are still manufactured and are actively preferred by many old-time players, so a skin head can be six months old. A plastic head does set a floor of 1957 for the head itself, but heads are replaced routinely, so it tells you nothing about the rim underneath it. ### The number inside decodes to a different year than the one on the peghead. Which is right? Often both. On modern instruments the peghead number is a neck number and the rim or resonator number is the instrument number, and they are recording different things. On older instruments a mismatch is more likely to mean the neck and the pot did not start life together, which is common and not necessarily bad — but it changes the value, so it is worth establishing. ### Is a four-string banjo older than a five-string? Not as a family — the five-string is much older, and it is the original. But any individual four-string banjo you find is likely to be from roughly 1918 to 1935, because that is when tenor and plectrum banjos were mass-produced. A five-string could be from any decade in the last 180 years. [The string count](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) covers what each one is for. ### Can I date it from a patent number on the tailpiece? Only as an earliest possible date. The patent was granted once and the part stayed in production for decades, so a 1920s patent number can sit on a 1960s banjo. It is useful for ruling dates out and close to useless for ruling one in. ### What is the fastest way to narrow it down? Count the strings, then look for a maker’s name, then look inside the rim. Those three take a minute between them and will usually get you to a decade and a country. Everything after that is refinement. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [Harp vs. Guitar: What Separates Them, and Which One to Learn](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-guitar/) **Published:** February 19, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Harp vs. Guitar: What Separates Them, and Which One to Learn A guitar has six strings and about twenty frets. Every note it plays comes from stopping one of those six strings somewhere along the neck, which is why six strings cover nearly four octaves on an instrument you can carry in one hand. A harp has no frets and nothing stops the strings. One string plays one note, so the instrument has to physically contain every note you want — 22 of them on a small lever harp, 47 on a concert pedal harp. That single fact sets the size, the weight, the price, the tuning time, and the reason a guitar goes on a bus and a harp goes in a van. If you are choosing one to learn### Start on the guitar — unless it is the harp you actually want The guitar is cheaper to begin, portable, teachable from a phone, and playable with other people from the first campfire. The harp is none of those. But a year of guitar buys you almost nothing on the harp: different hand position, different reading, different way of stopping a note. Nobody was ever argued into loving the harp by a cost comparison, and if the harp is the sound in your head, the shortest route to it is a harp. **Strings:** guitar 6, harp 22–47 **Entry price:** ~$190 vs. ~$600 **Weight:** 4 lb vs. 11–80 lb **Tuning:** six pegs vs. every string, most days at first ## Harp vs. guitar, side by side HarpGuitar**Strings**22–38 on a lever harp, 47 on a concert pedal harp6, or 12 on a twelve-string**Frets**None. One string, one noteAbout 20, so six strings reach every semitone**Range**Three octaves on a 22-string lever harp; six and a half on a pedal harpJust under four octaves**Changing key**Flip levers by hand, or move seven pedals with your feetNothing to change — every semitone is already under your fingers**Notation**Grand staff, two clefs, as on a pianoOne treble staff, or tab**Fingers used**Four per hand. The little fingers never playFour fretting fingers and a thumb; pick or fingers on the other hand**Stopping a note**You damp the string with your hand, or it rings onLift the fretting finger and the note stops**Total string tension**Roughly a ton on a concert pedal harpAbout 155 lb on a light-gauge steel-string; nearer 90 lb on nylon**Tuning**22–47 pegs, and a new harp wants doing daily for weeksSix pegs, half a minute**Weight**11 lb for a 22-string lever harp; about 80 lb for a concert grand4–5 lb**Entry price**~$600 for a lever harp with levers on every string~$190 nylon-string, ~$260 steel-string**A full set of strings**$150–400, and specific to your model$8–15, and any set fits**Getting to a lesson**Move the harp, or find a teacher who travelsSling it on your back ## One string per note explains almost everything else Press a guitar string against a fret and you shorten it, which raises its pitch. Twenty frets across six strings gives well over a hundred places to put a finger, and the same pitch turns up in three or four of them. The instrument stays small because the neck does the work. A harp string is played at full length, every time. To add a note you add a string, and to add a low note you add a long one — which is what the sweeping curve of the neck is for. A concert harp carries roughly a ton of string tension across its frame, and the pillar at the front exists to stop that tension folding the instrument in half. The wood has to be heavy enough to survive it, which is why the thing weighs as much as a person and costs as much as a car. Everything downstream follows. Six strings can be tuned in half a minute; 47 cannot. Six strings can be replaced from a $10 packet; harp strings are gauged per instrument and per position. A guitar can be handed to you in a pub; a harp is where it is, and you go to it. The full weight figures are in [how much a harp weighs](/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/), and the price side is in [why harps are so expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). ## The harp starts out of key, and that is by design A guitar plays all twelve semitones anywhere on the neck. Nothing about a key change asks anything of the instrument; it asks something of the player, and that is all. A harp is diatonic. Its strings give you seven notes per octave and no more, and reaching the other five is a mechanical operation. On a lever harp, each string carries a sharping lever that raises it a semitone when you flip it. Most fully levered harps are tuned to E flat rather than C, because starting three flats down means the levers can climb through eight keys instead of stranding you above C with nowhere to go. On a pedal harp the strings are tuned flatter still — C flat major, all pedals up — and seven pedals raise every octave of a note at once, through natural in the middle position and sharp at the bottom. The practical difference lands mid-piece. A pedal harpist changes key with their feet while both hands keep playing, which is why orchestral harp parts move freely. A lever harpist has to take a hand off the strings to flip a lever, so accidentals get planned into the arrangement or arranged out of it — and a harp with levers only on the F and C strings, which is how many budget models are sold, will stop you at the first B flat. That is the single specification to check before buying one. [Lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) goes through the rest. ## Nothing stops a harp string except your hand On a guitar, releasing the fretting finger kills the note. Silence is free, and beginners get it without noticing they are being given it. A plucked harp string rings until something touches it. Play four notes in a row and you have four notes sounding at once, so damping is an active technique that has to be learned alongside playing — a palm laid across the bass strings, a finger returned to the string it just plucked. It is the reason untrained harp playing turns into a wash, and the reason a harpist’s hands are always doing more than the notes on the page suggest. The flip side is that the harp is the more forgiving instrument on day one. Its strings are already in tune with each other, so almost anything you pluck sounds consonant. A guitar in the same first hour buzzes, rattles and mutes itself, because pressing a string cleanly against a fret is a skill and holding down a barre chord is a harder one. That asymmetry misleads a lot of people about which instrument is harder. ## Which is harder depends on when you ask **First week.** The harp, easily. It makes a beautiful noise immediately and asks nothing of your fingertips. The guitar hurts, buzzes and takes a fortnight before anything sounds like music. **First year.** They swap. The guitar has tab, so a song you want to play is a search away and the notation problem never arrives. The harp has no equivalent shorthand, so you read a grand staff in two clefs from the beginning, the way a pianist does — and you do it without frets to locate a note by feel, placing four fingers per hand on strings you identify by color and by distance from the ones you just played. **Long run.** Both instruments reward the same thing and neither is finishable. The honest difference is not difficulty but access: guitar teachers are everywhere and harp teachers are not, so harp lessons often mean traveling, or going online, or waiting for a local teacher to have a slot. Factor that in before the instrument, because it is harder to solve than the price. Our estimate of the runway is in [how long it takes to learn the harp](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/). ## What each one actually costs A guitar that a teacher will not ask you to replace costs about $190 in nylon and about $260 in steel. That is the whole outlay. Strings are $8–15 and you change them yourself in twenty minutes. Harps run on a different scale, and the numbers depend on where you shop. On Amazon, around $600 buys a 22-string lever harp with levers on every string, which is roughly the cheapest instrument that behaves like a harp. Harp dealers start higher — around $1,300 for the cheapest fully levered instrument, with most of what they stock sitting between $2,000 and $5,000 — because a dealer harp is built to hold tune under harder use and arrives set up. Pedal harps start around $15,500. Then there is the running cost nobody mentions. A full set of lever harp strings is $150–400 depending on the instrument, and a shop charges around $175 in labor to fit one if you would rather not spend an evening on it. A guitar’s equivalent is a $10 packet. It is also why renting is normal in the harp world and unheard of in the guitar world. Harp dealers rent a lever harp for roughly $50–80 a month, usually on a four-month minimum, and the payments credit against a purchase if you go on to buy — which makes renting the sensible first year if there is a shop within reach. [What a grand harp costs](/grand-harp-cost/) covers the top end. ## The strings are not comparable objects Guitar strings come in six gauges in a packet, and the packet fits any guitar of that type. Moving from light to medium gauge changes the feel and, on a steel-string, eventually the setup — but it is a preference, not a compatibility question. Harp strings are specified per instrument and per string. A 34-string harp uses a different set from a 34-string harp by another maker, because gauge follows the scale length at that exact point on that exact neck. They are also color-coded so you can find your place at speed: C strings are red, F strings blue or black, and the rest are white or uncoloured. The material changes as you descend, too — nylon or gut at the top, gut through the middle, wire-wound over a nylon core in the bass. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The upshot for a buyer is simple. Buy guitar strings by gauge and brand. Buy harp strings by harp — the set that fits a Roosebeck fits Roosebecks, and ordering by string count alone is how people end up with a box of the wrong thing. [Changing harp strings](/changing-harp-strings/) walks through the job. ## So which should you buy? If it is the harp you want ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings with Chelby Levers - 22 hard nylon strings - C3–C6, three full octaves - Chelby sharping levers on every string - About 36 inches tall, 11 lb - Spare string set, tuning tool and play book included - ~$600 This is roughly the cheapest instrument that behaves like a harp rather than like a souvenir. Three octaves is enough for a melody with a left hand under it, nylon is kind to fingertips that have never plucked anything, and levers on all 22 strings keep you out of the trap the cheaper Roosebecks set — those carry levers only on the F and C strings, which reads as a sensible saving right up to the first B flat. Roosebecks are made in Pakistan for an American importer and the consistency is not what the photographs imply, so expect a settling-in period and budget an evening for tuning it into submission. At 11 pounds it still moves between rooms in one hand, which no other harp on this page does. If you are within reach of a harp shop, renting something better for a year beats buying this outright — the comparison against everything else at the price is in [best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/). Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wtH52G) If the harp’s *sound* is what drew you, but not its price ### Yamaha C40II Classical Guitar - Nylon strings, full size - Spruce top, meranti back and sides - Rosewood fingerboard and bridge - 650 mm scale, 52 mm nut - ~$190 Nylon strings plucked with bare fingers are the closest a guitar gets to the thing people mean when they say they like the sound of the harp: soft attack, no pick, no metallic edge. The wide flat neck suits fingers moving independently, which is also how a harpist’s hands work, and nylon under about 90 lb of total tension will not shred fingertips the way steel does. What it will not do is strummed pop songs — the classical’s neck is wide, its action is high by steel-string standards, and it is built to be played one note at a time. At $189.99 it is priced at the going rate, so there is no discount to hunt for. Around $190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qm6Bpk) If you want to play songs with other people ### Yamaha FG800J Acoustic Guitar - Solid spruce top - Steel strings, dreadnought body - Nato and mahogany back and sides, rosewood fingerboard - ~$260 Solid top is the specification that matters at this price, and it is the reason this guitar rather than the pile of $120 bundles beneath it. A solid top flexes as a single piece and opens up over years of playing; a laminate one sounds the same in 2036 as it does today. Everything else about the FG800J is ordinary in the way a first guitar should be. Steel strings hurt for a fortnight and then stop, which is the toll the harp does not charge and the reason a lot of people quit in week two. The listing carries two menus: a Style menu offering the plain acoustic at around $260 and an acoustic-electric at around $420, and a Size menu offering dreadnought or the smaller concert body. Plain acoustic, dreadnought, unless you have a reason to want otherwise. The plain acoustic dreadnought is $259.99, which is the going rate for it. Around $260[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qjwpCh) ### What to buy alongside either one A **clip-on tuner**, whichever way you go. The [D’Addario Eclipse](https://amzn.to/3lIFiYZ) is about $18, and for a guitar it is the end of the subject. On a harp it is the beginning of one: plucking a string sets several of its neighbors humming, and a tuner reading through a microphone will chase them. A vibration-sensing model is worth the extra few dollars there, and [our harp tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/) works through the options. Then see [how to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/), because the order you work in matters when there are 22 pegs. **Spare harp strings**, if you buy the harp. A new one will lose a string or two while the wood settles, and an evening ends early without a spare. Roosebeck’s [29-string C–C set](https://amzn.to/3SEy7C4) is about $70 and fits the 29-string Minstrel — not the 22-string Heather above, which takes a different set from the same maker. That is the whole point of the paragraph above in one purchase: order by the harp, not by the word Roosebeck. [Changing harp strings](/changing-harp-strings/) covers fitting them. **A method book**, and the right one for where you are. On the harp, Sylvia Woods’ [Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp](https://amzn.to/4fZjQsu) is about $16 and twelve lessons long, assumes no prior music reading, and works on a harp with or without levers; Salzedo’s [Conditioning Exercises](https://amzn.to/3lRE4ur) is about $8 and belongs on the stand a year later, when you have technique to sharpen rather than acquire. On the guitar the equivalent pair is the [Hal Leonard Guitar Method Book 1](https://amzn.to/4geW9v0) at about $10 to start, and [Guitar Aerobics](https://amzn.to/415EEoB) at about $22 once chords are solid — it is a year of daily technique drills, not a beginner’s book, and buying it first is how it ends up unopened. More harp titles in [beginning harp music books](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/), and general orientation in [learning to play the harp](/learn-to-play-the-harp/). ## FAQs ### What is the difference between a harp and a guitar? A guitar has six strings and frets, so shortening a string against a fret produces every other note. A harp has no frets and one string per note, which is why it needs 22 to 47 of them. The harp is plucked with four fingers of each hand at full string length; the guitar is fretted with one hand and struck with the other. ### Which is easier to learn, harp or guitar? The harp is easier for the first few weeks and harder after that. Its strings are in tune with each other, so early plucking sounds pleasant, while a guitar buzzes and mutes until fretting technique arrives. Beyond that the harp asks for two-clef reading, active damping and note-finding without frets, and harp teachers are far thinner on the ground. ### How much does a harp cost compared to a guitar? A usable beginner guitar is $190–260. A 22-string lever harp with levers on every string is around $600 on Amazon; harp dealers start near $1,300 and mostly stock $2,000–5,000 instruments. Pedal harps start around $15,500. Strings widen the gap further: $8–15 a set for a guitar against $150–400 for a lever harp. ### Can you play the same music on a harp and a guitar? Some of it, in arrangement. Both cover a similar span of pitches, so melodies transfer, but chromatic passages that a guitar plays without thinking require lever or pedal changes on a harp — and harp writing leans on rolled chords, glissandi and sustained overlapping notes that a guitar cannot hold. Sheet music is published separately for each for good reason. ### Which instrument is louder? A concert pedal harp is louder than an acoustic guitar — far more soundboard, far more string, and roughly a ton of tension behind it. A small lever harp is not; it sits about level with a nylon-string guitar, which is why both end up with a pickup as soon as anyone else is playing. See [amplifying a harp](/how-to-amplify-a-harp/). ### Can you use guitar strings on a harp? No. Harp strings are gauged for one position on one model and are knotted through the soundboard rather than anchored at a bridge. Guitar strings have ball ends, the wrong gauges and the wrong lengths, and steel on a harp built for nylon or gut adds tension the frame was never designed to take. ### Does learning one help with the other? Only the general musicianship — reading rhythm, hearing intervals, keeping a practice habit. The physical skills barely overlap. A guitarist coming to the harp starts from scratch on hand position, damping and reading two clefs, and a harpist coming to the guitar has never fretted a note. ### How often does each need tuning? A guitar takes half a minute and holds for a few sessions. A harp is tuned before every playing session as a matter of course, and a new one wants doing daily for its first few weeks while the strings stretch and the soundboard settles. With 22 to 47 strings that is a real ten to fifteen minutes. [How to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the order to work in. ## The short version The guitar is the better first instrument on every practical measure: cost, portability, teachers, repertoire, and how quickly you can play with other people. None of that is an argument against the harp, because none of it is why anyone wants one. So the question is not which instrument is better but which sound you are actually after, and how much friction you will accept to reach it. If you would be happy playing either, play the guitar — you will be making music sooner and for less. If only the harp will do, buy a lever harp with levers on every string, find a teacher before you find the instrument, and rent if there is a shop close enough to rent from. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Deering vs Gold Tone: Which Banjo Brand Should You Buy?](https://promusicvault.com/deering-vs-gold-tone/) **Published:** April 4, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Banjo Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/banjo-comparisons/ "Banjo Comparisons")› Deering vs Gold Tone: Which Banjo Brand Should You Buy? Where these two ranges meet, they cost the same money. A Deering Goodtime Two is around $850. A Gold Tone CC-100R+ is around $850. So the choice is not about what you spend — it is about what that money is spent on, and the two brands spend it in almost opposite directions. Best for most players choosing between the two### Deering Goodtime Two Built in California, set up by the people who made it, and worth a large share of what you paid if you ever sell it. The Gold Tone beside it carries more hardware for the same money, and that is a real argument — but resale is the one that protects you if the banjo turns out not to stick. Around $850 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i5W3Zd) **Under $600:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 **Most hardware per dollar:** Gold Tone CC-100R+ — around $850 **Cheapest American made:** Deering Goodtime — around $600 ## The two brands, side by side DeeringGold ToneFounded1975, by Greg and Janet Deering1993, by Wayne and Robyn RogersBasedSpring Valley, CaliforniaTitusville, FloridaWhere builtCalifornia, start to finishAsia, to Gold Tone’s specRange starts at~$600 (Goodtime)~$315 (AC-1)Tone ringNone below the Goodtime Special, around $1,000Rolled brass hoop from Cripple Creek upHooks / brackets1624 on the Cripple Creek Plus modelsBag or case includedNoGig bag on most modelsWarranty, first owner8 years on Goodtime; no time limit above it7 years on Cripple Creek; lifetime on MastertoneWarranty, second ownerNone — it ends when you sell1 year on Cripple Creek, 5 on Mastertone and ACResaleHolds a large share of its priceFalls away like most imports ## The same money buys two different things Put a Goodtime Two and a CC-100R+ on the same bench and the Gold Tone looks like the better deal by a distance. It has a rolled brass tone hoop where the Deering has bare wood, twenty-four hooks against sixteen, planetary tuners rather than geared ones, an engraved armrest, a resonator that unbolts so the same banjo covers bluegrass and old-time, and a gig bag in the box. The Deering has none of that. It does not even come with a bag. What the Deering has instead is where it was made and what happens to it afterward. It is built in California by the largest banjo maker in America, on the same tooling as their instruments costing five times as much, and it is set up by that same shop before it ships. Sell it in five years and you will get a large fraction of your money back, which is not true of any imported banjo at this price. So the split is clean. If you are confident the banjo is going to stick, buy the specification — the Gold Tone is more instrument for the money and it is not close. If there is a real chance you will change your mind, the Deering’s resale is worth more than the tone hoop, because it is the difference between losing a little and losing most of it. ### A brass hoop is not a tone ring Gold Tone’s hardware advantage is real but it is worth knowing exactly what it is. The brass in a Cripple Creek is a rolled hoop — a bent bar of brass sitting under the head. It is brighter and louder than the bare wooden rim a Goodtime uses, for very little weight or money. It is not the cast bell-brass Mastertone-style ring that bluegrass banjos are built around, and it does not sound like one. Neither brand puts a cast ring anywhere near $850. Gold Tone gets there first, at the OB-150; Deering’s Goodtime line never does, and their cast-ring instruments start well above $2,000. If a loud bluegrass pot is the destination, that gap matters more than anything else on this page. [Open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) covers the related choice. ### Both brands set their banjos up. Neither can set up a warehouse. Deering sets up every banjo in Spring Valley before it leaves, and Gold Tone gives every instrument a twelve-point setup in Titusville before shipment. That is a point in favor of both and it is why either brand plays properly out of the box in a way a generic import does not. It survives shipping imperfectly, though, and the banjo is unusually exposed here because **the bridge is not attached to anything**. It is a loose piece of wood held down by string pressure alone, and it moves. If your new banjo plays in tune open and sharp everywhere else, that is the bridge, not the brand — check the harmonic at the twelfth fret against the fretted note and slide it until they match. Our [tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) walks through it. ## The warranties do not work the way the price suggests Deering’s coverage is longer and it is completely non-transferable — it ends the moment the instrument changes hands, on every model they make. Gold Tone’s is shorter at the top and partly survives a sale. Both are void if you did not buy from an authorized dealer, and Deering additionally requires you to register the instrument. LineFirst ownerSecond ownerDeering Goodtime8 years (6 if built before 2025)NoneDeering, Vega, TenbrooksNo time limitNoneGold Tone MastertoneLifetime5 yearsGold Tone Cripple Creek7 years1 yearGold Tone AC series5 years5 years That condition is the one to take seriously, because on an instrument costing the better part of a thousand dollars it is the difference between a warranty measured in years and no warranty at all. Both brands publish their dealer lists, so buy from an authorized dealer and keep the receipt — it costs a minute and it is the cheapest insurance on the whole purchase. ## Where the brands do not compete at all Below about $600 there is no comparison to make, because Deering does not build anything that cheap. The Goodtime is the floor of their range and it is also the cheapest American-made banjo on the market. Everything under it is Gold Tone’s, and the AC-1 is the one worth having. Gold Tone also builds a far stranger catalogue. Twelve-inch pots, A-scale necks, long necks, fretless fingerboards, Irish tenors, banjitars, banjolas, cello banjos, resonator guitars. Deering covers the ordinary variants — tenor, plectrum, six-string, a fretless Goodtime — but if the instrument you want is unusual, Gold Tone is often the only company making it at a sane price. Our [guide to banjo types](/types-of-banjos/) is the place to start if you are not sure which one you are after. ## Which one to buy № 1 · Best overall at the price they share ### Deering Goodtime Two - Resonator - No tone ring - About 6 lb - Made in California - ~$850 A rock maple neck, a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, a geared fifth-string tuner and a resonator bolted to the back — and nothing on it that exists to look expensive. It arrives playing in tune with itself, which is the practical argument for buying American at this price. Be honest about what it is not. There is no tone ring, sixteen hooks rather than twenty-four, and no bag or case in the box. In a room with a guitar and a fiddle going it will get buried. What it has is eight years of warranty, a shop in California that will service it, and a resale value nothing else here matches. **Pros**- American built and set up before shipping - Holds its value better than anything at this price - Eight-year warranty, and a shop that services it **Cons**- No tone ring, 16 hooks, no bag - Less instrument on paper than the Gold Tone beside it - Warranty ends the day you sell it Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i5W3Zd) № 2 · The most banjo for the money ### Gold Tone CC-100R+ - Removable resonator - Rolled brass tone hoop - 24 hooks, planetary tuners - Gig bag included - ~$850 The same money as the Goodtime Two and visibly more instrument. The brass hoop gives it brightness and volume the Deering’s bare rim cannot produce, the planetary tuners are a genuine upgrade over geared ones, and the resonator unbolts — so one banjo covers bluegrass and old-time while you work out which one you are. Against that, it is built in Asia and it will not hold its price. The plus over the base CC-100R is a factory-fitted pickup, which is what Gold Tone names the model for; if you have no intention of plugging in, the standard model does the same job for about fifty dollars less. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Brass tone hoop where the Deering has none - Resonator comes off, so it plays both styles - Planetary tuners, 24 hooks and a bag included **Cons**- Resale is poor next to the Deering - Seven-year warranty, not eight - Gloss vintage-brown finish is not to every taste Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hzhW2V) № 3 · The cheapest way in ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back - Composite rim - 3.75 lb - Gig bag included - ~$315 Deering builds nothing at this price, so this is a comparison with one entrant. The composite rim keeps it very light — a banjo you can hold all evening — and gives it the dry, woody voice clawhammer wants rather than the metallic ring of a bluegrass setup. It is the one Gold Tone whose warranty fully transfers, five years either way, which is a small oddity in the buyer’s favor. The composite rim divides opinion on looks and it will never be loud enough for a jam, but as a first old-time banjo from an established maker it is hard to argue with. **Pros**- An established builder’s instrument at entry money - Very light and comfortable - Warranty transfers in full **Cons**- Composite rim is not to every taste - Too quiet for bluegrass volume Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qmDouA) № 4 · Cheapest American made ### Deering Goodtime Openback - Open back, 11″ rim - No tone ring - 4.5 lb - ~$600 The Goodtime Two without the resonator, for $250 less. Same neck, same rim, same factory, same warranty. If you already know you want an open back, there is no reason to pay for the bowl. The ceiling is permanent — no amount of setup will make a ringless open back carry over a bluegrass band — but that is not what it is for. As the least money that buys an American banjo with a shop behind it, it is the value benchmark of both brands’ ranges. **Pros**- The cheapest American-made banjo there is - Light, and set up before it ships - Strong resale for the money **Cons**- No bluegrass future beyond playing at home - No bag or case included Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3RTkZJ0) № 5 · Best for old-time and clawhammer ### Deering Goodtime Americana - Open back, 12″ rim - Renaissance head - About 4.5 lb - ~$750 The twelve-inch rim drops the pitch of the pot and gives the deep, plunky voice fiddle tunes sit on, and the Renaissance head takes the edge off the attack. Four and a half pounds is genuinely unusual and it changes how long you can play. Note that this version has a standard fingerboard rather than a scooped one. If the scoop is what you came for — and for clawhammer played up over the head, it is worth having — the Gold Tone below has it for a hundred dollars more. **Pros**- A genuine old-time voice, not a compromise - Nothing here with a wooden pot is lighter - American built, with the same warranty and resale **Cons**- No scoop at this price - Quiet by design — not a band instrument Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fYLndI) № 6 · Best clawhammer specification ### Gold Tone CC-Carlin12 - Open back, 12″ pot - Scooped fingerboard - 13⁄8” nut - Gig bag included - ~$850 Bob Carlin’s signature specification in Gold Tone’s cheaper Cripple Creek trim, and the most purpose-built clawhammer banjo either brand sells at this money. The scooped fingerboard gives you somewhere to strike over the head, the wide nut suits the thumb work, and the twelve-inch pot supplies the depth. Deering has no answer to this below the Artisan line. What you give up is the American build and the resale — and the twelve-inch scooped pot commits you, because it is the wrong banjo the day you decide you want to play bluegrass after all. **Pros**- Scoop, wide nut and 12″ pot at one price - Nothing comparable from Deering near this money - Set up by Gold Tone before shipping **Cons**- A specialist — no use for bluegrass - Resale well behind the Deerings Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fZRRck) № 7 · Where a real bluegrass pot starts ### Gold Tone OB-150 - Resonator, one-piece flange - Cast bell-brass tone ring - Hard case included - ~$1,300 The point at which the argument stops being about value and starts being about volume. A cast bell-brass ring and a one-piece flange are what a bluegrass banjo is actually built around, and this is the cheapest credible way to own both. It is a heavy instrument and it is the wrong banjo for anyone playing old-time. But if being heard next to a guitar, a fiddle and a mandolin is the whole point, nothing in the Goodtime line will ever do it, and Deering’s own cast-ring banjos cost more than twice this. A case is included, which the Deerings never are. **Pros**- Cast ring and one-piece flange at the lowest price either brand offers - Hard case in the box - Lifetime warranty, five years to a second owner **Cons**- Heavy, and pointless for old-time - Still an import at a serious price Around $1,300[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fT5ppS) ## What to add WhatWhy it matters[Carrion hardshell case](https://amzn.to/4xqfT6k)No Deering ships with one and the pot is the part that gets damaged. This one is cut for resonator banjos, so it fits a Goodtime Two or a CC-100R+ — not the open backs.[Clip-on banjo tuner](https://amzn.to/4xBqrjk)Five strings, and the short fifth is the one that drifts. More options in [our banjo tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is Deering better than Gold Tone? Deering is better built and better supported; Gold Tone gives you more instrument for the money. At the prices where both compete the Deering is the safer purchase because of resale and service, and the Gold Tone is the better specification. Below $600 only Gold Tone exists, and above about $1,200 only Gold Tone offers a cast tone ring. ### Are Deering banjos made in the USA? Yes, all of them, in Spring Valley, California — including the entry-level Goodtime line, which is why it is the cheapest American-made banjo you can buy. More context in our [American-made banjo guide](/best-american-made-banjo/). ### Where are Gold Tone banjos made? They are designed in Titusville, Florida and built in Asia to Gold Tone’s specification, then given a twelve-point setup in Florida before shipping. That last part is the reason they play better out of the box than a generic import at the same price. ### Which brand is better for a beginner? It depends entirely on the budget. Under $600 the question answers itself — Gold Tone, and the AC-1 for old-time. At $600 and up, a Goodtime is the more forgiving purchase for someone who is not yet sure they will stick with it, because you can sell it without losing much. Our [beginner banjo picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) include cheaper options from other makers. ### Does the warranty survive if I buy secondhand? Not with Deering — their coverage ends when the instrument changes hands, on every line. Gold Tone gives a second owner one year on a Cripple Creek and five on a Mastertone or an AC model. Both brands void coverage entirely if the original purchase was not from an authorized dealer. ### Do either of them sound good enough for bluegrass? For playing at home or with one other person, yes, either. For a jam, you need a cast tone ring and a flange, and neither brand puts those in a banjo under about $1,200. That is the Gold Tone OB-150’s argument, and it is a strong one. See [our bluegrass banjo picks](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) for the wider field. ### Why do Deering banjos cost so much with so little hardware on them? Because the money is going into American labor and materials rather than into brackets and plating. It is a defensible trade and it is also a real cost — you are buying a lighter, plainer banjo than an import at the same price. [Why banjos are expensive](/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/) goes into where the money actually goes. ## So which one? If you are choosing at the price the two brands share, take the [Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4i5W3Zd) when you might not stick with it and the [CC-100R+](https://amzn.to/4hzhW2V) when you know you will. Below that, only Gold Tone is playing, and the [AC-1](https://amzn.to/4qmDouA) is the one to have. For old-time specifically, the [Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4fYLndI) and the scooped [CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/4fZRRck) are the two worth arguing over. And if a bluegrass jam is where this is heading, save for the [OB-150](https://amzn.to/4fT5ppS) rather than buying twice. Our [intermediate banjo guide](/best-intermediate-banjo/) and [picks around $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/) put both brands beside their competitors. **Categories:** Banjo Comparisons --- ### [Clavichord vs. Harpsichord: The Real Differences, and Which One You Could Own](https://promusicvault.com/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/) **Published:** January 6, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Keyboard Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/keyboard-comparisons/ "Keyboard Comparisons")› Clavichord vs. Harpsichord: The Real Differences, and Which One You Could Own A harpsichord plucks its strings. A clavichord strikes them and holds on. Almost every other difference between the two — how loud they are, what shape they are, what they cost, which one could sit in your house — follows from that one sentence. The harpsichord is the loud one, the instrument Bach wrote concertos for, and it plays at very nearly the same volume however hard you hit it. The clavichord is quieter than the conversation you would have over the top of it, and it is the only keyboard instrument built before the piano that answers to the weight of a finger. If you want one answer### Harpsichord if you want to play with other people. Clavichord if you want to play at home. The repertoire, the teachers and every continuo part in Baroque music assume a harpsichord, so that is the instrument to learn if you intend to play with anyone. The clavichord costs roughly half as much, sits on a table, is inaudible through a wall, and teaches finger control that the harpsichord physically cannot. Neither is sold in ordinary music shops and neither is cheap, so the first thing worth buying is not an instrument at all — Kottick’s *Harpsichord Owner’s Guide* is what tells you whether the one you are looking at is a bargain or a restoration bill. Around $10 on Kindle [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45WVsBM) **Sound made by:** plucking vs striking **Touch changes volume:** barely vs completely **Loudness:** fills a hall vs ~50 dB **Realistic cost:** $4,000+ vs $2,200+ ## Table of Contents - [Clavichord vs. harpsichord, side by side](#clavichord-vs-harpsichord-side-by-side) - [One plucks and lets go; the other strikes and stays](#one-plucks-and-lets-go-the-other-strikes-and-stays) - [The clavichord hears your fingers. The harpsichord does not.](#the-clavichord-hears-your-fingers-the-harpsichord-does-not) - [How a harpsichord gets loud and soft instead](#how-a-harpsichord-gets-loud-and-soft-instead) - [Fretted and unfretted clavichords](#fretted-and-unfretted-clavichords) - [Fifty decibels is quieter than it sounds](#fifty-decibels-is-quieter-than-it-sounds) - [Shape, size and telling them apart on sight](#shape-size-and-telling-them-apart-on-sight) - [What they cost, and where you would actually get one](#what-they-cost-and-where-you-would-actually-get-one) - [You will be tuning it yourself](#you-will-be-tuning-it-yourself) - [So which one is more popular?](#so-which-one-is-more-popular) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [What is the main difference between a clavichord and a harpsichord?](#what-is-the-main-difference-between-a-clavichord-and-a-harpsichord) - [Which is louder, a clavichord or a harpsichord?](#which-is-louder-a-clavichord-or-a-harpsichord) - [Can you play loudly and softly on a harpsichord?](#can-you-play-loudly-and-softly-on-a-harpsichord) - [Which is easier to play?](#which-is-easier-to-play) - [What is a fretted clavichord?](#what-is-a-fretted-clavichord) - [What is Bebung?](#what-is-bebung) - [How much does a clavichord or harpsichord cost?](#how-much-does-a-clavichord-or-harpsichord-cost) - [Which came first?](#which-came-first) ## Clavichord vs. harpsichord, side by side ClavichordHarpsichord**How it sounds a note**A brass blade — the tangent — rises and presses against the string, and stays thereA plectrum on a rising wooden jack plucks the string and lets go**Does touch change the volume?**Yes, across the instrument’s whole rangeBarely — measurements put it at about a decibel per step**Vibrato**Yes, by rocking the finger on a held keyImpossible**How loud**About 50 dB at two meters — below normal speechEnough to lead an ensemble or fill a small hall**Strings per note**One pair, and on older instruments shared with the neighboring keyTwo or three, at different pitches, switched in and out by hand**Range**3½ to 5 octaves4 octaves on an Italian single, 5 on a French double**Shape**A plain rectangular box, usually on a table or a light standWing-shaped, like a small grand piano, on its own legs**Weight**Around 40 lb — one person can carry it150 lb and up, and awkward with it**How you change the tone**With your fingers, and nothing elseRegistration: stops, a coupler, and often a second keyboard**What it was for**Practicing, teaching, composing, playing to yourselfSolo repertoire, continuo, concertos, opera**Tuning**Yourself, most times you sit downYourself, most times you sit down**Realistic cost**From about $2,300 as a kit; around $8,000 from a makerFrom about $4,400 used; $12,000–$20,000 for a good single**Where you buy one**Specialist early-keyboard dealers, individual makers, or a kit. Not general music shops. ## One plucks and lets go; the other strikes and stays Press a harpsichord key and you raise a jack — a thin slip of wood standing on the back of the key. Set into the jack is a pivoting tongue carrying the plectrum, a sliver of quill, leather or plastic. On the way up the plectrum catches the string and plucks it. On the way back down the tongue swings out of the way against a small spring, so the string is not plucked a second time, and a scrap of cloth in the top of the jack settles back onto the string and silences it. The important part of that sequence is the moment the plectrum lets go. From then until you release the key, nothing you do with your finger reaches the string. The note is already out of your hands. The clavichord does the opposite. Each key carries a small brass blade called a tangent, which rises and presses against its string from below — and does not come away. The tangent both sets the string ringing and marks the end of the vibrating length, so it is acting as hammer and nut at the same time. The dead length on the far side is permanently muffled by a strip of cloth woven through the strings, which is also what stops the note: lift the key, the tangent drops away, and the whole string is smothered by that cloth. So for as long as a clavichord key is down, your finger is still in contact with a vibrating string through a rigid lever. That is the whole difference between the instruments, and everything below is a consequence of it. ## The clavichord hears your fingers. The harpsichord does not. Play a clavichord key harder and the note is louder, in the ordinary way a piano is. Play it softer and it is quieter. There is no register to change and no stop to pull; the dynamic is in the finger. It is why C.P.E. Bach favored the clavichord above the other keyboards of his day and treated it as the instrument on which a player’s touch could properly be judged. It goes further than volume. Because the tangent is still pressing on the string, rocking the finger on a held key varies the string tension and bends the pitch. That is *Bebung*, a vibrato produced after the note has begun, and no other keyboard instrument of the period can do it. The same mechanism is the hardest thing about playing one. Extra pressure sharpens the note whether you meant it to or not, so a heavy hand does not simply sound loud, it sounds out of tune. Clavichord technique is largely about controlling that. On a harpsichord, the amplitude the string ends up with is very nearly independent of how fast the key went down. Careful measurements do find something — a stronger attack shifts the balance of harmonics and can move the level by around a decibel a step, up to about five decibels in the bass. It is audible if you are listening for it. It is not dynamics. Against a piano’s range of thirty decibels or more, a harpsichordist has no volume control worth the name. ## How a harpsichord gets loud and soft instead It changes how many strings sound, and which ones. A harpsichord carries more than one set of strings, named by organ convention after the length of pipe that would give the same pitch. An 8′ set sounds at written pitch; a 4′ set sounds an octave higher; a 16′, on the few instruments that have one, an octave lower. Each set has its own row of jacks, and a hand-operated stop slides that row a couple of millimeters sideways so its plectra either reach the strings or miss them entirely. A common Flemish disposition is 8′ + 4′; a French double usually has two 8′ sets, a 4′, and two keyboards. The second keyboard is not for playing higher notes. It gives access to a different set of strings, so the two hands can play at two different volumes and colors at once — and a coupler, often a shove mechanism that slides the upper keyboard back seven millimeters, makes the lower manual play both at the same time for the loudest sound the instrument has. Two more devices get confused with each other constantly, including by people selling instruments. The **buff stop** slides a batten of leather or felt pads against the ends of one set of strings, damping the upper harmonics and leaving a short, dry, plucked sound. The **lute stop** is a separate row of jacks that plucks an existing set of strings very close to the nut, which is a nasal, reedy, altogether brighter effect. One mutes; the other does not. The buff stop is the one you will actually meet, and it is the one usually mislabelled. None of that can be done in the middle of a phrase — stops are moved by hand, between sections. So the expression that happens inside a phrase is built from time rather than volume: how long each note is held, how much silence is left before an important one, small elasticities of tempo. A harpsichordist emphasizes a note by placing it late and leaving air around it. It works, and it is a genuinely different craft from piano playing rather than a poorer version of it. ## Fretted and unfretted clavichords Because a clavichord tangent decides where the string starts speaking, two tangents striking the same string in different places produce two different notes. Makers used that: on a *fretted* clavichord, adjacent keys share a pair of strings, which makes the instrument smaller, cheaper and lighter. Clavichords were built this way for the first three centuries of their existence; the first mention of an *unfretted* one, with its own pair of strings per key, comes in 1693. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The cost is that two notes sharing a string cannot sound together. Makers paired the notes least likely to be wanted at once — a natural and the sharp beside it — but the restriction is real, and some passages simply cannot be played on a fretted instrument. Anything with a G against an A♭ is out. For a first clavichord this matters less than it sounds. Fretted instruments are the cheaper ones, they hold their tuning better because there is less tension on the case, and the repertoire written when fretting was universal fits them by definition. If you intend to play late Bach and beyond, buy unfretted. ## Fifty decibels is quieter than it sounds A clavichord measures around 50 dB(A) two meters away. Ordinary conversation runs 60 to 65. So the instrument is not merely quiet, it is below the noise floor of most rooms — a fridge, a computer fan or traffic through a closed window will bury it, and a listener has to be within a few feet and the room has to be silent. That single number explains the clavichord’s whole history. It has no ensemble repertoire because it cannot be heard next to anything else. It was the instrument of the practice room, the teaching room and the composing desk, and it stayed popular in German-speaking countries, Scandinavia and Iberia into the early 1800s, long after the harpsichord was being pushed aside by the piano everywhere else. The same fact is the strongest modern argument for owning one. A clavichord is an acoustic keyboard you can play at midnight in a flat with a neighbor on the other side of the wall, and nobody will know. Nothing else does that. ## Shape, size and telling them apart on sight A harpsichord is wing-shaped and horizontal — the outline of a small grand piano, with the strings running away from the player, a hinged lid, and its own legs or stand. A clavichord is a plain rectangular box with the strings running left to right across it, and it usually sits on a table or a light trestle. If it looks like furniture rather than a piano, it is a clavichord. Vertical harpsichords do exist — a *clavicytherium* stands the soundboard up on end, like an upright piano — but they are rare, and mostly museum pieces. Nothing you are likely to be looking at will be one. The weight difference follows the shape. A clavichord runs to about 40 pounds, small enough to carry to a lesson. A harpsichord starts around 150 and needs two people and a plan. Both were often decorated well past the point of necessity — painted soundboards, marbled cases, Latin mottoes on the lid — because these were the good furniture of a wealthy house as much as they were instruments. ## What they cost, and where you would actually get one Neither instrument is a retail product. There is no model range, no shop with one on the floor, and nothing on a general marketplace but decorative props and toys. Real ones come from three places: a small number of makers building to order, the specialist second-hand market, or a kit you finish yourself. Clavichords are the affordable end. A fretted kit starts around $2,300 and a more ambitious one around $3,400; a reconditioned instrument through an early-music dealer runs roughly $4,000 to $5,500, and a new one from a working maker starts around $8,000. Harpsichords are a different order of money — used singles turn up from about $4,400 through dealers like the Harpsichord Clearing House, a good Flemish or French single sits somewhere between $12,000 and $20,000, and doubles and restored antiques run to $25,000, $35,000 and beyond. Second-hand is where most people buy, and it is also where the money is lost, because a harpsichord that has sat unplayed for a decade can need thousands of dollars of work that is invisible in a photograph — a cracked soundboard, a warped case, a whole set of perished plectra, pins that will not hold. This is the point at which reading beats browsing. Two books do more for a prospective owner than any amount of browsing. Edward Kottick’s *The Harpsichord Owner’s Guide* was written by a man who has built some thirty instruments, and it covers the things that decide whether a second-hand harpsichord is a bargain or a money pit — what the national styles are and what each is good for, what to examine before you pay, and then how to voice a plectrum, replace a string and set a temperament once it is yours. Joan Benson’s [*Clavichord for Beginners*](https://amzn.to/4x2BGA7) is the equivalent on the other side and much harder to come by: a practical account of how to touch the instrument, from someone who spent a career playing it. Reckon on around $50 in print, or well under $20 as an ebook. ## You will be tuning it yourself Both instruments are strung at low tension in thin wooden cases that move with the weather, and both go out of tune far faster than a piano. Harpsichord players tune before nearly every session; it takes ten or fifteen minutes once it is a habit. Calling someone out to do it is not practical, so this is a skill that comes with the instrument rather than an optional extra. Two things make it harder than tuning a guitar. Baroque music is usually played at A=415 Hz, roughly a semitone below the modern A=440, and many instruments have a keyboard that slides sideways to switch between the two. And the temperament is rarely equal — meantone and the various well temperaments are what this repertoire was written for, and they are the reason a harpsichord in a distant key sounds the way it does. A guitar clip-on is the wrong tool for it. Those assume equal temperament at A=440 and cannot be told otherwise, which rules out both of the things this repertoire needs. What works is a tuner that calibrates a long way below 440 and stores the historical temperaments as presets — the [Korg OT-120](https://amzn.to/3UeayjL) has been the early-music standby for years. It calibrates from 349 to 499 Hz in single-hertz steps, so 415 is a setting rather than a workaround, and it holds eight historical temperaments — Werckmeister III, Kirnberger III, Vallotti, Young, Kellner, Pythagorean and two meantones — alongside equal. Around $80. ## So which one is more popular? The harpsichord, by a wide margin, and it has been ever since Wanda Landowska began performing on one in the early 1900s and unveiled a new two-manual Pleyel at the Breslau Bach Festival in 1912. The historically informed performance movement that followed rebuilt the instrument along period lines and put it back into orchestras, opera pits and conservatoires, where it remains. The clavichord’s revival has been quieter, in every sense. It is played by a small and committed group, mostly at home, and its literature overlaps almost entirely with the harpsichord’s — the two instruments shared players and shared music for centuries, and very little was written for the clavichord alone. It never disappeared, and it has never been in fashion either. **Also read:** - [Piano vs. Harpsichord (What Are The Differences?)](https://promusicvault.com/piano-vs-harpsichord/) - [Harp vs. Harpsichord (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-harpsichord/) - [Is the Piano a String Instrument?](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/) - [Keyboard instruments, explained](https://promusicvault.com/keyboard-instruments/) ## FAQs ### What is the main difference between a clavichord and a harpsichord? A harpsichord plucks its strings with a plectrum and a clavichord strikes them with a brass tangent that stays pressed against the string. Because the clavichord’s tangent keeps contact, the player controls volume and can add vibrato; on a harpsichord the note is beyond the player’s reach the instant it sounds. ### Which is louder, a clavichord or a harpsichord? The harpsichord, by a long way. A clavichord produces around 50 dB(A) at two meters, below the level of normal speech, and cannot be heard alongside another instrument. A harpsichord can lead an ensemble and carry in a small hall. ### Can you play loudly and softly on a harpsichord? Not with your fingers. Playing harder changes the tone slightly and the level by about a decibel, which is nothing next to a piano’s range. Harpsichordists change volume by switching sets of strings in and out with hand stops, coupling two keyboards together, and shaping phrases through note length and timing instead. ### Which is easier to play? The harpsichord, if you already play piano — the keys behave predictably and the touch is light and shallow. The clavichord is unforgiving in a way no other keyboard is: too much pressure sharpens the note, so a heavy hand plays out of tune rather than merely loud, and a fretted instrument will refuse certain intervals outright. ### What is a fretted clavichord? One where adjacent keys share a pair of strings, their tangents striking at different points to give different notes. It makes the instrument smaller and cheaper, and it means the two notes sharing a string cannot be sounded together. An unfretted clavichord gives every key its own strings and plays anything. ### What is Bebung? A vibrato unique to the clavichord, made by rocking the finger on a key that is already down. The tangent is still pressing the string, so varying the pressure varies the tension and wavers the pitch. It cannot be done on a harpsichord, an organ or a piano. ### How much does a clavichord or harpsichord cost? A clavichord kit starts around $2,300, a reconditioned instrument runs $4,000 to $5,500, and a new one from a maker starts near $8,000. Harpsichords begin around $4,400 second-hand, with a good single manual between $12,000 and $20,000 and doubles well beyond. Neither is stocked by general music shops — they come from specialist makers, early-keyboard dealers, or as kits. ### Which came first? The clavichord, with the first known reference in 1404, though the two developed alongside each other through the fifteenth century and both flourished until about 1800. The piano displaced both, and the harpsichord returned to the concert stage in the twentieth century while the clavichord stayed a private instrument. **Categories:** Keyboard Comparisons --- ### [Best Wooden Recorders: Which Ones Are Actually Wood](https://promusicvault.com/best-wooden-recorders/) **Published:** October 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Recorder Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/recorder-reviews/ "Recorder Reviews")› Best Wooden Recorders: Which Ones Are Actually Wood A large share of the recorders sold with a wood grain down the body are molded plastic with a coating on them. Yamaha says so themselves: the YRA-312B is, in their words, “identical body and design as the YRA-302B, but with an added coating to give the appearance of Rosewood”. Aulos labels some of theirs “Woodgrain Finish”, and every recorder in their catalogue is ABS resin. Neither is hiding anything — the information is simply in the specification rather than in the photograph, and the photograph is what sells. Real wooden recorders exist at every price from about twenty-five dollars to about four hundred, and the cheap end is better than its reputation, because the softer, cheaper woods are the ones that suit a first wooden instrument. If you want one answer### Eastar ERS-31BM — maple soprano, Baroque fingering, around $27 Solid North American maple, three-piece so the foot joint rotates to suit your hand, and the cheapest way to find out whether you actually enjoy playing wood. Maple is one of the woods that never needs oiling, which removes the main reason people give up on a wooden recorder. Around $27 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3RegIuH) **German fingering:** Eastar ERS-31GM, ~$28 **Pearwood:** Hohner 9550, ~$40 **Serious money:** Yamaha YRS-64 rosewood, ~$400 **If wood is the wrong answer:** Yamaha YRA-302B, ~$30 ## Telling wood from a coating The tell is in the model number, and both big makers publish it. Yamaha’s current wooden recorders are the 60, 80, 800 and 900 series and are described on their own specification pages as handcrafted; everything in the 300 series is ABS resin, whatever color it has been finished in. The rosewood and ebony versions carry the same bore, the same windway and the same tuning as the plain brown model beside them, at roughly fifteen dollars more. ModelReads asActually**Yamaha YRS-312B / YRA-312B**RosewoodABS resin, simulated rosewood finish**Yamaha YRS-314B / YRA-314B**EbonyABS resin, simulated ebony finish**Yamaha YRS-322B / YRA-322B**RosewoodABS resin, simulated rosewood finish**Aulos — the entire range**Wood, on the woodgrain-finish modelsABS resin, every model Aulos builds**Yamaha YRS-61 / 62 / 64 / 82 / 83**WoodWood — handcrafted soprano**Yamaha YRA-61 / 64 / 801–811 / 901**WoodWood — handcrafted alto**Hohner 95xx pearwood**WoodWood — pear**Eastar ERS-31BM / ERS-31GM**WoodWood — maple If the model number is not to hand, the wood itself is: on a real wooden recorder the grain runs continuously across the joints and around the back, and the finger holes are cut through visible end grain. A printed finish repeats, and it stops dead at the tenon. ## The cheap woods are the right woods to start on Wooden recorders are not priced by how good they sound. They are priced by how hard the wood is to work and how long the maker spends voicing them, and hardness is also what decides the tone. Moeck grade the woods they use from 1 to 5 and set out the rule plainly: softer woods, grades 1 and 2, give a warm, fundamental tone that blends in an ensemble, while harder woods such as palisander and grenadilla, grades 4 and 5, give a bright, resonant tone suited to playing alone. Medium woods sit in the middle and do both. Maple and pear are at the soft end. That makes them the wrong choice for a soloist and the right choice for almost everyone else — warm, forgiving, easy to blend with a second player or a piano. It also makes them cheap, which is a coincidence rather than a compromise. The second thing the wood decides is maintenance, and here the gap is larger than the price gap. Moeck’s own guidance is that boxwood, grenadilla, olive, palisander, plum and rosewood must be oiled regularly, while their maple and pear instruments are impregnated with paraffin at the factory and never need oiling at all. So the twenty-seven dollar maple recorder needs swabbing out and nothing else, and the four hundred dollar rosewood one needs a bottle of oil and a routine. ## The picks № 1 · The first wooden recorder to own ### Eastar ERS-31BM Maple Soprano Recorder - Solid North American maple - Baroque fingering - Soprano, key of C - Three-piece - No oiling required - ~$27 Maple, three joints, and a price that makes the decision reversible. The three-piece build matters more than it sounds: the foot joint rotates, so the lowest hole can be moved to wherever the little finger naturally falls, which is the difference between a comfortable instrument and one that gets put down after a fortnight. The tone is what soft wood gives you — rounder and less piercing than a cheap plastic soprano, without the projection a hard-wood instrument has. It responds more slowly than a Yamaha ABS and wants a steadier column of air, which is a fair description of every wooden recorder and part of the reason wood is a second instrument rather than a first. Baroque and German fingering are sold as two options of the same instrument, one dollar apart, and the fingering is not printed in large type on either. The **B** in ERS-31**B**M is Baroque, which is the system every English-language method book assumes. **Pros**- Genuinely solid maple at a price most people will risk - Rotating foot joint fits the hand - Never needs oiling **Cons**- Voiced to a price — the tuning is good rather than exact - One letter from the German-fingered version - Still needs playing in and drying like any wooden instrument Around $27[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3RegIuH) № 2 · The same instrument in German fingering ### Eastar ERS-31GM Maple Soprano Recorder - Solid North American maple - German fingering - Soprano, key of C - Three-piece - ~$28 Identical body, identical wood, one dollar more, and the fourth and fifth finger holes swapped in size. German fingering makes the note F easy and makes F sharp — and everything with a sharp in it — worse. It is worth buying only if a teacher has asked for it or a class is already using it. **Pros**- Matches a German-fingered class set - Low F is simpler for a small hand **Cons**- Sharps play out of tune above the basic scale - Most published repertoire assumes Baroque Around $28[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gSlbRh) № 3 · The traditional pearwood soprano ### Hohner 9550 Pearwood Soprano Recorder - Seasoned pear, dark stained - Baroque fingering - Soprano, key of C - Two-piece - No oiling required - ~$40 Pear is the wood European makers have used for school and student instruments for a century, and it sits a step up from maple on the hardness scale — a little more definition at the top, still soft enough to blend. Hohner season and stain theirs, which is where the near-black color comes from. Two-piece construction is the trade. There is one fewer joint to leak or to work loose, which is why it has lasted as a design, but the foot is fixed, so the lowest hole is where the maker put it. On a soprano that rarely matters; on an alto it would. The mouthpiece is shaped rather than left square, and it is noticeably more comfortable over an hour than the molded plastic beaks. Thirteen dollars over the maple buys a better wood, a shaped beak and a hundred years of the same pattern. **Pros**- Pear, seasoned and stained rather than raw - Shaped mouthpiece that suits a long session - No oiling routine to keep up **Cons**- Fixed foot joint, so no adjusting for hand size - Ships in a clear plastic sleeve rather than a case - Hohner’s pearwood sopranos run under several near-identical numbers Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HzA9uF) № 4 · If the recorder is the instrument, not a phase ### Yamaha YRS-64 Handcrafted Rosewood Soprano Recorder - Rosewood, handcrafted - Baroque fingering - Soprano, key of C - Three-piece, arched windway - Cotton case, cork grease, cleaning rod - ~$400 This is where the money goes and what it buys. Rosewood is a hard, dense wood — grade 4 or 5 on Moeck’s scale — so the tone is bright, clearly defined and carries, which is what a solo or chamber part needs and what a maple recorder cannot do. Yamaha describes it as rich and vigorous with abundant overtones, and put it in the same handcrafted line they sell to professionals. The arched windway is the other half. Yamaha is direct about what it costs and what it buys: it puts a slight resistance in the way of the air, which a beginner reads as hard work and a player with breath control reads as something to shape a phrase with. Combined with a hard wood it is an instrument that rewards technique and exposes its absence. It is also the one on this page that needs looking after. Rosewood is on the oiling list, it dislikes radiators and cold cars, and it will crack if it is put away wet. Fifteen times the price of the maple soprano buys perhaps twice the instrument, which is the usual arithmetic once a craft process is involved. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Projection and tonal definition nothing cheaper reaches - Handcrafted and voiced rather than turned to a price - Comes with the case, rod and cork grease it needs **Cons**- Needs oiling, drying and a stable temperature - The arched windway is unforgiving of a wobbly airstream - Fifteen times the price of a perfectly good wooden recorder Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xk4HZ5) № 5 · When wood is the wrong answer ### Yamaha YRA-302B Alto Recorder - ABS resin - Baroque fingering - Alto, key of F - Rottenburgh bore, arched windway - ~$30 Yamaha’s own claim for the 300 series is that it is “fully competitive with more expensive wooden models”, and on the evidence of what it costs against what a comparable wooden alto costs, they are not overstating it by much. The bore is cut to the eighteenth-century Rottenburgh pattern and the windway is arched, so it is the tone and the response of a wooden recorder in a body that does not crack, does not need oiling, tolerates a school bag and can be washed. The rosewood-finish version of this instrument, the YRA-312B, is the same body with a coating on it for about fifteen dollars more. If the look is what you are after, it is a fair way to get it and a good recorder underneath. It is just not wood, and the finish is the only part of the instrument that wears. **Pros**- Rottenburgh bore and arched windway at plastic money - Nothing to oil, dry, season or crack - Holds its tuning through any humidity **Cons**- Does not have the warmth of a good wooden alto and never will - Alto fingering is a genuine relearn from the soprano Around $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hLULCF) **The same alto with a rosewood coating:** Yamaha YRA-312B, ~$45 — [check price](https://amzn.to/3kACpZF) **Oil, for rosewood and the other hard woods:** MusicNomad bore oil, ~$9 — [check price](https://amzn.to/3SskTrN) **Method book:** Essential Elements Book 1, ~$7 — [check price](https://amzn.to/4zUTsYP) ## The first six weeks decide how long it lasts New wood absorbs moisture fast, particularly in the windway and around the labium, and if it takes on too much it swells and warps. That is why a wooden recorder has to be played in, and why one that has been played hard on its first evening is often never quite right afterward. Moeck publish the schedule they recommend, and it is short enough to memorize. WeekMaximum playing per day**1**About 5 minutes**2**About 10 minutes**3**About 15 minutes**Each week after**Add another 5 minutes**About week 6**Break-in complete Two conditions go with the table. If the instrument turns hoarse before the time is up, stop for the day — hoarseness is water in the windway, and it is the instrument telling you it has had enough. And it has to dry completely before it is played again, which in practice means one session a day rather than three short ones. Start in the low register with long held notes and slow runs, and widen the range and the tempo week by week rather than all at once, because the wood has to get used to varying air pressure as well as to moisture. A child can do all of this perfectly well without supervision. ## Looking after it after that Warm the instrument in your hands or under a jumper before playing. A cold recorder condenses your breath immediately and goes hoarse within a minute; a warm one does not. Rinse your mouth first as well, because anything that gets into the windway stays there and dulls the sound. Afterward, thread a soft lint-free cotton cloth through the cleaning rod, work it into a tuft that fills the bore and wipe the inside dry with a twisting motion. Then leave the recorder out in room air, in the shade, until it is completely dry. Putting a damp instrument back in its case is the single most common way a wooden recorder ends up mouldy or split. Never touch the labium — the sharp edge in the window — or put anything into the windway. The labium is the part that makes the note and it is thin enough to damage with a fingernail, often past repair. And keep the instrument away from radiators, direct sun and drafts, because it is sudden changes of temperature rather than temperature itself that crack wood. Oiling applies only to the hard woods. If the bore looks dull, pale and dry rather than faintly glossy, it wants oil; a thin almond-based bore oil brushed everywhere except the block and the windway is all that is required, a few times a year. Do not use linseed oil — it leaves a sticky residue that is difficult to remove, and rags soaked in it can ignite on their own. ## Checking the fingering before you buy Wooden recorders are sold in Baroque and German fingering just as plastic ones are, and the model codes are just as easy to misread. Baroque, sometimes called English, is what the repertoire and the method books assume. German is a 1920s simplification that makes the note F easy at the cost of every sharp above it. There is a way to settle it from a photograph, which Moeck set out and which works on any recorder ever made: count down to the fourth and fifth finger holes and compare their sizes. If the fourth is the larger of the two, it is German. If the fifth is larger, it is Baroque. That test is worth more than the model number, because it cannot be mistyped. The codes follow the same conventions as the plastic instruments — Eastar puts **B** or **G** in the middle of the model number, Yamaha uses an even number with a **B** for Baroque. There is more on this in [our guide to plastic recorders](https://promusicvault.com/best-plastic-recorder/) and in [the Aulos and Yamaha comparison](https://promusicvault.com/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/). ## FAQs ### Is a wooden recorder better than a plastic one? Not below about a hundred dollars. A well-made plastic recorder holds its tuning better than a cheaply turned wooden one, survives being dropped, and can be washed. Above that a good wooden instrument has a warmth and a range of color that molded resin does not reach. Wood is a considered second purchase, not a first one. ### Which wood should I choose? Maple or pear if you play with other people or are buying your first wooden recorder — soft woods give a warm tone that blends, and they need no oiling. Rosewood, grenadilla, palisander or boxwood if you play alone or lead a part, because hard woods are brighter and project further. Those also have to be oiled. ### How much does a wooden recorder cost? A solid maple soprano starts around twenty-five dollars and a pearwood one around forty. A handcrafted instrument from a maker who voices each one individually runs from about three hundred and fifty upward, and altos and tenors cost considerably more than sopranos at every level. ### Do wooden recorders crack? They can, and the causes are known: being played too long when new, being put away wet, and sudden changes of temperature. Playing it in over six weeks, drying it properly and keeping it away from radiators deals with nearly all of it. ### Can a child have a wooden recorder? Yes, and breaking it in themselves is a good exercise. But a wooden recorder does not belong in a school bag, and if the instrument is going to spend its life being carried around and shared, plastic is the honest answer. ### What does a two-piece or three-piece recorder mean? How many joints the body has. Three-piece instruments have a separate foot, which rotates so the lowest hole can be lined up with your little finger. Two-piece instruments have one fewer joint to leak or loosen but a fixed foot. On a soprano the difference is small; on an alto or a tenor it is not. ### Does a wooden recorder need a case? It needs somewhere to live once it is dry. What it must not have is a case it goes into damp, so a bag that breathes is more useful than a sealed one, and neither is a substitute for leaving it out in room air first. ## Where to go next If wood is turning out to be the wrong answer, [the plastic recorder picks](https://promusicvault.com/best-plastic-recorder/) cover the same ground for a tenth of the money. For the size above the soprano, see [alto recorders](https://promusicvault.com/best-alto-recorder/), and for the one below the bass, [tenor recorders for small hands](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-recorder-for-small-hands/), where the wooden instruments have ergonomic options the plastic ones do not. The rest of the family sits under [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Recorder Reviews --- ### [Best Mandolin for Bluegrass: The Chop Comes From the Top](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Bluegrass asks one thing of a mandolin that no other style does: the chop. A short, hard, muted chord on the backbeat, cutting through a banjo and a guitar without a microphone. An instrument that cannot do it will sound polite in a jam and get quieter the longer the night goes on. What produces it is a carved, graduated spruce top braced with tone bars — not the scroll, not the finish, and not the price. That narrows the field a great deal. Below about $350 nothing has a carved top, and above about $1,100 you are buying wood figure and fret dressing. Five instruments cover everything in between. Best mandolin for bluegrass### The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek A hand-carved solid spruce top over longitudinal tone bars, in an F-style body, for about what a decent laminate mandolin costs. It is the cheapest instrument on the market that chops properly, and the only reason to spend more is that you want to. Around $400 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45BflhU) **Spend less:** Ibanez M522S — around $350 **All solid, all round:** Ibanez M700S — around $600 **Buy once:** Eastman MD315 — around $1,100 ## Three things make a mandolin work for bluegrass **A carved, graduated top.** One piece of spruce, arched by cutting it away rather than by bending it, and thinned to different depths across its area so it is stiff at the bridge and flexible at the edges. That is what lets a chord bark and then stop dead. A laminate top — layers glued together and pressed into shape — damps itself, which is exactly the wrong behavior: the chop turns into a thud and the notes lose their edge. This one distinction is worth more than everything else on the instrument combined, and it is where the line falls at roughly $350. **Tone bars, not X-bracing.** Under the top, two parallel bars running with the grain leave the center of the top free to move as a unit — the arrangement Gibson used on the F-5 in the 1920s, and the one every bluegrass mandolin has copied since. An X-brace ties the top together across the middle and gives a rounder, sweeter, longer-ringing note. Lovely for song accompaniment and for Celtic playing; less useful when the job is a percussive stab on beats two and four. The Loar publishes the bracing for each model, and the difference is visible right at the bottom of its range: the F-style LM-310F is tone-bar braced and the otherwise similar A-style LM-110 is X-braced. **A setup.** Mandolins arrive with the strings too far off the fretboard and the floating bridge in roughly the right place. Expect $60 to $125 to have the action lowered, the bridge fitted and located properly and the nut slots cut — more than a guitar costs, because the floating bridge has to be dressed to match the top. A $400 mandolin that has been set up plays better than a $700 one that has not, and every instrument here needs it. ## The five at a glance MandolinStyleTopBack & sidesPrice bandBest for[The Loar LM-310F-BRB](https://amzn.to/45BflhU)FHand-carved solid spruce, tone barsMaple~$400The chop, for the least money[Ibanez M522S](https://amzn.to/3H8rjTp)FSolid Sitka spruceFlamed maple~$350Gloss finish on a budget[Ibanez M700S](https://amzn.to/3H9N8lv)FSolid carved Sitka spruceSolid flamed maple~$600All-solid without the big jump[Eastman MD315](https://amzn.to/3DfCmJe)FSolid spruce, hand-builtSolid maple~$1,100The last mandolin you buy[The Loar LM-110-BRB](https://amzn.to/3DcpiV2)AHand-carved solid spruce, X-braceMaple~$400Playing sitting down ## The picks № 1 · Best bluegrass mandolin under $500 ### The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek - F-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - Longitudinal tone bars - Maple back & sides - Padauk board, bone nut 1-1/8″ - ~$400 The Loar builds 1920s-style carved instruments at prices that do not require a 1920s income, and the Honey Creek is the plain end of that. The top is hand-carved and graduated rather than pressed, and the bracing under it is the pair of longitudinal tone bars that the whole style is built on. The result is dry, barking and slightly rough at the edges — which is the sound, not a fault. The savings are all cosmetic. Satin brownburst instead of gloss, padauk instead of ebony, plain nickel tuners, and no fretboard extension past the 20th fret. Nothing there touches the sound. It is a two-way truss rod, so a shop can correct the neck as the instrument settles. **Pros**- Carved graduated top and tone bars at the bottom of the market - A real chop rather than a muffled strum - Opens up noticeably over the first year or two **Cons**- Plain hardware and a plain fingerboard - Needs a setup before it plays its best - Satin finish marks more easily than gloss Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45BflhU) № 2 · The cheapest F-style worth owning ### Ibanez M522S - F-style - Solid Sitka spruce top - Flamed maple back & sides - Purpleheart board, 24 frets - 13.8″ scale, 30mm nut - ~$350 Ibanez builds these to a consistency the small carved-top makers cannot match, and this is the one to have if you want gloss and figured wood for the money. The top is solid Sitka, the back and sides are flamed maple, and the block inlays and gold tuners make it look like a far more expensive instrument in a band photograph. It does not chop like the Loar. The note is cleaner and shorter and there is less bark in it, and it will not change much with age. Set against that, it arrives closer to playable out of the box than anything else here, and the fingerboard is dead flat — comfortable for chords, less so for anyone used to a radiused board. **Pros**- Solid spruce top for less than the Loar - Flamed maple and a high-gloss finish - Very consistent from one instrument to the next **Cons**- Less bark and less character than a carved top - Flat fingerboard radius will not suit everyone Around $350[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3H8rjTp) № 3 · All-solid without the big jump ### Ibanez M700S - F-style - Solid carved Sitka spruce top - Solid carved flamed maple back & sides - Purpleheart board, 24 frets - Antique violin sunburst, gloss - ~$600 The step up inside the Ibanez line, and the specification is the reason: solid carved spruce over solid carved flamed maple, where the M522S has a solid top and nothing else claimed. Solid back and sides matter less than the top — the back colors what the top has already decided — but they are the difference between an instrument that stays as it is and one that keeps improving. At around $600 it sits in the awkward middle. It is a better instrument than the Loar and not a better bluegrass instrument by as much as the price gap suggests, because the Loar spent its whole budget on the one thing bluegrass needs. Buy this if you want the all-solid build and the gloss and the flamed maple, and are happy that the extra $200 is buying those. **Pros**- Solid carved top, back and sides - Genuinely handsome, and holds its value better than laminate - Same reliable build as the cheaper Ibanez **Cons**- The tone gain over a $400 carved top is small - Purpleheart rather than ebony at this price Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3H9N8lv) № 4 · The last mandolin you buy ### Eastman MD315 - F-style, f-holes - Solid spruce top, built by hand - Solid maple back & sides - Ebony board, 12″ radius, 23 frets - Bone nut 1-3/32″, 13-7/8″ scale - Padded gig bag included - ~$1,100 Eastman’s workshops build these by hand, and this is the model where that stops being a marketing line and starts being audible. Everything is a grade up from the instruments above: ebony fingerboard on a 12″ radius, a bone nut, an adjustable compensated ebony bridge, a cast aluminum tailpiece, and a thin satin finish that lets the top move. It is loud, it has a hard front edge to every note, and it will still be the right instrument when you are good. The satin finish and plain appointments mean it looks less expensive than it is, which bothers some players and delights others. A gig bag comes with it, so the accessory list below is shorter for this one. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Hand-built, all solid, with hardware to match - Ebony board and a radiused fingerboard - Loud enough for an unamplified jam, with room to spare **Cons**- Nearly three times the Loar for a smaller gain than that implies - Plain-looking for the money Around $1,100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DfCmJe) № 5 · If the scroll does not matter to you ### The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek - A-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - X-brace - Maple back & sides - Padauk board, bone nut 1-1/8″ - ~$400 The same carved spruce top and the same maple body as the LM-310F, in the plain teardrop shape and at the same money. It is lighter, it rests flat on the thigh instead of levering the neck upward on a point, and bags for it are easier to come by. For anyone who plays mostly sitting down it is the more comfortable instrument by a clear margin. The difference is under the top rather than around it. This one is X-braced, which rounds the note off and lets it ring longer — sweeter for singing behind, softer at the moment the chop is supposed to stop. If bluegrass rhythm is the point, take the F. If you are picking tunes and accompanying songs, this may suit you better than the instrument above it. **Pros**- Same carved top and same price as the F-style - Lighter and easier to hold sitting down - Warmer, longer note for song accompaniment **Cons**- X-bracing softens the chop - Needs a strap button fitted, or a tie behind the nut Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DcpiV2) ## The scroll is not the sound The scroll at the top of an F-style body and the two points below it are solid wood. The cavity inside the instrument stops short of them, no air moves through them, and a mandolin built without them would sound very much as it does now. Gibson’s F-5 changed bluegrass because of its graduated carved top, its tone bars and its f-holes; the scroll came along for the ride, and Bill Monroe’s 1923 F-5 fixed the silhouette in everyone’s mind for good. That does not make the shape pointless. It is what a bluegrass audience expects to see, it sells on faster second-hand, and the lower point gives you somewhere to rest the instrument against your leg. It is worth having for those reasons. It is not worth having at the cost of a carved top, which is the trade every cheap F-style asks you to make — the scroll is the expensive part of the body to cut, and on a $150 instrument the money came out of somewhere. Our [A-style vs F-style comparison](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) goes through what the shape costs at each price, and [types of mandolins](/types-of-mandolins/) covers the rest of the family. ## Strings, tuning and the setup Bluegrass is played on medium-gauge phosphor bronze, 11 to 40. Lighter strings are easier on the fingers and give you a thinner chop; heavier than 40 buys volume you will pay for in a warped neck. [D’Addario’s EJ74 set](https://amzn.to/3E18kcR) is the default across the genre and costs around $10 — loop-end, phosphor bronze over steel, and the tension the instruments above were designed around. Change them more often than feels reasonable; a mandolin string goes dull in weeks, not months. Tuning is GDAE, low to high, in fifths, and eight strings drift out of tune faster than six. [A clip-on chromatic tuner](https://amzn.to/4clVozh) reads the vibration through the headstock rather than the air, so it works in a room full of banjos, and the current Snark ST-2 recharges rather than eating watch batteries. Around $22. Our guide to [tuning a mandolin](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) covers doing it by ear. The setup is the part people skip and should not. Budget $60 to $125 and treat it as part of the purchase price rather than an upgrade. It is the difference between an instrument you pick up every evening and one that lives in its bag. Speaking of which — an F-style will not fit an A-shaped bag, and most cheap mandolin bags are cut for the A. [This padded backpack bag](https://amzn.to/4hCarbF) is cut wide enough for both shapes, has 10mm of rigid foam and a hard bottom protector where the endpin sits, and runs around $45. The Eastman comes with one. ## Playing plugged in There are $200 acoustic-electric mandolins, and they solve the wrong problem: they put a pickup in an instrument that cannot chop in the first place. The better route is a carved-top mandolin from the list above and a pickup fitted into it. [K&K’s Mandolin Twin Internal](https://amzn.to/4xQosHu) is the standard answer — two sensors bonded under the top, no battery, no preamp, no magnet in the soundhole, and it reproduces the woody attack instead of flattening it. Around $120, plus fitting if you would rather not reach through an f-hole yourself. For a jam or a festival stage, a single microphone in front of the band still beats every pickup made. The pickup is for the nights when it does not. ## Learning the repertoire If you have never held a mandolin, start with [Rich Del Grosso’s Hal Leonard method](https://amzn.to/4ygaE9u), around $11 — notation and tablature side by side, and it gets you fretting the doubled strings cleanly, which is the only genuinely hard part of the first month. For the style itself, Jack Tottle’s [*Bluegrass Mandolin*](https://amzn.to/45D9DvN) has been the book since the 1970s and is still the one experienced players hand over. It works through the vocabulary of Monroe, Bobby Osborne, Jesse McReynolds, Frank Wakefield and John Duffey, from the basics up to crosspicking and double stops, with the standard session tunes along the way. Around $30, and it will last you years. See also [how hard the mandolin is to learn](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/). ## Questions ### Do I actually need an F-style for bluegrass? No. What you need is a carved top with tone bars under it and f-holes in it. Those come on both shapes. The F outline is convention — a strong one, and worth following if you plan to sell the instrument on — but nothing about the scroll makes sound. ### How much should I spend? Around $400 plus a setup gets you an instrument that does the job properly and that you will not outgrow for years. Below $350 you are buying a laminate top, which cannot chop. Above $600 the gains are real but they get small quickly. [What a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) breaks the whole range down. ### What is the chop, exactly? A closed chord struck on beats two and four and immediately muted by relaxing the fretting hand, so it lands as a percussive crack rather than a ringing chord. In a bluegrass band the mandolin is the snare drum. It is the reason a mandolin that sustains beautifully can still be the wrong instrument for the job. ### Should I buy used instead? Only if you can play the instrument first or know someone who can. The two things that make a mandolin worthless — a warped neck and a top that has sunk under the bridge — are hard to see in a photograph and expensive to correct. At the prices here, new plus a setup is the safer arithmetic. ### Is a mandolin harder than a guitar? Different rather than harder. The scale is short and the strings are tuned in fifths, so scale and chord shapes repeat identically up the neck instead of breaking at the third string the way a guitar’s do. The difficulty is the doubled courses: both strings of a pair have to be fretted cleanly or the note buzzes. Most people are through that in a few weeks. ### What if I mostly play at home, sitting down? Then look hard at the A-style. It sits flat on the thigh, it is lighter, and the scroll’s only practical function — a place to loop a strap and a point to brace against your leg — matters mainly when you are standing up. [Best mandolins for the money](/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) and [best mandolins for beginners](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) both lean that way for the same reason. **Categories:** Mandolin Reviews --- ### [Best Intermediate Banjo: What the Step Up Actually Buys](https://promusicvault.com/best-intermediate-banjo/) **Published:** July 31, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Intermediate Banjo: What the Step Up Actually Buys The banjo you learned on has started to annoy you, and the obvious move is to spend three or four times what it cost. Whether that is a good idea depends entirely on where you are heading. For old-time and clawhammer, this price bracket is not a stepping stone at all — it is the end of the road, and players gig on these instruments for thirty years. For bluegrass it is the awkward middle, because the one part that makes a bluegrass banjo sound like one does not appear until roughly a thousand dollars, and everything below that is hardware arranged around its absence. The step up most people should make### Deering Goodtime Openback Built in California, set up before it ships, and backed for eight years. It is the point where the instrument stops fighting you — the tuners hold, the action is right, the neck is straight — and for a great many players it is simply the last banjo they buy. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j7mMbQ) **For old-time:** Deering Goodtime Americana — around $750 **Most bluegrass hardware:** Ibanez B300 — around $600 **Least money well spent:** Washburn Americana B10 — around $500 ## The six at a glance BanjoBackTone ringBuiltPrice bandBest for[Deering Goodtime Openback](https://amzn.to/3j7mMbQ)Open back, 11″NoneCalifornia~$600The step up that ends the question[Deering Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/3Sm1wRv)Open back, 12″NoneCalifornia~$750Old-time and clawhammer[Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/3HdqCYR)ResonatorNoneCalifornia~$850American built, with a resonator[Ibanez B300](https://amzn.to/46wta1j)Resonator, flangeRolledImport~$600Bluegrass layout for the money[Washburn Americana B10](https://amzn.to/4zxCG1y)ResonatorNoneImport~$500The smallest worthwhile jump[Washburn Americana B9](https://amzn.to/3DkF1l7)ResonatorNoneImport~$380Planetary tuners on a budget ## What stepping up actually buys ### A setup, more than a spec sheet The largest single difference between a $200 banjo and a $600 one is not the wood. It is that somebody adjusted the second one. Head tension set to pitch, bridge placed where the intonation is actually right, action low enough that barre chords do not hurt, truss rod set, fifth-string nut cut properly. On a cheap banjo none of that is guaranteed and all of it drifts. Deering does this in San Diego before the instrument leaves the building, and the specialist shops that sell the imports do it too. Buy the same import from a warehouse and you get the box the factory sealed. That is the real reason a step-up banjo feels transformed on day one, and it is worth knowing because it points at a cheaper option covered further down. ### The tone ring is where the money stops adding up A tone ring is a metal hoop sitting on top of the wooden rim with the head stretched over it. It is what turns a thud into a ring, and it is the most expensive part of a banjo to make. There are three answers, and only one of them is the bluegrass sound. **No ring** — the head bears on bare wood. Dry, woody, quick to decay, and exactly what old-time players want. Every Deering Goodtime works this way. **A rolled hoop**, a bent bar of metal, which is what the Ibanez B300 and most imports at this price use: brighter and louder than bare wood for very little money or weight. **A cast bell-brass ring**, three pounds of poured metal, which is the sound on every bluegrass record you have heard. Nothing on this page has the third one. The cheapest cast ring worth owning is the Gold Tone OB-150 at $1,299.99 — sand-cast bell brass, a one-piece die-cast flange — and the instruments most professionals settle on — a Deering Sierra, a Gold Tone OB-250 — run from $2,000 to $2,500. So if bluegrass volume in a jam is the destination, spending $850 here buys you a nicer banjo without buying you that. Either take one of these knowing where its ceiling is, or leave the money alone and save. Our [picks around $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/) cover the next rung up. ### Old-time has no such ceiling Turn the question round and it comes out differently. An open-back banjo has no tone ring by design, no resonator, no flange and not much hardware, so the things that cost money on a bluegrass banjo are things an old-time player is actively trying to avoid. A good rim, a straight neck, a decent head and a proper setup is the entire specification, and $600 to $800 buys all of it. That is why the Goodtime Americana at around $750 is not an intermediate instrument in any meaningful sense. It is a finished one. The 12-inch rim drops the pitch of the pot and gives the deep plunky voice fiddle tunes sit on, the Renaissance head takes the edge off the attack, and four and a half pounds means you can play it all evening. There is more on the wider choice in [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) and in our [clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). ### Gold Tone makes the obvious banjos here The Cripple Creek line is the natural answer at this price. Gold Tone holds their prices, so the CC-Carlin12 and the CC-100R+ both sit around $850 and stay there — there is no discount to hunt for, and what differs between one of these banjos and another is who set it up and who answers the phone afterward, not the number on the tag. The CC-Carlin12 is the best clawhammer specification anywhere near this money: a scooped fingerboard, a 12-inch pot and a wide nut, with a gig bag included. One thing worth knowing before you commit — Gold Tone void the warranty on anything not bought from an authorized dealer, so buy from one and keep the receipt. ## The six picks № 1 · The step up that ends the question ### Deering Goodtime Openback - Open back, 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Rock maple neck, geared fifth-string tuner - 4.5 lb - Made in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 There is nothing on this banjo that exists to look expensive. A rock maple neck, a violin-grade maple rim, a geared fifth-string tuner, and a factory in San Diego that plays each one before it ships. What you notice first is not the tone — it is that the thing simply works, holds its tuning, and stays where you set it. It will not get louder over time and it has no bluegrass future beyond playing at home or with one other person. That ceiling is permanent and no amount of setup moves it. Against that, a Goodtime holds a large fraction of its price on the used market, which is the closest thing to a free trial available at this level. Our [full Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/) goes further. **Pros**- American built and set up before shipping - Same price on Amazon as at the banjo shops - Holds value better than anything else here - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so no bluegrass projection - Plain appointments and no case in the box Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j7mMbQ) № 2 · For old-time ### Deering Goodtime Americana - Open back, 12″ rim - No tone ring - 12″ Renaissance head - 4.5 lb - Made in California - ~$750 The 12-inch pot is the whole point. A wider rim lowers the pitch of the drum itself, and with the translucent Renaissance head over it the attack softens into something round and low that sits under a fiddle instead of arguing with it. Four and a half pounds is unusually light, and it changes how long a session lasts before your shoulder decides otherwise. The version sold here has a standard fingerboard rather than a scooped one, so if you want to strike the string over the end of the neck you will be catching fretwire. That is the one specification a dedicated clawhammer player would want and this does not have it. Everything else about the instrument is aimed squarely at the style. **Pros**- 12″ rim and Renaissance head give a genuine old-time voice - 4.5 lb — nothing here is lighter - American built, eight-year warranty - The going rate for the specification, with no discount to hunt for **Cons**- No scooped fingerboard - Quiet next to any resonator banjo Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Sm1wRv) № 3 · American built, with a resonator ### Deering Goodtime Two - Resonator - No tone ring - Three-ply violin-grade maple rim, 11″ - 6 lb - Made in California - ~$850 A Goodtime with a three-ply maple bowl bolted to the back, which throws the sound forward and adds about a pound. Everything good about the openback is still here — the setup, the warranty, the resale — and the resonator makes it a more conventional-looking instrument that suits bluegrass technique perfectly well. Be clear about what the extra $250 buys, though. It is projection and appearance, not a tone ring. In a room with a guitar, a fiddle and a mandolin all going at once this still gets buried, and the Ibanez below has more bluegrass hardware on it for $250 less. What the Deering has instead is where it was built and what it will be worth in ten years. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- American built with the same setup and warranty - Six pounds — light for a resonator banjo - Best resale value on the page **Cons**- Still no tone ring at $850 - Sixteen hooks, no flange, no case Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HdqCYR) № 4 · Most bluegrass hardware ### Ibanez B300 - Resonator with two-piece flange - Rolled tone ring - 24 brackets, 11″ Remo coated head - Basswood block rim, walnut resonator with abalone purfling - Okoume neck, purpleheart board, 22 frets, acrylic inlay - Plastic nut - ~$600 On paper this is the most bluegrass instrument here and it costs less than the Deering openback. A rolled ring, a two-piece flange, twenty-four brackets and an armrest — the full traditional layout, at a price where the American banjos have none of it. The acrylic vine inlay and the gloss walnut resonator make it look like an instrument costing twice as much. The friction tuners are the honest complaint. Ibanez fits chrome friction pegs rather than geared or planetary machines, and friction pegs slip; expect to retune more than you would like, and budget for planetary replacements if it irritates you. The basswood block rim is also a step below a three-ply maple one, and an import at this price will not hold its money. Our [B300 review](/ibanez-b300-banjo/) covers it in depth. **Pros**- Brass ring, flange and 24 brackets for around $600 - Genuinely handsome for the money - The going rate, with no discount to hunt for **Cons**- Friction tuners slip - Basswood block rim, not three-ply maple - Little resale value Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46wta1j) № 5 · The smallest worthwhile jump ### Washburn Americana B10 - Resonator - No tone ring - Mahogany neck and resonator, gloss sunburst - 22-fret engineered-wood board, die-cast tuners - Remo head, Kershner-style tailpiece - ~$500 If the banjo you have cost $180 and you want a real one without spending like it, this is the sensible amount of money. Mahogany rather than laminate, a Remo head rather than whatever the factory had, die-cast tuners that hold, and a Kershner-style tailpiece you can actually adjust to change the tone. Washburn lists it at $499 themselves, so the asking price is the going rate for the instrument rather than a premium. There is no tone ring and there is no flange, so it is a resonator banjo in shape rather than in voice, and the gloss sunburst is doing some work that the specification does not back up. Washburn specifies the fingerboard as engineered wood rather than rosewood, and have done since at least 2019, even though their own product description still says rosewood; they list one B10 and that is its board. Taken as the cheapest step that is genuinely a step, though, it is the right pick — and it leaves enough over for the setup that will do more than the next $200 of instrument. See our [B10 review](/washburn-b10-banjo-review/). **Pros**- Mahogany, Remo head and die-cast tuners at ~$500 - Adjustable tailpiece — a real tone control - Sold at Washburn’s own list price **Cons**- No tone ring and no flange - Looks more expensive than it sounds Around $500[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zxCG1y) № 6 · Planetary tuners on a budget ### Washburn Americana B9 - Resonator - Cast aluminum rim - Mahogany resonator - Planetary tuners - Engineered-wood fingerboard - ~$380 Planetary tuners at this price are unusual and they matter more than most of what else is on the sheet. They are geared, so they move in small predictable amounts and stay put, which is the difference between tuning once at the start of an evening and tuning between every tune. Set against the Ibanez above, this is the cheaper banjo that will annoy you less. The rim is cast aluminum rather than wood, which is the reason it costs $380. Aluminum is bright and a bit metallic and it will never be mistaken for a maple pot, but it is consistent and it does not move with the weather. Washburn specifies an engineered-wood fingerboard here too, as they do across the whole line below the B16. **Pros**- Planetary tuners for under $400 - Aluminum rim is stable and consistent - Below Washburn’s own list price **Cons**- Aluminum pot sounds brighter and thinner than wood - Engineered-wood board on the version at this price Around $380[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DkF1l7) ## Also worth a look BanjoPrice bandWhy you might pick it[Oscar Schmidt OB3](https://amzn.to/3JgbpZV)~$350A plain open-back with a wooden rim, cheaper than anything else here that is not a toy. The right choice if old-time is the plan and $600 is not available yet. It comes with either a rosewood or an ovankol fretboard at the same price, so pick the wood you want rather than taking whichever comes up first. More options in our [open-back picks](/best-open-back-banjo/).[Gold Tone CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/45Zoa5b)~$850Scooped fingerboard, 12″ pot, wide nut and a gig bag — the best clawhammer specification at this money, and the same price wherever you buy it.Gold Tone OB-150~$1,300Where a cast bell-brass tone ring actually starts. If bluegrass volume is the whole reason you are upgrading, this is the one to save for. ## Try fixing the banjo you have first If what is bothering you is that the strings buzz, the tuning slips, the action is high or the tone is dull, none of that is a reason to buy a different banjo. A fresh head runs $30 to $40, a decent bridge $10 to $30, and a proper setup at a shop that knows banjos costs less than a hundred. Together that is a fifth of what a Goodtime costs and it fixes every complaint on that list. Tightening the head alone changes the instrument more than most people expect, and it is free. New strings and a chromatic clip-on tuner are the other two cheap wins — our picks are in [banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/) and [banjo tuners](/best-banjo-tuner/). Do all of that, play it for a month, and then decide whether you still want to spend $600. Quite often the answer changes. ## Frequently asked questions ### What counts as an intermediate banjo? Roughly $400 to $900, above the starter instruments and below the tone-ring banjos. It is a description of price rather than of anything you can point at on the instrument, which is why the answer depends so much on style: the same $700 buys a finished old-time banjo or an unfinished bluegrass one. Our guide to [what banjos cost](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) maps the whole range. ### Should I skip this tier and save for a better banjo? For bluegrass, seriously consider it. A $2,000 banjo with a cast ring is a different instrument, not a nicer version of the same one, and the players who tell you to save are usually the ones who bought twice. For old-time the advice does not apply at all — the money above $800 goes on rims, woods and appointments rather than on anything that changes how the banjo works. ### Is an American-made banjo worth the extra? At this price it mostly buys two things: an instrument that arrives correctly set up, and one you can sell. A Deering Goodtime returns a large share of its price used, where an import at the same money returns very little. If there is a real chance you will change your mind about the banjo, that gap is worth more than any specification. See [American-made banjos](/best-american-made-banjo/) and [why banjos cost what they do](/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/). ### Open back or resonator? Old-time, clawhammer and playing at home: open back. Bluegrass, three-finger picking and jams: resonator. If you genuinely do not know yet, an open back is the safer purchase — it is lighter, cheaper, and a resonator banjo played quietly at home is mostly just heavier. There is a fuller answer in [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). ### How much heavier is a resonator banjo? About a pound for the resonator itself, and considerably more once a tone ring and a flange are involved. The Goodtime Americana is 4.5 lb and a full bluegrass banjo runs past eleven. If you play standing, that is not a detail — we put numbers to the range in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ## So which one? For most people the [Deering Goodtime Openback](https://amzn.to/3j7mMbQ) is the one to buy — American made, properly set up, and worth real money in five years if you change direction. If old-time is settled, the [Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/3Sm1wRv) is the finished version of that instrument and you will not need to upgrade again. Heading for bluegrass on a fixed budget, the [Ibanez B300](https://amzn.to/46wta1j) puts the whole traditional layout in front of you for around $600, and the [Washburn B10](https://amzn.to/4zxCG1y) does the honest minimum for $500. But if a jam is where this is going, the money is better saved than spent here — see [our picks around $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/) and [the bluegrass guide](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/). Still early on? [Start here instead](/best-banjo-for-beginners/). **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo Tuners: 4 Picks and the B-String Problem](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) **Published:** April 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo Tuners: 4 Picks and the B-String Problem A banjo note is over in about a second, and for that second the head, the rim and the four strings you did not pluck are all ringing along with it. Every tuner here will find a G. What separates them is whether the display settles before the note dies, and whether it can do anything about the one string a chromatic tuner always leaves slightly wrong. Our pick for most players### KLIQ UberTuner Reads vibration through the clip rather than listening to the room, settles fast enough for a banjo’s short note, and has the brightest display of the cheap ones — which is what you want when you are retuning outdoors. Three-year warranty, at a price where ninety days is normal. Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kBP5iY) **Cheapest that gets it right:** Snark ST-8 — around $20 **For the B string:** Peterson StroboClip HD — around $60 **Smallest:** D’Addario Micro Headstock — around $22 ## The four at a glance TunerTypePickupAccuracyPrice bandBest for[KLIQ UberTuner](https://amzn.to/3kBP5iY)Clip-onVibration±1 cent~$20Almost everyone[Snark ST-8](https://amzn.to/3HAzY2n)Clip-onVibration onlyNot published~$20Spending as little as sensible[Peterson StroboClip HD](https://amzn.to/46tYWfs)Clip-on strobeVibration±0.1 cent~$60Making the open G chord ring[D’Addario Micro Headstock](https://amzn.to/4xz0EIu)Clip-onVibrationNot published~$22Leaving clipped on permanently ## Why a banjo is harder on a tuner than a guitar ### The note is gone before a slow tuner has decided Decay is the whole problem. A guitar sustains long enough for a tuner to average a reading. A banjo gives it a bright, fast attack and then almost nothing, over the top of a drum head that is still resonating. Tuners that listen through a microphone are the ones that struggle here, because they hear the head and the room along with the string, and the needle swings between sharp and flat while you wait for it to make up its mind. Reading vibration through the clip removes most of that at a stroke. It is the thing that matters most on a banjo, and it is why a $20 clip-on can outperform a better tuner that is listening rather than feeling. ### The B string is the one that sounds wrong Standard G tuning is gDGBD, which is an open G chord — the reason you can strum a banjo without fretting anything. The second string, B, is the third of that chord, and the third is where equal temperament and a plain major chord disagree most: tuned dead center on a chromatic tuner, B sits about 14 cents sharp of the pure third the open chord wants. Every string reads perfect and the chord still has a slow beat in it. Players have always fixed this by ear, easing the B down until the beating stops. A sweetened preset does it for you: Peterson’s banjo setting exists specifically to counter what its manual calls the typical sharp B string, and a second preset does the same for the different scale length of a tenor. Sweetened tunings are essentially a Peterson feature, and the cheapest Peterson clip-on is around $60 — which is the honest reason to spend more on a banjo tuner, far more than any accuracy figure on the box. ### The fifth string is the highest one The short string running to the peg at the fifth fret is g4, above every other string on the instrument. A chromatic tuner shows G whichever octave you are in, so it will happily watch you wind that string toward a G an octave too high, and it will break before it gets there. If the tuner says G and the string feels frighteningly tight, you are in the wrong octave: open, it should match the first string fretted at the fifth fret, an octave above the third string. A fuller walk through the tuning itself is in [how to tune a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/). ## The four picks № 1 · Best for most players ### KLIQ UberTuner - Clip-on - Piezo vibration sensor - ±1 cent - A0 (27.5 Hz) – C8 - Calibration 430–450 Hz - 3-year warranty - ~$20 The display is the reason to pick this one. It is large, bright and color-coded, it swivels and tilts so it reads whether the tuner is on the front or the back of the peghead, and it stays legible in sunlight — which the cheapest clip-ons generally do not, and which matters the first time you try to retune outdoors. The sensor is vibration only, so a noisy room changes nothing. Accuracy is quoted at ±1 cent, and on a banjo that is not the limiting factor: the temperament is. What you are buying is a tuner that settles quickly, reads clearly, and is covered for three years at a price where ninety days is the norm. KLIQ sell an EcoTuner and a twin pack under the same name. The plain UberTuner is the one described here. **Pros**- Brightest display at this price, and readable outdoors - Vibration pickup ignores the room entirely - Three-year warranty - Swivels far enough to sit behind the peghead **Cons**- No sweetened tunings, so the B string is still yours to fix - Calibration stops at 450 Hz, which only matters alongside something tuned well away from A=440 Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kBP5iY) № 2 · The least you can sensibly spend ### Snark ST-8 Super Tight - Clip-on - Vibration sensor only — no microphone - 360° swivel color display - USB rechargeable - Calibration 415–466 Hz - ~$20 One thing to get straight before you buy a Snark, because the two models are easy to confuse. The ST-2 — the one most people mean when they say Snark — has a built-in microphone as well as a vibration sensor, and on a banjo the microphone is what makes the reading dance. The ST-8 has no microphone at all. It cannot hear the room, only the instrument it is clipped to, which on this instrument is an improvement rather than a missing feature. Past that it is a plain, fast, popular tuner with a big display on a 360-degree swivel. Buy it to spend as little as is sensible, or to find out how much tuning is going to bother you before spending more. **Pros**- No microphone to pick up the room - Quick to settle, and easy to read at arm’s length - The cheapest tuner here that does the job properly **Cons**- Nothing to fall back on when you cannot clip it to the instrument - Coarser than the KLIQ once you are close to center - Snark does not publish an accuracy figure Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HAzY2n) № 3 · The one that fixes the chord ### Peterson StroboClip HD - Clip-on strobe - ±0.1 cent - Over 50 sweetened tunings - Banjo presets for five-string and for tenor - CR2032 battery - ~$60 Three times the price of the others, and the accuracy figure is not what you are paying for. The banjo preset is. Peterson’s five-string setting shifts the targets so the open G chord rings instead of beating — its manual describes the job as countering the typical sharp B string — and the tenor preset does the same for a shorter scale and a lower tuning. Nothing under about $50 offers this at all. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A strobe display also behaves differently from a needle. Instead of a pointer that has to settle, you get a band that drifts one way or the other and stops moving when the pitch is right, which suits a note that is dying under you. The honest case against it is that a beginner will not hear the difference for a while, and a $20 clip-on gets a banjo perfectly playable. This is the tuner for someone who already knows their banjo sounds slightly sour strummed open and wants to know why. **Pros**- Banjo and tenor banjo sweetened presets, which nothing cheaper has - Strobe display reads steadily through a fast decay - ±0.1 cent, and it holds it **Cons**- Three times the price of a tuner that will get you in tune - The strobe takes a few minutes to learn to read - The HDC above it costs $20 more for a rechargeable battery and a longer preset list — the banjo settings are the same Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46tYWfs) № 4 · The one you stop noticing ### D’Addario Micro Headstock Tuner - Clip-on - Piezo vibration sensor - Reversible tri-color backlit screen - Calibration 410–480 Hz - CR2032 battery, with auto-off - ~$22 Small enough to clip behind the peghead and leave there, invisible from the front and clear of the fifth-string peg — which on a banjo is a real consideration, since that peg sits out on the neck at the fifth fret and a bulky tuner parked nearby gets in the way of the string you adjust most often. The trade is the screen. It is a fraction of the size of the KLIQ’s and you will lean in to read it, particularly in dim light. Tuning at home in your own time, that costs you nothing. Tuning on a stage between songs, buy the bigger display. D’Addario makes three other versions of this tuner, and one of them is not a clip-on at all: the clip-free model mounts with screws through a tuning machine. The plain clip-on, single pack, is the one described here. **Pros**- Small enough to live on the banjo permanently - Clears the fifth-string peg - Reversible screen, so it reads from either side of the peghead - Widest calibration range here **Cons**- Small screen, and you will lean in to read it - D’Addario does not publish an accuracy figure for it Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xz0EIu) ## Also worth a look TunerPrice bandWhy you might[Fender FCT-2](https://amzn.to/3XZ7gNT)~$24A dual-hinge clip that mounts on either side of a peghead, and one of the most popular clip-ons sold. Nothing wrong with it on a banjo — just a few dollars more than the KLIQ for nothing the KLIQ lacks. Fender’s simpler FT-1 sells for less.[D’Addario Eclipse](https://amzn.to/4qKrL0q)~$18The cheapest here worth owning, with a bigger screen than the Micro and the same reversible mounting. Buy it if you want to spend less than the KLIQ.[Korg TM-70T](https://amzn.to/4x2FktN)~$40Runs a tuner and a metronome at once on a music stand, reads down to C1, and replaces the older TM-60. Its built-in microphone is the wrong tool on a banjo, though — the CM-400 contact mic that fixes that is sold separately. A practice device rather than a tuner to carry. ## Where to clip it The front of the peghead is the obvious spot and works on most banjos. If the reading is weak, move it: a thick peghead overlay and a heavy resonator both damp the vibration that reaches the top of the neck, and the back of the peghead often reads better than the front. Failing that, clip it to the rim, which is far closer to where the sound is actually being made. Keep the jaws off the head itself. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I use a guitar tuner on a banjo? If it is chromatic, yes — every banjo string sits comfortably inside the range of any modern clip-on. What does not work is a tuner left in guitar mode, which is looking for E, A, D, G, B, E and will try to drag your fifth string toward something it recognizes. Switch it to chromatic and forget it has modes at all. ### Why does the display keep jumping between sharp and flat? Usually because the tuner is hearing more than the string you meant. Damp the other four with your palm, pluck once and cleanly over the neck rather than down by the bridge, and read the first steady moment rather than the last. If it still hunts, the tuner is using a microphone — turn that off, or use one that only reads vibration. ### My fifth string will not stay in tune. Is the tuner wrong? Almost certainly not. Most inexpensive banjos use a friction peg for the fifth string, which holds by pressure alone and gives up as the string settles or the weather turns. No tuner fixes that. A geared peg does, though the hole usually has to be re-tapered to take one, so it is a job for whoever does your setups rather than an afternoon at the kitchen table. Before blaming the peg, check how old the strings are. A tired string stretches, will not hold a pitch and reads dull and unstable on any tuner — [a fresh medium set](https://amzn.to/46wt0qJ) costs a few dollars and rules it out in ten minutes. There is more on gauges and materials in our guide to [banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/). ### Will a clip-on handle double C or sawmill tuning? Any chromatic tuner will, because it identifies whatever note it hears rather than expecting a particular one. Double C is gCGCD, sawmill gDGCD, open D f#DF#AD. The only tuners that object are the ones left sitting in a preset mode. ### How accurate does a banjo tuner need to be? More accurate than you can hear, which nearly all of them are. A cent is a hundredth of a semitone, and a good ear catches two or three of them on a sustained note. So ±1 cent is not what is holding your banjo back — the temperament is, and so is how long the strings hold once you have finished. ### Is a phone app good enough? For checking a single string in a quiet room, yes. The problem is the microphone: a phone hears the head, the room and whoever else is tuning, which is the same weakness that makes microphone-based tuners awkward on this instrument. At a jam it is not a contest — a $20 clip-on that reads vibration will beat any app you can install. ## So which one? Buy the [KLIQ UberTuner](https://amzn.to/3kBP5iY) and stop thinking about it. It reads vibration, it settles fast, you can see it outdoors, and at around $20 it is not a decision worth agonising over. Spend the $60 on the [Peterson StroboClip HD](https://amzn.to/46tYWfs) when the open G chord starts bothering you. That is the only upgrade here that changes how the banjo sounds rather than how quickly you get it in tune. New to the instrument? Start with [how to tune a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/), and if you are still choosing the banjo itself, [the beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) and [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) are where to go next. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Banjo vs Fiddle: Which Should You Learn First, and What It Costs to Start](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-fiddle/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Banjo vs Fiddle: Which Should You Learn First, and What It Costs to Start A five-string banjo has frets and is tuned to an open chord. Strum it without touching the neck and you have played a G major — in tune, in time, on the first day, with the left hand still in your lap. A fiddle has no frets and makes no sound at all until you draw a bow across a string, and where the note lives on that string is something your fingers have to learn to find without being told. That is the whole difference in one paragraph, and it decides more than history, price or repertoire do. Neither instrument is easy and both take years. But the first three months look nothing alike, and the first three months are what determine whether there is a fourth. If you want one answer### The banjo — unless the sound in your head is a fiddle It rewards you sooner, it forgives a bad first month, and you can teach yourself a long way before a teacher becomes the limiting factor. None of that matters if what you actually want is to play the fiddle, because wanting it is the only fuel that gets anyone through a fretless instrument’s first year. Choose by the sound you cannot stop thinking about; where that is genuinely a tie, take the banjo. Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x7oCdA) **If you choose the fiddle:** Eastar EVA-3 outfit — around $140 **Buying for a child?** The fiddle, and it is not close **Want to be useful at a jam by Christmas?** The banjo **Play guitar already?** The banjo starts halfway in ## Side by side Banjo (5-string)Fiddle**Strings**5 steel4, steel or synthetic core**Standard tuning**g–D–G–B–D — an open G chordG–D–A–E, fifths throughout**Frets**22, and a fifth string that starts at the 5thNone**How a note is made**Plucked, with fingers or picksBowed**Scale length**26¼”About 13″ of vibrating string**Weight**4–6 lb open back, 8–10 for a budget resonatorAbout a pound**Sizes made**One, essentiallyEight, from 1/16 up to 4/4**First sound**A chord, immediatelyA note, once the bow stops arguing**Realistic entry price**~$150–225~$115–160 as an outfit**Setup on arrival**Position the bridge, change the strings$50–80 at a shop, and skipping it is a false economy**Teacher**Optional for a long timeClose to essential from the start**Written in**TablatureNotation, or learned by ear**Job in a band**Drives the rhythm, takes breaksCarries the melody ## The banjo pays you back on day one Open G tuning is the reason. The five strings are tuned g–D–G–B–D, which is a G major chord already assembled, so the instrument is consonant before you have learned anything. Put one finger down and you have a different chord. The frets mean every note you fret is exactly the note you meant, and the short fifth string rings out over the top of everything as a drone, which is the sound people are thinking of when they think of a banjo. A fiddle gives you none of that. Bowing and stopping the string are two separate skills that both have to work before a single note is worth hearing, and beginners are consistently surprised that the bow is the harder of the two. The left hand is a memory problem — after a few months your fingers know where B lives. The right hand is a physics problem, and the physics does not care how much you have practiced: too little weight and the note whistles, too much and it crunches, wrong speed and it dies halfway across. The banjo’s difficulty is real, it just arrives later. Around month three the right hand becomes the whole problem: the Scruggs rolls that define bluegrass are fixed patterns of thumb, index and middle finger that have to run underneath a tune at speed without you thinking about them, and building that takes as long as anything on a fiddle. Clawhammer is a different motion again, and a genuinely awkward one to acquire from a book. What the banjo will not do is punish you for the first eight weeks while you find out. ## What each one actually costs to start BanjoFiddle**Instrument**~$175~$140, bow and case included**Before it plays properly**Position the bridge, fit better strings$50–80 for a shop setup**Needed on day one**Picks, a tuner, a strap — about $50Nothing; a decent outfit arrives complete**Strings**~$8 a set, several times a year~$26 a set, once or twice a year**Lessons**Optional$35–50 per half hour, weekly, for the first year**First year, self-taught**Around $250Around $230**First year, weekly lessons**Around $2,000Around $2,000 The numbers come out close, which is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that the lesson row is optional on one instrument and close to compulsory on the other, so the two totals are not really alternatives — the honest banjo figure is $250 and the honest fiddle figure is nearer $2,000. If a weekly lesson is not going to happen this year, that is a real argument for the banjo rather than a rationalisation. Two smaller things. A fiddle bought online arrives with the bridge lying loose in the case, and a $140 outfit that has been through a shop plays better than a $300 one that has not, so treat the setup as part of the purchase price rather than an upgrade. And a banjo’s strings are cheap because you get through them: five thin steel strings under a picking hand wear out several times faster than four bowed ones. [Spare sets](/best-banjo-strings/) live in the case. ## Which one you can teach yourself The banjo, comfortably, for the first year or two. Banjo music is written in tablature rather than notation — a picture of the strings with fret numbers on it — which means you can read it on the first evening without knowing what a key signature is. Rolls are patterns, patterns are learnable from a diagram, and if you play one wrong you can hear that you played it wrong. The instrument tells you the truth. A fiddle does not tell you the truth, and that is the case for a teacher. Play a note slightly flat and it sounds slightly sad rather than obviously wrong, so a self-taught beginner builds a fingerboard map that is a few cents out everywhere and does not find out for a year. The same goes for the bow hold, the left wrist and where the instrument sits on the collarbone: all of them are easy to do slightly wrong, none of them announces itself, and every one is harder to fix later than to learn correctly now. Most of what a fiddle teacher does in the first six months is stop you learning things you would spend the following two years unlearning. You can absolutely teach yourself to fiddle. Plenty of traditional players did, and picking up tunes by ear from other players is how the music traveled long before anyone charged by the half hour. It is simply slower and riskier than the equivalent path on a banjo, and that is worth knowing before you choose rather than after. ## Let the music decide it Both instruments live in the same rooms, so this is a smaller fork than it looks — but it is not nothing. - **Bluegrass.** The banjo is the signature sound of the genre and the fiddle is one of its lead voices, so either works. If what pulled you in was *Foggy Mountain Breakdown*, that is a [banjo](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) and nothing else will do. - **Old-time.** The fiddle leads and the [clawhammer banjo](/best-banjo-for-old-time-music/) plays underneath it. This matters more than it sounds: at an old-time jam a banjo player can find the key and vamp along with a tune they have never heard, while a fiddler is expected to know it. That is the single biggest reason the banjo gets you into a session sooner. - **Irish.** Fiddle, overwhelmingly — or a four-string [tenor banjo](/best-banjo-for-irish-music/), which is a different instrument from the five-string this page is about and tuned differently. - **Country, western swing, Cajun, Québécois.** Fiddle. - **Anything with an orchestra in it.** Violin, which is the same instrument as a fiddle. Start with a teacher and start reading notation in the first week, because that path has requirements the folk one does not. One practical footnote for later. A fiddle is tuned G–D–A–E, which is also [mandolin](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) tuning, so a fiddler already knows where every note lives on a mandolin fretboard. A banjo player’s nearest neighbor is the [guitar](/banjo-vs-guitar/). Whichever you pick, you are buying a second instrument cheaply somewhere down the line. ## The household problem A banjo is loud. A beginner fiddle is worse than loud, because for the first couple of months it produces a sound nobody in the building enjoys, including the person making it. Both are played sitting in a normal room and neither has a volume control. The fix on both is a practice mute — a weighted clamp that sits on the bridge and takes most of the carrying power out of the instrument without changing how it plays. On a fiddle a heavy metal mute is dramatic, turning it into something you can genuinely practice with a sleeping child in the next room. It costs about ten dollars and it is the first accessory to buy if you live in a flat. The banjo’s version clamps on in the same way and does less, but a banjo at least sounds like music from the first week, which is half the complaint. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## If you are buying for a child, buy the fiddle This is the one part of the question with a clear answer. Violins are made in eight sizes, from a 1/16 that suits a four-year-old up to the full-size 4/4, and a child who has outgrown one trades it for the next. Banjos are made in one size. The short-scale banjos that exist are travel instruments for adults rather than scaled-down beginner instruments, and some of them are tuned up to a higher pitch to compensate for the shorter neck — so they are not a smaller version of what a child would go on to play. A full-size banjo is also 26¼ inches of neck and, with a resonator on it, eight to ten pounds hanging off a small shoulder. Under about eleven or twelve, the fiddle is the instrument that fits. When you buy one, get the size measured rather than guessed — a violin one size too big teaches a child that the instrument hurts. ## The two to start on If you choose the banjo ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - 5 strings, full size - Mahogany resonator, and it unbolts - 24 brackets - Remo Weatherking head, geared 5th tuner - ~$175 The resonator comes off with a screwdriver, which is why this is the one to buy while the question is still open. A resonator throws the sound forward and is what bluegrass wants; an open back is quieter and warmer and is what clawhammer and old-time want. Nobody choosing a first banjo knows yet which of those they will end up playing, and this is the cheapest instrument that lets you find out without buying twice. Twenty-four brackets at this price is unusual — sixteen is the norm — and they are what let you tension the head evenly enough to get a clean tone rather than a thud. The Remo head is the same brand fitted to banjos costing several times as much, and it is the single component most responsible for how a cheap banjo sounds. Budget an evening for the bridge: it ships loose, and where you place it is what makes the instrument play in tune up the neck. **Pros**- Plays as a resonator or an open back - 24 brackets where 16 is common - Remo head at a budget price - Postpones the bluegrass-or-old-time decision **Cons**- Heavy with the resonator fitted - Factory strings and bridge both want attention - Not the banjo you keep for twenty years Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x7oCdA) If you choose the fiddle ### Eastar EVA-3 4/4 Violin Outfit - Spruce top, maple back and sides - Four integrated fine tuners - Finger positions printed on the fingerboard - Hard case, bow, rosin, shoulder rest, tuner and spare strings included - ~$140 Everything needed on day one is in the box, which matters more on a fiddle than on a banjo: a violin with no rosin is an ornament, and a beginner who has to work out what a shoulder rest is before playing a note tends not to play the note. Fine tuners on all four strings matter for the same reason. Tuning a violin from the pegs alone is a skill in itself, and a new player who must do it every day before they can practice will practice less. The finger guide printed on the fingerboard is the interesting part on a page like this one — it is the fiddle’s attempt at frets, and it works. A beginner plays in tune sooner with it than without. It is also the thing a teacher will want removed within a few months, because reading the positions stops you listening for them, and listening for them is the actual skill. Take it as training wheels rather than a feature. Then spend the $50 to $80 on a setup. At this price that is not an upgrade, it is the difference between an instrument you play and one you look at. If there is any chance you will want to plug in — playing with a band, or into an amp at home — [the Cecilio acoustic-electric](https://amzn.to/3UiQnl0) is the same money and does both jobs from one instrument. **Pros**- Genuinely complete — nothing else to buy - Fine tuners on all four strings - Finger guide gets a beginner in tune sooner - Eastar builds the same outfit in 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 for children **Cons**- Needs a setup before it sounds like itself - The supplied bow is the first thing you will replace - The finger guide has to come off eventually Around $140[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ggOfBC) ## What to buy alongside it ItemForPriceWhy[KLIQ UberTuner](https://amzn.to/3SaN1zM)Both~$19Chromatic, so it reads either instrument. A beginner cannot yet hear that they are out of tune, and an hour spent practicing on an out-of-tune instrument teaches the ear the wrong thing[D’Addario National finger and thumb picks](https://amzn.to/45xIUAR)Banjo~$17Bluegrass rolls need picks to have any volume at all, and this is the shape the style was built on. Get used to them early — switching later is a nuisance[D’Addario Prelude strings](https://amzn.to/40QMG4z)Fiddle~$26The standard student set, steel core, and a large improvement on what any budget outfit arrives wearing. Buy the 4/4 medium set unless the fiddle is a fractional size Add a strap for the banjo and a practice mute for whichever one you buy, and both are complete for well under fifty dollars either side. Everything else can wait until you know what you are missing. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a fiddle the same thing as a violin? Yes. Same instrument, same four strings, same G–D–A–E tuning, same shop. The word tells you what is being played rather than what is being held. Some players who only fiddle have the bridge shaved slightly flatter so two strings can be sounded together more easily, and many prefer steel strings to synthetic core, but a violin off the wall of any shop is a fiddle the moment you play a reel on it. ### Which is harder to learn, banjo or fiddle? The fiddle is harder to start and the banjo is harder than people expect to continue. Getting a pleasant sound out of a fiddle takes a few months; getting a pleasant sound out of a banjo takes an afternoon. Getting either one up to speed in a band takes years. If you are choosing on difficulty alone you are really choosing on the first three months, and the banjo wins those. ### How long before I can play a tune? On the banjo, a simple tune inside a month of daily practice and something recognisable at a jam within six. On the fiddle, a simple tune in two or three months, and the first year goes largely on tone rather than repertoire. Both assume twenty minutes a day, every day, which matters far more than how long each session runs. ### Can I learn both? Eventually, and plenty of old-time players do exactly that — fiddle and banjo together is one of the oldest sounds in American music. Get one of them to the point where you can hold your end up in a jam first. Learning two instruments from scratch at once mostly produces two years of being bad at both. ### Do I need to read music? For the banjo, no — [banjo material](/banjo-chords-ultimate-guide/) is written in tablature, which shows which fret on which string and asks nothing else of you. For the fiddle it depends where you are heading: traditional players learn by ear and many read nothing at all, but anything classical or orchestral needs notation from the beginning. ### What does each one cost? A first banjo worth owning runs about $150 to $225, and [the ceiling is a long way above that](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/). A first fiddle runs about $115 to $160 as an outfit with a bow and a case, plus $50 to $80 to have it set up. Below those numbers on either instrument you are buying something harder to play than it should be, which is the worst thing a first instrument can be. ### Is the banjo or the fiddle better for an adult starting from nothing? Adults do well on both, and the usual worry — that it is too late — is not supported by anything. What adults tend to have less of is patience with sounding bad, and that points at the banjo. An adult beginner on a banjo has something to show a friend after a fortnight. An adult beginner on a fiddle does not. ## So which one? Take the banjo if you want to be playing music rather than exercises by the end of the month, if a weekly lesson is not in the budget, or if you have not yet decided which of these traditions you want to belong to. Take the fiddle if you are buying for a child, if you want to carry the melody rather than the engine room, or if it is a fiddle you hear when you imagine yourself playing. That last reason outranks everything else on this page, and it is the only one still true in year three. Once you have picked a side, the shortlists are here: [the best banjos for beginners](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) and [the best fiddles for beginners](/best-fiddles-for-beginners/). **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Aulos vs Yamaha Recorders: Which to Buy, and the Digit That Decides It](https://promusicvault.com/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Recorder Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/recorder-comparisons/ "Recorder Comparisons")› Aulos vs Yamaha Recorders: Which to Buy, and the Digit That Decides It Both brands are good. Aulos and Yamaha have been making plastic recorders for fifty years, both are used in schools on three continents, and a blind listening test between their equivalent models would embarrass neither company. The badge is not the decision. Two things are. The first is the model number, because both companies sell the same recorder in two fingering systems one digit apart, and one of those systems is wrong for almost everyone reading this. The second is that Aulos builds the better cheap recorder and charges four times as much for it, which is why the answer below is a Yamaha. If you want one answer### Yamaha YRS-24B soprano — Baroque fingering, double holes, about $8 It is the recorder most American school programs hand out, and the cheapest way to get a properly tuned instrument with the fingering your method book assumes. The B is the part that matters: the YRS-23 is the same recorder with German fingering, and it costs more. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Ub9Svv) **Better instrument:** Aulos 205A Robin — curved windway, lighter head **Step up:** Yamaha YRS-302B, ~$22 **Alto:** Yamaha YRA-302B, ~$30 **Tenor:** Yamaha for the keys, Aulos for the lighter reach ## The model number tells you the fingering, and it is easy to get wrong Recorders come in two fingering systems. Baroque — also called English — is what the published repertoire assumes, what a teacher will teach, and what every fingering chart in an English-language method book shows. German fingering is a 1920s simplification that makes one note easier and everything with a sharp or a flat in it harder. Both brands encode the system in the model number and neither puts it in large type. Yamaha uses an odd number for German and an even number with a B for Baroque. Aulos does the same thing one digit lower. German — not the one you wantBaroque — the one you want**Yamaha entry soprano**YRS-23YRS-24B**Yamaha Rottenburgh soprano**YRS-301IIIYRS-302BIII**Yamaha plant-based soprano**YRS-401, YRS-401IIYRS-402B, YRS-402IIB**Aulos Robin soprano**204A205A**Aulos Symphony soprano**502B503B**Aulos Haka soprano**702B703B**Altos, either brand**Not madeAll of them The two instruments in each pair are otherwise identical — same body, same finish, same list price. Only the size of the third and fourth finger holes changes. The trap is sharpest on Amazon, where the German and Baroque Yamahas share one listing and one set of reviews. Eight thousand people rating a recorder five stars are rating both versions at once, and the variant selector is the only thing standing between you and the wrong one. Read the title before you check out: it says which fingering you are buying. ## What German fingering actually costs you On a Baroque recorder, F is a forked fingering — you cover a hole below an open one. Beginners find it awkward, and in about 1926 the German maker Peter Harlan widened the fourth hole so that F could be played by lifting one finger instead. That is the whole of the change. What it costs is F sharp, which needs the fork instead, and needs it badly enough that the note sits flat however carefully you blow. Every key with sharps in it degrades from there, and the top octave goes with it. A German-fingered recorder is comfortable in C major and F major and increasingly unhappy everywhere else. Then there is the practical problem. Fingering charts in English-language method books show Baroque. Online tutorials show Baroque. Anyone you play with will be on Baroque. A child who learns German fingering has to unlearn it, and the moment they find out is usually the moment the music starts getting interesting. German fingering is genuinely standard in parts of continental Europe, so it is a regional instrument rather than a defective one. If you are buying in the US, the UK, Canada or Australia, you want Baroque. ## Aulos builds the better cheap recorder. The Yamaha is still the better buy Two things are true at once here. The first is that Aulos wins the specification outright at the bottom of the range. The windway — the narrow channel between your lips and the sharp edge that splits the air — is straight on a cheap recorder and curved on a good one, and the curve shapes the airstream before it reaches the edge, which gives a rounder tone and a steadier top octave. Yamaha’s own spec sheet says the YRS-23 and YRS-24B are straight, and that the arched windway starts at the 300 series. Aulos puts a curved windway in everything it makes, down to the cheapest Robin. Its Robin heads also use a patented hollow “cavity wall” molding that makes the instrument lighter, which is why they turn up in primary schools full of small children holding one up for forty minutes. The second is what it costs. An Aulos soprano runs several times the price of the Yamaha, and the Symphony above the Robin costs more again. A curved windway is a real advantage, but it is not a four-fold one, and a child who loses a recorder twice a term is better served by the eight-dollar instrument that plays the same fingerings. So the honest version is that the Aulos is the nicer instrument and the Yamaha is the better purchase. A YRS-24B is about a quarter of the price of the Aulos that beats it, and the gap buys a method book, a case and a spare. For an adult buying one careful instrument the Aulos is a defensible choice. For a child in a school program it is four times the money for a difference they are not ready to hear. ## The sopranos worth buying № 1 · The default answer ### Yamaha YRS-24B Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - Double holes, low C/C♯ and D/D♯ - Straight windway - 3-piece ABS - ~$8 The most widely owned recorder in American schools, and cheap enough that the decision barely deserves the thought. Intonation is genuinely good for the money, the double holes mean the low chromatic notes play in tune rather than approximately, and it survives being carried in a rucksack by a nine-year-old. The straight windway is the compromise. Next to an Aulos it is a little thinner in the low register and a little more work to hold steady up top. At this price that is an observation, not a complaint. **Pros**- Correct fingering and double holes at about eight dollars - Cheap enough to replace without a second thought - What the teacher will be holding **Cons**- Straight windway — the thing you pay more to improve - One digit from the YRS-23, which is the German-fingered version Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Ub9Svv) № 2 · The better instrument ### Aulos 205A Robin Soprano / Descant Recorder - Baroque fingering - Double holes - Curved windway - Cavity-wall head - 32.4 cm, three-piece ABS The recorder British schools buy the way American ones buy the Yamaha, and on specification it is the better of the two: curved windway, lighter head, a fuller and louder low register, and enough tonal body that adults tend to prefer it once they have played both. The A on the end is Aulos’s mark for English fingering, so the model number settles the question the way the Yamaha’s does. The catch is what it costs. Several times the Yamaha buys you the windway and the lighter head — real improvements an adult will notice and a nine-year-old will not. If you want one good soprano and intend to keep playing, the Yamaha 300-series below does the same job for less; if you are buying for a child who may lose it, the argument is not close. **Pros**- Curved windway at the bottom of the range, which Yamaha does not offer - Lighter in the hand than anything comparable - Fuller, louder low register **Cons**- Several times the price of the Yamaha that nearly matches it - Wider windway takes more air, which some players read as harder work № 3 · Worth the step up ### Yamaha YRS-302B Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - Arched windway - Rottenburgh model - 3-piece ABS - ~$22 This is where a Yamaha stops being a school recorder. The 300 series is cut to the Rottenburgh pattern with the arched windway the cheap models lack, and Yamaha is unusually direct about what that buys: a sound “surprisingly close to that of wooden recorders”, with intonation they call impeccable. The slight extra resistance is the kind an experienced player uses rather than fights. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) At around $22 this is the Yamaha that answers the Aulos on the one specification Aulos wins lower down the range — a shaped windway that gives the player something to push against. If you are buying one recorder for an adult who intends to keep playing, buy this. The **YRS-402B Ecodear** is the same instrument molded in a plant-derived resin instead of ABS, and Yamaha says the change of material on its own gives a mellower, more centered tone and better control in the high register. It costs a few dollars more. Buy it if the plant-based body and the softer voice appeal; the design underneath is identical. **Pros**- Arched windway and Rottenburgh voicing for about $22 - Rounder low register and a top octave that holds its tuning - The cheapest way into a shaped windway either brand sells **Cons**- Narrow windway still clogs sooner than an Aulos - Overkill for a child in a school program YRS-302B — around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qA3f29) YRS-402B — around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zhnxkY) More options either way in our [plastic recorder picks](/best-plastic-recorder/). ## On alto, the brands actually tie The fingering trap disappears here — neither company builds a German-fingered alto at all, and both say so on their own spec sheets, so every alto either of them sells is Baroque. What is left is two good instruments, and this time the Yamaha is also the cheaper one. What you getPrice**Aulos 509B Symphony**Curved windway, adjustable thumb rest in the box, a longer bore than the Robin that gives it a more refined tone. Aulos’s finest alto, and the one to pick if you want the rounder, louder voiceAround $38[Check price](https://amzn.to/3RXcblj)**Yamaha YRA-302B**Rottenburgh model, arched windway, double holes for low F/F♯ and G/G♯. More focused and better controlled at the top; the standard adult step-up alto, and about eight dollars less than the AulosAround $30[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gophA8) The Aulos is rounder and louder, the Yamaha tighter and better controlled at the top — and since the Yamaha is now the cheaper of the two, it takes a positive preference for the Aulos voice to justify the difference. Our [alto recorder guide](/best-alto-recorder/) goes further into both. ## On tenor, it depends where your hand runs out A tenor is a long instrument and the bottom two holes are a genuine stretch, which is why this size is decided by ergonomics rather than tone. The two brands solve the stretch at opposite ends. The [Aulos 211A Robin](https://amzn.to/4xF22ZQ), around $58, is the shorter and lighter instrument, with its holes set closer together — easier across the middle joint, where three fingers have to span holes four to six. It has no keys, so the little finger still has to travel to the bottom hole and seal it, and that is the reach that stops most people. The [Yamaha YRT-304B](https://amzn.to/4zxXfLc), around $75, puts low C and C♯ on levers, which removes that reach entirely. It is the richer-sounding of the two and the wider-spaced, so it trades the easier middle joint for the easier bottom. For twenty dollars less the Aulos is the cheaper way in, but the keys are worth more than the saving to most hands. We have gone through both reaches, and how to tell which one is yours, under [tenor recorders for small hands](/best-tenor-recorder-for-small-hands/). ## What they sound like, and why one of them clogs first The tonal difference between the brands is small, consistent, and follows from the width of the windway rather than from anything mysterious. Yamaha’s is narrower. That means more resistance against the breath, a more focused and slightly quieter sound, and better control at the top of the range. Aulos runs wider: less resistance, more air going in, a louder and meatier tone with more body low down. Neither is better. A beginner usually finds the Aulos easier to make a note on; a player with some control usually prefers what the Yamaha lets them do with it. The same narrowness is why Yamahas clog sooner. Warm breath meets cold plastic, condensation collects in the windway, and the note turns to a hiss mid-phrase. The narrower the channel, the less water it takes. Three fixes, all free. Warm the head joint in your hand or under your arm for a couple of minutes before you start, which prevents most of it. When it happens anyway, cover the window with a finger and suck sharply through the mouthpiece — the windway clears in a second. And on a plastic recorder, wash the head in warm water with a drop of dish soap and let it dry without rinsing: the residue stops droplets forming, and it lasts for weeks. ## Soprano or alto, descant or treble Worth clearing up, because the two brands sell into British and American markets under different words for the same object. Soprano and descant are the same recorder, the small one in C. Alto and treble are the same recorder, the larger one in F. Aulos and most UK retailers say descant and treble; Yamaha and most US retailers say soprano and alto. Start on the soprano. It is cheaper, smaller, and every beginner method is written for it. The alto reads in a different key and is a better second recorder than a first. *\[Whichever brand you land on, [Essential Elements Book 1](https://amzn.to/4i581Ta) is about $7 and is the method most classrooms work from — 130 tunes and a fingering chart in the back. Check that the chart matches your instrument’s fingering before the first lesson.\]* *\[A hard case beats a gig bag for something that lives in a school bag. [This one](https://amzn.to/4da3oUg) lands at about $15 delivered and is cut for the Yamaha 20-series specifically, so measure before ordering if you went with the Aulos.\]* ## FAQs ### Is Aulos or Yamaha better? On specification, Aulos, because its cheapest recorder has a curved windway and Yamaha’s does not. On what you should actually buy, Yamaha, because the Aulos that beats it costs four times as much. Both make instruments good enough that the fingering system matters more than the badge. ### Which one is easier to play? Aulos, marginally, in the first weeks — the wider windway takes less precise breath control, so early notes speak more easily. Yamaha’s extra resistance is what an experienced player wants and what a first-week player notices as effort. ### How do I tell which fingering a recorder has before I buy it? Read the model number. Yamaha: an even number ending in B is Baroque, an odd number is German — YRS-24B yes, YRS-23 no. Aulos: 205A, 503B and 703B are Baroque; 204A, 502B and 702B are German. Where no model number is given, there is no way to tell which fingering you are getting — so buy one that states it. ### Does the plastic really matter? Less than the windway does. Both brands use ABS resin, and Yamaha’s plant-based line replaces it with a biomass resin built on plant-derived polylactic acid, which Yamaha says gives a mellower, more centered tone closer to wood. It is a real difference and a subtle one, and it does not outrank getting the fingering right. ### Should I get a wooden one instead? Not first. A good plastic recorder outplays a cheap wooden one, needs no breaking in, tolerates being left in a car, and can be washed. Wood is a considered second purchase — see [wooden recorders](/best-wooden-recorders/) when you get there. ### How long will one last? Indefinitely, if you do not sit on it. Plastic recorders do not crack, do not care about humidity, and can be washed. The only part that wears is the simulated wood finish on the dearer models, which is worth knowing before paying extra for one. ### How do I clean one? Swab the bore with the cleaning rod and cloth after playing, and every few weeks wash the whole instrument in lukewarm water with a little dish soap, then air dry. Never use hot water and never a dishwasher — the joints will distort. ### Can I mix brands in an ensemble? Yes, and recorder groups routinely do. The difference between an Aulos and a Yamaha is smaller than the difference between two players, and both are built to the same modern pitch standard. What you cannot mix is fingering systems across your own set of instruments. If you are still deciding whether the recorder is the instrument you want, we have compared it with the [flute](/flute-vs-recorder/) and the [penny whistle](/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/), and the rest of the family sits under [woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Recorder Comparisons --- ### [AKLOT Lyre Harp Review: Which of the Five You Should Buy](https://promusicvault.com/aklot-lyre-harp-review/) **Published:** March 17, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› AKLOT Lyre Harp Review: Which of the Five You Should Buy AKLOT does not make one lyre harp. It makes a seven-string at around thirty-five dollars, three sixteen-strings at around eighty, and a fifteen-string nylon-strung harp at around a hundred and fifty that is not a lyre at all. They share a name, a look and a price bracket, and they are not interchangeable. The sixteen-string is the one nearly everybody means, and it is the right buy. Of the two at eighty dollars, take the one with the note names engraved beside each tuning peg. The one to buy### AKLOT 16-String Lyre Harp, carved note markings Two octaves of steel strings tuned G3–A5 in C major, a mahogany body with a maple saddle over a brass bridge plate, and every string’s note cut into the wood above its peg. It arrives with a stick-on transducer pickup and a quarter-inch lead, a tuning wrench, a spare string set and a drawstring bag. Around $80 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bZHNxu) **The same instrument, plain face:** AKLOT 16-string dark mahogany — around $80 **For a child or a gift:** AKLOT 7-string — around $35 **If you want a resonance box:** Donner DLH-003 — around $100 ## The AKLOT range at a glance InstrumentStringsTuningNotes markedPrice bandSuits[16-string, carved notes](https://amzn.to/4bZHNxu)16 steelG3–A5, C majorEngraved at every peg~$80Most people[16-string, dark mahogany](https://amzn.to/3WJcKeT)16 steelG3–A5, C majorNo~$80Anyone who prefers the darker finish[7-string](https://amzn.to/4ijqpaI)7 steelD4 E4 G4 A4 B4 D5 E5No~$35Children, gifts, ambient playing15-string harp15 nylonC4–C6Red and blue strings~$150Someone who wanted a harp, not a lyre The last row is the one that catches people out. It has a curved neck, a soundbox behind the strings and soft nylon strings, which is a harp; the others have strings stretched across an open frame and steel under your fingers, which is a lyre. [The difference between a lyre and a harp](/lyre-vs-harp/) is worth two minutes before you spend anything, and if the instrument is for a child, [our guide to harps for children](/harps-for-kids/) covers that fifteen-string properly. ## What eighty dollars actually buys A body carved from mahogany, sixteen steel strings running from zither pins along the curved arm down to a bridge at the foot, and a saddle to pass the vibration into the wood. It sits in your lap or on a table, and it is light enough to hold for an hour without your arm complaining. In the box with it: a stick-on transducer pickup with a quarter-inch output, a tuning wrench, a spare set of strings and a soft drawstring bag. The pickup is the unusual inclusion. A lyre is a quiet instrument — steel strings on a small body do not move much air — so if you want to record it, add reverb to it or play it through a small amp, that transducer is the difference between doing it and buying a microphone. There is more on the options in [amplifying a harp](/how-to-amplify-a-harp/) and [recording one](/how-to-record-a-harp/). The sound is bright, metallic and short — nearer a zither or a music box than the soft wash the word harp suggests. That is what steel strings on a compact wooden body do, and every lyre in this price range does it. Hear one before you commit: ## The tuning is the hard part, and nobody warns you The sixteen strings are tuned G3 A3 B3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5 A5 — two octaves of C major plus a note at each end. It arrives untuned, and the first sitting with it is mostly tuning. The pins are zither pins turned with the wrench, and there is no gearing between the wrench and the string: a movement you would call small moves the pitch a long way, and it is easy to overshoot and snap a thin high one. Work in increments you can barely see, come up to the note rather than down onto it, and expect the first week to need retuning every day while new strings stretch. Two complaints come up more than any others from owners: that it drifts out of tune, and that strings break. They are the same complaint. Most of the drift and most of the breakages happen while the set is bedding in, and after a fortnight of daily tuning it settles — though a lyre held at this tension will always want more attention than a guitar. The spare set in the box therefore matters more than it looks. Restringing takes about ten minutes — [changing a harp string](/changing-harp-strings/) covers it. Any chromatic tuner will do the job; a clip-on that reads vibration rather than sound is easier on a quiet instrument, and [our tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/) has the options. [How to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) sets out the order to work in. ## What it can and cannot play Sixteen strings, one note each, no sharps and no flats. Everything in C major is available and so is everything in its modes, which covers a great deal of folk music, hymns, carols, lullabies and most of what a beginner tutor book opens with. Anything needing an accidental is off the table until you retune the string it needs, and anything in a distant key means retuning several. Two octaves is enough range that melodies rarely run off the end, and enough that you can hold a bass note under a tune. This is the real gap between the sixteen and the seven: seven strings in a pentatonic tuning cannot be played wrong, and cannot play a written melody either. If you want to learn pieces rather than make pleasant sounds, the extra forty-five dollars is not optional. [Learning without a teacher](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) covers what the first months look like. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Choosing between them № 1 · The one to buy ### AKLOT 16-String Lyre Harp, carved note markings - 16 steel strings - G3–A5, C major - Mahogany body, maple saddle, brass bridge plate - Note names engraved above every peg - Soundhole in the face - Pickup, wrench, spare strings, bag - ~$80 Sixteen identical steel strings look exactly alike, and a beginner spends the first fortnight counting from the bottom to work out where they are. This one has G3, A3, B3 and the rest cut into the wood beside each peg, so you never count and you never tune the wrong string. It is a small thing that removes the most tedious part of the first month. The rest is the standard AKLOT sixteen: same range, same tuning, same accessories, same money. The face carries a soundhole with an engraved surround, and the strings run over a maple saddle onto a brass bridge plate at the foot. **Pros**- Note names at every peg — genuinely useful for a year - Full two-octave range at the entry price - Pickup and spare strings included **Cons**- Bright, zither-like tone rather than a classic harp sound - Steel strings are hard on bare fingertips for the first few weeks Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bZHNxu) № 2 · The same instrument, plainer ### AKLOT 16-String Lyre Harp, dark mahogany - 16 steel strings - G3–A5, C major - Carved from a single piece of mahogany - Bone saddle - No note markings, no soundhole - Pickup, wrench, spare strings, bag - ~$80 The older of the two, and the one most reviews of “the AKLOT lyre harp” are actually about. It is cut from one piece of mahogany, finished dark red, with the maker’s mark burnt into the plain face where the other model has its soundhole. Same range, same tuning, same box of accessories, same price. Choose it if you prefer the look, which is a perfectly good reason — it is the handsomer of the two. Just know that you are giving up the note markings to get it, and that on a diatonic instrument with sixteen lookalike strings those markings earn their keep. **Pros**- The better-looking instrument of the two - Bone saddle, one-piece body - Identical range, tuning and accessories **Cons**- No note markings, so you count strings for the first month - Same bright, short-sustaining tone Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XEFGWw) № 3 · For a child, or a gift ### AKLOT 7-String Lyre Harp - 7 steel strings - D4 E4 G4 A4 B4 D5 E5 — pentatonic - Mahogany, bone saddle - Wrench and gig bag - ~$35 Thirty-five dollars buys a real wooden instrument rather than an ornament, and the pentatonic tuning means there is no wrong note in it. Run a thumb across the strings and it sounds deliberate. For a child, a present, or something to keep within reach of a desk, that is the right design and the sixteen-string is overkill. Understand the limit. Five notes repeating over an octave and a step will not play written melodies — no full scale, no semitones, nothing out of a tutor book. It is an instrument for improvising, and it is a good one. It also ships without spare strings, so buy a set with it. **Pros**- A real mahogany instrument at an impulse price - Impossible to play a wrong note - Small and light enough for young children **Cons**- Pentatonic — written music is off the table - No spare strings and no pickup in the box Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ijqpaI) ## The alternative at a hundred dollars The [Donner DLH-003](https://amzn.to/4zLwd34) is the same sixteen strings over the same G3–A5 range for about twenty dollars more, and the twenty dollars buys a hollow resonance box rather than a carved body. It is a little louder and it sustains a little longer, and the kit adds an instruction booklet, picks and a cloth. It has no pickup, so if amplifying it is on the list the AKLOT is the cheaper route by more than the price difference. We compare the pair against the rest of the field in [our lyre harp guide](/best-lyre-harps/), and the Donner range has its own [write-up here](/donner-lyre-harp-review/). ## The verdict At eighty dollars the AKLOT sixteen-string is a real instrument and not a decoration. It is well cut, it holds its tuning once the strings have settled, the two-octave diatonic range covers a great deal of music, and the bundled pickup is the sort of thing that normally costs half the price of the instrument again. The tone is brighter and thinner than the word harp leads people to expect, the strings are unforgiving of a heavy hand on the wrench, and you should plan on breaking one early. Buy the version with the note markings unless you actively prefer the dark mahogany. Buy the seven-string only if the point is the object rather than the playing. And if what you pictured was a soft, warm, nylon-strung sound, you wanted a harp rather than a lyre — start with [the beginner harp guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) instead. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Trumpet Fingering Chart: Every Note, With Alternates and Tuning Fixes](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) **Published:** February 8, 2023 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/trumpet/ "Trumpet")› Trumpet Fingering Chart: Every Note, With Alternates and Tuning Fixes Valve 1 is the one nearest the mouthpiece, valve 2 is the middle, valve 3 is nearest the bell. Those three give seven usable combinations, and every note on the trumpet comes out of one of them. Everything below is written pitch — what you read off a part marked for B♭ trumpet. The same fingerings work on cornet, flugelhorn and treble-clef baritone, so one chart covers all four. ## Every note, low F♯ to high C ### Below the staff NoteValvesAlternateTuningF♯ / G♭ (lowest note)1-2-3—Very sharpG1-3—SharpA♭ / G♯2-3——A1-23—B♭ / A♯1——B2——C (one ledger line below)open——C♯ / D♭1-2-3—Very sharpD1-3—SharpE♭ / D♯2-3—— ### On the staff NoteValvesAlternateE (bottom line)1-23F (first space)1—F♯ / G♭2—G (second line)open1-3A♭ / G♯2-3—A (second space)1-23B♭ / A♯1—B (third line)2—C (third space)open2-3C♯ / D♭1-23D (fourth line)11-3E♭ / D♯22-3E (fourth space)open1-2F (top line)1— ### Above the staff NoteValvesAlternateF♯ / G♭2—G (space above the top line)open1-3A♭ / G♯2-3—A (first ledger line above)1-23B♭ / A♯1—B2—C (high C, two ledger lines above)open— Written F♯ below the staff is the bottom of the trumpet’s normal range — 1-2-3 is as much tubing as three valves can add. Above high C the notes sit close enough together that several fingerings will produce most of them, and players choose whichever is in tune on their own horn rather than following a chart. For the practice room wall### QMG color-coded trumpet fingering chart An 11×17 laminated wall chart with the valve circles color-coded by note, which is what makes it readable from a music stand at arm’s length instead of something you lean in and squint at. Laminated matters more than it sounds: a paper chart clipped to a stand lasts about a term. Around $13 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qJTQF4) ## Why seven fingerings cover thirty-one notes Each valve drops the pitch by adding tubing. Valve 2 has the shortest loop and lowers by a half step, valve 1 by a whole step, valve 3 by a step and a half. Press two down and the drops add up, which gives seven lengths of horn: open, 2, 1, 1-2 (or 3), 2-3, 1-3, and all three. Seven lengths is nowhere near thirty-one notes. The rest comes from your lips. One length of tubing sounds a whole series of notes depending on how fast you buzz, and the trumpet’s range is those seven series stacked on top of each other. It is why the open fingering plays six different notes, and why nothing on the chart can tell you which one you will get. FingeringNotes it plays, low to highOpenC · G · C · E · G · C2B · F♯ · B · E♭ · F♯ · B1B♭ · F · B♭ · D · F · B♭1-2 (or 3)A · E · A · C♯ · E · A2-3A♭ · E♭ · A♭ · C · E♭ · A♭1-3G · D · G · B · D · G1-2-3F♯ · C♯ · F♯ · B♭ · C♯ · F♯ Every row starts below the staff and finishes above it, and the gaps close as it climbs: a fifth, then a fourth, then two thirds. That is why the high register is hard to pitch accurately and the low register is not — near the top, the wrong note is a step away rather than a fifth away. The jump from G above the staff to high C looks like a break in that pattern. There is a note between them, but it lands so flat that it is unusable, so the trumpet skips it and takes the fourth instead. ## Low D and low C♯ play sharp, and the chart cannot fix it Each valve slide is cut to be correct on its own. Use two together and the combined tubing comes out fractionally short for the note, and the more valves involved the worse it gets. Low down, the error is big enough to hear from across a room. Four notes are affected, and two of them turn up constantly: - **D below the staff** and **G below the staff** (1-3) — push the third valve slide out about half an inch. - **C♯ below the staff** and **bottom F♯** (1-2-3) — push it out about an inch, or as far as it will go. That is what the ring or saddle on the third valve slide is for. Hook a finger through it and move the slide as you play the note, not before it: the adjustment has to arrive and leave with the note, because that same slide position would leave everything else flat. Some trumpets also carry a throw or trigger on the first valve slide, which does the same job for D and E♭ at the top of the staff. On a horn with no ring at all, the only option is to lip those four notes down, which works and costs you tone. ## Alternate fingerings, and when they earn their keep The alternates in the third column are not worse versions of the standard fingering. They come from the overlap between those seven series — several of them reach the same note from a different length of tube — and they are there for two reasons: to keep the fingers still in a fast passage, and to shift the pitch of a note that is sitting badly. The 1-2 and 3 swap is the one to learn first, because it applies to every note that uses 1-2. Those two combinations are supposed to be the same length, but on most trumpets the third valve slide is built slightly longer than valves 1 and 2 together, so 3 on its own sits a shade flat where 1-2 sits a shade sharp. Two things follow. A below the staff often speaks better in tune on 3 than on 1-2. And a figure that runs A to G on the second line moves one finger with the 3 fingering instead of lifting two. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The rest are situational. Third-space C as 2-3, G above the staff as 1-3, D on the fourth line as 1-3 — each of these keeps a valve down through a passage where the standard fingering would make you release one and press another at speed, and trills are where that pays off most. Check any alternate against a tuner before you commit to it. They vary from instrument to instrument, and a fingering that solves a technical problem is no use if it drags the pitch with it. ## Your written C is a concert B♭ The trumpet is a transposing instrument. Play the C on this chart and the note that comes out of the bell is the B♭ a whole step below it. Sit at a piano, play what you each call C, and you will disagree. It matters in two places. Music written for piano, guitar, flute or violin cannot be handed to a trumpet player as it stands — every note has to move up a whole step first. And when a director calls a concert B♭ scale, the trumpet section plays a C scale: open, 1-3, 1-2, 1, open, 1-2, 2, open. Orchestral players often work on a C trumpet, which sounds where it is written. The fingerings on this chart are identical on one; only the pitch that comes out changes. ## The exercise that puts the chart away A chromatic scale from bottom F♯ to high C and back runs all thirty-one notes in order, so it drills every combination on this page in about ninety seconds. Slowly, with a tuner on the stand and the third valve slide moving where it should, it does most of the work of the chart on its own. Start it from written C rather than from the bottom for the first few weeks. The low register wants a settled embouchure before it will speak reliably, and starting on F♯ means starting on the worst note on the instrument. ## What to work through next Fingerings are quick to learn and not much use alone. What turns them into playing is a method book with a sequence to it, and which one depends on whether anyone is teaching you. BookBest forPriceEssential Elements Book 1School band. It is the book most US programs issue, and it is written for a room of players on different instruments at onceAround $13[Check price](https://amzn.to/4zUT1Ob)Rubank Elementary MethodTeaching yourself. A straight sequence of studies with no ensemble parts and nothing to bounce off, which is what you want alone in a roomAround $9[Check price](https://amzn.to/4g77z3X) If you are reading this before buying a trumpet at all, the range is wider than it looks, and the school-standard instruments sit between $400 and $900. We have been through [what a trumpet actually costs](/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) at each level, and which [brands to steer around](/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/). TrumpetWho it suitsPriceJean Paul TR-330The cheapest first horn from a maker with a published warranty, a parts programme and named service centers. 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case includedAround $250[Check price](https://amzn.to/4h2gYLR)Jean Paul TR-430The step up, and the one to buy if a teacher is involved. Rose brass leadpipe and a third valve slide ring, which the low-D problem above makes worth havingAround $400[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xGaDLt) ## Trumpet fingering questions worth answering ### Which valve is number one? The one closest to the mouthpiece, under your index finger. Valve 2 is the middle, under your middle finger, and valve 3 is nearest the bell, under your ring finger. Charts number them in that order without exception. ### Why do C, G and E all use no valves? Because a single length of tube sounds a series of notes, not one. With no valves down the trumpet will play C, G, C, E, G and C going up, and your lips pick between them. Every other fingering does the same thing from a lower starting point. ### Why are my low D and low C♯ always sharp? Because 1-3 and 1-2-3 add up to slightly less tubing than those notes need. It is built into the instrument rather than into your playing. Extend the third valve slide about half an inch for D and about an inch for C♯, using the ring, and bring it back for the next note. ### What are the lowest and highest notes on the chart? Written F♯ below the staff at the bottom, because 1-2-3 is as much tubing as the valves can add, and high C at the top. Pedal tones exist below that F♯ and experienced players go well above high C, but neither belongs on a fingering chart. ### Do cornet and flugelhorn use the same fingerings? Yes. Both are pitched in B♭ with three valves, so this chart transfers directly, and treble-clef baritone and euphonium parts use it too. What changes between them is the bore and the tone, not the fingers — the differences are in our [flugelhorn and cornet comparison](/flugelhorn-vs-cornet/). ### Why does my C sound like a B♭ on the piano? Because a B♭ trumpet sounds a whole step below what it reads. Nothing is out of tune; the notation is shifted so that one fingering means one written note across the whole family. Piano music needs transposing up a step before a trumpet can read it. ### Do I have to memorize all of them? Eventually, but not deliberately. Keep the chart on the stand and look things up mid-piece. The notes you play most stop needing it within a few weeks, and a slow chromatic scale takes care of the stragglers. If you are still weighing the trumpet against something else, we have compared it with the [saxophone](/trumpet-vs-saxophone/), the [mellophone](/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) and the [bugle](/trumpet-vs-bugle/), and the rest of the family sits under [brass instruments](/brass-instruments/). **Categories:** Trumpet --- ### [Washburn B10 Banjo Review: A Long-Scale Banjo With No Tone Ring](https://promusicvault.com/washburn-b10-banjo-review/) **Published:** March 22, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Washburn B10 Banjo Review: A Long-Scale Banjo With No Tone Ring The Washburn B10 is a $500 five-string banjo with a mahogany neck, a mahogany rim and a mahogany resonator, finished in gloss sunburst with floral inlays down the fingerboard. It is one of the better-looking instruments at the price, and it is a genuine wooden banjo rather than a composite one, which at $500 is not a given. Two things on Washburn’s own specification sheet decide whether it is the right banjo for you, and neither appears in the sales description. The scale is 27½ inches, more than an inch longer than a bluegrass banjo normally is. And there is no tone ring. Washburn B10 — verdict### Washburn Americana B10 Buy it for the wood body and the way it looks. A mahogany rim and resonator with a gloss sunburst and floral inlays is a lot of instrument for $500, and the lifetime warranty is real. Do not buy it expecting a bluegrass sound: with no tone ring under the head it is a resonator banjo in shape rather than in voice. The long scale and the plastic nut are worth knowing about before you order, not after. Around $500 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3jgnHGV) **Better player at the same money:** Gold Tone AC-5 — around $500 **The Washburn with a tone ring:** B11 — around $900 **American built:** Deering Goodtime Two — around $850 ## The two numbers that decide it ### A 27½-inch scale, on an instrument built around 26¼ Washburn publishes the B10’s scale length as 27.5 inches. The bluegrass standard is 26¼, and Washburn’s own B11 above it is 26⅜. The whole bottom half of their banjo line — the B7, B8, B9 and B10 — sits on the same long neck, and the line reverts to standard scale from the B11 up. An extra inch and a quarter sounds like nothing and changes three things. String tension goes up by roughly a tenth at the same gauge and pitch, so a light set on a B10 feels about like a medium set on a normal banjo — firmer under the right hand, a bit more resistant to bending. Stay on light gauge here; Washburn ships the line on D’Addario light nickel and there is no reason to go heavier. The frets are proportionally further apart, which is a real consideration if the player has small hands, and most noticeable in first position where the stretches are widest anyway. And the bridge sits further back on the head than you may expect, which matters when you come to place it — see below, because the B10 arrives with the bridge loose in the box. None of that is a fault. It does mean that instruction written for a standard-scale banjo — fret spacing, bridge placement, string choice — needs adjusting slightly for this one. ### There is no tone ring A tone ring is a hoop of metal that sits on top of the wooden rim with the head stretched over it. It is the single component most responsible for the cutting, bell-like bark that a banjo makes on a bluegrass record. Without one, the head bears directly on the wood and you get a warmer, softer, quieter instrument. Washburn names a rolled brass tone ring on the B11 and specify none on the B10 or the B9. When a maker advertises a component on one model and leaves it off the sheet for another, that is the answer. In Washburn’s line, the tone ring starts at $900. The resonator on the back is doing a different job. It reflects sound forward instead of letting it escape behind you, which makes the B10 louder and more directional than an open-back banjo of the same price. Loud is not the same as bright. If bluegrass is the destination, read [what actually makes a banjo a bluegrass banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) before spending anything, because the answer is more expensive than $500. ## The fingerboard is engineered wood Washburn’s specification for the B10 gives the fretboard as engineered wood — a composite board, not rosewood. Their product description on the same page says rosewood. The specification is the one to believe: it is the field that changes model by model across the line, and it has read engineered wood since at least 2019, while the description has never been updated. Washburn lists one B10 today, model B10-A-U, and that is its fingerboard. In use it matters less than it reads. A composite board is harder than rosewood, does not dry out, never needs oiling and takes a fret job perfectly well. What it tells you is where the money went on a $500 banjo, and the same sheet answers that twice over: the nut is ABS, which is to say plastic, on every banjo Washburn makes from the B6 to the $2,299 B17. ## “An American original” is the brand, not the build George Washburn began making stringed instruments in Chicago in 1883, and by 1889 the company was the largest mandolin maker in America. All of that is true and none of it describes this banjo. The name has changed hands repeatedly since; today the copyright line on Washburn’s own site reads JAM Industries USA. Washburn does not publish where the B10 is built, and no specification sheet, listing or catalogue entry states a country of origin. Treat the 1883 date as heritage rather than as evidence about the instrument in the box. If American manufacture is the point of the purchase, the cheapest banjo that actually says so is the Deering Goodtime Two at around $850 — a California-built resonator banjo with a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, and, for what it is worth, no tone ring either. The warranty is worth more than the history. Washburn cover the B10 for the lifetime of the original purchaser against defects in materials and workmanship — but it is not transferable, so it is worth nothing to a second owner, it applies only if the banjo was bought from an authorized dealer, and the customer pays freight in both directions. Strings, frets and tuning machines are excluded as normal wear. ## The Gold Tone AC-5 costs the same Gold Tone builds a resonator banjo at the same price, and the two have opposite priorities. Washburn B10Gold Tone AC-5Rim and resonatorMahoganyCompositeNeckMahoganyMapleFingerboardEngineered woodRosewoodNutABS plasticZero Glide zero fretTruss rodNot specifiedTwo-way adjustableScale27½”26-3/16″Tone ringNoneNoneWeightNot published5.5 lbIn the boxBanjo onlyGig bagWarrantyLifetime, original owner only5 years, transferablePrice band~$500~$500 The Washburn is the better object and the Gold Tone is the better instrument. Mahogany against composite is a real difference in material quality, and the sunburst and floral inlays are worth something to most people looking at a banjo on a stand in the corner of a room. Everything on the Gold Tone side of that table, though, is a thing you feel while playing. A zero fret ahead of the nut makes open strings ring like fretted ones and stops the tuning drifting when you capo, which is exactly the problem a plastic nut creates. A two-way truss rod means the neck relief can be adjusted in both directions when the seasons move it; a neck with no adjustable rod is a neck you live with. The standard scale puts the frets where every book and chord chart assumes they are. And it arrives set up rather than boxed at the factory, with a bag. For a first banjo those things decide more evenings than the rim material does. For someone who already plays, knows how to set an instrument up and wants a wooden pot, the Washburn is the more satisfying thing to own. ## The two picks № 1 · The banjo under review ### Washburn Americana B10 - Mahogany rim, resonator and neck - Remo head, ebony-tipped maple bridge - Engineered-wood fingerboard, floral inlays, 22 frets - ABS nut, 1 3/16″ wide - 27½” scale · single coordinator rod - Kershner-style tailpiece, chrome armrest, die-cast tuners - Gloss sunburst · no tone ring · ~$500 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Washburn lists the B10 at $499 and it sells at that, so there is no discount to hunt for and no premium being charged. What the money buys is a wooden banjo: a mahogany rim with a mahogany resonator bolted to it, rather than the composite shells that dominate this price. The gloss sunburst and the floral inlay work are better than the price suggests, and the chrome armrest and ebony-tipped bridge are details that get skipped further down. It sounds like what it is — warm, round, moderately loud, without the metallic crack a tone ring produces. That suits old-time playing, song accompaniment and practice far better than it suits a jam, and it is a perfectly pleasant banjo to sit and play. Nothing about it is bad. It is simply built to a different brief than the description implies. Budget for the setup. The bridge ships loose, the nut is plastic, and neither of those is unusual at $500, but both are between you and an instrument that plays in tune. - Mahogany rim and resonator, not composite - Best-looking banjo at the price - Lifetime warranty against defects - Sold at the maker’s own list price - No tone ring, so not a bluegrass voice - 27½” scale is a longer reach than standard - Plastic nut, and no adjustable truss rod specified - Nothing in the box — no bag, no strap, no picks Around $500 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3jgnHGV) № 2 · Better player, same money ### Gold Tone AC-5 - 11″ composite rim, 13″ composite resonator - Maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, 22 frets - Zero Glide nut, 1‑3/16″ · two-way truss rod - 26-3/16″ scale, GDGBD, .011–.024w - 16 brackets, Terminator tailpiece, Remo coated head - 5.5 lb · gig bag included · ~$500 Gold Tone sells the AC-5 at $499.99, the same money as the B10, and spend it on the parts a player touches. The Zero Glide nut is the standout: a zero fret sitting ahead of the nut so that every open string is stopped by fret wire rather than by a slot cut in plastic. It is the single most effective fix for the tuning problems that plague budget banjos, and it is not usually seen at this price. Behind it are a rosewood board, an adjustable truss rod, a standard 26-3/16″ scale and a professional setup before it ships. At 5.5 pounds it is also half a banjo lighter than most resonator instruments, which is the difference between practicing for an hour and putting it down. The compromise is the pot. The rim and resonator are composite rather than wood, and Gold Tone is open about it — it is stiff, consistent and unaffected by humidity, but it does not have mahogany’s warmth and the banjo looks plain next to the Washburn. It has no tone ring either, so it is not a bluegrass banjo on this count any more than the B10 is. Gold Tone’s AC-series warranty runs five years and, unusually, transfers to a second owner. - Zero fret instead of a plastic nut - Adjustable truss rod and a standard scale - Set up before it ships, and a bag included - 5.5 lb, and a transferable five-year warranty - Composite rim and resonator, not wood - Plain natural satin with dot inlays - No tone ring Around $500 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zAuRZ3) ## Where the B10 sits in Washburn’s own line Washburn builds eight banjos. Three of them bracket the B10 closely enough to be worth a look before you commit. ModelTone ringScaleWhat you getPrice band[Washburn B9](https://amzn.to/4c821Fi)None27½”Aluminum rim, geared planetary 5th-string tuner~$380[Washburn B10](https://amzn.to/3jgnHGV)None27½”Mahogany rim, floral inlay, gloss sunburst~$500[Washburn B11](https://amzn.to/4iqkAbA)Rolled brass26⅜”One-piece flange, planetary tuners, hardshell case~$900[Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4gNIbSm)None26¼”California-built, three-ply maple rim, 6 lb~$850 The B9 is the interesting one underneath. It costs about $120 less and gives up the mahogany rim for cast aluminum and the floral inlay for dots — but it gains a geared planetary tuner on the fifth string, which the B10’s sheet does not list. Aluminum is brighter and more metallic than wood and it will never be mistaken for a mahogany pot, though it is completely stable through a change of season. What the extra $120 for a B10 buys is the wooden rim and the appearance. The B11 is the one to look at if the B10 was ever going to be a bluegrass banjo. It brings the rolled brass tone ring, a one-piece flange, planetary tuners and a hardshell case, and it drops back to a standard 26⅜” scale. A case alone is $100 to $150, so the real step from the B10 is smaller than $400. Anyone weighing it against instruments from other makers should read the [intermediate banjo picks](https://promusicvault.com/best-intermediate-banjo/) first. ## Getting it playing ### The bridge is loose in the box Banjo bridges are not glued. They are held in place by string tension alone, and the B10 ships with its bridge unattached, which surprises people who have only owned guitars. Where you put it sets the intonation for the whole instrument. The method is the same on any banjo: measure from the front edge of the nut to the middle of the twelfth fret, then place the bridge the same distance again beyond the twelfth fret, with the feet square to the strings. On the B10 that puts it noticeably further back than on a standard-scale banjo, so do not eyeball it against a photograph or another instrument. Check it by comparing the twelfth-fret harmonic with the fretted note on the first and fourth strings and sliding the bridge a fraction until they match — a [clip-on tuner](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) makes this a five-minute job. ### Strings, and the plastic nut Stay on light gauge. The long scale already adds about a tenth to the tension, and a medium set on a B10 pulls harder than a medium set was designed to. Our notes on [which banjo strings to buy](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) cover the choices; the short answer for this instrument is a standard light five-string set and nothing clever. The ABS nut is the part most likely to annoy you. Plastic slots are usually cut a little tight and a little high from the factory, which makes the first two frets play sharp and makes the strings bind when you tune. If the banjo will not settle, that is the first place to look, and having the slots dressed properly is cheap. Replacing the nut in bone or Corian is a standard job at any repair shop and transforms how a budget banjo holds pitch. ## So should you buy it? Buy the [B10](https://amzn.to/3jgnHGV) if you want a wooden banjo that looks like a proper instrument, you are playing at home or accompanying singing, and you are comfortable placing a bridge and living with a plastic nut. It is honest value at $500 and the lifetime warranty is not nothing. Buy the [Gold Tone AC-5](https://amzn.to/4zAuRZ3) instead if this is a first banjo. The zero fret, the truss rod, the standard scale and the setup out of the box will matter more over the first year than the difference between mahogany and composite. And if the plan is bluegrass, save. Neither of these has a tone ring, and neither will sound like the records. In Washburn’s own line that begins with the [B11](https://amzn.to/4iqkAbA) at around $900 with a case in the box, and the wider field is covered in our [bluegrass banjo guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) and the picks [under $1,000](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-under-1000/). ## Also worth reading - [Open-back banjo vs resonator banjo](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) — what the back of the instrument actually changes - [Best banjos for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) - [How much a banjo costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/), band by band - [Types of banjo](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-banjos/) **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Types of Banjos: What Each One Plays, and Which to Buy](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-banjos/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› Types of Banjos: What Each One Plays, and Which to Buy Nearly everyone arriving at this question wants a five-string. It is the banjo on every bluegrass and old-time record, it is what the word means with nothing else attached to it, and the other kinds exist because particular musicians wanted the instrument to do a job the five-string does not do — carry an Irish reel, take guitar chords without relearning anything, hold down rhythm in a 1920s dance band, fit in hand luggage. Almost everything that separates one from another is the neck. Nearly every banjo ever built stretches a head over a circular wooden pot; count the strings, then count the frets from the nut to where the neck meets that pot, and you have identified the instrument. If you want one answer### A five-string, with a resonator on the back if you intend to play with other people The five-string is the only banjo that plays bluegrass and the only one that plays clawhammer, because both are built around the short fifth string the others do not have. It is also the easiest to buy, sell, teach and find lessons for. Choose the back — resonator to be heard in a jam, open back for old-time and for playing at home — and everything after that is budget. Around $850 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U29nE3) **Tight budget:** the Pyle PBJ60, around $160, and spend $50 to $100 on a setup **Old-time and clawhammer:** the Deering Goodtime open back, around $600 **Genuinely undecided:** the Gold Tone CC-100R+, whose resonator unbolts in a few minutes **Irish tunes:** a four-string tenor, not a five-string **You already play guitar:** a six-string banjo, tuned exactly like one ## Every type at a glance TypeStringsFrets to bodyStandard tuningWhat it playsFive-string522gDGBDBluegrass, old-time, clawhammer — the default banjoTenor417 or 19CGDA, or GDAE for IrishIrish traditional melody, trad jazz rhythmPlectrum422CGBDTrad jazz rhythm, solo chord-melodySix-string622EADGBEWhatever you already play on a guitarBanjolele4~17GCEAUkulele repertoire, louderLong neck525eEBEG#BFolk song accompaniment in lower keysBanjo-mandolin8~17GDAEMandolin and fiddle tunes, with cutCello and bass banjo4 or 5variesAn octave belowLow parts in banjo ensembles Open back and resonator are not on that list on purpose. They are a choice made on top of a type rather than a type of their own, and most of these instruments are sold both ways. ## The five-string, and the short string that defines it A five-string banjo has four strings running the length of the neck and a fifth that starts at the fifth fret, with its own tuning peg poking out of the side of the neck at that point. It is the shortest string and it is tuned to the highest note — a g above the string next to it — and it is not fretted in ordinary playing. It rings as a drone. That one string carries the whole tradition. Clawhammer is a downward strike of the hand in which the thumb catches the fifth string on the way back, and the rhythm it produces cannot exist without it. Bluegrass rolls are three-finger patterns built around the drone falling in a fixed place. Take the fifth string off and both styles stop working, which is why no four-string banjo plays either of them however hard it is pushed. Standard tuning is gDGBD, an open G chord, so a beginner’s first tunes come out of it with almost no left hand at all. Our guide to [tuning a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers the alternatives, and [the string count question](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) goes further into why five became standard. ### Open back or resonator A resonator is a wooden bowl bolted to the back of the pot. It stops sound escaping backward into your body and throws it forward at whoever is listening, so the banjo gets louder in the direction it is pointed and brighter with it. On the same banjo from the same maker that bowl costs about $250 and adds about a pound and a half. Bluegrass needs it. Old-time does not, and the extra weight is the reason plenty of clawhammer players who could afford one do not own one. If you have not settled on the music yet, the resonator is the safer purchase, because a resonator banjo plays clawhammer perfectly well while an open back will not keep up with a guitar and a fiddle in a jam. The full comparison is in [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/), and [our open back picks](/best-open-back-banjo/) cover that side on its own. ### Three five-strings that make the choice concrete The cheap way in ### Pyle PBJ60 - Resonator, 5-string - Friction 5th peg, not the geared one Pyle claims - Remo head, truss rod - Rosewood fretboard - ~$160 The sensible way to find out whether you are going to stick with this. Nobody who specializes in banjos builds anything at this price, so the question is not which budget banjo is best made but which one leaves the most money for the setup — and a $160 banjo plus a proper setup comes to a little over $200 and plays honestly. If you already know you want to play, the money is better spent further up. Our [under $200 guide](/best-banjo-under-200/) compares this bracket properly. **Pros**- Remo head and a truss rod at the lowest price here - Nothing wrong with it is built in — it is all adjustment - Leaves the setup budget intact **Cons**- Needs a setup to play properly - Friction fifth peg, despite the feature list - Heavy for what it is - Little resale value Around $160[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45w0JAb) The open back ### Deering Goodtime - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - Rock maple neck, 22 frets - No tone ring - 4.5 lb - Built in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 The cheapest banjo from a maker whose instruments arrive playing in tune with themselves, and the one to buy if clawhammer or old-time is the plan. Four and a half pounds is genuinely light, and it changes how long an evening lasts before your shoulder complains. There is no tone ring — the head bears straight onto the wooden rim — which reads as clear and woody and is perfectly loud enough in a room or against a fiddle. It also holds its value better than anything else at the price. [Clawhammer banjos](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) goes further into the style. **Pros**- American built and set up before shipping - The lightest way into a serious banjo - Strongest resale value at this price - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited bluegrass cut - Adding a resonator later costs more than buying the Goodtime Two - No case in the box Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wvZQCG) The resonator ### Deering Goodtime Two - 3-ply resonator, 11″ violin-grade maple rim - Rock maple neck, 22 frets - No tone ring - 6 lb - Built in California, eight-year warranty - ~$850 The same banjo with the bowl on the back, which makes it the cleanest illustration of what the resonator costs: every other part is shared with the open back model. It will sit comfortably in a jam, and it plays clawhammer perfectly well if you change your mind later. What it will not produce is the hard metallic ring of a bluegrass banjo costing twice as much, because that comes from a cast tone ring this does not have. For a first resonator banjo that is the right trade. Our [under $1,000 guide](/best-banjo-under-1000/) has the full picture at this budget. **Pros**- American built and set up before shipping - Six pounds, light for a resonator banjo - Best resale value in the bracket - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited bluegrass projection - A pound and a half heavier than the open back - No case in the box Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U29nE3) Two others are worth naming without a full write-up. The [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4qi4D9x), around $315, is a composite-rim open back and the obvious step between the budget instruments and the Deerings. The [Gold Tone CC-100R+](https://amzn.to/4qo2aui), around $850, has a resonator that genuinely unbolts, which makes it the one to buy if you cannot yet say which music you are heading for. Both sit at their maker’s list price. ## The four-strings: tenor and plectrum Both are four-string banjos on the same eleven-inch pot, and side by side they look like one instrument in two lengths. A plectrum has 22 frets on a scale of about 26 inches and is tuned CGBD. A tenor has 17 or 19 frets on a scale between about 20 and 23 inches and is tuned in fifths — CGDA, or GDAE when it is going to an Irish session. Both are played with a flat pick. The split goes back to two sets of musicians walking into the same 1920s dance band from different instruments. Five-string players took the drone string off and kept their scale length and their fingering, and that is the plectrum — which is why a plectrum banjo is, quite literally, a five-string without the short string, on the same 22 frets and the same 26-inch neck. Mandolin and banjo-mandolin players wanted their own fingering to come with them instead, so they got a shorter neck tuned in fifths, and that is the tenor. For Irish playing the fret count matters more than any label on the box. A tenor becomes an “Irish tenor” the moment it is restrung and tuned GDAE, and nothing in the construction changes. Both fret counts are genuinely played. Deering builds the same Goodtime tenor in each and recommend the short one to Irish and Celtic players wanting a shorter scale for “those tricky single-note runs”, while calling the 19-fret the scale “so commonly found in traditional jazz and Irish music” — so it is reach against range, not the real thing against a compromise. Note too that 17 frets does not pin the scale down: Deering’s short neck is 21 inches and Gold Tone’s is 19¾, so read the scale rather than the fret count. If you wantBuyWhyPriceIrish tunes, long neckDeering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor23″ scale, 4.5 lb, and it doubles as the trad-jazz layout~$600[Check price](https://amzn.to/3TQcEX9)Irish tunes, short neckGold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor17 frets over 19¾”, ships tuned GDAE, brass tone hoop, gig bag~$700[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gjfPy9)Irish tunes, least moneyGold Tone AC-4 ITThe same 17-fret 19¾” neck and GDAE tuning on a composite rim, 3.5 lb~$315[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wN5qka)Trad jazz, lightestDeering Goodtime Plectrum22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale, 4 lb~$600[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wv3QDA)Trad jazz, enough volume for a bandGold Tone Cripple Creek PlectrumRemovable resonator, brass tone hoop, gig bag~$700[Check price](https://amzn.to/4cFYBcY)[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $600 is where wooden-rim four-strings start, and Deering builds the same instrument in both necks at the same price, which makes that comparison unusually clean. The AC-4 IT undercuts that by half on a molded composite rim — bright and thin beside maple, with no tone ring — but it is a real 17-fret Irish tenor rather than an approximation of one, which makes it the sane way to find out whether the instrument suits you. [Plectrum versus tenor](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) works through the decision in full, and there are dedicated picks for [tenor banjos](/best-tenor-banjo/), [plectrum banjos](/best-plectrum-banjos/) and [Irish playing](/best-banjo-for-irish-music/). ## The six-string banjo A six-string banjo, or banjitar, is a banjo pot with a guitar neck on it, tuned EADGBE. Every chord shape and every scale a guitarist knows is correct on it from the first minute, which is the entire point and the entire appeal. The idea is not new. Six-string and zither banjos were being built in London and New York in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, and the modern instrument is a revival rather than an invention. What it will not give you is the sound people associate with the banjo, because that sound comes from the drone string and from rolls played around it. A six-string in a guitarist’s hands produces guitar music with a banjo’s attack and decay, which is a useful thing to own and is not a five-string in disguise. So the honest reckoning is this: if you want to sound like a banjo player, learn the five-string; if you want a banjo timbre inside music you can already play tonight, this is the shortcut and it works. The [Jameson six-string](https://amzn.to/4xLOuM7) at around $175 is the cheap way to find out whether the idea suits you, and it is a budget import at that price rather than a serious instrument — the good ones start at three or four times the money. [Our six-string picks](/best-6-string-banjo/) go into the models properly. ## The banjolele A banjolele is a ukulele neck on a small banjo pot, tuned GCEA and played with the same four chord shapes. It was a music-hall instrument in the 1920s and 1930s, when a ukulele on its own could not be heard past the third row, and that is still what it is for: the ukulele repertoire at a volume that carries. It is also the smallest and lightest thing on this page by a wide margin, which makes it the practical choice for travel and for small hands. It is not a route into banjo playing — the scale, the tuning and the technique are a ukulele’s — and anyone buying one expecting to arrive at bluegrass later will be disappointed. The [Kmise concert banjolele](https://amzn.to/4qD3xp7) at around $90 comes with a bag, tuner, strap and spare strings, which is most of what a first one needs. [Banjo versus banjolele](/banjo-vs-banjolele/) sets the two side by side. ## The rarer ones, and what they are for **Long neck.** Pete Seeger had a luthier cut his neck and splice in three extra frets so he could tune the whole instrument down a minor third and sing in lower keys. The result is a 25-fret five-string on a scale of about 32 inches, tuned eEBEG#B, and it is still made. Capo it at the third fret and it plays everything a standard five-string plays; leave it open and you have three frets below that when a song needs them. **Banjo-mandolin.** Eight strings in four courses on a banjo pot, tuned GDAE, so a mandolin or fiddle player can play everything they already know with far more cut. These sold in enormous numbers during the mandolin and banjo orchestra boom of the 1920s, which is why so many turn up in attics. **Cello and bass banjo.** Built to fill the lower parts in banjo ensembles, tuned an octave or so below the instruments above. They are specialist purchases and almost nobody buys one first. **Fretless.** Not a different type so much as a different neck — no fret wire, so notes are stopped against the fingerboard itself. It is an old-time and early-minstrel sound, sliding and soft-edged, and it is much harder to play in tune. Worth knowing about; not worth starting on. **Twelve-string.** These have been built, but there is essentially nothing on the new market, so anyone determined to own one is buying secondhand and taking what turns up. One thing to watch while searching: a model number containing “12” usually refers to a twelve-*inch* pot rather than twelve strings, and Gold Tone’s AC-12 is a five-string. ## What actually changes the sound Within a type, four things account for most of the difference between one banjo and the next, and they are not the ones a spec sheet leads with. The **tone ring** is a metal ring the head bears against at the top of the rim, and it is not the resonator — confusing the two is the expensive mistake. A cast bell-brass ring is about three pounds of poured metal and it is where the hard, ringing, sustaining sound of recorded bluegrass comes from. Banjos carrying one start at about $1,300. Below that, most instruments have a lighter rolled hoop or no ring at all, and the difference between those two is smaller than the difference a setup makes. The **rim** underneath it is usually multi-ply maple, and it does most of the work on any banjo without a heavy ring. The **head** is a consumable — a fresh one costs $30 to $40 and can wake up a dull instrument. And the **setup**, which costs $50 to $100 at a shop that knows banjos, does more for how a cheap banjo plays than the next $200 of instrument would. [What a banjo is made of](/what-is-the-banjo-made-of/) takes the whole thing apart, and [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) covers the price ladder. ## Where the banjo came from The banjo’s ancestors are West African plucked lutes — the akonting, the ngoni and the xalam among more than sixty gourd-lute instruments across the region. Enslaved West Africans carried the tradition to the Caribbean and colonial North America and rebuilt the instrument from what was available: a gourd body, a hide stretched over it, a fretless stick neck, a floating bridge, and a short thumb string. That short thumb string is the direct ancestor of the fifth string, and the clawhammer stroke is the same downward technique used on the akonting. The banjo is a Black American instrument in origin, and the five-string form it had taken by the middle of the nineteenth century — before the tenor, the plectrum and the six-string were thought of — is the one still sitting at the center of the family. ## What you need besides the banjo A **clip-on tuner** comes first, and it matters more on a banjo than on most instruments because five strings at low tension drift constantly and the fifth string goes sharp every time you capo. Our [tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/) cover the options. **Strings** are cheap and are the fastest improvement available on a banjo that came out of a box — factory sets are usually old by the time the instrument ships. Gauges are not interchangeable between types: a tenor in jazz tuning takes a light set, the same tenor tuned GDAE for Irish playing needs a heavier one, and a plectrum takes four of the long strings from an ordinary five-string set. [Banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/) has the detail. A **strap** is not optional on a resonator banjo, which has nothing to rest on your knee comfortably and will slide off it. A **capo** follows once you play with other people, and five-string players need a fifth-string capo or spikes as well as a standard one. A **case or gig bag** is worth having before the banjo leaves the house, and several of the instruments above include one — which is worth counting when comparing prices. ## Common questions ### Which type of banjo should a beginner buy? A five-string, unless you have a specific reason otherwise — you already play guitar and want to use those chords tonight, or you are learning Irish tunes on a tenor, or you want the ukulele repertoire. Every beginner’s book, every teacher and every tab site assumes five strings. [Our beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) has the picks. ### Can you play bluegrass on a four-string banjo? No. Bluegrass rolls are built around the fifth string as a drone, and a tenor or plectrum does not have one. You can play chords and melodies on four strings very happily; you cannot produce that sound, and no change of technique gets you there. [Bluegrass banjos](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) are all five-strings for this reason. ### What is the difference between a plectrum and a five-string? The short fifth string, and nothing else of substance. Same 22 frets, same scale of about 26 inches, same pot. CGBD is a five-string’s dropped-C tuning with the drone removed. If you own a five-string you can find out this afternoon whether plectrum playing suits you: take a flat pick and leave the fifth string alone. ### How heavy are they? An American-built open back five-string runs about four and a half pounds and the same banjo with a resonator about six. Inexpensive imported resonator banjos are the heavy ones, often ten to twelve pounds, because the weight sits in cast hardware rather than a tone ring. [Banjo weights](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) has the detail, and it matters more than people expect once a strap is involved. ### Can I take the resonator off a banjo, or add one? Taking one off is usually four bolts. Adding one to a banjo that was not built for it generally is not, because the flange that seals the gap has to be there, and buying the kit afterward routinely costs more than buying the resonator model in the first place. Some banjos are designed to convert; if you genuinely cannot say which music you are heading for, that is the feature to look for. ### How many types of banjo are there? Eight are in current production and worth naming: five-string, tenor, plectrum, six-string, banjolele, long neck, banjo-mandolin, and the cello and bass instruments. Two of those — the five-string and the tenor — account for very nearly everything sold. ## So which one? A five-string. Put the resonator on the back if you are going to play with other people or you want bluegrass, leave it off if you are heading for old-time or you mostly play at home, and if you cannot say yet, buy one whose resonator comes off. The four-strings, the six-string and the banjolele are all worth owning, but each of them is the right answer to a question you would already know you were asking. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [Trumpet vs. Bugle (And Why a Trumpet Plays Every Bugle Call)](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-vs-bugle/) **Published:** March 29, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Trumpet vs. Bugle (And Why a Trumpet Plays Every Bugle Call) Most people asking this are holding one of them. It came out of a grandfather’s footlocker, or a troop needs a bugler, or a funeral is coming and somebody has to sound Taps. The question underneath is usually the same: is this thing a trumpet with the buttons missing, and does it matter which one I get? It is nearly that. A bugle is one fixed length of tube. A trumpet is a fixed length of tube with three valves that switch extra loops in and out, so the player can choose between several lengths instead of one. Everything else follows from that — including the one that decides most of these purchases: a trumpet plays every bugle call with the valves untouched. If you want one answer### A bugle plays five notes. A trumpet plays those same five with the valves up, plus everything in between Bugle calls are written in the key of C and use five notes of a single harmonic series. Those are exactly the notes a B♭ trumpet gives you open, which is why Scouting America’s Bugling merit badge accepts a trumpet or a cornet in place of a bugle, in writing. Buy a bugle when you want the object — a ceremony, a troop, a G-pitched sound at a graveside. Buy a trumpet when you want to play music. **Bugle:** 5 notes, no valves **Trumpet:** chromatic, about two and a half octaves **US regulation bugle:** key of G, slide to F **Taps:** 24 notes, four pitches ## Table of Contents - [Trumpet vs. bugle, side by side](#trumpet-vs-bugle-side-by-side) - [Five notes, and why no bugle call contains a scale](#five-notes-and-why-no-bugle-call-contains-a-scale) - [The American bugle is officially a trumpet](#the-american-bugle-is-officially-a-trumpet) - [Which one is harder](#which-one-is-harder) - [If the reason you are here is Taps](#if-the-reason-you-are-here-is-taps) - [The bugle worth owning, and the ones that are wall ornaments](#the-bugle-worth-owning-and-the-ones-that-are-wall-ornaments) - [If the answer is a trumpet instead](#if-the-answer-is-a-trumpet-instead) - [For a Scout working on the Bugling merit badge](#for-a-scout-working-on-the-bugling-merit-badge) - [Why a drum and bugle corps has valves](#why-a-drum-and-bugle-corps-has-valves) - [Questions worth answering](#questions-worth-answering) - [Can a trumpet play Taps?](#can-a-trumpet-play-taps) - [Is a bugle easier to play than a trumpet?](#is-a-bugle-easier-to-play-than-a-trumpet) - [How many notes does a bugle play?](#how-many-notes-does-a-bugle-play) - [What key is a bugle in?](#what-key-is-a-bugle-in) - [Is a bugle a trumpet?](#is-a-bugle-a-trumpet) - [Can you put a trumpet mouthpiece in a bugle?](#can-you-put-a-trumpet-mouthpiece-in-a-bugle) - [Also read](#also-read) ## Trumpet vs. bugle, side by side BugleTrumpet**Key**G with a slide to F, on the US regulation pattern; B♭ on British and import modelsB♭**Valves**NoneThree pistons**Notes available**Five, from one harmonic seriesEvery semitone across about two and a half octaves**Bore**Cylindrical over about two-thirds of its length, on the American patternCylindrical until the bell, .459″ on the school standard**Moving parts**A tuning slide, and nothing elseThree pistons, four slides, springs and felts**Music written for it**Bugle calls, and nothing elseOrchestra, concert band, jazz, pop, brass quintet**Reads**Calls written in CIts own transposed part, and calls written in C**Mutes**Rarely usedStraight, cup, Harmon and the rest**Learning curve**Almost nothing to learn, hard to hit cleanlyA great deal to learn, easier to hit**What it costs**Around $110 for a playable oneFrom about $140, and $400–900 for a school instrument ## Five notes, and why no bugle call contains a scale Buzz into a tube of fixed length and it will only sound at the frequencies that fit into it a whole number of times. That set of frequencies is the harmonic series, and it is what every brass instrument is built on. Down at the bottom the notes are far apart; higher up they crowd together. There is no way to get anything in between without changing the length of the tube. All bugle calls are written in the key of C, and the practical part of the series gives five notes: C, G, C, E and G, spanning an octave and a fifth. A sixth, the C above, turns up in trumpet music and hardly ever in bugle music. That is the whole vocabulary. It is why a bugle call is built out of leaps and fanfare figures rather than tunes, and why you will not find a stepwise scale anywhere in the repertoire — the notes to make one do not exist on the instrument. Taps is twenty-four notes long and uses four of the five. Every other call in the American book is assembled from the same handful, which is the reason the calls are recognisable at a distance and across a parade ground: there is not much they can be confused with. Valves solved this in 1818, when Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blühmel took out a Prussian patent on the idea. Each valve drops an extra loop of tubing into the air column: the second lowers the pitch a semitone, the first a whole tone, the third a tone and a half, and combinations fill in the rest. Seven lengths of tube, seven harmonic series, and the gaps between the bugle’s five notes are gone. Our [trumpet fingering chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) is that arithmetic laid out note by note. ## The American bugle is officially a trumpet Organologically the two words describe bore shapes, not valve counts. A bugle proper is a conical natural horn — the tube widens continuously from the mouthpiece to the bell, the way a flugelhorn or a French horn does. A field trumpet is a cylindrical natural horn, staying the same diameter over roughly two-thirds of its length and flaring only at the end. That is the trumpet’s profile exactly. The instrument every American calls a bugle is the second thing. Quartermaster specification No. 325, dated 2 May 1892, set the US Army’s standard trumpet in the key of G, replacing the 1879 model in F with a C crook, and gave it a slide that pulls out to drop the pitch to F, with lines scribed on the slide to show how far. It is catalogued as the *M1892 field trumpet*. Every branch of the Army took it up, the Navy and Marines followed around 1917, and it was standard through the Second World War. Practically every American bugle built since has been a copy of it. So the honest answer to what separates a trumpet from an American bugle is not the shape of the tube and not the sound it makes. It is the three valves, and nothing else. The key still matters, because it is what makes the calls sound the way people expect. On a G bugle, written C sounds G — a fourth below the page. On a B♭ bugle or a B♭ trumpet, written C sounds B♭, a tone below. The G instrument therefore sits a minor third lower than the trumpet playing the same written notes, and buglers who have spent careers at Arlington describe that as the more somber of the two. There is no military rule requiring either. If you want Taps to sound the way it sounds in your memory, that minor third is most of the reason why. ## Which one is harder There is less to learn on a bugle and it is harder to play. Both are true and they are not in tension. Less to learn is obvious: no fingerings, no chromatic scale, no transposition to think about, a handful of tunes. A trumpet asks for all of that plus the ability to read a part. On paper the bugle is a fortnight’s work and the trumpet is a decade’s. Harder to play is the part that catches people out. With no valves, every change of note is a lip slur, and the intervals between the bugle’s five notes are wide — a fifth, then a fourth, then a third. You place each one with your embouchure and your air alone, with nothing to help you land it, and the two lowest notes are the ones most calls start on. On a trumpet the valves narrow the target: you can play a stepwise line in the comfortable middle of the horn and never attempt a leap. A bugle gives you nothing but leaps. Which is why a trumpet player of a year or two can pick up a bugle and get through Reveille the same afternoon, and somebody with no embouchure at all cannot, however simple the tune looks written down. If you are buying a bugle so that a specific person can play a specific call on a specific date, work backward from that date generously. ## If the reason you are here is Taps Taps is twenty-four notes, four pitches and no accidentals, and it is still the hardest thing many players ever do, because it is unaccompanied, exposed, slow, and there is no second take. Two things are worth knowing before you attempt it. The rhythm is straight eighth notes. Playing them as a dotted eighth and a sixteenth — the swung, bouncing version — is the single most common error, and it is immediately audible to anyone who has heard the call done properly. The fermatas sit over the third, sixth, fifteenth and twenty-fourth notes, and how long you hold them is the one place interpretation belongs. The second thing is that you may not need to do it at all. In September 2003 the Department of Defense approved a ceremonial bugle for military funeral honors: a cone-shaped insert that sits deep in the bell and sounds a recorded Taps at the press of a button, indistinguishable from a live bugler at graveside distance. It was trialled from November 2002 to May 2003 with fifty prototypes, and more than 96 percent of the families surveyed endorsed it. It exists because the arithmetic is brutal — at the time of the decision the entire US military had roughly 500 buglers against more than 1,800 veterans dying every day — and it is offered as an alternative to a stereo recording rather than as a substitute for a live player. If a family asks for a bugler, ask the funeral director what the honors detail can provide before you buy anything. ## The bugle worth owning, and the ones that are wall ornaments The bugle market splits sharply at about eighty dollars. Below that line sit dozens of near-identical brass horns described as cavalry trumpets or ceremonial horns, with no key stated anywhere in the listing. A brass tube that has never been built to a pitch will not sit at G or B♭ or anything else, which means it cannot be played in tune with a second instrument and cannot be played against a recording. As a thing to hang on a wall it is fine. As a thing to sound Taps on it is not. Above the line, look for the key printed in the description: *key of G with F slide* is the regulation pattern and is what makes the calls come out where everyone expects them. The affordable one that is actually a bugle ### Regiment 4500 Regulation Bugle, Key of G with F Slide - Key of G, slide to F - Lacquered brass - Lanyard rings for a cord - Detachable nickel-plated mouthpiece - Carrying bag included - ~$110 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Built to the regulation pattern — G with the pull-out slide to F — which is the only specification on a bugle that decides anything. Full-size, lacquered brass, with lanyard rings for a cord and a soft bag to carry it in. This is the horn to buy for a troop, a color guard, a re-enactment unit or a household that needs one on a shelf that will still play when it is taken down. It is a competent instrument rather than a fine one, and at this money that is the correct trade. Nothing about the way a bugle is played rewards a better horn the way a trumpet does; five notes are five notes, and what separates a good performance from a bad one is entirely the player. **Pros**- Correctly pitched in G with the F slide, and says so - Bag included, which matters for something that lives in a cupboard - Full size, so it plays like the instrument the calls were written for **Cons**- Lacquer and finish are ordinary - The supplied mouthpiece is serviceable rather than good Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qFBd5n) There is one bugle above that with an actual pedigree. Rexcraft began supplying official bugles to the Boy Scouts in 1919 and was bought by Buglecraft in 1933, which named its U.S. Regulation model after it and built it in Long Island City. The name and the pattern are still in production, and it is the horn a great many veterans’ organizations have used for decades. The one with the lineage ### U.S. Regulation Bugle, Brass Lacquer, with Mouthpiece, Bag and Book - Key of G, tuning slide to F - Polished brass, lacquered, fully tapered bell - Traditional fluted bugle mouthpiece - Gig bag and call book included - Also sold in nickel silver - ~$270 The direct descendant of the Rexcraft and Buglecraft horns, built to the 1892 pattern and stamped with the name on the bell. It comes with a fluted bugle mouthpiece rather than the trumpet 7C that most bugles ship with, which is the detail worth having: a deeper cup makes the low notes — where most calls begin — speak with less effort. The bundle with the bag and the call book is the one to take if you are starting from nothing, since a bugle bought loose usually ends up needing both. Spend this rather than the $110 if the horn is going to be used regularly and in public, or if it is going to be handed on. **Pros**- The traditional fluted mouthpiece, not a trumpet piece in a bugle receiver - Bag and call book in the box - The pattern the American calls were written for, unchanged **Cons**- Two and a half times the price of a horn that plays the same five notes - Nothing about it plays better than the cheaper one in a beginner’s hands Around $270[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wXKJ5j) The calls themselves ### Bugling After Taps — Buddy Cooke - Over 100 American bugle calls - 16 marches - 36 pages - ~$13 A bugle without the calls is a paperweight, and the calls are the part nobody has written down at home. This collects the American repertoire well past the eight or nine everybody knows, along with marches that sit inside the five notes, which is what you want once Reveille and Taps are secure and there is nothing left to practice. Written in C like all bugle music, so it works unchanged on a G bugle, a B♭ bugle or a trumpet with the valves up. **Pros**- Far more material than a bugle’s five notes suggest exists - Costs less than a mouthpiece - Playable on any of the three instruments **Cons**- Notation only — no recordings to check yourself against - Thin, so it wants a folder rather than a shelf Around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wVq2H8) ## If the answer is a trumpet instead For a child who might stay with it, someone who wants to read music, or anyone who would like the bugle calls *and* everything else, this is the buy. A trumpet costs more, needs valve oil and a teacher, and rewards both. It also plays every call in the bugle book without a valve going down. The one to buy if a teacher is involved ### Jean Paul TR-330 Student B♭ Trumpet - B♭, three pistons - Two-piece yellow brass bell - Stainless steel valves - Play-tested in the US before shipping - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case - ~$250 The reason to pay this rather than the $140 is the play-testing: every horn is checked before it ships, which is why these turn up in school rental fleets and why the valves work out of the box. On an instrument where a sticking third valve is the difference between a child practicing and a child giving up, that is worth the difference on its own. It is a student horn and it will be outgrown by a committed player in a few years, at which point the school-standard instruments sit between $400 and $900. Check you are ordering the plain TR-330 rather than the lacquer variant or the starter bundle, which are separate options at separate prices. **Pros**- Play-tested individually, which almost nothing at this price is - Case and 7C mouthpiece in the box - Plays every bugle call open, so it covers both jobs **Cons**- No third valve slide ring, so low D and low C♯ run sharp with nothing to correct them - Outgrown by a serious player inside a few years Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qHsyPZ) If the budget is the bugle’s ### Eastar ETR-380 B♭ Trumpet - B♭, three pistons - Hard case, 7C mouthpiece - Gloves and cleaning kit - Sold in several finishes at different prices - ~$140 About the same money as a regulation bugle, and it does everything the bugle does plus the other seven-eighths of the instrument. A complete outfit — hard case, mouthpiece, oil, cloth — so there is nothing else to buy before the first lesson. The honest limit is that it is a first horn and behaves like one: the valves are looser and the intonation less settled than the Jean Paul’s, and a player who sticks with it will want to move on. As a way of finding out whether anyone is going to stick with it, it is hard to argue with. **Pros**- Complete outfit, nothing else needed to start - Costs about what a playable bugle does and does far more - Hard case, which a beginner’s horn needs more than anyone’s **Cons**- Valve feel and intonation are what you would expect at the price - Finishes are priced differently, so the cheapest is not always the one shown Around $140[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qKzfkk) If you are weighing the whole ladder rather than these two, we have been through [what a trumpet costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) at each level and [which brands to steer around](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/). ## For a Scout working on the Bugling merit badge The requirements were revised on 1 January 2020 and they end with a note that decides the purchase: a bugle, a trumpet or a cornet may all be used. If there is already a trumpet in the house, the badge can be earned on it. The work itself is a short history of the instrument, an explanation and demonstration of how it makes sound, an original call composed for the troop or patrol and played to them, ten calls sounded from a list of fifteen with the use of each explained, the care and cleaning of the horn, and three months’ service as troop bugler. The ten are the real commitment. First Call, Reveille, Assembly, Mess, Retreat, To the Colors and Taps are the ones most troops actually use, and Church, Fire, Swimming, Drill, Fatigue, Recall, Officers and Call to Quarters make up the rest of the list. Three months as bugler is the requirement that decides which instrument to buy, not the badge. A Scout sounding Reveille at camp wants a bugle, because that is what the job looks like. A Scout who also plays in the school band already owns the answer. ## Why a drum and bugle corps has valves Watch a drum and bugle corps and the horns have pistons, which makes the name look like a lie. It is a fossil. Corps brass was restricted for decades to bell-front instruments pitched in G, because that was the definition of a bugle, and makers spent fifty years adding first one valve, then two, then three to horns that were still nominally valveless field instruments. The rules congress voted in 1999 to allow bell-front valved brass in any key, sousaphones and trombones excepted, effective from the 2000 World Class season. G bugles disappeared from competition almost immediately, because B♭ and F instruments are what marching bands already own and what makers already build. A further change in 2014 opened it to all brass. What is on the field now is a marching band hornline; the word bugle survives in the name and nowhere else. ## Questions worth answering ### Can a trumpet play Taps? Yes, with all three valves up. Taps uses four notes of the harmonic series, and a B♭ trumpet with the valves untouched gives exactly that series. It comes out a minor third higher than on a G bugle, which is the only audible difference. ### Is a bugle easier to play than a trumpet? There is far less to learn and it is harder to play cleanly. Without valves every note change is a lip slur across a wide interval, placed by embouchure alone. A trumpet demands more knowledge and gives more help. ### How many notes does a bugle play? Five in practice — written C, G, C, E and G, spanning an octave and a fifth. A sixth, the C above, is theoretically available and almost never written in bugle music. ### What key is a bugle in? The US regulation instrument is in G with a slide that lowers it to F, set by an 1892 Army specification. British-pattern and imported bugles are usually in B♭. Bugle music is written in C regardless, so the same page works on any of them. ### Is a bugle a trumpet? The American one is, technically. Its official designation is the M1892 field trumpet, and it has the cylindrical bore that defines a trumpet rather than the conical bore that defines a bugle proper. The only real difference from a modern B♭ trumpet is the three valves. ### Can you put a trumpet mouthpiece in a bugle? Usually yes — most bugles take a trumpet shank, and many are sold with a 7C in the box. The traditional bugle mouthpiece has a deeper cup, which makes the two low notes most calls start on easier to sound. Either will fit; the deeper one is kinder. ## Also read [Brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/), the whole family and what each one is for · [Trumpet fingering chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) · [Flugelhorn vs. cornet](https://promusicvault.com/flugelhorn-vs-cornet/), the same taper argument one step further · [Mellophone vs. trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) · [Trumpet vs. saxophone](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-vs-saxophone/) **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Rover RB-20 Banjo Review: A Good Banjo at an Awkward Price](https://promusicvault.com/rover-rb-20-banjo-review/) **Published:** March 29, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Rover RB-20 Banjo Review: A Good Banjo at an Awkward Price The Rover RB-20 is Saga’s student open back: an eleven-inch rim made of composite rather than wood, finished in metallic gun gray, on a mahogany neck with a Santos rosewood fingerboard. It lists at around $495. The specification is more generous than that price usually buys — twenty-four brackets, a Vega-style armrest and a geared fifth-string peg are all things that get left off cheaper banjos. The trouble is where $495 lands. A composite-rim open back weighing under four pounds is exactly what Gold Tone sells for around $315, and another hundred on top of the Rover buys an American-made Deering. The RB-20 is a decent instrument in a bracket that punishes decent. The short version### Gold Tone AC-1 The same idea as the Rover — eleven-inch composite rim, mahogany neck, built light — for around $315 rather than around $495. It ships set up in Florida with a Zero Glide nut that holds tuning, weighs a published 3.75 lb, and carries a five-year transferable warranty. The Rover beats it on hardware and loses everywhere else. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gpEMbg) **Buy once:** Deering Goodtime — around $600, made in California **If it is clawhammer:** Gold Tone CC-OT — around $700, scooped ## What Saga actually built The rim is the headline, and it is the thing most descriptions of this banjo skip. It is not maple. It is a molded composite, which is the same construction Gold Tone uses on the AC-1 and for the same reasons: it is light, it does not move with humidity, and it costs less to make than a three-ply wooden pot. Composite rims have a slightly drier, quicker voice than maple — less bloom, less sustain, and no tone ring here to add cut. Around it, the appointments are genuinely good for the money. Twenty-four hooks pull the head down evenly, where budget banjos often use sixteen. The armrest is a deluxe Vega-style one, included rather than a $30 accessory. The tailpiece is a traditional No-Knot. The fifth-string peg is geared rather than friction, which is the difference between a drone string that stays where you put it and one that slips every time you touch it. Rover RB-20Gold Tone AC-1Deering GoodtimeRim11″ composite11″ composite11″ 3-ply mapleNeckMahoganyMahoganyRock mapleFingerboardSantos rosewoodRosewoodMapleScale length25 1/2″26-3/16″26 1/4″Brackets241616ArmrestIncludedOptionalOptionalWeightNot published3.75 lb4.5 lbPrice band~$495[~$315](https://amzn.to/4gpEMbg)[~$600](https://amzn.to/4wzp0R6) Saga publishes no weight for the RB-20, and any figure you see quoted for it is worth treating carefully — the numbers attached to banjos in retail listings are shipping weights, which include the gig bag and the carton. A composite-rim open back with no tone ring is a four-pound instrument, not an eight-pound one. If weight is what you are shopping on, [the weights of the common banjos](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) are worth reading first. ## The short scale The RB-20’s scale length is 25 1/2 inches. A standard five-string banjo is 26 1/4 — that is what Deering uses on the Goodtime, and Gold Tone is within a sixteenth of it at 26-3/16. The Rover is three quarters of an inch shorter than the instrument it is copying. This is not a fault, and it is not the short-scale trap either — the RB-20 is a full-size banjo tuned to standard GDGBD, not a travel instrument pitched up to A. What it does mean is that at the same tuning the strings sit at roughly five percent less tension. In the hand that reads as a slightly softer, more forgiving feel and marginally closer fret spacing, at the cost of a little of the crack and volume a longer scale gives you. For a first banjo that trade is arguably the right way round. Ordinary five-string sets fit it without any thought. If anything the shorter scale is a reason to go up a gauge rather than down, since you are starting from lower tension — [which strings to put on a banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) covers the gauges. ## Where the price goes wrong Everything above is a reasonable $350 banjo. At around $495 it has to beat two specific instruments, and it does not manage either. Below it, the Gold Tone AC-1 is the same construction at around $315. The Rover has better hardware — more brackets, the armrest, the geared fifth peg — but the AC-1 answers with a Zero Glide nut, a documented setup before it ships, a published 3.75 lb weight and a five-year warranty. That is $180 for a handful of fittings, and fittings are the cheapest thing on a banjo to upgrade later. Above it, around $100 more buys the Deering Goodtime, which is made in California from three-ply violin-grade maple and holds its value in a way no import in this bracket does. If you are going to spend $495 you are close enough to $600 that the question stops being about specification and starts being about whether you want to buy a banjo once. ## What to buy instead № 1 · The direct replacement ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim - No tone ring, 11″ Remo frosted head - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, 22 frets - 26-3/16″ scale, 1-3/16″ Zero Glide nut - 3.75 lb - Gig bag included, five-year transferable warranty - ~$315 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) This is the Rover’s specification for $180 less, and the two differences that matter both go Gold Tone’s way. The Zero Glide nut is a fitted replacement that cuts the string slots to the right depth and width, which is the single most common reason a cheap banjo plays sharp at the first fret. And every AC-1 is set up in Gold Tone’s own Florida shop before it ships, which does more for how a banjo plays than any specification line. What you give up is hardware. Sixteen brackets rather than twenty-four, and no armrest in the box. Neither changes how it sounds, and an armrest is a $30 part whenever you decide you want one. **Pros**- Same composite construction, $180 cheaper - Zero Glide nut, so it plays in tune up the neck - Set up before it ships - 3.75 lb, and it feels it **Cons**- Plainer hardware than the Rover - No armrest included - No tone ring, so it will not carry a bluegrass band Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gpEMbg) № 2 · If you would rather buy once ### Deering Goodtime - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, frosted head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale - 4.5 lb - Made in California - ~$600 The cheapest banjo built in America, and the instrument the whole sub-$700 open back market gets measured against. A wooden rim where the Rover has composite, a maple neck, a geared fifth peg, and very little bolted on that exists only to look expensive. It arrives playing in tune with itself and needing nothing. The honest caveat is that it is plain. No scoop, no tone ring, no inlay to speak of. That is also why it suits a player who has not settled on a style — nothing about it pushes you toward clawhammer or bluegrass, and it resells better than anything else at this money if you turn out to want something else. **Pros**- Cheapest American-built banjo there is - Maple rim rather than composite - Set up before it ships, and holds its value - Commits you to no particular style **Cons**- Around $100 more than the Rover - Heavier than either composite banjo - Plain to look at Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wzp0R6) № 3 · If clawhammer is the plan ### Gold Tone CC-OT Cripple Creek Old-Time - Open back, 11″ maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - 11″ Remo Fiberskyn head - Maple neck, rosewood board, 18 frets with a scoop - 26-3/16″ scale, 5.5 lb - Gig bag, strap and tuner included - ~$700 The scoop is the point. The last few frets are cut away so the hand can strike the strings over the end of the fingerboard, where the tone is softer and rounder, and it is the one thing on a banjo that is genuinely difficult to add afterward. The Fiberskyn head is a synthetic imitation of calfskin and takes most of the glare off. Neither the Rover nor the two banjos above have either. It is also the most committed instrument here. If you are not certain you are heading for old-time, an unscooped open back keeps every door open and costs less. Gold Tone builds the CC-OT in one size only, full scale. **Pros**- Scooped fingerboard, which cannot be retrofitted cheaply - Fiberskyn head, warmer than a frosted one - Brass tone ring, so it has some cut when you want it - Comes with the accessories you would buy anyway **Cons**- The dearest option here by some way - 5.5 lb, noticeably heavier - The scoop commits you to a style Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bPQTNi) ## Who the RB-20 does suit If one turns up used at $250 to $300, it is a good buy and the hardware starts looking like the bargain it should have been at list. The twenty-four brackets and the geared fifth peg are real advantages over anything else at that money, and a composite rim will not crack or go oval in a dry house, which makes it a sensible banjo to leave on a stand and pick up. The shorter scale suits smaller hands, and it suits anyone coming from guitar, since 25 1/2 inches is a common guitar scale. What it will not do is bluegrass — there is no tone ring and no resonator, so it has no projection to speak of, and [the difference between an open back and a resonator banjo](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is worth understanding before you buy either. ## Verdict The Rover RB-20 is a well-appointed student open back that is priced as though the appointments were the expensive part of a banjo. They are not. The setup, the nut and the rim material are what decide whether a beginner enjoys the first six months, and on those the Gold Tone AC-1 does the same job for around $315 while the Deering Goodtime does a better one for around $600. Buy the RB-20 second-hand and you’ve got a lot of banjo. Paying list for it means paying Deering money for an import, and that is the case it cannot win. If you are still deciding, [the open back banjos worth owning](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/) and [the best banjos for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) both go wider than this page does. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Recording King RK-R35-BR Banjo Review: Cast Ring, No Case](https://promusicvault.com/recording-king-rk-35-review/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Recording King RK-R35-BR Banjo Review: Cast Ring, No Case The Recording King RK-R35-BR Madison is a full-size five-string resonator banjo built the way pre-war bluegrass banjos were built: a three-ply steam-bent maple rim, a sand-cast bell brass tone ring, a one-piece flange and a twenty-four-hook tension hoop. Recording King lists it at $2,099. It sells for around $1,400. That combination of parts is the whole reason the banjo exists. A cast ring and a one-piece flange are the two components that separate a bluegrass banjo from a banjo with a resonator bolted on, and from an American maker they start at about $3,500. The RK-R35-BR is one of two ways to get both for well under half that. The other one is cheaper and comes with a case. The short version### Recording King RK-R35-BR Madison Genuine pre-war bluegrass hardware — cast bell brass ring, one-piece flange, twenty-four brackets, bone nut, Presto tailpiece — for around $1,400 against a $2,099 list. It is the traditionalist’s answer at the price, and it arrives with no case and no setup. Budget for both. Around $1,400 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JjOfBL) **Cheaper, and a case in the box:** Gold Tone OB-150 — around $1,300 **What it arrives without:** a hardshell case — around $145 **Then budget:** $50 to $100 for a setup ## What Recording King actually specifies These figures are Recording King’s own. The rim is three-ply steam-bent maple, eleven inches, carrying a Mastertone-style bell brass cast tone ring and a Mastertone-style one-piece flange. The neck is maple with a two-way adjustable truss rod, the nut is bone, the scale is 26-1/4″ over twenty-two frets, and the head is a Remo frosted eleven-inch high crown under a twenty-four-bracket notched hoop. The tailpiece is Presto-style, the tuners are planetary with ivory buttons, and there is a geared fifth peg. The resonator is maple with ivoroid binding in a hand-rubbed brown satin finish, and the seagull inlay runs across both the fingerboard and the peghead. One row on that sheet has changed, and it is the row most descriptions of this banjo still get wrong. The fingerboard is **padauk**. It was rosewood on the earlier RK-R35, and the change came in alongside the -BR suffix on the model number — Recording King’s own specification sheet said rosewood in 2015 and says padauk now. Padauk is a dense orange-red hardwood that plays much like rosewood and darkens toward brown as it ages. Both boards are in circulation, so a used RK-R35 will likely have rosewood and a new RK-R35-BR will not, and neither is a fault. Recording King publishes no weight for it. The directly comparable instrument — same three-ply maple rim, same cast bell brass ring, same maple resonator — is a published 11.5 lb, and that is the figure to plan for. This is a heavy banjo, as every bluegrass banjo with a cast ring in it is. If that matters more to you than volume does, the trade is covered in [open back versus resonator](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). ## Where it sits Recording King RK-R35-BRGold Tone OB-150Recording King RK-R20Gold Tone OB-250Tone ringMastertone-style bell brass, sand cast11″ flat-top 20-hole bell brass, castRolled11″ flat-top 20-hole bell brass, castFlangeMastertone-style one-pieceOne-piece castNone publishedOne-piece castRim11″ 3-ply steam-bent maple11″ 3-ply mapleMaple11″ 3-ply mapleResonatorMaple, ivoroid binding14″ maple, cream bindingMaple14″ flame mapleFingerboardPadauk (rosewood before the -BR)RosewoodRevebondEbonyNutBone1-3/16″ Zero GlideNot published1-3/16″ Zero GlideHead11″ Remo frosted, high crown11″ Remo coated, high crownRemo11″ Remo coated, high crownBrackets2424Not published24TailpiecePresto-styleTerminatorNot publishedTerminatorTunersPlanetary, ivory buttonGT planetaryNot publishedGT planetaryScale26-1/4″26-3/16″Not published26-3/16″WeightNot published11.5 lbNot published13 lbCaseNot includedIncludedNot includedIncludedBuiltChina, for a US brandAsia, set up in FloridaChina, for a US brandAsia, set up in FloridaMaker’s list$2,099$1,299.99$1,199$1,599.99Price band[~$1,400](https://amzn.to/3JjOfBL)[~$1,300](https://amzn.to/4yff7JF)~$1,200~$1,600 The RK-R20 in that third column is the rung below in Recording King’s own line, and it is the comparison that explains what the R35’s money buys. Two hundred dollars less gets a resonator banjo with a *rolled* tone ring — a strip of brass bent to shape and sitting on the rim, rather than a ring poured in a mold and machined. It is the single largest difference between the two instruments, and it is the difference between a banjo that carries in a jam and one that does not. ## The tone ring is the whole argument A cast bell brass ring weighs around three pounds on its own — Gold Tone publishes 8.5 lb for their rolled-ring resonator banjo and 11.5 lb for the cast-ring one directly above it, which is where that weight goes. The mass sits under the head’s outer edge and does two things a rolled hoop cannot: it holds the head’s tension against a rigid mass rather than a springy one, and it stores and returns energy, which is what produces the long sustain and the hard leading edge on every note that bluegrass banjo playing is built on. It is also most of the reason the finished banjo weighs eleven and a half pounds. Recording King calls the ring Mastertone-style and do not say whether it is a flathead or an archtop profile. Owners describe a flathead voice — deeper, rounder in the low end, and the profile most Scruggs-style players want. If you are after the brighter, tighter archtop sound, that is worth knowing before you order rather than after. The one-piece flange matters for a duller reason and matters anyway. It is a single cast ring that carries the resonator and the brackets together, so the pot stays round and the resonator sits true. Two-piece and tube-and-plate flanges both work; the one-piece is what a Mastertone has, and it is the thing that is genuinely expensive to make. That is why [banjos cost what they do](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/). ## What owners actually report The consistent verdict from people who own one is that it sounds like a far more expensive banjo and arrives needing work. Both halves of that are worth taking seriously. On the sound, owners writing on the banjo forums describe a classic flathead bluegrass voice with real volume and sustain, and several say it holds up against instruments costing several times more. Ratings from long-term owners sit around nine out of ten. On the work, the recurring themes are specific. Setup out of the box is inconsistent — one owner describes a unit that arrived close to playable, another one that needed the nut recut because the fifth string buzzed badly. The stock maple and ebony bridge is the first thing most owners change, and a better bridge is the cheapest meaningful upgrade a banjo of this kind takes. The planetary tuners are described as adequate rather than good. And the nut is narrow at about 1-3/16″, which is what a Gibson Mastertone measures and is therefore traditional rather than a defect, but it will feel tight if you have come from a wider neck. None of that is unusual for an instrument built in Asia and shipped without passing through anyone’s workshop. It does mean the real price is the banjo plus $50 to $100 for a setup, and a setup on a banjo with a cast ring is not optional — head tension, bridge placement and action are what let the ring do its job. ## The banjo, and the one to weigh it against The subject ### Recording King RK-R35-BR Madison - 11″ 3-ply steam-bent maple rim - Mastertone-style sand-cast bell brass tone ring - Mastertone-style one-piece flange, 24 brackets - Maple neck, two-way truss rod, padauk board, 22 frets - 26-1/4″ scale, bone nut, seagull inlay - Remo frosted 11″ high crown head - Presto-style tailpiece, planetary tuners, geared 5th peg - Maple resonator, ivoroid binding, hand-rubbed brown satin - No case — maker’s list $2,099 Traditional in every choice it makes: bone rather than a compensated nut, a frosted head rather than a coated one, a Presto tailpiece, ivory-button planetary pegs. Those are the appointments a bluegrass player who cares about the pre-war template actually wants, and no other banjo near the money assembles all of them. The cost of that is that it does nothing to make ownership easy — no case, no setup, no published warranty terms from the current distributor. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Sand-cast bell brass ring and a one-piece flange, both genuine - Sells well under Recording King’s own $2,099 list - Bone nut, frosted head and a Presto tailpiece — the traditional set - Long-standing favorite among bluegrass players, and they say so **Cons**- No case, which is around $145 on top - Arrives unset; budget $50 to $100 more - Stock bridge is the first thing most owners replace - Around 11.5 lb, and it feels it after an hour Around $1,400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JjOfBL) The honest alternative ### Gold Tone OB-150 Orange Blossom - 11″ 3-ply maple rim - 11″ flat-top 20-hole cast bell brass tone ring - One-piece cast flange, 24 brackets - Maple neck, two-way truss rod, rosewood board, 22 frets - 26-3/16″ scale, 1-3/16″ Zero Glide nut - Remo coated 11″ high crown head, Terminator tailpiece - 14″ maple resonator, 11.5 lb - Hardshell case included, set up in Florida before it ships - Lifetime warranty to the original owner The same two components that make the Recording King worth having — a cast bell brass ring and a one-piece flange — for a hundred dollars less, with the case in the box and the instrument adjusted before it leaves the building. Counting the case, the gap is closer to $250. It is the less romantic banjo: a coated head and a Zero Glide nut instead of frosted and bone, and a modern tailpiece. It is also the one that arrives playing. **Pros**- Cast ring and one-piece flange, and it costs less - Hardshell case included - Set up before shipping, so nothing to fix on arrival - Lifetime warranty to the original owner **Cons**- Coated head and a synthetic nut — less traditional voice and feel - Same 11.5 lb, so no relief there - The OB-250 sits $300 above it with ebony and flame maple, which is a tempting upsell Around $1,300[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yff7JF) ## What to spend the rest on A banjo with a cast ring in it is worth protecting properly, and this one ships without anything to protect it. A gig bag is not enough for eleven and a half pounds of instrument with a heavy ring suspended inside a wooden pot. Buy it at the same time ### Carrion C-2901 hardshell resonator banjo case - Multi-ply wood core, black tolex exterior - Plush-lined dense foam interior - Chrome-plated brass hardware, lockable latches - Cut for a five-string resonator banjo - ~$145 A wood-core case rather than a molded shell, which is what you want under a banjo this heavy — the weight is concentrated in the pot and a soft case lets it move. Check it is the resonator cut rather than an open-back one; the pot depth is different and an open-back case will not close over a resonator. **Pros**- Wood core, not molded plastic - Lockable latches - The cheapest sensible protection for a banjo at this price **Cons**- Heavy, as wood-core cases are - Adds around ten percent to the cost of the banjo Around $145[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3lPLoH0) The other thing worth buying is material to play on it. Somebody stepping up to a cast-ring banjo has usually outgrown the beginner books and wants Scruggs-style rolls, backup and up-the-neck positions rather than another run at Cripple Creek. For the player buying this banjo ### Complete 5-String Banjo Method: Intermediate Banjo - Book with online video and audio - Picks up where a beginner method stops - Rolls, backup, up-the-neck playing - Standard notation and tablature - ~$20 The gap this fills is the one most self-taught players hit at exactly this point: comfortable with the basic rolls, and with no idea how to play behind a singer or find anything above the fifth fret. The online audio matters more than it sounds like it does, because banjo timing is very hard to learn from a page. **Pros**- Aimed squarely at the player who has stopped improving - Video and audio included rather than sold separately - Around $20, against a $1,400 instrument **Cons**- Assumes you already have the basic rolls - Bluegrass-focused; not much here for clawhammer Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3xJNzhZ) ## FAQ ### What does the Recording King RK-R35-BR cost? Recording King’s own list price is $2,099. It sells for around $1,400, which is well under list — unusual, and the main reason to look at it now rather than later. ### Is the fingerboard rosewood or padauk? Padauk on the current RK-R35-BR, rosewood on the earlier RK-R35. Recording King’s specification sheet said rosewood in 2015 and says padauk now, and the change arrived with the -BR on the model number. A great many descriptions of this banjo still say rosewood because they were written before the change. Padauk is dense, orange-red when new, browner with age, and plays much like rosewood. ### How much does it weigh? Recording King does not publish a figure. Expect around 11.5 lb, which is what the equivalent cast-ring maple banjo weighs. Roughly three of those pounds are the tone ring. Any number you see under about ten pounds for this instrument is a shipping estimate rather than a measurement — more on that in [what a banjo weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ### Does it come with a case? No. A hardshell case cut for a resonator banjo is around $145 and should be treated as part of the purchase price. ### Is the RK-R35-BR suitable for a beginner? It will not hurt anyone to learn on, but it is the wrong purchase. Nothing about a cast tone ring helps a beginner, the weight actively works against long practice sessions, and the money is better spent on an instrument that arrives set up. Our [beginner banjo guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) covers the sensible starting points, and [the intermediate step](https://promusicvault.com/best-intermediate-banjo/) covers the rung below this one. ### What music is it for? Bluegrass, first and last. Everything about the design — the cast ring, the resonator, the one-piece flange, the tight head — is aimed at volume and cut in a band. You can play [old-time](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-old-time-music/) or [clawhammer](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) on it, but you would be fighting the instrument, and the resonator does not come off. For those styles an open back is the right tool. ### What warranty does it carry? Recording King changed hands in 2025 — The Music Link closed and St. Louis Music took over distribution — and the brand’s current site publishes no warranty terms. Older descriptions promising a limited lifetime warranty date from before that change, so treat the warranty as unknown rather than assuming it carries over. ## Verdict The RK-R35-BR is a genuinely good bluegrass banjo and the specification is not a trick. A sand-cast bell brass ring, a one-piece flange, twenty-four brackets, a bone nut and a Presto tailpiece is the pre-war template built properly, and the players who own them have been saying for fifteen years that it sounds like an instrument costing several times as much. At around $1,400 against a $2,099 list, it is the cheapest way into that specification with a traditional set of appointments on top. The honest qualification is that it is not the cheapest way into the specification at all. The Gold Tone OB-150 has the same cast ring and the same one-piece flange for a hundred dollars less, ships with a hardshell case, is adjusted before it leaves the building and carries a lifetime warranty. Count the case and the setup the Recording King needs and the gap is around $250 in the Gold Tone’s favor. So it comes down to what you are buying. If you want the traditional voice and the traditional fittings — frosted head, bone nut, Presto tailpiece, ivory buttons — and you are content to spend an afternoon and another two hundred dollars getting there, the Recording King is the more satisfying instrument and the one with the reputation behind it. If you want a cast-ring bluegrass banjo to arrive in a case, in tune, and playing, take the Gold Tone and spend the difference on lessons. Still deciding how far up the ladder to go? [The best banjos under $1,000](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-under-1000/) covers the rung below this one, and [the bluegrass banjos worth owning](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) covers the whole range. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Piccolo vs. Flute: Same Fingerings, a Different Instrument](https://promusicvault.com/piccolo-vs-flute/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Piccolo vs. Flute: Same Fingerings, a Different Instrument Hold the two side by side and the piccolo looks like a concert flute that shrank in the wash. It is not. The fingering chart is identical, so a flute player can play a piccolo part on sight, and almost everything else about the instrument — the bore, the lowest note, the way the part is written on the page, the amount of air it wants and the price on the ticket — is different. Which means the honest question is not which one to prefer. It is which one to start on, and then how long to wait before adding the other. The short answer### Start on the flute, whichever one you actually want to play The piccolo takes the flute’s fingerings and hands them back on a tube half the length, where the tone hole is smaller, the air has to be faster and better aimed, and the pitch moves under you until you have built the control to hold it. There is no shortcut to that embouchure, and the flute is where everyone builds it — which is why school programs put beginners on flute and hand the piccolo to a flute player two or three years in. Buy a flute you can keep, and the piccolo will still be there when your face is ready for it. Around $250 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UjAGKo) **Already play flute:** the piccolo needs no new fingerings at all **School band:** beginners go on flute; the piccolo is a doubling job **Just curious:** around $110 answers it, and it will not be in tune **Buying for the long run:** $450–1,300 gets a flute nobody outgrows quickly ## The differences that decide it Concert flutePiccolo**Length**About 26 inches, three piecesAbout 12½ inches, two pieces**Bore**Cylindrical body, tapered headConical body, cylindrical head**Foot joint**C foot as standard, B foot on step-up modelsNone — head and body only**Written range**C4 to C7D4 to C7**Sounding range**C4 to C7 — the sameD5 to C8, an octave above the page**Transposition**NoneOctave — written a whole octave below pitch**Fingering**BoehmBoehm — identical**Air**More of it, at moderate speedLess of it, much faster and tighter**Usual materials**Silver-plated nickel silver; sterling silver higher upABS resin or composite; grenadilla for orchestral work**What a student model costs**$250 online, $450–1,300 for a school-standard makeAround $1,100 for the standard student model**Where it plays**Everything — orchestra, band, jazz, folk, soloOrchestra, concert band, marching band ## The piccolo sounds an octave above the page, and you transpose nothing This is the one thing worth getting straight before anything else, because it sounds like extra work and is the opposite. A piccolo part is printed a whole octave lower than it sounds. Write the note as written, finger it as written, and the instrument delivers it an octave up. That is the entire transposition, and it is done by the person who engraved the part, not by you. The reason is purely practical: at concert pitch the piccolo’s ordinary working register would sit four and five ledger lines above the staff and be unreadable. So a flute player picking up a piccolo has nothing to convert and nothing to relearn. The dots are in the same places, the fingerings under them are the same fingerings, and the octave is the instrument’s problem. The flute, by contrast, is not a transposing instrument at all — written C4 is sounding C4. ## The bores run opposite ways, which is why the piccolo stops at D Theobald Boehm patented the modern flute in 1847 and the shape he settled on was a straight cylindrical body with a headjoint that tapers — the reverse of the baroque flute, which narrowed steadily from the head down. The piccolo never made that switch. Most piccolos still have a conical body with a cylindrical head above it, which is the older arrangement, and everything else about them is Boehm: the keywork, the fingerings, the concert C pitch. The visible consequence is at the bottom. A flute has a foot joint, and the standard student foot takes it down to C4; step-up models add a B foot for one more semitone. A piccolo has no foot joint at all — head and body, and that is the whole instrument — so its written range starts at D and it simply has no low C or C♯. Composers know this and write around it. The audible consequence is the carry. A narrow conical tube throws its energy into the upper partials, which is what gives the piccolo its edge, and it is why one piccolo sits on top of a full concert band while sixteen flutes are still blending into it. ## The fingerings are identical. The embouchure is not. Everything that makes the piccolo hard is above the neck. The embouchure hole is a fraction of the flute’s. The air stream has to be correspondingly narrower, faster and aimed with far more precision, and the margin for error in where it lands is small enough that a slight change of lip shape moves the pitch audibly. That is the honest reason the piccolo is called difficult: not the notes, not the fingers, but the fact that intonation in the top octave is something the player supplies rather than something the instrument hands over. Two smaller things follow from the size. Less air goes into a piccolo than a flute, but it needs more support behind it, especially high up, which surprises flute players who expect a small instrument to be less work. And the fingers and hands sit closer together than they do on a flute, so the stretch is easier but the accuracy demanded of each finger is greater — noticeably so with large hands. None of that is a reason to avoid the piccolo. It is a reason to arrive with a flute embouchure already built, which takes months rather than weeks and is the same skill either way. ## Three octaves, not one, and the top note is the highest in the orchestra A piccolo’s written range runs from D4 to C7, so it sounds D5 to C8 — a little under three octaves, and that top C is the highest note in standard orchestral writing. All three octaves are used. The bottom one is quiet, hard to place and easy to lose in a texture, and composers use it deliberately for exactly that reason. A concert flute with a C foot runs C4 to C7 — three octaves, written and sounding the same. Experienced players reach above that, but notes past D7 are specialist territory. Line them up and the piccolo gives away an octave and a tone at the bottom and buys an octave at the top. That is the whole trade, and it is why the two instruments cannot cover for each other and why the repertoire does not swap. A flute part played on piccolo is an octave high, and the bottom of it does not exist. ## The small instrument is the expensive one A student flute from one of the makes school programs actually specify runs somewhere between about $450 and $1,300 depending on the brand, and there are properly built online-first flutes at around $250. The standard student piccolo is about $1,100. Half the length, twice the money. It is not a mistake in the pricing: a piccolo carries the same key mechanism as a flute built to tighter tolerances on a smaller body, the tone holes have to be undercut individually to get the upper register in tune, and it sells in a fraction of the numbers. This is the practical reason there is no such thing as a piccolo beginner. Nobody spends four figures on a second instrument for a player who has not yet got a first one under control, and no school buys one before a student can already play. It also sets a trap at the other end. There are piccolos at around $110, and they play — they will tell you in a fortnight whether you enjoy the instrument, which is a reasonable thing to find out before spending ten times as much. What they will not do is the fine work, and the fine work is the entire difficulty of the piccolo. Learning intonation on an instrument that cannot hold it teaches the wrong lesson. ## The piccolo is not much louder. It is in a much worse place. Measured in raw volume the two instruments are close. A flute runs roughly 92 to 103 decibels at the player’s ear and a piccolo roughly 90 to 106, so on the numbers alone the piccolo is barely ahead. The frequency is the problem. Human hearing is most easily damaged between 2,000 and 4,000 Hz, and the piccolo’s high register lands at 2,048 to 4,096 Hz — almost exactly on top of it. Kelly Mollnow Wilson, writing in *The Flute Examiner*, sets out the numbers and the conclusion: piccolo players should be wearing hearing protection, and teachers should be insisting on it the way they insist on hand position. The kind matters. Foam plugs cut the top off everything and leave a player unable to hear their own tone, which is why they get abandoned within a week. Musician’s earplugs use a filter that drops the whole spectrum by a fixed amount instead, so the sound gets quieter without changing shape. Anyone taking up the piccolo seriously should budget for a pair, and it is worth knowing before you start rather than after. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Wood, resin or metal Flutes are simple here: student instruments are silver-plated nickel silver, and the money above that buys sterling silver and eventually gold. The body material changes the response more than the sound, and no beginner needs to think about it. Piccolos split three ways, and the split is about where the instrument gets played rather than how good it is. - **Resin or composite body with a metal headjoint.** The school and marching answer, and what most students are handed. Yamaha describes their own resin body as “sturdy, maintenance-free” and aimed at students and doublers alike; Selmer builds the equivalent to survive extreme temperature and humidity. Both are saying the same thing — this is the piccolo you can take onto a cold field in October. - **Grenadilla.** The orchestral material, warmer and more flexible, and the one that wants care. Wood moves with heat and humidity, so it needs swabbing, oiling and acclimatising before it is played hard in the cold. - **All metal.** The brightest and the most unforgiving of the three, and where most of the cheap piccolos sit. Fine on a marching field, hard work anywhere that asks for a quiet high note. One detail that catches flute players out: a wooden or composite piccolo headjoint usually has no lip plate, just a hole cut in a curved surface. Some makers fit a metal headjoint with a molded lip plate precisely so a flute player has something familiar to put their chin against. ## Which one to buy The flutes first, because that is where almost everyone reading this should start. № 1 · The way in ### Jean Paul FL-220 student flute - Closed hole, offset G - Split E mechanism - Silver-plated cupronickel throughout - C foot joint - Around $250 Every one is set up and play-tested by a NAPBIRT-certified band-instrument technician before it ships, which is the single thing separating it from the hundred-dollar flutes it sits beside in the search results — those arrive as they left the factory, and a flute that has never been regulated is a flute that leaks. The split E is the surprise at this price: it splits the G keys so the third-octave E speaks cleanly instead of cracking, and plenty of dearer student flutes go without it. Closed hole and offset G are exactly right for a beginner. **Pros**- Set up by a certified technician rather than shipped raw - Split E at a fraction of what the school-standard flutes cost - Offset G and closed holes, which is what a beginner needs **Cons**- A committed student will outgrow it in a few years - Cupronickel body rather than the silver of a step-up flute - Semi-hard case rather than a proper shell Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UjAGKo) № 2 · The flute the band room means ### Gemeinhardt 2SP student flute - J1 headjoint, made in Elkhart, Indiana - Closed hole, offset G, C foot - Silver-plated head, body, foot and keys - Hard shell case and rod - Around $460 This is the flute a rental agreement usually turns out to be for, and it has been the default student flute in American schools for long enough that band directors specify it by number. Gemeinhardt makes every C flute headjoint itself in Elkhart, the 2SP goes through two rounds of bench testing before it leaves, and it carries a five-year warranty, which has to be registered with the maker and bought through an authorized dealer to hold. Bought outright it costs about six months of rental and it is still the right instrument in eighth grade. **Pros**- The instrument school programs already standardize on - Five-year warranty and a maker who repairs its own instruments - Hard shell case, which a school bag will eventually justify **Cons**- No split E, so third-octave E is the player’s problem - Nearly twice the price of a well set-up online flute - Warranty only applies if it is registered with the maker Around $460[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y87zZ2) № 3 · The standard student piccolo ### Yamaha YPC-32 - Key of C, conical bore - ABS resin body - Silver-plated nickel silver headjoint - Split E mechanism, undercut tone holes - Around $1,100 When a school program says piccolo, this is what it means. Yamaha aims it at students and doublers in the same breath, and both halves of that are visible in the design: the resin body is maintenance-free and will not crack going from a warm room to a cold field, and the metal headjoint gives a flute player a lip plate and a response they recognize. The split E and the individually undercut tone holes are the parts you are actually paying for — they are what put the upper register where it is written instead of somewhere near it. **Pros**- Resin body handles marching season without splitting - Split E and undercut holes do real work on the intonation - Familiar lip plate and response for anyone coming off a flute **Cons**- Costs more than a good student flute, and it is a second instrument - Resin will not satisfy a player heading for orchestral work - Needs pads, corks and a technician like any keyed woodwind Around $1,100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qGOZ7Q) № 4 · Finding out without spending four figures ### Eastar EPC-1 - Key of C - Cupronickel body, nickel-plated - Hard case, rod, cloth and fingering chart - Twelve-month warranty - Around $110 Worth being straight about what this is. It plays, it is assembled well enough for the money, and it will tell a curious flute player within a fortnight whether the piccolo is an instrument they want — which is a sensible thing to establish before spending ten times as much. What it will not do is the fine work: no split E, no undercut tone holes, and the top octave is yours to hold with your face rather than the instrument’s to help with. Fine as a first month, or as the one that lives in a marching case. **Pros**- A tenth of the price of the student standard - Complete kit, so nothing else has to be bought first - Cheap enough to march with in bad weather **Cons**- No split E, so the upper register is harder work - All-metal body, which is the brightest and least forgiving option - Not the instrument to build piccolo intonation on Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gShnAq) ## Common questions ### Is a piccolo just a small flute? It has the same fingering system and the same concert C pitch, so a flute player can read and finger a piccolo part immediately. It has a different bore, no foot joint, a different lowest note and a written part that sits an octave below what comes out. Same family, same fingers, different instrument. ### Which is harder to learn? The piccolo, and by a wide margin at the start. The smaller embouchure hole makes the first note harder to find and the pitch harder to hold, and the top octave asks for control a beginner has not built yet. From a working flute embouchure it is far less daunting, because none of the fingering has to be relearned. ### Which should I learn first? The flute, essentially always. It builds the embouchure the piccolo needs, it gives you the fingerings for free, it has a far larger repertoire, and it is cheaper. Two or three years in, adding the piccolo costs an instrument and a few months of embouchure work rather than starting again. ### Can a piccolo play flute music? The fingerings work, so the notes come out — an octave higher than written, and with the bottom C and C♯ missing entirely. It is a useful practice trick and it is not the same piece. The repertoires do not swap: the flute has an enormous solo literature and the piccolo has very little, most of its writing being orchestral and band parts. ### Why is the piccolo written an octave low? Readability. At sounding pitch its ordinary register would sit several ledger lines above the staff for whole pages at a time. Writing it down an octave puts the part back on the staff, and the player does nothing differently — the transposition is already in the printed music. ### How old is each instrument? Transverse flutes are ancient, and bone flutes found in southern Germany have been dated to roughly 40,000 years old. The piccolo is much younger as a written-for instrument: small octave transverse flutes were military instruments through the Middle Ages, and the first piccolo parts in composed music appear in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s works in the first half of the eighteenth century. Both instruments as we know them today are Boehm’s, from the 1840s. ### What about D-flat piccolos? They were built in the early twentieth century and were the marching-band instrument of their day, which is why some old band parts are written for one. Nobody makes them now and those parts get played on a C piccolo. If you are weighing these against the other small flutes, we have written on [piccolo vs. fife](/piccolo-vs-fife/) and [fife vs. flute](/fife-vs-flute/), and on [flute vs. recorder](/flute-vs-recorder/) if the question is really where to start a child. There is more on [what a flute costs](/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) and [what a piccolo costs](/how-much-does-a-piccolo-cost/), and both sit in the [woodwind family](/woodwind-instruments/) despite having no reed at all. **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Oboe vs. Clarinet: The Reed Is the Whole Decision](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Oboe vs. Clarinet: The Reed Is the Whole Decision Side by side these two look like one instrument in two sizes — black body, silver keys, a bell at the bottom, both a shade over two feet of tube. Then one of them sounds nearly an octave lower than the other. That single fact is where the whole comparison starts, and everything a beginner needs to know falls out of it: how long it takes to get a note, how many seats there are, and what it costs every month to keep playing. The short answer### Start on the clarinet, unless someone has offered to teach you the oboe A clarinet makes a recognisable note on the first afternoon, costs about $250 with a reed already in the case, and its reeds come ten to a box for about $24. Yamaha describes the oboe as one of the more difficult woodwinds to play and say it takes a while before a beginner can produce a sound at all; its reeds are sold one at a time at around $17, and the firm that makes them tells players to keep three good ones on hand. None of that makes the oboe a bad instrument. It makes it an instrument to take up with a teacher rather than alone — and if a teacher has offered, take it, because the oboe chair is the one nobody can fill. Around $250 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ijkDGr) **Small hands or small lungs:** the oboe suits both better than the clarinet does **Learning at home without a teacher:** the clarinet, and it is not close **Wants the deep low notes:** the clarinet goes far further down **Wants to be needed:** a band set carries six clarinet parts and one oboe part ## The differences that decide it ClarinetOboe**Reed**One blade of cane clamped to a mouthpieceTwo blades bound to a metal tube — no mouthpiece at all**Bore**CylindricalConical, about 4 mm across at the top and widening all the way down**Overblows**A twelfth — finger a C, blow harder, get the G above the octaveAn octave, like a recorder or a flute**Pitched in**B♭ (also A), so it reads a tone above what it soundsC, so it reads and sounds the same note**Keywork**17 keys and 6 rings; six holes sealed by bare fingertipsCovered keys throughout — no hole is sealed by a fingertip**Air**Ordinary wind-instrument breath supportToo little escapes; the problem is stale air backing up**Tuning adjustment**Pull the barrel out, or fit a shorter oneOnly the reed — there is nothing else to move**Reeds cost**About $24 for tenAbout $17 each**A synthetic reed costs**About $19About $129**Starter instrument**Around $250, molded, set up before it shipsNot a shelf purchase — see below ## Why the clarinet sounds lower when it is the same length A clarinet is a cylinder stopped at one end by a reed. An oboe is a cone, also stopped by a reed — and, as the acoustics group at the University of New South Wales puts it, a closed cone has nearly the same set of resonances as an open cylinder of the same length, while a closed cylinder has only the odd ones, starting an octave lower. That is why the oboe’s range sits close to the flute’s and the clarinet, at much the same length, drops away below both. The consequence a player feels is what happens when you blow harder. Yamaha puts it plainly: overblow a recorder and you get the note an octave up, but finger a C on a clarinet and blow hard and out comes a high G — a twelfth. An oboe behaves like the recorder. A clarinet does not, and it has to fill that extra fifth with notes of its own before the fingerings can start repeating. UNSW count the cost exactly: eighteen tone holes would be needed to cover the bottom two registers, more holes than a person has fingers, which is why the instrument is loaded with keys and linked rings. So the clarinet’s famous range — Yamaha calls it four octaves, and no other wind instrument reaches as high — and the clarinet’s famous awkwardness are the same fact wearing two hats. The oboe has no equivalent obstacle. Its low register and its high one are fingered the same way, an octave apart. ## The difficulty is real on both, and it arrives at different times The oboe is hard on day one. Yamaha’s own guide says it takes time before a player can produce a sound at all, and that even once the sound arrives a beginner has little control over it — notes that will not speak when they are wanted, no quiet dynamic, high notes that refuse. That is the wall, and it is at the front. The clarinet’s wall is further in. Getting a note is easy; the first twelve notes are easy; then the fingering has to jump the twelfth into the second register and the throat notes either side of it are the thinnest, stuffiest, least cooperative sounds on the instrument. Nobody quits a clarinet in week one. They quit in month four. ### Small hands and small lungs favor the oboe This is the part that runs against the reputation. The oboe’s bore is around 4 mm wide at the top of the upper joint, so very little breath goes in — Yamaha describes the player’s problem as an *excess* of breath rather than a shortage, with carbon dioxide accumulating during long phrases and having to be dumped before the next one. Their conclusion is that there is no handicap for a player with a small body. And because the oboe’s keys are more compact than a clarinet’s and no hole is covered by a bare fingertip, Yamaha says small hands may even have an advantage. A clarinet asks the opposite. Six of its holes are sealed by the pads of the fingers, and a hand that cannot seal them cannot play a clean note however hard it tries. [The weight of a clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh/) goes through where that lands on a young player. ## What the reeds cost, which is the part nobody budgets for A clarinet reed is a single blade of cane on a mouthpiece. A box of ten good student reeds costs about $24, so a reed is worth about two and a half dollars, and a beginner who chips one has lost pocket change. An oboe reed is two blades of cane bound to a metal tube, shaved by hand until they nearly touch. There is no mouthpiece; the reed *is* the mouthpiece. They are sold singly at about $17, and Fox — who build both the reeds and the instruments — publish their own student reed at $16.25 and their artist reed at $19. Jones, who make the reed most American students start on, say an oboe reed has a relatively short life, that a played-out reed closes at the tip and starts playing sharp, and that a player should keep three or more good ones to choose from, because having your only reed collapse mid-concert is not a position anyone wants to be in. Three reeds in the case is around $50 of cane sitting there at all times. The synthetics settle the comparison, because one maker sells both and prices them itself. Légère lists a synthetic B♭ clarinet reed at $24.99 and a synthetic oboe reed at $129.99. Same company, same material, same idea — five times the money, because a double reed is five times the object. ### The reed is also the tuning slide A clarinet that is playing sharp gets pulled out at the barrel, or fitted with a shorter one; the maker of the clarinet below sells spare barrels for ten dollars. An oboe has no such joint. Yamaha states it outright: the only way to alter an oboe’s pitch is to adjust the breadth or length of the reed, and that cannot be done suddenly on the day of a performance. It is the reason an oboist ends up learning to scrape cane, which Yamaha puts on their list of who the instrument suits — people who enjoy detailed handiwork. Fox sells the tools for it, and the prices tell you it is a real second craft: a reed knife runs to about $43, a mandrel about $57, and a finishing kit a little over $200. A clarinettist’s whole consumable routine, by comparison, is a box of reeds and some cork grease. [Which clarinet reed to start on](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) covers the strengths, and [filed vs. unfiled](https://promusicvault.com/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/) the cut. ## How many seats there are Look at what a publisher actually prints. A standard American concert band set — take Rubank’s *Americana Collection for Band*, sold part by part in Hal Leonard’s catalogue — ships 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th B♭ clarinet, alto clarinet and bass clarinet. Six clarinet parts. It ships one oboe. Read that either way you like, and both readings are true. A clarinettist joins the largest section in the room, learns fast alongside a dozen others, and has to be good to sit at the front of it. An oboist is a soloist from the first rehearsal, is missed the moment they are absent, and will be asked to play things no first-year clarinettist is ever handed. Scarcity is the oboe’s compensation for everything above, and it is not a small one. [Orchestra vs. band](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) covers who plays what where. ## What to buy № 1 · The clarinet ### Jean Paul CL-300 student clarinet - ABS body, Boehm system, 17 keys and 6 rings - Nickel-plated keys, adjustable thumb rest - Set up and play-tested by a certified band-instrument technician - Arrives with mouthpiece, ligature, case and a reed - Around $250 The same key system and the same seventeen keys and six rings as the instruments a band room is already full of, on a molded body that will not crack in a cold car. What separates it from the cheap end is the setup step: every one is regulated by a technician before it ships, and an instrument that leaks has never been fixed by practicing harder. The maker backs it with a one-year warranty and sells the parts afterward — a replacement barrel is ten dollars, a lower joint a hundred and thirty — which is the thing to look for at this price. **Pros**- Regulated by a technician rather than shipped as it left the line - Individual replacement parts published, down to single keys - Adjustable thumb rest, which is where the entire weight lands **Cons**- One-year warranty, original purchaser only - Cases covered for six months rather than the full year - The supplied mouthpiece is the first thing a keen student replaces [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ijkDGr) № 2 · Buy this with the clarinet ### Vandoren JUNO B♭ clarinet reeds, strength 2½ - Box of ten, each reed in its own sealed pack - Strengths 1½ to 3½ - Cut in Vandoren’s own French factory - Carries the maker’s anti-counterfeit ID code - About $24 for ten A clarinet arrives with a single reed and a beginner will kill it inside a fortnight. Vandoren cuts the JUNO specifically for people who have just picked the instrument up, from the same cane and in the same factory as the reeds professionals play. Strength 2½ is the usual school number and suits an adult or a student a term or two in; Vandoren themselves suggest a 1½ for someone starting from nothing, so check the number before ordering rather than taking whichever appears first. About $24 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45Pqs6Z) № 3 · If it is the oboe ### Jones JR101MS oboe reed, medium soft - Cane double reed, red thread — the student grade - Medium soft, the strength a beginner starts on - Sold singly, as oboe reeds are - Around $17 The reed most American oboe students are handed. Medium soft is the right end of the range for a new embouchure, exactly as a 2½ is on a clarinet, and Jones make the same reed in medium and medium hard to move up to. Buy more than one: Jones’s own advice is to keep three or more good reeds to choose from, and their care instructions — soak it in water for a couple of minutes before playing, rinse it afterward, dry it in a ventilated case rather than the tube it came in — are worth following, because they say it gets up to four times the life out of a reed. That turns a consumable into a routine, and it is the routine, more than the cost, that a clarinettist never has to learn. Around $17[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46e1XAF) № 4 · The alternative to cane ### Légère European Scrape Oboe reed, medium soft - Molded synthetic, plays straight out of the packet - No soaking, no drying, no rotation - Medium soft, medium and medium hard - Around $129 Légère made the first synthetic oboe reed and sell it on consistency and durability: it plays immediately, and it plays the same on a damp Tuesday as it did on a dry Friday, which no cane reed does. Whether it is worth six cane reeds up front is a question of how much a player’s own time is worth to them. The catch is real, though, and it is the one the section above describes — a molded reed is a fixed shape, so the one route an oboist has to adjust the instrument’s pitch is closed off. It suits someone who wants to practice rather than to make reeds; it does not suit someone whose teacher is about to hand them a knife. Around $129[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UZkZIi) ### Why there is no oboe in that list Because an oboe is not something to choose on your own, and the makers say so. Yamaha’s advice on choosing one is that a beginner cannot judge an oboe without a professional’s reed in it, and that it will need periodic adjustment after purchase because of how finely the mechanism is built. Fox goes further in their warranty: any new Fox or Renard instrument can be sent back to the factory within its first year for a complete servicing — cleaning, oiling and mechanical regulation — which tells you plainly that a year of playing is expected to move something. It is not a $250 purchase either, and the makers who publish prices show by how much. Howarth of London list their whole oboe range, and the cheapest instrument they build — the Junior — is £1,595; their Junior Conservatoire is £1,795 and the S10 and S20 that most students settle on run from £2,195 to £3,195. In dollars that is roughly two thousand at the very bottom and three to four for a school-grade instrument, against $250 for the clarinet above. That is why the oboe is normally rented rather than bought for a first year, and [the woodwind family](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) goes through the rental arithmetic for both double reeds. One caution on that range: Howarth’s cheapest model uses the British thumbplate system rather than the conservatoire one, and the two are different under the fingers. American band rooms are conservatoire, which is what Yamaha’s plastic student oboe and Fox’s whole line use, so check which system an instrument carries before buying anywhere. It is also worth knowing what a cheap oboe leaves out, because the makers publish it. Yamaha’s plastic student model uses what they call a simplified Conservatoire system. Fox’s chart splits their line the same way: their two student oboes are “modified conservatory” while everything above is “full conservatory”, and the cheapest of all drops the third octave key, the low B♭ vent and the low C–D♭ trill, and uses a solid rather than articulated C♯ mechanism. Those are notes and trills, not trim. Buy the instrument with whoever is going to teach you on it. ## The families behind each one The clarinet family is the larger by a distance: piccolo (or octave) clarinet, the B♭ and A sopranos that do nearly all the work, alto, bass, contrabass, and the curved basset horn from the late eighteenth century. Soprano clarinets have been built in everything from a C tube to a G tube; the B♭ and the A are what survived, and Yamaha puts the difference at a semitone and a change of color — the A darker and used for quiet writing, the B♭ brighter. A professional carries both and the composer decides which comes out. The oboe family is short and mostly rare. The oboe itself is in C, the oboe d’amore in A, the cor anglais in F, both of the latter with egg-shaped bells — though Yamaha is careful to say the muffled sound owes more to the taper of the bore than to the shape of the bell. Below those is the bass oboe, which barely exists: Yamaha reckons only a few are built anywhere in the world in a year, and the reason they are built at all is that Holst wrote for one in *The Planets*. [English horn vs. oboe](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-oboe/) takes that pair further, and [bassoon vs. oboe](https://promusicvault.com/bassoon-vs-oboe/) the other double reed. ## Where each one came from The oboe is the older of the two and its name gives away what it sounded like: from the French *hautbois*, wood of high or loud sound, which is the root of the word in English, Italian and German alike. Yamaha puts its origin somewhere around the middle of the seventeenth century in France, with the medieval and Renaissance shawm behind it; the early instruments carried two or three keys and could not manage all the semitones, and the rest were added from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. The word on the spec sheet comes from the end of the nineteenth century. A new French mechanism — the conservatoire system — displaced the German one across Europe, and by one account it was Richard Strauss announcing a preference for it in the early twentieth century that finished the argument. The German instrument survived around Vienna as the Wiener oboe, which the Vienna Philharmonic still plays. Every oboe in the buying guides is a descendant of the French one, which is why “conservatoire” keeps turning up in the specifications. The clarinet is a newcomer, generally credited to the Nuremberg maker Johann Christoph Denner at the start of the eighteenth century. The single-reed chalumeau already existed and sounded well low down; what Denner’s instrument added was a top. The name records it — *clarino* is trumpet, and a clarinet was a little trumpet. It carried only two keys until the first half of the eighteenth century, and the layout used today was settled by Klosé in the mid-nineteenth century on Theobald Boehm’s principles, which is why a modern clarinet is called a Boehm clarinet even though Boehm did not build it. ## Common questions ### Can an oboist switch to clarinet, or the other way round? Both directions work, and neither is free. The fingerings share a family resemblance and the reading transfers — though an oboist reads in C and a clarinettist a tone above what they sound, so a switcher has to relearn where the notes are on the page. The embouchure is the real work: a clarinet reed sits on a mouthpiece and is driven against it, while an oboe’s two blades are held between the lips and driven against each other. Moving to the clarinet means learning to control a reed you are pressing against something solid; moving to the oboe means learning to control two blades held against each other with nothing behind them. The second is the longer job. ### Is the oboe louder than the clarinet? Not louder, but much harder to bury. The oboe’s closed cone sounds the whole harmonic series; the clarinet’s closed cylinder sounds only the odd-numbered harmonics and drops the even ones. That is a difference in the shape of the sound rather than its volume, and it is why one oboe cuts through an orchestra while a dozen clarinets blend into a single section. ### Which is better for jazz? The clarinet, by a century of repertoire. It is a front-line instrument in New Orleans and swing playing and there is a body of work to learn from. Oboe does appear in jazz, but as an occasional color rather than a tradition, and a beginner will find almost nothing written for it. ### Does either one need a wooden body to be worth playing? No, and for a first instrument the molded body is the better buy on both. Grenadilla is a dense tropical hardwood that takes up and gives off moisture, and it can crack when a cold instrument is warmed by breath. Yamaha’s student oboe is ABS resin, upper joint, lower joint and bell, and so is the clarinet above. The setup matters more than the material. [What clarinets cost](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) covers the step up to wood. ## Where to go next [Clarinet vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-vs-flute/) is the same decision against the other common starter, and [is the clarinet hard to play](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) goes into the break in detail. If the clarinet has already been chosen, [reeds for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) and [the marching band guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) are the next two, and [clarinet brands to avoid](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-brands-to-avoid/) is worth reading before spending anything under $200. [The woodwind family](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) puts both instruments in context with the rest. **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Roosebeck Minstrel Harp Review: Which of the Four Is Worth Buying](https://promusicvault.com/minstrel-harp-review/) **Published:** April 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Roosebeck Minstrel Harp Review: Which of the Four Is Worth Buying The Minstrel is Roosebeck’s largest Celtic harp: 29 strings, four full octaves from C3 to C7, and on the carved rosewood models a sharping lever on every single string. That last detail is the whole reason to care about it. A lever on all 29 strings is the specification that separates a harp you can play real music on from one that is locked into a couple of keys, and everywhere else it appears you are paying well over a thousand dollars for it. The verdict### Buy the carved rosewood Minstrel, and buy whichever carving is cheapest. Vine, Thistle and Celtic Knotwork are the same instrument. Roosebeck says so themselves — the carving on the side panels is the only thing that changes, and all three sound identical. They drift up to about $45 apart, which is real money for a decorative panel you will look at from the wrong side while you play. Around $745 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gneYwo) **Same harp, knotwork carving:** [around $775](https://amzn.to/3SkuuAT) **Same harp, thistle carving:** [around $790](https://amzn.to/4gFL1sC) **If you want the lower range and a stand built in:** [the pedestal model, around $850](https://amzn.to/3S3TBIl) ## What 29 levers actually buys you A sharping lever raises one string by a semitone. Put levers on the C and F strings only and you can move between a handful of related keys. Put a lever on every string and any key is available, plus accidentals mid-piece, which is what most published harp arrangements assume you have. The step from partial levers to full levers is the single most expensive rung on the lever-harp ladder. Rees, who build the Harpsicle family in Indiana, publish the arithmetic plainly across one 26-string design: the bare Harpsicle with no levers lists at $650, the Sharpsicle with levers on the F and C strings at $955, and the Fullsicle with a lever on all 26 at $1,320. Same harp, same wood, same number of strings. The levers are worth $670. The Minstrel arrives with three more strings than a Fullsicle, an extra octave of range, and levers on all of them, for a little over half the money. That is the entire argument for the instrument, and it is a strong one. What it costs you is real, and it is not nothing. ## The four Minstrels are not the same harp Roosebeck sells the Minstrel in four configurations under one name, and two of them differ in ways that matter more than the price gap suggests. The number of levers changes with the model, and so does the range — that is the specification worth reading twice before ordering. ModelRangeLeversHeightPrice band**Rosewood, carved** Vine / Thistle / KnotworkC3–C7 4 octaves**29 — one per string**36.5″~$745–790**5-panel with pedestal**A2–A6 4 octaves, pitched lower2445″~$850**Walnut, plain**C3–C72436.5″discontinued The pedestal model is the one to think about carefully, because it is the most expensive and it is not simply a better Minstrel. Its range starts on A2 rather than C3, so the whole instrument sits a minor third lower — more bass, but every piece of music written for a C3 harp now needs rethinking at the bottom. And it carries 24 levers rather than 29, so its lowest five strings cannot be sharped at all. You are paying about a hundred dollars more for extra bass, a built-in stand, and five fewer levers. That stand is a genuine convenience. At 45 inches the pedestal model reaches playing height on its own; the standard Minstrel, at 36.5 inches, stands on the floor on its base and gets tilted back against your shoulder from a chair, the way any Celtic harp of that size is played. Neither arrangement is wrong, but one of them decides where in the house the harp lives. ## The harp itself The one to buy### Roosebeck Minstrel Harp, 29 strings, carved rosewood - 29 DuPont nylon strings, C3–C7, four octaves - A Chelby lever on every string - Solid sheesham frame, hand-carved side panels, Finnish birch plywood soundboard - 36.5″ × 22.75″ × 9.5″, 14.6 lb - Tuning tool and a spare string set in the box Four octaves is the point at which the standard Celtic and folk repertoire stops being an arrangement problem. The seven strings the Minstrel has over a 22-string harp all sit at the bottom, where accompaniment lives, and they change what the left hand is able to do rather than just extending the top. Chelby levers engage the string from the side instead of pinching it from above, which is why they do not pull strings off the bridge pins the way cheaper levers can, and the caps are color-coded — red for C, blue for F — so you can find your bearings without counting. Fourteen and a half pounds is a real instrument’s weight. It is not a lap harp and it does not travel casually, but one person moves it to a car without help. **Pros**- A lever on all 29 strings, which normally costs twice this - Four octaves — enough for intermediate repertoire, not just beginner arrangements - Solid sheesham frame, not a laminate shell - Tuning tool and spare strings included **Cons**- Plywood soundboard, not solid — the compromise at this price - Weeks of daily tuning before it settles - You may have to set the lever intonation yourself - No case included Around $745 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gneYwo) ## What owning one is actually like Roosebeck’s own owner’s guide is unusually frank about this, and it is worth taking seriously before you order, because most of the disappointment with this harp comes from not knowing it. The harp ships de-tuned, deliberately, to keep the frame from taking shipping stress under full tension. Bringing it up to pitch stretches 29 new nylon strings and loads the soundboard for the first time, so it will need tuning constantly for the first few weeks and regularly for months after that. Roosebeck describes the tone as developing over that period rather than arriving with the instrument. That is normal for nylon-strung harps and it is still a surprise if nobody told you. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Their recommended first tuning is worth following: disengage all the levers, check every string is seated in its bridge-pin notch and not resting against any part of a lever, then tune from the longest string to the shortest — reds first, then blues, then the clear strings — so the soundboard loads evenly rather than from one end. The tuning pins are tapered, so push inward as you turn or they will not hold. Then the part nobody enjoys. Once the levers are engaged, each one has to actually produce a clean semitone, and on this harp that is not guaranteed out of the box. Roosebeck’s guide walks the owner through adjusting it themselves: bridge pins get pulled out or pushed in with pliers to change how far the string moves, and the levers can be shifted up or down. On a harp costing twice as much that regulation is done at the workshop before it ships. Here it is a job you may inherit, and if the idea of taking pliers to a new instrument makes you wince, that is the honest reason to spend more on a harp that arrives already set up. Two other things follow from how it is built. The soundboard is Finnish birch plywood rather than solid spruce, which is stable and consistent and does not open up with age the way a solid top does. And the harps are made in Pakistan for an American importer, so fit and finish vary more between units than the photographs suggest — not badly, but visibly. ## The one accessory it needs The Minstrel does not come with a case, and a 36-inch harp with 29 exposed strings is not something to move in a blanket. The purpose-made padded nylon bag is shaped to this instrument — 36 inches across the back, a 24-inch tuning arm, a 39-inch pillar — which a generic cover is not, and a harp shifting inside a loose case is how necks get knocked out of line. Add this### Roosebeck padded nylon case for the Minstrel - Quilted nylon, shaped to the Minstrel - Fits every Minstrel variant - Shoulder strap, pockets for music and the tuning tool - About 3 lb It is a soft case, not a flight case, and it is priced like a hard one. That is the trade on an instrument this shape: nobody makes a molded case for it, so this is what there is, and it is better than the alternative of not having one. Around $105 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zoS3cA) You will also want a clip-on tuner that reads low nylon strings cleanly, which is a different problem from tuning a guitar — we go through the options in our [harp tuner guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/). Beyond that, the tuning tool and spare set in the box cover the first year, and [replacing a string](https://promusicvault.com/changing-harp-strings/) is a job you can do yourself. ## Who should buy it, and who should not The Minstrel makes sense for someone who already knows they want a harp. If you have had lessons on a rented instrument, or you have outgrown a 22-string harp and keep running out of bass, this is the cheapest way to get four octaves and full levers under your hands, and the money you save against an American-built equivalent is most of a year of lessons. It is the wrong instrument if you are not sure yet. Seven hundred-odd dollars to find out whether you like the harp is a lot, and a [smaller harp](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/) answers that question for a fraction of it. It is also the wrong instrument if you want something that arrives finished. A harp that needs weeks of settling and possibly a session with pliers is a project, and the people who are happiest with a Minstrel are the ones who expected that. And if the budget can stretch, it is worth knowing what the next rung looks like. A Dusty Strings Ravenna 26 lists at $1,715 and a Rees Fullsicle at $1,320 — both American-built, both regulated before they leave the workshop, both with hardware that will still be working in a decade. They have fewer strings than the Minstrel. You are not buying range at that price, you are buying the things this harp asks you to supply yourself, and [that is most of what a harp’s price is](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). ## Questions people ask ### Is the Minstrel a lap harp? No. At 36.5 inches and 14.6 pounds it stands on the floor and leans back against your shoulder while you sit. A [harp you hold on your knee](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) is a 12- to 22-string instrument weighing four to eleven pounds. ### How many keys can you play in? With a lever on every string, tune the harp flat and every key is reachable by setting levers before you start, plus single accidentals mid-piece by flipping a lever. That is the practical difference between a lever harp and a [pedal harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/), where the changes happen with your feet while both hands keep playing. ### Does the carving affect the sound? No. The carving is cut into the solid side panels of an otherwise identical frame, and Roosebeck states outright that the three carved versions sound the same. Choose on looks and price. ### Is the Minstrel a beginner harp? Not really. Roosebeck lists it just under $1,000 and position it as their flagship Celtic harp, above the 22-string Heather and well above the small lap harps. A complete beginner is better served by something smaller and cheaper; the Minstrel is the harp people move to once they know they are staying. ### How long before it holds its tuning? Expect daily tuning for the first few weeks and frequent tuning for several months. Nylon strings stretch a great deal before they stabilize, and the soundboard is settling under load for the first time. This is not a fault; it is what a [newly strung harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/) does. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Lute vs Lyre: The Difference Is the Neck, and It Decides Everything](https://promusicvault.com/lute-vs-lyre/) **Published:** May 2, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Lute vs Lyre: The Difference Is the Neck, and It Decides Everything A lyre has no neck. Its strings run from a crossbar down across the face of the body, and there is nothing to press them against, so each string plays one note and only that note. A lute has a neck with frets on it. You stop a string against a fret to shorten it, so thirteen strings will give you every semitone across two and a half octaves. Everything else — the shape, the repertoire, the price, how long before you can play a tune — follows from that. If you are choosing between them### The lyre is an instrument you can own this week. The lute is a project. A 16-string lyre is about $100, needs no lessons to get a tune out of, and is locked into one key until you retune it string by string. A lute is $600 at the very bottom of the market, $1,000–$1,500 for a student instrument and $3,000 upward built to order, is tuned with friction pegs, and its music is written in a notation you will have to learn from scratch. Neither prepares you for the other. **Notes available:** lute ~30 chromatic, lyre 7–16 diatonic **Frets:** lute 8–12 tied, lyre none **Entry price:** ~$600 vs. ~$35 **Older by:** the lyre, about 3,700 years ## Lute vs. lyre, side by side LuteLyre**String bearer**A neck, projecting from the body, with a pegbox angled back from itA yoke: two arms rising from the body, joined by a crossbar**Frets**Eight to twelve, tied around the neck in gut or nylon so they can be movedNone**Notes per string**Nine or more, depending on the fret countOne**Strings**11 on a six-course lute, 13 on a seven-course, past 20 on a Baroque lute or theorbo7, 10, 16 or 19 on modern instruments; 3 to 10 on ancient ones**Paired?**Yes — strings run in “courses” of two, tuned in unison or an octave apart, with a single top stringNo — every string is its own note**Range**Roughly two and a half chromatic octaves from a seven-course instrumentOne octave on a 7-string, two on a 16-string, and no accidentals**Playing in another key**Move your handRetune the affected strings with a wrench**Body**A bowl built from a dozen or more thin staves, with a flat spruce soundboardA flat slab, or a shallow hollow box**String material**Nylon and wound copper today, gut historicallySteel on almost everything sold now**Notation**Tablature — letters or numbers on a six-line grid, not staff notesOrdinary staff notation, or numbered strings**Weight**1.3–1.8 lb — deliberately built as thin as it will bear2–4 lb**Price**~$600 for a factory-built instrument; $1,000–$1,500 for a student lute, $3,000 up built to order~$35 for a 7-string, ~$100 for a 16-string**Peak**c. 1500–1650 in Europec. 2500 BC Sumer through classical Greece and Rome ## In the standard classification, a lyre *is* a lute Instruments are catalogued by the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which sorts stringed instruments by where the strings sit in relation to the soundboard. Harps go in one group, because their strings rise away from the soundboard at an angle. Everything whose strings lie flat across the soundboard goes in another, numbered 321 and labeled *lutes*. That group then splits on what carries the strings. Under 321.2 are the *yoke lutes, or lyres*: instruments where the strings attach to a yoke “which lies in the same plane as the sound-table and consists of two arms and a cross-bar”. Under 321.3 are the *handle lutes*, where “the string bearer is a plain handle” — a neck. The European lute sits at 321.321, a necked bowl lute, alongside the mandolin. So the honest answer to “is a lyre a kind of lute” is yes, in the same technical sense that a violin is. The everyday answer is that they are two different instruments and the difference is the neck. ## One string, one note — and what that costs A 16-string lyre gives you sixteen notes: the G below middle C up to the A two octaves above it, all of them white notes in C major. There is no thirteenth note hiding anywhere. If a tune needs an F sharp, you take the wrench and retune the F strings, and then you are in G major until you change them back. A seven-course lute has thirteen strings, which sounds comparable and is not. Eight tied frets on the neck mean each course covers about an octave on its own, so those thirteen strings between them produce over thirty distinct pitches, every semitone included, and a key change is a matter of moving your hand. The trade is in what your hands have to do. On a lyre the left hand does not fret anything — it damps. Greek players struck across all the strings at once with a leather plectrum in the right hand and silenced the ones they did not want with the straightened fingers of the left, which is exactly how a modern lyre works and why a beginner can get a real sound out of one in an afternoon. On a lute the left hand has to find and hold pairs of strings against moveable frets while the right plucks individual courses, and that takes months. ## The lyre is thousands of years older The oldest surviving stringed instruments in the world are lyres. Four of them came out of the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, dug by a joint University of Pennsylvania and British Museum expedition from 1922, and they date to between about 2550 and 2450 BC. One has a bull’s head in gold and lapis lazuli on the front. String counts moved around. The earliest known lyre had four, tuned to fill out a perfect fourth; classical Greek instruments are shown with three, four, six, seven, eight and ten at various dates, and the seven-string version on the Minoan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada is fourteenth century BC. The Greeks kept two instruments under the one idea: the plain *lyra*, treated as a rustic thing suitable for teaching children, and the *kithara*, a big wooden seven-string played by professionals at banquets and games. The lute arrived in Europe three and a half thousand years after the Ur lyres, and it came from outside. It takes its name and its shape from the Arabic *ʻud* — *al-ʻud*, “the wooden one” — and crossed over during the Middle Ages through the Crusades, through Moorish Spain, or through Sicily, where the thirteenth-century king Manfred von Hohenstaufen was a keen player. For its first two centuries in Europe it had five courses and was played with a quill, like the ʻud, which limits it to single lines and strumming. The change came in the late fifteenth century, when players began using their fingertips instead. That allowed several independent parts at once. A sixth bass course was added, the body grew longer and more elegant, tablature was invented to write the music down, and the lute became the most admired instrument in Europe for the next hundred and fifty years. Shakespeare has a character in *Much Ado About Nothing* ask whether it is not strange “that sheepes guts should hale soules out of mens bodies”. It did not survive the eighteenth century in general use. By 1800 it had been out of fashion for two generations, and what exists today is a revival, rebuilt from surviving instruments and printed tablature. ## What they sound like A lyre sold today is steel strings on a small piece of mahogany. It is bright, metallic and close to a zither or a music box, with a short decay and not much volume. Struck as a chord it is genuinely lovely; played as a melody it is thin. Nothing at this price sounds like the soft wash people expect from the word “harp”, and the instrument is not a harp — [the two are built on opposite string geometry](/lyre-vs-harp/). A lute is nylon and wound copper over a thin spruce top on a hollow bowl. It is quiet — quieter than a classical guitar, by a long way — but dense and complex up close, with a fast decay that makes the paired courses shimmer slightly out of phase with each other. That shimmer is the sound, and it is why a lute never quite sounds like a guitar playing the same notes. The bowl is what does it. A dozen or more thin staves bent and glued edge to edge give a stiff, light shell that pushes the whole job of making sound onto the soundboard. It also makes the instrument extraordinarily light: a small lute weighs about 1.3 lb, less than most of the wooden lyres it is being compared with, and it will slide off your knee if you let it. ## What you can actually buy This is where the two stop being comparable. Lyres are a commodity. Lutes are made by a small number of specialist workshops, mostly to order, and one manufacturer builds a range to a standard specification at a fraction of a handmade instrument’s price. If you want the lyre ### Donner DLH-003, 16-String Lyre Harp - 16 carbon steel strings - Two octaves, G3–A5, tuned to C major - Solid mahogany body with a hollow resonance box - Copper saddle - Tuning wrench included - ~$100 Sixteen is the string count to buy. Two octaves covers the folk tunes, hymns and film themes people pick a lyre up for; a 7-string runs out after one. The hollow box behind the strings is the other thing worth paying for — the solid-slab lyres at the same money are noticeably quieter and die away faster. It arrives roughly in tune and settles over the first week as new steel strings stretch. Expect to go round it with the wrench every session for a while. The [full lyre harp comparison](/best-lyre-harps/) puts it against the alternatives, and there is more on the range in our [Donner lyre harp review](/donner-lyre-harp-review/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gQROzL) If you only want to try one ### AKLOT 7-String Lyre Harp - 7 steel strings, one octave - Mahogany, bone saddle - Tuning wrench and gig bag included - ~$35 Seven strings is the ancient count, and at thirty-five dollars this is the cheapest honest way to find out whether the instrument suits you. One octave of C major is enough for a nursery tune or a drone under a voice and not enough for much else, so buy it knowing that, and buy the 16-string if you intend to play properly. It makes a good present. AKLOT builds the same outline as a 7-string, a 16-string and a 15-string harp, so check the string count against what you meant to order. [Our review of the AKLOT lyre](/aklot-lyre-harp-review/) covers the range. Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xY1z4S) If you want the lute ### Roosebeck 7-Course Descant Lute - 13 strings in 7 courses - 19¾-inch (500 mm) scale, tuned a whole step above a standard Renaissance lute - Lacewood stave bowl, European spruce soundboard, rosewood fingerboard - Eight tied nylon frets - Rosewood friction pegs - 1.3 lb, padded gig bag included - ~$600 This is a real lute, not an ornament: a proper staved bowl, a thin spruce top, tied frets and paired courses, and Roosebeck publishes a full specification for it, down to the fret count and the weight. Owners who already play call the tone pleasant and cheerful, quieter than a handmade instrument but genuinely a lute’s sound. Two things to know before you buy. It is small, and it is pitched high: the 19¾-inch scale sits nearly four inches under a standard Renaissance lute’s and the whole instrument is tuned a whole step up, with the top string at A rather than G. That is what a descant is for — it takes the high line in a consort, the way a descant recorder does — and it suits smaller hands, but it will disappoint anyone expecting a full-size lute in standard pitch. And it has friction pegs, plain tapered rosewood turned in a hole, exactly as a violin does. They work, and they need technique; owners’ commonest complaint about it is that the pegs slip, and the commonest fix is a little peg compound and learning to push in as you turn. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xpKCR9) Buy with it ### Roosebeck 7-Course Lute String Set - All 13 strings for a 7-course lute - Rectified nylon trebles, silverplated copper wound basses - Gauges .018 to .035, specified course by course - The set Roosebeck specifies for the descant lute above - ~$33 Lute strings carry no warranty and Roosebeck’s own advice is to replace them every three to four months, and to fit a fresh set to a new instrument that has been sitting. There are thirteen of them at seven different gauges, and they are not something a local shop stocks, so a spare set in the case is not optional the way it is on a guitar. It is also the clearest illustration of how a lute is strung. The first course is a single .018 nylon; courses two to four are matched pairs; and the bottom three are a wound silver string paired with a plain nylon one an octave above it, which is where the shimmer in a lute’s bass comes from. Around $33[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cwYb95) ## If you are serious about the lute The Lute Society’s advice to prospective players is worth taking straight. Their golden rule is to consult an experienced teacher before you buy anything, because “an instrument that is too small or too large for your hand, or unsuitable for the repertoire you really want to play, will cause a great deal of frustration”. On the budget end they are blunt but not dismissive: “Very cheap lutes may turn out to be a false economy, though in many cases may be greatly improved by the attentions of a competent luthier.” They also point out that lutes hold their resale value reasonably well, which changes the arithmetic on a $1,500 instrument considerably. It is not money spent so much as money parked. The other thing to settle first is which lute. The instrument had several golden ages and each wants a different build. Medieval music was played on five courses with a plectrum. Most of the sixteenth century belongs to the six-course Renaissance lute, tuned close to a modern guitar. From the later sixteenth century makers added a seventh course, then an eighth, ninth and tenth. Baroque lutes went to eleven, twelve and thirteen, with a different tuning again. That sounds like an obstacle and mostly is not, because the repertoire is bottom-heavy. Of John Dowland’s surviving works, 45 need only six courses and about 45 more can be played on six with a little adjustment; only the remaining 20 really want more strings. A six- or seven-course instrument is not a compromise. It is where the music is. ## Which one should you learn? Pick the lyre if what you want is to make a pleasant sound soon, on an object you like looking at, for a hundred dollars. It is a genuine instrument with a genuine four-thousand-year history and it asks almost nothing of you at the start. It also has a ceiling, and you will meet it: sixteen notes, one key, no way to hold a note or bend one. Pick the lute if what you actually want is the music — Dowland, Francesco da Milano, the English song repertoire — and you are prepared to learn tablature and find a teacher. It is closer to taking up the classical guitar than to buying a lyre, in cost, in difficulty and in what you get back. And if it is the sound of Renaissance music you are after rather than the instrument itself, a nylon-string guitar plays most of the lute repertoire in transcription for a fraction of the money. It will not sound like a lute. It is the same music, and it is a far better test of whether you want to spend a thousand dollars than reading about it is. We go through that trade-off, and how the lute compares with its closest modern relative, in [mandolin vs lute](/mandolin-vs-lute/). ## FAQs ### Is a lyre the same as a small harp? No. On a harp the strings pass through the soundboard at close to a right angle and pull upward on it, which is why a harp needs a pillar. On a lyre they lie flat across the face and press down through a bridge, as on a guitar. The “lyre harp” sold online is a lyre. See [lyre vs harp](/lyre-vs-harp/) for the full comparison. ### How many strings does each one have? A modern lyre comes in 7, 10, 16 and 19-string versions; ancient ones ran from three to ten. A six-course Renaissance lute has eleven strings, because the top course is single and the other five are paired. A seven-course has thirteen. Baroque lutes and theorbos go past twenty. ### Why are lute strings in pairs? Two thin strings tuned together are louder than one thick one and decay in a more interesting way, because they never quite agree. On the bass courses the pair is often tuned an octave apart rather than in unison, which adds brightness to notes that would otherwise be muddy. The pairs are called courses, and you fret and pluck each pair as one string. ### Which is easier for a complete beginner? The lyre, by a wide margin. There is no fretting hand to train and no new notation, so a first tune takes an afternoon. The lute needs a teacher, tablature and several months before anything sounds intentional. ### Can I try a lute before committing to one? Yes, and it is the standard advice. The Lute Society runs a hire scheme for its members in the UK — £36 a month at the time of writing, with a discount for full-time students — and lute societies elsewhere keep lists of teachers and of members selling instruments. An hour with a teacher and a real instrument settles the question better than anything written down. ### Is the lute related to the guitar? Closely, in tuning if not in shape. A six-course Renaissance lute is tuned in fourths with a single major third in the middle, which is the guitar’s own interval pattern with the third moved one string down. A guitarist can read lute tablature within a week. The vihuela, a guitar-shaped instrument tuned identically to the lute, carried the whole Spanish Renaissance repertoire, and that music plays on either one without alteration. ### Where does the word “lute” come from? From the Arabic *al-ʻud*, “the wooden one” — probably to distinguish it from instruments bodied in gourd or faced with parchment. The ʻud is still central to Arabic music and is the lute’s direct ancestor. “Lyre” comes to English through Latin from the Greek *lyra*. ### Can you play chords on a lyre? Yes, and it is what the instrument is best at. Because the strings are tuned to a scale, most groups of three sound consonant, so a strum across the whole instrument works. Shaping a particular chord means damping the strings you do not want with the other hand, which is exactly how the Greeks played it. ### Do lyres and lutes hold their tuning? Neither is good at it. A new steel-strung lyre needs daily attention for the first week or two while the strings stretch, then settles down. A lute never quite stops: thirteen nylon strings respond to every change in humidity, friction pegs have no gearing to hold a fine adjustment, and tuning between pieces is simply part of playing the instrument. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [How Much Does a Trumpet Cost? What Every Price Level Actually Buys](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/trumpet/ "Trumpet")› How Much Does a Trumpet Cost? What Every Price Level Actually Buys Yamaha’s student trumpet and Yamaha’s professional Xeno have the same bore and the same bell diameter. ML, 11.65 mm, 0.459″. Bell 123 mm, 4-7/8″. Those numbers do not move anywhere on the ladder, from the horn a twelve-year-old rents to the one in the pit. Roughly $2,600 separates the two ends of it. So the price of a trumpet is not the price of a bigger or a different instrument. It is the price of a bell made from one piece of brass instead of two, of gold brass instead of yellow, of silver plate instead of lacquer, and of the tolerances that decide whether the valves still feel right in fifteen years. That is worth paying for at some point in a player’s life. It is not worth paying for in month one, and it is the money most people are actually asking about. The short answer### Around $250 buys a new trumpet worth repairing. Around $900 buys the one school programs standardize on Below about $200 the instrument costs less than the first service bill, which is where the real expense starts. A clean and service runs $100–160 and a valve alignment $100–200, so a $130 trumpet is written off by its first proper visit to a workshop. Above about $1,500 you are buying a bell and a set of tolerances, not a different instrument. **Cheapest worth owning:** ~$250 **School standard:** ~$900 **Rental:** ~$20–40/month **Clean and service:** $100–160 ## Table of Contents - [What a trumpet costs, level by level](#what-a-trumpet-costs-level-by-level) - [What the extra money actually buys](#what-the-extra-money-actually-buys) - [The trumpets worth buying at each price](#the-trumpets-worth-buying-at-each-price) - [The running costs nobody quotes](#the-running-costs-nobody-quotes) - [What a workshop charges](#what-a-workshop-charges) - [Why the cheapest trumpet is the expensive one](#why-the-cheapest-trumpet-is-the-expensive-one) - [Should you rent instead?](#should-you-rent-instead) - [Buying used, and what to look at](#buying-used-and-what-to-look-at) - [What the warranty is worth at each price](#what-the-warranty-is-worth-at-each-price) - [The other trumpets, and what they cost](#the-other-trumpets-and-what-they-cost) - [So what should you spend?](#so-what-should-you-spend) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [How much is a good beginner trumpet?](#how-much-is-a-good-beginner-trumpet) - [Is a $100 trumpet worth buying?](#is-a-100-trumpet-worth-buying) - [Why are professional trumpets so expensive?](#why-are-professional-trumpets-so-expensive) - [How much does it cost to maintain a trumpet?](#how-much-does-it-cost-to-maintain-a-trumpet) - [Is it cheaper to rent or buy a trumpet?](#is-it-cheaper-to-rent-or-buy-a-trumpet) - [What is the most expensive trumpet?](#what-is-the-most-expensive-trumpet) - [Do cornets cost more than trumpets?](#do-cornets-cost-more-than-trumpets) ## What a trumpet costs, level by level Yamaha and Conn-Selmer, who between them own most of the school market, sell through dealers and publish no prices at all. Jean Paul publishes every model on their own site, which makes them the one maker whose steps between tiers can be read straight off a price list rather than inferred. LevelWhat it isNew price**Bargain bin**Marketplace brands, colored finishes, no published warranty or parts$100–170**Budget new**Jean Paul TR-330 and equivalents — the cheapest with a repair route behind it~$250**Step-up student**Jean Paul TR-430, rose brass leadpipe, larger bore~$400**School standard**Yamaha YTR-2330, Bach BTR301~$890 lacquer, ~$1,000 silver**Intermediate**Yamaha YTR-3335 and YTR-4335GII, gold brass bell~$1,100–1,450**Professional**Yamaha Xeno YTR-8335, Bach Stradivarius 180S37~$2,700–3,800**Custom and artist**Yamaha YTR-9335, hand-finished and one-off builds$4,000 and up Two of those rows do most of the work. The jump from the bargain bin to about $250 is the only one that changes whether the instrument can be kept alive at all. The jump from $900 to $3,000 changes how it feels to a player who already knows what they want, and is invisible to one who does not. ## What the extra money actually buys Yamaha publishes a specification sheet for every model, so the ladder can be read a rung at a time. Here are four of them, in the maker’s own words. YTR-2330 studentYTR-4335GII intermediateYTR-6335 professionalYTR-8335II Xeno**Bore**ML 11.65 mmML 11.65 mmML 11.65 mmML 11.65 mm**Bell diameter**123 mm123 mm123 mm123 mm**Bell**Two piece, yellow brassTwo piece, **gold brass****One piece**, yellow brassOne piece, yellow brass**Weight**MediumMediumMedium**Heavy****Finish**Gold lacquerGold lacquerGold lacquer**Silver-plated****Mouthpiece**TR-11B4TR-11B4TR-14B4TR-16C4**Roughly**~$890~$1,350~$2,000~$3,400 Four rows are identical down the whole column. The instrument is the same size, in the same key, with the same air passing through it. What changes is the bell — two pieces of brass seamed together or one piece drawn and spun, yellow brass or the higher-copper gold brass — then the wall weight, then the plating. Notice also that the $890 student horn and the $1,350 intermediate ship with the **same mouthpiece**, the TR-11B4. That $460 buys a gold brass bell and nothing else you can point at on the specification sheet. Whether a gold brass bell is worth $460 to a particular player is a real question, and it is a different question from whether a beginner would hear it. The one place the money buys something a beginner will feel is at the very bottom, where it stops being about bells and starts being about whether the valves move. That is the next section. ## The trumpets worth buying at each price The cheapest trumpet worth owning ### Jean Paul TR-330 Student B♭ Trumpet - B♭, two-piece yellow brass bell - Stainless steel valves, monel-free - Play-tested in the US before shipping - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case included - 1-year warranty to the original buyer - ~$250 This is the number to measure everything else against. Jean Paul sells the individual parts of it — a main tuning slide is about $25, a second valve slide $50, a valve rebuild kit $16, a set of valve felts $10 — and that catalogue, more than any spec, is what separates a cheap trumpet from a disposable one. A repair tech can order the part rather than fabricate it. It plays like a $250 trumpet. The upper register is stuffier than a Yamaha’s, the third valve slide ring is adequate rather than good, and a player still going in four years will want out of it. That is the correct arc for a first trumpet, and it ends with an instrument that is still worth something. **Pros**- Cheapest new trumpet here with spare parts and a warranty behind it - Set up and play-tested before it ships, so the valves work out of the case - Case and mouthpiece are usable rather than placeholders - Costs less than a year of rental **Cons**- Warranty is one year — the shortest of the three makers on this page - Stuffy above the stave compared with the school-standard horns - Outgrown inside a few years by anyone who sticks with it Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SB0YHe) If $250 feels too close to the line ### Jean Paul TR-430 Intermediate B♭ Trumpet - 0.465″ bore — larger than the 0.459″ school standard - Rose brass leadpipe - Adjustable third valve ring - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case included - ~$400 The $150 step up from the TR-330 buys a rose brass leadpipe, a bigger bore and an adjustable third slide ring, which is the one of those three a student will use every week — low D and C♯ are sharp on every trumpet ever built, and the ring is how you fix them while playing. The larger bore cuts both ways and it is worth being blunt about. It takes more air, so a small eleven-year-old may find it harder work than the narrower school horns, and a player moving into a band room full of 0.459″ instruments will be blowing something slightly different from everyone around them. For an adult beginner or a bigger student it is the better buy of the two. **Pros**- Adjustable third valve ring, which the cheapest horns leave off - Rose brass leadpipe, normally an intermediate feature - Same parts catalogue and warranty as the TR-330 - Still under half the price of the school standard **Cons**- 0.465″ bore needs more air than a young beginner may have - Called intermediate, priced under most makers’ student horns — it is a good student trumpet, not a step-up one - Sixty percent more than the TR-330 for one usable feature Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SGInK3) The one school programs standardize on ### Yamaha YTR-2330S Student B♭ Trumpet, Silver-Plated - ML 11.65 mm (0.459″) bore, 123 mm bell - Two-piece yellow brass bell, gold brass leadpipe - Monel valves - First valve slide thumb hook, adjustable third slide - TR-11B4 mouthpiece and case included - ~$1,000 silver-plated; the gold-lacquer YTR-2330 is around $890 This is the trumpet a school band director names when asked, and the reason is not tone. It is that every repair shop in the country has the parts, every director has seen a thousand of them, and the valves are still good after a decade of teenagers. Monel is a harder alloy than the plating on budget valves, and valve wear is what actually kills student trumpets. It is also two to four times the price of the trumpets above, for an instrument with the same bore and the same bell diameter. If the player is committed, it is the last trumpet they need until they are choosing one on tone rather than on durability. If the player is eleven and undecided, this is the wrong first purchase, and renting is the honest answer. **Pros**- Monel valves — the part that decides how long a student trumpet lasts - Universally serviceable; no repair tech will be short of parts - Holds resale far better than anything cheaper - Thumb hook and adjustable third slide as standard **Cons**- Roughly four times the TR-330 for identical bore and bell dimensions - Silver plate costs about $110 more than the lacquer and changes nothing mechanical - Yamaha’s warranty does not apply to instruments bought outside their authorized dealer network Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y9DhoI) ## The running costs nobody quotes A trumpet has three moving parts and no reeds, no pads and no strings, which makes it one of the cheapest instruments in the band room to keep going. The whole consumable budget is under $30 a year. The bills that matter are the ones that arrive every few years instead. The one thing you must buy ### Al Cass Fast Valve Oil - 2 fl oz - Lasts a student roughly six months - ~$7 Valves seize because they run dry, and a seized valve is the single most common reason a trumpet arrives at a workshop. A bottle costs about seven dollars and about two dollars a year in use. Nothing else on this page has that ratio of expense to consequence. Around $7[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4d2Bzgz) What keeps the service bill away ### MusicNomad 6-Piece Trumpet and Cornet Cleaning and Care Kit - Valve oil, slide grease, cleaner, brushes, cloth, bag - Snake brush for the leadpipe - ~$20 The thing that destroys a trumpet from the inside is what gets blown into it and left there. Red rot — the pink patches that appear on the leadpipe of a neglected horn — is corrosion working through the brass from the inside, it cannot be reversed, and the only fix is replacing the tube. A snake brush through the leadpipe once a month prevents it, and this is the cheapest way to own one. Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Slv3L3) The upgrade that is not urgent ### Bach 7C Trumpet Mouthpiece - Medium cup, the default student size - Silver-plated - ~$65 The 7C is the size almost every beginner starts on, and Bach’s is the one teachers name. It is worth knowing that it costs about sixty-five dollars, and worth knowing that you probably do not need it yet: every trumpet on this page ships with a serviceable mouthpiece already, and Yamaha fits the same TR-11B4 to its student horn and its intermediate one. Buy it when a teacher asks for it, when the stock mouthpiece is visibly worn, or when a player is moving between two instruments and wants one consistent feel. Buying it in week one is the most common way a beginner spends money that changes nothing. Around $65[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45Zjhcm) The one that decides whether practice happens ### Protec ML203 Compact Practice Mute - Aluminum, compact profile - Fits inside the bell for storage in most cases - ~$35 A trumpet is loud in a way that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not lived with one, and an hour a day in an apartment or a shared house is not a neutral request. Thirty-five dollars is the difference between a player who practices on weeknights and one who does not, which makes it a better return than any amount spent on the instrument itself. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Every practice mute raises the back pressure and pushes the pitch sharp, this one included, so it is a tool for putting in the hours rather than for the hour before an audition. Electronic systems that pair a mute with headphones do the same job with far less pitch distortion, and cost about $230. Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x0g4Ey) ## What a workshop charges These are the numbers the buying guides leave out, and on a trumpet they are the whole argument. Published repair rates land in a narrow band: JobTypical chargeHow oftenChemical clean and service$100–160Every two to three yearsValve alignment$100–200Once or twice in an instrument’s lifeMinor dent$20–50Whenever it gets droppedRe-soldering a joint~$30As neededMajor dent work, red rot repairBy estimateOften not worth doing ## Why the cheapest trumpet is the expensive one Put the two sets of numbers next to each other and the bottom of the market stops making sense. A $130 trumpet meets a $120 clean and service in year two, and at that point the sensible thing to do is throw it away. Yamaha has a phrase for this in their own guidance on second-hand instruments: **beyond economical repair**, which they define as the point where the cost of the instrument plus the cost of the repair exceeds the price of replacing it. A bargain-bin trumpet is born there. It gets worse than the arithmetic suggests, because a repair tech cannot always take the job at any price. The makers at the bottom publish no parts catalogue, so a cracked valve casing or a stripped slide has no replacement to order and the horn is finished. That is why the $250 line matters more than any of the tone arguments: it is roughly where a maker starts selling you the pieces of the thing they sold you. The other cost is invisible and larger. A trumpet with leaking valves or a bent leadpipe is harder to play in tune and harder to get a note out of, and a beginner has no way to know the instrument is the problem. Plenty of children conclude they cannot play the trumpet when what they cannot play is that trumpet. We have gone through [which brands to steer around and why](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/) separately. ## Should you rent instead? Rental runs about $20 to $40 a month depending on the instrument’s condition and age, usually with maintenance included and with some or all of the payments credited against a purchase if you convert. Most programs credit the full amount for the first twelve months. The arithmetic is straightforward. At $25 a month, ten months of rental is $250, which is the price of a new budget trumpet outright. So renting only wins if one of two things is true: the player might quit, or the instrument you would otherwise buy costs $900 rather than $250. Both are often true, and that is the honest case for renting. A beginning band class in September has a real attrition rate by Christmas, and a rental that ends is far cheaper than a purchase that sits in a closet. Rent for the first year, and if the player is still going, put the accumulated credit against the school-standard horn rather than buying the budget one twice. ## Buying used, and what to look at Used is where the value is on this instrument, because a trumpet has nothing in it that perishes on a shelf. A used school-standard horn runs roughly $400 to $850 depending on condition, which puts a proven Yamaha or Bach inside the price of a new budget one. That is the single best-value purchase on this page, and it comes with a real risk attached. Four things decide whether a used trumpet is a bargain or a liability, and three of them are checkable in a minute: - **The valves.** Press each one down and let it come back up on its own spring. It should be fast and silent. Slow, gritty or catching means wear, and worn valves leak compression — which no amount of oil fixes and which costs more to correct than a student horn is worth. - **The slides.** First and third should move freely and fast, since those are the ones you tune with while playing. The main and second tuning slides should move smoothly but not fall out. - **Red rot.** Look along the leadpipe for reddish or pink patches, often with a darker center. That is the copper corroding out of the brass from the inside. It cannot be reversed and it eventually perforates the tube; the only repair is replacing the section. - **Compression, which you cannot see.** Hold down two valves, cover the bell with your palm and blow. A healthy horn resists and holds. This is the one worth having a teacher or a tech check, because it is what separates a $500 instrument from a $150 one. Assume the price of a clean and service on top of whatever you pay — $100 to $160, and a used horn from a closet will need it. Budget accordingly and a used school-standard trumpet is still the best value here. One thing to know before you weigh a used instrument against a new one: **none of the three makers on this page transfers its warranty.** Conn-Selmer states theirs applies only to the original purchaser, does not cover previously used instruments and is not transferable. Yamaha’s applies only to instruments bought from their authorized US dealers. Jean Paul’s runs to the original buyer with proof of purchase. A used trumpet is sold as-is, always. ## What the warranty is worth at each price Conn-Selmer is unusual in tiering their warranty by price rather than offering one term across the catalogue, and it is a clean statement of what a maker thinks it is selling. MakerTermConditions**Conn-Selmer** — Prelude, 100 and 200 series2 yearsOriginal purchaser, authorized dealers, not transferable**Conn-Selmer** — 300 to 900 series and marching brass5 yearsSame conditions**Yamaha**Published per instrumentVoid on anything not bought from an authorized US dealer**Jean Paul**1 yearOriginal purchaser, proof of purchase, authorized sellers only**Bargain-bin brands**Usually none published— Jean Paul’s one year is the shortest here, which is worth saying plainly about an instrument recommended above. What partly offsets it is what happens outside the warranty: they sell the individual parts, and their policy commits them to approving a local repair shop and paying it directly for warranty work rather than making you ship the horn. Neither of those things is true of anything cheaper. ## The other trumpets, and what they cost There is a fact in Yamaha’s own catalogue that answers most of these questions at once. They build B♭ trumpets at every level from a student model up to hand-finished artist instruments. Every other trumpet they make starts at professional level and goes up: InstrumentCheapest Yamaha buildsRoughly**B♭ trumpet**Student (YTR-2330)From ~$890**Cornet**Student (YCR-2310III, YCR-2330III)From ~$800**Flugelhorn**Professional (YFH-631G)From ~$700 from other makers**C trumpet**Xeno (YTR-8445)~$3,500 and up**E♭/D trumpet**Professional (YTR-6610S)~$3,000 and up**Piccolo trumpet**Professional (YTR-6810)~$3,500 and up**Herald trumpet**Professional (YTR-6330F)~$2,500 and up**G/F trumpet**Artist only (YTR-9710)$5,000 and up So the answer to “how much does a C trumpet cost” is really “there is no cheap one, because nobody who needs a C trumpet is a beginner”. The same goes for the piccolo, the E♭ and the herald. If you have seen a piccolo trumpet advertised for a few hundred dollars, it is not one of these instruments. The cornet is the exception, and it is the useful one. It is the only other member of the family with a genuine student tier, it takes the same fingerings, and in a brass band it is the instrument with the seats — a standard band has ten cornet parts and no trumpet at all. If that is the ensemble in question, the cornet is not a compromise, it is the correct purchase. We have set the two [against each other and against the flugelhorn](https://promusicvault.com/flugelhorn-vs-cornet/) in more detail. Marching trumpets are the last category worth a word, and the honest answer is that most players do not need one. A marching band horn is built for durability and projection outdoors, and it costs about the same as an equivalent concert instrument. Most school marchers simply use their concert trumpet. ## So what should you spend? If a child is starting band in September and might not be playing by March, rent. About $25 a month, maintenance included, and the credit goes against a real instrument if they stay. If you want to own something outright and $900 is not on the table, spend about $250. That is where spare parts, a warranty and a repair route begin, and everything below it is a bet that nothing will ever go wrong. If the player is committed, or you are buying once for a household, the school-standard horn at around $890 to $1,000 is the last trumpet they will need for a decade — or the same instrument used, at $400 to $850, with a service on top and the valves checked first. And above about $1,500 you are buying a bell. That is a real thing to buy, when a player knows what they want out of one. It is not a thing to buy on their behalf. ## FAQs ### How much is a good beginner trumpet? About $250 for a new one with spare parts and a warranty behind it, or about $890 for the model school programs standardize on. Between those two the extra money buys durability — monel valves and universal parts availability — rather than a different-sounding instrument. ### Is a $100 trumpet worth buying? No, and the reason is arithmetic rather than snobbery. A chemical clean and service costs $100 to $160 and a valve alignment $100 to $200, so the first real repair costs more than the instrument. Makers at that price also publish no parts catalogue, so some repairs cannot be done at all. ### Why are professional trumpets so expensive? Not because they are bigger. Yamaha’s student and professional B♭ trumpets share a bore of 11.65 mm and a bell diameter of 123 mm. The money buys a bell drawn from one piece of brass rather than seamed from two, heavier wall material, silver plating, a different mouthpiece and much tighter manufacturing tolerances — things a professional feels every day and a beginner cannot yet use. ### How much does it cost to maintain a trumpet? Under $30 a year in consumables — valve oil is about $7 a bottle and lasts a student around six months, plus slide grease and brushes. Beyond that, a chemical clean and service every two or three years at $100 to $160. There is nothing on a trumpet equivalent to a saxophone’s pads or a violin’s strings. ### Is it cheaper to rent or buy a trumpet? At about $25 a month, renting costs the price of a budget trumpet in ten months, so buying is cheaper if the player continues. Renting wins when they might not, or when the instrument you actually want is the $890 one — most programs credit the first year of payments against a purchase. ### What is the most expensive trumpet? Custom and artist-level instruments start around $4,000 and hand-built one-offs from small makers run well beyond that. In the mainstream catalogues, a professional B♭ runs $2,700 to $3,800, and a C, piccolo or E♭ trumpet starts at roughly the same place because none of them is built at student level at all. ### Do cornets cost more than trumpets? No — they land in much the same place. A student cornet starts around $800 against a student trumpet’s $890, and the ladders above that run in parallel. The cornet is the only other trumpet-family instrument with a genuine beginner tier. Next: [the brands to steer around](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/), the [fingering chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/), and [the rest of the brass family](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/). **Categories:** Trumpet --- ### [How Much Does a Banjo Cost? Every Rung, and Where the Tone Ring Starts](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) **Published:** April 4, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How Much Does a Banjo Cost? Every Rung, and Where the Tone Ring Starts A banjo worth keeping costs around $315. You can spend $160 and have something playable once a repair shop has spent an hour on it, you can spend $9,000, and the part most people are really paying for — the tone ring that makes a bluegrass banjo ring and sustain — does not arrive until about $1,300, whichever maker you buy from. The price most people should pay### Around $315 — Gold Tone AC-1 This is where a banjo stops being a kit of parts and becomes an instrument somebody adjusted before it shipped. Composite rim, zero-glide nut, geared fifth-string tuner, and a gig bag. Nothing below it is set up by a person; nothing above it changes the sound until you have roughly quadrupled the budget. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gCMWhz) **Finding out whether you like it:** around $160 **Buying once, American built:** around $599 **Add for a setup and what it arrives without:** $110 to $160 ## The ladder, rung by rung BudgetWhat the money buysExampleWorth paying?**$125–175**A complete five-string banjo with nothing adjusted. Choose carefully and you still get a truss rod and a Remo head[Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/45BLaXU), ~$160Yes, with a setup**$300–475**A rim worth having, and a maker who adjusts the instrument before it leaves the building[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4gCMWhz), ~$315This is the rung to aim for**$599–849**American building, a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, and an instrument that holds its value[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4xbXgTH), ~$599Yes, if you are keeping it**~$1,000**Full bluegrass hardware: resonator, one-piece flange, planetary tuners, a rolled brass hoop under the head[Gold Tone BG-150F](https://amzn.to/4xH3r1G), ~$1,000If bluegrass is the plan**$1,230–1,600**A cast tone ring. This is the rung where the sound changes rather than the finish[Gold Tone OB-150](https://amzn.to/4xeLU1a), ~$1,300The last upgrade you will hear plainly**$2,200–3,500**Professional American instruments — Deering’s Vega line from about $2,199, the Sierra around $3,499Working players’ banjosWhen it is your living**$3,700–6,000**Boutique bluegrass built to prewar Gibson specifications; Huber’s Workhorse starts around $3,695Hendersonville and San Diego shopsA want, not a need**$6,000 and up**Top-line and commissioned work; Deering’s Tenbrooks runs about $6,549 and the Vega Dragon Star about $8,999Commissioned buildsA different conversation ## The tone ring is what you are actually paying for A banjo is a drum with a neck bolted to it. The neck matters for comfort; the pot — rim, head and tone ring — makes the sound. And the tone ring is the single most expensive component on the instrument, which is why the price ladder is really a ladder of rings. **Under about $450, there is no ring at all.** The head sits directly on the wooden rim. That is not a defect: it gives the light, dry, woody voice that clawhammer and old-time players choose on purpose, and it is why [open back banjos](/best-open-back-banjo/) at this price are the real thing rather than a compromise. **From around $475 you get a rolled brass hoop.** Gold Tone’s own specifications call it a rolled brass flat bar — a strip of brass formed into a ring and fitted over the rim. It adds weight and sustain and takes some of the plink out. It is a real improvement and it is not a cast tone ring. **The cast ring arrives at about $1,230 to $1,300**, and both American makers land in the same place. Deering’s Goodtime Special, at $1,229, is the first Goodtime with a tone ring of any kind — a patented steel one, which Deering describes as a simpler version of the brass ring in their upper line. Gold Tone’s OB-150, at $1,299.99, brings a cast flat-top bell brass ring and a one-piece cast flange. That is where the sustain and the bark that people mean by “bluegrass banjo” actually come from. Two makers, different lines, different metals, same threshold. If the ringing sustain is what you are chasing, that is the number to save toward — and if it is not, you can stop spending a long way below it. ## Between $315 and $1,000 you are buying build, not sound This is the least comfortable thing on the page, and it is worth being plain about. Going from a $315 banjo to an $850 one buys a straight neck that stays straight, frets that have been leveled and dressed, a three-ply maple rim instead of a composite one, tuners that hold pitch, a warranty, and a company that puts the instrument in a jig before it ships. Every one of those is worth having, and several of them are the difference between practicing and giving up. None of them is tone. The [step up to an intermediate banjo](/best-intermediate-banjo/) makes the instrument nicer to own and easier to sell. It does not make it sound like a different instrument, because the pot has not changed. ## The resonator is a $250 option Within one maker’s line the arithmetic is clean. Deering’s [Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4xbXgTH) open back is $599; the [Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4qAFzKX), the same banjo with a resonator on the back, is $849. That $250 buys projection and the bluegrass silhouette, and it adds about a pound and a half to what you carry. Pick by the music rather than the money — [the two are for different jobs](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) — and note that several banjos in the $150 to $850 range have resonators that simply unbolt, which is the cheapest way to buy the question rather than answer it. ## What it costs after you have bought it A banjo arrives needing $110 to $160 of things no price list mentions, and the first line of the table does more for how it sounds than any of the upgrades above. WhatCostWhy**A setup**$50–100Bridge placement, head tension, action, nut slots, neck relief. A banjo has more adjustable parts than a guitar and a cheap one arrives with none of them set**[D’Addario EJ55 strings](https://amzn.to/4x9kdqq)**~$7Factory strings are the weakest part of most inexpensive banjos. Check the packet says five-string — the tenor and plectrum sets look almost identical**[Fingerpicks and a thumbpick](https://amzn.to/3U7cx9D)**~$10Bluegrass rolls need them. Buy a multipack, because the right fit is a matter of bending them until they stop falling off**[A clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4xH3N8w)**~$19Five strings, and the fifth one starts at the fifth fret. [Tuning by ear](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) in the first month is how beginners quit**[A strap](https://amzn.to/4zqw8BN)**~$20A banjo will not sit on your knee like a guitar. This is not optional even sitting down**A new head, eventually**$30–40Two or three years of playing, and the cheapest way to change the voice of a banjo you already own**A better bridge**$10–30Five minutes, no tools, and on a budget banjo it is the single best-value part you can replace[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Protect the setup line before anything else. A $160 banjo that has been through a repair shop plays better than a $250 one straight out of the carton, and on a cheap instrument the work is mostly bridge placement and head tension — both of which move the sound more than another hundred dollars of banjo would. That is also the honest answer to whether [the banjo is hard to learn](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/): most of what beginners blame on themselves is a bridge in the wrong place. ## Why some banjos are $80 Because they have four strings. Tenor and plectrum banjos are cheaper to build and cheaper to ship, they turn up first in a search sorted by price, and they are the wrong instrument for almost everyone arriving at the banjo through bluegrass or old-time. The rolls, the tunes and every beginner course assume five strings and that short drone string at the fifth fret. Four-string banjos are excellent at what they are for — Irish tunes, trad jazz, 1920s dance music — but they are a deliberate choice rather than a default. Count the tuners in the photograph before anything else; there is more on [what the strings do](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) and on [the rest of the family](/types-of-banjos/). ## Buying used Banjos hold value unevenly, and the split is useful. American-built instruments — Deering, Huber, the older Vegas — typically fetch 65 to 75 percent of new, and a twenty-year-old Goodtime is worth buying. Import banjos under about $300 lose most of their value immediately, which is why the used market at that end is largely instruments somebody gave up on within a year. The pot is the durable part. Rims, tone rings and hardware last for decades and a tarnished one cleans up. What does not survive neglect is the neck: check it sights straight, that the truss rod still turns, and that the fifth-string peg holds. A warped neck costs more to correct than the saving, and it does not photograph. ## What a professional banjo costs Working bluegrass players are mostly between $3,000 and $6,000. Deering’s Sierra starts around $3,499 and the Golden Era around $5,949; Huber’s Workhorse, built in Hendersonville to prewar Gibson specifications, is about $3,695, and the Deluxe version $4,275. Above that, Deering’s Tenbrooks Saratoga Star runs to roughly $6,549 and the Vega Dragon Star to about $8,999. What the money buys at that level is a cast bell-bronze or bell-brass ring, a rim turned and fitted to it by hand, inlay and finish work measured in weeks, and a neck shaped to a specification rather than a pattern. It is a better instrument than a $1,300 banjo. It is not five times better, and a good player on a Goodtime Special will out-sound a poor one on a Golden Era all night. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much should a beginner spend on a banjo? Around $315 if you already know you want to play, and around $160 plus a setup if you are still finding out. The stretch between $175 and $300 is the least rewarding part of the ladder — it buys a slightly nicer version of an unadjusted instrument. Our [beginner banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) works through the individual picks. ### Is a $150 banjo worth buying? Yes, provided you budget $50 to $100 to have it set up, and provided it has a truss rod. A geared fifth-string tuner is worth having too, but it is a twenty-dollar part that can be fitted later; a neck with no truss rod cannot be fixed at all. Without the setup it will be stiff, sharp in first position and dull-sounding, and you will conclude the banjo is not for you. There are six worth considering [under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/). ### Why are some banjos $10,000? Hand work and materials, in that order. A cast tone ring machined and fitted to a hand-turned rim, engraved hardware, cut inlay and a nitrocellulose finish that takes weeks are all measured in a skilled person’s hours. Above about $6,000 you are also buying scarcity, since the workshops building them make a few hundred instruments a year at most. ### Do open back banjos cost less than resonator banjos? Within one maker’s line, yes — about $250 less on Deering’s Goodtime models. Across the whole market the two overlap completely, because a well-made open back for old-time playing can cost far more than a plain resonator banjo. ### What does it cost to keep a banjo going? About $7 a set for [strings](/best-banjo-strings/), changed every couple of months if you play regularly, a head every few years at $30 to $40, and a setup every year or two. Nothing else routinely wears out, and the expensive parts are the ones that never fail. ### Is an expensive banjo easier to play? Only because dearer instruments tend to arrive properly adjusted. Comfort comes from the setup, not the price tag. The one genuine exception is weight: a bluegrass banjo with a cast ring and a resonator can pass eleven pounds, which is a real consideration if you stand up to play. There is a full comparison of [what banjos weigh](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ### How much for a bluegrass banjo specifically? Around $1,000 gets the full layout — resonator, one-piece flange, planetary tuners — and around $1,300 adds the cast tone ring that produces the sound itself. Below $1,000 you can play bluegrass perfectly well; you will simply be quieter in a circle of people. More in [what a thousand dollars buys](/best-banjo-under-1000/). ## So what should you spend? If you are not yet sure you will stick with it, buy the [Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/45BLaXU) at around $160 and spend $50 to $100 having it set up. That is a little over $200 for an instrument that plays properly, and you lose very little if you stop. If you know you want to play, the [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4gCMWhz) at around $315 is the cheapest banjo that arrives ready and the last one you can buy without thinking about it. If you would rather buy once, the [Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4xbXgTH) at around $599 is American built and will still be worth most of that in ten years. And if bluegrass is the whole point, skip the middle. Save until you can reach the [Gold Tone OB-150](https://amzn.to/4xeLU1a) at around $1,300 rather than spending $700 twice, because everything between here and there sounds like the banjo you already have. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [How Long Is a Bassoon? 4 ft 5 in Tall, 8 ft 6 in of Tube](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-is-a-bassoon/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bassoon](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bassoon/ "Bassoon")› How Long Is a Bassoon? 4 ft 5 in Tall, 8 ft 6 in of Tube A bassoon stands about four and a half feet tall when it is assembled, and holds roughly eight and a half feet of tubing inside that. The gap between those two numbers is the whole instrument: the bore doubles back on itself near the floor, so a tube longer than most people are tall stands up next to a seated player. The short answer### About 135 cm tall — 4 ft 5 in — holding about 260 cm of bore, or 8 ft 6 in Those are Yamaha’s own figures for a standard German-system bassoon. The bore is a cone that starts at 4 mm where the reed goes in and opens to 40 mm at the bell, and it turns through 180 degrees inside a metal U at the bottom of the instrument. Unfolded, it would stand well clear of a standard doorway. **Assembled height:** ~135 cm / 4 ft 5 in **Bore unfolded:** ~260 cm / 8 ft 6 in **Pieces in the case:** five **Lowest note:** B♭1 ## Why it has to be that long Length sets pitch, but not at the same rate for every shape of tube. The acoustics group at the University of New South Wales puts the rule plainly: in a closed conical bore — the oboe, the saxophone, the bassoon — the longest wavelength the tube will sustain is twice the length of the cone. In a closed cylinder, which is what a clarinet is, it is *four* times the length. Same note, half the tube. That is the price of the cone, and the bassoon pays it. To reach B♭1 — the B♭ two lines below the bass staff, an octave above the lowest note the contrabassoon plays — a conical instrument needs something in the region of eight and a half feet of tube, where a cylindrical one of the clarinet family gets there on roughly half that. What the cone buys in return is the full harmonic series rather than the odd harmonics alone, which is why a bassoon overblows at the octave and a clarinet does not. Yamaha describe the bassoon’s range as extending over three octaves, which is more than the bass clef comfortably holds. That is why bassoon parts move up into the tenor clef in the high register instead of piling on ledger lines — a piece of notation that exists because of how much tube is in the room. ## The fold, and what it costs Eight and a half feet of tube standing straight up would be unplayable, so the bassoon folds once. The bore runs down the wing joint, into the boot at the bottom, round a metal U-tube, and back up through the long joint to the bell at the top. Carl Almenräder, a German military bandmaster, made the first of those U-tubes around 1825; Yamaha note that it has to be built to fine tolerances, and that denting one degrades the sound of the whole instrument. Three consequences follow from the fold, and each of them is something an owner deals with every week. What the fold doesWhyWhat it means in practice**Water collects at the bottom**The U-tube is the lowest point of the bore, and breath condenses as it coolsFine while the instrument is upright and being played. Laid flat afterwards, moisture soaks into the wood — so it comes apart and gets swabbed after every session**Tone holes are drilled at an angle**The instrument is too wide for fingers to reach the holes where the acoustics want them, and at the boot the bore passes through the same piece of wood twiceAn angled hole is a longer hole, which flattens the note slightly. Yamaha puts the deepest tone hole bore on a real bassoon at 4 cm — the hole alone is longer than most recorders’ finger spacing**The sound appears to move**The lowest note leaves through the bell at the top; the next note up leaves through holes below it, and lower still, until the bore turns and the pattern reversesPlayers seated in front of a bassoon often report the sound travelling up and down behind them. It is not an illusion — the sound really is coming out of a different height for each note ## The only part you can lengthen is the crook Most wind instruments tune by changing their length. A clarinettist pulls the barrel, a flautist pulls the head joint, a trumpeter moves a slide. The bassoon has none of that: the body is four pieces of wood locked together and there is nothing in it that extends. Tuning happens entirely at the metal crook — the bocal — that carries the reed into the wing joint. So bocals are sold by length, and the number stamped on one is what it means. A No. 1 is the shorter standard; a No. 2 is longer and sounds flatter. Yamaha note that European practice sometimes runs No. 0 and No. 1 instead, with No. 00 shorter again, and that 3 and 4 are longer. A new instrument normally arrives with two, and the reason is weather: heat raises an instrument’s pitch, so a long bocal brings it back down, and a short one does the opposite in the cold. It is a small tube doing a large job. The bore inside it widens from about 4 mm at the reed to about 10 mm where it meets the wood, and how it widens over that span — the taper angle — is what makes one bocal sound different from another of the same length. Some professionals own dozens. ## Too long for whose hands? Height is not the problem. The instrument sits at an angle across the body with its weight on a strap, so a short player and a tall one hold it the same way. The problem is reach: the tone holes are spread over the full length of a wide instrument, and small hands do not span them. Both of the makers a school is likely to buy from build a short-reach model for exactly this, and they solve it in opposite ways — which matters, because only one of the two costs the player anything. ModelHow the reach is shortenedWhat you give up**Fox Renard 51** Short reach key configurationThree keys are deleted from the layout: the right-hand B♭ trill, the right thumb A♭ and the right-hand C♯Those three keys. Fox describe the model as suiting beginning or middle school students, which is the honest scope — it is a stepping stone, not a permanent instrument**Howarth Academy Student Short Reach**Nothing is removed. The wing joint’s thumb key touches are extended in length, and the E♭ and C♯ touches on the long joint are repositionedNothing, mechanically. Howarth lists it slightly below its standard Academy student model rather than above it Fox’s own note on the Renard 51 is the one worth reading twice: the keys were *removed* “to accommodate small hands”. A student who grows into a full instrument will have to learn three fingerings they never had. That is a reasonable trade at eleven and a poor one at sixteen, and it is the question to ask a school before the rental form is signed. If a bassoon is being chosen on more than reach, [what a bassoon costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/) covers the rest of the ladder. ## Getting it out of the room A bassoon comes apart into five pieces — bell, long joint, boot, wing joint and the metal crook — and the longest of them is the long joint. It is long enough that makers have built an entire product category around shortening it. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Yamaha calls the result a “Gentleman’s Type”: the bass joint is split at a different point and the bell lengthened to make up the difference, so the pieces fit a shorter case that looks like an attaché case rather than a coffin. Fox sell the same idea as a *cut*, and list three — standard, long bell compact, and divided bass compact — with a separate case for each family. Yamaha’s YFG-811 has a variant, the 811C, whose only listed difference is that the included case is the compact one. None of this is free. A compact cut adds a join, and a join is another place for a 260 cm cone to leak. It is bought by people who take a bassoon on aircraft and trains, not by people who carry one to the same rehearsal room every week. ## Three things the length makes you buy None of these is glamorous, and all three exist because the instrument is the size it is. Buy this one first ### Hercules DS561B Bassoon and Bass Clarinet Stand - Folding tripod, swivel legs with locking pins - Adjustable base rest - Retractable floor peg - Load capacity 15 kg / 33 lb - ~$80 A bassoon cannot be put down. Water sits in the U-tube at the bottom of the boot the moment you stop playing, and Yamaha is explicit that this is harmless while the instrument is vertical and a problem the moment it is laid horizontal — the wood in the lower joints will rot if it is left that way often enough. Between movements, during a rehearsal break, or in the twenty minutes before a lesson finishes, the instrument has to stand up somewhere. The base rest adjusts to take either a bassoon or a bass clarinet and can be turned to hold the instrument facing towards or away from the stand, so it works whichever way the chair is pointing. The 15 kg capacity is many times what any bassoon weighs; that figure is there because the same stand takes a bass clarinet. It folds flat enough to go in a bag. Around $80 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gYcAgW) If you have to carry one anywhere ### Protec PL252 Platinum Series Bassoon Gig Bag - 20 mm high-density foam - Wood panel supports - Padded backpack straps - Double bocal section - ~$180 The case a bassoon arrives in is built to survive being dropped, which is the right priority and makes it a heavy rectangular box to get on a bus. This is the other kind of case: ballistic nylon over 20 mm foam with wood panels behind the sensitive areas, carried on the back rather than in one hand. Two details earn it. The interior blocks are modular, so the fit can be tightened around a particular instrument rather than left loose — which matters more on a bassoon than on most things, because five loose pieces in a bag knock against each other. And there is a dedicated section for two bocals, which is what you have if the instrument came with the usual pair. Protec lists it at $294; it does not sell for that. Around $180 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i2tdJj) The part a body swab cannot reach ### Hodge Silk Bassoon Bocal Swab - 100% silk - Weighted pull-through - Sized for the crook only - Made and sold by Hodge - ~$20 The crook is a curved metal tube about 4 mm across at one end. Nothing straight goes through it, and it is the part of the instrument the reed has been sitting in, so it is also the wettest. A body swab is far too big; this is the same silk in the size that fits. **Pull it, do not push a brush through it.** The whisper key’s tone hole is on the crook rather than on the wood, and it is closed by a needle-thin pipe that protrudes into the middle of the bore with a disc on the end too small to see properly. Yamaha warns that people bend it while cleaning without ever noticing it was there. A soft weighted pull-through is the reason that warning does not apply to you. Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UrQyKL) ## How it compares InstrumentTube lengthFoldsLowest note**Oboe**A straight tube you can hold in one handNoneB♭3**Bassoon**About 260 cm / 8 ft 6 inOnce, in the bootB♭1**Contrabassoon**About 5.5 mFour timesB♭0 — the lowest note in the orchestra The oboe is the comparison people reach for, and it is worth being careful with. The two share a double reed and a conical bore and nothing else about their dimensions: the bassoon sounds two octaves lower on a great deal more tube, and its reed is made entirely of cane with no metal staple, pushed onto the crook rather than into the instrument. It is not a large oboe any more than a cello is a large violin. [Bassoon vs. oboe](https://promusicvault.com/bassoon-vs-oboe/) goes into which suits which player, and [the woodwind family](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) sets both of them against the rest of the section. ## Common questions ### How tall is a bassoon standing up? About 135 cm, or 4 ft 5 in, assembled. On a stand with the floor peg down it sits a little higher than that. ### How long is a bassoon if you unfold it? Around 260 cm of bore, or 8 ft 6 in. You cannot actually unfold one — the U-tube is a fixed metal casting inside the boot joint — but that is the length of the air column the instrument contains. ### How many pieces does a bassoon come apart into? Five: the bell, the long joint (some makers call it the bass joint), the boot, the wing joint (also called the tenor joint), and the metal crook or bocal. The four wooden pieces are the instrument; the crook is the part you tune with. ### Is a bassoon too big for a child? Not because of its height, which the strap takes care of. The limit is finger reach, and the makers agree on where it falls — Fox aim their short-reach Renard 51 at beginning and middle school players. Below that, most teachers start a student on another woodwind and move them across later. ### Why is the bassoon longer than the bass clarinet? Because of the shape of the bore rather than the pitch. A closed cylinder sounds a note whose wavelength is four times the tube’s length; a closed cone needs a tube twice as long to sound the same note. The clarinet family is cylindrical and the bassoon is conical, so the bassoon needs roughly double the tube to reach the same bottom of its range. ### How old is the bassoon? Older than the shape it has now. Its ancestors — the shawm, the rankett and the dulcian — were sixteenth-century instruments, and bassoons with three or four keys were normal through the eighteenth. The instrument in an orchestra today is essentially Almenräder’s, redesigned in the first half of the nineteenth century around a much larger set of keys and that U-tube in the boot. If it is the weight rather than the length that is the question, [how much a bassoon weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh/) is the other half of the same problem — and [why bassoons are so expensive](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/) explains what it takes to build 260 cm of accurate conical bore out of maple. **Categories:** Bassoon --- ### [Gold Tone CC-50 Review: What the Brass Tone Ring Buys You](https://promusicvault.com/gold-tone-cc-50-banjo-review/) **Published:** April 6, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Gold Tone CC-50 Review: What the Brass Tone Ring Buys You The Gold Tone CC-50 Cripple Creek is an eleven-inch open back with a multi-ply maple rim, a hard maple neck and a rolled brass tone ring, listed by Gold Tone at around $475 with a gig bag. The tone ring is the whole argument for it, and it is unusual at the price: the banjos immediately either side of it use a composite rim or carry no ring at all. Whether that is worth having depends entirely on what you plan to play, and a lot of open-back players would rather not have it at all. The short version### Deering Goodtime For about $125 more than the Cripple Creek, the Goodtime is built in California, weighs a pound less and carries an eight-year warranty. It has no tone ring and no bag, and for old-time and clawhammer neither of those is the thing you are short of. It is the open back you stop upgrading from. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zN8Q9F) **Cheaper:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315, 3.75 lb **Same pot, more hardware:** Gold Tone CC-100 — around $590 **If it has to be bluegrass:** Gold Tone CC-50RP — around $640, resonator ## What Gold Tone actually builds The pot is the part that matters. Eleven inches of multi-ply maple, an eleven-inch rolled brass flat-bar tone ring sitting on top of it, a flat-bar tension hoop and eighteen brackets pulling a Remo coated head down over the lot. The neck is hard maple with a rosewood fingerboard, twenty-two frets, dot inlays and a two-way truss rod, on a single eleven-inch coordinator rod. Two fittings are better than the price suggests. The nut is a 1-3/16″ Zero Glide — a slotted replacement nut that stops the strings binding as you tune, and normally something you buy afterward and fit yourself. The fifth-string peg is geared rather than friction, which is the difference between a drone string that stays where you put it and one that creeps flat every time your thumb brushes it. Gold Tone CC-50Gold Tone AC-1Deering GoodtimeRim11″ multi-ply maple11″ composite11″ 3-ply mapleTone ringRolled brass flat barNoneNoneNeckMapleMahoganyRock mapleFingerboardRosewoodRosewoodMapleScale length26-3/16″26-3/16″26 1/4″Brackets181616Weight5.5 lb3.75 lb4.5 lbBagIncludedIncludedNot includedWarranty7 years5 years, transfers8 yearsPrice band~$475[~$315](https://amzn.to/4g97EFE)[~$600](https://amzn.to/4zN8Q9F) Every Cripple Creek is set up in Gold Tone’s Titusville, Florida shop before it ships, which is worth more on a $475 banjo than any single component on it. The warranty on the CC line runs seven years to the first owner and one year to whoever buys it next, and it only applies if the instrument came from an authorized Gold Tone dealer. ## What the brass tone ring does A tone ring is a metal hoop between the wooden rim and the head. The head bears on metal instead of wood, and the result is more volume, more sustain and a harder edge to the attack. A rolled brass flat bar is the light end of that idea — nothing like the twelve-pound bell-brass castings on bluegrass banjos — but the effect is in the same direction. For frailing and clawhammer that is a mixed blessing. The plunky, dry, quick-decaying voice that old-time players spend money chasing comes from a plain wooden rim with nothing on it, which is exactly why the American-built open backs at this price and well above it ship without a ring. The Cripple Creek’s brass gives you cut in a noisy room and a note that hangs on longer than a pure old-time banjo’s would. So the ring is a genuine feature and not automatically an upgrade. If you are heading for [clawhammer and old-time](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/), it is a reason to look at the CC-50 rather than a reason to buy it. If you want one banjo that can hold a line against a couple of guitars, it earns its keep. ## Weight, bag and the tailpiece question Gold Tone publishes 5.5 lb. That is a pound heavier than a Goodtime and nearly two heavier than their own AC-1, and it is the price of the maple rim and the brass. Ignore any figure you see attached to a retail listing — those are shipping weights, measured with the bag and the carton, and they run high by a couple of pounds on every banjo sold. [What banjos actually weigh](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) goes through the real numbers. The included bag is a light one — enough to carry the banjo to a lesson, not enough to protect it in a car boot. Gold Tone’s own hardshell for the eleven-inch pot is the HD14, and it is the accessory to budget for if the banjo is going to travel. One spec has changed over the years and it explains a lot of older advice about this banjo. The current sheet lists a Terminator tailpiece — Gold Tone’s high-mass, bend-proof design that takes loop or ball-end strings. Cripple Creeks built earlier came with a straight-line tailpiece, which is the part long-time owners talk about replacing. On a current one there is nothing to replace. ## Which Cripple Creek you are looking at Gold Tone builds four instruments around this pot, and they are easy to confuse because three of them cost the same. ModelWhat changesWeightPrice**CC-50**The standard open back, 22 frets, GDGBD5.5 lb~$475**CC-50TR** TravelerTwo frets removed, 23-9/16″ scale, tuned a whole step up to AEAC#E5 lb[~$475](https://amzn.to/4ikAnsn)**CC-50RP**13″ maple resonator that pops off, planetary tuners6.5 lb[~$640](https://amzn.to/4qq9Rjq)**CC-50/L**The standard banjo, left-handed5.5 lb[~$475](https://amzn.to/4qu8Ve1) The Traveler is the one to be careful about, because it costs the same as the full-size banjo and is not a smaller version of it. Gold Tone ships it tuned to A rather than G — same shapes, everything sounding a whole step higher — so a chord book, a teacher and a jam will all be a step away from you until you change it. Heavier strings bring it back down to GDGBD, and Gold Tone says so itself, but that is a purchase to make deliberately rather than by accident. The RP is the interesting one. It is the same pot with a full-walled thirteen-inch resonator and no flange, so the resonator and its brackets come off with a screwdriver and you have an open back again. Planetary tuners replace the guitar-style ones. If you are still deciding between the two shapes, [open back against resonator](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is the argument in full. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## What else this money buys Best open back at the money### Deering Goodtime - Open back, 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Rock maple neck, maple fingerboard, 22 frets - 26 1/4″ scale, geared fifth peg - 4.5 lb - Built in San Diego, eight-year warranty - ~$600 - Made in California by a firm that builds nothing but banjos - A pound lighter than the Cripple Creek - Eight years of warranty, and the resale to match - Plain maple rim is the classic old-time voice - No tone ring, so less volume and less sustain - No bag in the box - Maple fingerboard rather than rosewood - $125 more Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zN8Q9F) This is the instrument the CC-50 has to beat and mostly does not. Deering builds it in San Diego, it weighs 4.5 lb, and eight years of cover is longer than anything else at this end of the market. What you give up is the brass ring and the bag. For old-time playing that is a trade most people would take; for volume it is not. The same pot, dressed up### Gold Tone CC-100 - Open back, 11″ multi-ply maple rim - 11″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Maple neck, rosewood board, snowflake inlays - 24 brackets, dual coordinator rods - 6 lb, gloss natural finish - Gig bag included, seven-year warranty - ~$590 - Identical rim and tone ring to the CC-50 - Twenty-four brackets hold the head tension more evenly - Two coordinator rods make the neck angle easier to set - Gloss finish and snowflake inlays look a class above - Half a pound heavier again - The extra money goes on fittings, not on tone - Gloss shows every fingerprint Around $590 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ijpVRY) If the brass ring is the reason you were looking at a Cripple Creek, this is where that ring still lives. The rim, the ring, the scale and the neck timber are the CC-50’s; the difference is six more brackets, a second coordinator rod, snowflake inlays and gloss. Worth it if you like the look, not if you are buying tone by the dollar. If $475 is the ceiling### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim - No tone ring, Remo frosted head - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, 22 frets - 26-3/16″ scale, 1-3/16″ Zero Glide nut - 3.75 lb - Gig bag included, five-year transferable warranty - ~$315 - 3.75 lb, and nothing full-scale here is lighter - Same Florida setup and same scale as the CC-50 - Warranty transfers in full, which is rare - Composite rim ignores humidity entirely - Composite pot has a drier, quicker voice than maple - No tone ring, so it will not carry a jam - Sixteen brackets rather than eighteen Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g97EFE) The AC-1 answers the question the CC-50 raises: how much of the Cripple Creek’s $475 is the rim and the ring? About $160, and everything else — the scale, the setup, the Zero Glide nut, the maker — comes down the ladder unchanged. If you are not sure the banjo is going to stick, start here and lose nothing. [The rest of the beginner field](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) is worth a look before you decide. ## Common questions ### Can you play bluegrass on a CC-50? You can play the notes on it, and the brass ring gives it more voice than most open backs. What it cannot do is project the way a resonator banjo does, because an open back throws a good part of its sound backward into your stomach. In a jam with a guitar and a fiddle you will be the quietest thing there. The CC-50RP is the same instrument with the resonator on, and that is the version to buy for [bluegrass](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/). ### Can you add a resonator later? Gold Tone built the conversion to run the other way. The CC-50RP is flangeless, so its resonator and mounting brackets come off with a screwdriver and leave you an open back — which is the version to buy if you want both. Going from the plain CC-50 to a resonator means sourcing the resonator and the brackets to fit it, and that is a job rather than an afternoon. ### What is the difference between the CC-50 and the CC-100? Fittings and finish. Both use an eleven-inch multi-ply maple rim with a rolled brass tone ring on a 26-3/16″ maple neck. The CC-100 adds six brackets, a second coordinator rod, snowflake inlays and a gloss finish, and gains half a pound. Nothing in the sound-producing part of the banjo changes. ### Does it need a setup when it arrives? No. Gold Tone sets every instrument up in Florida before it ships, which is the main reason to buy from a maker rather than to chase the cheapest banjo with a Remo head on it. You will still need to tune it and check the bridge is standing where it should — the twelfth-fret harmonic should match the fretted note, and the outer strings should sit the same distance in from each edge of the fingerboard. ### What strings does it take? Standard five-string sets. Gold Tone ships it with .011, .013, .016, .024w and .011 — a light gauge — and the Terminator tailpiece accepts loop or ball ends, so anything on the rack fits. Going up to a medium set adds tension and volume, which suits clawhammer. [Which banjo strings to buy](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) covers the gauges properly. ## Verdict The CC-50 is an honest instrument and a well-judged one: a wooden rim, a brass ring, a Zero Glide nut and a geared fifth peg, set up by the people whose name is on the headstock, with a bag and seven years of cover. As a first banjo it does everything a first banjo needs to. What makes it a harder recommendation than it looks is where it sits. A hundred and sixty dollars below, the AC-1 gives you the same scale, the same setup and two pounds less to hold. A hundred and twenty-five above, the Goodtime gives you a banjo built in California with a warranty that outlasts most players’ interest. The Cripple Creek’s answer to both is the tone ring — and for the open-back music this banjo is shaped for, the tone ring is the one thing you might have been happy to do without. More on the shape and the money: [the best open-back banjos](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/), [what a banjo costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/), and [Deering against Gold Tone](https://promusicvault.com/deering-vs-gold-tone/) if it has come down to those two. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Filed vs. Unfiled Reeds: What the File Cut Changes, and What It Doesn't](https://promusicvault.com/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Filed vs. Unfiled Reeds: What the File Cut Changes, and What It Doesn’t Turn a clarinet or saxophone reed over and look at where the bark stops. On some reeds it ends in a curved line that dips toward the tip. On others a narrow strip has been taken off straight across, leaving a clean edge and a small step. That strip is the whole difference: reeds with it are filed, reeds without it are unfiled. It is a real difference in the blank, and it is a smaller one than the labels suggest. The reed makers themselves do not agree on what it sounds like — D’Addario calls one filed reed “dark, rich” and another one “tonal clarity”, and describe an unfiled reed as “warm, refined”. Vandoren sells exactly one reed with the word filed on it and classify nothing else in the catalogue that way. The short answer### Neither, until you have tried both on your own mouthpiece You do not buy a cut, you buy a reed model, and the cut arrives with it. The cheapest honest way to settle it on alto sax is Vandoren’s mix card: four reeds at one strength, one of them a JAVA and one a JAVA Red, which is the same reed family filed and unfiled. About $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U6IYFf) **The only true like-for-like test:** D’Addario Select Jazz, sold as Filed and Unfiled, about $30–40 a box **On clarinet:** Rico (unfiled, about $25) against Royal (filed, about $28) **If you play outdoors:** a synthetic reed, about $34, where there is no bark to file at all ## What the file cut is A single reed starts as a length of cane split from a tube of *Arundo donax*. The back half keeps its bark and sits flat against the mouthpiece table. The front half is planed away into the vamp — the sloping, pale area that thins to a tip a few hundredths of a millimeter thick. Where the vamp meets the bark, there is a choice. Leave the bark alone and the join is a shallow curve, wrapping around the sides of the vamp in a U. That is the unfiled reed, also sold as the American cut, the single cut or simply the regular cut. Or take a narrow strip of bark off in a straight line across the reed, above the shoulder, and the join becomes a clean horizontal edge. That is the filed reed — the French file cut, the French cut, the double cut. The strip is perhaps a couple of millimeters deep and it is the only thing that changes. Same cane, same tip, same taper, same strength number on the box. ## What it changes Bark is the hardest, stiffest part of the cane. Removing a strip of it just behind the vamp means there is less rigid material at the point where the reed is anchored, so the whole vamp can move a little more freely against the mouthpiece. That is the mechanical argument for the filed cut, and it is why filed reeds are usually described as quicker to speak and easier to blow. The tone claims are where it falls apart. Here is what the makers say about their own reeds, in their own words: ReedCutWhat the maker says it does**D’Addario Royal**Filed“additional tonal clarity”, ease of response**D’Addario Hemke**Filed“a dark, rich tone with immediate response”**D’Addario Reserve** (alto)Filed“dynamic flexibility and exceptional, warm tone”**D’Addario Rico**Unfiled“unfiled cut for added support”, quick response**D’Addario Mitchell Lurie**Unfiled“warm, refined tone and effortless playability”**D’Addario Select Jazz**BothThe same sentence for either cut: “great projection, clarity, and a vibrant sound”**Vandoren JAVA Red**Filed“a full, rich, centered sound” with “an extremely precise attack”**Légère French Cut**Synthetic“a dark, focused sound” for classical players**Légère American Cut**Synthetic“a bright, punchy sound” for jazz Filed reeds in that list are called clear, dark and warm. Unfiled reeds are called supportive and warm. And of the two synthetic reeds carrying the French and American names, it is the French one that is sold as the darker. The cut is one of four or five things the maker adjusts, alongside vamp length, tip thickness, heel taper and the thickness of the spine down the middle, and those move the sound further than the strip of bark does. What survives is narrow and worth knowing: a filed reed of the same model and strength tends to speak a fraction sooner and take slightly less air, which suits a resistant, close-tipped mouthpiece. An unfiled one leaves more cane behind the vamp and tends to feel firmer under the bottom lip, which is why it is the traditional choice on wide-open jazz mouthpieces. Neither is a rule you should trust over your own ears. ## The reeds that let you actually test it Almost every reed comes as one cut or the other and gives you no choice about it. A few do, and those are the only way to change the cut without changing something else at the same time. № 1 · The cheapest experiment ### Vandoren Alto Sax Jazz Reed Mix Card - Four reeds, one each of ZZ, V16, JAVA and JAVA Red - All four at the same strength - Sold in strengths 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 - Reed comparison chart included - About $20 The JAVA and the JAVA Red on this card are the same reed family with and without the file cut, at a matched strength, so you can play one against the other in an afternoon rather than committing $39 to a box of ten and finding out you preferred the other one. The ZZ and V16 in the card are a bonus — both are Vandoren’s jazz cuts, and trying four reeds for half the price of one box is the point of it. **Pros**- Filed and unfiled at the same strength, in one purchase - Half the cost of a single box - Two more jazz cuts thrown in **Cons**- One reed of each, so a dud tells you nothing - Alto sax only — there is no clarinet equivalent that pairs a filed and an unfiled reed About $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U6IYFf) № 2 · The like-for-like pair ### D’Addario Organic Select Jazz, Filed and Unfiled - Same model, sold in both cuts - Third strengths — 2 Soft through 4 Hard - Boxes of 3, 10 or 25 - Alto, tenor, soprano and baritone - About $30–40 for ten This is as close to a controlled test as the reed world offers. D’Addario makes Select Jazz in a filed and an unfiled version, give them the same description word for word, and list them at the same price, so the only variable between the two boxes is the strip of bark. The third strengths help too: if a 3 Medium filed reed feels a shade loose, 3 Hard exists, where most brands would send you from 3 straight to 3.5. **Pros**- The only mainstream reed where the cut is the sole advertised difference - Third strengths make small adjustments possible - D’Addario lists both cuts at the same price, so neither is the budget option **Cons**- A jazz cut — not the reed for a classical audition - Two boxes to settle one question is about $70 Filed — about $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cMsYhV) Unfiled — about $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cSenBD) № 3 · The filed reed with a name for it ### Vandoren JAVA and JAVA “Filed – Red Cut” - JAVA: thicker tip, longer palette, designed in 1983 - JAVA Red: Vandoren’s file-cut version of it - Boxes of 10, strengths 1 to 4 - Alto, tenor, soprano and baritone - About $39 a box either way Vandoren describes the Red as more flexible than the original with a little more body, offering “a full, rich, centered sound and excellent projection with an extremely precise attack”. That is a fair description of what a file cut is supposed to buy you, and it is the only reed in the entire Vandoren catalogue sold on the strength of it. The plain JAVA is the green box that has been the standard jazz alto reed for forty years; the Red is worth a box if your mouthpiece feels like hard work at the start of a phrase. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Two well-established reeds, not a novelty pairing - Identical price, so no penalty either way - Available in the same strengths across the whole sax family **Cons**- The Red is not simply the JAVA plus a file cut — Vandoren changed the flexibility too - Both are jazz reeds with a thick tip; a classical player wants a different model JAVA, about $39[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ztakWj) JAVA Red, about $39[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qBJBCY) ## On clarinet, it is Rico against Royal Clarinet has no single model sold in both cuts, but it has the next best thing. Rico and Royal come from the same maker, and D’Addario describe both as built on a traditional blank and profile, naming the cut as what separates them: Rico is the unfiled one, Royal the filed one. They are three dollars apart, which makes trying both an easy decision. Unfiled ### Rico Organic Bb Clarinet Reeds - Unfiled cut - Strengths 1.5 to 4 - Box of 10, each reed sealed - The standard first reed in school programs - About $25 The orange box that most clarinettists start on. D’Addario puts the unfiled cut down to “added support”, which is a fair description of how it feels — firm under the lip, tolerant of a beginner’s embouchure wandering around, and forgiving if you bite. Cane consistency at this price is what it is, and a box of ten will contain a few that play noticeably better than the rest. **Pros**- The cheapest reed here per box - Firm enough to survive an unformed embouchure - Every strength from 1.5 up, so a beginner can start soft **Cons**- Box-to-box variation is real at this price - Plain in tone next to a step-up reed About $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zAwRRc) Filed ### D’Addario Royal Organic Bb Clarinet Reeds - Filed cut - Strengths 1 to 4 - Box of 10, each reed sealed - Same blank and profile as the Rico - About $28 Royal is the filed member of the same family, and D’Addario puts the cut down to “additional tonal clarity” alongside an easier response. It is the sensible step up when a student’s tone has arrived but their articulation is still late — the note starts sooner and the top of the register stops feeling like a fight. Same strength numbering as the Rico, so a 2.5 stays a 2.5 when you switch. **Pros**- Quicker response than the Rico at the same strength - Three dollars more, which is not a real barrier - Strength 1 exists, which almost nothing else offers **Cons**- Less forgiving of biting than the unfiled Rico - Still a student reed — it will not carry an advanced player About $28[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46bEhfZ) ## Strength and mouthpiece move more than the cut does Going from a 2.5 to a 3 changes the instrument more than going from unfiled to filed at the same number. And the right number is not a fixed property of the player — it depends on the mouthpiece you are blowing it against. Vandoren states the relationship plainly in their own technical notes: > With the same tip opening: long facing = stronger reed, short facing = softer reed. With the same facing: open mouthpiece = softer reed, closed mouthpiece = stronger reed. So a player who has moved to a wider-tipped jazz mouthpiece and kept the same reed strength is fighting the setup, and no amount of switching between cuts will fix it. Get the strength right against the mouthpiece first. Then the file cut is a genuine fine adjustment rather than a shot in the dark, and you will be able to hear it, because everything else will be settled. One more thing worth checking before you change anything: reeds are a consumable and a tired one behaves like the wrong one. A cane reed played daily is finished in a few weeks. If your response has gone soggy and your top register has gone unreliable, the reed has probably just died. ## Synthetic reeds, where there is no bark to file A molded synthetic reed has no bark and no vamp cut into it, so nothing is filed off anything. Légère still sell an American Cut and a French Cut, because the names have stopped describing a manufacturing step and started describing a style of reed. The French Cut is their classical reed, aimed at “a dark, focused sound”. The American Cut is the jazz one, aimed at “a bright, punchy sound”. They cost about ten times a single cane reed and last months rather than weeks, and they do not care about humidity, which is the argument for one if you play outdoors or switch instruments mid-set. Strength numbers do not transfer from cane, so expect to try one either side of your usual. Légère French CutLégère American Cut**Aimed at**Classical playingJazz and contemporary**Maker’s description**Dark, focused, centered, symphonicBright, punchy, maximum projection**Response**Smooth and even across registersFast, with more edge**Price**About $34About $34[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xfFleS)[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wBWaPN) ## Common questions ### How do I tell which one I already have? Look at the back of the reed, at the line where the pale vamp meets the darker bark. A straight line running across the reed, usually with a visible step down, is a filed reed. A curve that dips toward the tip and wraps around the sides is unfiled. It is easier to see under a lamp than in daylight. ### Is a filed reed brighter? Not reliably. D’Addario’s Hemke is a filed reed sold on its “dark, rich tone”, and their Reserve is a filed reed sold on warmth. Légère’s French Cut, which takes its name from the filed cut, is their darkest saxophone reed. The cut affects how the reed responds; the vamp length, tip thickness and spine are what set the tone color. ### Does the strength number change when I switch cuts? Within one maker, no — a Rico 2.5 and a Royal 2.5 are graded the same way. Across makers it changes a great deal, and a Vandoren 3 is stiffer than a Rico 3. Change one thing at a time. ### Why is it called the French cut? Because the French makers used it and the American makers did not, which is also where American cut comes from. Be careful with the term on clarinet: Vandoren also uses “French cut” to mean a reed shaped for the Boehm system as opposed to a German-system reed, which is a different distinction entirely and has nothing to do with filing. ### Does any of this apply to oboe and bassoon? No. A double reed is two pieces of gouged, shaped and scraped cane bound to a staple or a wire, with no bark left in the playing area at all, so there is nothing to file. The equivalent argument there is American scrape against European scrape, which is about the length and shape of the scraped area and produces a much larger difference than a file cut ever does. ### My teacher told me to buy a specific reed. Should I experiment anyway? Play what you were told for as long as it takes to get a stable sound, then experiment. A cut you prefer is worth having; a cut you chose while your embouchure was still forming tells you nothing, because the thing you were adjusting to was yourself. ## Also worth reading - [Best clarinet reeds for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) - [Best clarinet for marching band](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) - [Is the clarinet hard to play?](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) - [How much do clarinets cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) - [How much does a saxophone cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) - [Oboe vs. clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/) - [Woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Euphonium vs. Tuba: Same Fingerings, Half the Instrument](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Euphonium vs. Tuba: Same Fingerings, Half the Instrument These two get confused because they sit next to each other, they are both wound brass with the bell pointing up, and a school band calls anything down there “low brass”. But the relationship is more specific than family resemblance. The euphonium is the tuba’s smaller descendant, pitched exactly an octave higher, and it reads the same music with the same fingerings. If you want one answer### The BB♭ tuba is the euphonium built at twice the length, an octave lower and two and a half times the weight Both are B♭ instruments. Both read bass clef written in C. The fingerings are identical, so a euphonium player can read a tuba part and put the same valves down — it will just come out an octave below. What changes is the size: Yamaha’s student euphonium is a .571″ bore behind an 11″ bell, their student BB♭ tuba is .728″ behind 17½″, and Besson’s own figures put a euphonium at 10 lb 8 oz against 26 lb for their BB♭ tuba. **Key:** B♭ on both **Pitch:** the BB♭ tuba an octave lower **Weight:** 10½ lb vs 26 lb **Fingerings and clef:** the same ## Table of Contents - [Euphonium vs. tuba, side by side](#euphonium-vs-tuba-side-by-side) - [Twice the tubing, an octave down](#twice-the-tubing-an-octave-down) - [The weight is the difference you will feel first](#the-weight-is-the-difference-you-will-feel-first) - [They read the same music, and that is a historical accident](#they-read-the-same-music-and-that-is-a-historical-accident) - [They do not share a mouthpiece](#they-do-not-share-a-mouthpiece) - [The fourth valve matters more than the third](#the-fourth-valve-matters-more-than-the-third) - [Which is easier?](#which-is-easier) - [Where each one actually plays](#where-each-one-actually-plays) - [Where they came from](#where-they-came-from) - [What they cost](#what-they-cost) - [What you actually buy](#what-you-actually-buy) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [Is a euphonium just a small tuba?](#is-a-euphonium-just-a-small-tuba) - [Can a euphonium player switch to tuba?](#can-a-euphonium-player-switch-to-tuba) - [Do they play the same notes?](#do-they-play-the-same-notes) - [Can I use my euphonium mouthpiece in a tuba?](#can-i-use-my-euphonium-mouthpiece-in-a-tuba) - [Which should a beginner start on?](#which-should-a-beginner-start-on) - [Is three valves enough?](#is-three-valves-enough) - [Which is louder?](#which-is-louder) - [Related](#related) ## Euphonium vs. tuba, side by side EuphoniumTuba**Key**B♭BB♭, C, E♭ or F**Tubing length**About nine feetAbout eighteen feet in BB♭**Sounds**An octave above the BB♭ tubaThe lowest voice in the band**Bore**.571″–.590″.630″–.812″**Bell**11″ or 12″14⅜″–20″**Weight**10½ lb20½ lb in E♭, 23–30 lb in BB♭**Valves**Three on student horns, four above thatThree on student horns, four to six above that**Reads**Bass clef written in C — the same convention, and the same fingerings**Mouthpiece**Large shank, cup about 25½ mmTuba shank, cup about 32 mm**Where it plays**Concert band, brass band, soloOrchestra, concert band, brass band, brass quintet**How it sits**In your lapOn a chair, a stand or your knee ## Twice the tubing, an octave down A brass instrument’s pitch comes from the length of tube the air travels. A B♭ euphonium is about nine feet of it. Yamaha puts the air path of a B♭ tuba at approximately 5.40 meters — near enough eighteen feet — with no valves down, stretching to about 9.60 meters with all of them depressed. Double the length, drop an octave. That is the whole of the difference in pitch, and everything else about the tuba being larger follows from having to wrap twice as much metal around a seated player. The bore widens with it. Across Yamaha, Conn, Holton, King, Besson and Wessex, every euphonium in current production is bored between .571″ and .590″, with an 11″ or 12″ bell. Tubas start at .630″ and run to .812″ on Yamaha’s professional rotary BB♭, with bells from 14⅜″ on a three-quarter-size student horn to 20″. There is no overlap and no ambiguous middle, which is unusual — the baritone and the euphonium blur into each other constantly, and these two never do. One caution about the word tuba: it covers four different instruments. BB♭ is the school and brass band standard and the one an octave below the euphonium. C is the American orchestral tuba. E♭ sits a fifth below the euphonium and F a fourth below it, and both are smaller, quicker horns that professionals use for solo and high-register work. If someone says a tuba is an octave below a euphonium, they mean the BB♭. ## The weight is the difference you will feel first Besson builds both instruments and publish a weight for both, measured the same way, which makes them the cleanest comparison available. Their Prestige euphonium is **10 lb 8 oz**. Their Sovereign E♭ tuba is **20 lb 8 oz**, just under double, and their BB♭ is **26 lb**. Wessex’s B♭ concert tubas land in the same place, from 23.1 lb for their smallest full-size model up to 29 lb 12 oz for a 6/4 instrument. Ten and a half pounds is a real load in a lap for an hour and the reason euphonium players end up with a pad or a strap. Twenty-six pounds is a different problem altogether: it does not rest on you at all. A tuba goes on a chair, on a stand, or balanced on a knee, and Yamaha’s own advice is worth repeating — hold it by the thick outer tubing or a wide part of the body, because the slides will bend under the instrument’s own weight if you lift it by them. That weight is also why the tuba is the instrument that stays at school. A euphonium in a case is something a fourteen-year-old carries home on a bus. A tuba in a case is not. ## They read the same music, and that is a historical accident Almost every brass instrument transposes: a B♭ trumpet player reads a written C and a B♭ comes out. The euphonium and the tuba are the exceptions. Both are B♭ instruments and both are written in C, at concert pitch, in bass clef — so the note on the page is the note that sounds. Yamaha explain why, and it is not a design decision. When the two instruments arrived in the mid-nineteenth century there were no dedicated players for them; contrabass and trombone players switched across, and composers wrote in a notation those players could already read. The convention stuck. It is the single most useful thing to know about the pair, because it means the fingerings are the same on both: a euphonium player handed a tuba puts down the same valves for the same written note and gets it an octave lower. There is a British exception. Brass band euphonium parts are written in treble clef and do transpose — the note on the page is not the note that sounds — because teachers there wanted beginners to learn one set of fingerings across the whole band and then move down to the low instruments. Tuba parts in the same tradition are treble clef too. So a euphonium player can find themselves reading either, and the clef on the page, rather than the instrument, tells you which convention you are in. ## They do not share a mouthpiece This is where the family resemblance stops being useful. Conn ships its euphoniums with a large-shank Bach 5G, whose cup is **25.50 mm** across. They ship their tubas with a Bach 18, whose cup is **32.10 mm**. Yamaha does the same thing with their own numbering — a 48 on the student euphonium, a 67 on the student tuba. The tuba mouthpiece is a quarter again wider and it will not go into a euphonium’s leadpipe, nor will the euphonium’s seat properly in a tuba. Worth knowing if you play both: the euphonium takes a mouthpiece from the trombone family, which is why 5G, 6½AL and similar sizes turn up on euphonium and trombone listings together. Check it says large shank. The same model number is made in both shanks and only the part number separates them — Bach’s 341 series is large, 350 is small — and a small-shank mouthpiece sits far too deep in a receiver built for a large one. ## The fourth valve matters more than the third Both instruments come with three valves at the student end and four above it, and on both the fourth is doing the same job: it fills the gap between the bottom of the ordinary range and the fundamental, and it gives an alternative fingering that plays in tune where the three-valve combinations do not. Yamaha says plainly what the three-valve horn costs you. On a euphonium, “if they have three pistons, part of the tonal range in the lower register (when you use 1+3 or 1+2+3 fingerings) tends to sound sharp”. That is the maker describing its own cheaper model, and it is the honest reason a four-valve euphonium is worth the step up rather than anything about tone. On tubas the same problem exists and is solved the same way, with some professional instruments going to five and six valves for finer control down there. Above that there is the compensating system, invented in the nineteenth century and, in Yamaha’s description, a means of correcting the instrument’s pitch in the lower register when the pistons are depressed while also making fingering easier. Every professional euphonium is compensating; Besson’s Sovereign and Prestige, Yamaha’s Neo and Wessex’s Dolce all use it. British-style tubas are compensating too. American tubas usually are not, adding a fifth valve instead. It is the same problem answered two ways, and it is the main thing separating a $2,000 euphonium from an $800 one. ## Which is easier? The euphonium, but not for the reason usually given. The size of the instrument is not the obstacle. Yamaha puts the lung capacity question flatly: the tuba does need more air than a clarinet or a trumpet, but “it pales in comparison to the flute”, and “there are women of small physical stature who are professional tubaists”. Anyone with ordinary lungs can play one. What actually makes the tuba harder is timing. There is so much air inside it that a note takes a moment to arrive after you blow, and the previous note keeps sounding after you stop — play a C then a D and you have to release the C early or the D lands late against everyone else. Yamaha describes it as something that becomes second nature, and it does, but it is a real skill the euphonium does not demand as sharply. The euphonium is also easier to hear yourself on. It sits in the tenor register where the ear separates pitches easily, and it carries the tune often enough that you find out quickly whether you are in tune. A student on the bottom line of the band, playing whole notes, can go a long time without discovering that. ## Where each one actually plays The tuba has a chair in the symphony orchestra and the euphonium does not. That is the sharpest practical division between them, and it runs the opposite way to what the instruments’ relative difficulty would suggest. Yamaha’s own illustration of the two makes the point: their tuba example is the prelude to Wagner’s *Meistersinger*, their euphonium example Holst’s *Second Suite for Military Band*. The euphonium’s home is the concert band and the British brass band, where it is a solo voice rather than a bass one — the instrument that gets the tune. When an orchestral score does want that sound it asks for a “tenor tuba”, as Holst does in *The Planets* and Strauss in *Ein Heldenleben*, and a euphonium player is brought in for the night. It is a superb instrument with a thin orchestral repertoire, which is worth knowing before choosing it. The tuba has the opposite profile: every orchestra needs one, every concert band needs one or two, and there is a solo literature on top — Vaughan Williams wrote his Concerto for Bass Tuba in 1954, widely called the first concerto for the instrument. If the goal is to end up playing in an orchestra, only one of these two gets you there. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Where they came from The tuba is the older of the two by three years. The German military bandmaster Wilhelm Wieprecht and the instrument maker Johann Moritz built the basstuba, and Moritz filed the patent on 12 September 1835. Before it, the low line in an orchestra went to the ophicleide or the serpent — keyed instruments with tone holes, closer to woodwinds in their mechanism. Mendelssohn’s *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* overture of 1826 still calls for an ophicleide. Three years later Moritz built a higher version, the tenor tuba. Another German, Ferdinand Sommer, made its tubing thicker and more tapered and named the result the euphonium, from the Greek *euphonos*, beautiful sound. So the euphonium is a tuba that was made smaller and then made more conical — which is exactly why they share a notation, a set of fingerings and a general shape, and why nobody thought to give the euphonium a transposing part of its own. Adolphe Sax was building his saxhorn family in Paris at the same time, and his bass saxhorn was sold as a euphonium and did well. The two lines merged in practice, which is part of why the naming around this end of the band has stayed messy ever since. ## What they cost The tuba is roughly double the euphonium at every rung, and for a plain reason: Yamaha attribute the price to the quantity of metal and the labor of working it, and a tuba is twice the metal. Wessex publishes prices for their whole range, which makes the ladder visible in one place — a student euphonium at about $800 against a junior tuba at about $1,600, a compensating euphonium at about $2,000 against a full-size B♭ tuba at about $2,900, and a handmade euphonium at about $3,300 against E♭ and BB♭ tubas from $3,500 to well past $8,000. Below about $800 for a euphonium and $1,400 for a tuba you are into instruments with no maker behind them — no published warranty, no spare pistons, no repair route when a valve sticks or a slide seizes. On something this large that matters more than on a trumpet, because the repair bill is proportional to the instrument and a dent in a bottom bow is a specialist job. This is the main reason the low brass in a school band belongs to the school. Our separate guide to [how much a tuba costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/) goes further into the tiers. ## What you actually buy On either instrument the horn is usually lent to you and the mouthpiece is yours. It is also the one part where the two genuinely differ, so it is the first thing to get right. \#1 — For the euphonium ### Bach 5G Large Shank Mouthpiece - Large shank (Bach 341 series) - 25.50 mm cup diameter - Deep cup, medium-wide rim - ~$85 This is the mouthpiece Conn pack with their own euphoniums, which is as good a recommendation as a student size gets — the maker voicing the instrument chose it. The deep cup is what you want on a conical horn: it fills out the bottom of the range, which is where a three-valve euphonium already struggles, and it keeps the tenor register warm rather than bright. Read the shank before ordering. Bach makes a 5G in small shank as well and the model name does not distinguish them; the part number does, and 341 is the large one. If the euphonium is a school instrument, take the mouthpiece out of it and compare the shank diameter before you buy anything. **Pros**- The size the maker fits to the instrument at the factory - Deep cup helps exactly where a student euphonium is weakest - Also correct on a large-shank trombone, so it travels with you **Cons**- Wrong for a small-shank horn, and the name will not tell you - Not cheap for a piece of metal - Useless on a tuba — it is not the same fitting Around $85[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4d2wDIz) \#2 — For the tuba ### Bach 18 Tuba Mouthpiece - Tuba shank - 32.10 mm cup diameter - Medium-deep cup, medium-wide rim - ~$110 The 18 is what Conn, Holton and King all pack with their BB♭ tubas, and Bach describe it as their best-selling all-round size with an even upper register. Set beside the 5G above, the numbers make the point this whole page has been making: 32.10 mm against 25.50 mm is not a variation on a theme, it is a different instrument’s fitting. A medium-deep cup is the sensible default for a student. It is easier to center a note on than the very deep orchestral sizes, and it does not thin out the top of the range, which matters because a school tuba part goes higher than people expect. **Pros**- The size three American makers fit as standard - Even across the range rather than specialized at one end - Correct on a sousaphone too, so it covers marching season **Cons**- The dearest item here - Middle-of-the-road by design — a specialist would go deeper - Will not fit a euphonium Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x0Bq4L) \#3 — Works on both ### Yamaha Low Brass Maintenance Kit - Valve oil and slide grease - Flexible cleaner, mouthpiece brush, casing brush - Polishing cloth and care manual - ~$29 Valves on a large instrument stick for the same reason they do on a small one, but a seized piston on a borrowed tuba is somebody else’s instrument and the school will notice. This has the oil, the grease, both brushes and the snake in one box, sized for low brass rather than for a trumpet. The mouthpiece brush is the part most beginners skip and the part that matters most, since the mouthpiece is the one thing here that is yours and lives in a bag. The rest is the routine a director will otherwise spend a lesson explaining. **Pros**- Covers the euphonium and the tuba equally - Cheaper than buying the oil, grease and brushes separately - Comes with the instructions, which a beginner needs **Cons**- The bottles are small and you will replace the oil first - Nothing in it addresses a stuck slide that has already seized Around $29[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46q7bZY) \#4 — The one that fixes the tuning problem ### Korg TM-70C Tuner and Metronome with Contact Mic - Chromatic tuner and metronome, together - CM-400 contact mic included - Transpose mode and sound-out mode - ~$50 Low brass is the hardest thing on earth for a tuner’s built-in microphone to read, because the fundamental is below where a small mic works well and a band room is full of other people. The contact mic clips to the bell and reads the vibration instead, and it is the reason to take this version rather than the bare tuner. It earns its place on either instrument, but it is close to essential on a three-valve one. If your low register goes sharp on 1+3 and 1+2+3 — which Yamaha says it will — a tuner is how you find out by how much, and the sound-out mode gives you a reference pitch to match against rather than a needle to chase. **Pros**- The contact mic works in a room where a microphone tuner cannot - Tuner and metronome in one thing to remember - Handles the treble-clef transposing parts as well **Cons**- The clip is one more small part to lose - Display is small if it is on a stand across the room Around $50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xthdpe) \#5 — For the twenty-six pounds ### Hercules DS552B Tuba/Euphonium Display Stand - Height adjustable - Fits both instruments - Folds for transport - ~$109 A tuba set on the floor gets stood on, knocked over and dented in the bottom bow, and that is the expensive repair on this instrument. A stand takes it off the floor and holds it at playing height, which also solves the other problem — balancing twenty-six pounds on a knee for a whole rehearsal is what makes people give the instrument up. It adjusts down far enough to be useful for a euphonium too, though the case for one there is weaker: ten and a half pounds sits in a lap perfectly well, and a pad does most of the job for a third of the money. Buy this for the tuba. **Pros**- Prevents the two most common ways a tuba gets damaged - Adjustable, so it suits a growing player - Covers both instruments if a household has one of each **Cons**- Expensive for what it is - Barely worth it for a euphonium on its own - Another thing to carry to a concert Around $109[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4r2rbLX) ## Common questions ### Is a euphonium just a small tuba? Historically, close to it. Moritz built the tenor tuba three years after the basstuba, and Ferdinand Sommer widened and tapered its tubing into what he named the euphonium. Yamaha still group it with the tuba family. But it is a separate instrument now, with its own repertoire, its own mouthpiece and its own job in a band. ### Can a euphonium player switch to tuba? More easily than almost any other switch in the band. The fingerings are identical and the clef is the same, so the reading transfers immediately. What has to change is the embouchure — a 32 mm cup asks for a looser, larger aperture — and the breathing, since the tuba wants more air per note and responds more slowly. Directors move euphonium players onto tuba constantly for exactly this reason. ### Do they play the same notes? They read the same written notes with the same fingerings, but a BB♭ tuba sounds an octave lower than a euphonium doing the same thing. The written ranges overlap substantially; the sounding ranges sit an octave apart. ### Can I use my euphonium mouthpiece in a tuba? No. The shanks are different sizes and the cups are more than six millimeters apart in diameter. An adaptor exists but it changes how the instrument responds, and it is a stopgap rather than a solution. ### Which should a beginner start on? Usually whichever the band needs, and that is not a dodge — low brass sections are chronically short of tuba players and a beginner who takes one gets more playing, sooner. If it is genuinely a free choice, the euphonium is easier to learn on, easier to hear yourself on, easier to take home, and hands you the tune more often. The tuba is the one that leads to an orchestra. ### Is three valves enough? For a first year, yes. After that the fourth valve is the upgrade that changes what you can play, because Yamaha themselves say a three-valve euphonium goes sharp in the low register on the 1+3 and 1+2+3 fingerings. It is the same story on the tuba. If you are choosing between a four-valve instrument and a three-valve one with a nicer finish, take the fourth valve. ### Which is louder? Less clear-cut than the sizes suggest. Yamaha makes the point that a tuba’s bore is not a straightforward guide to its volume, because where the valves sit on the instrument decides the bore as much as the design intent does. A tuba fills the bottom of a band’s sound; a euphonium projects a melody over the top of it. They are loud in different directions. ## Related The confusing pair is not this one — [euphonium vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) covers two instruments that really are hard to tell apart, and [tuba vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/) the step between them. [Tuba vs. sousaphone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) is the same instrument wrapped two ways. For where all of these sit in the section, see our guide to [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/), and for the numbers, [how much a tuba weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-weigh/). **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Euphonium vs. Baritone (And How to Tell Which One You Have)](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-baritone/) **Published:** March 29, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Euphonium vs. Baritone (And How to Tell Which One You Have) Most people asking this have a horn in front of them, or a part on the stand headed *Baritone*, and want to know whether the two match. Usually they don’t. Both instruments are in B♭, both are built from about nine feet of tubing, both have the same range and, near enough, the same fingerings. What separates them is how fast the tube widens on its way to the bell, and that shows up in one number you can measure with a tape: the bell. If you want one answer### Measure the bell. Under about 9½ inches it is a baritone; 10 inches or more it is a euphonium Across Yamaha, Besson and Wessex the true baritones run 8″ to 9¼″ at the bell and the euphoniums 11″ to 12″, with nothing in between. Valve count will not tell you — both are built with three and with four. And if the horn is bell-front and an American school called it a baritone, it is a euphonium: Yamaha’s own marching baritone is specified at a .571″ bore, identical to their marching euphonium. **Bell:** 8–9¼″ vs 10–12″ **Bore:** about .50–.54″ vs .57–.59″ **Weight:** 5½–6 lb vs 7½–10½ lb **Key, range, fingerings:** identical ## Table of Contents - [Euphonium vs. baritone, side by side](#euphonium-vs-baritone-side-by-side) - [There are three instruments here, not two](#there-are-three-instruments-here-not-two) - [Three ways to tell which one you are holding](#three-ways-to-tell-which-one-you-are-holding) - [Measure the bell](#measure-the-bell) - [Reverse the tuning slide](#reverse-the-tuning-slide) - [What the valves do not tell you](#what-the-valves-do-not-tell-you) - [The euphonium is much heavier, and it matters](#the-euphonium-is-much-heavier-and-it-matters) - [The clef question, which is not really about the instrument](#the-clef-question-which-is-not-really-about-the-instrument) - [They do not take the same mouthpiece](#they-do-not-take-the-same-mouthpiece) - [Which one should you play?](#which-one-should-you-play) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [What is the main difference between a euphonium and a baritone?](#what-is-the-main-difference-between-a-euphonium-and-a-baritone) - [Does a euphonium have four valves and a baritone three?](#does-a-euphonium-have-four-valves-and-a-baritone-three) - [Can a euphonium and a baritone use the same mouthpiece?](#can-a-euphonium-and-a-baritone-use-the-same-mouthpiece) - [Is the baritone in my school band a real baritone?](#is-the-baritone-in-my-school-band-a-real-baritone) - [Which is harder to play?](#which-is-harder-to-play) - [Is a euphonium a small tuba?](#is-a-euphonium-a-small-tuba) ## Euphonium vs. baritone, side by side Baritone hornEuphonium**Key**B♭B♭**Tubing length**About nine feetAbout nine feet**Range**The sameThe same**Fingerings**The sameThe same**Bore**.504″–.543″.570″–.590″**Bell**8″–9¼″11″–12″**Taper**Mostly cylindricalAlmost entirely conical**Valves**Three or fourThree or four**Weight, concert models**5½–6 lb7½–10½ lb**Mouthpiece shank**SmallSmall or large**Sound**Brighter, closer to a tromboneDarker and fatter, closer to a tuba**Where it has its own chair**British-style brass bandBrass band, concert band, wind ensemble ## There are three instruments here, not two The comparison is awkward because the word *baritone* is doing two jobs. There is a genuine British-style baritone horn, a narrow instrument with a bell about the size of a trombone’s. There is a euphonium. And there is an American-style euphonium, usually bell-front, that the whole American school system has called a baritone for a century. David Werden, euphonium soloist with the United States Coast Guard Band for twenty-six years, measured that third instrument and put it at roughly a .560″ bore with a forward-facing bell around 10½ inches and tubing that tapers all the way through. Set against his own two horns — a .592″ euphonium and a .515″ baritone — the school instrument is not sitting between them. It is a euphonium with the wrong name on it. He also counted what he was handed to play: about eighty percent of his music was marked *Baritone*, and about one percent of it was actually written for one. That is the practical shape of the problem. A part headed *Baritone* in an American concert band folder is, nearly always, a euphonium part. The makers have simply gone along with it, and Yamaha’s catalogue shows the whole thing in one page. Their concert baritone, the YBH-301, is a real one: .504″ bore, 8⅜″ upright bell, small-shank mouthpiece. Their *marching* baritone, the YBH-301M, is specified at a .571″ bore with a 10″ bell and a large-shank mouthpiece — the same bore, to three decimal places, as the marching euphonium sitting beside it in the same catalogue. Yamaha’s two baritones are further apart from each other than their marching baritone is from their euphonium, which is not apart at all. Outside that tradition the two are simply different instruments and nobody confuses them. The North American Brass Band Association’s 2026 rules list the permitted instruments for its championship sections one by one, and *B-flat Baritone Horn* and *B-flat Euphonium* appear as separate entries. A brass band seats both, and a euphonium player cannot cover a baritone part by turning up with a bigger horn. ## Three ways to tell which one you are holding ### Measure the bell On an upright-bell concert horn this is the whole answer, and a tape measure across the mouth of the bell settles it in ten seconds. The makers’ own current specifications: Maker and modelBoreBellYamaha YBH-301 baritone.504″8⅜″Besson Prodige BE157 baritone.525″8″Wessex BR12 baritone.527″—Besson Sovereign BE955 baritone.543″9¼″Wessex EP14 euphonium.570″12″Yamaha YEP-201 euphonium.571″11″Besson Prodige BE163 euphonium.580″11″ or 12″Besson Sovereign BE967 euphonium.590″11″ or 12″ Three makers, two continents, and the gap between .543″ and .570″ has nothing in it. Bore is an internal measurement you cannot take at home, but on these instruments it tracks the bell closely enough that the bell does the job. Bell-front marching horns are the exception, and they run one way only. A marching baritone is built on the euphonium’s bore — Yamaha specifies .571″ for theirs, the same figure as their marching euphonium — with a 10″ bell rather than 11″ and a tighter wrap so it balances on the arms. On a marching horn the bell tells you which of the two the maker decided to call it, and nothing about what it is. Both are euphoniums. ### Reverse the tuning slide Werden’s test, and the neatest one, because it measures the thing the definitions actually turn on. Pull the main tuning slide out, turn it around, and try to put it back in the other way up. On a baritone it goes. The tubing there is close enough to cylindrical — the same diameter at both ends — that the slide fits either way round. On a euphonium it will not, because the tube is already wider at one end than the other. That is the difference between the two instruments, demonstrated with no tools and nothing to look up. Put the slide back the right way afterward. ### What the valves do not tell you Valve count decides nothing, and the catalogues make that plain. Yamaha’s YBH-621 is a baritone with four. Their YEP-201 and YEP-211 are euphoniums with three. Besson’s Prestige baritone has four compensating valves and their Prodige euphonium range includes a three-valve model. What the fourth valve actually buys is range and tuning, not a change of instrument. It drops the pitch by a perfect fourth, filling in the gap between the bottom of the ordinary range and the fundamental, and on a compensating horn it also routes the air through extra loops of tubing that pull the flat low register back into tune. On a four-valve instrument it is usually worked by the left hand while the right stays on the first three. One more horn to rule out while you are looking. If what you have is smaller again and pitched in E♭, it is an alto horn — a tenor horn in British usage — and it is neither of these. It plays a different part and reads a different transposition, and a section leader who hands you one instead of a baritone has made a real mistake rather than a naming one. ## The euphonium is much heavier, and it matters You feel this one by the end of a rehearsal. Besson publishes a weight for both of their top instruments: the Sovereign baritone is 5 lb 8 oz and the Prestige euphonium is 10 lb 8 oz. Same maker, same tier, same key — and one is nearly twice the other. The rest of the published figures fill the picture in. Besson’s four-valve Prestige baritone is 5 lb 15 oz and Wessex’s compensated baritone is 6 lb, so a baritone is a five-and-a-half to six pound object however it is built. Euphoniums start higher and climb: Wessex gives 7½ lb for their marching euphonium, and the full compensating concert instruments are where you reach ten and a half. Both instruments are held in the lap and steadied with the left arm, so that weight lands on one thigh and one shoulder for the length of a rehearsal. On a baritone it is a non-issue. On a compensating euphonium it is the reason players sit badly, and the reason posture is the first thing a teacher corrects. A lap pad is the cheap fix and it is the one accessory a euphonium player buys that a baritone player generally does not. It raises the horn to where your air is rather than where your leg is, and it stops the whole thing sliding as you breathe. For the euphonium’s ten and a half pounds ### Protec A109 Lap Pad for Euphonium and Tuba - Contoured, non-slip - Removable height inserts - Euphonium and tuba - ~$31 A shaped pad that sits on the thigh and gives the bottom bow something to rest on that is neither bony nor slippery. The height is adjustable with inserts, which is the part that matters — the point is to bring the mouthpiece up to your embouchure so you are not craning down to meet it, and the right height depends on your leg and your chair as much as the horn. Worth it on a euphonium, marginal on a baritone. Six pounds resting on a thigh is fine; ten and a half is what makes players slump sideways to take the load, and once that habit sets in it costs you air. **Pros**- Fixes the posture problem rather than working around it - Adjustable height, so it suits a growing player - Cheap next to anything else you can do for comfort **Cons**- Not much use on a baritone — the weight is not the problem there - One more thing to remember at a rehearsal Around $31[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gh6g3W) ## The clef question, which is not really about the instrument Either instrument can be handed to you in either clef, and the two are not interchangeable. It is worth asking which you are on before the method books are ordered rather than a month later. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Bass clefTreble clef**Written pitch**Concert — what is written is what soundsAn octave and a major second above concert**Reads like**Trombone, tubaTrumpet**Fingerings**Learned freshIdentical to trumpet**Book to buy**Marked Baritone B.C.Marked Baritone T.C.**Where it leads**Brass band, concert repertoire, solo literaturePlaying this month, transition later The treble clef version exists to let a trumpet player move across without learning a new clef or a new set of fingerings. Written a major ninth above what sounds, a treble clef part puts the same dots in the same spaces for the same three valves. It is a conversion trick and it works. Bass clef is where the instrument’s own literature lives. The brass band repertoire, the solo repertoire, and anything you will later be handed on trombone or tuba are all written in it. If you have a choice and no trumpet behind you, take bass clef; it is slower this month and free every month afterward. Both books are the same beginner method most American band programs already run on, printed separately per clef. The part matters more than the horn — a euphonium and a baritone reading the same clef read the same book. If your part saysBuyPriceBaritone, bass clefEssential Elements Book 1 — Baritone B.C.~$12 · [Check price](https://amzn.to/4gOqpyi)Baritone, treble clefEssential Elements Book 1 — Baritone T.C.~$13 · [Check price](https://amzn.to/4zC7huK) ## They do not take the same mouthpiece Getting this wrong costs real money, and Yamaha’s own catalogue settles it flatly: baritone mouthpieces are listed in small shank only, across every series they make. Euphonium mouthpieces are listed in small shank and large shank, and their professional Neo series euphonium mouthpieces are large shank only. The shank is the tapered end that goes into the instrument, and there are two diameters. A large shank will not seat in a small-shank receiver; a small shank drops into a large-shank one and rattles. The same model number is sold in both, so the name on the mouthpiece tells you nothing — a Bach 6½AL is the standard small shank, because the L refers to the throat and backbore rather than the shank. So the rule is not *baritones take this and euphoniums take that*. The shank belongs to the horn in front of you. A baritone will be small shank; a euphonium may be either, and the better the instrument the more likely it is large. Pull out whatever came in the case, take it to the band room, and match it — or ask your director, who will know. Cup size is the other half, and it is a real difference rather than a naming one. A euphonium’s wider bore wants more air and a deeper cup to fill it; the same deep cup on a baritone makes the instrument sound woolly and takes away the brightness it exists for. That is why the two get different mouthpieces even when the shank happens to match. Small shank · baritones, and most school euphoniums ### Bach 6½AL Trombone, Baritone and Euphonium Mouthpiece - Small shank - 25.40 mm cup - Medium-deep cup - Medium-wide rim - ~$72 The default American school low brass mouthpiece, and a sensible step up from whatever has been sitting in the case since the horn was bought. The cup is deep enough to give the bottom of the range some body without making the top of the staff hard work, which is the balance a first or second year wants on either instrument. Check the size reads 6½AL — Bach sells a range of cups under one name, and the neighboring sizes are shallower and brighter. If the horn you are matching turns out to have the wider receiver, this is the wrong one and the Yamaha below is the equivalent. **Pros**- The size directors expect, so you match the rest of the section - Medium-deep cup works across the whole range - Forgiving low register for a beginner **Cons**- Small shank only — wrong for a large-shank euphonium - The model name does not carry the shank, so it is easy to order the wrong end Around $72[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xmgNAS) Large shank · the proper euphoniums ### Yamaha 48L Large Shank Mouthpiece - Large shank - 25.25 mm cup - Standard cup depth - Semi-narrow backbore - ~$66 Yamaha’s 48 is the cup they build their own euphoniums around, and the 48L is that cup on the wider stem. If the mouthpiece receiver on your horn takes the fatter shank — which is most compensating euphoniums and a good many intermediate ones — this is the uncomplicated answer, and it is a genuine standard rather than a compromise. Almost the same rim diameter as the Bach above, so moving between them is less of an adjustment than the price difference suggests. What you are choosing here is the end that fits, not a different way of playing. **Pros**- Large shank stated outright, so there is nothing to work out - The cup Yamaha voice their own euphoniums to - Heavy silver plating stands up to a school year **Cons**- Useless on a baritone, which is small shank on every maker checked - Standard depth rather than deep — a big compensating horn may want more cup Around $66[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UjGAei) The other thing either horn needs is valve oil, roughly every second rehearsal, and there is no interesting decision in it. [Al Cass Fast](https://amzn.to/3STZ8Bs) at about $7 is what most band rooms have on the shelf and it lasts a term. ## Which one should you play? In an American school this is rarely a live question, because the storage room has euphoniums in it and calls them baritones. Where it is live, it splits cleanly. If youTakeWhyAre in an American concert or marching bandEuphoniumIt is what the parts marked Baritone were written for, and what the school owns.Play in a British-style brass bandWhichever chair is openThey are separate parts with separate music. The baritone section is usually the easier one to get into.Are small, or eleven years oldBaritoneHalf the weight and a smaller bore to fill. It is the standard route in, and the move up later costs nothing.Are coming from tromboneEuphoniumSame clef, same pitch, same range, and the bore is closer to a large-bore trombone’s than a baritone’s is.Are coming from trumpetEither, in treble clefThe fingerings are already yours. The euphonium’s deeper cup is the bigger adjustment of the two.Want to play solosEuphoniumNearly all the solo literature is written for it, and it is the voice a concert band gives the tune to. Neither is a standard orchestral instrument. Both are mid-nineteenth-century inventions, which put them a generation too late for the repertoire an orchestra plays most of the time, and a symphony that wants this register writes for trombones and tuba. Where a euphonium does appear it is usually covering a part a composer marked *tenor tuba*. Their real homes are the concert band, the wind ensemble and the brass band, and in all three the euphonium is a solo voice rather than a section filler. If you are buying rather than borrowing, both are serious money and both are ordinarily bought through a school or rented with credit toward a purchase. The mouthpiece is the part that is yours, that travels with you between horns, and that changes how you sound for the price of a couple of lessons. More on the family in our guide to [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/), and the two nearest comparisons are [euphonium vs. tuba](https://promusicvault.com/euphonium-vs-tuba/) and [tuba vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/tuba-vs-baritone/). If the horn in question is a marching one, [mellophone vs. baritone](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-baritone/) covers the other instrument you may be offered, and [how much a baritone weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-baritone-weigh/) goes further into the physical side. ## FAQs ### What is the main difference between a euphonium and a baritone? How fast the tubing widens. A euphonium is conical almost end to end, with a bore around .57″–.59″ and a bell of 11 to 12 inches. A baritone is close to cylindrical through the middle, with a bore around .50″–.54″ and a bell of 8 to 9¼ inches. Key, tubing length, range and fingerings are the same on both. ### Does a euphonium have four valves and a baritone three? No. Both are made with three and with four. Yamaha builds a four-valve baritone and a three-valve euphonium; Besson builds both as well. The fourth valve lowers the pitch by a perfect fourth to fill in the bottom of the range and, on a compensating instrument, to correct the tuning down there. It says nothing about which instrument you have. ### Can a euphonium and a baritone use the same mouthpiece? Sometimes, and you cannot assume it. Baritone mouthpieces come in small shank only. Euphonium mouthpieces come in both, and professional euphoniums are large shank — a large shank mouthpiece will not go into a baritone at all. Even when the shanks match, a euphonium wants a deeper cup than a baritone does. Match the mouthpiece to the horn, not to the name. ### Is the baritone in my school band a real baritone? Probably not. American school instruments called baritones are usually euphoniums by every published definition — conical bore around .560″, bell around 10½ inches, often bell-front. Measure the bell: at 11 inches you have a euphonium. True British-style baritones are uncommon in American schools and are mostly found in brass bands. ### Which is harder to play? The euphonium takes more air and is twice the weight, so the first month is physical. The baritone is lighter and easier to fill but less forgiving of a lazy sound, because its brighter tone hides nothing. Neither is hard to get a first note out of, which is why both are common starting instruments. ### Is a euphonium a small tuba? It is built on the same principle — a wide conical bore and a deep cup mouthpiece — and it is sometimes called a tenor tuba for that reason. But it is pitched an octave above a B♭ contrabass tuba and about nine feet long against the tuba’s eighteen, so it is a different instrument with a different job. **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo Review: Decide the Resonator First](https://promusicvault.com/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/) **Published:** April 8, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo Review: Decide the Resonator First The [Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3HaOOLt) is a 4.5 lb open back five-string built in California, and at around $600 it is the least expensive banjo built in the United States. It has a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, twenty-two frets set straight into a rock maple neck, and no tone ring, no resonator and no truss rod. Two of those omissions are choices you live with happily. The third — the resonator — is the one decision this purchase actually turns on, and it is much cheaper to get right now than to fix later. The short version### Buy it — but choose open back or resonator before you order Nothing else at $600 is made this well, and the parts Deering did not cut are the ones that decide whether you keep playing: a straight neck, level frets, geared tuners on all five strings and a rim that sounds like an instrument. Adding a resonator afterward costs about $280 in parts, which puts the retrofit above the price of the model that comes with one. Pick the version you want on day one. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HaOOLt) **Same banjo with a resonator:** Goodtime Two, around $850 **Half the money:** Gold Tone AC-1, around $315 **Retrofit later:** about $280 in parts **Budget for:** a case, from around $46 ## The specification, from Deering **Made in**San Diego, California**Neck**Rock maple, “D” shape, satin finish over natural maple stain**Fingerboard**None — the frets go directly into the maple neck**Frets**22 pressed-in nickel silver**Inlays**Hardwood, Art Deco inspired**Nut**Lexan polycarbonate, 1 1/4″ wide**Truss rod**None**Rim**3-ply violin grade maple, 11″**Tone ring**None — the head sits on the wood**Head**11″ frosted top, high crown**Hooks**16 flat J-hooks, beveled steel tension hoop**Tuners**Sealed geared, plus a geared 5th string tuner**Bridge**5/8″ Goodtime Smile**Tailpiece**Deering patented Goodtime, adjustable**Armrest**Included, bronze powder finish**Scale length**26 1/4″ nut to bridge**Overall length**37 1/2″**Weight**4.5 lb**Factory strings**.010 / .011 / .013 / .021w / .010**Tuning**G D G B D**Case**Sold separately ## There is no truss rod, and that decides your strings Most stringed instruments carry an adjustable steel rod in the neck to control relief — the small forward bow that keeps the strings off the frets. The Goodtime has none, and Deering is open about why. The neck is one piece of hard rock maple with the frets pressed straight into it, and there is no separate fingerboard glued on top. With a single dense hardwood and no glue line between two woods pulling against each other, Deering says the stresses that make a rod necessary are “eliminated, or almost nonexistent”. The relief is machined into the neck at the factory and stays there. The catch is in how that relief was calculated. Deering sets it against the tension of the light strings they fit — .010, .011, .013, a .021 wound fourth and a .010 fifth. Put a heavier set on and you increase the pull on a neck with no way to answer it. Deering makes the same point from the other direction: when they built the Goodtime Six, which takes steel guitar gauges, they fitted a two-way truss rod to it, because the heavier strings needed one. So the practical rule on this banjo is: stay at light gauge. That is not a hardship — light is the standard five-string gauge and the one most players use anyway — but it does mean the medium sets some bluegrass players prefer are not a good idea here. More on what fits in our guide to [banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/). Action is still adjustable, just not at the neck. Deering gives three routes: tighten or loosen the coordinator rod, reset the neck angle against the rim, or tighten the head. The coordinator rod is the usual one, and it is a steel bar running through the pot rather than the wooden dowel stick traditional open backs use, so the action moves with a wrench rather than a shim. ## Open back or resonator: do the arithmetic first The Goodtime is sold two ways from identical parts. Open back is around $600 and weighs 4.5 lb. The Goodtime Two adds a three-ply resonator and the two-piece flange that holds it, costs around $850, and weighs 6 lb. From the rim down they are the same banjo. Deering does sell a retrofit kit, so the open back is not a dead end: any Goodtime with an 11″ pot can be converted with a flange, a resonator and a set of armrest J-hooks. The kit is around $280, made to order in ten to fourteen business days. That is the number worth writing down, because $600 plus $280 is $880, and the Goodtime Two is $850. Converting later costs more than buying the resonator model outright, and you do the fitting yourself. Which one you want is a question about music, not budget. The resonator throws sound forward and is what bluegrass is played on; the open back is quieter, warmer, a pound and a half lighter, and is what clawhammer and old-time players use. If you know which of those you are heading for, buy that one. If you genuinely do not know yet, buy the open back — it is the cheaper mistake, and it is the more comfortable banjo to sit with for the first year. Our guide to [open back versus resonator banjos](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes through the difference in more detail. ## How it compares GoodtimeGoodtime TwoGold Tone AC-1**Price**Around $600Around $850Around $315**Back**OpenResonatorOpen**Rim**3-ply violin grade maple, 11″3-ply violin grade maple, 11″Composite, 11″**Tone ring**NoneNoneNone**Neck**Rock maple, no separate fingerboardRock maple, no separate fingerboardMahogany with a rosewood fingerboard**Truss rod**NoneNoneTwo-way adjustable**Nut width**1 1/4″1 1/4″1 3/16″, Zero Glide**Scale length**26 1/4″26 1/4″26 3/16″**Weight**4.5 lb6 lb3.75 lb**Bag or case**NeitherNeitherGig bag included**Warranty**8 years, registered8 years, registered5 years, transferable If you already know you want bluegrass ### Deering Goodtime Two - Resonator - 3-ply maple rim, 11″ - 6 lb - ~$850 The same neck, rim, hardware and warranty with a three-ply resonator and a two-piece flange added. The resonator reflects the head’s sound forward instead of letting it spill out of the back, which is why it is the shape bluegrass settled on — it is louder in the direction of the audience and cuts through a band. It is a pound and a half heavier and $250 dearer, and it is a slightly less pleasant thing to hold on the sofa for an hour. Buy it if the music you are aiming at is bluegrass. Do not buy it because it looks more like a proper banjo. **Pros**- Projects forward, which is what a band needs - Cheaper than buying the open back and converting it - Same California build and eight-year warranty **Cons**- Six pounds against four and a half - Wrong instrument for clawhammer and old-time - No case at this price either Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45HHOTh) If $600 is more than you want to risk ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back - Composite rim, 11″ - Two-way truss rod - Gig bag included - ~$315 Gold Tone’s entry banjo is roughly half the money and arrives with three things the Goodtime does not: a gig bag, a twelve-point factory setup, and a two-way adjustable truss rod. It also has a Zero Glide nut, a fitted nut that sets the string height at the first fret properly — the commonest reason a cheap banjo feels hard to fret. At 3.75 lb it is the lightest banjo on this page. What you give up is the rim. The AC-1’s is a composite molding rather than three plies of violin maple, and that is most of what you hear in the difference between the two. The neck is narrower too — 1 3/16″ at the nut against the Goodtime’s 1 1/4″ — which suits small hands and crowds large ones. It is a good banjo for the money and a plainer sound. Buy it if you are not yet sure the banjo will stick. **Pros**- Around half the price - Gig bag and a twelve-point setup included - Has the adjustable truss rod the Goodtime lacks **Cons**- Composite rim rather than laminated maple - Plainer, less resonant tone - Narrower nut, tight for large hands Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45MadaF) ## What is not in the box The Goodtime arrives as a banjo and nothing else. The armrest is fitted, which is more than most makers manage at this price, but there is no bag, no case, no tuner and no strap. Two of those are worth sorting out on the same order. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A case matters more here than on a heavier instrument, because an open back has no resonator protecting the underside of the pot and the head is exposed on both faces. The important number when you shop is the rim diameter: the Goodtime’s pot is 11″, and most banjo cases are cut for the 12″ to 13″ resonator shape, which leaves an open back sliding around inside. The proper case ### Crossrock CRW520OBJ11BK - Wooden hardshell - Cut for an 11″ open back - Lockable latch, accessory compartment - ~$120 Multi-ply cross-laminate wood shell with a sponge lining, one lockable latch, metal feet and a compartment inside for a tuner and spare strings. It comes in three sizes and the one cut for this banjo is the 11″ open back, so check the size reads 11-inch rather than 11–12.5 or resonator. Around $120[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xc147k) The cheap option ### MUSIC FIRST padded gig bag - 16 mm padding - Fits a 38″ full-size banjo - Backpack straps - ~$46 Sixteen millimeters of padding, a cotton shell, a neck fixing band inside and backpack straps. It fits a full-size banjo up to about 38″ long, which covers the Goodtime’s 37 1/2″. Enough for carrying it to a lesson and storing it safely at home; not enough for putting it in a car boot under other luggage. Around $46[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46lWFmo) The tuner ### D’Addario Micro Banjo Tuner - Piezo, reads vibration not sound - Clamps to the tension hoop - Color display, visual metronome - ~$23 Built for a banjo rather than adapted to one: it clamps onto the tension hoop with a non-marring bracket instead of a headstock clip, so it stays out of the way of the fifth-string peg, and it reads vibration through the hardware rather than listening to the room. The display swivels on two axes, which is the only way to make a hoop-mounted tuner readable from playing position. It also runs a visual metronome, which matters more than it sounds when you are learning rolls. Around $23[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qwueLP) If you would rather compare tuners properly before buying one, we have a whole guide to [banjo tuners](/best-banjo-tuner/). ## The warranty is eight years, and only if you register Deering’s Goodtime warranty runs eight years, which is unusually long, and it comes with conditions worth knowing before you buy rather than after. - **You have to register it.** Send in the warranty card or register online. Deering is explicit that the coverage depends on it. - **Eight years applies to banjos built on or after 1 January 2025.** Anything made before that carries the earlier six-year term, which matters if you are looking at a used one. - **It does not transfer.** Sell the banjo and the warranty ends. A second-hand Goodtime has no coverage at all, whatever its age. - **Buy from an authorized dealer.** Deering void the warranty on instruments bought outside their dealer network. - **It covers materials and workmanship only.** Not normal wear, fret wear, finish, strings, a worn nut or bridge, accidental damage, or the case or bag. - **You pay the shipping.** Both directions, warranty or not. None of that is unreasonable, and the eight years is genuinely better than the rest of the market offers. It is simply a warranty with a registration card attached, and the card is the part people throw away. ## What it sounds like, and why The Goodtime has no tone ring. On most banjos a ring — a hoop of brass or steel — sits on top of the rim and the head stretches over it, and that metal is what produces the bright, cutting ring people associate with bluegrass. Here the head is stretched directly over the wooden edge of the rim, so what you hear is maple. The result is warm rather than brilliant, with a shorter sustain and a woody thump on the low strings. That is the sound old-time and clawhammer players want, and it is the sound the whole Goodtime range makes: no Goodtime has a ring until the Goodtime Special, which is the first one to fit a steel one. It is also why a $600 Goodtime and a $2,000 bluegrass banjo are not the same instrument with different price tags — the tone ring and the cast flange are most of the money, and Deering left both out on purpose. The tailpiece is adjustable, which is the one free tone control on the banjo. Tightening it presses the strings harder onto the bridge and the sound gets snappier; backing it off mellows it. Deering designed the Goodtime tailpiece specifically to give that adjustment at this price, and most new owners never touch it. ## Who should buy it Buy it if you want a banjo that will still be worth playing in ten years and you would rather not replace it in two. The things that make cheap banjos discouraging — uneven frets, a neck that shifts, a fifth-string friction peg that will not hold, a rim that sounds like a biscuit tin — are all absent here, and they are absent because the same people who build Deering’s $3,000 banjos build this one. Skip it if you want to play bluegrass in a band, in which case the Goodtime Two is the right end of the same line and a banjo with a cast tone ring is the right end of the market. Skip it too if you are not yet sure you will keep going: $600 is a lot to find out with, and the Gold Tone at half the money answers that question for less. Our guides to the [best open back banjos](/best-open-back-banjo/) and [the best banjo for the money](/best-banjo-for-the-money/) put it against the rest of the field. ## Common questions ### Is the Deering Goodtime really made in America? Yes, in San Diego, California, in the same workshop and by the same people as Deering’s professional instruments. It is the least expensive American-built banjo on the market, and the reason it is possible at $600 is that the design leaves out the two most labor-intensive parts — the tone ring and the resonator flange — rather than cutting corners on the ones that remain. ### Can I put a resonator on it later? Yes. Deering makes a retrofit kit for any Goodtime with an 11″ pot, containing the resonator, the flange, the armrest J-hooks and instructions. It costs around $280 and is made to order in ten to fourteen business days. But $600 plus $280 is more than the $850 Goodtime Two, so it is worth doing only if your plans changed after you bought. ### Can you play bluegrass on an open back Goodtime? You can play every note of it, and with fingerpicks it is loud enough for a kitchen. What it will not do is cut through a fiddle and a guitar in a jam, because there is no resonator throwing the sound forward and no tone ring adding the brightness that carries. It is the wrong shape for the job rather than a bad instrument. ### What strings does it take? Five-string banjo strings tuned G D G B D, and it ships on a light set — .010, .011, .013, a .021 wound fourth and a .010 fifth. Stay at light gauge when you replace them. There is no truss rod to compensate for a heavier set. ### Does it need a setup out of the box? Far less than an imported banjo does. The frets are level, the neck angle is set and the bridge is placed at the factory. What you may want to adjust after a few weeks is the action, using the coordinator rod, and the head tension as it settles. Neither needs a workshop. ### Is there a version for clawhammer? Deering builds the Goodtime with a scooped fingerboard as an option, for about $60 more. Scooping removes the frets over the head end of the neck so the striking hand can sit further forward, which is the position clawhammer wants. If you already know that is the style you are learning, it is worth having. If you are not sure, the standard neck plays clawhammer perfectly well — see our guide to [clawhammer banjos](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). ### How does it compare to the Artisan Goodtime? The Artisan is the same banjo in a darker stain with a few upgraded parts, and it costs around $950. Whether that is worth $350 is covered in our [Deering Goodtime Artisan review](/deering-goodtime-artisan-review/). **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Clarinet vs. Flute: Same Price, Different Player](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-vs-flute/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Clarinet vs. Flute: Same Price, Different Player Both are woodwinds, both are about twenty-six inches long, both read from the treble clef, and the same maker will sell you either one for the same $250. So price does not decide this, and neither does quality. What decides it is the shape of the player’s mouth, the size of their hands, and where in the first year each instrument puts its difficulty. Those three things point clearly enough that school band directors screen for them before a child touches an instrument, and they are worth knowing before spending anything. The short answer### Buy the clarinet, unless the player is set on the flute The clarinet fits nearly every mouth, makes a recognisable note on the first afternoon, and a beginning band class is built around twelve to fifteen of them. The flute is the one that rejects people: a teardrop shape in the middle of the top lip, a markedly receded jaw, or a mouth of new braces turn the first note into weeks of work rather than days, and it is routinely the most oversubscribed choice in the room. If the player actively wants the flute, buy the flute — wanting it beats any screening test ever devised. Just know which of the two is the safe purchase. Around $250 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qEIUsB) **Set on the flute:** the same maker, the same $250, and no argument **Small hands:** the flute — every hole is under a key, not a fingertip **Braces on or coming:** the clarinet, by a wide margin **Learning alone at home:** the flute reads in concert pitch; the clarinet does not ## The differences that decide it ClarinetFlute**How the sound starts**A cane reed slapping against a mouthpieceYour own airstream splitting on the edge of a hole**First recognisable note**The same afternoonDays to a few weeks**Assembled length**About 26 inches, five piecesAbout 26 inches, three pieces**Weight**About 740 g, all of it on one thumbAbout 440 g, but held out sideways across the body**Keywork**17 keys and 6 rings — six holes sealed by fingertipsClosed-hole keys — every hole covered by a pad**Pitched in**B♭ — written a whole tone above what soundsC — sounds exactly as written**Range**Written E3 to about C7, close to four octavesC4 to C7, three octaves**Overblows at**A twelfthAn octave**Consumables**Reeds, constantly, and cork greaseNothing, until the pads need a technician**Student body material**ABS resin; grenadilla higher upSilver-plated nickel silver; solid silver higher up**Chairs in a school band**Twelve to fifteen in a beginning classA handful, and heavily contested**What a good starter costs**$250, or $400 for one that lasts longer$250 online, $450–1,300 for a school-standard make ## One of them is a stopped pipe, and nearly everything follows from that A flute is an open tube. Air goes in at a hole near one end and out of the far end, and an open tube resonates on every harmonic in the series. Blow faster and the note jumps to the next one up, which is an octave. So the fingerings for the bottom octave are the fingerings for the second octave: same fingers, faster air. A clarinet is a cylinder with a reed clamped over one end, and a reed effectively stops that end. A stopped cylinder resonates only on the odd-numbered harmonics — the first, the third, the fifth — so the first note available above the fundamental is not the octave but the twelfth, an octave and a fifth up. Press the register key and the instrument jumps by that much. That single fact is responsible for most of what is distinctive about the clarinet. It has to bridge a twelfth rather than an octave, so it needs a longer run of fingerings before the register key takes over, and the keywork to reach them: seventeen keys and six rings on a standard Boehm instrument, against a flute mechanism that simply repeats itself an octave up. It is also why the clarinet has the largest range in the section, close to four octaves, and why it can go so much lower than a flute despite being the same length — a stopped pipe sounds an octave below an open pipe of the same size. Its lowest written note, E3, sounds as a D3 — a minor seventh below the flute’s bottom C. The dark, hollow bottom register this produces has its own name, the chalumeau, after the folk pipe the clarinet grew out of. Nothing on a flute sounds like it. [The woodwind family](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) sorts out where both instruments sit among the rest. ## The difficulty is real on both, but it arrives at different times This is the part that decides whether a beginner is still playing in June. ### The flute is hardest in week one There is nothing in a flute to help you. A recorder has a windway that aims the breath at the edge for you; a clarinet has a reed that vibrates whether or not you are any good. A flute has a hole with a sharpened rim on the far side, and the player has to form an airstream of the right width, at the right angle, with the right amount of the hole covered by the lower lip. That is the entire technique and it is invisible. First lessons are usually spent on the headjoint alone, and a reliable note takes days to a few weeks. Once it comes, the flute gets easier fast. The fingerings are regular, the second octave uses the first octave’s fingers, and beginners are playing real melodies within a few weeks of the note arriving. ### The clarinet is hardest around month four A clarinet makes a noise on the first attempt, because the reed does the work. Then, some months in, the beginner reaches the break. The top of the bottom register is a written B♭, fingered with the A key and the register key — essentially two fingers on the instrument. The next note up, B natural, is the bottom-of-the-clarion note, and it is fingered as a low E with the register key held: every finger of both hands down, plus a little finger key. Going up a semitone therefore means putting eight fingers onto the instrument at once, sealing six open tone holes with the pads of the fingers rather than with keys, without moving the register key or the embouchure, in time. Miss one hole by a millimeter and you get a squeak. Every clarinettist crosses this and it takes a few weeks of dull practice. It is also the single most common point at which a beginner concludes the instrument is beyond them, which is worth knowing in advance so it reads as a stage rather than a verdict. [Is the clarinet hard to play?](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) goes further into it. So: if the household has patience for a fortnight of nothing, the flute rewards it. If it has patience for one bad month in the spring, the clarinet does. ## What band directors actually check, and you can check it in five minutes School programs publish the physical criteria they screen beginners on, and for these two instruments the criteria are specific, consistent and easy to apply at the kitchen table. ### What rules out the flute - **A teardrop upper lip.** A small point of tissue in the middle of the top lip splits the airstream in two and makes it very hard to aim. Programs list this first, and it is the most common reason a keen student is steered elsewhere. - **A markedly receded jaw.** An extreme overbite puts the lower lip in the wrong place against the lip plate. The published sheets disagree about a mild overbite — one treats any overbite as disqualifying, another says a slight one usually makes an excellent flute player — so do not rule yourself out for a small one. - **Double-jointed fingers.** Named on both sheets. A finger that collapses backward cannot move quickly over a keyed mechanism. - **Arms that will not reach.** The flute is held out to the right across the body, so the left arm has to cross the chest and stay there. This is the usual reason a seven-year-old cannot start on one. ### What rules out the clarinet - **Hands too small to seal the holes.** Six of the clarinet’s tone holes have no pad over them — the fingertip is the pad. If a finger cannot cover a hole completely the note will not speak, and you get air or a squeak instead. This is the one physical requirement the clarinet has that the flute does not, and it is the reason a small child is often better on flute. - **An extremely rounded bottom row of teeth,** which stops the mouthpiece sitting where it needs to. - **Protruding top teeth, or sharp and jagged bottom teeth.** The top teeth rest directly on the mouthpiece and the bottom lip cushions the reed against the bottom teeth. Beyond those, the clarinet takes almost anyone. One director’s sheet describes it flatly as the default instrument when the other instruments do not fit, and notes that students with a wide variety of mouth, lip and teeth formations succeed on it. That tolerance is most of the argument for starting there. ### Braces settle it on their own If orthodontic work is underway or scheduled, the clarinet is the easier instrument by a distance, and the reason is mechanical. On a clarinet the lower lip folds over the bottom teeth to cushion the reed, and the top teeth sit on the hard rubber of the mouthpiece, where a stick-on patch handles the brackets. Single-reed players are consistently the quickest wind players to adapt to braces. On a flute the lips themselves form the aperture that shapes the air, and brackets change the shape of the upper lip from behind. There is no patch for that; you rebuild the embouchure and wait for the tissue to settle, which takes about a month. Most flute players get there. One band program still rules the instrument out for anyone in braces, which tells you how much trouble it causes in a beginner’s first year. ## Reading in the wrong key, and when it matters The flute sounds what is written. The clarinet is a B♭ instrument: read a C, hear a B♭. Everything a clarinettist reads is printed a whole tone above the pitch that comes out. Inside a band this costs nothing at all, because the parts are printed already transposed and the whole ensemble sounds right together. It costs something at home. A piano book, a guitar chord chart, a hymnal, a fiddle tune written out for a session — a clarinet playing from any of those is a tone flat against everyone else, so the player needs music printed for B♭ instruments or the ability to transpose on sight, which takes a year or two to become comfortable. A flute simply plays from whatever is on the stand. For a child joining a school band the point is academic. For an adult teaching themselves at the kitchen table, or anyone who wants to play along with a guitarist, it is a real and permanent difference, and it is the strongest single argument for the flute. ## What each one costs to keep going The instruments cost the same. The running costs do not. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A clarinet eats reeds. Cane reeds absorb moisture, soften, warp and die, and a beginner kills them faster than anyone because a new embouchure chips the tip. A box of ten good student reeds is about $24 and a student will use several boxes in a first year; a clarinet also wants cork grease and, eventually, new tenon corks. [Which reed to start on](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) matters more than most beginners realize, because a reed one strength too hard makes the instrument feel impossible. A flute has no consumable at all. It has a cleaning rod and a cloth, and that is the whole daily routine. What it has instead is a mechanism — pads on rods and springs, which drift out of adjustment — and a technician’s bench rate runs $85 to $100 an hour whichever instrument is on it. Over five years the two roughly even out; over the first year the flute is cheaper to run. Two things apply to both. Renting through a school program costs roughly $20 to $40 a month and is the sensible route if there is any doubt the child will stick with it. And nothing under about $150 is worth buying in either family — that is the price at which the setup step gets skipped, and an instrument that has never been regulated by a technician leaks, which no amount of practice fixes. ## What to buy № 1 · The clarinet ### Jean Paul CL-300 student clarinet - ABS body, Boehm system, 17 keys and 6 rings - Nickel-plated keys, fishskin pads, blued steel springs - Adjustable thumb rest - Two barrels, 65mm and 62mm - Around $250 The same specification a school band director would write down — the same key system and the same seventeen keys and six rings as the Yamaha the band room is full of — on a molded body that will not crack. Every one is set up and play-tested by a certified band-instrument technician before it ships, which is what separates it from the hundred-dollar clarinets alongside it, and the maker sells individual replacement joints, keys and barrels years later. It arrives with a mouthpiece, ligature, swab, cork grease and one reed, so it plays on the day it lands. **Pros**- Set up by a technician rather than shipped as it left the factory - Adjustable thumb rest, which is where the whole weight lands - Two barrels, so tuning to an ensemble is possible from the start **Cons**- One-year warranty, to the original buyer only - Semi-hard case rather than a shell - The supplied mouthpiece is the first thing a keen student will replace Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qEIUsB) № 2 · The flute ### Jean Paul FL-220 student flute - Silver-plated cupronickel head, body, foot and keys - Closed hole, offset G - Split E mechanism - C foot joint - Around $250 The flute half of the same decision, from the same maker at the same money, and put together the way a beginner’s flute should be: closed holes so there is nothing to seal with a fingertip, and an offset G that puts the left ring finger where the hand naturally sits. The split E is the genuine surprise at this price — it separates the G keys so the third-octave E speaks instead of cracking, and plenty of dearer student flutes go without it. Like the clarinet above, it is regulated by a technician before it ships. **Pros**- Split E, which is uncommon anywhere near this price - Closed hole and offset G, exactly right for a first flute - Nothing to buy afterward to make it playable **Cons**- A committed student outgrows it in a few years - Cupronickel rather than the silver of a step-up flute - Semi-hard case Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zELBOV) № 3 · Buy this with the clarinet ### Vandoren JUNO B♭ clarinet reeds, strength 2½ - Box of ten - Strengths 1½ to 3½ - Cut in Vandoren’s own French factory - Carries the maker’s anti-counterfeit ID code - About $24 for ten A clarinet arrives with one reed, and a beginner will destroy it inside a fortnight. Vandoren designed the JUNO specifically for people who have just picked the instrument up and cut it from the same cane, in the same factory, as the reeds professionals play. Strength 2½ suits an adult or a student a term in; drop to a 2 for an eleven-year-old, because a reed one step too hard simply will not vibrate for a mouth that has not built up yet, and that is by far the most common reason a new clarinet sounds terrible. **Pros**- Designed for beginners rather than adapted for them - Softer strengths available if 2½ is still too hard - Costs slightly less than the usual student box **Cons**- Stops at 3½, so an advancing player changes model eventually - Cane varies from reed to reed, as all cane does - Nothing here helps a flute player at all About $24 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UnXqsy) ## If it sticks Neither $250 instrument is a mistake, and neither is the last one a serious player will own. The step up is worth taking after two or three years, not before. № 4 · The clarinet, two years on ### Jean Paul CL-400 intermediate clarinet - Boehm system, 17 keys - Silver-plated keys - Synthetic pads - Upgraded CL-4 mouthpiece and a proper case - Around $400 The honest upgrade from the CL-300 rather than a different instrument: the same key system on better hardware, with synthetic pads that shrug off the moisture a cane-reed instrument fills itself with, and a mouthpiece that is genuinely a step up rather than the molded one every student clarinet ships with. Still a molded body, which is the right call for anything that goes outdoors or to school. Grenadilla is a different conversation and a much larger check. **Pros**- Synthetic pads last far longer than fishskin on a student instrument - The mouthpiece alone is most of what changes the sound - Molded body still handles school and weather **Cons**- Silver plating tarnishes with sweat, unlike the CL-300’s nickel - Not wood, which is what a conservatoire audition will eventually want - Sixty percent more money for a real but not dramatic gain Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xoS2DX) № 5 · The flute the band room means ### Gemeinhardt 2SP student flute - J1 headjoint, made in Elkhart, Indiana - Closed hole, offset G, C foot - Silver-plated head, body, foot and keys - Hard shell case and cleaning rod - Around $460 When a school specifies a flute by model number, this is usually the number. It has been the American default student flute long enough that directors name it without thinking, Gemeinhardt makes every C flute headjoint itself in Elkhart, each instrument goes through two rounds of bench testing before it leaves, and it carries a five-year warranty against the one year the $250 instruments offer. Bought outright it costs about a year of rental and it is still the right flute in eighth grade. **Pros**- Five-year warranty, and a maker that repairs its own instruments - The instrument school programs already standardize on - Hard shell case, which a school bag eventually justifies **Cons**- No split E, so the third-octave E is the player’s problem - Nearly twice the price of a well set-up online flute - Warranty has to be registered with the maker to hold Around $460[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wP7uIv) One case is worth naming and is not on this list. A child who wants the flute but cannot yet reach across the body needs a curved headjoint, which folds the top of the instrument back on itself and shortens the reach considerably; Gemeinhardt builds a version of the 2SP that ships with both the curved and the straight headjoint, so the same flute grows with the player. It is a specialist item and expensive for what it is, but it is the only thing that solves the reach problem, and a year of waiting is the alternative. ## Common questions ### Which is easier to learn? Neither, overall — they are hard at different moments. The clarinet is far easier in the first fortnight, because the reed produces a note whether or not you know what you are doing. The flute is far easier in the second year, because its fingerings repeat between octaves and it has nothing like the break. Which of those a household is better placed to absorb is the useful question. ### How many keys does each one have? A standard B♭ clarinet has seventeen keys and six rings, and that is the figure every maker publishes, from a $250 molded instrument to a professional grenadilla one. A student flute’s mechanism covers every hole with a padded key, which is why hand size is a question of reach on a flute and a question of sealing on a clarinet. ### Is the flute the only woodwind without a reed? No. Every instrument that starts its note on a sharp edge rather than a reed belongs to the same half of the family: the piccolo, the recorder, the tin whistle, the fife and the Irish flute all have no reed either. What separates the concert flute from most of them is that you aim the air yourself, where a recorder or a whistle has a built-in windway that aims it for you. [Flute vs. recorder](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/) is that difference in full. ### Is a recorder a flute? Formally yes — a recorder is a duct flute, and the concert flute is a transverse flute. They are cousins rather than the same thing, and the fingerings do not transfer cleanly. What separates them is the windway, not the material — wooden recorders and metal flutes are both common. ### Can you switch from one to the other later? You can, and the music you have learned carries over completely, but nothing physical does. The embouchures have nothing in common, the fingering systems are unrelated, and a clarinettist moving to flute starts on the headjoint like everyone else. The genuinely easy doubles are elsewhere: clarinet to saxophone, because both are single reeds and the saxophone overblows at the octave, and flute to piccolo, where the fingerings are identical. [Piccolo vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/piccolo-vs-flute/) covers that one. ### Which one is louder, and which carries in a band? The clarinet has far more dynamic range at the bottom and a bigger sound overall; the flute’s low register is its weakest and is easily buried, while its top octave cuts through anything. That is why band scoring tends to put flutes on the melody up high and clarinets on everything from inner harmony to bass lines — and why a beginner flautist can feel inaudible for the first year while a beginner clarinettist can be heard from the next room, for better and worse. ### How much does each one cost? A properly set up starter of either is about $250. Below roughly $150 the technician’s setup is what has been cut, so an instrument at that price is a gamble rather than a saving. Intermediate clarinets start around $400 and a school-standard flute runs $450 to $1,300. Renting is $20 to $40 a month. [Clarinet costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) and [flute costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) break both down further. ## Also read - [Oboe vs. clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/) — the other single-reed-versus-double-reed decision - [Best clarinet for marching band](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) — why wood is the wrong answer on a field - [How much does a clarinet weigh](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh/) — and why it hangs off one thumb - [Piccolo vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/piccolo-vs-flute/) — same fingerings, different instrument - [Irish flute vs. tin whistle](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/) — the folk end of the same family - [Fife vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/fife-vs-flute/) — six holes and no keys - [Violin vs. flute](https://promusicvault.com/violin-vs-flute/) — across the sections **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [The Best Ukulele Strings for Beginners: Size First, Then Sound](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) **Published:** August 11, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› The Best Ukulele Strings for Beginners: Size First, Then Sound A set of ukulele strings costs less than a takeaway, and picking the wrong one is the most common reason a cheap ukulele sounds worse after a restring than it did before. Almost all of that comes down to two choices made before tone ever enters into it: the size of your instrument, and whether the fourth string sits above the others or below them. Get those right and any of the sets below will sound good. Get the first one wrong and nothing will. If you want one answer### D’Addario Nyltech, in your size Warm, gut-like and forgiving, at around $7.50 a set. Nyltech is D’Addario’s own synthetic-gut material, and it is the closest thing to a default: it flatters a cheap laminate ukulele instead of exposing it, and it does not need a bright instrument to sound right. Buy the soprano set for a soprano and the concert set for a concert — they are different strings, not different packets. Around $7–8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gz8ESt) **Cheapest set worth fitting:** Ernie Ball ball-end nylon — around $6 **Brighter and clearer:** Martin fluorocarbon — around $6.50 **For low G:** Aquila Red Series — around $13 **Never buy:** a set for a size other than yours ## Table of Contents - [Buy for your size, and here is the number that proves it](#buy-for-your-size-and-here-is-the-number-that-proves-it) - [One set per size](#one-set-per-size) - [High G or low G](#high-g-or-low-g) - [What the materials actually do](#what-the-materials-actually-do) - [The sets worth buying](#the-sets-worth-buying) - [Also worth a look](#also-worth-a-look) - [The trap in the packet: sets tuned to D](#the-trap-in-the-packet-sets-tuned-to-d) - [Fitting them so they last](#fitting-them-so-they-last) - [Questions people actually ask](#questions-people-actually-ask) - [Will better strings fix a bad ukulele?](#will-better-strings-fix-a-bad-ukulele) - [How often should I change them?](#how-often-should-i-change-them) - [Can I put guitar strings on a ukulele?](#can-i-put-guitar-strings-on-a-ukulele) - [Do I need a different set for a left-handed ukulele?](#do-i-need-a-different-set-for-a-lefthanded-ukulele) - [Where to start](#where-to-start) ## Buy for your size, and here is the number that proves it Soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles are all tuned to the same four notes — G, C, E, A. The scale lengths are not the same, so reaching those notes on a longer neck needs more pull. String makers handle that by changing the gauges, which is why one material comes in three or four different sets. Aquila publishes the tension of every string they make, and adding up one material across the sizes shows how far apart they really are. These are their New Nylgut sets, all at standard GCEA tuning: SizeAquila setsTotal pull of the four stringsAgainst a soprano**Soprano**AQ-4About 31 lb—**Concert**AQ-7About 39 lb+26%**Tenor**AQ-10About 53 lb+72%**Baritone** (DGBE)128UAbout 44 lbDifferent tuning entirely A tenor set fitted to a soprano is being asked to reach the same pitch over a much shorter distance, so it arrives slack and floppy, buzzes on the frets and plays flat as soon as you press hard. A soprano set on a tenor goes the other way: thin, sharp and under enough strain to snap. Neither is a tone problem you can adjust your way out of. The baritone is a separate instrument in this respect. It is tuned D–G–B–E, a fourth below the others, with the two lowest strings wound in metal, and it needs a set made for that. Aquila also builds a baritone set for players who tune GCEA instead, and it pulls about 69 lb — more than half again what the standard baritone set does. If you tune a baritone up, buy the strings for it rather than fitting tenor strings and hoping. If you are not certain which size you own, measure from the nut to the bridge saddle: roughly 13” is a soprano, 15” a concert, 17” a tenor and 19” a baritone. Our guides to [soprano](/best-soprano-ukuleles/), [concert](/best-concert-ukuleles/), [tenor](/best-tenor-ukuleles/) and [baritone](/baritone-ukuleles/) ukuleles go through what each size is actually for. ## One set per size Four sets, one for each size. Your ukuleleSetMaterialPrice**Soprano**D’Addario EJ88SNyltechAround $7.50[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wUlTTX)**Concert**D’Addario EJ88CNyltechAround $7.50[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gz8ESt)**Tenor**Aquila AQ-10New NylgutUnder $10[Check price](https://amzn.to/4y6z2KB)**Baritone**Martin M630FluorocarbonAround $7[Check price](https://amzn.to/3SVFi92) ## High G or low G A standard ukulele set is re-entrant: the fourth string, the one nearest your face, is tuned *above* the third rather than below it. That is where the bright, jangly sound comes from, and it is what makes a strummed chord on a ukulele sound like a ukulele rather than like a small guitar. A low-G set drops that string an octave. You gain four lower notes, which matters for fingerpicking, melody playing and anything arranged from guitar music, and you lose the chime. Most low-G strings are wound in metal to get down there without going slack — on Aquila’s Red Series sets the low G is a .030 wound string in place of a .024 plain one. Two practical points before you switch. A wound string is noticeably thicker, so it may not fit the nut slot cut for the plain string it replaces, and it squeaks under a sliding finger in a way plain nylon does not. And on a tenor the swap actually *reduces* the total pull — Aquila’s tenor Red set drops from about 48 lb to about 47 lb when the low G goes in, while the same swap on a concert raises it from about 35 lb to about 37 lb. Neither shift is large enough to worry a healthy instrument, but the feel changes. Start on high G. It is what the instrument was designed around, it is what almost every beginner tutorial assumes, and a set costs little enough that changing your mind later is cheap. ## What the materials actually do MaterialSold asSoundSuits**Nylon**Ernie Ball, D’Addario Pro-ArtéSoft, warm, a little mutedCheap ukuleles that are already bright and harsh**Synthetic gut**Aquila Nylgut, D’Addario NyltechWarm with more body and volume than nylonMost players, most instruments**Fluorocarbon**Martin, D’Addario Pro-Arté CarbonBright, clear, more separation between notesWarm or boxy ukuleles; fingerpicking**Titanium**D’Addario EJ87Bright and loud, dense feelPlayers who find nylon dull**Wound metal**Low G and baritone third and fourth stringsDeep, guitar-likeLow-G and baritone tunings only The useful way to read that table is as a correction rather than a preference. A boxy, dull ukulele wants fluorocarbon. A shrill, plasticky one wants nylon. Something in the middle wants synthetic gut, which is why Nylgut is what so many ukuleles leave the factory wearing. Almost nobody needs to work through all five. ## The sets worth buying № 1 · The all-rounder ### D’Addario Nyltech - Nyltech synthetic gut, unwound - Soprano EJ88S and concert EJ88C - GCEA tuning, high G - Made in New York - Around $7.50 Nyltech is D’Addario’s answer to Nylgut — a synthetic built to imitate gut rather than to imitate nylon — and it does the thing a beginner set most needs to do, which is make a $60 ukulele sound better than it has any right to. It has more low end than plain nylon and less glare than fluorocarbon, so it forgives both a rough strumming hand and a cheap laminate top. It is also the least fussy set here to live with. It settles down within a day or two, it holds pitch through a change of room temperature, and it does not amplify the fret buzz that budget instruments arrive with. The one thing it will not do is add sparkle: if your ukulele already sounds soft and you want it to cut, this is the wrong direction and the Martin fluorocarbon below is the right one. **Pros**- Warm and full without sounding dull - Flatters cheap instruments rather than exposing them - Settles quickly and stays put - Around $7.50 a set **Cons**- No extra brightness for a boxy ukulele - Thicker under the fingers than fluorocarbon - Made unwound only, so no low-G option Soprano — around $7.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wUlTTX) Concert — around $7.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gz8ESt) № 2 · The factory standard ### Aquila New Nylgut - Nylgut synthetic gut, unwound - Tenor AQ-10 — .026 / .033 / .039 / .029 - About 53 lb total pull - Made in Caldogno, Italy - Under $10 Nylgut is the material most ukulele makers fit at the factory, so for a lot of players this is not a change of strings but a return to the ones the instrument was voiced around. Aquila describes it as richer and more resonant than either nylon or fluorocarbon, and the character is unmistakable in a shop: more body, a rounder attack, and a slight softness at the front of each note that suits strumming. The tenor set is the one to take. Aquila’s tenor is the best-priced size in the range and the size where Nylgut’s extra body does most work, because a tenor has the air inside it to make use of the low end. The trade is that Nylgut stretches a great deal when new — Aquila says so on the packet — so expect to retune constantly for the first day. **Pros**- The sound most ukuleles were designed around - Full, resonant low end on a tenor - Made in Italy, with published gauges and tensions - Under $10 for the tenor set **Cons**- Stretches heavily for the first day or so - Matt surface catches a little under the fingers - Matt finish shows dirt from the fingers Tenor — under $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y6z2KB) № 3 · The bright one ### Martin fluorocarbon - Clear fluorocarbon, unwound - M600 soprano and concert, M620 tenor - M630 baritone, DGBE, two wound strings - GCEA tuning, high G - Around $6.50 Fluorocarbon is denser than nylon, so the same note needs a thinner string, and thinner strings give a clearer, more separated sound with a faster attack. This is the set for a ukulele that sounds boxy or muffled, and for anyone who picks rather than strums, because individual notes stop blurring into each other. It is also the cheapest fluorocarbon on this page, which is unusual for a brand that could trade on the name and does not. The M630 is also the cleanest baritone answer on the market: it comes in the correct DGBE gauges with the lower two strings wound, at the same money as the standard sets. Be honest with yourself about direction, though — on an already bright, thin-sounding instrument, fluorocarbon makes the problem worse. **Pros**- Clear and articulate, good for fingerpicking - Thinner and slicker under the fingers - A proper baritone set at the same price - Cheapest fluorocarbon worth fitting [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Makes a bright ukulele harsher - Less body than synthetic gut - Thin strings can bite an unsanded nut slot Soprano / concert — around $6.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kJpKE0) Tenor — around $7[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gwbzg5) Baritone — around $7[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SVFi92) № 4 · The easy fit ### Ernie Ball ball-end nylon - 100% nylon monofilament - Gauges .028 / .032 / .040 / .028 - Soprano and concert (P02326 black, P02329 clear) - Ball ends instead of tie ends - Around $6 Every other set here ties to the bridge, which means winding a slippery nylon string around a bar under tension and getting the knot to hold. It is the part of restringing that beginners give up on. Ernie Ball put a ball on the end instead, the way a guitar string has one, and it drops into a slotted bridge and stays there. They also claim it cuts break-in time by up to a fifth, because a tied knot keeps creeping for days after the string itself has settled. Check your bridge before you buy. If yours is a plain bar you tie to rather than a slotted bridge, the ball has nowhere to seat and this is not the set for you. The tone is straightforward nylon — the black is warmer with a percussive edge, the clear brighter with more projection, both softer and less loud than synthetic gut. As the cheapest set on this page, it is also the sensible one to keep spare. **Pros**- No knot to tie at the bridge - Settles faster than a tied set - Warm and gentle on a harsh instrument - The cheapest set worth fitting **Cons**- Needs a slotted bridge - Quieter and softer than Nylgut or fluorocarbon - Soprano and concert only in the plain set Around $6[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wuwQ1z) № 5 · The low-G answer ### Aquila Red Series - Dense red composite, wound low G - Concert AQ-86 and tenor AQ-88 - Low G is .030 wound - Lower pull than Nylgut at the same size - Around $13 The Red Series is built the opposite way round from most strings. Instead of changing thickness to change pitch, Aquila load the material to change its density, so the strings come out noticeably thinner than Nylgut — a concert Red set runs .023 to .033 where the equivalent Nylgut runs .026 to .038. Thinner strings at the same pitch means less pull: about 35 lb against Nylgut’s 39 lb on a concert, and about 48 lb against 53 lb on a tenor. That roughly 10% drop is what you feel. Barre chords take less hand, bends come easier, and the instrument is less tiring over an hour. The sound is brighter and more immediate than Nylgut without going as glassy as fluorocarbon. It is the most expensive set on this page, and the low-G string is wound, so check it clears the nut slot before you cut anything. **Pros**- About 10% less pull than Nylgut at the same size - Easier on the hand for barre chords - Bright and immediate without harshness - Proper wound low G in both sizes **Cons**- Around double the price of the Nyltech - Wound string may not fit an uncut nut slot - Wound string squeaks under a sliding finger Concert low G — around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wrVMH1) Tenor low G — around $14[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4iwQeEj) № 6 · The step up ### D’Addario Pro-Arté Carbon - All-fluorocarbon, unwound plains - EJ99SC soprano and concert - EJ99TLG tenor with wound low G - GCEA tuning - Around $11 D’Addario’s carbon sets are the same idea as the Martin fluorocarbon executed to a tighter tolerance, and the difference shows up in intonation rather than in tone. Fluorocarbon is sorted by gauge to closer limits than nylon can be, and the payoff is chords that stay in tune with themselves up the neck instead of drifting past the fifth fret. On a decent solid-top ukulele that is worth the extra few dollars; on a $50 laminate it is money spent on a limit the instrument will not reach. The tenor low-G set is the one to note. It uses a fluorocarbon fourth rather than a metal-wound one, which removes the finger squeak and the nut-slot problem that come with a wound low G — and gives up some of the depth in exchange. If you want low G on a tenor and hate string noise, this is the set that solves it. **Pros**- Tighter intonation up the neck - Low-G option with no wound string - Clear and quick without sounding thin - Fits a soprano or a concert from one set **Cons**- Around $4 more than the Martin equivalent - Wasted on a cheap laminate instrument - Unwound low G has less depth than a wound one Soprano / concert — around $11[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hS353P) Tenor low G — around $11[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gz99fj) ## Also worth a look SetWhyPrice**D’Addario Titanium EJ87**The cheapest set in D’Addario’s range and the loudest. Bright and dense, and made in all four sizes. Take it if plain nylon has always sounded dull to you.Around $6.50[Check price](https://amzn.to/4cbTsJD)**Aquila Super Nylgut AQ-103**Slightly thinner than New Nylgut and pulling within a pound of it, with a smoother, pearl-colored surface. Aquila’s own reason to pick it is that it stretches less, which shortens the retuning day.Around $12[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gwc49X)**Ernie Ball wound low G**Ball ends and a .030 bronze-wound low G, for concert and tenor. The cheapest way to try low G, and the easiest to fit.Around $8[Check price](https://amzn.to/45Rnyi4) ## The trap in the packet: sets tuned to D Before the middle of the last century, ukuleles were commonly tuned a tone higher than they are now — A, D, F♯, B rather than G, C, E, A. Sets for that tuning are still made and still sold, and they look identical to standard sets on the shelf. D’Addario builds five different soprano sets. Four of them — the Nyltech, the Titanium, the rectified black nylon and the Pro-Arté Carbon — are specified by D’Addario for GCEA. The fifth, the clear nylon EJ65S, is specified for ADF#B. Aquila likewise sell New Nylgut in ADF#B alongside GCEA and DGBE. None of these are faulty products; they are simply for a tuning almost no beginner uses. Fitted to a ukulele tuned GCEA, a D-tuning set sits a tone below what it was gauged for, which is slack, dull and prone to buzzing. The fix is to read the tuning on the packet rather than the size, because the size will be right and the tuning wrong. If it does not say GCEA — or DGBE on a baritone — it is not the set you want. ## Fitting them so they last Aquila prints a warning on their Nylgut sets that applies to every synthetic-gut and fluorocarbon string, and that nobody reads: the material is sensitive to being cut. Before fitting, check that the slots at the nut and the bridge are shallow, perfectly smooth and free of sharp corners, and if they are not, smooth them with 600-grit emery cloth or fine steel wool. A sharp edge in a nut slot is the single most common reason a new string breaks in the first week, and it will break every replacement in the same place until it is dealt with. Aquila’s other instruction is the answer to the complaint that new ukulele strings will not hold pitch. Rather than waiting days for them to settle, pull each string firmly sideways away from the fingerboard while you tune, retune, and repeat — stopping only when the string stops dropping in pitch. That compresses most of the stretch into a few minutes. If your ukulele still drifts after that, the cause is somewhere else, and [why a ukulele won’t stay in tune](/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) goes through the rest. Change all four at once rather than one at a time. Strings age together, and a single new string against three old ones is louder and brighter than the rest of the instrument, which sounds worse than four evenly worn strings. A set that has gone dull, will not hold a tuning it used to hold, or has developed flat spots where your fingers land has done its job. ## Questions people actually ask ### Will better strings fix a bad ukulele? They will fix the sound and not the instrument. Strings change tone, volume and feel, and a $7 set genuinely does transform a cheap ukulele — the factory strings on the cheapest instruments are usually the worst part of them. What strings cannot fix is high action, a warped neck, frets that buzz or a bridge lifting off the top. If the instrument is uncomfortable to fret rather than unpleasant to hear, the problem is not the strings, and our guide to [ukuleles for beginners](/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) covers what to buy instead. ### How often should I change them? There is no interval worth quoting, because it depends entirely on how much you play and how acidic your hands are. Judge it by behavior instead: strings that have stopped holding pitch between sessions, gone dull, or worn flat where they cross the frets are finished. For someone practicing most days that tends to be a few months; for an instrument played twice a month it can be a year or more. ### Can I put guitar strings on a ukulele? No. Steel guitar strings pull several times what a ukulele is built to take and will bow the neck or pull the bridge off. Classical guitar strings are nylon and the right family, but they are gauged for a 25” scale and six different pitches, so on a 13–17” ukulele the tension lands nowhere useful. The difference between the two instruments is covered in [ukulele vs. guitar](/ukulele-vs-guitar/). ### Do I need a different set for a left-handed ukulele? No. A left-handed ukulele takes the same set in the same size, fitted in reverse order. Buy for the body size and the tuning exactly as you would for a right-handed instrument. ## Where to start Buy the D’Addario Nyltech set for your size, in high G, and play it for a month before deciding anything else. It is around $7.50, it suits almost every ukulele and almost every player, and it gives you a reference point — once you know what your instrument sounds like on a good neutral set, you can tell whether it needs brightening with fluorocarbon or softening with nylon. That question is impossible to answer from a shelf, and easy to answer after four weeks. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Travel Banjos: Six Picks and What a Short Neck Costs You](https://promusicvault.com/best-travel-banjos/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Travel Banjos: Six Picks and What a Short Neck Costs You A travel banjo is a banjo with a shortened neck, and shortening the neck has one consequence that matters more than weight, price or looks: the same strings go slack. A maker can answer that two ways — fit heavier strings and keep the instrument in standard GDGBD, or leave the gauges alone and tune the whole thing up to open C. The first kind is a banjo you can take anywhere. The second is a banjo you can only play on your own. Neither the model name nor the scale length tells you which one you are buying, and it costs nothing to get right. Our pick### Gold Tone AC-Traveler Four pounds, a full eleven-inch head so it still sounds like a banjo, and standard GDGBD tuning — which means every chord you know works and you can sit in with anyone. It is also the cheapest instrument here from an actual banjo maker, and it arrives set up in Florida with a gig bag in the box. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qiCSO9) **Smallest that still tunes to G:** Gold Tone AC-Mini — around $370, 28½” end to end **Best sounding:** Gold Tone CC-Mini — around $565, but it is in open C **Under $130:** Vangoa 26 Inch — around $123 **If a ukulele will do:** Kmise banjolele — around $99 ## The six at a glance InstrumentScaleStringsWeightTuningPrice band[Gold Tone AC-Traveler](https://amzn.to/4qiCSO9)23½”54 lbGDGBD~$315[Gold Tone AC-Mini](https://amzn.to/4wZp65l)19¾”53 lb 9 ozGDGBD~$370[Gold Tone CC-Mini](https://amzn.to/3SC9bLm)19¾”54 lbCGCEG~$565[Vangoa 26 Inch](https://amzn.to/4hDlvFk)26″ overall52.8 lbOpen G~$123[Gold Tone Little Gem](https://amzn.to/4hDxSBq)15″ concert42.6 lbGCEA~$220[Kmise banjolele](https://amzn.to/3Xzr7n6)23″ overall42.6 lbGCEA~$99 ## The tuning is the whole decision A full-size five-string has a 26¼” scale and sits in GDGBD. Take four or six inches off that and the string tension drops; leave the same gauges on and the instrument goes flabby and will not hold a note. The fix is either heavier strings at the same pitch, or the same strings tuned up. Makers choose, and they do not always choose the same way at the same size. Gold Tone builds two banjos at an identical 19¾” scale. The AC-Mini ships with a heavy set — .013 to .030 — and stays in GDGBD. The CC-Mini ships with .011 to .024 and sits in CGCEG, open C, a fourth above standard. Same maker, same scale length, two different instruments to play. So the number on the spec sheet does not tell you which you are getting, and the string gauge does. What open C actually costs is this: every shape you have learned makes a different chord than it used to. The G shape gives you C, the D shape gives you G. Gold Tone publishes a transposition chart for the CC-Mini precisely because of it. On your own it makes no difference at all — the banjo is in tune with itself and the tunes come out fine. The moment somebody else is in the room with a guitar, you are a fourth away from them and a capo only goes one direction. If this is going to be your only banjo, or you ever play with other people, buy one in GDGBD and never think about it again. Our [guide to tuning a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers the standard tuning in full. ### “26 inch” and “26¼ inch” are not the same measurement Budget listings measure the whole instrument end to end. Makers quote scale length, which is nut to bridge and roughly two-thirds of the total. So a “26 inch mini banjo” and a banjo with a 26¼” scale sound like the same size and are nowhere near it — the first is about the length of your arm, the second is a full-size instrument well over three feet long. Gold Tone’s AC-Mini has a 19¾” scale and measures 28½” overall, which is the clearest illustration of the gap. When a price looks impossible for the size, check which number is being quoted. ### Head diameter decides the volume The drum, not the neck, is what makes a banjo loud. Eleven inches is the standard pot and it is what a full-size instrument uses; the eight-inch pot on most travel banjos is a little over half the area, and it sounds like it — sweeter, thinner, and comfortably quieter than a guitar sitting next to it. The AC-Traveler is the outlier here, keeping a full eleven-inch head on a shortened neck, and it is the reason it is the pick even though two others on this page are smaller and lighter. If you want a small banjo that still carries across a campfire, that is the specification to buy. ## Flying with a banjo US airlines are required by law to let you bring an instrument into the cabin. The rule is 14 CFR § 251.3, made under the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, and it says a carrier must permit a passenger to carry a violin, guitar or other small musical instrument in the cabin without any fee beyond what it charges for comparable carry-on baggage. That entitlement is real and it is worth knowing at the gate. It comes with two conditions, and the second is the one that bites. The instrument has to stow safely in a baggage compartment or under a seat, and there has to be space for it *at the time you board*. Under-seat space on the 737s and A320s that fly most domestic routes runs about fourteen to eighteen inches wide and eight to eleven high, so nothing banjo-shaped is going there — it is the overhead bin or nothing. Bins fill front to back as people board, which makes boarding position the entire game. Board in an early group and the rule works exactly as written; board last and there is no space, the condition is not met, and the law is on the airline’s side. The other thing that helps is a soft bag rather than a hard case. A gig bag squashes into a part-full bin alongside roller cases in a way a rigid case cannot, and every Gold Tone on this page includes one. ## The six picks № 1 · The one to buy ### Gold Tone AC-Traveler - 23½” scale, 22 frets - 11″ composite rim, 11″ Remo frosted head - 1¼” Zero Glide nut - 4 lb - GDGBD standard tuning - Gig bag included, set up in Florida - ~$315 The AC-1 with a shorter neck, and the only instrument on this page that gives up size without giving up anything else. The eleven-inch head is the whole argument — it is the same drum a full-size banjo uses, so the tone has body and the volume is real, while the neck is nearly three inches shorter than standard. Gold Tone states plainly that it ships in standard GDGBD, so there is nothing to relearn and nothing to transpose. The composite rim is the trade. It is dimensionally stable, shrugs off damp and heat, and keeps the weight at four pounds, which is exactly what you want in something that lives in a car boot — but it does not have the warmth of a wooden pot and some players never take to it. The Zero Glide nut is a genuine extra at this money: it seats the open strings at fretted height so first position plays in tune, which is usually a trip to a shop. For a first travel banjo, or a second banjo that goes where the good one does not, nothing else here is close on value. **Pros**- Full 11″ head, so it sounds like a banjo - Standard GDGBD — no transposing, plays with others - 4 lb, and set up before it ships - Gig bag and Zero Glide nut included **Cons**- Composite rim is not to every taste - The widest instrument here — 11″ of pot to carry - Shorter frets take a few days to get used to Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qiCSO9) № 2 · Smallest that still tunes to G ### Gold Tone AC-Mini - 19¾” scale, 20 frets, 28½” overall - 8″ composite rim, 8″ Remo frosted head - 1¼” Zero Glide nut, nato neck - 3 lb 9 oz - GDGBD standard tuning, heavy .013–.030 strings - Gig bag, five-year transferable warranty - ~$370 Four inches shorter in the neck than the AC-Traveler and half a pound lighter, and still in standard tuning — which is the trick, and it is done with a much heavier string set rather than by tuning up. At 28½” end to end this is the one that genuinely disappears into luggage, and the five-year transferable warranty is unusually generous for the money. The eight-inch pot is the cost. It is a sweeter, smaller, more parlour-ish sound than the AC-Traveler makes, and in company it will be the quietest thing playing. The heavy strings also feel stiff under the left hand at first, which is the price of keeping the pitch where it belongs. If the deciding factor is whether the banjo fits, this is the one; if it is whether the banjo is heard, spend $55 less and take the AC-Traveler. **Pros**- 28½” overall — the easiest here to pack - Standard GDGBD despite the short scale - Lightest five-string on this page at 3 lb 9 oz - Five-year transferable warranty **Cons**- 8″ head is noticeably quieter and thinner - Heavy strings feel stiff to fret - Costs more than the bigger-sounding AC-Traveler Around $370[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wZp65l) № 3 · The best sounding ### Gold Tone CC-Mini - 19¾” scale, 19 frets, 30½” overall - 8″ multi-ply maple rim with rolled brass tone ring - Maple neck, rosewood board, snowflake inlay - 4 lb - CGCEG — open C, a fourth above standard - Gig bag included - ~$565 A proper wooden pot with a rolled brass bar under the head, which is the thing none of the composite instruments have and the reason this is the best-sounding banjo on the page by a clear margin. Maple rim, rosewood fingerboard, snowflake inlays, geared fifth-string tuner — at a glance and under the fingers it is a small version of a real banjo rather than a travel compromise. And it is in open C, which at this price is a real problem. Everything you know produces the wrong chord name, you cannot play with a guitarist without transposing on the fly, and the shapes will fight you when you go back to a full-size instrument. That is a lot to accept for the player most likely to be spending $565 on a second banjo. Buy it if the travel banjo is a toy for your own amusement and you want it to sound lovely; if it has to work in company, the AC-Traveler at nearly $250 less is the better instrument for the job. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Maple rim and brass tone ring — much richer than composite - The nicest fit and finish here - Geared fifth-string tuner - Same 19¾” scale as the AC-Mini **Cons**- Open C tuning — chord shapes all transpose - Dearest thing on this page by a distance - Heavier than the AC-Mini for the same scale Around $565[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SC9bLm) № 4 · Under $130 ### Vangoa 5 String Banjo, 26 Inch - 26″ overall length, five strings - Mahogany body, Remo head, 12 brackets - Removable back — open or closed - Two-way truss rod, 3mm action at the 12th - 2.8 lb - Bag, tuner, strap, picks and spare strings included - ~$123 The one to take when you would rather not care what happens to it. A real Remo head and an adjustable truss rod at this money are more than the category usually offers, the back comes off if you want the lighter, mellower open sound, and the kit covers everything you need to start. What you are not getting is a factory setup, and on a banjo that matters more than on most instruments — budget for an hour of a repairer’s time to sort the bridge placement, head tension and nut slots, which turns a $123 banjo into a properly playable one for about $200 all in. At this scale, ordinary-gauge strings in open G will feel slack under the picking hand, and a heavier set is the cheap fix — exactly the trick Gold Tone uses on the AC-Mini. It is also sold in two sizes under one name: this is the 26″, and there is a 38″ full-size version, so make sure you are choosing the small one. Our [guide to banjos under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) works through that arithmetic in full. **Also at this price:** the [Mulucky B806](https://amzn.to/3Je0Ia0) is the same idea in sapele with a closed back, around $106, and worth a look if the Vangoa is between finishes. **Pros**- Remo head and a truss rod at $123 - Removable back — two sounds in one instrument - Everything you need to start is in the box - Cheap enough to take somewhere you would not risk a good banjo **Cons**- Arrives unset up; add a setup to the real cost - Sold under one name in two very different sizes - Ordinary hardware, and it will not hold pitch like the Gold Tones Around $123[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hDlvFk) № 5 · The banjo ukulele, done properly ### Gold Tone Little Gem - 15″ concert scale, 18 frets - 8″ clear acrylic rim - 1⅜” nut, maple neck and fingerboard - 2.6 lb - GCEA — standard ukulele tuning - Gig bag included - ~$220 · four colors, each its own listing A banjo ukulele sidesteps the entire tuning problem, because GCEA is what a ukulele is always in — there is no transposing, no heavy string set and nothing to relearn, and anyone who plays uke can pick this up and go. The see-through acrylic pot is not a gimmick either: it is a rigid, stable rim that shrugs off weather, and it took Best in Show at Summer NAMM on the strength of it. Be clear about what it is. Four strings, no fifth-string drone, and nylon under the fingers — this will not teach you clawhammer or bluegrass rolls and it is not a five-string in miniature. What it is is the loudest, most percussive ukulele in the room and the least fuss to travel with, at 2.6 lb. It comes in four transparent colors — diamond, ruby, sapphire and amethyst — which are the same instrument underneath. See [banjo vs ukulele](/banjo-vs-ukulele/) if you are weighing the two instruments rather than the two sizes. **Pros**- Standard GCEA — nothing to transpose, ever - 2.6 lb and about as robust as an instrument gets - Built and set up by a banjo maker - Gig bag included **Cons**- Four strings and no drone — it is not a five-string - Nylon strings, so none of the metallic bite - Twice the price of the Kmise for the same tuning Around $220[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hDxSBq) № 6 · Cheapest way in ### Kmise banjolele - Concert scale, 23″ overall, four strings - 8″ head, removable resonator - Sapele body; several finishes - Aquila nylon strings, truss rod, 3mm action at the 12th - 2.6 lb - Bag, strap, tuner, pickup, picks and spare strings included - ~$99 Under a hundred dollars for a banjo-voiced instrument you can genuinely learn on, with the resonator removable if you want it quieter and lighter. It ships with Aquila strings — an Italian maker whose nylon is what a lot of players fit to ukuleles costing several times this — and a truss rod, which at this price is not a given. For a first instrument, a holiday instrument, or something to leave at a second home, the value is hard to argue with. The nylon strings need a solid week of daily retuning before they settle, which catches out anyone expecting to play it properly the day it arrives; that is normal for nylon and not a fault, but it is worth knowing before you take it away for a weekend. The sound is bright and loud rather than resonant — cheerful and a bit rowdy, which suits singalongs better than it suits anything delicate. **Pros**- Around $99 with everything you need included - Removable resonator — two voices, and lighter without - Standard GCEA tuning - The cheapest honest way into a banjo sound **Cons**- A week of retuning before the nylon settles - Loud and bright rather than resonant - Fret ends can be sharp; quality varies unit to unit Around $99[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Xzr7n6) ## What else to think about ### Weight, honestly The spread on this page is 2.6 lb to 4 lb, against roughly 5 lb for a full-size open back and eleven or more for a bluegrass banjo with a resonator and a cast tone ring. That is the real gain from traveling small, and it is bigger than the size difference suggests — see [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) for the full range. Between four pounds and three and a half, though, nothing changes that you will notice. Do not pay for the difference. ### Composite or wood Composite rims are molded plastic, and for an instrument that is going to sit in a hot car or a damp tent they are the sensible choice — they do not move with humidity, they do not need retensioning after a temperature swing, and they are lighter. Wood sounds better. That is the trade in one line, and for a travel instrument specifically the composite argument is stronger than it is anywhere else in the banjo world. ### Resonator or open back Every travel instrument here is either open backed or has a back that comes off, which is not a coincidence — the resonator is a wooden bowl that adds a pound and a couple of inches of depth to throw sound forward at an audience you probably do not have. Take it off and the banjo is lighter, flatter against your back and mellower. Our [open back vs resonator comparison](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) covers what the sound actually does. ### Budget for the setup A banjo’s bridge is not glued down — it is held in place by string tension, and where it sits determines whether the instrument plays in tune above the fifth fret. Add head tension, action and nut slots and you have a job that costs $50 to $100 at a shop and makes more difference below about $400 than the next $200 of instrument would. The Gold Tone models here are set up in Florida before they ship and need nothing. The budget instruments are not, and that money belongs in the total from the start. ## FAQ ### Can you take a banjo on a plane? Yes. Under 14 CFR § 251.3, a US carrier must let you bring a small instrument into the cabin at no charge beyond its ordinary carry-on fee, provided it stows safely and there is space when you board. In practice that means the overhead bin — under-seat space is far too shallow — so board as early as your ticket allows, because the space condition is the one that fails. ### What size banjo is best for travel? A scale length somewhere between 19¾” and 23½”, which puts the whole instrument at roughly 28″ to 34″. Shorter than that and you are into ukulele territory; longer and you are carrying a full-size banjo, which is perfectly possible but stops being a travel instrument. ### Do travel banjos sound like real banjos? That depends on the head, not the neck. An eleven-inch pot sounds like a banjo whatever the scale length, which is why the AC-Traveler is the pick here. An eight-inch pot is sweeter and markedly quieter — pleasant on its own, easily buried by a guitar. ### Can I put a short-scale banjo into standard G tuning? Usually, with a heavier string set — that is exactly how Gold Tone keeps the 19¾” AC-Mini in GDGBD. Gold Tone offers a heavy set for its open-C models too, though it does not recommend it, and the shorter the scale the worse the compromise gets. Buying an instrument that is already in the tuning you want is the cleaner answer. See [our banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) for gauges. ### Is a banjolele a banjo? It is a banjo body with a ukulele neck: four nylon strings in GCEA, no fifth-string drone, and none of the rolls or clawhammer technique that make a five-string what it is. As a travel instrument it is excellent and it genuinely sounds banjo-ish. As preparation for playing a five-string, it teaches you very little. [How many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) covers the family properly. ## Where to land For nearly everyone the Gold Tone AC-Traveler is the answer: standard tuning, a full-size head, four pounds and around $315. Go to the AC-Mini if packing size is the binding constraint and you accept a quieter instrument, and to the CC-Mini only if you want the nicest-sounding small banjo and genuinely do not mind playing in open C. Under $130 the Vangoa plus a setup is an honest instrument. And if you mainly want something small and cheerful to carry, the banjo ukuleles do the job with less to think about — the Little Gem if you want it built properly, the Kmise if the budget rules. If none of this is quite the instrument you had in mind, [our beginner banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) starts from the full-size end. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Tenor Recorder for Small Hands: Which Reach Is Actually Stopping You](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-recorder-for-small-hands/) **Published:** October 22, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Recorder Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/recorder-reviews/ "Recorder Reviews")› Best Tenor Recorder for Small Hands: Which Reach Is Actually Stopping You A tenor recorder asks two completely different things of your right hand. Spreading the fingers across the middle of the instrument is one. Getting the little finger down to the bottom hole is the other. Running out of road on one is not the same problem as running out on the other, they have different fixes, and buying the wrong fix is how you end up with a second tenor. The cheap answer to the little-finger problem is a key, and the cheap answer to the spread problem is a physically smaller instrument. Only one of the two plastic tenors worth owning has keys. If you want one answer### Yamaha YRT-304B — two levered keys, and they remove the reach that actually defeats people The bottom hole is the one that stops players, and the Yamaha simply does not ask you to cover it: low C and C♯ are on levers, so the right little finger rests on a key instead of stretching for a hole. It is the heavier and more widely spaced of the two, which matters if your trouble is the middle joint rather than the bottom — but for most small hands the keys settle it, and it costs about twenty dollars more than the keyless option. Around $75 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/404rszZ) **If the spread is the problem:** Aulos 211A Robin — smaller body, closer holes, no key **Costs nothing:** move the right thumb before you buy anything **Same fingering as a soprano:** your existing method book works ## Two different reaches get called small hands Hold a tenor in playing position and the right hand is doing two unrelated jobs. Three fingers have to span holes four, five and six down the middle joint, and the little finger has to travel past all of them to the seventh hole at the bottom. A hand can be perfectly comfortable with one and hopeless at the other. The bottom hole is the harder of the two, and not only because it is furthest away. The little finger has the least independent movement of any digit on the hand — its extensor tendon is tied to the ring finger’s by connective bands, so pulling it down toward the bottom hole drags the ring finger off hole six with it. That is why the failure is usually two notes going wrong at once rather than one. A key fixes that completely. A smaller instrument does not — it shortens every distance a little, including one that was never the problem. ## Find out which one you have before you spend anything If you already own a tenor, cover holes one to six and stop there. If those six are comfortable and it all falls apart when the little finger goes hunting for the seventh, you want keys. If holes four to six are already a strain before the little finger is even involved, you want a smaller body — and keys will not save you. There is a third answer, and it is free. Most of the time the right hand is simply sitting in the wrong place: rotated too far under the instrument, with the thumb parked opposite the wrong finger, so the little finger is reaching backward as well as downward. Slide the right thumb toward the foot of the recorder until it sits roughly under holes five and six, let the wrist drop, and let the elbow come away from your ribs. Reaches that felt impossible often stop being reaches at all. Try that for a week before deciding your hands are the problem — a different recorder cannot fix a hand position. Measuring your hand span will not settle it either. Hole placement varies enough between models that two tenors of identical length can want different hands. What runs out firstWhat actually fixes itWhat to buyLittle finger cannot reach hole sevenA lever, so the finger never covers a holeYamaha YRT-304BFingers cannot spread across holes four to sixA shorter body with closer holesAulos 211A RobinBothClose spacing *and* a key — the combination is rare and costs moreAulos 511B SymphonyWrist aches, holes are reachable at ear levelArm and thumb position, or a bent neckNothing — fix the position firstThumb tires and the instrument sagsTaking the weight off the thumbA thumb rest or a sling ## The two plastic tenors worth owning № 1 · For the little-finger problem ### Yamaha YRT-304B Tenor Recorder - Baroque fingering - Two levered keys, low C and C♯ - Double holes, D/D♯ and C/C♯ - 3-piece ABS - Key of C, range C4–D6 - ~$75 The keys are the whole argument. On a keyless tenor the right little finger has to travel to the bottom hole and seal it, and that single reach ends more tenor careers than everything else combined. Here it rests on a lever. The double holes mean the low chromatic notes are properly in tune rather than approximately, which is not true of every plastic tenor at any price. The unflattering part is the spacing. Holes four to six sit further apart than on the Aulos, and the D/D♯ double hole is centered in a way that wants a longer ring finger than a lot of people have. If your hand is already struggling across the middle joint, the keys at the bottom are solving a problem you do not have. It is also the heavier of the two, which is felt after twenty minutes rather than immediately. Tonally it is the better instrument of the pair — firmer, more focused, and easier to control at the top of the range once you have the breath for it. **Pros**- Levers remove the hardest reach on the instrument - Double holes on both low chromatic notes - The firmer, better-controlled sound of the two **Cons**- Widest hole spacing here — wrong fix if the spread is your problem - Centered D/D♯ hole punishes a short ring finger - Heavier in a long session Around $75[Check current price](https://amzn.to/404rszZ) № 2 · For the spread problem ### Aulos 211A Robin Tenor Recorder - Baroque fingering - No keys - Curved windway - 3-piece ABS, about 622 mm - Key of C, range C4–D6 - ~$58 Shorter and lighter than a standard tenor, with the finger holes set closer together and a slightly smaller mouthpiece. Across the middle joint it is genuinely the easier instrument, and the reduced weight is worth more than it sounds if you play standing or for any length of time. Aulos builds the better cheap plastic recorder generally, and the curved windway gives it a rounder, more forgiving tone than the price suggests. Then there is the bottom hole, and this is where the instrument’s reputation runs ahead of it. There is no key. The little finger still has to reach hole seven and seal it, and players with average-sized adult hands report that this remains a real stretch on the Robin — closer spacing higher up does not shorten the one distance that was hardest. Buy it because the middle joint suits you, not because it is billed as the small-hands tenor. Low C is also the weakest note on it. It speaks easily enough, but it is quiet, and it will not carry against other instruments in a group. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Closest hole spacing of the two, and noticeably lighter - Curved windway, warmer and more forgiving low down - The cheaper of the two **Cons**- No key, so the hardest reach is untouched - Low C is quiet and gets buried in an ensemble - Billed as a small-hands instrument on the strength of half the problem Around $58[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j7lEoC) ## The one that does both, and the ones that cost a thousand dollars Aulos also builds the 511B Symphony tenor, which keeps the closer Aulos hole spacing and adds an extension key for low C and C♯. It answers both halves of the problem at once, and its key lever is longer than Yamaha’s, so there is less travel for the little finger as well as less stretch. It sells for a little over a hundred dollars, and it is the one to look for if neither of the two above quite fits. Above that the money goes up steeply and the ergonomics get properly serious. Mollenhauer, Moeck and Küng all build wooden tenors with a bend in the neck, which brings the right hand higher and turns the whole reach into something closer to holding an alto, and comfort models that add further keys for holes three and four so neither hand has to spread at all. These start around nine hundred dollars and run past thirteen hundred, and adding a key to a tenor you already own is roughly three hundred dollars a key. That gap is the reason to start with a sixty or seventy-five dollar plastic tenor rather than agonising over the decision. It costs about five percent of the ergonomic answer and it tells you, in a fortnight, whether your hands and the tenor are ever going to get along. ## A thumb rest and a sling fix a problem no recorder fixes A tenor is heavy enough that the right thumb ends up doing two jobs at once: holding the instrument up and acting as the pivot everything else moves around. When the thumb is loaded, the fingers above it lose range, and a reach that is fine in the first minute stops being fine in the tenth. From the inside it is indistinguishable from running out of reach: both get worse the longer you play. A thumb rest moves the contact point and lets the thumb push rather than grip. A neck sling takes the weight off it entirely, and on a tenor the trick worth knowing is to put your right arm through the strap so the load sits on the shoulder — it keeps the cord clear of the left thumb, which is otherwise in the way the whole time. Some adjustable thumb rests carry an eyelet so you can run a sling from the instrument itself. Between them they cost very little and they change the reach more than the difference between the two recorders above. ## A tenor reads exactly like a soprano Both are in C, and the fingerings are identical — the tenor simply sounds an octave lower. The American Recorder Society publishes one chart for the pair. If you have played a descant, you already know every fingering on a tenor and the only new skill is the reach and the breath. That also means you do not need tenor-specific material, which is just as well, because there is very little of it. Any descant method transfers straight across, and the Trapp Family method is the one worth having: it is a beginner’s book for descant that moves into duets, trios and quartets rather than stopping at the end of the exercises, so it is still useful once you can play. Read it as written and let the tenor sound an octave down. Worth adding### The Trapp Family Recorder Method, Volume 1 A descant method, which is the point — the fingerings are the same ones a tenor uses. Exercises through to four-part arrangements, so it does not become useless in a month. Around $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3IAU0cr) ## One thing you do not have to worry about Tenors are only made with Baroque fingering. The German-fingering trap that catches people buying a soprano — where one digit in the model number changes the instrument and makes every sharp and flat harder — does not exist at this size, so there is no wrong version of either recorder above to accidentally buy. Our [Aulos and Yamaha comparison](/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) covers that if you are buying a soprano at the same time. ## FAQs ### How do I know if a tenor recorder is too big for my hands? Cover holes one to six and stop. If those are comfortable and only the bottom hole defeats you, a keyed tenor solves it. If holes four to six are already a strain, you need a physically smaller instrument instead. Check your right thumb position first — it is under holes five and six on a well-held tenor, and moving it fixes more reaches than money does. ### Do I need a tenor recorder with keys? Only if the bottom hole is what stops you. A key for low C and C♯ means the little finger presses a lever instead of covering a hole, which removes the longest reach on the instrument. It does nothing for the spread across the middle three fingers, so it is the wrong purchase if that is where your hand runs out. ### Is the fingering on a tenor recorder different from a soprano? No. Both are in C and use identical fingerings; the tenor sounds an octave lower. Anything written for descant can be played on a tenor as it stands, and any descant method book will teach it. ### What is a knick or bent-neck tenor recorder? One with a bend between the head and the body, which brings the instrument closer in and lets the right hand sit higher — roughly where it would be on an alto. It helps short arms and stiff wrists rather than short fingers, and it is a wooden-instrument feature: no plastic tenor has it. ### Can a child play a tenor recorder? Some can, but the bottom hole is the limit rather than the fingerings, which they already know from a descant. A keyed tenor extends the age range downward considerably. Weight matters too — a child who can reach everything may still not hold it up for a full rehearsal without a sling. ### Why is low C so hard on a tenor recorder? Two reasons at once. It is the furthest hole from the hand, and the little finger has the least independent movement of any finger — its tendons are linked to the ring finger’s, so stretching for the bottom hole tends to lift the ring finger off the hole above. It also needs the most air of any note on the instrument, so a leak that would be inaudible higher up silences it completely. ### Should I get a wooden tenor recorder instead? Not as a first tenor. Wood is where the ergonomic options live — bent necks and extra keys — but the entry point is around nine hundred dollars, and plastic is the sensible way to find out whether the size suits you at all. Wood also needs playing in and dries out if neglected. **Also read:** - [Aulos vs Yamaha recorders — which to buy, and the digit that decides it](/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) - [Best alto recorder — the size most people should own before a tenor](/best-alto-recorder/) - [Best plastic recorder](/best-plastic-recorder/) - [Best wooden recorders](/best-wooden-recorders/) **Categories:** Recorder Reviews --- ### [Best Plastic Recorder: What to Buy, and the One Digit That Decides It](https://promusicvault.com/best-plastic-recorder/) **Published:** October 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Recorder Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/recorder-reviews/ "Recorder Reviews")› Best Plastic Recorder: What to Buy, and the One Digit That Decides It Almost every plastic soprano recorder sold is built to one of two fingering systems, and the two are sold side by side at the same price under model numbers that differ by a single digit. Get that digit wrong and the fingering chart in the method book stops matching the instrument in the child’s hands. Everything else about buying a plastic recorder — brand, color, price — matters less than that. The good news is that plastic is genuinely the right material here. It does not crack, it does not need oiling, it goes under a tap, and at the cheap end it holds its tuning better than wood at four times the money. If you want one answer### Yamaha YRS-24B soprano — Baroque fingering, double holes, about $8 The recorder most American school programs hand out, and the cheapest way to get properly controlled intonation with the fingering your method book assumes. The **B** is the load-bearing part of the name: the YRS-23 is the same instrument with German fingering. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qrX1kU) **In a color:** Yamaha YRS-20, ~$11 — that line has no German version **Step up:** Yamaha YRS-302B, ~$22, arched windway **Cheapest safe pick:** Eastar ERS-21BN, ~$8 **Method book:** Essential Elements Book 1, ~$7 ## The model number is where the fingering is written Baroque fingering — also called English — is what the published repertoire assumes, what a teacher will teach, and what the chart in the back of every English-language method book shows. German fingering is a 1920s simplification that makes F easier to reach and makes F sharp, and everything with a sharp in it, worse. If you are buying in the US, the UK, Canada or Australia, you want Baroque. Neither maker prints the word in large type. Both encode it in the model number instead, and they use opposite conventions. Model familyGerman — not this oneBaroque — this one**Yamaha school soprano**YRS-23YRS-24B**Yamaha Rottenburgh soprano**YRS-301IIIYRS-302BIII**Yamaha plant-based soprano**YRS-401, YRS-401IIYRS-402B, YRS-402IIB**Yamaha color soprano**Not madeYRS-20BB, YRS-20BG, YRS-20BP**Yamaha altos**Not madeAll of them**Aulos Robin**204A (G)205A (E)**Aulos Symphony**502B (G)503B (E)**Aulos Bel Canto**104A (G)105A (E)**Aulos Haka**702B (G)703B (E)**Eastar student soprano**ERS-21G-, ERS-1G-ERS-21B- Yamaha uses an odd number for German and an even number with a **B** for Baroque. Aulos number theirs the other way up and then settle it with a letter in brackets, where **(G)** is German and **(E)** is English. Eastar puts the letter in the middle of the code. Within a pair the instruments are otherwise identical — same body, same finish, same money. Only the size of the third and fourth finger holes changes. Two lines escape the problem entirely. Yamaha’s colored Rainbow sopranos are built in Baroque only, in blue, green and pink, so a child who wants a green recorder cannot accidentally end up on the wrong system. And nobody makes a German-fingered alto — every alto either brand sells is Baroque. [Our Aulos and Yamaha comparison](https://promusicvault.com/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) goes further into what German fingering costs you once the music starts using sharps. ## What the extra fifteen dollars buys Plastic sopranos run from about eight dollars to about twenty-five, and there are exactly two things separating the ends of that range. The first is the windway — the narrow channel between your lips and the sharp edge that splits the air and makes the note. Cheap recorders use a straight one; better ones use an arched one. Yamaha describes the difference in their own terms, and they are honest about which is easier: a straight windway, they say, is easy to play and ideal for beginners, while an arched one adds “a slight resistance” that buys better breath control, more tonal expression and more projection. That resistance is the point. A beginner reads it as hard work. A player with some breath control reads it as something to shape a phrase with. The second is the bore. The 300-series instruments are cut to the Rottenburgh pattern, an eighteenth-century design, and the tone sits noticeably closer to a wooden recorder — rounder low down, less shrill at the top. Below that, the body is simply a molded tube. What does *not* vary is the thing beginners assume they are paying for. Double holes at the bottom two positions, so that low C sharp and D sharp play in tune rather than approximately, are standard on everything worth buying here, including the eight-dollar Yamaha. If a soprano has single holes at the bottom, that is a reason to skip it whatever it costs. ## The sopranos worth buying FingeringWindwayPiecesMaterialPrice**Yamaha YRS-24B**BaroqueStraight3ABS~$8**Eastar ERS-21BN**BaroqueStraight3ABS~$8**Yamaha YRS-20 (colors)**BaroqueStraight3ABS, BPA-free~$11**Yamaha YRS-302B**BaroqueArched, Rottenburgh3ABS~$22**Yamaha YRS-402B**BaroqueArched, Rottenburgh3Plant-based resin~$25 № 1 · The default answer ### Yamaha YRS-24B Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - C5–D7 - Double holes, low C/C♯ and D/D♯ - Straight windway - 3-piece ABS - ~$8 Yamaha calls this “possibly the world’s most popular model” and it is hard to argue. It is the recorder a great many American classrooms hand out, it costs less than the method book, and the intonation is properly controlled rather than approximately right — which is not something the generic eight-dollar recorders can promise. The straight windway is the compromise, and it is the correct one at this price. It takes very little breath and gives a soft, clean note almost immediately, which is exactly what a nine-year-old needs. It is also thinner in the low register than the arched-windway models and harder to hold steady at the top. That is an observation about a $8 instrument, not a complaint. **Pros**- Correct fingering and double holes for about eight dollars - Cheap enough to replace without a second thought - What the teacher will be holding **Cons**- Straight windway — the thing you pay more to improve - One digit from the YRS-23, which is the German-fingered version and costs more Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qrX1kU) № 2 · For a child who wants a color ### Yamaha YRS-20 Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - Blue, green or pink - Double holes, low C/C♯ and D/D♯ - BPA-free ABS - 3-piece - ~$11 The Rainbow line is the same class of instrument as the YRS-24B in a body a child will actually want to carry, and the reason it belongs on this page rather than in a toy shop is that Yamaha never built a German-fingered version of it. Every color is Baroque, so the usual trap does not apply. The double holes are there and so is the tuning. Three dollars more than the plain one buys the color and nothing else. That is a fair trade if it is the difference between an instrument that gets practiced and one that stays in the bag. **Pros**- No German-fingered version exists, so the color choice is safe - Same double holes and tuning as the school model - BPA-free, and Yamaha publishes the safety standards its resin meets **Cons**- Costs more than the plain YRS-24B for no acoustic gain - Straight windway, like everything at this price Around $11[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46l7e9i) № 3 · The cheap one that is not a gamble ### Eastar ERS-21BN Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - Double holes - Straight windway - 3-piece ABS - Detachable thumb rest - ~$8 Most recorders at this price are unbranded mouldings sold under a different name every season, and plenty of them turn out to be German-fingered. The Eastar is the exception worth knowing about: a real model number, a Baroque version that is clearly named as one, and a movable thumb rest, which is a genuine convenience on a small hand and something the Yamaha does not offer. It is not the equal of the Yamaha on intonation, and Eastar’s own name for the finish — “Natural” — describes a cream plastic rather than anything else. But at the same money as the YRS-24B it is a legitimate second choice, and it is the one to buy if you want two recorders in the house without spending twice. **Pros**- Baroque version explicitly named, unlike most of its price bracket - Adjustable thumb rest for a small or awkward hand - Double holes at the price where they often disappear **Cons**- Intonation is good rather than Yamaha-good - The German version sits under the same product name — check the model code ends in B Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wIuuZy) № 4 · Where a recorder stops being a school recorder ### Yamaha YRS-302B Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - Arched windway - Rottenburgh model - 3-piece ABS - ~$22 This is the one to buy for an adult who intends to keep playing. The arched windway and the Rottenburgh bore are the two things that separate a plastic recorder from a plastic whistle, and Yamaha’s claim for the 300 series — a sound “surprisingly close to that of wooden recorders”, with intonation they describe as impeccable — is the closest a specification sheet gets to a boast. It is roughly three times the money and about ten times the instrument. It asks more of you. The arched windway resists the breath, which is what gives you something to control, and a beginner who has never had to think about air pressure will find the low notes harder to start. F is the note people struggle with, and on Baroque fingering that is expected: F is the forked fingering, covering a hole below an open one, and it comes out sour until the seal is right. It is the fingering rather than the instrument. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Arched windway and Rottenburgh bore for about twenty-two dollars - Rounder low register and a top octave that stays in tune - Cheaper than the plant-based model with the same design **Cons**- The added resistance is real work for an outright beginner - Narrower windway clogs sooner than a cheap wide one Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gvy4Ag) № 5 · The plant-based one ### Yamaha YRS-402B Ecodear Soprano Recorder - Baroque fingering - Arched windway - Rottenburgh model - Plant-based resin - ~$25 Same arched windway and same Rottenburgh pattern as the YRS-302B, molded in a biomass resin built on plant-derived polylactic acid instead of petroleum ABS. Yamaha’s case for it is not only environmental: they say the change of material on its own produced a mellower, more centered tone, better breath response and easier control in the high register. Players who have both tend to agree that it is the warmer of the two. The honest note is that it costs a few dollars more than the ABS instrument it is otherwise identical to, and that Yamaha has since moved the line on to a second-generation version in a differently formulated resin. The instrument described here is the Ecodear original. Buy it because you want the plant-based body and the softer tone; if you want the design at the lowest price, the YRS-302B above is the same recorder in ABS. **Pros**- Mellower and more centered than the ABS models - Arched windway and Rottenburgh voicing - Plant-derived body with no loss of durability **Cons**- Dearer than the ABS instrument with the same design - Superseded in Yamaha’s current line-up by a second-generation version Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HAfYgl) ## The one that would be here if it said which fingering it is Squeaking is what makes small children give up on the recorder, and it has one cause: a fingertip laid across a flat, drilled hole leaves a gap the child cannot see or feel, and the note comes out as a shriek. Nuvo’s Recorder+ solves it properly — enlarged tone holes with silicone key pads over them, so the finger presses a flap rather than sealing a rim. Larger holes also give a fuller tone, and the whole instrument is waterproof enough to wash in hot soapy water. It is not a pick here, for one reason. Nuvo builds it in both fingering systems under a single model number — the code identifies the body and key colors and nothing else, and their own catalogue instructs the trade to specify Baroque or German when ordering. So on a Recorder+ the model number, the packaging and the fingering chart in the box, which prints both systems side by side, all decline to tell you which one you have. On this page that is disqualifying. If you can get it confirmed as Baroque before you buy, it is a genuinely clever instrument for a six-year-old. ## Past the soprano Start on the soprano. It is smaller, cheaper, and every beginner method is written for it. The larger recorders read from a different position on the stave and make far better second instruments than first ones — but a plastic body is even more of an advantage as the instrument grows, because a wooden alto or tenor is a serious sum of money and needs looking after. Alto · the usual second recorder ### Yamaha YRA-302B Alto Recorder - Key of F - Baroque fingering - Arched windway, Rottenburgh - Double holes on low F/G - 3-piece ABS - ~$30 The standard adult step-up, and the size most of the serious recorder repertoire is written for. It is the 300-series design in the larger key — arched windway, Rottenburgh bore, doubled bottom holes — and the fingering question does not arise, because no German-fingered alto exists. Reading in F after a year in C is the real adjustment, not the stretch. **Pros**- Where the recorder repertoire actually lives - Arched windway and doubled bottom holes as standard - No fingering trap at this size **Cons**- Reads in F, which means relearning the note names - Bigger stretch than a soprano for a child’s hand Around $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y3tvoe) Tenor · an octave below the soprano ### Yamaha YRT-304B Tenor Recorder - Key of C, an octave below the soprano - Baroque fingering - Arched windway - Keys for the bottom notes - 3-piece ABS - ~$75 The tenor uses the same fingerings as the soprano an octave down, so there is nothing new to read — the difficulty is entirely physical. It is a long instrument and the bottom holes are a genuine reach, which is why this one puts low C and C sharp on levers and removes the stretch that stops most people. Rich and even across the registers, and a fraction of what a wooden tenor costs. **Pros**- Same fingerings as the soprano, so no relearning - Keys remove the reach that defeats most hands - Wooden tenors start at several times the price **Cons**- Wide finger spacing across the middle joint - Takes considerably more air than a soprano Around $75[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xiXfgA) If the reach is the thing you are worried about, we go through both tenor patterns and how to tell which suits your hand in [tenor recorders for small hands](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-recorder-for-small-hands/). ## Why plastic is the right answer, and where it is not A wooden recorder has to be played in over weeks, oiled, kept away from radiators and never left wet. It swells, it cracks, and its tuning moves with the humidity in the room. None of that applies to a molded ABS body. It washes, it survives a school bag, and it plays the same in January as in July. There is also the question nobody asks out loud about an object a child keeps in their mouth. Yamaha publishes exactly what their resin is tested against: Japan’s Food Safety and Sanitation Law standards for utensils and toys, the European REACH lead and phthalate limits, and the North American CPSIA lead and phthalate regulations, with the manufacturing quality system certified to ISO 9001 by an independent body. Whether a six-dollar unbranded recorder meets any of that is not stated anywhere, which is most of the argument for spending eight. Where plastic genuinely gives something up is at the top of the market. A good wooden alto has a warmth and a range of color that no molded body reaches, and a serious player will eventually want one. That is a decision for someone several years in, not someone buying a first instrument — and even then, most of them keep a plastic one for outdoors and for teaching. ## Keeping it playing The common fault is not breakage but clogging. Warm breath meets cold plastic, condensation collects in the windway, and the note turns to a hiss mid-phrase. Warming the head joint in your hand for a couple of minutes before starting prevents most of it. When it happens anyway, cover the window with a finger and suck sharply through the mouthpiece — it clears in a second. For washing, take it apart, use lukewarm water with a drop of dish soap, and let it dry without rinsing the head: the residue stops droplets forming and the effect lasts for weeks. Never hot water and never a dishwasher — heat distorts the joints. A smear of joint grease on the tenons once a season stops them binding. **Whatever you buy:** [Essential Elements Recorder Book 1](https://amzn.to/4xWYqSO) is about $7 and is the method most classrooms work from — 130 tunes, rhythm drills and a fingering chart in the back. Check the chart matches your instrument’s fingering before the first lesson. ## FAQs ### Are plastic recorders as good as wooden ones? At the bottom of the market a plastic recorder is better, because a cheap wooden one is a badly voiced tube that also needs maintenance. Plastic wins on tuning stability, durability and cleaning at every price under about a hundred dollars. Above that a good wooden instrument has a warmth and tonal range that molded resin does not reach, and that is where players start to want one. ### Which recorder do schools use? In the US, overwhelmingly the Yamaha YRS-24B or something priced against it. The thing that matters when buying for a class is that every instrument in the room is the same fingering system: one German-fingered recorder among Baroque ones puts that child on different notes from everyone else for months before anyone works out why. Order one model throughout, and a couple of spares, because they get lost. ### Why does my recorder squeak? Almost always a hole that is not completely sealed, and almost always the third or fourth finger of the lower hand. Blowing harder makes it worse. Check the pads of the fingers are flat across the holes rather than the tips, and look for a faint ring pressed into the skin after a note — that is the seal. The other cause is over-blowing into the second octave without opening the thumb hole. ### Can you put a plastic recorder in the dishwasher? No. The instrument is waterproof but not heatproof, and a dishwasher cycle can distort the joints and the windway — which is the part that makes the note. Lukewarm water and a drop of dish soap by hand does the job. ### What size should a beginner start on? Soprano, in C, which is what almost every plastic recorder sold is. It is the smallest comfortable size, the cheapest, and the one all the beginner methods are written for. The alto in F is the usual second instrument and reads differently; the tenor is the same fingering an octave down but a real stretch. There is more on how the recorder fits among its relatives in our guide to [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/), and on how it compares with the flute in [flute vs recorder](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/). **Categories:** Recorder Reviews --- ### [The Best Fender Ukuleles: Only One of Them Has a Solid Top](https://promusicvault.com/best-fender-ukuleles/) **Published:** July 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› The Best Fender Ukuleles: Only One of Them Has a Solid Top Fender builds eleven ukuleles. They run from $116 to $360, they are all made to the same standard of fit and finish, and every one of them has a nut measuring exactly 1.375″ across. So the money does not buy you a wider neck, a longer scale for the same size, or better string spacing — the range is more consistent in the hand than almost any other brand’s. What it does buy, in order as you go up: a bone nut instead of a plastic one, a body made of something other than laminated basswood, a pickup and preamp, a gig bag in the box, and — on exactly one model — a solid top. Knowing which rung you are buying is the whole decision, and Fender publishes enough to work it out. If you want one answer### Fender Avalon Tenor Ukulele A tenor is the size most adults get on with, and the Avalon is the cheapest one Fender makes. Seventeen-inch scale, nineteen frets, walnut fingerboard, laminated basswood body — a straightforward beginner instrument with a grown-up neck length, at what Fender themselves charge for it. Spend more only if you have a reason from the list below. Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SsUz0V) **Cheapest Fender worth buying:** Venice Soprano — around $116 **First real step up in materials:** Zuma Concert — around $170 **If you need to plug in:** Rincon Tenor — around $265 **The only solid top:** Dhani Harrison — around $350 ## Table of Contents - [The whole range on one screen](#the-whole-range-on-one-screen) - [Sizes, and the numbers behind them](#sizes-and-the-numbers-behind-them) - [The Fender ukuleles worth buying](#the-fender-ukuleles-worth-buying) - [Also worth a look](#also-worth-a-look) - [What the badge is and is not worth](#what-the-badge-is-and-is-not-worth) - [Warranty, and the condition attached to it](#warranty-and-the-condition-attached-to-it) - [Questions worth answering](#questions-worth-answering) - [Where are Fender ukuleles made?](#where-are-fender-ukuleles-made) - [What is the difference between the California Coast and Fullerton series?](#what-is-the-difference-between-the-california-coast-and-fullerton-series) - [Do I need the model with a pickup?](#do-i-need-the-model-with-a-pickup) - [Which strings do they come with?](#which-strings-do-they-come-with) - [The short version](#the-short-version) ## The whole range on one screen Fender publishes a full specification for every ukulele they sell, and reading the eleven of them side by side is more useful than any amount of description. Prices are Fender’s own. ModelSizeBodyNutPickupBagFender’s price**Venice**SopranoLaminated basswoodPlastic——$115.99**Avalon**TenorLaminated basswoodPlastic——$149.99**Zuma**ConcertSapeleBone——$209.99**Zuma Exotic**ConcertBocote or spalted mapleBone——$229.99**Fullerton Tele**ConcertSpruce top, okoume backSynthetic boneYes—$259.99**Fullerton Strat**ConcertSpruce top, okoume backSynthetic boneYes—$259.99**Fullerton Jazzmaster**ConcertSpruce top, okoume backSynthetic boneYes—$259.99**Rincon**TenorOvangkolBoneYesYes$269.99**Montecito**TenorAcaciaBoneYesYes$349.99**Dhani Harrison**Tenor**Solid** ovangkol topBoneYesYes$349.99**Fullerton P-Bass**Bass ukeSpruce top, okoume backSynthetic boneYes—$359.99 The solid-top column is the one that decides the top of the range. Fender writes “Solid Ovangkol” on the Dhani Harrison’s top and “Solid Okoume” on the Fullerton’s back and sides, so they do use the word when it applies — and they do not use it anywhere else in the range. They also write “Laminated Spruce” for the Fullerton top and “Laminated Basswood” for the Venice and Avalon, so the vocabulary is deliberate. If a solid top is the thing you are shopping for, the Dhani is the one instrument in this catalogue that Fender claims it for. The Fullerton series is the other row worth reading twice. Its selling point is the body shape — a Telecaster, a Stratocaster, a Jazzmaster or a Precision Bass, shrunk — and the marketing line is “spruce top with okoume back and sides”, which reads as though the top is the good bit. Fender’s own spec sheet says the opposite: the back and sides are solid okoume and the top is laminated spruce. It is the sides of the instrument that are solid and the soundboard that is not. ## Sizes, and the numbers behind them Fender only builds one soprano and it is the smallest thing here by a distance. The scale lengths, from their specification sheets: SizeScale lengthFretsWhich models**Soprano**13.6″ (345 mm)12Venice**Concert**15″ (381 mm)16Zuma, Zuma Exotic**Concert** (Fullerton)15.04″ (382 mm)19Fullerton Tele, Strat, Jazzmaster**Tenor**17″ (432 mm)19Avalon, Rincon, Montecito, Dhani**Bass uke**20.25″ (514 mm)18Fullerton Precision Bass The Venice stops at twelve frets, which is four fewer than the Zuma at the same width of neck and seven fewer than the tenors. Twelve is enough for the great majority of ukulele songs, but it does mean the fingerboard runs out where the body starts, so anything that climbs high is off the map. If you already know you want to play beyond the octave, start at concert size. The Fullerton concert ukes are the odd ones out: essentially the same scale as a Zuma but nineteen frets rather than sixteen. They also carry a maple neck where the rest of the range is nato, and they leave the factory strung with Aquila Nylgut rather than Fender’s house set. If you are still deciding between body sizes rather than between models, our [concert versus tenor comparison](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) works through it on general terms, and [the soprano guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) covers the smallest size across all brands. ## The Fender ukuleles worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### Fender Avalon Tenor Ukulele - Tenor, 17″ scale, 19 frets - Laminated basswood top, back and sides - Walnut fingerboard, nato neck - Plastic nut, open-back geared tuners - No gig bag - Around $150 The Avalon is the Venice grown up: the same construction and the same slim C-shaped neck on a tenor body, which gives you a longer string length, a deeper voice and seven more frets for about thirty-five dollars more. For an adult picking up a ukulele for the first time that is the right trade almost every time, because the tenor’s fret spacing suits full-sized fingers and the extra body volume makes it easier to hear what you are doing. It is honestly specified rather than flattered. The body is laminated basswood, the nut is plastic and there is no bag — this is Fender’s entry rung, and it sounds like one: bright, a little boxy, perfectly pleasant. What you get for the badge is consistency. The neck profile, the walnut board and the no-tie bridge are the same parts Fender fits further up the range, and the instrument arrives set up closely enough that most people never touch it. Six colors exist; the sunburst and black are the ones that stay in the catalogue longest, and they are the same instrument underneath. **Pros**- Cheapest tenor Fender makes - Full 17″ scale and 19 frets - Sells at Fender’s own list price - Slim neck that suits small hands as well as large **Cons**- Laminated basswood body throughout - Plastic nut - No gig bag, and a tenor needs one - No pickup Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SsUz0V) № 2 · Cheapest one worth having ### Fender Venice Soprano Ukulele - Soprano, 13.6″ scale, 12 frets - Laminated basswood, cream-bound top - Walnut fingerboard, nato neck - Plastic nut, 4-in-line Tele headstock - No gig bag - Around $116 The Venice is the ukulele most people mean when they say Fender ukulele, and it is the best-reviewed instrument in the range by a wide margin — 4.5 stars across more than eight hundred ratings, which is more feedback than the rest of the line put together. That count is worth something on an instrument this cheap, because the failure mode at this price is inconsistency rather than bad design. Physically it is a proper soprano: 13.6″ of string, twelve frets, a light bound body and the painted four-in-line Telecaster headstock that is the reason to buy this one rather than a generic. The bridge is a no-tie design, which means restringing is threading rather than knotting — a genuine convenience the first time you do it. The limits are the ones a soprano always has, plus a plastic nut. Twelve frets and a short scale mean the notes are close together and the tone is bright and short; if you have big hands you will feel it, and the Avalon above is the answer. As a first instrument, a travel instrument or something to leave lying about the house, it is hard to fault at the money. **Pros**- 4.5 stars over 800+ ratings, far the most-reviewed here - Genuine soprano dimensions, not a shrunken concert - Bound body and painted Tele headstock at the price - No-tie bridge **Cons**- Only 12 frets - Plastic nut - Laminated basswood body - Cramped for large hands Around $116[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3T1AD5o) № 3 · First real step up ### Fender Zuma Concert Ukulele - Concert, 15″ scale, 16 frets - Sapele body - Walnut fingerboard, nato neck - Pull-through bridge, 4-in-line headstock - No gig bag - Around $170 This is the point in the range where the body stops being laminated basswood. The Zuma is built from sapele — a dense, mahogany-like African hardwood that most makers use at three times this money — and the difference is audible rather than theoretical: warmer, rounder and with noticeably more sustain than the Venice or the Avalon. Concert size splits the difference between the two, at 15″ and sixteen frets. The version at this price is the painted Zuma Classic, with a gloss finish over the top and headstock and the sapele left natural on the back and sides. Fender’s current catalogue version is the plain natural one in open-pore satin, which lists around forty dollars higher; the wood, the scale and the fingerboard are the same, and the finish is the difference. Twenty dollars over the Avalon for a hardwood body is the best value judgement in the whole Fender range. The reason it is not the outright top pick is size: if you specifically want a tenor, the Avalon is your entry point and the Rincon is the next rung, and there is no sapele tenor in between. **Pros**- Sapele body rather than laminated basswood - Only about $20 over the Avalon - Concert size suits most adults - Warmer and longer-sustaining than the entry models **Cons**- No pickup - No gig bag - Three fewer frets than the Fullerton concerts - Gloss painted top hides most of the wood Around $170[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gzcdbd) № 4 · The one that looks like a Fender ### Fender Fullerton Jazzmaster Uke - Concert, 15.04″ scale, 19 frets - Laminated spruce top, solid okoume back and sides - Maple neck, walnut fingerboard - Fender FE-U01 preamp: volume, tone, built-in tuner - Aquila Nylgut strings fitted - Shell pink, Fender part 0970533556 - Around $260 The Fullerton series is a Jazzmaster, Telecaster or Stratocaster body at ukulele scale, complete with pickguard and the matching four-in-line headstock, and it is the only thing in this range that nobody else makes. The Jazzmaster is the pick of the three because its offset waist is the shape that survives the shrink best; the Tele and Strat versions are mechanically identical and cost the same. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) All of them carry Fender’s FE-U01 preamp — volume, tone, and an integrated tuner with an on/off switch and a low-battery light. That tuner is the underrated part: a built-in chromatic tuner on a $260 instrument saves you buying a clip-on, and it is the same unit fitted to the Rincon and Montecito above it. The honest reservation is what the body is made of. Fender’s spec sheet gives the top as laminated spruce and the back and sides as solid okoume, so the soundboard — the panel that does the work — is the laminated one. Unplugged it sounds fine and no better than the sapele Zuma below it. You are buying the shape, the electronics and the tuner, and those are real things to buy; you are not buying more instrument. A nineteen-fret neck on a concert body is also genuinely useful, and it is three more than the Zuma gets. **Pros**- Preamp with volume, tone and a built-in chromatic tuner - 19 frets on a concert body - Maple neck and Aquila Nylgut strings from new - Nothing else looks like it **Cons**- Laminated spruce top despite the solid back and sides - Unplugged tone no better than the cheaper Zuma - No gig bag at $260 - Needs a battery Around $260[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46rgpVJ) № 5 · Best to plug in ### Fender Rincon Tenor Ukulele - Tenor, 17″ scale, 19 frets - Ovangkol throughout, open-pore satin - Bone nut and saddle - Fender FE-U01 preamp with built-in tuner - Gig bag included - Around $265 The Rincon is the first Fender ukulele that stops making compromises you can point at. It is built entirely from ovangkol — a hard, dense West African wood with a rosewood-like ring to it — in an open-pore satin finish that leaves the grain visible and the top free to move. The nut and saddle are bone rather than plastic or synthetic, which is the single cheapest upgrade that changes how an instrument sustains, and Fender fits it here as standard. It has the same preamp as the Fullerton, and it comes with a gig bag, which the Fullerton at the same money does not. For a tenor that is not a small point: a bag is the difference between the instrument living in a corner and living in the boot of a car. Against the Montecito at eighty-five dollars more, the Rincon gives up the acacia body, the abalone purfling, the cream binding and the gloss finish, and keeps the electronics, the bone nut, the bag and the scale length. In sound rather than looks, that is a very small gap for the money. **Pros**- All-ovangkol body, no basswood or laminate in the marketing - Bone nut and saddle - Preamp, tone control and built-in tuner - Gig bag included at a price where the Fullertons have none **Cons**- Only one finish is made - Fender does not claim a solid top for it - Few owner ratings so far - Needs a battery Around $265[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qHIy4o) № 6 · The only solid top ### Fender Dhani Harrison Ukulele - Tenor, 17″ scale, 19 frets - **Solid** ovangkol top, ovangkol back and sides - Three-quarter body depth - Bone nut, Aquila Nylgut tenor strings - Fender FE-U01 preamp, gig bag included - Around $350 This is the only ukulele in Fender’s catalogue whose top they describe as solid. Everything else in the range is either explicitly laminated or specified without the word, and Fender demonstrably use it when it is true — so if solid-top tone is the reason you are shopping at this price, this is the one instrument that answers. A solid top is not a cosmetic upgrade. A single piece of wood vibrates as one thing and opens up over years of playing; a laminate is three thin layers with glue between them, which is stiffer, more stable and acoustically deader. On a tenor body with a proper bone nut and Aquila strings from new, the Dhani is a noticeably more resonant instrument than the Rincon underneath it. The body is built to three-quarter depth, so it sits flatter against the ribs than a full-bodied tenor, and it comes in two finishes with different fingerboard inlays and engraving on the back — the turquoise is the better-reviewed of the pair. Same preamp and tuner as the rest, and a gig bag in the box. At the same $350 as the Montecito, this is the one to take if you care how it sounds and the Montecito is the one to take if you care how it looks. Both are defensible; only this one has the solid top. **Pros**- The only solid top Fender puts on a ukulele - Bone nut and Aquila Nylgut strings from new - Preamp, tuner and gig bag included - Best-rated instrument at the top of the range **Cons**- Three-quarter depth gives up some low end - Signature-model engraving is not to everyone’s taste - Same price as the more decorated Montecito - Needs a battery Around $350[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gGzmsl) ## Also worth a look ModelWhy you mightWhy you might notPrice**Montecito Tenor**All acacia — a close relation of koa — with abalone purfling and rosette, cream binding, gloss finish, bone nut, preamp and a gig bag. The prettiest thing Fender makes on four strings.Fender does not claim a solid top for it, so at the same money the Dhani is the better-specified instrument. Very few ratings.Around $350[Check price](https://amzn.to/45TNbPa)**Fullerton Jazzmaster, sunburst**The same instrument as the shell pink above in three-color sunburst, Fender part 0970533500, and it costs noticeably less.Only a handful of ratings on this finish, against twenty-seven on the pink.Around $226[Check price](https://amzn.to/4r0AiwF)**Fullerton Precision Bass Uke**A real bass in ukulele form: 20.25″ scale, 1.77″ nut, nickel-wound nylon-core strings and an onboard preamp. Nothing else does this job at the size.The weakest-rated instrument Fender makes in this range, at 3.6 stars. Buy it because you want a bass ukulele, not because it is a good ukulele.Around $360[Check price](https://amzn.to/4x4JUYE) ## What the badge is and is not worth A Fender ukulele is a competently built instrument at a price that reflects the name on the headstock as well as the wood in the body. The pattern in the range is plain enough: the body stops being laminated basswood at the Zuma, there is no pickup until the Fullerton, and Fender will not call a top solid below the Dhani Harrison. Brands that specialize in ukuleles reach those rungs for less, and our [guide to ukulele brands](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) goes through who does what. What Fender genuinely give you is consistency and parts. Every ukulele in the range shares a 1.375″ nut, a walnut fingerboard, a no-tie or pull-through bridge and the same slim neck profile, so moving up the range does not mean relearning the instrument. The FE-U01 preamp fitted to the Fullerton at $260 is the same one fitted to the Montecito at $350. And the Fullerton bodies are not available from anyone else at any price. If you want a Fender because you want a Fender, that is a perfectly good reason and the range will not embarrass you. If you want the most instrument for the money and the logo is incidental, buy the Zuma and stop. ## Warranty, and the condition attached to it Fender cover acoustic guitars, basses and ukuleles under a single two-year limited warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. Three conditions in it are worth knowing before you buy: - **It applies to the original retail purchaser only**, and only when the instrument was bought from an authorized Fender dealer. It does not transfer if you sell it on, and it does not attach to a second-hand instrument. - **You pay the freight.** Transport, insurance and shipping costs for warranty work are the owner’s responsibility in both directions. - **Setup is not covered.** Fender treats the initial setup and adjustment as normal dealer preparation, and routine adjustment of any kind is excluded, as are fret wear, saddle and nut wear, strings and batteries. Keep the receipt. It is the proof of purchase the warranty runs on, and without it there is no claim. ## Questions worth answering ### Where are Fender ukuleles made? Fender does not state a country of origin on any ukulele product page or specification sheet. They publish the woods, the hardware, the scale length and the electronics down to the preamp model number, and they say nothing at all about where the instrument is built. Anyone who tells you a specific country is inferring it, and we are not going to add to that. ### What is the difference between the California Coast and Fullerton series? California Coast is the traditional-shaped range — Venice, Avalon, Zuma, Zuma Exotic, Rincon and Montecito — all with nato necks and normal ukulele outlines. Fullerton is the guitar-shaped range, named after the California town where Leo Fender started the company, and every Fullerton has a maple neck, a pickguard, nineteen frets and a preamp fitted as standard. The Dhani Harrison sits in neither; Fender file it under Artist Signature. ### Do I need the model with a pickup? Only if you intend to play through an amp or a PA. A pickup adds nothing to an unplugged instrument and costs about ninety dollars of the difference between the Zuma and the Fullerton. The one genuine bonus is the built-in chromatic tuner that comes with Fender’s preamp, which is a small convenience rather than a reason on its own. If you want to add a pickup later to a ukulele that has none, [that is a solved problem](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-pickups/). ### Which strings do they come with? The Fullerton ukes and the Dhani Harrison ship with Aquila Nylgut, which is a good set and worth keeping. The California Coast models — Venice, Avalon, Zuma, Rincon, Montecito — leave the factory on Fender’s own house strings, described in the specification only as “standard” for the size. Those are the ones most owners change first, and [a set costs less than a takeaway](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/). ## The short version Buy the [Avalon](https://amzn.to/3SsUz0V) if you want a tenor and a sensible price. Buy the [Venice](https://amzn.to/3T1AD5o) if you want the cheapest one that is still properly made. Buy the [Zuma](https://amzn.to/4gzcdbd) if you want the best instrument per dollar in the range, which it is by a clear margin. Buy the [Fullerton Jazzmaster](https://amzn.to/46rgpVJ) if the shape is the point. Buy the [Rincon](https://amzn.to/4qHIy4o) if you need to plug in and want a bag with it. And buy the [Dhani Harrison](https://amzn.to/4gGzmsl) if a solid top is what you came for, because it is the only one that has one. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Clarinet for Marching Band: Why You March on Plastic](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) **Published:** October 22, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** A marching clarinet has one job that a concert clarinet does not: survive. August rehearsals at a hundred degrees, a November stadium at forty, rain that arrives halfway through the third movement, and the occasional collision with a trombone slide. That single requirement decides almost everything, and it decides it against wood. So the answer is always a molded body. The more useful news is that at this level the instrument is the least important thing you will buy — a twenty-dollar reed and a ten-dollar lyre change more about how a season goes than the difference between a $90 clarinet and a $250 one. Best clarinet for marching band### Jean Paul USA CL-300 An ABS body, nickel-plated keys, an adjustable thumb rest and a hard case, set up and play-tested before it ships. It is the cheapest clarinet a band director is unlikely to send home, and nothing under $200 matches it for the parts that wear out. Around $250 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HAm5Bd) **Spend less:** Eastar ECL-300 — around $90 **Step up:** Jean Paul CL-400 — around $400 **Buy first:** a synthetic reed — around $19 ## Wood cracks, and a field is where it happens Grenadilla is a dense tropical hardwood, and like all wood it takes on and gives up moisture with the air around it. As it does, it swells and shrinks — unevenly, because the bore is wet from your breath while the outside is not. Hold that gradient at ninety-five degrees in direct sun, then repeat it in near-freezing air two months later, and the wood eventually relieves the stress the only way it can, which is to split. A crack through a tone hole is a bench repair, not a field repair. Molded bodies — ABS resin, or the hard rubber sold as ebonite — do none of this. They are dimensionally stable across the whole range of weather a marching season can produce, they need no bore oil, and they tolerate being knocked. That is the entire argument, and it is why players who own a wood clarinet still march on a plastic one and keep the good instrument for indoors. It also means the best clarinet you can buy is the wrong answer to this question. Buffet’s E11 is a genuinely fine intermediate instrument at around $1,450, and it is unstained African blackwood — so it belongs in a concert hall and not on a fifty-yard line. ## The three details worth checking **Nickel-plated keys.** Marching means sweat, and a lot of it, on keywork you have no time to polish between sets. Nickel plating is hard and stays bright with no attention at all. Silver plating is the traditional finish on better instruments and it will tarnish dark in a season of outdoor use — that is cosmetic rather than structural, but it is worth knowing which one you are choosing, because on some models the cheaper trim is the nickel one. **An adjustable thumb rest.** Standing and moving, the entire weight of the instrument hangs off the right thumb, for an hour at a time, several times a week. A rest that can be moved to suit the hand — and that will take a neck strap ring — is the difference between an uncomfortable season and a painful one. It is also the single spec most often missing at the bottom of the market. **Pads that do not swell.** Traditional pads are skin over felt, and felt absorbs water. Play wet, in the cold, repeatedly, and pads swell and then leak; a leaking pad turns the bottom register into guesswork. Synthetic pads seal across humidity swings instead, which is a real and checkable advantage rather than a marketing line, and it is the main thing you get by moving up a tier. ## A word about the Yamaha YCL-255 The YCL-255 is the student clarinet school programs standardize on, and it earns that: an ABS body, a 65mm barrel and intonation that holds together across the break better than anything else near its price. There is a catch, and it is not the instrument. Yamaha’s US warranty covers instruments supplied through its authorized US dealers. The YCL-255s that circulate cheaply are export stock built for other markets, and they arrive with a soft case instead of the hard one and no US warranty cover — so any repair goes back through the country of sale, which on a school instrument is not a realistic proposition. Buy this one from an authorized Yamaha dealer, where the warranty and the case come with it, and expect to pay around $900 to $1,000. ## At a glance ClarinetBodyKeysPadsPrice bandBest for[Jean Paul CL-300](https://amzn.to/3HAm5Bd)ABS resinNickel-platedStandard~$250The one to buy[Jean Paul CL-400](https://amzn.to/4zmzFBj)ABS resinSilver-platedSynthetic~$400Marching and concert on one horn[Eastar ECL-300](https://amzn.to/3JoqSqZ)MoldedNickel-platedBladder~$90The cheapest defensible option[Hisonic 2610](https://amzn.to/3Jjostl)EboniteNickel-silverPrestini~$120Hard rubber on a budget[Mendini by Cecilio](https://amzn.to/404rkjZ)ABS resinNickel-platedBladder~$130Two barrels in the kit[Eastrock Bb](https://amzn.to/3HzCupr)ABS resinNickel-platedStandard~$127A spare for the band room ## The picks № 1 · Best clarinet for marching band ### Jean Paul USA CL-300 - ABS resin body - Nickel-plated keys - French Boehm, 17 keys, 6 rings - Adjustable thumb rest - Hard case - ~$250 There is a gap between the sub-$150 clarinets and the ones school programs actually accept, and the CL-300 is the cheapest instrument that lands on the right side of it. The body is ABS, the keys are nickel-plated, the thumb rest adjusts, and it ships in a hard case. Nothing on the list of things that matter outdoors is missing. What separates it from the $90 tier is not the parts list but what happens before it ships: Jean Paul has every instrument set up and play-tested by a qualified band-instrument technician first. That is the step the budget brands skip, and skipping it is why two clarinets off the same production line can play completely differently. A clarinet that arrives sealing properly and in adjustment is worth more to a beginner than any spec on the box. It is not an exciting instrument. The tone is focused and slightly plain, it will not flatter a good player the way a wood clarinet does, and nobody upgrading from it will miss it. For four years of marching, that is the correct set of compromises. **Pros**- Set up and play-tested before shipping, which is rare at the price - Nickel keys and an adjustable thumb rest - Hard case included - Parts and service are easy to come by **Cons**- Plain, slightly narrow tone next to a wood instrument - Standard pads rather than synthetic - Nearly three times the cost of the budget options Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HAm5Bd) № 2 · One clarinet for marching and concert season ### Jean Paul CL-400 - ABS resin body - Silver-plated cupronickel keys - Synthetic pads, blue steel springs - Two interchangeable barrels - French Boehm, 17 keys, 6 rings - ~$400 The case for spending the extra $150 is the pads. Synthetic pads hold their seal through the wet-then-cold cycle that makes skin-and-felt pads swell and leak, which is precisely the failure a marching instrument is exposed to and a concert instrument mostly is not. Blue steel springs keep the action even as the season goes on. The two barrels are the other reason this one earns its place. A shorter barrel raises the pitch, a longer one lowers it, and marching outdoors in the cold pushes a clarinet flat while a hot afternoon pushes it sharp. Swapping barrels gives you somewhere to go when pulling the joints out is not enough — useful on a field where you cannot retune between charts. The keys are silver-plated rather than nickel, which is the one respect in which this is less suited to marching than the CL-300 below it: expect them to darken outdoors. That is appearance only, and if this is going to be the instrument for concert band too, silver is the finish you would want indoors anyway. **Pros**- Synthetic pads, which is the upgrade that actually matters outdoors - Two barrels give real tuning latitude in heat and cold - Even, well-regulated action out of the box - Good enough to keep through concert season **Cons**- Silver plating tarnishes with outdoor use - Still a molded body, so it will not sound like wood - Overkill if this is only ever a marching instrument Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zmzFBj) № 3 · The cheapest one worth buying ### Eastar ECL-300 - Molded body - Nickel-plated keys - Bladder pads - Boehm 17-key system - Case, stand, mouthpiece, reeds, care kit - ~$90 At around ninety dollars this is a quarter of the price of the CL-400 and it plays well enough for a first season, which makes it the honest answer for a family finding out whether marching band sticks. Eastar is Donner’s wind-instrument line, so there is a real company behind it rather than a name applied to a generic import, and the kit arrives complete down to the stand and the care tools. Two things to know. Eastar builds this model in two trims about eighty dollars apart, and it is the cheaper one that has the nickel-plated keys — the dearer trim moves to silver plating, which is the finish that suits marching less well. For once the cheap option is also the right one, so make sure the nickel version is the one you order. The other is that the body material is described inconsistently: the model name says ebonite, the specification says ABS, and one line calls it bakelite. Those are three different plastics. All of them are stable enough for a field, so nothing about marching is at risk — but you cannot know from the documentation which one you are getting, and that uncertainty is a fair description of this whole price tier. Unit-to-unit variation is real: two of these can play noticeably differently, and neither has been through a technician’s hands. Budget for a shop visit if it arrives leaking. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- A quarter of the price of the step-up instruments - Nickel keys on the cheaper of the two trims - Complete outfit, nothing else to buy - An established brand with parts behind it **Cons**- The maker’s own description names three different body materials - No pre-ship setup, so quality varies between examples - Bladder pads will not last the way synthetic ones do Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JoqSqZ) ## Also worth a look ClarinetPrice bandWhy you mightWhy you might not[Hisonic Signature 2610](https://amzn.to/3Jjostl)~$120An ebonite body and US-made Prestini pads at a price where neither is usual, plus nickel-silver keysAn unfamiliar name with no setup process behind it, and no adjustable thumb rest[Mendini by Cecilio](https://amzn.to/404rkjZ)~$130Two barrels in the kit, which is unusual this cheap and genuinely useful outdoorsCalled ebonite in the model name but specified as ABS, and it costs half again what the Eastar does[Eastrock Bb](https://amzn.to/3HzCupr)~$127Two spare barrels and a solid ABS body; a reasonable spare to keep in the band roomNothing here that the cheaper Eastar does not also do ## Three things that matter more than which clarinet you buy Any of these clarinets will get through a season. What actually goes wrong on a field is smaller and cheaper than the instrument, and it is where the money is best spent first. Buy this first ### A synthetic reed — Légère Classic - Bb clarinet, Classic cut - No soaking, no break-in - Unaffected by humidity - Carry case included - ~$19 Cane is a plant, and it responds to weather exactly as you would expect a thin sliver of dried grass to respond. On a hot afternoon a cane reed goes soft and unfocused; in the cold it plays stiff and hard to start; in the rain it waterlogs. And it needs wetting before it works, which is a problem when you are standing in a block on a field and the drum major has already called the set. A synthetic reed removes all of that. Légère’s own account of it is that the reeds are “not affected by environmental conditions such as high humidity” and need no pre-soaking — they play the moment they go on the mouthpiece, and they play the same in November as in August. One of them lasts long enough to make the arithmetic against a box of cane reeds work out in its favor, quite apart from the reliability. Match the strength to whatever you already play — Légère makes the Classic in several, so check the number before ordering. A 2½ is the usual school strength if you have never had to think about it. There is a real trade-off: a synthetic feels different under the lip, and that takes some getting used to, so it is worth changing over during marching season rather than the week before a concert audition. Around $19[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gHaQbC) The one you can afford to break ### A spare mouthpiece — Glory kit - Bb clarinet mouthpiece - Ligature, cap and a reed included - ~$12 Mouthpieces get chipped, and marching is where it happens — in the rush to get an instrument into a case, or when a clarinet goes down on a running track. A chipped tip is not repairable, and a good mouthpiece costs more than a budget clarinet does. So march on a cheap one and keep the better mouthpiece for concert season. It is the least glamorous twelve dollars here and the one most likely to save a considerably larger sum. Anything decent will do; this kit is the usual choice because it arrives with the ligature and cap you also need. Around $12[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U5W71i) You cannot march without it ### A lyre and a flip folder - American Plating 506N clarinet lyre, nickel — ~$12 - Grover-Trophy 10-window flip folio — ~$10 - Folio holds 20 sides of music The lyre is the clamp that holds your music to the instrument; the flip folder is the little windowed book that goes in it. Clarinet lyres are not interchangeable with the ones for brass — a clarinet lyre clamps around the upper joint, above the hand, where it will not foul the keywork or the rings. The 506N is the plain nickel band-room standard, made in the US, and there is nothing to improve on at twelve dollars. Pair it with a ten-window folio and you have both sides of twenty pages of drill music where you can see them. Fill it before the first rehearsal rather than during it. Around $12[Check lyre price](https://amzn.to/46fahzK) Around $10[Check folder price](https://amzn.to/4hCUd1U) ## If you are on bass clarinet Almost nobody buys their own marching bass clarinet, and that is the right instinct — this is a school-inventory instrument, and if your program owns one, march on it. Where a family does buy, there is essentially one answer. Best bass clarinet for marching band ### Yamaha YCL-221II - Bb bass clarinet, to low Eb - ABS resin body - Nickel-silver barrel and bell - Nickel-plated keys - Two-piece body, compact case - ~$3,100 The YCL-221II is the student bass clarinet that school programs standardize on, and the case for a molded body is even stronger here: a bass clarinet is a lot of instrument to expose to weather, and this one has an ABS body with nickel-silver metalwork that will not mind. The two-piece body and the smaller case are the practical part — a bass clarinet that packs down is a bass clarinet that gets onto the bus. Be clear-eyed about the money. This is a $3,000 instrument where every soprano clarinet here is under $400, and it is only worth buying if the player is committed well past marching season. If the school has one, use theirs. Around $3,100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3RhGC0Q) ## Frequently asked questions ### Can you use a wood clarinet in marching band? You can, and you should not. The repeated swing between a hot, damp bore and cold, dry air outside it is what cracks grenadilla, and a crack through a tone hole means a bench repair and weeks without an instrument. Players who own both march on the plastic one. If a wood clarinet is the only one you have, at least keep it out of direct sun and out of a hot car, and warm it up gradually rather than playing it cold. ### Is a clarinet even audible on a football field? Individually, barely — which is worth knowing before you spend a lot chasing tone. A clarinet’s sound spreads out of the whole instrument rather than firing forward from a bell, so outdoors, with no walls to reflect anything back, it carries far less than a trumpet. This is why marching arrangements put clarinets in unison sections rather than in exposed lines, and why durability is the sensible thing to buy at this level rather than the last few percent of sound quality. ### Is there such a thing as a dedicated marching clarinet? No. Unlike the brass, where marching-specific horns really exist, clarinettists march on the ordinary Bb soprano clarinet. A “marching clarinet” means a plastic-bodied student clarinet with a lyre clamped to it, which is why the choice comes down to which plastic clarinet and what to clamp to it. ### What should I do about rain? For the instrument, not much — a molded body and nickel keys will shrug off a wet show, provided you swab it out and dry the keywork properly afterward rather than closing a wet clarinet into its case. Pads are what suffer, so open the case up at home and let it dry out. A case cover is worth having if you march somewhere wet; a bin liner over the case works for one downpour. ### Do I need a different reed strength for marching? Not usually, though a half-strength harder outdoors is worth trying: a slightly stiffer reed is more stable when you are pushing air hard and moving at the same time. If you are switching between cane and synthetic, expect the numbers not to correspond exactly — the strengths are not measured the same way. More on the underlying differences in [clarinet reeds for beginners](/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) and [filed versus unfiled reeds](/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/). ### How heavy is a clarinet to carry for an hour? A Bb soprano clarinet is about a pound and a half, a shade under two with the mouthpiece fitted, which sounds like nothing and is not the problem — the problem is that the weight hangs off one thumb in a fixed position. Set the thumb rest properly, and if your instrument takes a neck strap ring, use one. Bass clarinet is a different question entirely and needs a neck strap or a peg. [How much a clarinet weighs](/how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh/) has the figures model by model. ### Which brands should I stay away from? The pattern to avoid is not really a brand, it is an instrument with no service behind it: no adjustable thumb rest, no parts availability, and nobody who will look at it when a key bends. Those turn up under a rotating set of names. [Clarinet brands to avoid](/clarinet-brands-to-avoid/) goes through the specifics, and [is the clarinet hard to play](/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) is worth reading first if this is a first instrument. For where the clarinet sits in a marching ensemble as against a concert one, see [orchestra versus band](/orchestra-vs-band/). **Categories:** Clarinet Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo Under $300 (The Best One Costs $175)](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-under-300/) **Published:** July 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo Under $300 (The Best One Costs $175) Three hundred dollars is enough to end up with a banjo that plays properly. It is not enough to buy one. Everything in this bracket arrives with the bridge loose in the box and the action set by nobody, and the difference between an instrument you keep and one that goes under the bed is almost entirely what happens to it after it lands. That is why the banjo recommended here costs a hundred and seventy-five dollars, and why the rest of the budget has a job. Best banjo under $300### Jameson 5-String Banjo A five-ply maple and mahogany shell, a Remo head, a truss rod, a geared fifth peg and a resonator that unbolts in a minute, for around $175. Spend the remaining hundred on having it set up and you finish under the limit with a banjo that outplays anything bought raw at $300. Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xWvAC5) **If it will never see a workshop:** Ortega Americana — around $300 **Clawhammer and old-time:** AKLOT Open Back — around $150 **Fifteen dollars over:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 ## At a glance BanjoBackRimBracketsPrice bandBest for[Jameson 5-String](https://amzn.to/4xWvAC5)Removable resonator5-ply maple and mahogany24~$175The whole budget, spent well[Ortega Americana OBJ150OP](https://amzn.to/4wQP1vk)Open backMahogany ply18~$300One object, straight out of the box[AKLOT Open Back](https://amzn.to/4gt8ETP)Open backMaple18~$150Clawhammer and old-time[Vangoa 5-String](https://amzn.to/4zxsWEw)Removable resonatorMahogany24~$200Not knowing which music yet[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4gLZTFT)Open back11″ composite16~$315Arriving already adjusted ## What $300 actually buys ### Below $200 it is one banjo wearing different badges Put the specifications side by side and they stop being different products. A plied maple and mahogany shell, a mahogany neck, a stained hardwood or purpleheart fingerboard, a drum head, twenty-four brackets, an adjustable tailpiece, a chrome armrest, an adjustable truss rod, a geared fifth-string tuner. The Jameson and the Vangoa read almost identically, down to the bracket count, and what separates $145 from $200 is mostly what else is in the carton — a bag, a clip-on tuner, a strap, a handful of picks, a spare set of strings. None of that is a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to buy the cheapest one whose specification you like and keep the change. ### Between $200 and $300 the instrument barely moves This is the stretch that gives the page its problem. Doubling the budget from $150 to $300 changes the wood on the fingerboard, sometimes the finish, occasionally the badge on the headstock — and leaves the parts that decide how a banjo plays exactly where they were. The rim is still plied. The head is still a stock Remo. Nobody has touched the bridge, the nut slots or the neck relief, because at this price nobody does. Pyle makes the point for you. Their PBJ140 sits at $200 with 24 brackets, an armrest, a geared fifth peg and a sapele resonator, and the fingerboard it gives you for the extra forty dollars over their own $160 banjo is engineered wood rather than the rosewood on the cheaper one. Money spent inside this band moves sideways as often as up. The one instrument in the band that is genuinely designed rather than commissioned is the Ortega Americana, and even there the honest comparison is close: Ortega publishes a full specification for it and put their name on it, which the import brands do not, but on paper it gives you a rosewood fingerboard and a satin finish in exchange for a hundred and twenty-five dollars and six brackets. ### Brackets are the number nobody should be counting Bracket count is the specification the budget banjos compete on hardest, and it measures almost nothing. Gold Tone puts **sixteen** on the AC-1, a banjo they draw themselves and adjust before it leaves the workshop. Ortega puts eighteen on the Americana. The $150 imports put on twenty-four. More hooks pull the head down at more points, which matters at the margins and is worth roughly nothing set against whether the bridge is standing in the right place. The same goes for the words on the shell. Mahogany, sapele, nato and okoume are all being used to make the same laminated pot, and none of them is audible through a plastic head under a bridge nobody has positioned. ### The setup is the upgrade A banjo arrives with the bridge lying loose under the strings, and where it ends up standing decides whether the instrument plays in tune at the twelfth fret. Add to that the nut slots, which come cut high enough to make the first three frets hurt, and the neck relief, which is what the truss rod is for. A shop will do all of it for **$50 to $100**, and it does more for how a banjo plays than any specification on this page. Which is the whole arithmetic of a $300 budget. A $175 banjo that has been through a workshop plays better than a $300 one that has not, and it costs less. Our guide to [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) goes through the rest of the ownership numbers. ## Open back or resonator, decided by the music A resonator is a wooden bowl bolted to the back that throws the sound forward. It makes the banjo louder and harder-edged, which is what bluegrass wants and what a clawhammer player is usually trying to get away from. It also adds two or three pounds to an instrument you will be holding for an hour at a time. If you already know which music you are heading for, that settles half of this page. If you do not, buy something whose resonator unbolts and decide later — the Jameson and the Vangoa both do. [Open back against resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) covers it properly, and the styles themselves are in [bluegrass banjos](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) and [clawhammer banjos](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). ## The picks № 1 · Best banjo under $300 ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - Removable mahogany resonator, two thumbscrews - Five-ply maple and mahogany shell - Remo Weatherking head, 24 brackets, chrome armrest - Purpleheart fretboard, 5/8″ maple and ebony bridge - Adjustable tailpiece - Adjustable truss rod, geared fifth-string tuner - ~$175 Everything a banjo has to have and nothing it does not. The resonator comes off with two thumbscrews, so one instrument covers bluegrass and clawhammer while you find out which of them you are — the single most useful feature at a price where nobody knows yet. The truss rod means a neck that goes out of line can be brought back rather than lived with, and the geared fifth peg holds where a friction peg slips. It is also the banjo with by far the longest record behind it in this bracket, gathered over more than a decade of being what people buy when they ask this question. That is worth something on an instrument nobody inspects before shipping, because it is the only evidence available that the average one is fine. What it does not give you is consistency. Two of these can arrive playing quite differently, and the fix for that is the setup the rest of your budget is paying for. **Pros**- The longest track record of anything in the bracket - Resonator off in a minute, so the music can stay undecided - Truss rod and a geared fifth peg - Leaves $100 of a $300 budget for the setup **Cons**- Unit-to-unit variation; two can play quite differently - Heavy with the resonator on, as all of these are - Nothing about it is designed, only assembled Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xWvAC5) № 2 · If it will never see a workshop ### Ortega Americana OBJ150OP-WB - Open back, mahogany ply rim, satin whiskey burst - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard with dot inlays - 22 frets, 31 mm (1.22″) nut, adjustable truss rod - Remo coated head, 18 brackets, built-in chrome armrest - Maple and ebony bridge, die-cast chrome tuners - ~$300 The one banjo under the limit that a company with a catalogue and a published specification put its own name on. Ortega lists every part of it — the rosewood board, the coated Remo, the maple and ebony bridge, the nut width to the millimeter — which is not something the brands below can be asked for at all, and it means the instrument you receive is the instrument that was described. The coated head is the quieter, warmer choice against the frosted heads elsewhere here, and on an open back that suits old-time playing rather than fighting it. The satin finish is thinner than the high gloss the import banjos wear, and the armrest is part of the design rather than an afterthought bolted through the tension hoop. The unflattering part is the arithmetic. Set the specification beside the Jameson’s and the gap is a rosewood fingerboard, a satin finish and a maker’s name, for a hundred and twenty-five dollars — and the Ortega has six fewer brackets. It is the better-made object. It is not, out of the box, the better-playing one, because neither has been adjusted. Take this if the banjo is going to be bought and played and never taken anywhere. **Pros**- A published specification from the company that made it - Rosewood board and a coated Remo, unusual at the price - Armrest built in, satin finish rather than heavy gloss - An open back that is meant to be one, not a resonator removed **Cons**- Nearly twice the Jameson for a specification barely ahead of it - Too new to have any owner record behind it - Open back only, so bluegrass volume is off the table - Still arrives unadjusted, like everything else here Around $300[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wQP1vk) № 3 · Best for clawhammer and old-time ### AKLOT 5-String Open Back - Open back, maple throughout, tiger maple rim - Remo head, 18 brackets - Two-way adjustable truss rod - Gig bag, tuner, strap, picks, spare strings, bridge ruler - Built in a 39″ full size and a 23″ short scale - ~$150 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) An open back at a price where most banjos in this bracket are resonator instruments with the bowl glued on. Maple all the way through gives a brighter, drier voice than the mahogany-shelled banjos, and with no resonator behind it the sound stays where a clawhammer player wants it — quieter, closer, easier to sing over. It also skips the two or three pounds a resonator adds, which is the difference between an instrument that gets picked up and one that does not. The two-way truss rod is the specification worth noticing. Most rods at this price only pull one way, so a neck that has gone the wrong direction cannot be corrected at all. AKLOT builds this body in two sizes and they are different instruments — the 39-inch is the full-size five-string described here, the 23-inch is a short-scale banjo pitched for a much smaller player. Make sure you are getting the 39-inch one. **Pros**- A real open back rather than a resonator banjo undressed - Two-way truss rod, which most of this bracket lacks - Lightest of the sub-$200 picks by a clear margin - Arrives with almost everything a beginner needs **Cons**- Too quiet for a bluegrass jam, and no resonator to add - Maple is brighter than some players want for old-time - Comes in a short-scale size that is easy to order by mistake Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gt8ETP) № 4 · If the music is still undecided ### Vangoa 5-String Banjo - Arched mahogany resonator, removable - Remo frosted head, 24 brackets - Sealed geared chrome tuners, geared fifth peg - Adjustable truss rod - Gig bag, tuner, strap, picks, spare strings - ~$200 The same recipe as the Jameson with a heavier arched resonator and a fuller accessory kit. The frosted Remo is the brighter, snappier head, which flatters fast fingerpicking and gives a clearer note under a bluegrass roll; take the resonator off and you have a mellower open back for the price of two thumbscrews. Worth knowing before you order: Vangoa builds this body several ways, and the one described here is the steel-strung acoustic with the frosted head. The same shape is also sold as a nylon-strung banjo and as an electric, and those are different instruments with different strings, different tension and a different job. At $200 it is the dearest of the import banjos here and the specification does not move much beyond the Jameson’s. What it does buy is a kit you will otherwise assemble one piece at a time. **Pros**- Resonator off in a minute, so one banjo covers both styles - Frosted Remo, which suits fingerpicking - Most complete accessory kit of the picks - Sealed geared tuners throughout **Cons**- Twenty-five dollars more than the Jameson for the same recipe - Sold in nylon-strung and electric versions that are easy to confuse - Shorter owner record than the Jameson Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zxsWEw) ## Fifteen dollars over the line The next real step in a banjo is not at $350 or $400. It is at $315, and it is worth saying plainly because a reader holding three hundred dollars is fifteen away from a different class of instrument. Worth going over budget for ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim, 11″ Remo LC frosted head - Mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard, 22 frets, 263⁄16″ scale - 13⁄16″ Zero Glide nut, two-way adjustable truss rod - Maple bridge with an ebony cap, 16 brackets - 3.75 lb, gig bag included - ~$315 Every part of this banjo was chosen rather than sourced, and Gold Tone adjust the instrument in their own Florida workshop before it ships. That last point is the one that matters on this page: it is worth roughly what the setup would have cost you, so the real gap between the Jameson and the AC-1 is closer to eighty dollars than a hundred and forty. Then there is the weight. Three and three-quarter pounds, against the eight to ten pounds a budget banjo with a resonator runs to. That is the difference between something you pick up out of an armchair and something that lives on a stand, and it appears on no specification list a shopper normally reads. Our guide to [what a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) has the comparison in full. The Zero Glide nut is the other detail worth the money for a beginner: it stops the tuning drifting every time a capo goes on or comes off. The rim is composite rather than wood, which is why it costs $315 instead of $600, why it weighs what it does and why it does not mind a cold car. Gold Tone warrants an AC-model banjo for five years and the cover transfers with the instrument, on condition it was bought from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Adjusted by the maker before it ships, so no shop trip - 3.75 lb, less than half what a budget resonator banjo weighs - Zero Glide nut and a two-way truss rod - Five-year transferable warranty **Cons**- Over the $300 limit, however narrowly - Composite rim rather than wood - Open back, with no resonator fitted or offered Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gLZTFT) ## Also worth a look BanjoBackPrice bandWhy it is not a pick[Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/4qxJ5pz)Resonator~$160Same parts list, no armrest and a friction fifth peg despite what Pyle claims; take it if the budget is really the constraint[Pyle PBJ140](https://amzn.to/3Se0C9D)Resonator~$200Pyle’s dearer banjo, and this one does have the geared fifth peg, plus an armrest, 24 brackets and a bundle of accessories. The catch is the fingerboard: engineered wood, where the cheaper PBJ60 has rosewood[Mulucky MB1101](https://amzn.to/4irR6Kv)Open back~$170Maple open back with 24 brackets; the AKLOT does the same job for less[Kmise 5-String](https://amzn.to/4gchTJm)Removable resonator~$145Cheapest full kit here; sapele back, okoume neck, and no Remo head specified ## What to spend the rest of the budget on In order. A **setup**, at $50 to $100, which is not optional and is the reason the top pick here is the cheap one. A [clip-on tuner](/best-banjo-tuner/), if one did not come in the box, because a banjo drifts and a beginner who cannot hear it will practice out of tune for months. A [fresh set of strings](/best-banjo-strings/), because the ones fitted at the factory have been on the instrument since it was crated. What can wait: a case, a strap, finger picks, and the second banjo. If you are starting from nothing, [the beginner’s guide](/banjo-tips-for-beginners/) and [how to tune a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) are the two to read first. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a banjo under $300 good enough to learn on? Yes, provided it has a truss rod and a geared fifth-string tuner, and provided it gets set up. Without the setup it will play stiff, sound sharp in first position and go dull, and you will conclude that the banjo is not for you when the real problem was a bridge in the wrong place. Everything recommended on this page has the two parts that matter. ### What does a setup actually involve? Standing the bridge in the right place and at the right angle, cutting the nut slots down to a playable depth, setting the neck relief with the truss rod, checking the head tension, and leveling anything that has gone wrong with the frets in transit. A shop will quote $50 to $100 for the lot. It is the single largest improvement available to a banjo in this price range, and it is not something a beginner can do by eye. ### Should I buy used instead? Three hundred dollars goes a long way on the used market and experienced players will tell you so. The catch is that it only works if you can tell a warped neck from a badly set-up one, and at this price the used market is largely banjos that somebody gave up on — which is to say banjos that were never set up either. If you have a player to take with you, buy used. If you do not, buy new and spend the difference at a workshop. ### Why is the Gold Tone AC-1 worth going over budget for? Because it arrives adjusted, which is the thing the rest of this page has to send you to a workshop for, and because it weighs less than half what a budget resonator banjo weighs. Add the setup cost to a $175 banjo and the two land within eighty dollars of each other, at which point the AC-1 is a designed instrument with a five-year warranty and the other is not. ### Do more brackets mean a better banjo? No. Gold Tone fits sixteen to a $315 banjo and the imports fit twenty-four to a $150 one. Brackets pull the head down against the rim, and past a certain number the extra ones are decoration. Judge a banjo in this bracket on whether it has a truss rod, a geared fifth peg and a proper Remo head, and then on what it costs. ### How heavy are these? A full-size banjo with a resonator on it runs to eight or ten pounds, which is a great deal to hold on a strap for an evening. Taking the resonator off a Jameson or a Vangoa saves two to three pounds, an open back like the AKLOT starts there, and the Gold Tone AC-1 is under four. It is the specification beginners never check and complain about most. ## So which one? Buy the [Jameson](https://amzn.to/4xWvAC5) at around $175 and book the setup with the change. That is the best-playing banjo three hundred dollars will produce, and it is not close. If clawhammer is already settled and the budget is not, the [AKLOT open back](https://amzn.to/4gt8ETP) is the right shape of instrument for a hundred and fifty. If the banjo is never going to see a workshop, spend the whole three hundred on the [Ortega Americana](https://amzn.to/4wQP1vk), which is the most carefully made thing under the limit. And if fifteen dollars is not the difference between buying and not buying, the [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4gLZTFT) arrives set up and settles the question for several years. Above it, [banjos under $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/) is where the pot becomes wood. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo for Folk Music: Five Picks, and Whether You Need the Scoop](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-folk-music/) **Published:** March 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo for Folk Music: Five Picks, and Whether You Need the Scoop Folk music asks a banjo to do two different jobs. One is frailing — the down-picking, clawhammer-family right hand that drives fiddle tunes, where the striking finger wants a soft, dry note and space over the head to hit. The other is playing behind a singer, where the banjo has to fill a room without covering the voice, and where the frets above the twelfth are where a fingerpicked melody actually lives. Both jobs want an open back. Only one of them wants a scoop, and that single decision separates these five instruments more than any amount of money does. Our pick### Deering Goodtime Twenty-two frets, no scoop and no tone ring, four and a half pounds, built in California and adjusted before it ships. It frails properly and it accompanies a voice properly, and it has not decided which of those you are going to do more of — which is the right answer for almost everyone buying a folk banjo for the first time. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/40k28Gr) **Half the money:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315, and 3.75 lb **Frailing, on a budget:** Gold Tone AC-12 — around $400, 12″ pot and a scoop **Deepest old-time voice:** Deering Goodtime Americana — around $750 **Loud enough for a session:** Gold Tone CC-OT — around $700, brass tone ring ## The five at a glance BanjoRimFrailing scoopFretsTone ringWeightBuiltPrice band[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/40k28Gr)11″ mapleNo22None4.5 lbCalifornia~$600[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4hNS9Ek)11″ compositeNo22None3.75 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$315[Gold Tone AC-12](https://amzn.to/4hNVHGH)12″ compositeYes18None5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$400[Gold Tone CC-OT](https://amzn.to/4gtmju3)11″ mapleYes18Rolled brass5.5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$700[Deering Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4gA7Nkp)12″ mapleNo22None4.5 lbCalifornia~$750 ## What folk music actually asks of a banjo ### The scoop is the fork in the road A frailing scoop is a ramp cut into the end of the fingerboard where the last few frets would be, so the striking finger can hit the string over the head without catching a fret edge. It gives a softer, rounder attack and it is the single most useful thing a maker can do to a banjo aimed at old-time playing. Gold Tone puts one on the AC-12 and the CC-OT, and both of those banjos have eighteen frets instead of twenty-two as a direct consequence. Those four frets are not decorative. Anything fingerpicked above the twelfth fret — the high answering phrases in a folk-revival arrangement, a melody played up the neck while singing underneath — needs them. So the scoop is a trade, not an upgrade: it makes the banjo better at frailing and permanently worse at everything played high. Cutting one afterward is luthier work, and there is no way to put frets back. If you already know that fiddle tunes and clawhammer are where you are heading, buy the scoop. If “folk” for you means songs with a banjo behind them, do not. ### Eleven inches or twelve Eleven inches is the standard pot and it is what most banjos of any kind use. Twelve is the old-time specification: a larger drum with the head at lower tension, which drops the pot’s fundamental and gives the deep, dry, plunky note that fiddle tunes sit under. It is a much bigger change in voice than the price difference between two eleven-inch banjos suggests. It is also a commitment. A twelve-inch pot sits wider against the body, heads and bridges for it are a smaller market, and the voice that suits a fiddle tune is not the voice that suits a singer — a twelve-inch banjo under a vocal is boomy in a way an eleven-inch one is not. The Goodtime Americana and the AC-12 are both worth having if that is the sound you want; neither is the safer first choice. ### A tone ring is volume, and volume is not always the point A tone ring is a metal hoop that sits between the wooden rim and the head. It adds volume, sustain and brightness, which is exactly what you want in a room full of fiddles and exactly what you do not want behind a quiet voice. Only the CC-OT here has one — a rolled brass flat bar — and it is the reason that banjo is a pound heavier than the Deering and cuts through where the Deering does not. The Goodtimes and the AC-series have no ring at all, and no open-back Goodtime is offered with one — the Goodtime that does have a tone ring is a resonator banjo at around $1,230. That is a genuine ceiling: no setup, no head change and no bridge will make a ringless banjo carry over a session. It is also why these banjos are pleasant to sing over. ### Weight, because folk gets played standing up A resonator bluegrass banjo runs eight to thirteen pounds. Everything on this page is between 3.75 and 5.5, and the difference between the ends of that range is noticeable across a two-hour session on a strap. The AC-1 at 3.75 lb is the lightest full-size banjo on the page by some way; the CC-OT at 5.5 lb is the heaviest, and the tone ring is where the weight went. Both Deerings sit at 4.5 lb, including the twelve-inch Americana, which surprises people who assume the bigger pot must weigh more. ### Where it is built, and what that buys Deering builds every Goodtime in Spring Valley, California, and cover them for eight years provided you register the instrument — a warranty that does not transfer to a second owner and is void if the banjo came from outside their dealer network. Gold Tone says plainly on their own site that the majority of their instruments are made in a Korean-owned factory in China, designed in Titusville, Florida, and given a twelve-point setup there before shipping. Their AC banjos carry five years, transferable; the Cripple Creek line carries seven to the original owner. The practical difference at these prices is smaller than the origin suggests, because both companies adjust the instrument before it leaves. Below about $300 nobody does, which is the real reason a cheap banjo needs a hundred dollars of work before it plays like the one above it. ## The five picks № 1 · The one to buy ### Deering Goodtime - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, no scoop - 11″ top-frosted high-crown head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale, 1 1/4″ nut - 4.5 lb, 37 1/2″ overall - Built in Spring Valley, California; eight-year warranty - ~$600 The cheapest banjo built in America, and the one every other instrument here gets measured against. A three-ply violin-grade maple rim, a rock maple neck with a truss rod, a geared fifth-string tuner, sixteen flat J-hooks and almost nothing bolted on for the sake of looking expensive. It arrives adjusted and playing in tune with itself, which at this price does more for how a banjo feels than any line on a specification. For folk specifically, the important things about it are the twenty-two frets and the absence of a scoop. It frails perfectly well — the head is high-crown frosted, which is bright and responsive under a striking finger — and it keeps the top of the neck available for the fingerpicked, sung-over folk-revival playing that a scooped banjo gives up. It also holds its value better than anything else on this page by a wide margin. **Pros**- Does both folk jobs without compromising either - 4.5 lb, and adjusted before it ships - American built, eight-year cover, best resale here - Nothing about it commits you to a style **Cons**- No tone ring, so it will not carry over a loud session - No scoop, and Deering does not offer one at this price - No case or gig bag - Plastic nut Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/40k28Gr) № 2 · The same argument at half the money ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim - No tone ring, no scoop - 11″ Remo LC frosted head - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, 22 frets, 26 3/16″ scale - 1 3/16″ Zero Glide nut, 16 brackets - 3.75 lb, gig bag included - ~$315 The composite rim is the reason this costs $285 less than the Deering, and it is a real difference rather than a cosmetic one: a molded rim is stiffer and less lively than three plies of violin-grade maple, and the AC-1 has a tighter, more compact voice as a result. What it is not is a toy. Gold Tone designs their own banjos, the Zero Glide nut means it plays in tune up the neck rather than only in first position, and every one is set up in Florida before it goes out. It is also the lightest thing here at three and three-quarter pounds, which matters more than it sounds if you play standing with a strap. Same twenty-two frets and same plain fingerboard as the Goodtime, so it takes the same uncommitted position on the scoop question. What you give up against the Deering is the maple rim and the resale, and at $285 less that is a defensible trade rather than a sacrifice. **Pros**- A real banjo from a banjo company at half the Deering’s price - 3.75 lb — the lightest here - Zero Glide nut and a gig bag included - Mahogany neck with a two-way truss rod - Five-year warranty, and it transfers **Cons**- Composite rim: drier and less open than maple - No tone ring and no scoop - Sixteen brackets, so head tension is coarser to set - Plain hardware throughout Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hNS9Ek) № 3 · Frailing, without spending $700 ### Gold Tone AC-12 - Open back, 12″ composite rim - Frailing scoop, 18 frets - 12″ Remo LC Renaissance head - Nato mahogany neck, rosewood board, 26 3/16″ scale - 1 7/16″ Zero Glide nut — the widest here - 5 lb, gig bag included - ~$400 Everything the old-time specification asks for, in the cheapest trim anyone builds it in. Twelve-inch pot, frailing scoop, and a Renaissance head — the translucent film that gives a warmer, older, less brittle note than a frosted one and is the usual choice on a big old-time pot. The nut is an inch and seven-sixteenths, a quarter-inch wider than the AC-1’s, which gives the fretting hand room for the fifth-string thumb work clawhammer depends on. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) At $400 it sits $350 under the Deering Americana and $300 under the CC-OT while having the scoop that neither the Americana nor the Goodtime has at all. The compromise is the same composite rim as the AC-1, scaled up: it does the deep twelve-inch note, but drier and with less bloom than a maple pot of the same diameter. For finding out whether the twelve-inch old-time sound is what you actually want, that is a sensible way to spend the money. **Pros**- The cheapest 12″ pot with a proper frailing scoop - Renaissance head and the widest nut on this page - 5 lb for a twelve-inch banjo - Gig bag included, set up before it ships **Cons**- Eighteen frets, and the scoop is permanent - Composite rim rather than maple - Wrong instrument for singing behind, and for bluegrass entirely - Twelve-inch cases and heads are a smaller market Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hNVHGH) № 4 · For playing with other people ### Gold Tone CC-OT - Open back, 11″ multi-ply maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Frailing scoop, 18 frets - 11″ Remo LC Fiberskyn head - Maple neck, rosewood board, 1 3/16″ Zero Glide nut, 18 brackets - Planetary tuners, No-Knot tailpiece, vintage armrest - 5.5 lb, gig bag included - ~$700 The only banjo here with a tone ring, and that is the whole argument for it. A rolled brass hoop under an eleven-inch Fiberskyn head gives volume and sustain a ringless banjo cannot reach, and it is what you want when the banjo has to be heard alongside a fiddle and a guitar rather than under a voice. The Fiberskyn keeps it warm rather than brash, which is the combination old-time players go looking for. The rest of the specification is unusually complete for the money: a multi-ply maple rim rather than composite, eighteen brackets so head tension can actually be set evenly, planetary tuners, a No-Knot tailpiece and a period armrest. It is also the heaviest thing on the page at five and a half pounds, and the scoop and eighteen frets put it firmly on the frailing side of the fork. Buy it because you want the volume and the scoop together; the Deering is the better instrument if you want neither. **Pros**- Rolled brass tone ring — the only one here - Maple rim, 18 brackets, planetary tuners - Scoop and Fiberskyn head, both right for frailing - Seven-year warranty to the original owner **Cons**- 5.5 lb, the heaviest here - Eighteen frets, so the top of the neck is gone - Too loud and too bright to sit under a quiet voice - $100 more than the American-built Goodtime Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gtmju3) № 5 · The deep voice, American built ### Deering Goodtime Americana - Open back, 12″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, no scoop - 12″ Renaissance medium-crown head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale, 1 1/4″ nut - 4.5 lb - Built in Spring Valley, California; eight-year warranty - ~$750 The Goodtime with a twelve-inch pot and a Renaissance head, and otherwise the same neck, scale, nut and fret count. It is the deepest, driest voice on this page and the one that sits under a fiddle tune the way old-time recordings sound, and it manages that without gaining any weight at all — still four and a half pounds, exactly the same as the eleven-inch Goodtime, which is not what a wider pot usually does to a banjo. What it does not have is a scoop, which is the odd thing about it: Deering sells the twelve-inch old-time voice and leave out the fingerboard feature most associated with the style. For a folk player that is arguably the right call, because it keeps twenty-two frets available; for a committed clawhammer player it means the AC-12 at half the price has a feature this does not. Buy it for the American build, the eight-year cover and the resale, and because a maple pot at twelve inches sounds better than a composite one. **Pros**- Genuine twelve-inch old-time voice, in maple - 4.5 lb — no heavier than the eleven-inch Goodtime - Twenty-two frets kept, unlike the scooped banjos - American built, eight-year cover, strong resale **Cons**- No scoop, at more than twice the AC-12’s price - No tone ring, so the same volume ceiling as the Goodtime - Boomy under a singing voice - No case, and twelve-inch cases are harder to find Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gA7Nkp) ## Also worth a look BanjoWhat it isPrice bandWho it suits[Gold Tone AC-1FL](https://amzn.to/4xYHZp6)The AC-1 with no frets at all~$315The gourd-banjo and pre-war sound, and sliding into notes rather than stopping them. Not a first banjo: without frets you have to already know where the notes are.[Oscar Schmidt OB3](https://amzn.to/3Dl9389)Nato neck, 18 frets, 18-bracket tone ring~$350The only banjo here under $400 that its maker specifies with a tone ring. The AC-1 costs less, has four more frets and a published weight, so take the Oscar Schmidt only if the extra volume is the thing you are after.[Mulucky MB1101](https://amzn.to/45Hcsw1)Maple open back, Remo head, 24 brackets, geared fifth peg~$170Finding out whether you like frailing before spending $315. Budget $50 to $100 to have it set up, because nothing at this price has been adjusted by a person. ## What else to budget for A setup costs $50 to $100 at a shop that knows banjos — bridge placement, head tension, action, nut slots, neck relief — and below about $400 it does more for how the instrument plays than the next $200 of banjo would. The Deerings and the Gold Tones on this page arrive adjusted; the Mulucky does not, and its real price is the sticker plus the setup. The other one worth planning for is the fifth string. Folk is sung, singers capo to fit their range, and a capo on the first four strings leaves the fifth behind. The two fixes are a separate fifth-string capo or a set of small spikes fretted into the neck at the seventh, ninth and tenth frets, which is about $25 of work and the tidier of the two. Strings are $8 to $15 a set — our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers gauges, and clawhammer players commonly drop one — and a [clip-on tuner](/best-banjo-tuner/) is around $20 and worth having on day one. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does folk music need an open back banjo? It does not require one, but it is what the style has settled on, for reasons that survive scrutiny: an open back is three to six pounds lighter, quieter in a way that lets a voice sit on top, and warmer in the mids where a resonator is brighter and more cutting. A resonator banjo plays every folk tune perfectly well and simply does it louder and heavier. [Open back vs. resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes through the trade in full. ### What about a long-neck banjo? The long neck is the folk-revival instrument — twenty-five frets instead of twenty-two, tuned three semitones lower to E, B, E, G# and B, so it plays in E and F without retuning and returns to standard G with a capo at the third fret. It exists because singers wanted keys below the banjo’s natural one, and it is genuinely useful if your voice sits low. It is also a specialist purchase: makers list them from around $360 to several thousand, and for almost everyone a standard neck with a capo covers the same ground upward. Nothing on this page is a long neck. ### Is clawhammer the same as folk banjo? Clawhammer is one right hand out of several. It drives old-time fiddle tunes and it is what the scooped banjos on this page are built for. Folk also covers two-finger and three-finger picking and the basic strum that carried the 1960s revival, all of which are played on the same instrument with the same tuning. If clawhammer specifically is the goal, our [clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) narrow the field further. ### Can a scoop be added or removed later? Added, yes — it is luthier work on the end of the fingerboard, and it is not cheap. Removed, no. Once the frets and the wood under them are gone they are gone, which is why the scoop is the one specification on this page worth being certain about before you buy rather than after. ### Is a $170 banjo good enough to start folk on? Yes, once it has been set up, and provided it has a truss rod and a geared fifth-string tuner. What you will not get is a rim worth keeping or a maker who adjusted it before shipping, so the honest arithmetic is $170 plus $50 to $100, which lands close enough to the AC-1 that the AC-1 is usually the better buy. Our [under $200 guide](/best-banjo-under-200/) works through the cheap end properly. ### Which one holds its value? The Deerings, and it is not close. An American-built banjo with an eight-year warranty sells used for a large fraction of what it cost. The scooped twelve-inch instruments sell into the smallest market of the lot, which is worth knowing if you buy one and then decide clawhammer is not for you. ## So which one? If folk means songs to you, buy the **Deering Goodtime** at around $600 — twenty-two frets, no scoop, four and a half pounds, American built, and nothing about it decided for you. If $600 is not available, the **Gold Tone AC-1** at around $315 makes the same argument on a composite rim and weighs less. If folk means fiddle tunes and a clawhammer right hand, buy the scoop: the **AC-12** at around $400 is the cheapest honest way to a twelve-inch pot with a frailing ramp, and the **CC-OT** at around $700 adds a brass tone ring and a maple rim if you will be playing alongside other instruments. The **Goodtime Americana** at around $750 is the deep old-time voice built in California, for the player who wants that note and refuses to give up the top of the neck to get it. New to the instrument entirely? Start with our [beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/). Want the wider open-back field rather than the folk-specific one? See [best open back banjo](/best-open-back-banjo/). And [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) covers the tenor, plectrum and six-string branches this page leaves out. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo for Bluegrass: Where the Tone Ring Actually Starts](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) **Published:** March 21, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo for Bluegrass: Where the Tone Ring Actually Starts Every banjo sold for bluegrass has a resonator bolted to the back, and the resonator is the cheap part. What separates a banjo that plays bluegrass from a banjo that *sounds* like bluegrass is the tone ring — a hoop of metal sitting on top of the wooden rim with the head stretched over it — and the makers’ own specification sheets show three completely different things sold under that one name. The version on the records is a cast bell-brass ring weighing close to three pounds. Nothing under about $1,300 has one. Below that you are choosing between a bent brass bar, which is brighter than bare wood and much cheaper, and no ring at all — which is what every Deering Goodtime has, including the ones sold as bluegrass banjos. Best banjo for bluegrass### Gold Tone OB-150 The cheapest banjo you can buy with the three things that actually make the bluegrass sound: a sand-cast bell-brass flathead tone ring, a one-piece cast flange, and enough mass behind them to be heard next to a fiddle and a mandolin. It arrives set up in Gold Tone’s Florida shop with a hardshell case in the box, which is worth another hundred dollars or more against the American banjos that ship bare. Around $1,300 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hMHYzT) **First bluegrass banjo:** Deering Goodtime Two — around $850 **Bluegrass layout you can carry:** Gold Tone BG-150F — around $1,000 **Cheapest with a tone ring:** Ibanez B300 — around $600 ## The five at a glance BanjoTone ringFlangeWeightPrice bandBest for[Gold Tone OB-150](https://amzn.to/4hMHYzT)Cast bell brass, 20-hole flat topOne-piece cast11.5 lb~$1,300The bluegrass sound itself[Gold Tone BG-150F](https://amzn.to/4xiGK4a)Rolled brass flat barFlat flange8.5 lb~$1,000The full layout, three pounds lighter[Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4hSGeVL)NoneTwo-piece6 lb~$850American built, and light enough to play all night[Gold Tone CC-100R](https://amzn.to/4xTaHYu)Rolled brass flat barNone6.5 lb~$800Learning, with the resonator removable[Ibanez B300](https://amzn.to/4gtEDDE)RolledTwo-pieceNot published~$600The traditional layout on a budget ## What actually makes a banjo a bluegrass banjo ### The resonator throws the sound forward. The flange holds it there An open-back banjo lets the sound out behind you. A resonator is a wooden bowl bolted to the back that reflects it forward instead, and it is the difference between an instrument that suits a porch and one that survives a band. The flange does the less obvious half of the job. It is the ring of metal that stands the resonator off from the pot and seals the gap, and it comes in two forms. A **two-piece flange** is a pair of pressed metal hoops, which is what the Deering Goodtime Two and the Ibanez B300 use. A **one-piece cast flange** is a single poured casting with the bracket shoes formed into it, and it is the design on the prewar Gibson Mastertones that bluegrass banjos have been copying ever since. It adds weight and stiffness exactly where the head is pulling, and on this page only the OB-150 has one. ### Three kinds of tone ring, and what each one costs The tone ring is where the money goes, and “brass tone ring” in a product description can mean two things that are nothing like each other. **No ring at all.** The head bears straight down on the wooden rim. That is every Deering Goodtime, including the resonator models. Deering’s own specification sheet for the Goodtime Two leaves the tone ring row empty, while filling in every other component down to the nut material. The note is dry, woody and dies quickly — lovely for old-time, and audibly short of sustain when a fiddle is playing over the top of it. **A rolled brass bar.** A quarter-inch brass rod bent into an eleven-inch hoop. Gold Tone uses it across the Cripple Creek and Bluegrass lines, and Ibanez uses something similar on the B300. It brightens the note and adds real sustain over bare wood for very little weight or cost. It is not the sound of a bluegrass record, and Gold Tone does not claim it is — its own copy for the BG-150F sells it on being *lighter* than their similarly appointed banjos. **A cast bell-brass flathead.** Poured, machined and drilled — twenty holes on the OB-150’s ring — and weighing close to three pounds by itself. This is the part that makes a banjo cut through a band and ring on after the note. It is the single most expensive component in a bluegrass banjo, and it is why the price roughly doubles when you cross into it. ### The weight is the sound, and the weight is the problem You do not have to take anyone’s word for how much ring is in a banjo, because the makers publish the weights and they line up exactly with the specification. A Deering Goodtime Two, resonator and all, weighs **6 lb**. Add Gold Tone’s rolled brass bar and a flange and the BG-150F comes to **8.5 lb**. Swap the bar for the cast ring and the pressed flange for a casting and the OB-150 is **11.5 lb**. Deering’s own cast-ring banjo, the Sierra, is 11 lb. There is no way to have the sound without carrying it: five and a half pounds separate the lightest banjo here from the loudest, and that weight *is* the loudness. Eleven and a half pounds on a strap for a three-hour session is a genuine consideration, and it is the one honest argument for buying less banjo than you can afford. If you play sitting down it barely matters. If you play standing, try the weight before you commit to it. Our guide to [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) puts the whole range side by side. ### A setup does more than the next $200 of banjo A banjo has more adjustable parts than any other fretted instrument — head tension, bridge placement, tailpiece angle, coordinator rods, action, the fifth-string nut — and they all interact. A setup at a shop that knows banjos costs **$50 to $100** and will do more for how an instrument plays and sounds than spending another two hundred dollars on the instrument itself. Gold Tone sets these up in their Florida shop before they ship, and Deering sets theirs up in California, which is a real part of what those two brands charge for. The banjos below them do not get that, and should be budgeted accordingly. ## The five picks № 1 · Best banjo for bluegrass ### Gold Tone OB-150 - 11″ flat-top 20-hole bell-brass tone ring - One-piece cast flange - 11″ three-ply maple rim, 14″ maple resonator - 24 brackets, planetary tuners, ZeroGlide nut - 26-3/16″ scale, 22 frets - 11.5 lb · hardshell case included - ~$1,300 This is the point at which a banjo stops approximating the bluegrass sound and starts producing it. The cast bell-brass ring and the one-piece flange are the two components the whole Mastertone formula is built on, and the OB-150 is the cheapest instrument from a maker whose prices hold that has both. Gold Tone lists it at $1,299.99 and it sells for that. Everything around them is right too. Twenty-four brackets pull the head evenly. The planetary tuners hold pitch through a set in a way friction pegs never will, which matters more in bluegrass than in any other style because you retune between tunes and capo constantly. The ZeroGlide nut puts a zero fret ahead of the nut so open strings ring like fretted ones and the tuning settles faster. And it arrives playable, set up in Florida rather than boxed at the factory. The case is not a detail. A hardshell is included here, where the American banjos at $850 to $1,229 ship with nothing at all — so the real gap between this and a Deering Goodtime Special is smaller than the sticker suggests. Gold Tone’s Mastertone warranty runs for the lifetime of the original owner and five years to a second, provided the banjo was bought from an authorized dealer. The honest catch is the weight. Eleven and a half pounds is what a cast ring costs you, and if you are playing standing for three hours you will know about it. It is also the wrong banjo for old-time — that much brass and mass is precisely what clawhammer players spend money avoiding. **Pros**- Cast bell-brass ring and one-piece cast flange at the lowest price either is available for - Hardshell case in the box - Planetary tuners and 24 brackets - Lifetime warranty to the original owner **Cons**- 11.5 lb — heavy on a strap - No use for old-time or clawhammer - An import, at a serious price Around $1,300[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hMHYzT) № 2 · The first bluegrass banjo to buy ### Deering Goodtime Two - No tone ring - Two-piece Goodtime flange - 3-ply violin-grade maple rim, 13-7/8″ resonator - 16 flat J-hooks, sealed geared tuners - 26-1/4″ scale, 22 frets, 1-1/4″ nut - 6 lb · no case included - ~$850 Built in California, set up before it ships, and six pounds — a little over half what the OB-150 weighs. For someone learning Scruggs style who wants an instrument that will still be worth owning in ten years, it is the easiest recommendation here. What it does not have is a tone ring. Deering’s specification sheet leaves the tone ring row blank and the head bears directly on the maple rim. Against a guitar in a living room that is perfectly good. In a jam with a fiddle and a mandolin you will find yourself playing harder to be heard, and the note will still die faster than the banjos on the records you are learning from. The sixteen hooks are worth knowing about too — every Gold Tone here has twenty-four. Fewer hooks means slightly less even head tension, and it is part of why this banjo sounds the way it does rather than a fault. Deering charges for the neck, the rim and the setup, and put very little hardware on top. Budget for a case: Deering ships the Goodtime Two bare, so add $100 to $150 for a hardshell. Deering’s warranty on Goodtimes built since January 2025 runs eight years, but only to the original owner, only if you register it, and only if you bought it from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- American built and set up before it ships - 6 lb — the lightest thing here with a resonator - Eight-year warranty on banjos built since 2025 - Geared tuners front and fifth **Cons**- No tone ring at all — the note dies quickly in a band - 16 hooks against 24 on the Gold Tones - No case, so add $100 to $150 Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hSGeVL) № 3 · The whole layout, three pounds lighter ### Gold Tone BG-150F - 11″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Flat flange - 11″ multi-ply maple rim, 14″ mahogany resonator - 24 brackets, planetary tuners, ZeroGlide nut - Hearts and flowers inlay, Presto tailpiece - 8.5 lb · gig bag included - ~$1,000 Everything a bluegrass banjo is supposed to have, arranged the conventional way, at eight and a half pounds instead of eleven and a half. Flange, brass ring, twenty-four brackets, planetary tuners, hearts-and-flowers inlay down the board. If the OB-150’s weight is what puts you off, this is the answer — and Gold Tone says as much itself, describing it as the lighter banjo among their similarly appointed models. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The trade is the ring. A rolled brass bar is not a cast hoop, and three pounds of poured metal is not a distinction you can split the difference on: this is bright and workable, where the OB-150 is a cannon. What you keep is everything else, and for a player who is going to spend more time in the living room than on a stage, that is the better bargain of the two. A gig bag is included, which the Deerings are not. Gold Tone publishes warranty terms by model family and list none for the Bluegrass series, so treat the cover here as unstated rather than assuming it matches the Mastertone line above it. **Pros**- Full bluegrass layout — flange, ring, 24 brackets, planetary tuners - 8.5 lb, three pounds under a cast-ring banjo - ZeroGlide nut settles tuning in first position - Gig bag included **Cons**- Rolled bar rather than a cast ring — audibly not the record sound - Still heavy compared with anything without a flange - No published warranty term for this line Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xiGK4a) № 4 · Best under $800 ### Gold Tone CC-100R - 11″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Removable 13″ maple resonator, no flange - 11″ multi-ply maple rim, maple neck, rosewood board - 24 brackets, sealed guitar-style tuners - 1-3/16″ ZeroGlide nut, Terminator tailpiece - 6.5 lb · gig bag included - ~$800 The Cripple Creek is the banjo to buy if bluegrass is the plan but not yet a certainty. The resonator unbolts, and with it off you have a perfectly good open-back banjo for clawhammer — so one instrument covers both styles while you find out which one you are. Nothing else here does that. It has the rolled brass ring the BG-150F has, twenty-four brackets, the same ZeroGlide nut and the same Florida setup, at six and a half pounds and two hundred dollars less. What it gives up is the flange — Gold Tone fill that row in for their flanged banjos and leave it empty across the Cripple Creek line, which is why the resonator lifts off — and the planetary tuners: the sealed guitar-style machines are perfectly stable, just slower to adjust than planetaries when you are retuning between tunes. Gold Tone also builds it with a factory-fitted pickup as the CC-100R+, about fifty dollars more, which is worth considering if you already know you will be plugging in. Warranty on the Cripple Creek line is seven years to the original owner and one year to a second, from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Resonator comes off — covers bluegrass and old-time on one banjo - Brass ring and 24 brackets at the lowest price here - 6.5 lb, and a gig bag included - Set up in Florida before it ships **Cons**- No flange — the resonator does less than a bolted-in one - Guitar-style tuners rather than planetary - Rolled bar ring, same as the BG-150F Around $800[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xTaHYu) № 5 · The traditional layout on a budget ### Ibanez B300 - Rolled tone ring - Two-piece flange - Basswood block rim, walnut resonator with abalone purfling - 24 brackets, 11″ coated Remo head - Okoume neck, purpleheart board, plastic nut - Chrome friction tuners - ~$600 At around $600 the B300 has a specification nothing else at that money offers: a block rim, a rolled tone ring, a resonator, a two-piece flange and twenty-four brackets. The American banjo two hundred and fifty dollars above it has no tone ring at all, and sixteen hooks rather than twenty-four. If the traditional bluegrass layout is what you are after and $850 is out of reach, this is where it starts. What Ibanez left out to get there is the tuning. The B300 has friction pegs rather than geared machines, and a plastic nut — both on Ibanez’s own specification sheet, and both the things owners complain about. For bluegrass specifically that is worse than it sounds, because the style involves constant capo work and retuning, and friction pegs slip. Geared fifth-string pegs and a bone nut together cost far less than the step up to the next banjo, so it is a fixable problem rather than a disqualifying one — but it is a problem, and it belongs in the budget alongside a setup. Our full [Ibanez B300 review](/ibanez-b300-banjo/) goes through the specification line by line, including where the retail descriptions of this banjo have never matched what Ibanez actually publishes. **Pros**- Block rim, tone ring, flange and 24 brackets at $600 - Remo head rather than an anonymous one - Walnut resonator and genuine binding work **Cons**- Friction tuners — the wrong choice for a style built on capos - Plastic nut - Budget $50 to $100 for a setup on top Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gtEDDE) ## Also worth a look BanjoPrice bandWhy you might pick it[Washburn Americana B10](https://amzn.to/4gyObxa)~$500Mahogany neck and resonator, Remo head, die-cast tuners and floral inlay, with no tone ring — so it sits between the Ibanez and the Deering on price and below both on bluegrass hardware. Washburn specifies the fingerboard as engineered wood rather than rosewood — their spec sheet has said so since at least 2019, even though their own product description still says rosewood.[Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/3XHrRqq)~$160Not a bluegrass banjo, and worth being clear about that: no tone ring, no flange, and a pot that will not carry over a mandolin. What it does have is a Remo head and a truss rod, which is the shortest list of parts that makes a banjo learnable. The fifth peg is a friction one whatever Pyle’s feature list says, so add a geared replacement to the bill. Buy it, spend $50 to $100 on a setup, and treat it as finding out whether you want one of the banjos above. Our [picks under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) cover this tier properly. ## Fingerpicks are not optional Bluegrass banjo is played with a thumbpick and two metal fingerpicks, on the thumb, index and middle fingers. That is not a preference — the rolls that define the style depend on the attack a metal pick gives, and none of the banjos above ships with any. Bare fingers on a bluegrass banjo produce a soft, indistinct version of the thing you are trying to play, which is worth knowing before you conclude the banjo is the problem. The picks to start on### D’Addario National finger and thumb picks Four brass fingerpicks and two thumbpicks in one set. National picks have been made since 1930 and D’Addario still sell them as the industry standard; the brass blades bend to fit your fingers and stay where you put them. Having two thumbpicks and spare fingerpicks in the packet matters more than it sounds, because these get bent, lost and left in cases. Around $17 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xkTdob) Beyond the picks, the two things worth budgeting for are a set of strings you have chosen rather than inherited — see our guide to [the best banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/) — and a clip-on tuner, since a banjo goes out of tune more often than anything else you will own. Our [banjo tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/) cover that. ## Questions worth answering before you buy ### Can I play bluegrass on a banjo with no tone ring? Yes — every technique in the style works fine on a Goodtime Two. What you give up is volume and sustain in company. Alone or with one guitar you will not notice. In a jam with a fiddle, a mandolin and a guitar you will be the quietest instrument in the circle, and playing harder to compensate is how beginners hurt their right hand. ### Is the cast ring really worth doubling the price? For the sound on bluegrass records, yes, and nothing else substitutes for it. For someone who is six months in and playing at home, no — the money does more as a setup, a decent case, a tuner and lessons. The useful test is whether you are already playing with other people. If you are not yet, buy the Goodtime Two or the CC-100R and come back to this question when you are. ### Do I need a resonator, or can I use an open back? For bluegrass, a resonator. An open back sends roughly half its sound behind you, which is the point of it for old-time and the opposite of what bluegrass needs. The Gold Tone CC-100R is the one banjo here that lets you have it both ways, since the resonator unbolts. We go through the difference in detail in [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). ### Should I buy used instead? At the top of this page, seriously consider it — a cast-ring banjo has almost nothing in it that wears out, and the ring is the expensive part. At the bottom, no: a $200 banjo that has been sitting in a cupboard needs the same setup a new one does, and you cannot see a warped neck in a photograph. And a warranty only covers the original owner on most of these. ### What about the Deering Goodtime Special? It is the Goodtime that has a tone ring — Deering’s own patented steel hoop — and the weight tells you it is doing something, at 8.75 lb against the Goodtime Two’s 6 lb. Deering lists it at $1,229, which puts it within seventy dollars of the OB-150 without the case the Gold Tone includes, and the steel ring is not the cast bell brass that makes the classic sound. It is the banjo to want if American-built matters more to you than the ring itself. We cover it in [banjos around $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/). ### How many strings does a bluegrass banjo have? Five, tuned gDGBD. The short fifth string runs from a peg at the fifth fret and is played as a drone with the thumb — it is the sound in every roll in the style, and bluegrass is not played on a four-string. Every banjo on this page is a five-string. More on the family in [how many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) and [types of banjo](/types-of-banjos/). ## The short version If you want the sound on the records and you will be playing with other people, the [Gold Tone OB-150](https://amzn.to/4hMHYzT) is the cheapest way to it: cast bell brass, a one-piece flange, a hard case in the box and eleven and a half pounds you will have to carry. If you are learning, the [Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4hSGeVL) is a better instrument to spend two years with, and you can stop reading about tone rings until you need one. If the weight of the OB-150 is the objection rather than the price, the [BG-150F](https://amzn.to/4xiGK4a) gives you the whole layout three pounds lighter. Whichever you buy, put $50 to $100 aside for a setup and $17 on a set of fingerpicks before you spend anything else. Between them they will change how the banjo plays more than any upgrade inside it. If you are still working out where to start, our [beginner banjo picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) and [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) are the places to go next. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best 6-String Banjo: Six Picks, and Why Weight Decides It](https://promusicvault.com/best-6-string-banjo/) **Published:** March 13, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best 6-String Banjo: Six Picks, and Why Weight Decides It A six-string banjo is a banjo pot with a guitar neck bolted to it. It is tuned E A D G B E, it is fretted exactly like a guitar, and every chord shape you already own works on it on day one — which is the entire reason the instrument exists. What varies between the ones worth buying is not the tuning or the fingering but the pot: whether there is a wooden bowl on the back, whether there is a metal ring under the head, and how much the whole thing weighs. That last one is the specification that decides whether you still play it in a year, and it swings from four and a half pounds to eleven and a half across instruments from a single maker. Our pick### Gold Tone CC-Banjitar A real banjo pot — eleven-inch multi-ply maple rim, rolled brass tone ring, thirteen-inch resonator — at seven pounds, which is four and a half pounds lighter than the flagship above it and about two hundred dollars cheaper. Gig bag and a pickup in the box, guitar scale, and set up in Florida before it ships. Around $850 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/46cESxU) **Cheapest worth owning:** Jameson 6-String — around $175 **Open back:** Washburn Americana B6-A — around $500 **Lightest with a resonator:** Deering Goodtime Six-R — 5.5 lb, around $1,190 **Left-handed:** Ortega Raven OBJE356 — around $550 ## The six at a glance BanjoBackTone ringPickupScaleWeightPrice band[Gold Tone CC-Banjitar](https://amzn.to/46cESxU)13″ maple resonatorRolled brassYes25 1/2″7 lb~$850[Jameson 6-String](https://amzn.to/3kMevKI)Removable mahogany resonatorNoneNoGuitarNot published~$175[Washburn Americana B6-A](https://amzn.to/3Jb0oZF)Open backNoneNo25 1/2″Not published~$500[Deering Goodtime Six-R](https://amzn.to/3UdpGhq)13 7/8″ poplar/maple resonatorNoneNo26 1/4″5.5 lb~$1,190[Gold Tone AC-6+](https://amzn.to/4qMWCd3)13″ composite resonatorNoneYes25 1/2″6 lb~$700[Ortega Raven OBJE356 (left-handed)](https://amzn.to/4xQfREu)Mahogany resonatorNoneYes24 3/4″Not published~$550 ## Weight is the specification to buy on An acoustic guitar weighs four to five pounds. A six-string banjo can weigh eleven and a half, and the price sheet runs the wrong way — the more you spend, the heavier it usually gets, because what the money buys is a thicker rim, a heavier resonator and a lump of cast or rolled metal under the head. Gold Tone publishes a weight for every model they build, and their own line reads: composite AC-6+ six pounds, CC-Banjitar seven, GT-500 eleven, GT-750 eleven and a half. Deering publishes theirs too, and the Goodtime Six-R is five and a half. Sitting down, none of that matters much. Standing with a strap for a three-hour evening, eleven pounds on one shoulder is the difference between an instrument you reach for and one that stays on the stand. The banjo is also badly balanced compared with a guitar — the mass is concentrated in a drum at one end rather than spread through a soundbox — so the felt weight is worse than the number. If you play seated at home, buy on tone. If you play standing, buy on weight, and treat everything over about eight pounds as a decision rather than an upgrade. Our guide to [what banjos weigh](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) covers the five-string side of the same question. ## It will not sound like a banjo by itself The banjo sound on a bluegrass record is mostly the right hand: three-finger roll patterns played with metal fingerpicks against a high drone string that a six-string does not have. Fret a G chord on a banjitar, strum it with a plectrum, and what comes out is a guitar with a drumhead — bright, percussive, short-sustaining, and recognisably not a banjo. That is worth knowing before you spend, because it is the single most common disappointment with the instrument and no amount of money spent on the pot fixes it. Two things do fix it. The first is your palm: rest the heel of the picking hand lightly on the head just behind the bridge and the ring dies back to a dry, plunky attack that sounds far more like the real thing. The second is retuning. Drop the sixth string from E to D, the fifth from A to G and the first from E to D, and you are in open G — D G D G B D. Your top four strings are then D G B D, which is exactly the four long strings of a five-string banjo, so roll patterns and banjo tab transfer straight across with only the drone missing. Any six-string on this page will hold that tuning without a setup change. ## Scale length is not standardized Guitar scale is 25 1/2 inches and most banjitars use it, which is why a guitarist picks one up and feels at home. But not all of them do. Deering builds theirs on a 26 1/4-inch scale, three-quarters of an inch longer, so at the same pitch the strings sit under noticeably more tension and the frets are spaced slightly wider. The Ortega runs the other way at 628 mm, a little under 24 3/4 inches, which is closer to a short-scale electric and feels slacker. Neither is wrong and the difference is not large, but it is the thing that will feel odd in the first hour if you were not expecting it, and it changes which string gauge suits the instrument. If you bend strings a lot or have small hands, the shorter scale is the friendlier one; if you play hard and want the top end to stay tight, the longer one earns its keep. ## The six-string banjos worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### Gold Tone CC-Banjitar - 11″ multi-ply maple rim, 13″ maple resonator - 11″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - 11″ Remo LC smooth head, 18 brackets - Maple neck, radiused rosewood fingerboard, 21 frets - 1-11/16″ Zero Glide nut, 25 1/2″ scale - SMP+ pickup with volume control - 7 lb, gig bag included - ~$850 This is the cheapest banjitar with a proper banjo pot underneath it — a laminated maple rim, a rolled brass flat-bar ring and a real wooden resonator, rather than a shell with a head stretched over it. It is set up in Titusville before it ships, which matters more on a six-string than on a guitar because the bridge floats and nothing about the intonation is fixed at the factory otherwise. The seven-pound figure is what makes it the pick rather than the GT-500 above it. That instrument has a steel tone ring and a gloss finish and costs two hundred dollars more, and it weighs eleven pounds — the extra money buys mass, not playability. The Zero Glide nut is a fitted replacement that puts a fret’s worth of height under the open strings so the first position plays in tune, and the SMP+ is a sliding magnetic pickup with its own volume knob, so the plugged-in question is answered without a soundhole to worry about. Gold Tone’s warranty on CC-series instruments runs seven years to the original owner, and it holds only if you buy from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- A genuine banjo pot with a brass tone ring at the price - 7 lb, against 11 for the flagship - Pickup and gig bag included - Zero Glide nut and a factory setup - Built left-handed as well **Cons**- Satin vintage brown only — no finish choice - Dot inlays and plain hardware next to the dearer models - Hard case is extra Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46cESxU) № 2 · The cheapest one worth owning ### Jameson 6-String Banjo Guitar - 5-ply maple and mahogany shell, removable mahogany resonator - No tone ring - Remo Weather King head, 24 brackets - Mahogany neck, purpleheart fretboard, truss rod - 5/8″ maple and ebony bridge, adjustable tailpiece - Chrome armrest, six closed geared tuners - Padded gig bag included - ~$175 Under about four hundred dollars nobody is building banjitars, they are commissioning them, and this is the one that has been commissioned longest and reviewed most — a few hundred owners rather than a handful, which at this end of the market is the only evidence there is that the things arrive playable. It is a laminated shell with a mahogany resonator, geared tuners and a real Remo head, and the purpleheart board is harder wearing than the stained hardwood usual at the price. The resonator lifts off, which is a genuinely useful feature at any money — closed back for volume, open back for a quieter, drier sound in a room. What you do not get is a tone ring, so it is quieter and woodier than the Gold Tone, and you should assume it wants an hour of attention when it arrives — bridge placed by ear against the twelfth-fret harmonic, head brought up to tension, tailpiece adjusted. Budget for a set of strings too, because the ones fitted at the factory are the first thing to go. Do that and it is a genuinely fun instrument for the money; skip it and it will play badly and you will blame the banjo. **Pros**- Far and away the most owner feedback of anything at this price - Resonator comes off, so it plays both ways - Remo head, geared tuners, truss rod and an armrest - Padded gig bag included - Cheap enough to find out whether you like the idea **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited volume and cut - Needs setting up before it plays properly - No published weight, and it is not a light instrument - Factory strings are worth replacing straight away Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kMevKI) № 3 · The open back ### Washburn Americana B6-A - Open back, mahogany rim - No tone ring - Distressed Remo head, 11″ notched tension hoop, 24 brackets - Mahogany neck, 20-fret engineered-wood fingerboard - 25 1/2″ scale, die-cast tuners - Ebony-tipped maple bridge, engraved armrest - ~$500 Take the wooden bowl off the back of a banjo and the sound goes into the room and into your chest instead of out at the audience — softer, drier, and a good deal easier to live with in a small space. It also takes a couple of pounds off. This is the only six-string here built as an open back rather than converted into one, and for playing at home, recording, or accompanying a singer it is a more pleasant instrument than anything here with a resonator. The trade is volume, and it is not recoverable. An open back will not carry over a guitar and a fiddle in a room and playing harder does not help, because the sound leaving the back of the pot goes into your shirt. There is no tone ring either, so this is the quiet end of a category already short on cut. The armrest is worth mentioning as a genuine comfort feature rather than decoration — the tension hoop and its brackets sit exactly where your forearm rests, and a banjo without one is uncomfortable within twenty minutes. See [open back vs. resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) for the longer version of the argument. **Pros**- Built as an open back, with a mahogany rim to suit it - Softer and more forgiving to play at home - Lighter than the resonator instruments here - Armrest fitted as standard **Cons**- Quietest instrument on this page - No tone ring and no pickup - No case or bag included - Weight is not published Around $500[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Jb0oZF) № 4 · American made, and the lightest with a resonator ### Deering Goodtime Six-R - 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - 13 7/8″ 3-ply poplar and maple resonator - No tone ring - Rock maple neck, pau ferro fingerboard, 15″ radius, 22 frets - 26 1/4″ scale, 1 11/16″ nut, 38″ overall - 5.5 lb - Built in Spring Valley, California; eight-year warranty - Ball-end strings, .010–.046 - ~$1,190 Five and a half pounds with a resonator on it is the number that justifies the price. Deering get there by leaving the tone ring out and using a light three-ply poplar resonator rather than a solid one, and the result is a banjitar you can wear all evening — a pound and a half under the Gold Tone that costs less, and six pounds under the Gold Tone that costs more. The radiused pau ferro board is the other thing a guitarist notices immediately, because flat banjo fingerboards feel wrong to a hand trained on a curved one. Two honest caveats. There is no tone ring, so despite the money this is not the loudest instrument here — the CC-Banjitar’s rolled brass ring gives it more cut for less outlay, and if projection is what you are buying, that is the better instrument. And the 26 1/4-inch scale is three-quarters of an inch longer than a guitar’s, which raises string tension noticeably at the same pitch. The eight-year warranty and the resale, though, are in a different class from anything else on this page. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- 5.5 lb, the lightest resonator instrument here - Built in California with an eight-year warranty - Radiused fingerboard, which most banjos do not have - Holds its value better than anything else on this page **Cons**- No tone ring at a price where others have one - 26 1/4″ scale feels tighter than a guitar - No pickup and no bag included on the base model - Takes ball-end strings, not the loop-end sets sold for banjos Around $1,190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UdpGhq) № 5 · The one to take outside ### Gold Tone AC-6+ - 11″ composite rim, 13″ composite resonator - No tone ring, 16 brackets - 11″ Remo LC smooth head - Maple neck, radiused rosewood fingerboard, 21 frets - 1-11/16″ Zero Glide nut, 25 1/2″ scale - SMP pickup with volume control - 6 lb, gig bag included - ~$700 The rim and the resonator are molded composite rather than laminated wood, which is a real engineering choice rather than a cost cut. Composite does not move with humidity, does not care about a cold car or a damp evening, and weighs less — six pounds, the lightest thing here with a resonator on it. For campfires, porches, festivals and anywhere an instrument is going to get treated like luggage, it is the sensible answer. The cost is tonal and some players never make peace with it. A composite pot is stable and even but it lacks the roundness and the slight unpredictability of a wooden one, and against the CC-Banjitar at a hundred and fifty dollars more it sounds flatter and has no tone ring to give it any edge. If this is going to be your only six-string and it will live indoors, spend the extra. If it is a second instrument that travels, this is the better buy of the two. **Pros**- Unbothered by humidity, heat and cold - 6 lb with a resonator fitted - Pickup, gig bag and Zero Glide nut included - Five-year transferable warranty on the AC series **Cons**- Composite tone is flatter than wood - No tone ring at seven hundred dollars - Only 16 brackets, so less even head tension - Warranty requires an authorized dealer Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qMWCd3) № 6 · Left-handed ### Ortega Raven OBJE356-SBK-L - Left-handed build - Mahogany resonator, aluminum rim, 30 brackets - Mahogany neck, ovangkol fingerboard, 21 frets - 43 mm nut, 628 mm (24 3/4″) scale - Black Remo Fiber Skin head, satin black finish - Built-in pickup with volume control - Deluxe gig bag included - ~$550 Left-handed six-string banjos barely exist, and this is the one that does. It is a decent instrument on its own terms too — thirty brackets around the hoop is more than anything else here, which gives more even head tension, and the aluminum rim is a genuinely different idea that produces a brighter, harder attack than a wooden one. The Fiber Skin head is a synthetic calfskin imitation, warmer and less glassy than the frosted white heads on everything else on this page, which offsets the metal rim rather neatly. Two things to know. The 628 mm scale is a little under 24 3/4 inches, shorter than a guitar, so it feels slacker under the hand and suits a slightly heavier gauge than a 25 1/2-inch instrument would. And it is built left-handed rather than restrung: the armrest, the pickup jack and the strap buttons are all on the correct side, which a flipped right-handed banjo can never manage. **Pros**- A properly built left-handed six-string, not a conversion - 30 brackets for even head tension - Pickup and gig bag included - Fiber Skin head is warmer than a frosted one **Cons**- Aluminum rim divides opinion against wood - Shorter scale than a guitar will feel slack at first - No tone ring - Black satin only, and weight is not published Around $550[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xQfREu) ## Also worth a look BanjoWhat it isWeightPrice band[Gold Tone BT-1000](https://amzn.to/4gIOoPt)Twelve-inch open-back pot with a rolled brass ring — deeper and drier than any eleven-inch here, and the one for old-time7 lb~$900[Gold Tone GT-500](https://amzn.to/3ws7txt)Steel tone ring, gloss maple, snowflake inlays; the traditional-looking flagship11 lb~$1,050[Gold Tone GT-750](https://amzn.to/4qsLHF3)Twenty-hole bell brass ring, bound curly maple resonator, hard case included; the loudest instrument on this page11.5 lb~$1,300[Gold Tone AC-6 Mini](https://amzn.to/4x6UAXf)Short 22 3/4″ scale, composite open back, still tuned E A D G B E — a travel instrument, not a child’s4 lb 5 oz~$370[Vangoa 6-String Kit](https://amzn.to/45APWF5)Beginner bundle with bag, strap and picks; a step up in fit and finish from the very cheapestNot published~$225 The BT-1000 deserves a second glance if old-time music is the destination rather than country or pop. A twelve-inch pot tuned lower is a fundamentally different voice from an eleven — deeper, drier, less sustaining — and it is the specification that makes a banjo sit under a fiddle tune rather than on top of it. It is also seven pounds, half the weight of the two flagships above it in the table, because there is no resonator on the back. ## Strings: check the tailpiece before you buy a set Six-string banjo strings come in two incompatible endings, and they are not interchangeable. Gold Tone’s Terminator and Straightline tailpieces take **loop-end** strings, which finish in a small wire eye that hooks over a pin. Deering’s takes **ball-end** strings, the same brass grommet an acoustic guitar uses. A loop-end set on a ball-end tailpiece will not stay put, and a ball-end set will not hook onto a loop-end one. Look at your tailpiece before ordering, not after. Gauge matters more than on a guitar because the bridge floats on a stretched drumhead rather than being glued to a soundboard, and a heavy set pushes the head down and chokes the instrument. Purpose-made banjitar sets run light for that reason — Gold Tone’s is .010 to .052, and Deering fits .010 to .046. A standard light acoustic guitar set, which starts at .012 and runs to .053 with a wound third, is heavier than either and is the wrong thing to reach for. Our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers the five-string sets. Strings ### Gold Tone BTS Banjitar Set - .010, .013, .020w, .032w, .042w, .052w - Nickel-plated steel - Loop end - Made in the USA - ~$12 The set the Gold Tone instruments ship with, and the right first replacement for any banjitar with a loop-end tailpiece. Light enough not to bury the head, with a wound third that keeps the middle of the chord from overpowering the top. Not for the Deering, which needs ball ends. Around $12[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3IgTBvH) Tuner ### D’Addario Micro Banjo Tuner - Mounts on a hoop bracket, not the headstock - Piezo transducer reads vibration, not sound - Full-color display on dual swivels - 435–455 Hz calibration, visual metronome - ~$23 A banjitar headstock is crowded with six guitar-style tuners and a clip-on tuner has nowhere sensible to sit. This one clamps to a bracket on the hoop instead, out of the way and out of sight, and reads the vibration through the rim rather than listening to the room — which is what you want in a jam. The swivels let it face either hand. Full options in our [banjo tuner guide](/best-banjo-tuner/). Around $23[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3EgUtz2) Case ### Lykos Hard Case, 5/6-String - Wood shell with leather covering, plush lined - 43″ long - Fits five- and six-string banjos - ~$90 Four of the six instruments here ship with a gig bag and two ship with nothing, and a banjo is a bad candidate for soft protection — the head is a drum and a knock in transit puts it out of tune at best. Measure the banjo end to end before ordering any case: this one is forty-three inches inside, which covers a full-scale banjitar comfortably, but banjo cases are cut to fit and a five-string case is not always long enough for a guitar neck. Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3xxlDOm) ## Questions ### Is a 6-string banjo a real banjo? It is a real instrument with a real banjo pot, and the first ones were built in the late 1800s, which makes the guitar-banjo older than bluegrass. What it is not is a five-string: no drone string, no five-string neck, and a different right-hand technique. It belongs to the same family as the tenor and the plectrum banjo: banjos built to be played by musicians who came from another instrument. Our [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) guide places all of them. ### Is a 6-string banjo easier than a 5-string? For a guitarist, on the first day, enormously — you already know every chord and every scale on it. Over a year, no, because sounding like a banjo means learning banjo right-hand technique, and that is the hard part of the five-string too. If you do not already play guitar there is no reason to choose a six-string at all; start with the [five-string picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) instead. ### How is a 6-string banjo tuned? E A D G B E, exactly like a guitar, on every instrument on this page including the short-scale Mini. Open G — D G D G B D — is the common alternative and is what most players use to get closer to a banjo sound. See [how to tune a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) for the five-string tunings. ### Can you play bluegrass on a 6-string banjo? You can play bluegrass songs on it, and plenty of country and rock records use one. You cannot play a bluegrass banjo break on it as written, because the rolls depend on the fifth string — a short drone that starts at the fifth fret and is always sounding the same note. There is no equivalent on a six-string, and the missing drone is what a listener hears. ### How much does a 6-string banjo weigh? Between about four and a half and eleven and a half pounds, which is a wider range than any other decision on this page. Open-back and composite instruments sit at the bottom, wooden resonators with metal tone rings at the top. Most makers do not publish a figure; Gold Tone and Deering both do, which is why the numbers in the table above come from them. ### Do you need fingerpicks? Only if you want the bluegrass attack. Metal fingerpicks and a plastic thumbpick are what make a five-string cut through a band, and they work the same way here — but they take weeks to stop feeling alien, and a flatpick or bare fingers is perfectly normal on a six-string. Try it without first. ### How many strings does a banjo normally have? Five, on the standard instrument. Four-string tenor and plectrum banjos are common in jazz and Irish music, and six-strings are the guitarist’s branch. The full count is in [how many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/). ## So which one? If you want one six-string banjo and want it to be right, the **Gold Tone CC-Banjitar** at around $850 is the answer — a proper maple pot with a brass tone ring, a pickup and a bag in the box, and seven pounds rather than eleven. If you play standing and can spend more, the **Deering Goodtime Six-R** at around $1,190 is five and a half pounds, American built and carries an eight-year warranty, at the cost of a tone ring. For home playing and recording, the **Washburn Americana B6-A** at around $500 is the quieter, gentler open-back option nobody else offers at the price. If the instrument is going to travel and get knocked about, take the composite **Gold Tone AC-6+** at around $700. Left-handers have exactly one properly built choice and it is the **Ortega Raven OBJE356** at around $550. And if the whole idea is still a maybe, the **Jameson** at around $175 will tell you whether you like it for less than the price of a setup on anything else. Coming at this from the guitar? [Banjo vs. guitar](/banjo-vs-guitar/) covers what actually differs between the two. Curious what the rest of the family costs? Try [how much a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/). And if the five-string is starting to look more interesting after all, the [open back picks](/best-open-back-banjo/) are where to go next. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [How Many Pedals Does a Harp Have? Seven — and Here Is What Each One Does](https://promusicvault.com/pedals-on-harp/) **Published:** July 11, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How Many Pedals Does a Harp Have? Seven — and Here Is What Each One Does Seven. A concert harp has seven pedals, one for each letter of the scale, and each of them has three positions. Three sit under the left foot and four under the right, and moving any one of them re-pitches every string of that letter across the whole instrument at once. The short answer### Seven pedals, three notches each, and one pedal per note name Left foot: **D, C, B**. Right foot: **E, F, G, A**. Top notch is flat, middle is natural, bottom is sharp. With every pedal in the top position the harp sounds C♭ major; press all seven to the middle and it is C major; press them to the bottom and it is C♯ major. That is what puts all fifteen major keys under a harpist’s feet, and it is why a pedal harp can change key in the middle of a bar while both hands keep playing. **Pedals:** seven **Positions each:** three **Settings available:** 2,187 **Keys reachable:** all fifteen **Lever harp equivalent:** one lever per string ## Which pedal is where The seven pedals are cut into slots in the base, four on the right of the column and three on the left. Read left to right, they run D, C, B, then E, F, G, A. The two on the outside — D on the far left, A on the far right — sit slightly further from the player than the rest, which is why Camac’s owner’s manual specifies long cushions for those two pedals and short ones for the other five. Position in the basePedalFootTop notchMiddleBottomFar left**D**LeftD♭DD♯Left, middle**C**LeftC♭CC♯Left, inner**B**LeftB♭BB♯Right, inner**E**RightE♭EE♯Right**F**RightF♭FF♯Right**G**RightG♭GG♯Far right**A**RightA♭AA♯ The split is uneven because the notes are. Four of the seven fall on the right side, so the right foot does more work, and the E pedal — the innermost on the right — is the one experienced harpists learn to take with the left foot when the right is already committed. Published pedal exercises drill exactly that as a separate skill. ## What one pedal actually moves Under the top of every string, up in the neck, sit two small brass discs with pins sticking out of them. Salvi’s technical manual describes the chain from foot to string in order. The pedal slides in a groove in the base and stops in one of three preset notches. It is coupled to a rod that runs up inside the column — hollow for exactly this reason — to the main action group in the neck, which distributes the movement of the seven rods to seven lines of upper discs and seven lines of lower ones, sliding between two brass plates. Each line connects every disc of one note name. The A line links all the A strings from the sixth octave to the first, so one movement of the A pedal grips all six or seven of them together. Pedal notchWhat the discs doSpeaking lengthSounds**Top**Neither disc touches the stringFull length, string resting on the nutFlat**Middle**The upper disc rotates and clamps the string in two pointsShortened onceNatural**Bottom**The upper disc stays put; the lower one rotates and clampsShortened againSharp That is the double action, and the two-stage part is the whole trick: the upper discs finish their rotation before the lower ones start. Camac’s manual has a name for the moment they hand over — the dead point — and says it has to fall exactly where the pedal reaches its middle notch, because the entire regulation of the mechanism is measured from it. Three positions on each of seven pedals is 2,187 possible settings. Most are of no musical use and a good many duplicate each other by enharmonic accident, which is its own resource: set B to sharp and C to flat and two adjacent strings sound the same pitch, which is how a harpist gets a fast repeated note out of an instrument whose strings need time to stop ringing. ## Why the harp is tuned in C flat Because the pedals can only ever shorten a string, never lengthen one. The instrument has to be strung at its lowest available pitch so that every pedal has somewhere to go, and the lowest available pitch for all seven letters at once is C♭ major — C♭, D♭, E♭, F♭, G♭, A♭, B♭. Which has a practical consequence at tuning time. Salvi’s manual is explicit that the pedals should be left in the flat position while you tune, so the mechanism is not carrying load that would throw the reading off, and their harps leave the factory at A442 rather than A440. A chromatic tuner pointed at an untouched pedal harp therefore reads a scale of flats and is not wrong. Our guide to [tuning a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) works through what each kind of harp should read. ## Where seven pedals came from A harp has seven notes to the octave and no black keys, so every harp ever built has needed a way of reaching the other five. The number seven has been settled since about 1720, when a Bavarian maker named Hochbrucker connected a set of hooks to levers running inside the forepillar and put seven pedals under them. The pillar has been hollow ever since. DateChangeWhat it gave the playerc. 1720Hochbrucker hangs seven pedals off levers in a hollow pillarHooks worked by the feet instead of the handsc. 1750Georges Cousineau replaces the hooks with metal platesThe string is gripped without being pulled out of plane1792Sébastien Érard substitutes rotating discs for the platesThe mechanism still used on every concert harp1810Érard patents the double action in London — a second set of discs on the same seven pedalsA third notch, and every key Before 1810 each pedal had two positions and could only raise a string a semitone, so the harp was strung in E♭ major and reached eight keys. The double action, patented in London in 1810 and on sale the following year, added the second bank of discs and with it the third notch, which dropped the tuning to C♭ and opened all fifteen. The older arrangement has left one visible fossil: on a modern harp the strings are still numbered from E rather than from C, because that was the top note on an eighteenth-century single-action instrument. ## What the pedals cost to own The mechanism is most of the reason a concert harp starts at about $15,500 while a lever harp with the same string count and the same wood starts near $600 — the argument is set out in full in [why harps cost what they do](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). What is less obvious is that it keeps costing after you buy it. A harp is a wooden structure under enormous load. Salvi puts the total string pull on a concert grand at about 1,200 kg, and say the wood goes on settling under it for the life of the instrument, shifting individual parts of the mechanism by tiny amounts as it does. Camac’s troubleshooting section opens by telling the owner that whatever the symptom, the first thing to check is the length of the cable belonging to the pedal that is misbehaving, because most small faults come from that cable having stretched. A cable that has grown by a fraction of a millimeter delays the dead point, the natural sits slightly flat, and the string buzzes because the disc is no longer gripping it hard enough. JobPedal harpLever harpHow oftenFull regulation by a technicianAbout $510–595About $330–345Every year or twoTechnician travel, if the harp does not go to themAbout $150–275 per visitPer visitPedal cushions or feltsReplaced when visibly worn; ten years or more on modern synthetic onesNot applicableRarelyRoom conditions the makers ask for35–65% relative humidity, roughly 50–86 °FContinuously Salvi recommends a full regulation once a year, or every two years at the outside, depending on how hard the instrument is worked. Both makers publish a climate range and both warn that the warranty does not cover damage from living outside it — Camac asks for 40 to 60 percent humidity, Salvi for 50 percent give or take fifteen. The two overlap comfortably, and a harp kept inside that band drifts far less than one that spends February next to a radiator. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Note also that the makers do not build the linkage the same way. Camac runs cables through the column, which stretch and need shortening; Salvi runs rigid rods. Either way the column is hollow and the working parts are inside it, which is worth knowing before anyone leans a pedal harp against a wall by its pillar. There is more on handling one in [how much a harp weighs](/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/). ## What to buy if the pedal harp is your instrument For the harpist whose feet are the slow part ### Jacqueline Pollauf, *Pedal Exercises for Harp* - Forty exercises, 44 pages - Oakway Studios, 2016 - Single pedals, then pairs, then pairs moving in opposite directions - A section on taking the E pedal with the left foot - Around $20 Almost nothing published for the harp addresses the feet on their own, and this does nothing else. Each exercise isolates one difficulty — one pedal at a time, two at once, two moving in opposite directions, flat straight to sharp without stopping at natural — so the thing you cannot do is the thing you are practicing rather than a bar you keep failing inside a piece. The second benefit is the one nobody expects: a pedal change is audible. Discs closing on seven strings make a noise, and drilling them deliberately is how the noise stops. Worth having beside [a general method](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) rather than instead of one, since it assumes you can already read and play. Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gufGJv) For the composer or arranger who does not play one ### Yolanda Kondonassis, *The Composer’s Guide to Writing Well for the Modern Harp* - 128 pages, Carl Fischer H78 - Written by a working concert harpist - Practical reference charts to work from - Publisher’s list price $32.99 - Around $35 A large share of the people who need to know how many pedals a harp has are writing for one. This is the book that answers the next question, which is what the seven pedals will and will not let a player do inside the bar you have just written — how long a change takes, how many can move at once, which enharmonic spelling makes a passage possible instead of impossible, and how to notate the changes so the harpist can see them coming. It is a reference rather than a read, and the charts are the reason to own it. A harp glissando is a pedal setting before it is anything else — the player sets seven pedals and then sweeps the strings — so writing one means knowing which chords the seven pedals can be made to spell and which they cannot. Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qOv5HV) The cheapest thing that protects the mechanism ### AcuRite Digital Indoor Thermometer and Hygrometer, Classic - Reads room temperature and relative humidity - Records the daily high and low of both - 32–122 °F, switchable to Celsius - Stands, hangs on a keyhole or sticks to metal - Around $13 Both makers name a humidity band in writing and both exclude climate damage from the warranty, which makes the room the harp lives in a specification rather than a preference. Thirteen dollars against an instrument that starts at five figures is not a close call. The high-and-low memory is the feature that matters here, not the current reading. What moves wood is the swing — a room that runs at 45 percent while you are looking at it and drops to 20 overnight with the heating on is the room that puts a mechanism out of regulation, and you will never catch that by glancing at a dial. It is a general-purpose room monitor rather than anything harp-specific, which is exactly what is wanted, because a harp is not kept in a case. Around $13[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hYEMRQ) ## Harps that have no pedals at all Most harps sold today have none. A lever harp puts a small sharping lever at the top of each string, worked by hand, and each one raises its own string a semitone — one string, not the whole instrument, and only upward. That gives eight major keys instead of fifteen, costs a hand for as long as the change takes, and has to be planned into the arrangement rather than dropped in mid-phrase. It also removes the entire mechanism, which is why the price falls by a factor of twenty. The full comparison is in [lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/), and the naming — folk, Celtic, Irish — is untangled in [Celtic harp vs. regular harp](/celtic-harp-vs-regular-harp/). Older solutions survive too. The Welsh triple harp carries three rows of strings, with the accidentals on the middle row reached between the two outer ones, and a cross-strung harp does the same job with two planes of strings crossing at an angle, rather as the black keys sit among the white on a piano. Both ask the hands to find the note instead of asking the feet to change it. The wire-strung clarsach has neither and simply gets retuned between pieces. If you are choosing a first harp, the pedals are not the decision — nearly every harpist starts on levers, including those who end up in orchestras, and [our beginner harp guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) covers what to look for. What matters far more at that stage is whether every string has a lever. The same job, without the mechanism ### Roosebeck 22-String Heather Harp, full Chelby levers - 22 strings, about 11 lb - A Chelby lever on every string, not just C and F - Eight major keys and their relative minors - Spare strings, tuning tool and a beginner method book in the box - Around $600 Everything above this describes a machine: seven rods up a hollow column, twenty-eight discs a technician has to set, a dead point measured to a fraction of a millimeter, and a regulation due every year or two for the life of the instrument. A lever harp reaches the same five notes outside the scale and has none of it. You flip a lever with a finger instead of pressing a pedal with a foot, and the column is just a piece of wood. What you give up is real and worth naming: eight keys rather than fifteen, one string at a time rather than every octave at once, and a hand off the strings for as long as the change takes, so accidentals have to be planned into the arrangement instead of dropped in mid-phrase. What you get is an instrument at a twenty-fifth of the price that plays most of the music people actually want to play, and it is where nearly every harpist starts. The specification that matters here is the one in the name. A harp with levers on only the C and F strings reaches four keys; this one has a lever on all twenty-two, which is what the folk and Celtic repertoire is written for. [Lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) sets the two side by side in full. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3T9tGzj) ## Questions people also ask ### How many strings does a pedal harp have? Forty-seven on a full-size concert harp, with 44 and 46 both built as smaller models. Seven pedals control all of them — [the string count](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) has nothing to do with the pedal count. ### Does moving a pedal change one string or all of them? Every string of that letter, in every octave, at the same instant. That is the difference from a lever harp, where each lever moves one string and nothing else. ### Can you hold a pedal halfway? No. Each pedal drops into a notch cut in the base and stays there without the foot, which is the point — a harpist who had to hold seven pedals would have no feet left for the next change. Composers do use the movement itself as a sound, sliding a pedal against a ringing string for a bent note, but that is an effect rather than a position. ### Is the harp in the string family? Yes, in every classification going. The pedals change nothing about that, and the question is settled properly in [is the harp a percussion instrument](/is-harp-percussion-instrument/). ### Why does my harp buzz on one note only in natural? Almost always the linkage for that pedal, not the string. Camac’s own answer is that the cable has stretched and the natural disc is no longer finishing its rotation before the pedal reaches the middle notch, so it is not gripping hard enough. Adjusting it is a technician’s job on most instruments. If the buzz is on the same string in every pedal position, look at [the string itself](/changing-harp-strings/) instead. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Celtic Harp vs. Regular Harp: What the Names Mean and Which to Buy](https://promusicvault.com/celtic-harp-vs-regular-harp/) **Published:** February 22, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Harp Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/harp-comparisons/ "Harp Comparisons")› Celtic Harp vs. Regular Harp: What the Names Mean and Which to Buy No harp maker sells a category called a Celtic harp. Camac’s catalogue has three headings — lever, pedal, electric. Lyon & Healy’s has pedal harps and lever harps. Rees, who build the Harpsicle line, define the term in their own glossary as “a term often used to describe a lever harp”, and that is as official as it gets. “Regular harp” is not a trade term either; it means the tall gold thing in an orchestra, which is a pedal harp. So the question is levers against pedals — except that one older instrument, still built and still played, is also called a Celtic harp, and it is neither. If you are buying the one people mean### A Celtic harp is a lever harp — buy one with a lever on every string Nothing about the shape, the carving or the word on the label decides what the instrument can do. The levers do. A harp with levers on only the C and F strings plays four keys; a harp with a lever on all of them plays eight, which is every key the Irish and Scottish repertoire is written in. That is the whole specification, and it is the one most cheap harps quietly leave out. **Entry price:** ~$600 vs. $15,500 **Weight:** 11 lb vs. 62 lb **Strings:** 22–38 vs. 47 **Keys:** eight vs. all fifteen ## Three instruments, two of them called Celtic Modern Celtic harpWire-strung clarsach“Regular” harp**Also sold as**Lever harp, folk harp, Irish harpEarly Irish harp, early Gaelic harpPedal harp, concert harp, grand harp**Strings**Gut, nylon or fluorocarbonBrass, sometimes silver in the bassGut and steel-wound bass**Played with**The pads of the fingers, nails shortThe fingernailsThe pads of the fingers, nails short**Getting the black notes**A lever per string, by handRetune, or fret a string against the armSeven pedals, three notches each**Keys available**Eight, from E flat tuningOne or two, and a retune between themAll fifteen, mid-bar**String count**19–40, usually 22–3819–3044, 46 or 47**Weight**11 lb at 22 strings, 44 lb at 404.4 lb at 19 strings, 16 lb at 3062 lb at 40 strings, 78–90 lb at 47**Price, new**$600 to about $8,800Roughly £1,200 to £4,000, built to order$15,500 to six figures**Where it came from**A Dublin pedal-harp maker, 1820sGaelic Ireland and Scotland, 10th centuryÉrard’s double action, early 1800s**What it is for**Folk, Celtic, therapy, exam grades 1–8Early Gaelic repertoireOrchestral and solo classical ## On a maker’s own price list, “Celtic” is a set of strings Camac builds a 38-string lever harp called the Isolde, and they sell it in two versions. The Celtic Isolde and the Classical Isolde are both 141 cm tall and 14 kg. Both have 38 strings running 1C to 6A. Both have a maple and beech body with a spruce soundboard, and both come in the same mahogany, cherry and walnut finishes. Every line of the specification is identical but one. The Celtic gets Alliance fluorocarbon strings, which Camac describes as “beautifully light”. The Classical gets Kürschner fluorocarbon at a tension Camac states is “identical to that of concert harps”. That is the difference. Same frame, same soundboard, same levers, same wood — and one is sold for traditional music and the other for classical repertoire on the strength of how hard the strings pull. This matters more than it sounds, because string tension is the thing a beginner’s hands learn. Light strings are easier and brighter; concert-tension strings hurt for a month and then transfer straight to a pedal harp. If a conservatoire is anywhere in the plan, that is the fork, and it is worth more thought than the shape of the pillar. [Lever harp vs. pedal harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) works through what the two mechanisms actually do. ## The other Celtic harp has brass strings and no levers at all “Clarsach” is simply the Gaelic word for harp. But the harp of the Gaels, from at least the tenth century, was a specific instrument: strung with wire, played with the fingernails, and built with a soundbox hollowed out of a single log. Ardival, who still build them in the Scottish Highlands, describe brass as the common metal, with silver and gold sometimes used in the bass. The oldest survivor is in the Long Room at Trinity College Dublin — the harp the college itself calls “the oldest surviving Irish harp, mistakenly associated with Brian Boru (d.1014) but probably dating from the later Middle Ages”. Trinity’s own description of it is the shortest good description of the whole family: a soundbox carved from a single block of willow, supporting 30 brass strings, played with long fingernails for “a resonant, bell-like tone”. It is the earliest surviving example of the type of instrument played in Ireland from medieval times until the tradition died out in the early nineteenth century. Wire is not a decoration. Brass rings for a very long time, so the technique is largely about stopping notes rather than starting them, and the hand has to damp what it has just played. The nails are not an affectation either; they are how you get a clean attack on metal. Nobody arrives at that from a nylon-strung harp by accident, which is why players treat it as a separate instrument rather than a stringing option. It is also not the cheap option. Ardival’s smallest, a 19-string Kilcoy at 2 kg, lists around £1,200; the 30-string Kinnellan, worked up from the string scheme Edward Bunting published in 1840, is £3,950. These are made to order in small numbers. If what you want is an instrument to learn on this year, the levered harp is the one. ## The modern Celtic harp is a shrunken pedal harp The name suggests an ancient instrument and a modern one. The lineage runs the other way. When the wire-harp tradition collapsed — Bunting was already transcribing tunes from elderly players at the Belfast Harp Festival in July 1792 because there were so few of them left — nothing carried on from it directly. What replaced it was an invention. John Egan was Dublin’s leading harp maker in the early nineteenth century, and what he built were pedal harps. In the 1820s he made a smaller, portable version of one: gut strings instead of brass, a rounded soundbox, about three feet tall, and in place of pedals a row of ivory knobs on the inside of the pillar — his “ditals” — each turning the same forked discs a pedal harp uses. The Historical Harp Society of Ireland, who own one, put its significance plainly: this harp “is the ancestor of the modern neo-Irish harp: the most usual Irish harp in use in the 21st century”. So the Celtic harp in a shop today is descended from a pedal harp, by way of a pedal-harp maker, and the sharping lever on its neck is a simplification of the pedal mechanism rather than a survival from anything older. That is why the two instruments feel so similar to play, why the same books work on both, and why almost every orchestral harpist started on the small one. ## What “regular harp” costs, and what it weighs Lyon & Healy is the one major maker who publishes a full list price, so the gap is easy to see rather than guess at. Their cheapest pedal harp is the Chicago Petite 40 at $15,500, which is 40 strings and 62 lb. A 47-string Style 100, the size a professional plays, is $30,900 and 78 lb. The trunk it travels in is another $2,450. The lever ladder underneath runs from about $600 for a fully levered 22-string, through Salvi’s 25-string Juno at $2,390, to Lyon & Healy’s own lever harps: the 34-string Drake at $3,490, the Ogden at $4,690, the Troubadour at $5,690 and the 40-string Prelude at $6,790. There is no overlap. The step from the dearest lever harp to the cheapest pedal harp roughly doubles the price again, and it is not a step up in quality — it is a mechanism. Nor is “Celtic” a synonym for cheap. Ardival’s modern 34-string lever harp lists at £4,680, more than any of their historical wire harps. [Why harps cost what they do](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) itemises where the money goes, and [how much a harp weighs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) has the full weight ladder if the question is whether you can carry one. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## What actually changes when you sit down Both instruments are played the same way — same hand position, same fingering, same four fingers per hand with the little finger unused. A teacher moves between them without comment. Three things genuinely differ. **The keys.** A lever harp is tuned in E flat and each lever raises its own string a semitone, which gives you eight major keys and their relative minors — three flats through to four sharps. A pedal harp is strung in C flat and each pedal has three notches, which gives all fifteen, and you can change one mid-bar with a foot while both hands keep playing. Almost all Irish and Scottish music sits in G, D and A, well inside what levers reach. Orchestral writing does not. **The hands.** Levers are moved by hand, so a lever change costs you a hand for a moment and has to be planned into the arrangement. This is why published folk-harp editions mark lever changes above the staff, and why a harp missing a lever makes a piece unplayable rather than merely harder. **The upkeep.** A pedal harp’s mechanism runs on cables that stretch, so it wants regulating every year or two at roughly $510–595, plus a technician’s travel if the harp does not come to them. Levers are re-regulated after about five years and then rarely. Over a decade that difference is comfortably more than the price of a first lever harp. ## Check the string count against the word on the label The word Celtic gets attached to instruments that are not harps at all. A lyre has strings stretched across a flat frame with no pillar and no neck, cannot be levered, and plays one key; several are sold as Celtic lyre harps at $100 to $470, which is most of the way to a real 22-string harp with a lever on every string. They are pleasant objects and a genuinely different instrument — [a lyre is not a small harp](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/) goes through what separates them. Two questions settle any listing. How many strings, and how many levers? A 22-string harp with 22 levers plays eight keys. A 22-string harp with two levers plays four, and one with none plays one — for much the same money. [String counts by harp size](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) covers what each range gets you. ## What to buy The Celtic harp to start on ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 strings, full Chelby levers - 22 DuPont hard nylon strings, C3–C6, three full octaves - A Chelby sharping lever on every string - Solid rosewood frame, plywood soundboard - 36″ × 18″ × 9″, 11 lb - Tuning tool, spare string set and a play book included - ~$600 This is the cheapest instrument that gets a lever onto every string, so all eight keys are yours rather than four. Three octaves covers the first-year folk repertoire and most of the second, and at eleven pounds it goes to a lesson under one arm. The Chelby levers engage from the side rather than pinching from above, so they do not drag strings off the bridge pins, and the caps are color-coded red for C and blue for F, which is the convention the concert makers use on their strings. The honest limits: the soundboard is plywood rather than solid spruce, so it is warm rather than loud; the nylon stringing is the light-tension choice and the wrong one if a pedal harp is where you are heading; and it arrives needing several weeks of daily tuning before it settles. It is a good first harp rather than a harp for life. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ixuCaX) If you want the range now ### Roosebeck Minstrel Harp, 29 strings, full Chelby levers - 29 DuPont nylon strings, C3–C7, four full octaves - A Chelby lever on every string - Solid rosewood frame, Finnish birch plywood soundboard - 36.5″ × 22.75″ × 9.5″, 14.6 lb - ~$775 The seven extra strings all sit below the Heather’s bottom C, which is where the left hand lives in a Celtic arrangement. Four octaves is the point at which most published Irish and Scottish settings stop needing to be simplified to fit, and it is the difference between playing an arrangement and adapting one. Three and a half pounds heavier, and still a one-person carry. The honest limits: same nylon strings and same plywood soundboard as the Heather, so this buys range rather than a better voice, and it stops short of the 34 strings the exam boards assume. The vine, thistle and knotwork carvings are the same instrument — Roosebeck says so themselves. Our [Minstrel review](https://promusicvault.com/minstrel-harp-review/) goes through it in detail. Around $775[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zIzi3R) The music that makes it Celtic ### Sylvia Woods — 40 O’Carolan Tunes for All Harps - 40 tunes by Turlough O’Carolan, 1670–1738 - Two arrangements of each: an easy version and a harder one - Chord symbols throughout, usable by other instruments - 112 pages, 8.5″ × 11″ - ~$23 The thread that actually runs from the old wire harp to the new one is the repertoire, not the woodwork. O’Carolan was a working Irish harper who played the wire harp, and Sheebeg and Sheemore, Eleanor Plunkett, Fanny Power and Carolan’s Concerto are still among the first pieces most harpists learn. Hal Leonard’s own description is exact: arranged for beginning and advanced harpers, playable on both lever and pedal harps, with each tune set twice so you can start on the easy version and come back to the other one in a year. Two arrangements per tune is the part worth paying for. Most collections give you one setting, which is either beyond you now or beneath you soon. If you would rather have dance tunes than airs, Woods’ [Irish Dance Tunes for All Harps](https://amzn.to/4xCplU8) is 50 Irish dance tunes at around $12, written, as Hal Leonard put it, in the keys they are most often played in — which is what the levers are for. Our [guide to first harp books](https://promusicvault.com/best-beginning-harp-music-books/) covers the methods that teach you to read them. Around $23[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45ULxNf) A new harp needs tuning before every session and daily for its first few weeks, so a chromatic tuner belongs in the same order — [the tuners worth having](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/) covers the clip-on and orchestral options, and [the beginner buying guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/) compares these against everything else at the price. ## Questions people ask ### Is a Celtic harp the same as an Irish harp? Today, yes — both names mean a lever harp. Historically they did not. Rees puts the drift precisely in their glossary: Irish harp is “a term associated with both wire and lever harps. Historically, the term was associated with wire harps but the usage of the term has been muddied over time and is now commonly taken to mean any lever harp.” Anyone talking about the wire instrument will normally say early Irish harp or clarsach to avoid the confusion. ### What is a clarsach? The Gaelic word for harp, used two ways. In Scotland it is often just the ordinary word for a lever harp — Ardival call their 34-string lever model “the standard size of a modern clarsach”. In an early-music context it means the medieval wire-strung instrument specifically. Which one somebody means is usually clear from whether they are talking about levers. ### Do you need long fingernails to play one? Only on the wire harp, and there it is not optional — brass wants a nail to give a clean attack, and Ardival say plainly that nails produce the better sound on wire strings. On a modern Celtic harp, strung in gut, nylon or fluorocarbon, you play with the pads of the fingers and keep the nails short, exactly as on a pedal harp. A nail catching a nylon string produces a click and wears a groove. ### Is a Celtic harp easier to learn than a regular harp? Not to play — the hand technique is the same and a teacher will not treat you differently. It is easier to own. It costs a twenty-fifth as much, weighs a sixth as much, fits in a car, needs no annual regulation, and asks nothing of your feet while both hands are learning to do two different things. What it gives up is the flat keys and the ability to change key inside a bar. ### How many strings should a Celtic harp have? Twenty-two is enough to start, 29 removes most of the arrangement problems, and 34 is the standard size for exam work and for playing with other people. The number of levers matters more than the number of strings at every one of those sizes. **Categories:** Harp Comparisons --- ### [Why Are Harps So Expensive? Where the Money Goes at Every Price](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) **Published:** July 9, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› Why Are Harps So Expensive? Where the Money Goes at Every Price Two facts set the price of a harp, and everything else follows from them. The strings pull on the frame with up to **2,000 pounds** of force. And on a pedal harp, more than **1,500 parts** sit inside the neck and column so that seven foot pedals can retune the whole instrument mid-phrase. A guitar has six tuners, a bridge and about 155 pounds of string tension. That is the entire difference in one line. The short answer### You are paying for a mechanism and a structure, not for rare wood — and the mechanism is optional. A concert pedal harp starts at about $15,500 because of the pedal action. A lever harp does the same job with a finger flick instead of a foot, has none of that mechanism, and plays most of the music people actually want to play. That is why the cheapest instrument here that genuinely behaves like a harp is around $600 rather than five figures. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/467kK0c) **Cheapest real lever harp:** Roosebeck Heather, 22 strings — around $600 **More range for the money:** Roosebeck Minstrel, 29 strings — around $775 **Finding out cheaply:** AKLOT 15-string — around $150 ## Table of Contents - [What each price buys](#what-each-price-buys) - [The mechanism is most of the money](#the-mechanism-is-most-of-the-money) - [A ton of pull, all the time](#a-ton-of-pull-all-the-time) - [Somebody's hands are on all of it](#somebodys-hands-are-on-all-of-it) - [The bills that arrive after you buy one](#the-bills-that-arrive-after-you-buy-one) - [Do harps hold their value?](#do-harps-hold-their-value) - [What to buy if you want to play one this year](#what-to-buy-if-you-want-to-play-one-this-year) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [Why is a pedal harp ten times the price of a lever harp?](#why-is-a-pedal-harp-ten-times-the-price-of-a-lever-harp) - [Why does a harp cost so much more than a guitar the same size?](#why-does-a-harp-cost-so-much-more-than-a-guitar-the-same-size) - [Does a more expensive harp actually sound better?](#does-a-more-expensive-harp-actually-sound-better) - [Can I rent instead of buying?](#can-i-rent-instead-of-buying) - [Is a harp under $200 a real instrument?](#is-a-harp-under-200-a-real-instrument) - [How many strings do I actually need?](#how-many-strings-do-i-actually-need) - [So where does the money go?](#so-where-does-the-money-go) ## What each price buys Harp prices do not climb smoothly. They step, and each step adds a specific thing: more strings, then levers on all of them, then a soundbox and neck built to hold pedal tension, then the pedal mechanism itself. Knowing which step you are paying for is most of the answer to why any given harp costs what it does. PriceWhat it isWhat the money adds**~$150**[AKLOT 15-string](https://amzn.to/4ztmpuE)Two octaves, no levers. A real tunable instrument, but one key and a short leash**~$600**[Roosebeck Heather, 22 strings](https://amzn.to/467kK0c)Three octaves and a lever on every string, so the key is yours to choose**~$775**[Roosebeck Minstrel, 29 strings](https://amzn.to/45ywmcw)A fourth octave and a lever on every string — enough range for intermediate repertoire**$1,715**Dusty Strings Ravenna 26American-built, fully levered. Even tension, stable tuning, hardware that keeps working**$2,815**Dusty Strings Ravenna 34Nearly five octaves on the same build. The point where a lever harp stops running out of notes**$3,490–6,790**Lyon & Healy lever harpsPedal-tension stringing and pedal-harp string spacing, so the technique transfers**$15,500**Lyon & Healy Chicago Petite 40The pedal mechanism. Seven pedals, 40 strings, 62 pounds**$26,500**Lyon & Healy Style 85 CG47 strings, the full orchestral range, and the build to survive a career of it The jump that matters is the one from about $6,800 to about $15,500. Nothing about the wood changes there. What changes is that the neck now contains a machine. ## The mechanism is most of the money A pedal harp is strung to one scale — C flat major — and every other key is produced by the pedals. Each of the seven pedals has three positions, and moving one has to shorten every string of that note name, in every octave, by exactly the right amount, silently, while you are playing with both hands. Lyon & Healy describes what that takes on a concert grand: **seven layers of stainless steel linkage and more than 1,500 parts**, running the length of the column and the neck. Those parts are made to tolerances that let a rod travel the whole height of the instrument and land a brass disc against a string at exactly the right pitch, then do it again a hundred thousand times without a click the audience can hear. Lever harps replace that machine with a small hand-operated lever beside each string. It is a far simpler part — and it is still the expensive part. Dusty Strings, who build the Ravenna in Seattle, put it plainly: **the cost of the hardware alone, the levers and so on, is a major portion of a harp’s price**. On their own price list, choosing fewer levers is the main way to make the same harp cheaper. This is worth carrying into a shopping decision, because it tells you where a cheap fully-levered harp saved its money. Levers are not a feature a maker can discount by 60% and leave everything else intact. Our [lever harp vs pedal harp explainer](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) covers what you give up by choosing levers, which for most players is less than they expect. ## A ton of pull, all the time The 2,000-pound figure is the one that explains the woodwork. Lyon & Healy states it, and the American Harp Society repeats it in its own material on soundboards: a pedal harp’s soundboard is under about 2,000 pounds of pressure from the strings, permanently, from the day it is strung. That load is why a harp is built the way it is. The soundboard is Sitka spruce, several boards glued edge to edge with the grain running horizontally, backed by a hardwood string strip that takes the pull. The soundbox is staved or laminated rather than cut from a slab. The column is not decoration — on a pedal harp it is also the conduit carrying the action rods, which is why the “pillar” on a cheap harp and the column on an expensive one are not the same component at all. It is also why the wood is dried before anything is cut. Lyon & Healy allow **six months to a year** for it. Wood that moves after the harp is assembled does not go slightly out of tune; it lets go of a joint that is holding back a ton. ## Somebody’s hands are on all of it Harps are not built on a line. Lyon & Healy says an apprentice can spend **three years learning a single area** of harpmaking, and around ten to become a master craftsperson. There is no version of that labor which gets cheaper with volume, because the volume is not there: harps are built to order, in a queue. You can see the queue in the maker’s own terms of sale. A standard order takes a 20% non-refundable deposit to reserve a place in production, a special order takes 50% — and the balance you eventually pay is the price at the time the harp is ready to ship, which may be higher than the price on the day you ordered. Instruments built in quantity are not sold that way. ## The bills that arrive after you buy one The purchase price is only part of it. A harp carries running costs that a guitar does not, and on a pedal harp they are genuinely large. JobLever harpPedal harpHow often**Regulation**Around $330–345Around $510–595Every year or two**Technician travel**Around $150–275 on top, if the harp does not go to themPer visit**Full set of strings**$150–400$640–950 for 47 stringsPiecemeal, continuously**Restringing labor**Around $330$330–435If you don’t do it yourself Strings are the recurring one, because they are consumed on a schedule rather than when they break. Lyon & Healy’s guidance for an advanced or professional player is to change the first and second octaves every six months and the rest of the instrument annually; a student or hobbyist can add six months to the top and a year to everything else. On a 47-string harp strung with gut through the middle, that is a standing bill of several hundred dollars a year on an instrument where nothing has gone wrong. Regulation is the other one, and it is unique to this instrument. It is the adjustment of every disc or lever so that a stopped string is actually in tune rather than approximately so — the harp equivalent of a setup, except that a pedal harp has 47 strings’ worth of mechanism to align. It is skilled work by a specialist who may drive a long way to do it. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) At the cheap end almost none of this applies. A 22-string lever harp is strung in nylon, costs a few dollars a string, and can be restrung and tuned by its owner — our guides to [changing harp strings](https://promusicvault.com/changing-harp-strings/) and [tuning a harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/) cover both. The one thing to budget for is a tuner, because a new harp needs tuning every day for weeks while the strings stretch. There are good ones from about $22 in our [harp tuner guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/). ## Do harps hold their value? Partly, and the answer splits in two: the trade-in value a maker will give you, and what actually wears out. The generous numbers are real but conditional. Lyon & Healy’s trade-in program credits **100% of the original purchase price within twelve months, 90% in the second year and 80% in the third** — but only on a harp bought new from them, once per customer, and only against a new pedal harp costing more. That is a ladder designed to move students upward, not a statement about resale. What actually ages is the soundboard, and it ages because of the 2,000 pounds. Cracks along the string strip are common and often repairable. A crack that runs *across* the grain is the serious one: once a board has failed there is little to do but replace it, which is a major job on a major instrument. A well-kept harp stays playable for decades — but it does so because someone spent money on it, not because harps are exempt from wear. The practical consequence for a buyer is that a second-hand harp is priced on its soundboard and its regulation history, not its age. A cheap old harp is usually cheap for a reason that costs more than the discount. ## What to buy if you want to play one this year The gap between $600 and $1,715 buys something real. An American-built harp arrives set up, holds its tuning under harder use, and has hardware that will still be working in ten years. The imports below are a genuine compromise, and worth making if the alternative is not starting. The one most people should buy### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings, Full Chelby Levers Three octaves, C3 to C6, with a sharping lever on every string, so no key is closed to you and the standard beginner repertoire is all playable. It comes with the tuning tool, a spare string set and a beginner play book, which is most of what you would otherwise be buying separately. This is the cheapest instrument we can point you at that is unarguably a harp rather than a harp-shaped object. - **Strings:** 22, color-coded, three octaves - **Levers:** Full Chelby, every string - **Frame:** Solid wood, handcrafted **Pros**- Levers on every string at a price where rivals have none - Light enough to move around the house one-handed - Tuning tool, spares and a play book included **Cons**- Import build quality varies unit to unit - Weeks of daily tuning before new strings settle - Three octaves will eventually cap the repertoire Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/467kK0c) If the three octaves worry you### Roosebeck Minstrel Harp, 29 Strings, Knotwork Four octaves, C3 to C7, and a sharping lever on all 29 strings. The extra octave is what separates an instrument you play beginner arrangements on from one you can take real intermediate music to, and the price for it is small compared with the same step anywhere further up the ladder. It is big enough to need a corner of a room rather than a shelf. - **Strings:** 29, color-coded, four octaves - **Levers:** 29 Chelby, one per string - **Frame:** Solid wood, carved knotwork **Pros**- Four octaves covers most intermediate arrangements - A lever on every one of the 29 strings - A large jump in capability for a small jump in price **Cons**- Same unit-to-unit variability as the Heather, on a dearer instrument - Lever regulation is a job you may have to finish yourself - Needs floor space and a stool Around $775 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45ywmcw) If you only want to find out### AKLOT 15-String Harp Two octaves, no levers, small enough to play on your lap. It answers the question of whether you like having a harp in your hands for a tenth of the price of finding out properly, and it is a real tunable instrument rather than a toy. It will not take you far: one key, and two octaves runs out of notes faster than you would think. - **Strings:** 15, color-coded, two octaves - **Levers:** None - **Included:** Tuning wrench, gig bag, strap **Pros**- The cheapest thing here that is genuinely a harp - Bag and wrench included, nothing else to buy - Easy to resell if the answer turns out to be no **Cons**- Two octaves and one key caps what you can learn - No spare strings in the box - AKLOT’s 16-string lyres look similar and cost half as much — a lyre has no forepillar and will not do this job, so check the string count Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ztmpuE) More options at every size are in our [beginner harp guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/), and if the harp is for a child, [harps for kids](https://promusicvault.com/harps-for-kids/) covers the in-between sizes. If what you actually want is the sound rather than the instrument, a lyre costs a fraction of any of this — [lyre vs harp](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/) explains what you would be giving up. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is a pedal harp ten times the price of a lever harp? Because of the action: over 1,500 parts and seven layers of steel linkage that let seven pedals retune the instrument while you play. The soundbox, the strings and the wood cost more too, but nothing else on the instrument multiplies its price the way the mechanism does. ### Why does a harp cost so much more than a guitar the same size? More strings, and each one needs a tuning pin, a bridge pin, an eyelet and usually a lever — so the parts count and the hand-fitting scale with the string count in a way a guitar’s never does. Then there is the tension: a harp frame holds back several times what a guitar body does. Our [harp vs guitar comparison](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-guitar/) works through the whole cost difference. ### Does a more expensive harp actually sound better? Up to a point, and the point is lower than the prices suggest. Most of what you hear between a $600 harp and a $2,800 one is tuning stability and even string tension rather than raw tone. Above that, the money buys projection and the ability to hold up under professional use. What it never buys is easier playing — that is technique. ### Can I rent instead of buying? Yes, and for a pedal harp it is the normal route — Lyon & Healy runs rent-to-own on their lever harps, and teachers often know of instruments sitting idle. For a first lever harp, renting rarely beats buying at these prices unless you are certain the interest is temporary. ### Is a harp under $200 a real instrument? A 15-string one is, in the sense that it is tunable, wooden and makes a harp sound. What it is not is a harp you can learn on for long: two octaves and no levers means one key and a small handful of arrangements. Treat it as the price of finding out rather than the price of starting. ### How many strings do I actually need? Twenty-two with full levers is the usual honest minimum for lessons, and 26 to 29 is where a harp stops getting in your way. Our guide to [how many strings a harp has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) covers the sizes and what each range plays. ## So where does the money go? Into the mechanism, the structure that survives the tension, and the hands of people who took years to learn one part of the job. Those costs are real and they are not going to fall, because the thing that would make them fall — building harps in quantity — is not how harps get built. The useful conclusion is that only one of those three costs is optional. Skip the pedals and the price drops by an order of magnitude while the instrument stays a harp — which is why the standard route into the instrument, the one the makers themselves build their trade-in ladders around, is a lever harp first. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Harp vs. Harpsichord: Both Are Plucked, and Only One Plucks Itself](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-harpsichord/) **Published:** February 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Harp vs. Harpsichord: Both Are Plucked, and Only One Plucks Itself These are the only two plucked-string instruments that turn up regularly in classical music, and the difference between them is not the shape or the keyboard. It is what does the plucking. On a harp it is your fingers, directly, one string at a time. On a harpsichord it is a small plastic or quill tongue on a wooden slip that rises when you press a key, catches the string, and lets go. Everything else — the dynamics, the tuning, the price, whether one could sit in your house — comes out of that. The short answer### The harp is the expressive one; the harpsichord is the chromatic one A harpist controls volume and tone with the fingers, across the whole range of the instrument. A harpsichordist barely can, and changes loudness by switching in extra sets of strings instead. In exchange, the harpsichord has all twelve notes of the octave permanently under the hands, where a harp has seven per octave and needs a lever or a pedal moved to get the rest. If you want to play the instrument, buy the harp: a good one starts around $600 and a harpsichord starts at several thousand. **Plucked by:** fingers vs. a plectrum on a jack **Notes per octave:** 7 vs. 12 **Entry price:** ~$600 vs. ~$4,400 **Touch changes volume:** completely vs. barely ## Harp vs. harpsichord, side by side HarpHarpsichord**Family**String, pluckedString, plucked — and keyboard**What plucks the string**The pads of the player’s fingersA plectrum in a pivoting tongue, on a jack the key lifts**Plectrum material**NoneQuill historically; Delrin or Celcon plastic today**Does touch change the volume?**Completely, note by noteVery little — a few decibels at most**How you get loud and soft**FingersSwitch registers in and out, or couple two keyboards**Notes available per octave**Seven, plus levers or pedals for the restAll twelve, always**When a note stops**When you damp it with your handWhen you let the key up**Typical size**22–47 strings52–63 keys, roughly four and a half to five octaves**Range covered**Up to about six and a half octavesAbout five**Weight**11 lb for a small lever harp; 78 lb for a concert grandAbout 150 lb and up, and a two-person lift**Cheapest way in**About $150; about $600 for one with a lever on every stringAbout $4,400 second-hand; a kit from the low thousands**Serious money**$15,500 for the cheapest pedal harp, six figures at the top$12,000–$20,000 for a good single; $25,000–$45,000 for a double**Tuning**Yourself, every few daysYourself, most times you sit down**Written for by**Debussy, Ravel, Britten, and every film composer sinceBach, Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau, Handel ## The harpsichord is named after the harp The resemblance in the name is not a coincidence. *Harpsichord* arrives in English in the 1610s from the French *harpechorde*, “harp string,” which comes in turn from the Latin *harpichordium* — *harpa*, harp, plus *chorda*, string. The Italians got *arpicordo* out of the same word. The extra *s* in the English spelling has no business being there and cannot be accounted for; it had crept in by the 1660s and stayed. So the instrument is called, literally, a harp-string. Whoever coined it had noticed the same thing this page is about: it is a box of strings that get plucked, which in 1600 described exactly one other instrument. The Old English word *hearpe* is defined in the dictionaries as a stringed instrument “played with the fingers,” and that phrase is the whole distinction — the harpsichord is the version where something else does the playing. ## What actually does the plucking On a harp there is nothing between you and the string. The player pulls it sideways with the pad of a finger and releases, and where the finger sits along the string’s length changes the tone: close to the soundboard it is thin and bright, further out it is round and full. A harpist moves the hand up and down constantly for exactly that reason. Wire-strung harps are the exception, and they are played with the fingernails, which is the closest a harp gets to having a plectrum at all. A harpsichord key does not touch a string. It lifts a jack — a thin slip of wood standing on the back of the key — and set into the top of the jack is a small pivoting tongue holding the plectrum. Going up, the plectrum catches the string and plucks it. Coming down, the tongue swings backward out of the way against a spring, so the string is not plucked twice, and then a scrap of felt on the jack lands on the string and stops it. Those springs are traditionally boar bristles, and they still are: Zuckermann Harpsichords International, which has been building these instruments in Connecticut for over sixty years, supplies them in natural bristle or a modern plastic, twelve to a pack for about $18. The plectrum itself was crow or raven quill for three centuries. Modern instruments almost all use Delrin or Celcon, made in three thicknesses — 0.015″, 0.020″ and 0.025″ — and priced at roughly $18 for seventy-five or $119 for a thousand. The reason for the volume discount is that this is a wearing part. Every string has its own jack, its own tongue and its own plectrum, and a five-octave instrument with two sets of strings has well over a hundred of each. The plucking point is fixed. The jack stands where the builder put it, and it plucks the same spot every time, which is why a harpsichord has one characteristic tone and a harp has a dozen. The nearest a harpsichordist gets to the harpist’s hand position is choosing which set of jacks to use — and that is a stop to pull, not a gesture. ## A harpsichord barely hears your fingers This is the difference musicians care about most. Press a harpsichord key gently or slam it and the note comes out at very nearly the same volume, because the plectrum passes the string at a speed the mechanism largely decides for itself. Play a harp string gently or hard and you get whatever you asked for. “Very nearly” is doing real work in that sentence, and it is worth being exact, because the flat claim that a harpsichord has no dynamics at all is not quite true. On an ordinary instrument the gap between a hard and a soft touch is around a decibel, rising to perhaps five in the bass — audible if you are listening for it, and nothing beside a piano’s thirty. A 2015 study went further and measured a 1788 Taskin, which carries a *peau de buffle* register of soft leather plectra that Taskin himself invented, and found differences reaching about eleven decibels there. Twenty-five listeners, none of them harpsichordists, could tell hard from soft well above chance — and still could when the first quarter-second of each note, where the mechanical clatter lives, was cut off. The authors’ conclusion was that the differences are real and audible but limited. Couperin had said as much in 1717: a hand falling from a height, he wrote, gives a sharper blow than one striking from close to. A few decibels is not a dynamic range. It is a shading. So the harpsichord gets its loud and soft somewhere else entirely: by adding and removing whole sets of strings. Each row of jacks with its own choir of strings is a register, named by length in the organ manner — an 8′ sounds at written pitch, a 4′ an octave above. A modest instrument has two 8′ registers; a bigger one has two 8′ and a 4′; a two-keyboard instrument adds a coupler that makes the lower keyboard drive the upper one’s jacks as well. Zuckermann sells its string sets in exactly those configurations, which is as clear a statement of the options as you will find. What that gives you is three or four fixed volumes, changed between phrases rather than within them. What a harpist has is a continuous range under every finger, plus the plucking point, plus harmonics, plus the ability to play one note louder than the one next to it. In the argument about which of these two instruments is more expressive, the harp wins comfortably, and it is the harpsichord’s own repertoire that proves it: Baroque keyboard music is written to be shaped by articulation and timing because volume was not available. ## Ringing on, and stopping The harpsichord wins the trade back on the other side. Lift a harpsichord key and the felt damper drops onto the string and the note ends, cleanly, when you decide. That is the control the repertoire is built on: a Bach fugue is legible on a harpsichord because each voice can be started and stopped independently, and length is the main thing a player has to work with. A harp has no dampers. A plucked harp string rings until something stops it, and the low strings ring for a long time — researchers at the University of New South Wales recording a two-second glissando found the harp still resonating well afterward, with everything above about 5 kHz dying away first and the fundamentals below 200 Hz decaying very slowly indeed. That is why a harp sounds like a wash and a harpsichord sounds like lace. Damping is therefore a technique a harpist has to learn: flat palms against the strings, or individual fingers placed back onto the ones that need to stop, while the other hand keeps playing. It is one of the harder things about the instrument and it does not exist on a keyboard at all. ## Twelve notes an octave against seven A harpsichord keyboard has the same black and white notes as a piano. Every accidental in every key is sitting there waiting, and nothing has to be moved to reach one. A harp is tuned diatonically: seven strings per octave, one per letter name. To play an F sharp you have to change what the F string is tuned to. On a lever harp that means flipping a small sharping lever at the top of the string by hand, which raises it a semitone — possible between phrases, awkward mid-bar, impossible in the middle of a run. A harp with levers on every string, tuned to E flat, reaches eight keys that way. On a pedal harp seven foot pedals each have three notches, flat, natural and sharp, and each one moves every octave of its letter at once; that gets you all fifteen keys and it can be done while the hands keep playing. [Lever harp vs. pedal harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) works through the two mechanisms properly. There is a neat consequence buried in this. A concert harp has 47 strings and covers about six and a half octaves; a large harpsichord has 61 or 63 keys and covers about five. The harp spans a wider range with fewer strings precisely because it only carries seven notes per octave. It buys reach by giving up chromaticism, and the harpsichord does the reverse. [String counts by harp size](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) has the ranges. This is also the practical thing to know if you have come here because you love the harpsichord repertoire and want to play it. Baroque keyboard music modulates constantly, and on a lever harp that means the lever changes have to be planned into the arrangement — which is exactly what a good published arrangement does for you. ## Owning a harpsichord means owning a machine A harp needs tuning, and strings break and get replaced, and that is very nearly the whole of it. [Tuning a harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/) and [changing harp strings](https://promusicvault.com/changing-harp-strings/) cover both jobs, and neither needs a tool you cannot keep in the case. A harpsichord has a parts catalog. Plectra wear out and get replaced one at a time. Voicing — shaping a plectrum with a scalpel on a hardwood block so that its note matches its neighbors — is an ordinary owner’s job, and the kit for doing it runs about $50. Jacks themselves are consumable at $5 each, so re-jacking a five-octave instrument is a four-figure exercise. A complete set of strings runs from about $400 for a small single to nearly $1,000 for a French double. Tuning happens most times you sit down, and it is done with a special hammer because the pins are rectangular rather than round. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) None of that is exotic; harpsichordists do it as a matter of course, and the trade has been supporting amateur owners for seventy years. Wally Zuckermann started building harpsichords in Hoboken, New Jersey in the early 1950s and invented the harpsichord kit essentially by accident, selling parts to customers who would not wait for a finished instrument; the company moved to Connecticut in 1970 and still publishes a stringing schedule for every instrument it has ever made. But it is a different relationship with an object than a harp asks for. ## What each one costs Harpsichords have no bottom of the market. There is no student model, no beginner tier, no factory building them in the thousands. Second-hand instruments start around $4,400, and that end of the range is mostly the plain box-shaped kit builds of the 1960s and 70s. A virginal — the small oblong single-keyboard relative — runs about $5,500 to $12,000. A single-keyboard harpsichord in good order is $12,000 to $20,000, and a two-keyboard French double is $25,000 to $45,000. A kit is cheaper and starts in the low thousands, but it is a woodworking project measured in months. Harps have a proper ladder. A small nylon-strung lever harp with no levers on it is about $150. A 22-string harp with a lever on every string, which is the first instrument that can play in more than one key, is about $600. Bigger lever harps run to a few thousand. Then there is a gap, and pedal harps begin at $15,500 for the cheapest model Lyon & Healy lists and go into six figures. [Why harps cost what they do](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) goes into where the money goes. So at the beginner end they are not comparable. Six hundred dollars buys a real harp you can learn on. Six hundred dollars does not buy a harpsichord at all. ## Telling them apart on sight and by ear By sight there is no difficulty at all once you have read this far. A harp is a triangle standing on the floor with the strings facing you and the player’s hands on the strings. A harpsichord looks like a long, narrow, elegant grand piano lying on legs, and the player sits at a keyboard on the short end. A concert harp is 73 inches tall and weighs 78 pounds; a lever harp is a piece of furniture you carry under an arm. A harpsichord is a two-person lift. By ear the tell is the ending of notes. Harp notes bloom and hang, and chords smear into each other unless the player stops them. Harpsichord notes are all attack — a click, a bright twang, and then a quick stop when the key comes up. If you hear a keyboard instrument that never gets louder or softer inside a phrase and never sustains, that is a harpsichord. If you hear something that swells and rings and glissandos across whole octaves, that is a harp. The [clavichord comparison](https://promusicvault.com/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/) covers the third instrument that gets confused with the harpsichord, and [piano vs. harpsichord](https://promusicvault.com/piano-vs-harpsichord/) the more common mix-up. ## What to buy Almost everyone who arrives at this comparison and then decides to play something ends up at the harp, because it is the one that exists at a price a person can pay. What follows is the shortest honest route from “I like that sound” to playing the Baroque repertoire on it, plus the book for the reader who wanted the harpsichord itself. Start here ### Deborah Friou — Baroque Music for the Harp - 56 pieces by Bach, Handel, Purcell, Corelli, Pachelbel, Scarlatti, Telemann and Vivaldi - Arranged for lever and pedal harp - Playing notes on accidentals and on lever and pedal changes - Composer sketches and a glossary of tempo terms - 96 pages, spiral-bound so it lies flat on a stand - ~$25 This is the book that answers the question the rest of this page raises. Harpsichord music is written for twelve notes an octave and a harp has seven, and the work of getting from one to the other is deciding which accidentals matter, which can be dropped, and where the lever changes go. Friou has done that for fifty-six of the best-known Baroque pieces — the Handel *Harmonious Blacksmith*, the Purcell hornpipes and chaconnes, the little Bach preludes and minuets everyone recognizes — and written the reasoning down rather than just printing the notes. The honest limits: it is arrangements, not urtext, so a few pieces lose an inner voice a harpsichordist would miss, and it assumes you can already read music and get around the instrument. It is a second or third book, not a first one. Our [guide to first harp books](https://promusicvault.com/best-beginning-harp-music-books/) covers the methods that come before it. Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gM0aaL) The instrument ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 strings, full Chelby levers - 22 nylon strings, C3–C6, three full octaves - A sharping lever on every string — eight keys rather than four - Solid rosewood frame, color-coded strings - 36″ tall, about 11 lb - Tuning tool, spare string set and a beginner play book included - ~$600 The reason to spend $600 rather than $150 on a first harp is this page’s whole argument in miniature. A cheap harp has no levers, which means one key and no accidentals, and Baroque music is unplayable on it. Levers on the C and F strings get you four keys. A lever on every string gets you eight, which covers the Friou arrangements and most of the folk repertoire besides. Three octaves is enough range for both. The honest limits: the soundboard is plywood, so it is warm rather than loud; it arrives needing several weeks of daily tuning before it holds pitch; and the nylon stringing is light-tension, which is the wrong choice if a pedal harp is where you are eventually heading. It is a good first harp rather than a harp for life. [Best harps for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/) compares it against everything else at the price. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xGsEtu) If you want to do it yourself ### Sylvia Woods — Music Theory and Arranging Techniques for Folk Harps - Chords, inversions, intervals, major and minor keys, modes and transposing - Chapters on accidentals in the melody and on tuning a harp in two keys at once - Accompaniment patterns, counter-melodies and how to choose chords - More than 90 pieces to practice on as you go - 112 pages, spiral-bound - ~$23 The other way to get harpsichord music onto a harp is to arrange it yourself, and this is the standard book on doing it. It matters here more than on a general harp page because two of its chapters are aimed squarely at this page’s problem: what to do about accidentals in a melody, and how to tune the instrument so that it sits in two keys at once. Once you can see which accidentals a passage really needs, most Baroque pieces turn out to be reachable and a few turn out not to be. The honest limits: it is a workbook and it expects work — it is a course in theory that happens to be taught from a harp, not a shortcut. If you want to play Bach this month rather than understand why the arrangement is the shape it is, buy the Friou instead. Around $23[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cPkR4g) For the harpsichord side ### The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord, edited by Mark Kroll - Cambridge University Press, 408 pages, paperback - Opens with a chapter on the history and construction of the instrument - A chapter per national school — England, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and more — each by a writer from that tradition - Separate chapters on Scarlatti, Bach and Handel - Chapters on tuning and temperament and on the harpsichord in ensemble - ~$37 Nobody buys a harpsichord on an impulse, and no reasonable version of this page pretends otherwise. What the reader who came here for the harpsichord can actually have is the literature, and this is the best general volume: multi-author, edited by the harpsichordist Mark Kroll, with Ton Koopman among the contributors. The national-school chapters are the reason to own it — they explain why a French instrument and an Italian one are built and played differently, which is the thing recordings never tell you. The honest limits: it is an academic book at an academic price, and it is a companion rather than a manual — there is nothing in it about how to look after one. If you have actually got a harpsichord in the house, the practical book is the owner’s guide named in our [clavichord and harpsichord comparison](https://promusicvault.com/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/) instead. Around $37[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zTtu86) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a harpsichord just a harp with a keyboard? Close enough to explain the name, not close enough to be true. Both pluck strings, but a harpsichord’s strings run away from the player horizontally over a soundboard, like a grand piano’s, and they are struck by a mechanism rather than by hand. A harp’s strings stand vertically in an open frame with nothing between them and your fingers. The families are related the way a guitar and a hurdy-gurdy are related. ### Which is older? The harp, by thousands of years. Harps appear in Mesopotamian and Egyptian art in the third millennium BC. The harpsichord is a late medieval invention, and the English word for it is only about four hundred years old. ### Can you play loudly and softly on a harpsichord? Only a little by touch — the difference between a hard and a soft touch measures about a decibel on an ordinary instrument, which listeners can hear but which is nothing beside a piano’s range of thirty or more. Real changes of volume come from switching registers in and out, which adds or removes an entire set of strings, and on a two-keyboard instrument from coupling the manuals together. ### Which is harder to learn? The harp, for almost everyone. A harpsichord asks you to read two staves and control articulation and timing, which is a keyboard player’s job; anyone who plays piano can get a tune out of one within minutes. A harp asks you to place both hands accurately on strings you cannot see behind, damp what you are not playing, and change levers or pedals to get accidentals, none of which has an equivalent on a keyboard. [How long it takes to learn the harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) puts numbers on it. ### Can a harp play harpsichord music? A pedal harp can play a great deal of it, because the pedals give it every key. A lever harp can play a good amount of it in arrangement, where the accidentals have been thought about in advance. What no harp does well is dense contrapuntal writing with three or four independent voices, because it has no dampers and the voices run into one another. ### Do harpsichords still get made? Yes. The early-music revival of the twentieth century put a working trade back together, and there are shops in the United States and Europe building new instruments to historical designs, supplying parts, and selling kits for people who want to build their own. It is a small trade making expensive things, which is why there is no cheap end to the market. ### Which one is in the orchestra? The harp, as a standing member of the string section from the nineteenth century onward. A harpsichord appears in a modern orchestra only when the music calls for one — Baroque repertoire, opera recitative, and the occasional twentieth-century score. ## The short version Both instruments pluck strings. On a harp your fingers do it, which gives you every gradation of volume and tone and leaves you with no dampers and only seven notes an octave. On a harpsichord a machine does it, which gives you all twelve notes and clean stops and takes your dynamics away. The harpsichord got its name from the harp because a seventeenth-century ear heard the resemblance immediately; four centuries later the resemblance is still the most useful thing to know about either of them. If you are choosing one to play, the harp is the one that exists at a price you can pay, and [the entry instruments are here](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/). **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [Penny Whistle vs. Recorder (And Why the Fingering Doesn't Transfer)](https://promusicvault.com/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/) **Published:** December 27, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Penny Whistle vs. Recorder (And Why the Fingering Doesn’t Transfer) Both are pipes you blow into the end of, both cost less than a tank of gas, and both make a note the second you blow. Then you put your fingers down, and they stop having anything to do with each other. A penny whistle has six holes and you use six fingers. A recorder has eight and you use eight, one of them your left thumb — and that thumb is doing a job no whistle has ever asked a finger to do. Playing one of these well teaches you almost nothing about the other. That is worth knowing before you buy the second one. If you want to read music and keep going### Yamaha YRS-314B soprano recorder — Baroque fingering, around $40 Two octaves and a tone, a chromatic scale that comes out in tune without half-covering anything, and the fingering that every method book and wall chart in English is printed for. It is Yamaha’s arched-windway school recorder in a darker finish, and it is built in Baroque fingering only — so there is no German-fingered twin sitting next to it waiting to be ordered by mistake. Around $40 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qKE8d2) **If you want to play tunes by ear:** a whistle, and the fingering is easier **To match a recorder’s key:** Clarke Original in C, around $28 **Bottom note:** whistle D5, soprano recorder C5 **Learning either:** the fingering is the whole job, so get a chart you trust ## The thumb is the difference Turn a penny whistle over and the back is blank. Six holes in a line down the front, three for the fingers of each hand, and nothing else to cover. Turn a recorder over and there is a hole under your left thumb. That hole is not a seventh note. It is the octave vent, and it is operated differently from every other hole on the instrument: instead of covering it or lifting off it, you roll the thumb until the hole is open by a crescent perhaps a millimeter wide. Get the crescent right and the note jumps an octave cleanly. Get it wrong and you are somewhere between the two registers, which sounds exactly as bad as it reads. A whistle player has no equivalent skill, because a whistle changes octave with breath alone. And there is the trap, because the two instruments want opposite things from that breath. ## Blowing harder means opposite things On a whistle, blowing harder is the technique. Cover all six holes, blow gently and you get the bottom D; push more air through the same fingering and it flips up an octave. That is how the second half of a whistle’s range is reached, it is deliberate, and every tutor teaches it in the first few pages. On a recorder, blowing harder is the most common beginner mistake there is. Yamaha’s own guidance on why a recorder will not make a note puts it plainly: when the instrument is blown too forcefully “sometimes there is a high-pitched, beep-like sound. This sound is the harmonic, one octave higher than the intended note, produced because the sound is being forced to rebound onto itself. The problem can be solved by blowing more gently.” The squeak a recorder makes when a child is trying too hard is the same physical event as a whistle’s second octave. On one instrument it is the goal and on the other it is the fault. A whistle player picking up a recorder tends to overblow the whole first octave; a recorder player picking up a whistle tends to be too polite with it and never gets above the bottom register at all. It cuts the other way in the low notes too. A recorder’s bottom C wants a slow, relaxed column of air, and rushing it is the other way the note comes out an octave high. Nothing on a whistle rewards that kind of restraint. Penny whistleSoprano recorder**Finger holes**Six, all on the frontSeven on the front, plus a thumb hole behind**Digits used**Six — three fingers per handEight — thumb and three fingers left, four fingers right**Bottom two holes**SingleDoubled, so the low sharps have their own aperture**Nominal key**D, so all six covered gives D5C, so all eight covered gives C5**Range**About two octavesC5–D7, two octaves and a tone**Second octave**More breath, same fingersPinch the thumb hole to a crescent**Sharps and flats**Half-holing and cross-fingeringsCross-fingerings the system was designed around**Volume**Loud, fixed, and it carriesQuiet, and famously so**Tuning**Usually a one-piece tube you cannot adjustHead joint pulls out; Yamaha reference A is 444 Hz**Bore**Cylindrical, or tapered on a ClarkeTapered, narrowing toward the foot**Material**Tinplate, brass, nickel or aluminum with a wood or plastic mouthpieceABS resin, or wood higher up the range**Fingering variants**One system, on every whistle ever madeTwo — Baroque and German, and they are not compatible**What a good one costs**$15–40$10–40 in plastic ## They are not in the same key, so the same fingers give different notes A standard penny whistle is in D. Cover everything and you get D5, the second D above middle C. A soprano recorder is in C — Yamaha builds every soprano in its catalog in C, and Aulos gives its whole soprano line a range of C5 to D7. Cover everything on a recorder and you get C5. So the one gesture the two instruments genuinely share — all fingers down, the first thing anybody does — produces notes a tone apart. Everything above it is displaced by the same tone. A whistle player who works out recorder music by finger pattern rather than by note plays the whole piece in the wrong key and cannot hear why, because it is internally consistent. This is also why a recorder reaches lower than a whistle despite being the shorter-feeling instrument to hold. C5 is a tone below D5. The recorder wins the bottom of the range and then wins the top as well, by another tone. There is a whistle in C, and it is the obvious thing to reach for if you already play a recorder and want the same music in the same key. It fingers exactly like a D whistle — a whistle transposes as a whole, so the chart does not change — and it sounds a tone lower. ## The whistle is the loud one This gets stated backward more often than not, so it is worth being blunt about. The penny whistle is substantially louder than the recorder, and its volume is not under your control — a whistle is about as loud as it is, and pushing harder sends you up an octave rather than up in volume. The recorder is the quiet instrument, and quiet enough that it cost the instrument its career. Yamaha’s own history of the recorder is candid about it: from the late 18th century the recorder came under pressure from the flute, “an instrument that differed in terms of volume and timbre,” and once orchestras began to grow “with its limited volume the recorder was unable to hold its own.” It then went roughly 150 years with almost nothing written for it. That history is the reason the two instruments ended up where they did. A whistle can be heard across a pub full of people, which is exactly what Irish session music needs. A recorder is a room instrument that blends, which is exactly what a consort of four recorders or a classroom of thirty children needs. Neither is a defect. ## Both play in every key. One of them enjoys it The old shorthand is that the whistle is diatonic and the recorder is chromatic. That is close enough to be misleading. Both instruments can play all twelve notes; what differs is how much it costs you. The recorder’s Baroque fingering system was designed around cross-fingerings, and Yamaha describes the trade-off it makes: on a Baroque instrument the “fingering for sharp (♯) and flat (♭) notes is simple,” at the price of the note F not falling in sequence with the rest of the scale. The bottom two holes are also drilled as pairs — Yamaha’s spec sheet lists “toneholes: double” on every soprano they make — which gives the lowest sharps a real hole of their own instead of a compromise. A whistle has none of that. Six single holes give you a major scale straight off, and everything outside it comes from half-covering a hole with a fingertip or from cross-fingerings that are approximate on a cheap instrument and vary between makers. It works, and Irish music lives comfortably inside D, G and A so it rarely has to work hard. Hand a whistle a piece in E flat and you will find out where the limit is. ## The recorder has a fingering trap the whistle does not Every penny whistle in the world uses one fingering system. A low D whistle, a C whistle, an alto in A — same six holes, same chart, different pitch. Nothing you learn has to be unlearned. Recorders come in two, Baroque and German, and they look identical in a photograph. German fingering makes F simpler and everything with an accidental in it harder, and Yamaha is unusually direct about where it leads: models other than the soprano are mostly built in Baroque, so “if fingering is learned on a German-style soprano model, it cannot be applied on a Baroque-style instrument,” and they recommend Baroque “for consistency throughout, from elementary school through to lifelong learning.” [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Both makers encode it in the model number rather than the name. Yamaha runs odd for German and even-plus-B for Baroque — the YRS-23 is German, the YRS-24B is Baroque, and they sit side by side. Aulos uses a letter: 204A is German and 205A is English, which is the same thing as Baroque. Check the digits before you order, whichever recorder you settle on. It is the single most common way people end up with the wrong instrument, and it is the sibling pages on [Aulos against Yamaha](https://promusicvault.com/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) and the [plastic recorder picks](https://promusicvault.com/best-plastic-recorder/) that go through the full model list. ## Which one to start on Start on the recorder if the point is music generally: reading from a page, playing with other people, moving up to an alto or a tenor later, or a child who is about to meet one at school anyway. It is chromatic without effort, it is the instrument the teaching material is written for, and the fingering transfers across every size of recorder there is. Start on the whistle if the point is tunes: Irish and Scottish music, learning by ear, sitting in with people, or simply wanting to sound like something recognizable this week. Six holes is genuinely easier than eight, there is no thumb technique to acquire, and the same fingering carries straight over to the [Irish flute](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/), the [fife](https://promusicvault.com/fife-vs-flute/) and the [low D whistle](https://promusicvault.com/best-low-d-whistle/). The recorder is the better instrument in the narrow sense — bigger range, better intonation, real chromatic ability, a repertoire that runs from Bach to Telemann. The whistle is the one more people keep playing, because it does one job extremely well and asks almost nothing on the way in. And if you already play one, do not expect a discount on the other. The mouth shape carries over and nothing else does. ## Three things worth owning № 1 · The recorder ### Yamaha YRS-314B Soprano Recorder - Key of C, Baroque fingering only - C5–D7 - Arched windway, Rottenburgh model - Double toneholes at the bottom two positions - Three-piece ABS, simulated Makassar ebony finish - Cotton case, fingering chart, cleaning rod and cream - Around $40 Mechanically this is Yamaha’s YRS-302B — the arched-windway model a step above the school standard — in a dark finish. The arch is the part that matters: it gives more resistance to blow against, which makes the breath easier to meter and is precisely the skill a whistle player arrives without. The reason to pay $40 rather than $10 is that it is built in Baroque only. There is no German-fingered version of a 314B to order by accident, which cannot be said of the cheaper models. Yamaha also publishes what the plastic is tested against, which is a fair question for a child’s instrument: its ABS clears Japan’s food-safety utensils and toys standards, EU REACH limits on lead and phthalates, and North American CPSIA. **Pros**- Baroque only, so the fingering trap cannot bite - Arched windway gives real breath control - Doubled low holes, so the bottom sharps play in tune - Washable, and effectively unbreakable **Cons**- Four times the price of a serviceable classroom recorder - The extra resistance is more work for a small child - The ebony look is a finish, not wood Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qKE8d2) № 2 · The whistle, in the recorder’s key ### Clarke Original Tinwhistle in C - Key of C, six holes - Tapered tinplate body, wooden fipple - Made in England - Fingering chart and song sheet included - Around $28 This is the whistle Robert Clarke started making in 1843, in the key that matches a recorder. If you already play recorder, a C whistle lets you take the same music across without transposing anything — and the whistle fingering chart is identical to a D whistle’s, because the instrument transposes as a whole. The Clarke is the odd one out among whistles in a way that suits a recorder player. The body is rolled tinplate tapering toward the foot rather than a parallel tube, and the mouthpiece is a wooden plug rather than molded plastic, which together give it a breathier, woodier tone than a brass whistle — closer to the sound a recorder makes, and further from the pure whistle edge. It is a fixed-length instrument with no tuning slide, so it is what it is against a piano. That is normal at this price and it is the trade for the tone. **Pros**- Same key as a soprano recorder, so the music carries over - Woodier, softer tone than a brass whistle - Chart and song sheet in the box - The original design, still made where it started **Cons**- Not tunable - D is the standard key for session playing, not C - A wooden fipple takes more care than plastic Around $28[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4grdgLz) № 3 · For learning the fingering ### The Bill Ochs Tin Whistle Handbook - Whistle fingering, ornaments and technique - Written for the six-hole system in any key - Around $23 The whistle’s difficulty is not getting a note, it is everything after: the half-holed accidentals, the second octave, and the cuts, taps and rolls that make the difference between playing the notes and playing the tune. Ochs is the standard text on all of it, and Clarke quotes him on its own whistles. Worth it particularly if you are arriving from a recorder, because the ornaments are the part with no recorder equivalent at all. A recorder articulates with the tongue; a whistle largely articulates with the fingers, and that is a habit you have to be taught out of. **Pros**- Covers the ornaments, which is where whistle playing actually lives - Fingering applies to any whistle, whatever its key - Assumes no reading ability **Cons**- Irish-focused, so limited use if you want other repertoire - Costs about what the whistle costs Around $23[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cgpGU5) ## Where the penny in penny whistle comes from From the price, and Clarke’s own account of its founder is specific about it. Robert Clarke was a farm labourer from Coney Weston in Suffolk who in 1843 had a blacksmith help him rebuild his wooden whistle out of the newly cheap tin plate. Lacking a saw for the wooden mouthpiece, he cut one from one of his wife’s corset stays and filed the teeth by hand. He and his son then walked from Suffolk to Manchester pushing their tools in a hand barrow, stopping at village markets to make and sell whistles along the way. The whistles were nicknamed “Megs” after the Victorian slang for a halfpenny, which is what they cost. He sold a great many to the Irish labourers building England’s railways and canals, who took them home — which is how an instrument invented by an Englishman in Suffolk became a fixture of Irish traditional music. The recorder went the other way entirely. It was already a finished instrument by the early 1700s, fell out of use for about 150 years, and was revived in the 20th century as a deliberate reconstruction — which is why Yamaha describes it as having kept its historic shape while every other wind instrument was redesigned around it. ## Common questions ### Is a penny whistle the same as a tin whistle? Yes. Penny whistle, tin whistle and Irish whistle are three names for one instrument. “Tin” describes what Clarke’s original was rolled from and “penny” describes what it sold for. ### Which is easier for a beginner? The whistle, clearly. Six holes against eight, no thumb technique, and the second octave arrives by blowing harder rather than by a skill. The recorder is easier to play *accurately* once you are past the first month, because its scale is properly chromatic and nothing has to be half-covered. ### Can I use my recorder music on a whistle? Only if the whistle is in C, and only if the piece stays in easy keys. A D whistle will play it a tone high. A C whistle plays it at pitch, and then anything with more than a couple of accidentals will start needing half-holes. ### How many holes does a recorder have? Eight positions: seven on the front and a thumb hole on the back. On most sopranos the lowest two are drilled as pairs, so you can count ten actual apertures on the instrument while still playing an eight-hole layout. Some beginner models are built with single holes instead, which simplifies the fingering and costs you the low sharps. ### Do they sound alike? Less than you would expect from two instruments built on the same principle. The whistle is brighter, louder and more penetrating; the recorder is softer, rounder and blends. A Clarke, with its tapered tin body and wooden mouthpiece, is the whistle that comes closest to the recorder’s side of that line. ## Also worth reading The recorder against the [flute](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/), the [flutophone](https://promusicvault.com/recorder-vs-flutophone/) and the [tonette](https://promusicvault.com/tonette-vs-recorder/). On the whistle side, the [Irish flute against the tin whistle](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/) and the [low D whistle picks](https://promusicvault.com/best-low-d-whistle/). The wider family sits under [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Best Electric Ukulele: Five Picks Across Two Very Different Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/best-electric-ukulele/) **Published:** December 6, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Electric Ukulele: Five Picks Across Two Very Different Instruments Search for an electric ukulele and you get two instruments back under one name. Most of them are ordinary ukuleles with a pickup fitted — they play unamplified, they sound like a ukulele through an amp, and they squeal if you get loud in front of one. A handful are solid slabs of wood with no soundbox at all, silent until you plug them in and immune to feedback at any volume. They cost different money, they solve different problems, and the listings almost never say which one you are looking at. Sorting that out first is most of the decision. Our pick### Kala KA-TK-C-CE Teak Tri-Top A concert ukulele with a cutaway, an active preamp and a tuner built into it, for around $110. Teak with a mahogany stripe down the middle, GraphTech Tusq nut and saddle, Aquila Super Nylgut strings. It has more electronics than ukuleles costing half again as much, and nothing about it is a compromise you notice later. Around $110 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45WVjyo) **The actual solid body:** Kala KA-SB-ACA-T — around $349, no soundhole, no feedback **Cheapest way in:** Córdoba 15CM-E — around $150, a volume knob and nothing else **Sounds best:** Córdoba 20TM-CE — around $250, solid mahogany top, 2-band EQ **Looks the part:** Epiphone Les Paul Concert — around $160, and it is hollow ## The five at a glance UkuleleTypeSizeTopElectronicsCutawayPrice band[Kala KA-TK-C-CE](https://amzn.to/45WVjyo)Acoustic-electricConcertTeakActive EQ **with tuner**Yes~$110[Córdoba 15CM-E](https://amzn.to/3kMlJOQ)Acoustic-electricConcertMahoganyVolume control onlyNo~$150[Epiphone Les Paul Concert](https://amzn.to/3XTiRhy)Acoustic-electricConcertNot publishedNot publishedYes~$160[Córdoba 20TM-CE](https://amzn.to/3ws2FYP)Acoustic-electricTenor**Solid** mahoganyActive, 2-band EQYes~$250[Kala KA-SB-ACA-T](https://amzn.to/4clFXqW)**Solid body**TenorAcaciaActive, volume and toneNo~$349 ## Acoustic-electric and solid body are not the same instrument ### One has a box in it and the other does not An acoustic-electric ukulele is a ukulele. It has a hollow body and a soundhole, it makes a perfectly good noise on the sofa with nothing plugged into it, and the pickup is an addition rather than the point. Four of the five here are that. It is the sensible choice for almost everybody, because the instrument still works on the days you are not playing through anything. A solid-body electric ukulele has no cavity at all. Unplugged it produces about as much sound as an unplugged electric guitar — enough to practice quietly in a hotel room, not enough to play to anyone. Everything it does audibly, it does through an amplifier. Kala, which builds the only mainstream one, puts the reason plainly in its own description: it can be run “clean or paired seamlessly with external instrument effects such as Chorus, Delay, and Distortion — all without the concerns of audio feedback.” That last clause is the whole argument. A hollow box in front of a loud speaker resonates with what comes out of the speaker, and past a certain volume the loop runs away and you get a howl. It is the standard problem with amplifying any acoustic instrument, and it is why a band-volume stage is a bad place for an acoustic-electric ukulele. A solid body has nothing to resonate, so the ceiling goes away. ### The one that looks like an electric guitar is the hollow one This is worth checking before you buy rather than after, because the appearances run backward. The Epiphone Les Paul Concert Ukulele has a Les Paul outline, a single cutaway, a scratchplate and a sunburst finish, and it is a hollow acoustic-electric with a round soundhole in the top and a plain tie-bar bridge — visible in the first photograph on the listing. Nothing about it is a shrunken electric guitar except the silhouette. The Kala solid body, the one instrument here that genuinely is a solid slab, looks like an ordinary tenor ukulele that somebody forgot to cut the hole in. Conventional body shape, conventional headstock, two small knobs on the lower bout and a jack in the endpin. If you are buying for the look, the two are the opposite way round from what you would guess. ### The pickup sits at the bridge on every one of them None of these instruments has a pickup mounted under the strings the way an electric guitar does. Córdoba’s spec sheet names the electronics as a ukulele pickup at the saddle; Kala’s solid body has a plain tie-bar bridge with nothing else on the top but the two control knobs. What the pickup hears is the bridge moving, not the string passing over a magnet. Practically, that means the tone control on the instrument does much less than the equivalent knob on a guitar, and how it sounds amplified depends heavily on what you plug it into. A bridge pickup running into a small amp with the gain up is bright and percussive, and it responds to effects pedals, which is what Kala is selling. It does not become an electric guitar, and no amount of distortion will make four nylon strings behave like six steel ones. ## What the money actually buys ### Electronics do not track price The cheapest ukulele on this page has the most complete electronics. Kala’s Teak Tri-Top at around $110 has an active preamp with a chromatic tuner built into it and a cutaway to reach the top frets. Córdoba’s 15CM-E, forty dollars dearer, has a pickup with a volume control and nothing else — no EQ, no tuner, no cutaway. Both are good instruments and the Córdoba is the tidier build, but on features per dollar the gap runs the wrong way. The built-in tuner matters more than it sounds. Nylon strings drift, and a ukulele that tunes itself from a button on its own side is a ukulele that gets played in tune. Everything else on that preamp — the bass and treble sliders — you will set once and forget. ### The solid top is the step that changes the sound Under about $200 the wood is laminate: thin plies under a decorative outer veneer. That is a reasonable engineering choice on a cheap instrument, because laminate ignores humidity and survives being knocked about, but it will never open up. Makers signal this by omission rather than by saying so. Córdoba’s spec table gives the 15CM-E a “Mahogany” top and the 20TM-CE a “**Solid** Mahogany” one, in the same field on the same website, and that single word is the difference between the two. A solid top is the first upgrade you hear rather than read, and here it arrives at around $250 with the 20TM-CE. It matters more on an amplified instrument than you might expect, because a bridge pickup is hearing the top move. [Our guide to ukulele tonewoods](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/) goes through what each species contributes once the construction is settled. ### Concert or tenor Three of these are concerts, at roughly a 15 to 16-inch scale, and two are tenors at 17. The tenor gives more room between the frets and carries a low G properly; the concert is lighter, cheaper and closer to the sound most people mean by ukulele. If you are plugging in specifically to play melody lines or solo arrangements, the tenor is the size that suits it — [our concert versus tenor comparison](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) takes that apart properly, and [the tenor guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/) covers the unamplified end of the range. ## The five picks № 1 · The one to buy ### Kala KA-TK-C-CE Teak Tri-Top - Acoustic-electric concert, Florentine cutaway - Teak top with a mahogany center stripe; teak back and sides - Meranti neck, Indonesian Nandu fingerboard, 18 frets - GraphTech Tusq nut and saddle, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Kala Active EQ with built-in tuner - Aquila Super Nylgut strings, strap button fitted - ~$110 The teak is the reason this exists and the electronics are the reason to buy it. A concert ukulele at this money normally arrives with a plastic nut, whatever strings were on the reel and no way to plug it in at all. This one has a Tusq nut and saddle, Aquila strings, an active preamp with a chromatic tuner in it, a cutaway, and a strap button already drilled — a list of things that on most ukuleles are the first four upgrades an owner ends up paying for separately. The wood is laminate, so it will not develop over the years, and the mahogany stripe down the center of the top is a decorative feature you will either like or not. Neither costs you anything in playability. At around $110 this is the ukulele to buy unless one of the four below describes you specifically. **Pros**- Chromatic tuner built into the preamp - Tusq nut and saddle rather than molded plastic - Cutaway and strap button at a price that rarely includes either - Aquila strings from the factory **Cons**- Laminate throughout, so it will not open up - Concert body, so a low G will sound thin on it - The center stripe is not to everyone’s taste Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45WVjyo) № 2 · The real solid body ### Kala KA-SB-ACA-T Solid Body Electric Acacia Tenor - Solid-body electric tenor, no soundhole - Acacia top, okoume back, sides and neck - Royal Blackwood fingerboard, 18 frets, bone nut and saddle - 16 7/8″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut, **1 5/8″ body depth** - Active EQ with volume and tone controls - D’Addario clear nylon with a low G from the factory - Padded gig bag included; made in China - ~$349 If you need an electric ukulele rather than an amplified one, this is essentially the choice at a sensible price. It is a slab of acacia over okoume, an inch and five-eighths deep against two and five-eighths on the teak concert above, with an active preamp and two knobs. It is silent enough to practice on at midnight and it will not feed back however loud the stage is. Two details are worth knowing before you order. It ships strung with a low G, which is unusual and which most people want on a tenor anyway, but it is a different sound from the reentrant tuning people expect from a ukulele. And it looks like a normal tenor with no hole in it — if the appeal of an electric ukulele for you is that it looks like a miniature Les Paul, this is not that, and the Epiphone below is. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- No feedback at any volume, which is the point - Genuinely quiet unplugged, so it practices anywhere - Bone nut and saddle, carbon fiber reinforced neck - Comes with a padded gig bag - Kala’s own price to the cent **Cons**- Three times the price of the acoustic-electric picks - Useless without an amplifier, so budget for one - Conventional looks, if you were expecting otherwise Around $349[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4clFXqW) № 3 · Best sounding ### Córdoba 20TM-CE - Acoustic-electric tenor with cutaway - **Solid** mahogany top; mahogany back and sides - Pau ferro fingerboard, rosewood bridge - 17″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut, 2 7/8″ body depth - Córdoba active pickup with 2-band EQ - Aquila New Nylgut tenor strings, satin finish - Made in China · ~$250 The solid mahogany top is what you are paying the extra hundred dollars for, and on a ukulele with a pickup at the bridge it earns its money twice — once acoustically and once through the amp, because the top moving is what the pickup is listening to. The tenor body and 17-inch scale give it a lower, rounder voice than the concerts here, and the cutaway means the top of the neck is reachable. The electronics are a step down from Kala’s in one specific way: an active two-band EQ, but no tuner. On a $250 instrument that is a slightly odd omission, and it means a clip-on tuner stays in the case. The nut is 1 3/8 inches, the same as the cheaper Córdoba, so the tenor buys you fret spacing rather than string spacing. **Pros**- Solid top, the one upgrade you hear - Active 2-band EQ - Tenor scale carries a low G properly - Cutaway and Aquila strings **Cons**- No built-in tuner at more than twice the Kala’s price - Solid top needs some humidity sense; laminate does not - Nut no wider than the $150 Córdoba Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3ws2FYP) № 4 · The plain one ### Córdoba 15CM-E - Acoustic-electric concert, no cutaway - Mahogany top, back and sides — laminate - Pau ferro fingerboard and bridge, composite nut and saddle - 14 3/4″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut, 2 3/4″ body depth - Córdoba ukulele pickup with volume control only - Aquila New Nylgut concert strings, fan bracing - Made in China · ~$150 Córdoba’s 15 series is the ukulele a lot of shops hand a beginner, and the -E is that ukulele with a pickup added. The build is neat — cream binding, fan bracing, a proper pau ferro board — and it plays and sounds like a slightly better instrument than the price suggests. It is the tidiest-made ukulele under $200 here. What it does not have is electronics. Córdoba’s own specification lists the pickup with a volume control and stops there: no EQ, no tuner, and there is no cutaway either. So a beginner spending $150 gets a better-finished ukulele than the $110 Kala and a worse amplified one, and the honest answer for most people is that the Kala’s feature list is worth more than the Córdoba’s fit. Buy this one if the plain, traditional look is what you want and you only need the jack occasionally. **Pros**- The tidiest build here under $200 - Composite nut and saddle, Aquila strings, cream binding - Traditional shape with no scratchplate or stripe **Cons**- Volume control and nothing else — no EQ, no tuner - No cutaway, so the top frets are awkward - Laminate top, and costs more than the better-equipped Kala Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kMlJOQ) № 5 · Bought for the shape ### Epiphone Les Paul Concert Ukulele - Acoustic-electric concert, hollow body - Les Paul outline with single cutaway and scratchplate - Round soundhole, tie-bar bridge, endpin jack - Vintage sunburst, gig bag included - Epiphone publishes no wood, scale or pickup specification - ~$160 People go looking for an electric ukulele because they have seen this, and it is a genuinely charming object — the Les Paul silhouette in miniature, sunburst over a figured top, in a gig bag. It is also, as the listing photograph shows, a hollow ukulele with a soundhole and a simple bridge, so it behaves like every other acoustic-electric here rather than like a small electric guitar. Epiphone publishes essentially nothing about it: no top wood, no scale length, no description of the pickup or preamp. That is unusual on an instrument at this price, and it means there is no way to tell you whether the electronics are closer to the Kala’s or the Córdoba’s. It is around $160 and what you are paying for is unambiguously the shape. If that is what you came for, it delivers exactly that. **Pros**- The look, which is the entire reason to buy it - Cutaway and gig bag included - Consistently well liked by the people who own one **Cons**- No published specification of any kind - Hollow-bodied, so it will feed back like the others - Costs more than better-documented ukuleles here Around $160[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XTiRhy) ## What you need beyond the ukulele An electric ukulele arrives with a quarter-inch jack and no way to use it. Two things close that gap and together they are under $110. **An amplifier.** The [Fender Frontman 10G](https://amzn.to/3V1HYT3) is around $90 and is the amp most people’s first electric anything gets plugged into. Ten watts through a six-inch speaker, a gain control and an overdrive switch, so it does the clean sound an acoustic-electric wants and the dirty one a solid body is for. There is a headphone jack on the front, which on a household’s first amplifier is the feature that keeps the peace, and an aux input for playing along to something. **A cable.** None of these instruments comes with one. A [10-foot instrument cable](https://amzn.to/4d8CLiu) is around $19 and ten feet is the right length — long enough to stand up and move, short enough not to coil on the floor. Buy one that is built properly the first time; the cheap ones fail at the plug and they fail in the middle of playing. Two things you do not need yet. Effects pedals are a later problem and the Frontman’s overdrive covers the first curiosity. And a strap is optional on a concert and close to essential on the solid body, which is heavier and has nothing to rest against your forearm — [our ukulele strap guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) covers what actually fits. ## Which one If you want a ukulele that can also plug in, buy the Kala Teak Tri-Top. It has the most electronics, the fewest compromises and the lowest price on this page, and the money you save covers the amplifier. If you are playing at a volume where an acoustic-electric howls, or recording, or you want to run the thing through pedals, the Kala solid body is the instrument that does that and the others are not. Budget for the amp as part of the purchase rather than after it, because without one you have bought a very quiet piece of acacia. If you mostly play unamplified and the pickup is for the occasional open mic, the Córdoba 20TM-CE is the best instrument here with the jack treated as a bonus, and the 15CM-E is the same idea for a hundred dollars less. And if you are here because you saw the Les Paul one, buy the Les Paul one — just know that it is a hollow ukulele wearing a guitar’s outline, not a guitar. ## FAQs ### Can you play an electric ukulele without an amp? An acoustic-electric one, yes — it is a normal ukulele with a jack, and four of the five here are that. A solid-body electric, not really: with no soundbox it produces about as much volume as an unplugged electric guitar, which is enough to hear yourself practice and not enough for anyone else in the room. ### Does an electric ukulele sound like an electric guitar? No. The pickup on all of these sits at the bridge rather than under the strings, and the strings are nylon, so the amplified sound is a louder, brighter ukulele rather than a small guitar. It takes effects pedals happily — Kala sells its solid body on exactly that — but distortion on four nylon strings is its own noise, not a Les Paul’s. ### Do electric ukuleles need batteries? The ones with an active preamp do — the Kala Teak Tri-Top, the Kala solid body and the Córdoba 20TM-CE all run their EQ and tuner off a battery in a compartment on the side. The Córdoba 15CM-E’s pickup is passive with a volume control, so it does not. A flat battery on an active system means the instrument goes silent through the amp, which is worth a spare in the case. ### What size electric ukulele should I get? Concert if you want the familiar ukulele sound and a light instrument, tenor if you have larger hands or intend to play melody and single lines. Tenor is also the size that carries a low G string properly, and low G is what most people plugging in are after. [The full comparison is here](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/). ### Why does my amplified ukulele squeal? Feedback. The hollow body is resonating with the sound coming out of the speaker and the loop is running away. Turn down, move out of the line of the speaker, or angle the instrument away from it. If it happens every time you play, the fix is either a soundhole cover or a solid-body instrument, which has nothing to resonate in the first place. ### Which strings does an electric ukulele take? The same as any other ukulele of that size — the pickup does not change what you fit. Match the set to the body size and choose high G or low G deliberately, since those are different sets rather than a setting. [Our strings guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) goes through the materials. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [How Much Does a Bassoon Cost? $7,000 New, $100 a Month to Rent](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bassoon](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bassoon/ "Bassoon")› How Much Does a Bassoon Cost? $7,000 New, $100 a Month to Rent The cheapest new bassoon from a maker your teacher will accept costs about $7,000. That is the real floor, and it is why almost nobody buys one first — a school-year rental runs somewhere near $100 a month, and it is the normal way into this instrument rather than a compromise. The short answer### About $7,000 new, about $100 a month to rent, and roughly $200 a year in reeds A bassoon has around two dozen keys, a bore that runs eight and a half feet through four joints, and tone holes drilled at angles through wood thick enough to need them. None of that gets cheaper at volume, so the entry price barely moves. What does move is how you pay it. **Rent:** $60–125 a month **Buy used, student:** $4,500–6,500 **Buy new, student:** around $7,000 **Professional:** $27,000 and up ## The ladder, rung by rung BudgetWhat the money buysExampleWorth paying?**$2,000–3,500**A plastic body, basic keywork and a scale that does not play in tune with itself. Finding a technician willing to work on one is its own problemUnbranded importsNo**$6,500–7,500**Plastic resin or polypropylene body, full German system, silver-plated keys, and usually two bocals in the case. This is the floor for an instrument that plays in tuneFox Renard 41 and 51, about $7,000Yes — this is the rung to aim for**$8,500–9,500**Either the same resin with more keywork, or a maple body. Maple sounds warmer and needs looking after; resin survives a school busJupiter JBN1000 about $8,900, Fox Renard 222 about $9,000Yes, if maple is what you want**$10,500–12,500**Intermediate maple instruments: more rollers and trill keys, a high D key, better bore work and a finish meant to last decadesFox Renard 220 about $10,800, Renard 240 about $12,000When the student is committed**$25,000–45,000**Professional building — hand-tuned bore, full conservatory keywork, and an instrument you audition onFox 201 about $27,500; the German professional models run to about $45,000When it is your living**About $95,000**Heckel, made in Wiesbaden at roughly a hundred instruments a year, with a waiting list measured in years rather than monthsHeckel 41iA different conversation ## The list price on a bassoon is fiction The Fox Renard 51 carries a manufacturer’s list price of $11,190 and sells for about $7,100. That is a third off, and it is not a sale — it is simply what the instrument costs. Every figure on the ladder above is what dealers actually ask, not what the tag says. It matters most when you are pricing a used instrument. A seller quoting “half of list” on a Renard 51 is asking $5,595 for something that costs $7,100 new, which is a discount of about a fifth, not a half. ## Renting, and why it is the normal answer Bassoon rentals run from about $40 a month at the cheap end to about $150 for a wood instrument, with most falling between $60 and $125. A resin student bassoon — the same Fox 41 or 51 you would buy — sits near the middle of that. Two things make renting better value than the monthly figure suggests. Most programs credit part of the rental toward a purchase, and the terms vary a lot: some apply the whole of the first twelve months, others half of every payment indefinitely. And a rental includes the repair that a bassoon will need, which is the part people underestimate — a leaking pad on a bassoon is not a thing you live with. Ask what the credit actually is before signing, because a $70 rental that credits nothing is worse after two years than a $110 one that credits half. ## Buying used A used student bassoon from a known maker runs $4,500–6,500, which saves perhaps a third against new. Used professional instruments hold value hard: second-hand Heckels commonly ask $30,000–46,000, and the serial number does much of the pricing. The saving is real but it is contingent. Pads, corks and felts wear out on a schedule, and a full overhaul costs $500–1,900. A bassoon that needs one is not a bargain at $4,500; it is a $6,000 bassoon with the bill deferred. Have it looked at by someone who works on bassoons specifically before the money moves, and treat “it just needs a service” as a price, not a reassurance. ## Reeds are where the money actually goes A bassoon reed is a consumable. Played regularly one lasts three to six weeks before it goes soft and stops speaking cleanly, so a student gets through eight to twelve a year. At $15–20 each that is $150–250 annually, every year, for as long as the instrument is played. It is the one cost on this page that never ends. Handmade reeds from a professional reed maker cost around $34 each and play better out of the envelope. Machine-profiled reeds cost about half that and need adjusting. Neither is wrong; the first buys consistency and the second buys practice at fixing reeds, which every bassoonist ends up learning anyway. The reed most students should buy ### Jones JR201AM Artist Bassoon Reed - Cane - Medium strength - Single reed - Machine-profiled, hand-finished - ~$20 The gouge is cut on diamond tooling and the profile is machined, which is what keeps the price at twenty dollars rather than thirty-four; the tip is then finished and each reed is play-tested before it is boxed. That combination is the reason it is the default student reed — it arrives closer to playable than a purely machine-made reed and costs a good deal less than a handmade one. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Choose Medium.** Jones cuts this reed in Medium Soft and Medium Hard as well, and the strength is the one thing that matters: a beginner embouchure cannot hold a hard reed closed, and a soft one goes flat as the pitch rises. Medium is where a student starts. Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zhCL9r) If you want to stop buying reeds ### Légère Bassoon Reed, Medium - Synthetic polypropylene - Medium strength - No soaking - Carry case included - ~$129 One of these costs about what six cane reeds cost, and the arithmetic is the whole argument: if it survives a school year it is cheaper than cane, and if you dislike how it plays you have spent $129 finding that out. It plays from the case with no soaking, and humidity does not change it — which is worth more than it sounds if you play outdoors, or in a hall that is dry in February and damp in June. What you give up is adjustability. A cane reed can be reamed, clipped and scraped into behaving; a synthetic one is what it is, so the strength has to be right when you order. Medium is the equivalent of a medium cane reed. There is a Medium-Hard for players who already know they want more resistance. Around $129 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bSztzs) ## The hundred dollars around the instrument A rental or a used purchase very often arrives without any of these. Together they come to under a hundred dollars, and the first two are not optional. WhatWhy it is not optionalPrice**[Neotech bassoon seat strap](https://amzn.to/4cmFCnK)**A bassoon is [too heavy to hang from your neck](/how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh/). The strap fastens to the chair leg and takes the weight through the seat instead, and the cup adjusts over a 13-inch range so it fits whatever chair the room has~$34**[Hodge silk bassoon swab](https://amzn.to/3TRauGN)**Water pools in the boot joint and swells the wood. Silk is used because it is absorbent, sheds no lint and compresses small enough to pull through the bore; this one does the wing joint as well~$24**[The New Weissenborn Method for Bassoon](https://amzn.to/4gfroX4)**Weissenborn’s 1887 method is still the standard, re-engraved here with modern fingering charts and photographs. Take the spiral-bound edition — it lies flat on a stand, which the paperback does not~$30 ## What it costs to keep one going A yearly service runs $200–400. A full overhaul — every pad, cork and felt replaced — is $500–1,900 depending on the instrument, and every bassoon needs one eventually, because pads and corks wear out on a schedule that has nothing to do with how well the instrument was made. Bocals are the other line item, and the one that surprises people. The bocal is the curved metal tube the reed sits on, it is a tuning and response component rather than a fitting, and players buy them the way trumpeters buy mouthpieces. A Fox bocal is around $280, a Yamaha around $700, a Heckel around $1,350. Student instruments usually ship with two, which is enough for years. ## Common questions ### Why is the floor so high? Because the expensive parts of a bassoon are the parts you cannot skip. The maple is seasoned for six to twelve years before anyone cuts it, which means a maker finances a decade of production in advance. The tone holes are large and drilled at an angle through thick walls, so each one has to be seated precisely or the instrument leaks, and there are more joints to fit than on any other [woodwind](/woodwind-instruments/). That work is hours of skilled hand labor on every single instrument, which is why the price barely falls at volume. There is more in [why bassoons are so expensive](/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/). ### Is a $2,500 bassoon ever worth it? No. At that price the body is plastic, the keywork is minimal and the scale does not play in tune with itself — and the intonation is not something a player can fix with their embouchure, so a student practices around a fault instead of learning to hear it. The repair problem compounds it: bassoon work is a specialism, and a technician who takes on an unbranded instrument charges the same hourly rate to fix a cheaper one. Rent instead — a year of rental costs less than the bad bassoon and puts a proper one in your hands. ### How does that compare with an oboe? An oboe is cheaper to buy and just as expensive to feed. A decent student oboe is roughly half the price of a student bassoon, but it takes the same double reeds on the same replacement cycle, and it is the harder of the two to make a first sound on. [Bassoon vs. oboe](/bassoon-vs-oboe/) goes into which one suits which player. ## So what should you spend? For a first year, about $100 a month plus $200 in reeds, and none of it on an instrument. Rent, find out whether the [size of the thing](/how-long-is-a-bassoon/) and the reed maintenance suit you, and let the credit build. After that, around $7,000 buys a resin Fox that will take a student through school without ever being the reason a passage does not work. Nothing between $2,000 and $6,500 is worth owning, and the step above $7,000 buys warmth and keywork rather than fixing anything — which makes this the rare instrument where the cheapest sensible option and the right one are the same purchase. **Categories:** Bassoon --- ### [Why Are Bassoons So Expensive? The Wood Waits Eight Years Before Anyone Cuts It](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/) **Published:** October 19, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Bassoon](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/bassoon/ "Bassoon")› Why Are Bassoons So Expensive? The Wood Waits Eight Years Before Anyone Cuts It A bassoon nobody will talk you out of costs about $7,000, and that floor barely moves. The reason is not rare timber. It is that the maple sits in a warehouse for the better part of a decade before anyone touches it, and that nearly everything afterward is done by hand, in a trade with a few hundred people in it worldwide. The short answer### You are paying for time and hands, not for materials The logs cost a maker very little. Seasoning them for six to twelve years costs a great deal, because it means financing a decade of production before a single instrument is sold. Then two dozen keys are made, plated and fitted one at a time, tone holes are drilled at angles through wood an inch thick, and five pieces have to seal against each other. None of that gets cheaper when you make more of them — and nobody makes very many. **Cheapest sensible new:** around $7,000 **Professional:** $25,000–45,000 **Heckel:** about $95,000, after a wait **Reeds:** $150–250 every year ## The wood is cheap. The eight years are not. Bassoons are built from maple, and specifically from sycamore maple — the European mountain maple that grows in the Balkan and Bohemian highlands. It is chosen for stability rather than hardness. It is a medium-hardness wood, softer than the sugar maple a kitchen worktop is made of, and it is picked because it moves as little as possible once it is dry. Getting it that dry is the expensive part. Fox, the largest bassoon maker in the world, buys four to five semi-trailers of logs a year and ages them for six to eight years before any work starts. Heckel dry theirs naturally for more than twelve. The company’s president put the economics of it in one line a few years ago: “you can’t buy that kind of time.” Read that as a balance sheet and it explains most of the price. A maker buys, moves, stores and insures a decade of raw material in advance and carries the cost until instruments come out of the other end, so every bassoon sold is paying interest on wood cut when its buyer was in primary school. Kiln-drying would take weeks instead, and it is not done, because wood forced dry keeps enough internal stress to move later — and a bore that moves after the tone holes are cut is a repair job rather than an instrument. ## Two dozen keys, each one made in the building A modern bassoon carries around twenty-five silver-plated keys, plus the rollers that let a finger slide between two of them. Fox makes their own keys, plate their own keys, and mount them by hand from parts they machine themselves. There is no drawer of standard bassoon keywork to buy in, because the market is not big enough for anyone to stock one. On a professional instrument it goes further than that: the keywork is specified rather than chosen from a shelf. Fox publishes twenty-one options — a high E key or an offset high E, a high F, a high A bridge, a left-hand E♭ trill, a plateau or a ring for the left third finger, rollers on the C♯ and whisper key, a low C♯ mechanism, three different whisper key locks, a balance hanger, a two-piece bass joint to fit a smaller case. A player orders the combination that suits their hands and their repertoire, and a fitter builds that instrument. This is where the comparison with a flute or a clarinet breaks down. Those are made in numbers that justify tooling — pay for it once, spread it over the run, and the unit price falls. A bassoon maker never gets to make that trade, because the run is never long enough to pay the tooling back. ## Four pieces of wood, and holes that do not go straight in A bassoon comes apart into five pieces — bell, long joint (some makers call it the bass joint), boot, wing joint and the curved metal bocal that carries the reed. Between them they hold a conical bore about 2.6 meters long, folded back on itself so that the [assembled instrument](/how-long-is-a-bassoon/) stands about 1.35 meters tall. The fold happens in the boot, where two parallel bores are joined at the bottom by a U-shaped metal connector, and the part of the boot that hands rest on is lined with hard rubber because bare maple would not survive the contact. The tone holes have no equivalent elsewhere. Folding the tube makes the instrument short enough to hold but does nothing about where the holes fall: acoustically they belong far apart, and a hand is only so wide. So they are drilled at an angle to the bore rather than straight through it, which brings the openings closer together outside than they are inside. On the wing joint that means a slanted channel through a wall roughly an inch thick, and each one has to meet its pad seat exactly square or the instrument leaks — with a single pad often covering three tone holes, so three seats must be true to each other as well as to the pad. Then all five pieces have to seal against one another for the life of the instrument. That is hours of skilled fitting no machine has taken over, and it is the same hours whether the bassoon is a $7,000 student model or a $95,000 one. ## Almost nobody makes them The largest bassoon manufacturer on earth is a company of about 150 people in South Whitley, Indiana, turning out roughly 120 bassoons a month. That is the ceiling of the industry: about 1,400 bassoons a year from the biggest name in it. Serious European makers run below that again, and some build around fifty instruments a year. Heckel, whose bassoons sit at the top of the market, build about a hundred instruments a year in Wiesbaden and have a waiting list measured in years. What they did about the queue is the clearest statement of the economics anyone in this trade has made. They used to offer a second, cheaper line called the Crest; they discontinued it. Their own explanation: “Due to the increasing demand for the original Heckel bassoon, the 41i model, and due to the long delivery times, it was decided to cease the production of the Crest and concentrate exclusively on the production of the 41i.” A maker facing more orders than it can fill responded by removing its affordable option. That only makes sense when the binding constraint is skilled hours rather than demand, and it is the reason to stop expecting bassoon prices to behave like prices for things that are manufactured. ## What the money actually buys, rung by rung PriceWhat is different about itWhere the extra money went**$2,000–3,500**Unbranded import, plastic body, minimal keywork, a scale that does not play in tune with itselfNowhere. This is the price of skipping the parts above**Around $7,000**Resin body, full German system, silver-plated keys, two bocals. Plays in tuneProper keywork, proper bore work, a maker who will still be there in ten years**$9,000–12,000**Maple body, more rollers and trill keys, a high D, better bore finishingThe seasoned wood, and the hand time that goes with working it**$25,000–45,000**Professional instruments, hand-tuned bore, keywork specified to orderA fitter’s weeks rather than days, and a bore adjusted by ear**About $95,000**A new Heckel, once the options are chosenTwelve years of wood, a hundred instruments a year, and a queue The first jump is the one that matters. Nothing between $2,000 and $6,500 is worth owning, and the reason is not snobbery about brands — at that price the intonation is wrong in ways a player cannot correct with their embouchure, so a student spends years practicing around a fault instead of learning to hear it. The repair side compounds it, because bassoon work is a specialism and a technician charges the same hourly rate to fix a cheap instrument as a good one. [What a bassoon costs](/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/) goes through the rungs in more detail, including renting, which is how most people actually start. ## What wears out, and it is not the playing Playing a bassoon does not warp it. Water does. Every breath you put through the instrument condenses inside it, and it collects in the boot joint at the bottom of the fold, which is exactly where the wood is thinnest around the U-bend and where it sits longest. An instrument swabbed out after every session lasts generations: bassoons built in the late 1940s are still working orchestral instruments, and they change hands for more than they cost new. One left wet, repeatedly, swells and lifts around the tone holes, and the fix is a bill. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) What does wear out is everything soft. Pads, corks and felts have a life measured in years regardless of how well the instrument was built, so a yearly service runs $200–400 and a full overhaul runs $500–1,900. Paying more does not reduce that bill — a better bassoon costs more to service, because there is more mechanism on it. The twenty-four dollars that protects the seven thousand ### Hodge Silk Bassoon Swab - Pure silk - Weighted pull-through - Does the boot and the wing joint - No lint - ~$24 Silk is used for this rather than cotton or microfibre for three reasons at once: it absorbs, it sheds nothing that can lodge in a tone hole, and it compresses small enough to pull through a bore that narrows to the width of a pencil. A cotton swab that jams in the wing joint is a repair, not an inconvenience. It is the cheapest thing on this page and the one with the best return. Pull it through the boot and the wing joint before the case shuts, every session, and the failure mode that actually kills bassoons never starts. Around $24 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wwr4ZV) ## The cost that never stops The instrument is a one-off payment. The reed is not. A bassoon reed is a consumable made of cane, and played regularly it goes soft and stops speaking cleanly after three to six weeks, so a student gets through eight to twelve a year. At $15–20 each that is $150–250 annually, for as long as the instrument is played, and it is the line on this page that never ends. It is also why bassoonists end up making their own. The tools — a gouger, a profiler, a shaper — run well past a thousand dollars before the first reed exists, which only pays off if you play for a living. Everyone else buys, and the choice is between cane at about twenty dollars and a synthetic that costs six times as much once and then stops costing anything. The default cane reed ### Jones JR201AM Artist Bassoon Reed - Cane - Medium strength - Machine-profiled, hand-finished - Play-tested individually - ~$20 The gouge is cut on diamond tooling and the profile is machined, which is what holds the price near twenty dollars rather than the thirty-four a handmade reed costs. The tip is then finished by hand and each reed is played before it is boxed, so it arrives closer to usable than a purely machine-made reed does. **Take the Medium.** The same reed is sold in Medium Soft and Medium Hard, and strength is the one variable that matters at the start: a beginner’s embouchure cannot hold a hard reed closed, and a soft one goes flat as the line climbs. Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SEAzsc) The one that ends the annual bill ### Légère Bassoon Reed, Medium - Synthetic - Medium strength - No soaking - Carry case included - ~$129 The arithmetic is the entire argument. This costs roughly what six cane reeds cost, so it pays for itself inside a school year and everything after that is free. It also plays straight out of the case with no soaking, and it does not care whether the hall is dry in February and damp in June — which matters more than it sounds, because a cane reed that has changed overnight is the usual reason a practiced passage stops working. What you lose is adjustability. Cane can be clipped, reamed and scraped into behaving; a synthetic reed is what it is, so the strength has to be right when you order. Medium matches a medium cane reed, and there is a Medium-Hard for players who already know they want the resistance. Around $129 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x7xz6H) Whichever you buy, how you store them decides how long they last. Reeds put away damp in a sealed tube grow mold within days, and a reed that has gone mouldy is finished. A case built to let air move — the [Pro Tec A253](https://amzn.to/4xG5H9E), about $20, holds five reeds on padded dividers and is vented for exactly this — turns a three-week reed into a six-week one, which halves the only recurring cost the instrument has. ## Then there is the bocal The bocal is the curved metal tube between the reed and the wing joint, and calling it a fitting undersells it. It sets the tuning and much of the response, it is the only part that changes how a bassoon plays without touching the bassoon, and players own several and choose between them the way a trumpeter chooses a mouthpiece. Student instruments ship with two, which is enough for years. The prices are not small: around $280 for a Fox, around $700 for a Yamaha, around $1,350 for a Heckel. A single Heckel bocal costs more than a good student clarinet, and it is a foot of bent metal tube. ## The money is parked rather than spent Bassoons do not depreciate the way almost everything else does. A Heckel built in the late 1940s changes hands today at $43,000–46,000. A maple student instrument bought at around $9,000 sells used near $6,700 after years of school work. A professional Fox that cost $27,000 new goes second-hand in the mid-twenties. The reason is the same scarcity that set the price in the first place: demand exceeds what the trade can build, so a good used instrument competes with a multi-year wait rather than with a discount. Buying a bassoon is closer to holding an asset than to buying a car. That resale assumes the pads are sound. An instrument needing a full overhaul is worth its asking price minus the overhaul, and “it just needs a service” is a price rather than a reassurance. ## Common questions ### Is the bassoon the most expensive instrument in the orchestra? No, though it is near the top of the winds. Contrabassoons run $55,000–73,000 new, so the instrument sitting next to the bassoon costs roughly twice as much. A concert pedal harp starts around $15,500 and climbs, for [reasons that are structural rather than acoustic](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). Strings go higher still, but a fine old violin is priced by who owned it — a different kind of expensive from a bassoon, where the money is buying hours worked this year. ### Why is a Heckel worth three times a professional Fox? Partly the build — twelve years of wood, a hundred instruments a year, and hand-finishing that scales with nothing. Partly the queue, since a new one arrives years after it is ordered and a second-hand one arrives now. And partly the resale: a Heckel holds its value so reliably that the real cost of owning one is the servicing rather than the purchase. It is not three times the instrument. It is three times the price. ### Is a plastic bassoon a compromise? Not at the $7,000 rung, no. A resin bassoon from a real maker has the same keywork and the same bore geometry as its wooden sibling, and it survives a school bus and a damp practice room in a way maple does not. Maple sounds warmer and needs looking after. For a student the resin instrument is the correct purchase rather than the cheap one — which makes this the unusual case where the sensible option and the entry-level option are the same object. ### Will bassoons ever get cheaper? Not the way guitars and ukuleles did. Those fell because volume paid for tooling and tooling replaced labor. A bassoon’s cost is seasoning time and skilled hours, and neither responds to volume — which is why the most prestigious maker in the trade answered a backlog by dropping a model rather than adding a shift. ### Is the oboe any cheaper to run? Cheaper to buy, no cheaper to feed. A student oboe is roughly half the price of a student bassoon, and it takes double reeds on the same replacement cycle for the same money. It is also the harder of the two to get a first sound out of. [Bassoon vs. oboe](/bassoon-vs-oboe/) covers which one suits which player, and [the woodwind family](/woodwind-instruments/) puts both in context. ## So is it worth it? For the first year, no. Rent, spend $200 on reeds, and find out whether the reed maintenance and [the sheer weight of the thing](/how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh/) suit you before any large sum moves. After that, the $7,000 is easier to justify than the number suggests, because it is not consumed. You are buying six to eight years of somebody’s seasoned maple, two dozen hand-fitted keys and a bore that plays in tune, and most of that money is still there in ten years when you sell it. What actually goes, permanently, is the $200 a year in reeds and the $200–400 in servicing. That is the real cost of playing the bassoon. The instrument is mostly a deposit. **Categories:** Bassoon --- ### [How Much Does a French Horn Cost? The Four Valves That Set the Price](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [French Horn](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/french-horn/ "French Horn")› How Much Does a French Horn Cost? The Four Valves That Set the Price A rotary valve is a brass cylinder turning inside a brass casing, and the gap between the two decides whether the instrument leaks. Engelbert Schmid, who builds horns in Bavaria, puts the working tolerance at five to eight hundredths of a millimeter and aims for five. Yamaha describes the same operation on its own production line and says the fit cannot be done by machine at all — “the sense and skill of a human being is more precise.” A French horn has four of those. A trumpet has three pistons, which are cheaper to make and vastly cheaper to fix. That single difference explains most of what follows: why the horn’s beginner tier starts around $700 rather than $250, why the instrument almost everyone actually needs costs four figures, and why a bargain used horn is the most expensive thing on this page. The short answer### About $700 buys the cheapest horn with a warranty and spare parts behind it. A full double starts around $1,500 The $700 instrument is a small-wrap single for a child, and it is outgrown. A full-size single F runs $1,400–1,800, and the double horn most players end up on runs $1,500 at the very bottom and $3,000–4,400 in the middle. Professional horns come mostly from a handful of European workshops, and the ones that publish a price list start around £7,000. **Child’s single:** ~$700 **Full-size single F:** ~$1,400 **Full double:** from ~$1,500 **Rental:** $30–100/month ## Table of Contents - [What a French horn costs, level by level](#what-a-french-horn-costs-level-by-level) - [Why four valves cost so much more than three](#why-four-valves-cost-so-much-more-than-three) - [Single or double, and what the difference costs](#single-or-double-and-what-the-difference-costs) - [The horns worth buying at each price](#the-horns-worth-buying-at-each-price) - [What a workshop charges](#what-a-workshop-charges) - [Used horns, and the one thing to check](#used-horns-and-the-one-thing-to-check) - [Should you rent instead?](#should-you-rent-instead) - [The running costs nobody quotes](#the-running-costs-nobody-quotes) - [So what should you spend?](#so-what-should-you-spend) - [Related reading](#related-reading) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [How much is a beginner French horn?](#how-much-is-a-beginner-french-horn) - [Why are French horns so expensive?](#why-are-french-horns-so-expensive) - [Is a used French horn a good idea?](#is-a-used-french-horn-a-good-idea) - [Should a beginner get a single or a double horn?](#should-a-beginner-get-a-single-or-a-double-horn) - [How much does it cost to maintain a French horn?](#how-much-does-it-cost-to-maintain-a-french-horn) - [What is the most expensive French horn?](#what-is-the-most-expensive-french-horn) - [Does a French horn hold its value?](#does-a-french-horn-hold-its-value) ## What a French horn costs, level by level Yamaha, Conn-Selmer, Jupiter and Hans Hoyer sell through dealer networks and publish no horn prices at all. Three makers do publish, and between them they cover the whole range: John Packer and Wessex list every model in dollars, and Engelbert Schmid publishes a full euro price list for the professional end. LevelWhat it isPrice**Marketplace singles**Unbranded three-valve F horns, no maker site, no published warranty or parts$540–970**Child’s single**Small-wrap single in B♭ or F — John Packer JP161 and JP162, Wessex FH20 and FH25$586–881**Full-size single**John Packer JP165 in F, Wessex FH33 in B♭ with a stop valve$705–1,782**Entry double**Compensating or full double — Wessex FH611, John Packer JP163$1,463–1,607**Student single, school brands**Yamaha YHR-314II~$3,100**Student to intermediate double**John Packer JP164 and JP261 RATH, Paxman Academy and Series 4~$3,000–4,400**Professional double**Dieter Otto 180, Alexander 103, Paxman Model 20 and 25, Engelbert Schmid£7,075–11,250 / €12,300**Triple**Wessex FH613P at the bottom, Schmid compensating triple at the top$4,429 / €18,050 The row that surprises people is the second one. About $700 is the floor for a horn from a company with a published warranty, a named repair route and parts you can order — and what that money buys is a scaled-down instrument for a ten-year-old. Our [trumpet prices](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) put the same floor at about $250, and [a student alto saxophone](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) at about $675 for a full-size professional-pitch instrument. The horn is the outlier among the instruments a school band hands out. ## Why four valves cost so much more than three Yamaha’s own specification tables are the clearest evidence of where the money is not going. The student single YHR-314II, the intermediate double YHR-567 and the professional YHR-671 all share a 12 mm (0.472″) bore, a medium bell, solid rotors, string lever action and the same HR-32C4 mouthpiece. Nothing in the published specification separates them. It is only at the custom level — the YHR-891 triple — that the rotors become hollow phosphor bronze and the casings nickel silver. So the price is the metal, the labor and the number of rotors. Schmid puts numbers on the first of those: gold brass adds 10% to the price of the instrument and nickel silver 20%, and a sterling silver taper — leadpipe, first branch, bell tail and flare — is a €6,000 option on a €12,300 horn. A hand-hammered bell is €940. Those are not tone descriptions; they are line items on a published price list. The labor is the part that does not scale. Each rotor is lapped to its casing with abrasive until the two match, and Schmid wants the bearings inside two hundredths of a millimeter. Yamaha’s account of its own factory says the same thing from the other side: after the machining, “these fine adjustments are the most difficult and cannot be performed by machine.” Four valves means four of those, plus the linkage that connects them and the second set of slides the thumb valve switches into. One option is worth pricing before you buy rather than after. A detachable bell makes the horn fit a smaller case and, Yamaha says, generally darkens the tone. Schmid supplies a screw bell at no extra charge; John Packer charges about $300 for it on the RATH double; and having it added later runs about $550 in a workshop. If you want one, buy it built in. ## Single or double, and what the difference costs A single horn is one set of tubing and three valves. A double adds a fourth thumb valve switching between an F side of roughly twelve feet and a B♭ side of roughly nine — the longer side richer low down, the shorter more secure high up. Nearly every orchestral player owns a double, which is why the single is a stage rather than a destination. Which key the single should be in is a genuine open question and both makers who publish on it say the same thing: ask the teacher first. Paxman notes that UK players traditionally start in F because that length of tubing gives the characteristic horn sound, with B♭ introduced later as the range extends. John Packer puts it more bluntly — some teachers work only on the B♭ side and some only on the F, so buying the wrong one is a real risk. The B♭ is easier to pitch; both read horn-in-F music and transpose a fifth. Size is the other half of it. Wessex is the only maker publishing a weight for every model, and the ladder runs 3.8 lb for a scaled-down student single F, 6 lb for a full double and 7.1 lb for a triple. A small child holding six pounds at arm’s length for a rehearsal is the reason three-quarter-size horns exist, and Paxman is explicit that the physical size of the player is the first consideration, not the budget. ## The horns worth buying at each price The cheapest horn with a repair route behind it ### John Packer JP161 Single B♭ French Horn - B♭ single, three rotary valves - Small wrap — scaled down for a child’s reach into the bell - Reads horn-in-F music and transposes a fifth - Mouthpiece and case included - 2-year warranty through an authorized dealer - Around $700 John Packer lists this at $850 and publishes the whole range around it, which is what makes the number checkable. It is designed for children: the small wrap exists so a young player can get the right hand properly into the bell and still sit up straight, and the maker says so rather than leaving it to be discovered. The B♭ side is the easier one to pitch, which is why it is the common starting point outside the UK. It is also the half of the instrument a teacher may not want first, so the model number to buy is genuinely a question for them — the JP162 is the same horn in F. **Pros**- The cheapest new horn here from a maker publishing a warranty, a price list and a service route - Small wrap is a real advantage for a player under about twelve - Costs less than a year of renting a double - Sells under the maker’s own list price **Cons**- Scaled down, so a full-size player will find the reach cramped - Single B♭ is a starting point, not an instrument to keep - Two-year warranty runs to the original buyer through an authorized dealer, and the buyer pays return shipping - Cosmetic and lacquer faults are excluded Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3T1gvQU) The full-size single ### John Packer JP165 Single F French Horn - F single, three rotary valves - Yellow brass bell, 310 mm - Full size, not a scaled-down wrap - One water key, lever type - 2-year warranty through an authorized dealer - Around $1,400 This is the instrument for an adult beginner or a teenager who has outgrown a school horn, and it is the point at which the price stops being a beginner price. The F side is the traditional starting key and the one that gives the horn its recognizable sound; the trade is that F is harder to pitch accurately than B♭, which is the whole reason the double exists. It sells for roughly $400 under John Packer’s own list, which is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly — on most of this page the maker’s list and the asking price are the same number. **Pros**- Full-size instrument at roughly half what the school-brand single costs - Well under the maker’s published list price - Maker publishes spare parts, a warranty and a service network - Enough horn to last several years before a double is needed **Cons**- No B♭ side, so the high register stays insecure - Three valves rather than four — it is a step toward a double, not a substitute - Warranty excludes finish and lacquer, and return shipping is the owner’s - The maker’s own product description for this model is written about a different horn Around $1,400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SlEZUR) What the school brands charge for the same three valves ### Yamaha YHR-314II Student F French Horn - F single, three solid rotors, string lever action - 12 mm (0.472″) bore — the same bore as Yamaha’s professional double - Yellow brass body, medium bell, fixed - HR-32C4 mouthpiece and case included - 5-year warranty to the original owner - Around $3,100 Yamaha publishes no prices, so the only way to place this horn on the ladder is against what it sells for, and it lands at roughly twice the John Packer single with the same valve count and a bore that matches to three decimals. What the money buys is the five-year warranty, a rotor tolerance held to Yamaha’s own factory standard, and the fact that every repair shop in the country has seen a thousand of them. That warranty has a condition worth reading before you buy anywhere. Yamaha covers only instruments bought directly from its authorized dealers in the fifty states and used there, it runs to the original owner, and it excludes normal wear and periodic maintenance. Five years of cover on a horn is worth real money; five years of cover that does not apply is worth nothing. **Pros**- Five-year warranty, the longest of any maker named here - Same bore, bell size, rotor type and mouthpiece as Yamaha’s professional double - Universal parts availability — every technician knows the instrument - Holds value better than anything else at this level **Cons**- Roughly twice the price of a full-size single from a maker that publishes a list - Still a three-valve single, so it does not solve the high register - Warranty is void unless bought from an authorized Yamaha dealer - Fixed bell, which means the bulkier case Around $3,100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gFQe2z) ## What a workshop charges These are the numbers that decide whether a horn is worth buying, and no price list includes them. Published brass repair rates are consistent across shops, and they scale with the number of rotors: JobTypical chargeHow often**Chemical flush and clean, single**$100Every two to three years**Chemical flush and clean, double**$125Every two to three years**Chemical flush and clean, triple**$185Every two to three years**Ultrasonic clean**~$195Instead of the above, on a neglected horn**Rotor repair — dents, linkage, lapping**~$75 per rotorWhen a valve sticks or leaks**Valve service, set of four**~$325Once or twice in an instrument’s life**Freeing seized slides**$25–55After storage or neglect**Water key cork / mechanism**$30 / $45Every few years**Complete valve rebuild**~$1,600Rarely, and rarely worth it**Detachable bell conversion**~$550Once, if at all Put that beside the price ladder. A double horn needing all four rotors seen to and a chemical flush is about $425 before anybody has looked at a dent, which is a third of the cheapest new double. On an unbranded $540 single the same work is three-quarters of what the instrument cost, which is the point at which nobody does it. ## Used horns, and the one thing to check A used horn is often the right answer — the instrument does not wear out from being played, and a fifty-year-old double in good condition is a better buy than anything new at the same money. The risk is entirely in the valves, and it is worth understanding why, because it is the one fault that cannot be undone. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Schmid is unusually direct about it. Horns, he writes, “are rarely dying by being played, but are destroyed by repairmen who don’t know the correct craft” — specifically by widening the gap between rotor and casing in an acid bath to make the valves feel free. It works once. At the next repair there is not enough metal left, and rebuilding the rotors by plating “absolutely never gives back the original running abilities.” Paxman, from the other end of the market, says the same thing in a sentence: cosmetic faults and minor dents rarely matter, but “problems with the valves can be much more serious, so expert advice should be sought before buying second hand.” Two more things are permanent. Yamaha’s account of its own repair shop notes that once a piece of brass has been bent, straightening it restores the shape but not the tone, because bent metal does not carry vibration the same way. And Hans Hoyer explains the red spots that appear on older yellow brass horns: dezincification, caused by moisture left inside the instrument, where the affected part has to be replaced rather than repaired. Gold brass and silver largely resist it, which is one of the quieter reasons the dearer alloys cost more. So the useful test on a used horn is not how it looks. Work each valve, listen for a leak under pressure, look inside the bell for red spotting, and budget $100–125 for a chemical flush and $75 a rotor on top of the asking price. A horn that needs all four is not a bargain at any price. Hans Hoyer’s own answer to owners asking what their instrument is worth is that nobody can say from a distance, because condition matters more than model and age — which is as good a reason as any to have a technician look before money changes hands. ## Should you rent instead? Rental programs advertise single horns at roughly $30 to $55 a month and doubles at $45 to $100, with the spread depending on whether the instrument is new or has been out before. Maintenance is usually included, which on this instrument is worth more than it is on most. The term that decides it is the purchase credit. Many programs apply 100% of what you pay toward a purchase for the first twelve months and nothing after that, so the arithmetic changes sharply at month thirteen. A double at $60 a month costs $720 in the first year, all of which comes off a purchase, and another $1,440 over the following two years, none of which does. Set against a full double from about $1,500 new, renting for three years costs more than buying outright and leaves you owning nothing. Not every scheme is structured that way. Paxman’s own rental in the UK charges £22.08 a month against a £795 horn and £68.05 against a £2,450 one — in both cases the purchase price divided by thirty-six, servicing included, with the instrument yours at the end. That is the shape to look for, and the question to ask is simply what proportion of the payments applies to a purchase, and for how long. Rent for the first year if the player is a child starting in band, because the credit is complete and the attrition rate in a beginning class is real. Buy if they are still playing at the end of it. ## The running costs nobody quotes A horn has no reeds, no pads and no strings, so the consumables bill is small. What it does have is four bearings that need oil on a schedule — Schmid says once a month, every two weeks in hot weather — and a bore that collects the calcium that eventually seizes a rotor. Half a drop in the right place is the difference between a $20 bottle of oil and a $325 valve service. ItemCostHow often**Rotor and bearing oil, slide grease**~$20 a kitA kit lasts a student a year or more**Leather hand guard**~$20Once**Method book**~$10Once**Mouthpiece, if you want your own**~$65Once, and not in the first year**Case, if the horn arrives without one**~$120Once**Chemical flush and clean**$100–125Every two to three years What keeps the valve service away ### Libretto French Horn Cleaning and Care Kit - Valve oil, slide grease, cleaning cloth - Mouthpiece and bore brushes - Case with instructions included - Around $20 The whole maintenance argument on a horn comes down to putting oil in four bearings on a schedule. Left dry, condensation carries calcium into the bearing, and calcium is a very poor lubricant — which is how a valve goes from stiff to seized to a bill. Nothing in a kit like this is exotic and any equivalent set does the same job. The point is having one in the case rather than intending to buy one, because the failure it prevents costs more than fifteen times what it costs. Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qRuQMs) Twenty dollars against the lacquer ### Protec Leather French Horn Hand Guard, Model L234 - Leather, with a securing strap - Sits between the left hand and the valve cluster - Around $20 The left hand rests permanently on the same patch of brass, and perspiration is corrosive. Warranties exclude lacquer wear as a matter of course, and the maker’s own guidance is that dezincification — the red spotting on older horns — comes from moisture the instrument was left sitting in. This is a small piece of leather and it is not going to change how anything plays. It changes what the instrument looks like in ten years, and on a horn that is a resale question. Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ciadmB) The first book ### Essential Elements for Band — F Horn Book 1 - Horn in F, band method book 1 - Online audio and practice tools included - The book most US school programs issue - Around $10 Written for horn in F, which is what every single and every double reads regardless of which side the thumb valve is on. If a band director has specified a different method, buy theirs — the point of a band book is that everyone is on the same page number. Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UGPGC0) The upgrade that is not urgent ### Holton Farkas MC French Horn Mouthpiece - Model H2850MC — the medium cup - American shank taper - Also made as the DC, a deeper cup - Around $65 Every horn on this page ships with a mouthpiece, and buying another one in month one is the most common way to spend money that changes nothing. The Farkas is the piece most American players end up on, and the reason to own one is consistency across borrowed instruments rather than tone. The cup depth is part of the model number and worth getting right: MC is the medium, DC the deeper one that gives more low register and costs more effort above the stave. A beginner wants the medium. Check the shank before you buy, because horn mouthpieces come in two tapers and they are not interchangeable. Yamaha states the difference: the European taper narrows 3 mm per 100 mm of length and the North American one 5 mm, and a mismatch leaks air and rattles in the receiver. Yamaha’s own leadpipe is cut to accept both; most are not. **Pros**- The default American medium-deep cup, so a teacher will know it - Consistent feel across school and borrowed instruments - Cheap enough to be a low-risk experiment once the embouchure is settled **Cons**- American shank — wrong for a European-taper leadpipe - Changes nothing for a beginner still building an embouchure - Cup depth is a personal fit, and the model number is the only way to specify it Around $65[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gulVLS) If a used horn arrives without one ### Protec MX316CT Contoured French Horn Case - Fits most modern fixed-bell horns, including large-wrap doubles - 600D nylon over a rigid EPS foam frame, velour lined - Backpack straps and a shoulder pad - Under 6 lb empty - Around $120 A fixed-bell horn needs a case built around the bell, which is why horn cases are the odd-shaped ones with a cone on the side — Yamaha points out that you can identify them across a band room by exactly that. A detachable-bell horn packs into something far smaller, and that is most of the argument for the screw bell. This is a foam-and-nylon case rather than a hard shell, which is why it weighs less than the horn inside it. Budget one into any used purchase where the case is missing or has given up, because dent work is the one job on the repair list that nobody will quote a price for in advance. Around $120[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zLICnC) ## So what should you spend? A child starting in school band: rent for the first year, take the maintenance cover, and ask what proportion of the payments applies to a purchase and for how long. Roughly $30–60 a month. A younger player who is definitely continuing: about $700 buys a small-wrap single from a maker with a warranty and parts, which is less than a year of renting a double and leaves something with resale value. An adult beginner: about $1,400 for a full-size single F, and skip the child-sized wrap entirely. Anyone playing beyond a couple of years: a full double from around $1,500, and it is the last instrument on this list that most players will ever need to buy. Above roughly $4,000 you are buying alloys, hand-hammering and a specific workshop’s valve geometry, and those are real differences to a player who already knows what they want and invisible to one who does not. And below about $500, the honest answer is not to. One chemical flush and a set of rotors costs more than the instrument, which means the first thing that goes wrong ends it. ## Related reading - [Brass instruments: the full list, and which one to start on](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) - [Mellophone vs. French horn: same part, different instrument](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) - [English horn vs. French horn](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-french-horn/) - [How much does a trumpet cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) - [Orchestra vs. band: which one to join](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) ## FAQs ### How much is a beginner French horn? About $700 for a small-wrap single from a maker that publishes a warranty and spare parts, and about $1,400 for a full-size single F. Unbranded marketplace horns start around $540, but the first repair costs more than the instrument, so that tier is a false economy rather than a cheaper option. ### Why are French horns so expensive? Four rotary valves, each lapped by hand to a fit measured in hundredths of a millimeter. Schmid works to five to eight hundredths between rotor and casing and wants the bearings inside two; Yamaha says the operation cannot be done by machine. A double horn also carries two complete sets of tubing and slides. Beyond that the price is metal — Schmid charges 10% more for gold brass and 20% more for nickel silver. ### Is a used French horn a good idea? Often, because the instrument does not wear out from playing. The risk is the valves: a rotor that has been widened in an acid bath to free it up cannot be properly restored, and plating the rotors back up never returns the original action. Have a technician check the valves before buying, and budget $100–125 for a chemical flush and about $75 per rotor on top of the price. ### Should a beginner get a single or a double horn? A single, unless the teacher says otherwise or the player is already big enough for six pounds of instrument. A single costs $700–1,800 against $1,500 and up for a double, and the double’s advantage — a secure high register — matters more once the range has developed. Ask which key the teacher wants: some work only on the B♭ side and some only on the F. ### How much does it cost to maintain a French horn? About $20 a year in oil and grease, plus a chemical flush and clean every two or three years at $100 for a single and $125 for a double. Rotor work runs about $75 per valve when something sticks. There is nothing on a horn equivalent to a saxophone’s pads, so a well-oiled instrument is genuinely cheap to run. ### What is the most expensive French horn? Among makers that publish prices, a compensating triple from Engelbert Schmid lists at €18,800 and a professional full double at €12,300 before options — a sterling silver taper adds €6,000 on its own. Professional doubles from the London and German workshops run roughly £7,000 to £11,250. ### Does a French horn hold its value? Better than most brass, because the professional instruments are made in small numbers by workshops that have not changed much in decades. But condition sets the price rather than the model: Hans Hoyer’s own answer to owners asking what a horn is worth is that no one can say without inspecting it, since previous repairs, valve action and dent history matter more than age. **Categories:** French Horn --- ### [Dean Backwoods 2 Banjo Review: The Pickup Was Never the Expensive Part](https://promusicvault.com/dean-backwoods-banjo-review/) **Published:** May 13, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Dean Backwoods 2 Banjo Review: The Pickup Was Never the Expensive Part The Dean Backwoods 2 is a five-string resonator banjo with a magnetic pickup sitting on the head at the neck end and a volume knob on the rim. Dean lists it at $549, which puts it against decent acoustic banjos that have no electronics at all. That trade — a pickup you get for free, a banjo that costs a hundred and fifty dollars less than it looks — is the whole question about this instrument. The answer is that it is the wrong trade, and Dean’s own specification sheet says why before you get anywhere near the sound. The nut is 1 1/8 inches wide. Every other five-string banjo in this bracket is between 1 3/16 and 1 1/4. That is a couple of millimeters, and on a banjo neck a couple of millimeters decides whether your fingers fit. The short version### Ortega Falcon OBJE400 The same idea done properly: a quilted maple resonator over a maple ply rim with a **brass tone ring**, a passive pickup with volume control, a maple neck, 22 frets, an armrest and a deluxe gig bag. The nut is 31 mm, so there is room to fret cleanly. About a hundred dollars more than the Dean listed for, and a materially better banjo before you plug anything in. Around $650 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g9VTyK) **Already own a banjo:** Gold Tone SMP+ — around $150, magnetic, no soldering **Open back, or no coordinator rods:** L.R. Baggs Banjo Pickup — around $190, it is a bridge **You actually want an electric banjo:** Gold Tone EBM-5 — around $1,400 ## What Dean actually built The pot is eastern mahogany with a clear Remo head, so you look through the drum head to the wood underneath — the one genuinely distinctive thing about the instrument, and the reason it photographs better than it plays. Twenty-four brackets pull the head down, which is generous; budget banjos often use sixteen. There is no tone ring. Dean’s description of the dearer Backwoods 2 Pro says it adds a brass tone ring and a thicker pot to the standard model, which tells you what the standard model does not have. A resonator with no tone ring is a specific sound: plenty of volume, very little of the metallic crack that carries a banjo over a fiddle and a mandolin. It will not front a bluegrass band acoustically, which matters here because the pickup does not fix that either. The neck is nyatoh, with a flat black walnut fingerboard, pearloid dots and 21 frets on a 26 1/2 inch scale. It bolts on through a four-bolt plate like an electric guitar neck rather than sitting on coordinator rods, so there is no rod to turn when the action creeps up — a truss rod adjustment and a taller or shorter bridge are the only levers you have. The nut is PPS plastic, the bridge is rosewood rather than the usual maple with an ebony cap, and the tuners are sealed die-cast. Dean Backwoods 2Ortega Falcon OBJE400Gold Tone EBM-5PotEastern mahogany resonatorMaple ply rim, quilted maple resonatorHollow mahogany F-style bodyTone ringNoneBrass8″ aluminumHead11″ clear RemoRemo Fiberskin style8″ Remo MC smoothNeckNyatoh, bolt-onMapleMapleFingerboardBlack walnut, flatMapleEbony, snowflake inlayFrets212221Scale26 1/2″26 3/8″ (670 mm)26 3/8″Nut width1 1/8″ (29 mm)1 7/32″ (31 mm)1 3/16″PickupMagnetic, neck positionPassive, with volume controlNeck humbucker plus SMP+ under the headIn the boxBanjoDeluxe gig bagHard casePriceListed at $549[~$650](https://amzn.to/4g9VTyK)[~$1,400](https://amzn.to/4cSpkmG) ## The neck is the thing that decides it A 1 1/8 inch nut is narrow for a five-string. Deering cuts the Goodtime at 1 1/4. Gold Tone cuts theirs at 1 3/16. Ortega cuts the Falcon at 31 mm, a shade over 1 7/32. The Backwoods 2 is between one and a half and three millimeters tighter than any of them, and it has a flat fingerboard radius on top of that. Three-finger banjo picking asks you to plant two fingers and a thumb on the head and fret cleanly with the other hand while a drone string sits right where your first finger wants to go. Take two millimeters out of the spacing and adult fingers start touching the neighboring string on pull-offs. One owner put it flatly: the neck is skinny enough that they could not get a pull-off out without muting something. That is not a setup complaint and no amount of adjustment fixes it. The flip side is real and worth stating. If you have small hands, or you are coming from a mandolin, a narrow neck is easier rather than harder. This is the one specification on the instrument that genuinely suits somebody — it just is not the general beginner the marketing points at. ## What the pickup does, and what it does not Dean’s DMT humbucker sits on the head between the neck and the bridge, sensing the steel strings directly rather than listening to the drum head. That is the right kind of pickup for a loud stage: magnetic units ignore the room, so they do not howl the way a microphone or an under-head transducer will once the monitors come up. Plugged in, the Backwoods 2 does exactly what it says on the box, and the owners who gig it say so. The catch is string balance. A five-string set runs from a .010 plain steel first to a .024 wound fourth, which is a huge spread of steel for one pickup to read evenly, and getting it level depends entirely on how the unit is positioned over the strings. Better banjo pickups solve this with pole pieces set for banjo gauges. Owners of this one report fighting it — one describing the third string coming through so much louder than the rest that a roll sounded like a mistake, another simply saying the pickup was hard to set and adjust. Budget an evening with the height screws. The wider point is the one that should decide your purchase. A banjo pickup is a $150 to $190 part that mounts in an afternoon and comes off again just as easily. The banjo underneath it is neither cheap nor removable. Letting the pickup choose the instrument is backward. ## What owners report It arrives with the bridge loose in the box. That is normal for every banjo ever made — the bridge is held on by string tension alone and has to be positioned by ear — but nobody tells first-time buyers, and it is the single most common source of panic on delivery. Beyond that the reports split the way they usually do on an import at this money: some arrive fine, some do not. Paint blemishes and a nut filed too deep both turn up, and one owner found the strings sitting off-center over the fingerboard, which is a neck alignment problem and not something a bridge move corrects. The ones that arrive right get warm reviews, particularly from people using it in country and rock bands rather than for bluegrass. Dean publishes no weight for it, and any figure quoted in a retail listing is a shipping weight that counts the carton. The closest banjo anyone does publish a real figure for — an eleven-inch resonator with no tone ring — is six pounds, and nothing without a tone ring gets much past that. What catches people out is not the mass but the shape: a resonator has a rounded back that wants to roll off a lap, which is why a strap is not optional on one of these. [What a banjo actually weighs, model by model](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) has the published figures. One thing worth knowing about the maker rather than the instrument: Dean’s parent company, Armadillo Enterprises, filed for Chapter 11 restructuring in June 2026. Armadillo have said Dean continues and that existing orders and dealer commitments will be honored. It is not a reason to panic, but on a $549 instrument it is a reason to think about who services a warranty claim. ## What to buy instead № 1 · The direct replacement ### Ortega Falcon OBJE400 - Quilted maple resonator, maple ply rim - Brass tone ring - Passive pickup with volume control - Maple neck and maple fingerboard, 22 frets - 670 mm scale, 31 mm nut, adjustable truss rod - 24 brackets, brushed nickel hardware, armrest - Remo Fiberskin-style head - Deluxe gig bag included, ~$650 This is what the Backwoods 2 wanted to be. The brass tone ring is the difference that matters — it is the part that gives a resonator banjo its bark, it cannot be retrofitted for less than the price gap, and the Dean simply does not have one. The nut is wide enough to play properly, the armrest and the gig bag are in the box rather than on the accessories list, and the maple rim is a real one. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The honest caveat is that the built-in pickup is a passive transducer rather than a magnetic unit, so it amplifies the banjo’s own voice rather than producing an electric tone of its own, and it is more prone to feedback at volume than a magnetic pickup would be. For most players that is the right compromise. For a loud stage it is not, and a magnetic pickup is what solves that. **Pros**- Brass tone ring where the Dean has none - 31 mm nut and a maple neck - Armrest and deluxe gig bag included - 22 frets rather than 21 **Cons**- Around a hundred dollars more - Passive transducer, not a magnetic pickup - Maple fingerboard divides opinion on feel Around $650[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g9VTyK) № 2 · If you already have a banjo you like ### Gold Tone SMP+ Sliding Magnetic Pickup - Magnetic humbucker, the same principle as the Dean’s - Mounts on the coordinator rods — no soldering, no drilling - Slides anywhere between the neck and the bridge - Kit includes the output jack, mounting plate, wire clamps and hex wrench - Fits five-string banjos with single or dual coordinator rods - ~$150, against a $169.99 list This is the argument of the whole page in one part. For about a quarter of what the Backwoods 2 listed at, the banjo you already own becomes the banjo that plugs in — and unlike a factory-fitted unit, you can slide this one toward the neck for a fatter tone or back toward the bridge for more attack, then take it off entirely when you sell the instrument. Gold Tone builds it well enough to use it themselves — the EBM-5 carries one hidden under its head. The one requirement is coordinator rods, the steel rods running across the inside of the pot. Bluegrass and resonator banjos have them. Most open backs, and the Backwoods 2 with its bolt-on neck plate, do not — for those the answer is a bridge pickup. **Pros**- Magnetic, so it holds up on a loud stage - Sliding mount, so you can tune the tone by position - No soldering and no holes drilled in the rim - Comes off again with a hex wrench **Cons**- Needs coordinator rods, so it will not fit every banjo - Adds an external jack and a cable to manage - Sounds like an electric banjo, which is not always what you want Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gk6HsR) № 3 · The one that fits any banjo ### L.R. Baggs Banjo Pickup - Vibration sensor molded into a 5/8″ maple bridge - Fits any five-string banjo — you change the bridge - Custom jack and mounting system included - Sounds like the banjo, amplified - ~$190, which is L.R. Baggs’ own price The neatest solution on the page. Rather than mounting a pickup inside the pot, L.R. Baggs molded their sensor into the bridge itself, so fitting it is the same job as changing a bridge — no rods to clamp to, no rim to drill, nothing that cares whether your banjo has a resonator. That makes it the only option here for an open back. Because it reads the bridge rather than the strings, it amplifies the instrument’s own voice, head and all — closer to a microphone than to the Dean’s magnetic unit. That is the better sound in a listening room and the harder one to control in front of a loud drummer. Pick on the basis of the room, not the price. **Pros**- Fits any banjo, open back included - Nothing drilled and nothing clamped - Amplifies the banjo’s real voice - Sold at the maker’s own price **Cons**- Dearer than the Gold Tone - More feedback-prone at high volume - You are committed to their bridge height Around $190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zzEVSc) № 4 · If the plugged-in sound is the point ### Gold Tone EBM-5 - Hollow F-style mahogany body, 8″ Remo head - 8″ aluminum tone ring - Humbucker at the neck plus an SMP+ under the head - Maple neck, ebony board, snowflake inlays, 21 frets - 26 3/8″ scale, 1 3/16″ nut, GT planetary tuners - 8.3 lb, GDGBD, hard case included - Set up in Titusville, Florida — ~$1,400 An entirely different proposition, and what a good many people looking for an acoustic-electric banjo actually want. Two pickups feeding separate knobs, an eight-inch pot that is quiet enough to practice on unamplified, and a body shaped like a mandolin so it hangs on a strap without a rim digging into your forearm. It is three times the money, so it is not a Backwoods 2 alternative for most people. It is the honest answer to the question the Backwoods 2 was asking, and it is built by a company that puts a weight on its spec sheet and sets every instrument up before it ships. **Pros**- Two pickups, properly voiced for banjo - Aluminum tone ring and an ebony board - Quiet acoustically, which is a feature on an electric - Hard case included **Cons**- Around three times the price - An 8″ pot is not a bluegrass banjo - 8.3 lb Around $1,400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cSpkmG) ## Who the Backwoods 2 does suit Small hands. That narrow nut and flat board are a genuine advantage if the standard banjo neck feels like a plank, and there is very little else built that way. Guitarists moving across will also find the four-bolt neck and the 26 1/2 inch scale familiar in a way a traditional pot assembly is not. It also suits a band that is amplified anyway. Without a tone ring the Backwoods 2 has no acoustic cut, but through a PA that stops mattering, and the clear head is a genuinely striking thing on a stage. If you play country or rock rather than bluegrass, and everything you do goes through a mixing desk, the missing tone ring costs you far less than it would a bluegrass player. What it will not do is bluegrass acoustically, and that is worth being clear about before you buy any resonator banjo — [the difference between an open back and a resonator](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is about the pot and the tone ring together, not the resonator alone. ## Common questions ### Is the Dean Backwoods 2 a good beginner banjo? Only if you have small hands. The narrow nut is the deciding factor and it is not adjustable. A beginner with average hands will make faster progress on a wider neck, and at this money there are several — [the banjos worth starting on](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) sets out the range. ### What is the difference between the Backwoods 2 and the Backwoods 2 Pro? The Pro adds a brass tone ring, a thicker pot and two extra frets — 23 rather than 21 — for $250 more at list. The tone ring is the substantive one; it is what turns a loud banjo into a cutting one. Everything else about the two instruments, including the 1 1/8 inch nut, is the same. ### Do you need an amp to play it? No. It is a complete acoustic banjo with a pickup added, and it plays unplugged like any other resonator banjo without a tone ring: loud, warm, not especially cutting. The jack is there when you want it. ### Can you fit a better pickup to it? Not the Gold Tone SMP+, which clamps to coordinator rods this banjo does not have. The L.R. Baggs bridge pickup will fit, because it fits anything. In practice, if you are replacing the pickup on a $549 banjo you have answered the question about whether it was the right banjo. ### Is there a six-string version? Yes — the Backwoods 6, which is a guitar-tuned banjo with a 25 1/2 inch scale and a 1 11/16 inch nut, so it plays like a guitar rather than a banjo. That is a different instrument for a different player, and [the six-string banjos worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-6-string-banjo/) sets out the options. ## Verdict The Backwoods 2 is a competent budget resonator banjo with a good idea attached to it. The clear head looks superb, twenty-four brackets is more than the price suggests, and the magnetic pickup is the right sort for a stage. But the money went into the electronics and the finish rather than the two things that decide how a banjo plays and sounds — the neck width and the tone ring — and neither can be added later. Which is the argument against buying any banjo for its pickup. A pickup is a part; it costs $150 to $190, it goes on in an afternoon, and it comes off again. Buy the best banjo you can hold comfortably, then plug it in when you need to. If you are still weighing the instrument itself, [the banjos worth stepping up to](https://promusicvault.com/best-intermediate-banjo/) and [what a banjo actually costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) are the places to look next. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Trumpet Brands to Avoid: What Actually Goes Wrong](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Trumpet Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/trumpet-reviews/ "Trumpet Reviews")› Trumpet Brands to Avoid: What Actually Goes Wrong A trumpet has three moving parts and all three of them will eventually need attention. Valves stick. Slides seize. Someone knocks it off a music stand. The day that happens is the day you find out what you actually bought, because the question stops being how it sounds and becomes whether anyone can get a part for it. That is the useful way to sort trumpets, and it is not the same as sorting them by badge. Some of the names that turn up on lists like this one are custom shops building four-thousand-dollar horns for professionals. They are on the list because someone mistook expensive for unsuitable. If you want one answer### Avoid the colored ones, and anything whose maker publishes no warranty, no parts and no repair route For a first B♭ trumpet, the Jean Paul TR-330 at around $250 is the cheapest instrument here made by a company with a dated warranty policy, a replacement-parts route and named service centers behind it. Under about $200 the market is built down to a price and sold hard on finish color, which is the one thing school band programs tell parents in writing to avoid. **First trumpet:** Jean Paul TR-330, ~$250 **Step up:** Jean Paul TR-430, ~$400 **School standard:** Yamaha YTR-2330, $700–950 **The test:** who fixes it? ## Table of Contents - [Taylor, Harrelson and Lätzsch are not beginner traps](#taylor-harrelson-and-laumltzsch-are-not-beginner-traps) - [What band programs actually put in writing](#what-band-programs-actually-put-in-writing) - [The question that actually decides it: who fixes it?](#the-question-that-actually-decides-it-who-fixes-it) - [Three specs that are not really decisions](#three-specs-that-are-not-really-decisions) - [What to buy instead](#what-to-buy-instead) - [The trumpet worth knowing about above these](#the-trumpet-worth-knowing-about-above-these) - [If you already own a cheap trumpet](#if-you-already-own-a-cheap-trumpet) - [Renting](#renting) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [What are the worst trumpet brands for beginners?](#what-are-the-worst-trumpet-brands-for-beginners) - [Are Taylor, Harrelson or Lätzsch bad for beginners?](#are-taylor-harrelson-or-laumltzsch-bad-for-beginners) - [Why do band directors say not to buy colored trumpets?](#why-do-band-directors-say-not-to-buy-colored-trumpets) - [How much should a first trumpet cost?](#how-much-should-a-first-trumpet-cost) - [How can I tell a low-quality trumpet before buying?](#how-can-i-tell-a-lowquality-trumpet-before-buying) ## Taylor, Harrelson and Lätzsch are not beginner traps These three names circulate as trumpet brands beginners should avoid. All three are custom shops, and a beginner will never be within reach of one by accident. **Taylor Trumpets** is Andy Taylor’s shop. Its current B♭ models — the Chicago, the Chicago Lite, the Chicago Standard — list between roughly $3,995 and $4,495 on Taylor’s own site. **Harrelson Trumpets** builds in Denver, Colorado, and sells custom leadpipes, bells, tuning slides and mouthpieces to players who want a specific horn optimized a specific way. **Lätzsch Custom Brass** has been in Bremen since 1949 and describes itself, in its own words, as “mainly known for our trombones”. Warning a first-year player off these is like warning a learner driver off Ferrari. It is true that they are not the right instrument, and it is no use to anyone, because the actual money at risk is at the other end of the market entirely. ## What band programs actually put in writing School band handbooks are unusually blunt about this, and two instructions come up again and again. The first is about color. Elizabeth City Middle School’s band handbook tells parents: “If you are looking to buy, avoid instruments in bright colors… Do not buy bright colored instruments for your child.” The McNary High School band program gives the reasoning: “Colored instruments are made cheaply (which is why they are cheap!), and will break, play out of tune, and have terrible tone quality.” This is a more useful filter than it sounds, because color is exactly what the bottom of the trumpet market competes on. Sub-$200 horns are routinely sold in blue, black, white, red and purple, and the finish is often the only thing separating one listing from the next. If you are looking for a single visible signal that an instrument was designed to be bought rather than played, that is it. The second is about off-brand instruments generally. McNary’s guidance reads: “Do NOT buy an ‘off-brand’ instrument! Ever! These are poor quality instruments that will break, produce a poor tone quality, play out of tune and need constant adjustments.” That is stronger than we would put it. A $110 trumpet will make a trumpet sound, and plenty of them carry perfectly respectable customer ratings. The problem is not the first week. It is the first repair. ## The question that actually decides it: who fixes it? Trumpets are repairable objects. Valves get lapped, dents get rolled out, a leadpipe gets replaced. Whether that is worth doing depends on something you can check before you buy: what the company behind the instrument publishes about supporting it. MakerWritten warrantyReplacement partsRepair route**Yamaha**Yes, with a dated policyYesAuthorized US dealer network**Conn-Selmer (Bach)**Yes, with a dated policyYes, a published parts programDealer network, plus serial-number lookup**Jean Paul**Yes — one year, dated policy, covered and excluded items listedYes, sent directNamed authorized service centers**Eastar**“12-month warranty” in product blurbs; no policy documentNot publishedNot published**Cecilio / Mendini**None publishedNot publishedNot published Cecilio’s own site is a single page of copy and does not contain the word warranty anywhere on it. Eastar’s mentions a twelve-month warranty inside individual product descriptions, but there is no policy behind it — nothing setting out what is covered, what is excluded or where an instrument goes to be looked at. Jean Paul, by contrast, publishes a dated policy naming what it covers, what it does not, and what happens when a claim succeeds: replacement parts sent out, repair at an authorized service center, or a replacement instrument. Note the condition attached to every one of the real warranties: they run to the original buyer, from an authorized dealer, with proof of purchase. Yamaha states it flatly — “Yamaha products purchased from retailers other than Yamaha Authorized Dealers (whether via the Internet, or otherwise) will NOT be covered by Yamaha’s warranties.” Jean Paul’s is the same in substance. Keep the receipt, and buy from a dealer the maker recognizes, or the warranty is decoration. ## Three specs that are not really decisions Beginner trumpet checklists tend to pad themselves out with specifications that sound like choices and are not. Every student B♭ trumpet worth owning lands in the same narrow band. **Bore.** The Yamaha YTR-2330 is ML, 11.65mm or .459″. Bach’s student horns are .459″. Blessing’s are .460″. The Jean Paul TR-430 is .465″. Makers are not even consistent about the label — Jean Paul calls .465″ a medium bore, Yamaha calls .459″ medium-large — so the word tells you less than the number, and the number barely moves. You are not choosing a bore. You are choosing a trumpet that happens to have one. **Valve material.** Monel and stainless steel are both standard and both fine; Yamaha and Bach use monel, Jean Paul uses stainless. What matters is how well the pistons are fitted, which no spec sheet reports. **Adjustable third-valve slide ring.** Effectively universal at this level. Its absence would be a red flag; its presence tells you nothing. What is worth checking is duller and more useful: a two-piece yellow brass bell, a case that closes properly, and a maker that answers the repair question above. ## What to buy instead Best first trumpet ### Jean Paul TR-330 Student B♭ Trumpet - Two-piece yellow brass bell, 4.92″ - Stainless steel pistons - Gold lacquer finish - Adjustable third-valve ring - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case included - One-year written warranty - ~$250 This is the cheapest trumpet on this page that comes with an actual support structure: a dated warranty policy listing what is covered, replacement parts sent direct, and named service centers. At around $250 it sits roughly a hundred dollars above the colored-horn tier and about a third of the price of the school standard, which is the gap most beginners should be aiming at. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It is a student instrument and it plays like one — the response is a little stiff at the top, and a player who sticks with it will want more horn inside two or three years. That is the normal shape of a first trumpet, and it is a better outcome than an instrument that is uneconomic to repair the first time a valve goes. Two versions share a listing: the TR-330 in gold lacquer at around $250 and the TR-330N in nickel at around $270, each offered on its own or as a bundle. The plain gold lacquer trumpet is the one to take. **Pros**- A real written warranty with a parts and service route behind it - Cheapest genuinely supported trumpet here - Case and mouthpiece included and both usable - Conventional gold lacquer, so it passes the band-handbook color rule **Cons**- Stiffer response than a Yamaha or Bach at three times the price - A committed player outgrows it within a few years - Warranty needs the receipt and an authorized dealer Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gEN3br) If the player is already committed ### Jean Paul TR-430 Intermediate B♭ Trumpet - .465″ bore - Rose brass leadpipe - Adjustable third-valve ring - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case included - One-year written warranty - ~$400 The step up from the TR-330, and the sensible buy for a student who has already done a year on a rental and is staying with it. The rose brass leadpipe is the substantive difference: it warms the tone and takes some of the edge off the top of the range, which is where a cheap trumpet sounds most obviously cheap. At around $400 this is not a beginner purchase, and it is worth being blunt that it does not close the gap to the horns that cost twice as much. What it does is buy a couple more years before the instrument becomes the limiting factor. **Pros**- Rose brass leadpipe makes a real difference to tone - Same warranty, parts and service route as the TR-330 - Holds a player through several more years **Cons**- Too much trumpet for a first-year beginner - Still short of what $700 upward buys Around $400[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Jean-Paul-USA-TR-430-Intermediate/dp/B01CYA7L6E?crid=37GJQ0XDDR28O&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Uu4B41xQK8L3w1DExBh4YcdFXK2f8yqltOgyAsZzM-idyBSYq3tMz1CeLThHt1ZuswPl1ooXOTOlzporlzVD063Pew1T4laTHxuvQskEqvk.FOLMx1fuqvsYqS585bjBeAgdFfOidsmVblNt3F6sIDU&dib_tag=se&keywords=jean%2Bpaul%2Busa%2Btr%2B430&qid=1745537508&sprefix=jean%2Bpaul%2Busa%2Btr%2B430%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.5998aa40-ec6f-4947-a68f-cd087fee0848&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a36e16b27a14be9a4cfe5cc1be695284&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) ## The trumpet worth knowing about above these The Yamaha YTR-2330 is what a large number of school programs standardize on, and it is the horn a student can keep for a decade rather than a few years. It is a two-piece yellow brass bell, a 123mm bell, an ML .459″ bore and monel pistons, and it runs somewhere between $700 and $950. One condition comes with it and it is worth repeating, because it is the single most expensive thing to get wrong at this price: Yamaha’s US warranty covers instruments originally sold by Yamaha Authorized Dealers in the United States, and nothing else. On a $250 trumpet that risk is survivable. On an $800 one it is most of the reason to be careful about where it comes from. ## If you already own a cheap trumpet Do not throw it out on the strength of a page on the internet. Two things are worth doing first, and between them they cost a fraction of a replacement. Take it to a repair shop for a check-over — the Elizabeth City handbook gives parents exactly this advice for any second-hand instrument, and it applies just as well to a new budget one. A valve alignment and a proper clean transform how a cheap horn plays, and the technician will tell you honestly whether it is worth more work. Then change the mouthpiece. It is the cheapest real improvement available to a budget trumpet, because the mouthpiece that ships with one is usually the least carefully finished part of the package. The cheapest worthwhile upgrade ### Bach 3517C Trumpet Mouthpiece, 7C - Bach Classic Series, model 3517C - 7C cup — the standard beginner size - Silver plated - Fits any B♭ trumpet or cornet with a standard receiver - ~$65 The 7C is the size nearly every beginner starts on, and a genuine Bach one is consistent in a way the mouthpiece bundled with a budget instrument generally is not — the rim is finished properly, the throat is where it should be, and it does not vary between examples. On a trumpet that cost a hundred dollars this is the single change that most improves how it plays. Check the model number rather than the size when buying. Bach’s 3517C is the 7C; the 3517CW is the 7CW, a wider cushioned rim, and listings for the two are easy to confuse because both get titled simply “7C”. Players usually move up to a 3C after a year or two, which many band programs treat as the standard size from that point on. **Pros**- Consistent, properly finished, and the size beginners are taught on - Biggest improvement per dollar on any cheap trumpet - Moves with the player to their next instrument **Cons**- A quarter of the price of the TR-330, which is a lot for a mouthpiece - Easily confused with the 7CW — check for 3517C Around $65[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3ShuBgS) ## Renting For a beginner in a school program, renting is often the better first move, and band handbooks routinely organize it. A rental puts a properly maintained instrument in a child’s hands, gets it serviced when it goes wrong, and costs nothing extra if they give up after a term. Many rental schemes also apply the payments toward a purchase. The case for buying is that a year of rental payments approaches the price of the TR-330 outright. If the player is already committed, buying wins on arithmetic. If they are eleven and it is September, it usually does not. Either way, the handbooks agree on one thing worth doing first: tell the band director what you are thinking of buying. They will say whether it fits the program, and they will know what the other trumpets in the section are. ## FAQs ### What are the worst trumpet brands for beginners? The risky tier is not a specific brand but the sub-$200 group sold mainly on finish color, whose makers publish no warranty policy, no replacement parts and no repair route. Cecilio and Mendini publish none of the three; Eastar mentions a twelve-month warranty in product copy without a policy behind it. ### Are Taylor, Harrelson or Lätzsch bad for beginners? They are not bad at all. They are custom shops building professional instruments — Taylor’s B♭ models list around $3,995 to $4,495 — and no beginner is going to buy one by mistake. ### Why do band directors say not to buy colored trumpets? Two reasons. Colored finishes cluster at the cheapest end of the market, so color works as a proxy for build quality. And school programs want the section to match, which matters once a band starts competing. ### How much should a first trumpet cost? Around $250 buys the cheapest properly supported new student trumpet. Around $400 buys an intermediate one. The school standard runs $700 to $950 and is worth it only for a player who is staying with the instrument. ### How can I tell a low-quality trumpet before buying? Look up the maker and try to find three things: a dated warranty policy, replacement parts, and somewhere to have the instrument repaired. If a company cannot tell you what happens when its trumpet breaks, that is the answer. Bright colors and a price under $150 point the same way. If you are still working out what you are buying, the [trumpet fingering chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) covers how the valves actually work, and [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) puts the trumpet in context alongside the rest of the family. For the instruments it gets confused with, see [trumpet vs. bugle](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-vs-bugle/) and [mellophone vs. trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/). **Categories:** Trumpet, Trumpet Reviews --- ### [Ibanez B300 Banjo Review: Bluegrass Hardware, Friction Tuners](https://promusicvault.com/ibanez-b300-banjo/) **Published:** May 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Ibanez B300 Banjo Review: Bluegrass Hardware, Friction Tuners The Ibanez B300 is a full-size five-string resonator banjo built around a basswood block rim, a rolled tone ring and a two-piece flange, with a walnut resonator, abalone purfling and twenty-four brackets. It sells for around $600. That specification does not exist anywhere else at that money — the American-built banjos in the same bracket have no tone ring, no flange and no resonator. What Ibanez took out to get there is the tuning. The B300 has friction pegs, not geared machines, and a plastic nut. Both are stated on Ibanez’s own specification sheet, both are the things owners complain about, and both are fixable for less than the price difference to the next banjo up. The short version### Ibanez B300 The most traditional bluegrass layout you can buy for around $600 — block rim, rolled tone ring, resonator, two-piece flange, twenty-four brackets — attached to friction tuners and a plastic nut. Worth it if you are willing to have it set up and to put geared pegs on it. Not worth it if you want to open the box and play. Around $600 [Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Ibanez-B300-5-string-Resonator-Banjo/dp/B00T0B49N4?crid=1CPX8WY3MZMVF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.2yjKytL5CvA6BNdxUjZBcgwd48xZjX3fAGuZ6aV9RlNHxpVxZC-srJpNPOQuRKUCpotMX-R1JoSc-ZcSmCiQBWfS4OPMoQyiPBY4rQoaEZyNU4v5izjdZBs6ZvfDxnII8oGoP99e5CJPkeIGmR7XfwKj-ep3XPdQ5RoqfTGrXD3sqMWHJql_zwHW-EdKofm_nrgXzLpCSbvDvjdr8yGdk74FpIBpyXAK9wX4QBaOY7c6FtQgfvU74rixma55-u5UnqzGiPdS4gykHSyoDUVYN7tAY8PpIeSCqQuJ1vGyvqs._bAhfOA2jrQ_hpA3Nf9Z8J1Vxmh1Jb9AkeB4p5uVrTE&dib_tag=se&keywords=ibanez+b300&qid=1746073594&sprefix=ibanez+b300%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=2ca43b5778cf4310e9f4c81d91e19619&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **If you want it to arrive playing:** Gold Tone CC-100R — around $800 **The one upgrade to budget for:** geared fifth-string peg — around $16 ## What Ibanez actually specifies These figures are Ibanez’s own. The neck is okoume with a bolted joint, the fingerboard purpleheart, the inlay acrylic and the resonator walnut with an abalone purfling line round its edge. The nut is plastic. The head is an eleven-inch coated Remo Weatherking under a steel tension hoop, pulled down by twenty-four brackets. Ibanez B300Ibanez B200Gold Tone CC-100RDeering Goodtime TwoRimBasswood blockBasswood11″ multi-ply maple3-ply violin-grade mapleTone ringRolledRolled11″ rolled brass flat barNoneResonatorWalnut, abalone purflingSapeleMapleMapleNeckOkoumeOkoumeMapleRock mapleFingerboardPurpleheart, acrylic inlayPurpleheart, acrylic inlayRosewood, snowflake inlayMapleTunersChrome frictionChrome frictionSealed gearedSealed gearedNutPlasticPlastic1-3/16″ ZeroGlideNot publishedHead11″ Remo coated WeatherkingRemo Weatherking11″ Remo LC coatedFrostedBrackets24242416FlangeTwo-pieceTwo-pieceTwo-pieceNoneScale26.4″26.4″26-3/16″26 1/4″BuiltImportImportImport, set up in FloridaCaliforniaPrice band~$600~$500[~$800](https://amzn.to/3SPfpYm)~$850 The B200 sitting $100 below it is the same instrument in cheaper clothes: same rim, same neck, same fingerboard, same friction pegs, same flange and bracket count. What the extra hundred buys on the B300 is walnut instead of sapele on the resonator, the abalone purfling round its edge, and the headstock inlay. It is a hundred dollars of appearance, and nothing in it changes how the banjo plays or sounds. ## The friction tuners A friction peg is a tapered shaft held in the hole by pressure, with a screw in the end of the button that you tighten to increase the grip. There is no gear train. Turning the button a few degrees moves the pitch a long way, and whatever tension is left in the string keeps trying to turn it back. A geared peg — planetary on a banjo, four turns of the button to one of the shaft — moves in small predictable amounts and stays where it is put. This is the one thing owners of the B300 consistently raise. Reviews on [Banjo Hangout](https://www.banjohangout.org/w/reviews/search/m/m/v/11368/) rate the instrument 8 and 9 out of 10 and still describe “weak tuners which do not hold tight” and a fifth-string peg that arrived badly seated. One owner replaced the whole set with Gotoh planetary machines and considered the banjo finished after that. There is a curiosity in Ibanez’s own range here. The cheapest banjo they make, the B50, is fitted with open-gear machine heads. The B200 and B300 above it both use friction pegs. Moving up the line loses you the geared tuning, because the friction peg looks more traditional on a banjo with a two-piece flange and a purfled resonator. ### The cheap fix The fifth string is the one that will drive you mad, because it is short, it is under the least tension and it is the one you retune most often when you capo. A single geared fifth-string peg costs around $16 and takes about ten minutes. The first thing to change ### Golden Gate P-142 geared fifth-string peg - 10:1 gear ratio - Seats into a 9mm hole - Triple nickel plating, removable pearloid button - Single peg, not a set - ~$16 Ten to one is a lot of gearing for one string, and it turns the fifth from the peg you fight into the one you forget about. Measure the hole in the neck before ordering. Nine millimeters is the usual size on a modern banjo, but it is worth a caliper rather than an assumption, and a hole a previous owner has already reamed will be wider. **Pros**- Fixes the worst of the problem for around $16 - 10:1 gearing, far finer than a friction peg - Ten-minute job with a screwdriver **Cons**- Leaves the other four as they were - Needs a 9mm hole Around $16[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SNp3L5) ### The proper fix If the other four annoy you too ### Gotoh SPBJ4-AIN planetary tuners, set of four - 1:4 planetary gearing - Nickel plated, vintage cream pearloid buttons - Made in Japan - Set of four, for the peghead only - ~$135 Planetary machines are what a bluegrass banjo is meant to have, and Gotoh’s are the ones most players fit. The gearbox sits in a compact housing behind the headstock, so a set of four looks close enough to the friction pegs they replace that the banjo does not change character. Be honest with yourself about the arithmetic first. This is a fifth of what the banjo cost, and adding it to the price of the B300 puts you within reach of a banjo that came with geared tuners and a proper nut already. It is the right purchase if you already own the B300 and a poor one if you are budgeting for it up front. **Pros**- The tuning problem gone entirely - Gotoh build quality, and they will outlast the banjo - Keeps the traditional look **Cons**- Around $135, on a $600 instrument - Does not include the fifth peg - The peghead holes may need reaming to fit Around $135[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Tuners-Polishing-SPBJ4-AIN-Pearloid-Buttons/dp/B07GCN55N8?crid=1AK3XKQDP5R4V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V7vkdLM8iVJZxsVBCpN1XaaS4drRvjfOfXgShjlDTzdQ6by5EGbOBLp04DgrZVI3BtPbofy6aYpic1VCWqk7oNn_3XSn1tpqjMXYZ2-x_4YDVC7L9K204igNk05n5m2xROmPlr_Qh-z9F0GD_QTCseLfVWxCAD_aYZ8OILKM7TaqW7fKt6JuCVnnZyFIOY_Jr5pQ8HMToyDEo8tBbjVP5i6uG7MVvZqQG8axfCigfXwf8AdWwLuJqJoqIabET9N1cHPdaxlYS1ow05_-YWHGegbg61aiFF4qYEcPJfJV0Z0.VC7fwFgYbxhJFGpS1FePO17afqWpQSfvDXoWlGq5KBc&dib_tag=se&keywords=gotoh+geared+banjo+tuners&qid=1746073745&sprefix=gotoh+geared+banjo+tuners%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=925a26853b90821935decef7fc8645d4&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) ## How it sounds, and why the rim matters The pot is the interesting part of this banjo. A block rim is built the way a barrel is: short blocks of wood glued edge to edge into a ring, then turned round. It is how Gibson built Mastertones and how most expensive banjos are still built, and it is almost never what you get on an import at this price, where a three-ply laminate is the norm. The B300’s block rim is basswood rather than maple, which is softer and lighter than the traditional wood, but the construction is the real thing. On top of it sits a rolled tone ring: a hoop of metal bent to shape, which the head bears down on. Ibanez does not publish what it is made of. What matters is the class of ring rather than the metal — a rolled hoop is bright and adds cut and volume over bare wood for very little weight or money, and it is not the same animal as a cast bell-brass ring, which is three pounds of poured metal and is what you are hearing on bluegrass records. Nothing near this price has a cast ring; the cheapest one worth owning is the Gold Tone OB-150 at around $1,300, which is covered in [the banjos worth having around $1,000](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-under-1000/). The result, once the head is tightened properly, is a loud, bright, punchy banjo with a fast decay — squarely a bluegrass voice rather than an old-time one. Owners who have set one up compare it favourably with instruments costing several times as much, and the block rim is the reason that comparison is even in the conversation. If a resonator is not obviously what you want, [the difference between an open back and a resonator banjo](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is worth settling first. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## What it needs when it arrives Both published owner reviews describe the same experience: the banjo turned up assembled but not set up. The head was slack, the coordinator rods needed adjusting, the action was high and the tuners were loose in their holes. After an afternoon of work both owners were delighted with it. This is normal for an import at this price and it is the single biggest thing separating a $600 banjo from an $800 one. If you can do it yourself, the order is: bring the head up to tension, set the coordinator rods so the neck angle gives you the action you want, position the bridge by the twelfth-fret harmonic, and put decent strings on. If you cannot, a banjo setup at a shop runs $50 to $100 and it is money far better spent than any hardware upgrade. The plastic nut is the other thing worth knowing about. Ibanez lists it as plastic, and a soft nut with slots cut slightly too narrow is the usual reason a cheap banjo plays sharp in the first position and pings when you tune. A luthier will cut you a bone one for very little while the banjo is in for setup. ## What to put on it The strings it ships with are not worth keeping. A medium 10–23 nickel-plated set is the standard bluegrass gauge and the right thing to put on a resonator banjo with a tone ring; light 9–20 is the alternative if you want less resistance under the fingers, at the cost of some volume. [The banjo strings worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) goes through the gauges properly. WhatWhich onePrice bandStrings[D’Addario XT, medium 10–23, nickel-plated](https://amzn.to/3U1UCRR) — treated to last several times longer than plain steel, which matters when the strings are the thing keeping friction pegs under tension~$9Tuner[Snark SN5X clip-on](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-SN5X-Guitar-Violin-Current/dp/B01H74YV56?crid=TKQIUJUXJA8C&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.i9GV_-Dcfe_usA-DDDYe-I8SWexV56j7mETHh2-oqU1Wc79XzBcxPlabfmjS1SrQamGtY3tRYt3aDxWEeK8nQrEdx6KBQ09w7v_MTWE79M5RJvHE_-kmw2M_ulZ3Tc5FButgDX6ESPs49CPATTU7VNuO2w38ti_TPPWYrM3cDVw-EOsjvf2MzZjQy3_HKJRydl-8gj1ofLLarlxu6l1ArLOrveJHs5h6M38e3wve0xdHS8mw39EKyJkiqm-pBbnDZ6d8734EdVa3EpLedC14tFJzeuRGAcs0aRSamzyKxpI.f8-Lwre5y8SwsbN8KLNF_9Z42VI7YF3RgQOOL7LT244&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bsn5x&qid=1746073993&sprefix=snark%2Bsn5x%2Caps%2C148&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=9336fd6158eb43fb384dca5ef6cddd41&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) — chromatic, reads by vibration, and you will use it more on this banjo than on most~$22Case[Gator GC-BANJO-XL molded ABS](https://www.amazon.com/Gator-Deluxe-Molded-Banjos-GC-BANJO-XL/dp/B0002GU88G?crid=3QCMKYEL1CLZ5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uoS367YnzHd1kN81yqBy65Ilq01YRdpx_E5Ff6pnyT_juDrfvPcVw8V-WrkrG41JJ7H6UdQpMVL4JIQc4Edafw240Zotdl9ZHg2P2PzOwMgHeKQxYZIpMA5vcso-GKDRWxahWJkiEZ8WgOxwQ9_f5z9hOo00r4IBcbadMh93C1T8xES6s79x2BJzz2u4PjC-nMITAPygGzdsOnYVUenDMf_AGA_KaY4mI27L_KvEsThSj6_sHb1_oQj-zH7NA3ovwKebvi-5DaIdzL20CKusLVrbGeMOqCZh3kDkd7vEmMk.GH5NP2TJgZpc5qKLHmKlzk_AVa-wZnevNP4lE53SE94&dib_tag=se&keywords=Gator+GC-BANJO-XL+Deluxe+ABS+Molded+Case&qid=1746074055&sprefix=gator+gc-banjo-xl+deluxe+abs+molded+case%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-6&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.9fe8cbfa-bf43-43d1-a707-3f4e65a4b666&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=3c67ffa19de2471945a9ba158cfbf7fa&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) — 14.4″ lower bout, so it takes the B300’s 14″ resonator; nothing ships with the banjo~$160 A clip-on that reads vibration rather than sound is worth insisting on here, since a banjo in a room with other instruments defeats a microphone tuner entirely. If you want something with banjo-specific sweetened tunings instead, [the banjo tuners worth owning](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) covers that ground. ## The banjo to buy instead, if you would rather not do any of that The $200 answer ### Gold Tone CC-100R Cripple Creek - Resonator, 11″ multi-ply maple rim - 11″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Sealed geared tuners - 1-3/16″ ZeroGlide nut - Maple neck, rosewood board, 22 frets, 26-3/16″ scale - 24 brackets, Remo LC coated head, Terminator tailpiece - 6 lb, gig bag included - Hand set up in Florida, seven-year transferable warranty - ~$800 Everything the B300 makes you do yourself, this has already had done. It is set up before it ships, so the head is at tension and the action is right out of the box. The tuners are geared. The nut is a ZeroGlide, which is a fitted replacement that cuts the slots to the correct depth and is the specific answer to the plastic-nut problem. A gig bag is in the box. What you give up is the block rim. The Gold Tone’s pot is multi-ply maple, which is the ordinary way of building a rim, against the B300’s blocked construction. On paper that goes Ibanez’s way and it is a real difference in how the two are made. In the hand, a set-up banjo with geared tuners beats a better-built one that will not stay in tune, and that is why this is $200 more. **Pros**- Arrives set up and playing - Geared tuners and a ZeroGlide nut, so nothing to fix - Rolled brass ring and a resonator, same layout as the Ibanez - Gig bag and a seven-year transferable warranty **Cons**- Around $200 more - Multi-ply rim rather than a block one - Plainer than the B300 to look at Around $800[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SPfpYm) Above both of them, the cheapest American-built resonator banjo is the Deering Goodtime Two at around $850, which has no tone ring at all — a decision Deering makes deliberately, and one that suits old-time better than bluegrass. [The banjos worth stepping up to](https://promusicvault.com/best-intermediate-banjo/) sets all three against each other. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the Ibanez B300 a good beginner banjo? Not really, and the reason is the tuning rather than the instrument. A beginner cannot yet tell the difference between a banjo that has gone out of tune and a hand that is fretting badly, so friction pegs cost them confidence they cannot spare. Someone who already plays, knows what a setup is and is buying on hardware for the money will get on with it very well. ### Does the B300 come with a case? No. There is no case and no gig bag, so budget for one separately. The resonator is 14 inches across and the body is a shade over four inches deep, which is a full-size bluegrass pot — any case sold for a full-size five-string resonator banjo will take it. ### What is the warranty on an Ibanez banjo? Ibanez file banjos under their acoustic line, and that warranty runs for the lifetime of the original retail purchaser, given by Hoshino USA and requiring the original sales receipt. Tuning hardware is the exception: it is covered for one year, not for life. Given which part of this banjo people replace, that is worth reading twice. ### Can the friction tuners be swapped for geared ones? Yes, and it is a common thing to do. The fifth-string peg is the easy one — a geared replacement drops into a 9mm hole. The four on the peghead are a bigger job, because planetary machines use a larger shaft than a friction peg and the holes usually need opening up. That is a ten-minute job for anyone with a reamer and a job for a shop otherwise. ### Is the B300 loud enough for a bluegrass jam? With the head brought up to proper tension, yes. The resonator throws the sound forward, the rolled ring adds cut, and twenty-four brackets pull the head evenly enough to hold that tension. It will not have the bark of a cast bell-brass Mastertone-style banjo, but nothing at three times the price will either. ## Verdict The B300 is a genuinely unusual instrument for around $600: block-rim construction, a rolled tone ring, a two-piece flange and twenty-four brackets, wrapped in a walnut resonator that looks like a banjo costing twice as much. Nobody else puts that combination in this bracket, and owners who set one up properly are consistently pleased with how it sounds. It is also a banjo that expects work. It arrives unset, the nut is plastic and the tuners are friction pegs, and Ibanez’s warranty covers those tuners for one year rather than for life. If you are happy to spend an afternoon and around $16 on a geared fifth peg, it is a lot of banjo. If you want to open a box and play, the extra $200 for a Gold Tone CC-100R buys exactly the things the Ibanez leaves you to sort out. Still working out where your money goes on a banjo at all? [What a banjo actually costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) and [the bluegrass banjos worth owning](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) both cover wider ground than this page does. **Categories:** Banjo, Banjo Reviews --- ### [Why Are Banjos So Expensive? It Is the Metal, Not the Wood](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/) **Published:** May 2, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› Why Are Banjos So Expensive? It Is the Metal, Not the Wood Mostly they are not. A playable five-string costs about the same as a playable guitar, and the two ladders run side by side until roughly $600. What is expensive is the *bluegrass* banjo, and the reason is that it carries about three pounds of cast bronze, a cast flange and forty-eight pieces of plated steel that no guitar has — made by a handful of companies who between them build fewer instruments in a year than one guitar factory builds in a fortnight. Where a banjo stops being expensive### Around $315 — Gold Tone AC-1 Composite rim, no tone ring, no resonator, no flange, 3.75 lb — and a person in Florida who set it up and played every note on it before it was boxed. Take the costly metal off a banjo and the price falls through the floor, because the metal is where nearly all of the difference lives. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bYHeny) **American built, still no tone ring:** around $599 **The first cast ring:** around $1,300 **What a professional pays:** $3,000 to $6,000 ## The same rim, four times the price Deering builds every banjo they sell in one building in San Diego. The Goodtime Two is $849. The Sierra is $3,499. Both are eleven-inch pots on a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, both have a 26¼-inch scale, and both necks are cut from hardwood by the same people in the same week. This is the entire difference between them. Goodtime Two, $849Sierra, $3,499**Rim**3-ply violin-grade maple, 11″3-ply violin-grade maple, 11″**Scale**26¼”26¼”**Hooks and nuts**16 flat J-hooks24 round J-hooks, hex nuts**Tone ring**None — head on bare woodCast 20-hole bell bronze**Flange**NoneOne-piece cast zinc**Hardware finish**Powder coatNickel plated**Fingerboard**MapleA-grade ebony, engraved inlays**Tuners**Sealed gearedPlanetary, geared fifth**Weight**About 6 lbAbout 11 lb Every line that changed is metal, or a process performed on metal. The wooden drum that a luthier would call the body of the instrument is the same part on both. Five of the eleven pounds the Sierra weighs are hardware the Goodtime does not have, and that hardware is most of the $2,650. Wood is what you pay for on a guitar, where the top is the thing that vibrates. On a banjo the wood is a hoop holding a sheet of plastic taut, and the metal sitting on top of that hoop decides almost everything about the sound. Buying a banjo by its timber is buying the wrong end of the instrument. ## Casting bronze is not woodworking A tone ring is a heavy metal hoop that the head presses down onto instead of bare wood, and it is the reason a bluegrass banjo rings and sustains and cuts through a room full of people. It is also a foundry product, which is a completely different industry from the one that makes musical instruments. Deering developed the ring in their top model with the Rüetschi bell foundry in Switzerland, and describe the aim as a casting “as dense and consistent in structure as a huge church bell”. That is not marketing about wood grain. It is a statement that they went to people who cast church bells, because getting the crystal structure of bronze right at that size is what those people do and nobody else does. The alternative is worse for the accountant. Deering’s Vega Tubaphone ring is not cast at all: in their words it is “made of three parts: the shell, hoop and the square tube”, which are “shaped, carefully hand fitted and soldered together, then polished and plated”. Three pieces of metal, fitted by hand, on one component of one instrument. There is no version of that which gets cheaper when you make more of them. Then everything gets plated. Twenty-four hooks, twenty-four nuts, a tension hoop, a flange, an armrest and a tailpiece all go through a nickel line, and plating is a trade with a minimum charge and a reject rate. The clearest evidence of what that costs is what Deering does to avoid it: the Goodtime’s spec sheet lists a powder finish rather than plating, and the Goodtime is the cheapest American banjo there is. The cheapest cast ring### Gold Tone OB-150 Orange Blossom - 11″ brass flat-top tone ring - One-piece cast flange - 3-ply maple rim, planetary tuners - Hard case included This is the rung where the sound changes rather than the finish, and both American makers put their first tone ring within seventy dollars of it — a cast brass one here, and a simpler steel ring on Deering’s $1,229 Goodtime Special. Everything below is a better-built version of a banjo with nothing under the head at all. If the ringing, barking bluegrass sound is the whole reason you want one, saving for this is cheaper than buying $700 twice. Around $1,300[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ztkaY3) ## Nobody makes very many banjos This is the part that never appears on a spec sheet and explains more than the spec sheet does. Deering is the largest banjo maker in the world. In fifty years they have built 186,294 banjos, and they publish the number: 17,425 before the year 2000 and 168,869 since. Martin celebrated their millionth guitar in 2004 and their two millionth in 2017. So one guitar company built a million instruments in thirteen years while the biggest banjo company on earth was building well under a hundred thousand. Every tooling cost, every casting pattern, every jig, every hour of engineering and every dollar of holding inventory on forty-odd distinct metal parts is divided by that much smaller number. It is the same arithmetic that makes a spare part for a rare car cost more than the same part for a common one, and it applies to every banjo on the market, not only the expensive ones. It also explains the shape of the price list. Deering’s own line runs from $599 to about $1,589, then jumps straight to $2,199 with nothing in between. That gap is not a marketing decision. It is where the manufacturing method changes from pressed and powder-coated parts to cast, plated and hand-fitted ones, and there is no way to be halfway through that change. ## Somebody has to set it up, and that is an afternoon A banjo has more things that need adjusting than any other common stringed instrument: head tension across twenty-four brackets, bridge placement on a bridge that is not attached to anything, neck angle through the coordinator rods, nut slots, relief, tailpiece pressure. None of it is set by the machine that made the parts. Gold Tone does that work in Titusville, Florida, and they publish what it involves — the neck inspected for twist and oil-conditioned, the bridge fitted and intonated, relief set until every string clears the fret wire, the nut slots filed, and then a final pass in which a cofounder of the company plays through every note on the instrument before it is packed. That is a skilled person’s hours on a banjo that sells for $315, and it is the clearest single reason an adjusted banjo costs twice what an unadjusted one does. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The unflattering corollary is worth saying plainly: at the very bottom of the market that work has simply not happened, and the price reflects it honestly. A $130 banjo is not a rip-off. It is a complete banjo with an afternoon’s labor missing, and the afternoon costs about what the banjo did. American built, no expensive parts### Deering Goodtime Openback - 3-ply violin-grade maple rim, 11″ - No tone ring, no resonator, no flange - Rock maple neck, 26¼” scale - About 4.5 lb The same rim as a $3,499 Sierra, from the same building, with every costly process left off it. It will still be worth most of what you paid in ten years, which is not true of anything under $300. If you want to know what an American banjo actually costs to build once the metalwork is removed, this is the answer — and it is why old-time players who never wanted a tone ring can buy once and stop. Around $599[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gnhe6A) ## The top of the market is a reproduction business Above about $3,500 the pricing stops being about manufacturing at all. What those instruments are is careful reproductions of Gibson Mastertone banjos built between roughly 1930 and 1940, which are the sound bluegrass has been chasing ever since, and which now change hands for the price of a car. Reproducing one means a cast ring machined and fitted to a hand-turned rim, inlay cut by hand, and a finish measured in weeks of curing rather than hours. The workshops doing it build a few hundred instruments a year between them. At that level you are buying a specific person’s hours and a very small supply, and the honest thing to say is that it is a want rather than a need — a good player on a $1,229 Goodtime Special will out-sound a poor one on a $6,000 banjo every night of the week. ## The expensive part is optional All of that metal belongs to one kind of banjo. For a large part of the banjo world the costly hardware is not an upgrade that has been skipped — it is a thing they actively do not want. Clawhammer and old-time playing wants the light, dry, woody note you get with the head bearing straight onto the wooden rim, and it wants an instrument you can hold on your knee for three hours. A four-and-a-half pound [open back banjo](/best-open-back-banjo/) with no ring and no resonator is the correct instrument for that music, not a compromised version of a better one. Which means a player who never intends to play bluegrass can stop spending at around $600 and own the last banjo they will need. The full trade-off is in [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/), and what the ring does to what you carry is in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ## Common questions ### Why is a banjo more expensive than a guitar? At the cheap end it is not — the two are within a few dollars of each other. Above about $600 a banjo carries cast and plated metal that a guitar has no equivalent of, and it is built by companies operating at a fraction of the scale. A dreadnought’s entire metal content is six tuners, six bridge pins, a truss rod and the frets. A bluegrass banjo has forty-eight plated fittings holding the head down before you reach the tone ring. ### Are cheap banjos any good? Under $200, a banjo is a complete instrument that nobody adjusted, and it will play badly until someone does. Budget for that work and it becomes genuinely decent. Around $315 you are buying an instrument that arrives ready, which is a bigger jump than the money suggests, and there are [six worth considering under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) if the setup is in the budget. ### What makes a $3,000 banjo different from a $600 one? Cast bronze, cast zinc, nickel plating, ebony, hand-cut inlay and eight more brackets. Not the rim, not the scale, and often not the neck wood. It is a better instrument and it sounds like a different one, but the difference lives almost entirely in the metal rather than in the woodworking. ### Why are vintage banjos so expensive? Because prewar Gibson Mastertones define the sound the whole genre is built on, and Gibson made them for about a decade. Everything expensive built since is an attempt to reproduce a ring and a rim from that period, which is why the boutique end of the market prices like a scarce antique rather than like a manufactured good. If you are trying to date an instrument you already own, the feature changes over the decades will tell you more than a serial number will — we have laid them out in [how to tell how old a banjo is](/how-to-tell-how-old-a-banjo-is/). ### Do expensive banjos hold their value? American-built ones do, and unusually well — the small production that makes them dear new is the same thing that keeps them dear used. Import banjos under about $300 lose most of their value straight away. That is the real argument for stretching to a Goodtime rather than buying twice. ### Will a more expensive banjo make me sound better? It will make you louder and give you more sustain, which in a circle of players reads as sounding better. It will not make you cleaner or faster. The two things that change how a banjo plays under your hands are a proper setup and a fresh head, and both cost a fraction of any upgrade — the head is the cheaper of the two and we have gone through the choices in [what a banjo is made of](/what-is-the-banjo-made-of/). ## So what should you actually spend? If the sticker shock came from looking at bluegrass banjos, that is the answer: you were looking at the one configuration where the metal costs more than everything else combined. Around $315 buys a banjo that arrives playable and that nothing under $1,300 will meaningfully improve on for sound. Around $599 buys an American one that will hold its value. And if you have decided bluegrass is the point, the jump to about $1,300 is a real one and the two or three steps in between are not worth taking. The whole ladder, rung by rung, is in [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/), and the individual picks are in [the beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/). **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [What Is a Banjo Made Of? Every Part, and What Each Material Does](https://promusicvault.com/what-is-the-banjo-made-of/) **Published:** April 3, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› What Is a Banjo Made Of? Every Part, and What Each Material Does A banjo is a drum with a neck bolted to it. The drum is a wooden hoop with a sheet of polyester film stretched over it and clamped down by a ring of steel hooks; the neck is a single piece of hardwood carrying a fretted fingerboard; the strings are steel. Everything else — the metal ring under the head, the bowl on the back, the plating on the hardware — is a variation on those four things. Three of those materials decide what the instrument sounds like: the wood of the rim, the metal ring sitting on top of it, and the film stretched over both. Two of the three can be changed in an afternoon for under fifty dollars, which is the useful thing to know about how a banjo is built. ## Every part, and what it is made of PartMaterialWhat it doesRim (the pot)Laminated maple, usually three plies; mahogany or birch on cheaper instruments; molded composite on the lightest onesThe body of the drum. Denser wood, brighter and louderTone ringCast bell brass or bronze, rolled brass, or absent altogetherThe head presses against it instead of bare wood. Three pounds of cast metal is what makes a bluegrass banjo loudHeadBoPET film — Mylar. Animal skin on historical and replica instrumentsThe vibrating surface. The single biggest change you can make for the moneyTension hoopBeveled steel, or notched brassClamps the head’s aluminum flesh hoop down onto the rimHooks and nutsNickel- or chrome-plated steel; 16 on an open back, 24 on most resonator banjosPull the tension hoop down. Tightening them tunes the drumBridgeMaple with a thin ebony cap, three feet, 5/8″ tall as standardCarries the strings’ vibration into the head. Not glued — it stands under string pressureTailpieceSteel alloy, platedAnchors the strings and sets how hard they press on the bridgeNeckMaple, mahogany or walnut; nato, sapele or okoume at the budget endStability first. The wood matters far less here than in the potFingerboardEbony on expensive banjos, maple, rosewood, purpleheart or ovankol elsewhereWear surface under the stringsFretsNickel silver — a copper-nickel-zinc alloy with no silver in itStops the string at a defined lengthNutBone, plastic or hardwoodSpaces the strings and sets their height at the top of the neckTruss rodSteelRuns inside the neck and adjusts its curve against string tensionTunersDie-cast metal gears, usually with plastic or pearloid buttonsHold the tuning. The fifth-string peg is often geared as wellResonatorLaminated maple or mahogany, with a cast zinc flangeOnly on closed-back banjos. Reflects sound forwardDowel stick or coordinator rodsA single hardwood bar, or one or two steel rodsJoins neck to pot and sets the neck angle ## The pot is a drum, and it is mostly maple The rim is a hoop of laminated wood about eleven inches across and two and a half deep. Maple is the standard because it is dense and stiff, and because laminating it in three plies with the grain alternating makes a hoop that will not go oval when a head is torqued down on it. Deering’s Goodtime line is built on a three-ply violin-grade maple rim; the same shape in mahogany or birch, which is what most instruments under $300 use, gives a warmer and less penetrating note. Sitting on top of the rim, on some banjos, is the tone ring. On a bluegrass instrument this is a cast bell-brass hoop weighing about three pounds, and it is most of the reason a bluegrass banjo weighs eleven pounds while an open back weighs four and a half. Old-time banjos often use a much lighter rolled brass bar, and plenty of good instruments — the whole Goodtime line included — have no ring at all, with the head bearing directly on the wooden rim. That is a choice about voice, not about quality. There is more on the trade-off in our guide to [open back banjos](/best-open-back-banjo/), and on what the ring costs you in [what a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). Whether there is a wooden bowl screwed to the back is a separate question from all of this, and it is covered properly in [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). ## The head is plastic, and it is the part to change The white surface stretched across the front is a single sheet of BoPET — biaxially oriented polyester film, sold under the name Mylar — crimped into an aluminum hoop. It replaced calfskin and goatskin in the 1950s and 60s for the obvious reason: skin goes slack when the weather turns damp, and film does not. Film comes in several finishes, and swapping one for another changes the instrument’s voice more than any other twenty-dollar decision. A **frosted or coated top** has a fine matt coating that damps the highest overtones: crisp, snappy, quick to decay, and the head almost every banjo leaves the factory with. A **clear** head is bare film, so it is the brightest and most open. **Fiberskyn** is film with a fibrous surface that looks and sounds like old calfskin — round, dry, plunky, the clawhammer favorite. **Renaissance** is honey-colored and sits between frosted and Fiberskyn, warmer than one and clearer than the other. A **black** head is the mellowest, with the longest sustain. Two numbers have to match before you order one. The first is diameter: eleven inches covers almost every banjo built, with twelve inches reserved for the deep-voiced old-time instruments. The second is crown height, the depth of the collar between the aluminum hoop and the playing surface — 3/8″ for low, 7/16″ for medium, 1/2″ for high. Get it wrong and the head either bottoms out before it is tight or has nothing left to grip. Medium is the safe answer if the banjo came with no paperwork, but the makers publish theirs: every eleven-inch Deering Goodtime takes a high crown, while the twelve-inch Americana and the current Deering upper line take a medium. The cheapest way to change your banjo### Remo WeatherKing 11″ Frosted Head The standard white frosted Mylar head, eleven inches, in the high crown that fits Goodtimes and most older banjos. A fresh head on a banjo that has had the same one for ten years is a bigger difference than anything else you can buy for the price of two sets of strings. Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wArCOw) **If your banjo takes a medium crown:** [Remo WeatherKing 11″ medium crown](https://amzn.to/45ArhjW) — around $27 **Also needed:** a bracket wrench, and an hour ## The bridge is two woods and it is not attached to anything The small three-footed piece carrying the strings across the head is maple with a strip of ebony glued along the top. Maple is light and stiff, so it passes the strings’ energy into the head rather than absorbing it; the ebony cap is hard enough that the steel strings do not saw grooves into it. Nothing holds the bridge down but string pressure, which is why it walks out of position over time and why it is the easiest upgrade on the instrument — the stock bridge on a cheap banjo is usually its worst part. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### Grover #73 Banjo Bridge - Maple body, ebony cap - 5/8″ tall, the standard height - Three feet, for a five-string - ~$14 Measure the old one before ordering. A taller bridge raises the action and a shorter one lowers it, so 5/8″ is only the right replacement if the banjo already had 5/8″ on it. The other thing worth doing while the strings are off is checking the feet sit flat on the head — a bridge rocking on one foot is losing you volume no material will give back. Around $14[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xN23L2) ## The strings are steel, and lighter than you would guess The three unwound strings are plain high-carbon steel. The wound ones have a steel core with nickel-plated steel or phosphor bronze wrapped round it — nickel is brighter and phosphor bronze warmer, and on a banjo the difference is small enough that gauge matters more. A five-string set runs from about .009 to .023, far lighter than any guitar set, and the pot is only under that tension because the head is doing most of the work of making the sound. Nylon and Nylgut sets exist for gut-strung old-time and minstrel playing, on instruments built for the lower tension. Which set to buy is its own question, and we have gone through it in [the best banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/). How many of them there should be is answered in [how many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) — four, five and six are all normal, and they are different instruments rather than different sizes. ## What the materials cost Price on a banjo buys materials in a fairly predictable order: first a real wooden rim instead of a molded one, then a properly seasoned hardwood neck, then a tone ring, then American labor. The gap between a $175 banjo and a $600 one is narrower on the spec sheet than the prices suggest. BanjoRimNeck and boardTone ringPrice band[Jameson 5-String](https://amzn.to/3U89w91)5-ply maple and mahoganyMahogany neck, purpleheart boardNone~$175[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4gFmuDX)3-ply violin-grade mapleHard rock maple, maple boardNone~$600 On paper those are closer than the prices suggest — both are laminated maple pots with no tone ring, and the Jameson arrives with a Remo head and a maple-and-ebony bridge already on it. What the extra money buys is consistency: seasoned wood that has stopped moving, frets leveled by someone who checked, and a setup done before the instrument was boxed. At the cheap end that work has not happened, so budget **$50 to $100** for a setup on top and the gap narrows a good deal further. Our [beginner banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) takes that argument further, and [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) covers the ladder above it. ## Where the materials came from The banjo descends from West African gourd lutes — the akonting, the ngoni, the xalam — carried to the Americas by enslaved people, and the earliest instruments were built from what was available: a gourd for the body, an animal skin tacked over it, a wooden neck, and gut strings. The seventeenth-century descriptions are of exactly that, a gourd with a neck fastened to it. Every material on a modern banjo is a nineteenth or twentieth-century replacement for one of those four. The gourd became a steam-bent and then laminated wooden hoop. The tacked skin became a skin clamped by a metal tension hoop, so it could be tightened, and then plastic film so it would stay tight. Gut gave way to steel, which is what made the instrument loud enough to cut through a string band. The metal tone ring is the newest part of all, and it exists only because players wanted more volume still. If you want to work out how old a particular instrument is, those transitions are the evidence — we have laid them out in [how to tell how old a banjo is](/how-to-tell-how-old-a-banjo-is/). ## Common questions ### What wood is a banjo made of? Maple, mostly. The rim is laminated maple on any banjo built to sound like one, and the neck is maple, mahogany or walnut. Fingerboards are ebony on expensive instruments and maple, rosewood, purpleheart or ovankol on the rest. Mahogany and birch turn up in the rims of cheaper banjos and give a softer note. ### Are banjo heads still made of animal skin? Almost never. Plastic film took over decades ago because it holds its tension through changes in humidity. Goatskin and calfskin heads are still made and still fitted to minstrel banjos and period reproductions, and they have a soft, dry voice nothing synthetic quite matches — but they need retensioning as the weather moves, which is why nobody gigs on one by accident. ### Does the tone ring really matter? It changes the voice, not the quality. A three-pound cast ring gives the cutting, bell-like bluegrass sound and adds six pounds to what you carry. A light rolled brass bar brightens an old-time banjo a little. No ring at all is the traditional open back arrangement and is what most clawhammer players want. There is no version of this where the banjo with the ring is simply the better instrument. ### Can I change what my banjo is made of? The three parts that most affect the sound are also the three cheapest: the head, the bridge and the strings. All three come off with a bracket wrench and a screwdriver, and together they cost less than fifty dollars. The rim, the neck and the tone ring are structural, and changing any of them is luthier work worth more than most banjos. ### Why is the fifth string shorter? Because it is a drone. It runs from a peg set into the side of the neck at the fifth fret and is tuned high, and it sounds the same note whatever the left hand is doing — that ringing note under everything is the sound people identify as a banjo. There is more on the family in our guide to [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) and on the wider group in [string instruments](/string-instruments/). **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [10 Famous Ukulele Players, and What Each One Actually Played](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-players/) **Published:** April 28, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ukulele/ "Ukulele")› 10 Famous Ukulele Players, and What Each One Actually Played The ukulele has been famous three separate times, and each boom had one player behind it. Cliff Edwards sold America millions of them in the 1920s. George Formby did the same to Britain in the 1930s on an instrument that was not quite a ukulele. Tiny Tim put it back on prime-time television in 1968. Everything since — Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, Jake Shimabukuro, the YouTube generation — has been the instrument being taken seriously rather than sold by the crate. ## 1. Israel Kamakawiwoʻole Israel Kamakawiwoʻole made the most widely heard ukulele recording in the world, and it was an accident. His medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” was recorded in 1988, in one take, in the small hours — a friend called a Honolulu studio at three in the morning asking for time, and Iz came in and did it. The recording sat around, appeared on *Ka ʻAnoʻi*, and then went onto *Facing Future* in 1993, which became Hawaiʻi’s first certified platinum album and has sold over a million copies. He was born in 1959 and died in June 1997 of respiratory failure, at 38. He stood 6 ft 2 in and weighed 757 lb at his heaviest. His brother Skippy, who played with him in the Makaha Sons of Niʻihau, had died of a heart attack in 1982 at 28. He played a tenor rather than a soprano — Martin’s tribute model, the 1T IZ, is a mahogany tenor. The playing itself is the least complicated thing about the recording: the medley is a handful of chords, and what makes it work is the voice and the timing behind them. That is genuinely good news if you have owned a ukulele for a week, because the arrangement is within reach almost immediately. ## 2. George Formby Formby was the biggest star in Britain for the best part of a decade — the highest-paid entertainer in the country from 1938 to 1942, and the top British male box-office draw from 1937 to 1943, across some twenty-two films. He was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904 and died in Preston in 1961, at 56. The instrument in his hands is a [banjolele](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-banjolele/), not a ukulele: a small banjo body with a ukulele neck and ukulele tuning, built to be heard at the back of a music hall over an orchestra and an audience. Anyone who tries to reproduce his sound on a wooden soprano is going to fail at the first bar, and the reason is the drum head rather than the technique. The technique is worth the trouble anyway. His right hand ran a “split stroke”, a syncopated pattern that sounds twice as fast as the tempo it is played at, and uke players still take it apart bar by bar. The songs are music-hall innuendo and they have aged unevenly; “When I’m Cleaning Windows” and “Leaning on a Lamp-post” are the ones to start with, and the playing has aged far better than the lyrics. There are statues of him in Douglas on the Isle of Man and in Wigan. ## 3. Jake Shimabukuro In April 2006 somebody uploaded a clip of Shimabukuro playing George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to YouTube without telling him. It had been filmed in New York for a show called Midnight Ukulele Disco. It has since passed seventeen million views, and the modern ukulele revival dates from roughly that moment. He was born in Honolulu in November 1976 and plays a custom four-string tenor built by Kamaka, the Honolulu family firm that has been making ukuleles since 1916. *Peace Love Ukulele* (2011) went to number one on Billboard’s world music chart, *Grand Ukulele* (2012) to number two, and *Trio* (2020) topped the contemporary jazz chart. He has a shelf of Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards, Hawaiʻi’s own music prize. The honest caveat for anyone watching that video and reaching for a credit card: the instrument is a one-off from a maker with a waiting list, and it is not what is doing the work. What separates his playing from everyone else’s is right-hand independence and a willingness to treat four nylon strings as an orchestra. None of that is bought. ## 4. Cliff Edwards Cliff Edwards was the first ukulele star, and he is the reason the 1920s boom happened. He picked up the instrument because it was portable and cheap, got the name “Ukulele Ike” from a waiter who could not remember his real one, and became one of the biggest recording artists of the decade. He made the first recording of “Singin’ in the Rain” in 1929, had a hit with “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” in 1928, and sold enough records to move millions of ukuleles along with them. Then he became a voice. He was Jiminy Cricket in *Pinocchio* in 1940, which means he sang “When You Wish Upon a Star”, and one of the crows in *Dumbo* the following year. The voice outlasted the records by fifty years. The end of the story is grim and worth telling. He died in 1971, aged 76, of cardiac arrest, in a convalescent hospital as a charity patient; his body went unclaimed until Disney arranged the burial. Start with the 1929 “Singin’ in the Rain” — the fast, chattering strum underneath it is a whole style that mostly died with him. ## 5. Tiny Tim Herbert Khaury, born 1932, took “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” to number 17 on the Hot 100 in 1968 and became a television fixture on *Laugh-In*. When he married Miss Vicki on *The Tonight Show* in December 1969, somewhere between thirty and thirty-five million people watched — a figure no ukulele performance will ever come close to again. He was treated as a novelty and he was not one. Khaury spent years in the New York Public Library researching the history of recorded sound and photocopying sheet music from the 1900s to the 1930s so he could learn it properly. The falsetto was a performance choice; he had a perfectly good baritone and used it when he felt like it. What he was actually doing on television was reviving Tin Pan Alley repertoire that nobody else was singing, on the instrument it had been written for. He died in November 1996, at 64, of a heart attack on stage at a benefit in Minneapolis, in the middle of that song. *God Bless Tiny Tim* (1968) is the record. ## 6. Roy Smeck Roy Smeck was billed as “The Wizard of the Strings” and earned it. A 1926 Vitaphone short called *His Pastimes*, released alongside *Don Juan*, made him famous overnight — it was one of the first sound films anyone had seen. He played at Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural ball in 1933 and at George VI’s coronation in 1937, and was still working on television decades later. He played the ukulele with his teeth, behind his back and with a violin bow, and in one 1933 film he appears playing steel guitar, tenor banjo, ukulele and six-string guitar at once through split-screen. He also designed the Harmony Vita-Uke, the pear-shaped instrument with the seal-shaped soundholes that sold in enormous numbers. The tricks are what got him billed and they undersell him. Strip them away and the playing underneath is cleaner and more inventive than almost anything else recorded on the instrument before 1950. He lived to 94, dying in 1994. ## 7. Taimane Taimane Gardner was born in Honolulu in 1989, started on the ukulele at five, and was playing on the street in Waikīkī when Don Ho heard her at thirteen and put her in his show. Her first album, *Loco Princess*, came out in 2005, followed by *Ukulele Dance* (2012), *We Are Made of Stars* (2015), *Elemental* (2018) and *Hawaiki* (2022). She took Favorite Entertainer of the Year at the 2019 Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards, and her NPR Tiny Desk set in March 2020 is the performance most people have seen. Her right hand is the thing to watch. It is flamenco technique — rasgueado rolls, percussive taps on the body, tremolo — applied to an instrument that has no business supporting it, and it fills a room in a way a strummed ukulele does not. *Elemental* is the album to start with. ## 8. Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam’s singer released *Ukulele Songs* on 31 May 2011 and it went to number four on the Billboard 200 — sixteen tracks in under thirty-five minutes, produced with Adam Kasper. It is mostly one voice and one strummed ukulele, with Glen Hansard and Cat Power turning up for a duet apiece and a couple of standards from the 1920s and 30s sitting alongside the originals. He had already used the instrument on the *Into the Wild* soundtrack in 2007. Nothing on the record is technically difficult and that is the point of it. A rock singer with an enormous voice recorded an album on the quietest instrument in the house and let the arrangements stay as bare as they sound, which is why half of it is playable by someone six weeks in. Start with “Can’t Keep” or “Sleeping by Myself”. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## 9. James Hill James Hill is the best case anyone has for the ukulele as a serious solo instrument, and he came out of a school program. Born in Canada in 1980, he learned through the Langley Ukulele Ensemble under the classroom method J. Chalmers Doane built for Canadian schools, took a music degree at the University of British Columbia, and then co-wrote the *Ukulele in the Classroom* books with Doane in 2008. He teaches through his own online school and has written a six-volume method of his own. *True Love Don’t Weep* (2009), made with the cellist Anne Janelle — now his wife — won Traditional Album of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and *The Old Silo* (2015) was nominated for a Juno. He plays custom instruments by Mike DaSilva, a Mya-Moe tenor and a Beltona resonator, and uses percussion off the body and old analogue effects as part of the arrangement rather than as decoration. Find his solo arrangement of “Billie Jean”, where the bassline, the backbeat and the melody are all happening on one ukulele at the same time. ## 10. Grace VanderWaal Grace VanderWaal won the eleventh season of *America’s Got Talent* in September 2016, aged twelve, singing songs she had written herself and accompanying them on a ukulele. Born in Kansas in January 2004, she released the *Perfectly Imperfect* EP that December, *Just the Beginning* in 2017, *Letters Vol. 1* in 2019 and *Childstar* in 2025. In 2017 Fender made her its youngest signature artist and its first ukulele player, and the instrument arrived the following year. Fender signature ukuleles are rare and this one is priced like a beginner instrument: a soprano in navy with gold hardware, a gold sparkle rosette and a floral soundhole label taken from the *Just the Beginning* cover art. Her later records lean on production and the ukulele much less, so the AGT performances and *Perfectly Imperfect* are where the uke playing is. It is straightforward strumming — the songwriting is what won the show. ## What they play, and what gets you close Four sounds cover this entire list, and only one of them costs real money. A soprano gets you Cliff Edwards, Tiny Tim, Roy Smeck and both of the modern singer-songwriters. A tenor gets you the Hawaiian players. A banjolele gets you Formby and nothing else will. And one signature model on the list is an instrument rather than a museum piece. Start here### Makala MK-S soprano Kala’s entry soprano is the shortest route to nine of these ten players. Soprano is the size the instrument was invented as and the size every 1920s and 60s recording was made on, so the bright, short-sustain sound you hear on those records is a function of the body and comes free. It is a real instrument rather than a toy — agathis body, rosewood fingerboard and bridge, mahogany neck — and it sells for the same price Kala themselves ask. Around $65 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zuNqxM) **For the Hawaiian players:** Kala KA-15T tenor — around $115 with a bag and tuner **For Formby:** Gold Tone BU-1 banjolele — around $315, and there is no substitute **Her actual signature model:** Fender Grace VanderWaal Moonlight — around $100 PlayerWhat they playNearest thing you can buyPrice bandIsrael KamakawiwoʻoleMahogany tenor[Kala KA-15T tenor](https://amzn.to/4c2vPmH)~$115Jake ShimabukuroCustom Kamaka tenor[Kala KA-15T tenor](https://amzn.to/4c2vPmH)~$115TaimaneTenor[Kala KA-15T tenor](https://amzn.to/4c2vPmH)~$115George FormbyBanjolele[Gold Tone BU-1](https://amzn.to/4hFGibo)~$315Cliff EdwardsSoprano[Makala MK-S](https://amzn.to/4zuNqxM)~$65Tiny TimSoprano[Makala MK-S](https://amzn.to/4zuNqxM)~$65Roy SmeckHarmony Vita-Uke, soprano scale[Makala MK-S](https://amzn.to/4zuNqxM)~$65Eddie VedderSoprano[Makala MK-S](https://amzn.to/4zuNqxM)~$65Grace VanderWaalFender Moonlight soprano[The same signature model](https://amzn.to/3XFSOdY)~$100James HillDaSilva customs, Mya-Moe tenor, Beltona resonatorNothing close under $1,000— For the Hawaiian players ### Kala KA-15T tenor - Laminate mahogany top, back and sides - 17″ scale, 1 3/8″ at the nut - Rosewood fingerboard, 18 frets - GraphTech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - Gig bag, clip-on tuner and cloth included - ~$115 Iz, Jake Shimabukuro and Taimane are all tenor players, and the size does more than add two inches of scale. The longer string length lowers the tension you need for the same pitch, so the notes hang on instead of dying, and there is room under the fretting hand for the chord shapes the Hawaiian players actually use. Anyone who has been strumming a soprano and cannot work out why their playing sounds thin next to those records has usually found the answer here. Kala’s mahogany series is the default recommendation at this price because of two components most makers economise on: a NuBone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic, and Aquila strings rather than whatever came off the reel. Both are the first things owners of cheaper ukuleles replace. The 1 3/8-inch nut is the reservation — it is on the narrow side for a tenor, so the extra room is in the frets rather than between the strings. **Pros**- The size the players on this list actually use - NuBone nut and saddle, not molded plastic - Aquila strings from the factory - Bag and tuner in the price **Cons**- Narrow nut for a tenor at 1 3/8″ - Laminate, so it will not open up with age - Nearly twice the price of a soprano Around $115[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4c2vPmH) For Formby ### Gold Tone BU-1 banjolele - 15 5/8″ concert scale, 18 frets - 8″ multi-ply maple rim, maple neck - 8″ Remo Fiberskyn head, open back - ZeroGlide nut, 1 3/8″ wide - Hot Dot pickup fitted - 2.75 lb, gig bag included - Standard GCEA tuning - ~$315 There is no cheap way to the Formby sound, because the sound is a drum. A banjolele puts a ukulele neck on a banjo body, and the head is what produces the sharp attack and instant decay that makes the split stroke audible as a pattern rather than a blur. Play the same part on a wooden soprano and the notes overlap into mush. Gold Tone builds this one on an eight-inch multi-ply maple rim with a Remo Fiberskyn head and no resonator, which is warmer and less cutting than the instruments Formby himself used — a fair trade unless you are genuinely playing a hall. It weighs under three pounds, comes with a pickup already fitted, and is priced at exactly what Gold Tone ask for it. The honest warning is that three hundred dollars is a lot for an instrument that plays one repertoire, and a banjolele is loud in a way that housemates notice. **Pros**- The only way to get the sound at all - Multi-ply maple rim and a Remo head, from a maker that has built banjos for decades - Pickup and gig bag included - Ordinary ukulele tuning, so nothing new to learn **Cons**- Expensive for a one-repertoire instrument - Open back, so less cutting than a resonator model - Very loud at home Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hFGibo) The signature model ### Fender Grace VanderWaal Moonlight soprano - Soprano scale - Mahogany top, back and sides - Navy satin finish, gold hardware - Gold sparkle rosette - Floral soundhole label from the *Just the Beginning* artwork - Her heart signature on the back of the headstock - Pull-through bridge - 1 lb, ~$100 Fender’s signature ukuleles are not a common thing and this is the only one on this list a reader can own. It is a straightforward soprano underneath the cosmetics, which is the right call — the point of a signature instrument at a hundred dollars is that a twelve-year-old can be given one, and this is a genuine playing instrument rather than a piece of merchandise with strings. The pull-through bridge is the practical detail worth knowing: strings feed through holes and knot behind, so restringing is quicker and less fiddly than tying to a standard tie-bar bridge. Against the plain Makala it costs about thirty-five dollars more, and what that buys is the finish and the association rather than better tone. Buy it because of who plays one. **Pros**- A real Fender signature model at beginner money - Pull-through bridge is easier to restring - Gold hardware and rosette look like far more than $100 - Soprano, so it covers most of this list **Cons**- You are paying for the finish, not the tone - Navy is the only finish it comes in - Soprano scale is cramped for larger hands Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XFSOdY) ## Where to start playing Two of the most-heard ukulele recordings ever made — the Kamakawiwoʻole medley and most of *Ukulele Songs* — are within reach of somebody who has owned the instrument for a month. That is unusual, and it is the strongest argument for starting on the ukulele rather than something with six strings. If you have not bought one yet, the size question matters more than the brand and we have worked through both: [how to choose a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) covers the sizes, [the beginner guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/) covers the instruments themselves, and there are dedicated shortlists for [sopranos](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) and [tenors](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/). The Makala above has [its own review here](https://promusicvault.com/makala-mk-s-review/), and [the rest of the Kala range](https://promusicvault.com/best-kala-ukuleles/) is worth a look if it turns out you want to spend more. Once there is an instrument in the house, [strumming](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) is the thing to work on first — it is what every player above has in common and what separates their records from everyone else’s. **Categories:** Ukulele --- ### [Types of Instruments: The Five Families and How Instruments Are Classified](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/) **Published:** January 6, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Types of Instruments: The Five Families and How Instruments Are Classified There are five families of musical instruments: **strings, brass, woodwind, percussion and keyboards**. An orchestra uses four of them — there is no keyboard section — and the fifth exists because pianos, organs and synthesizers need somewhere to live. What puts an instrument in a family is how the sound starts, not what the instrument is made of. That one rule explains almost every case that looks wrong: a silver flute is a woodwind, a brass-bodied saxophone is a woodwind, and a wooden cornett is brass. ## Table of Contents - [The five families](#the-five-families) - [Strings](#strings) - [Brass](#brass) - [Woodwind](#woodwind) - [Percussion](#percussion) - [Keyboards](#keyboards) - [The instruments that look like they are in the wrong family](#the-instruments-that-look-like-they-are-in-the-wrong-family) - [The saxophone](#the-saxophone) - [The piano, and why the argument dissolves](#the-piano-and-why-the-argument-dissolves) - [The harp](#the-harp) - [The accordion and the harmonica](#the-accordion-and-the-harmonica) - [The electric guitar](#the-electric-guitar) - [An orchestra uses four of the five families](#an-orchestra-uses-four-of-the-five-families) - [Hornbostel–Sachs, the system museums actually use](#hornbostelsachs-the-system-museums-actually-use) - [Reading the numbers](#reading-the-numbers) - [The other classification systems](#the-other-classification-systems) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [How many types of instruments are there?](#how-many-types-of-instruments-are-there) - [Is the saxophone brass or woodwind?](#is-the-saxophone-brass-or-woodwind) - [What is the difference between brass and woodwind?](#what-is-the-difference-between-brass-and-woodwind) - [What is the difference between a family and a classification?](#what-is-the-difference-between-a-family-and-a-classification) - [What is the largest section in an orchestra?](#what-is-the-largest-section-in-an-orchestra) - [Is the clarinet the same as a saxophone?](#is-the-clarinet-the-same-as-a-saxophone) - [Is the piano percussion or a string instrument?](#is-the-piano-percussion-or-a-string-instrument) - [How do percussion instruments make sound?](#how-do-percussion-instruments-make-sound) - [Where to start if you are choosing one](#where-to-start-if-you-are-choosing-one) FamilyWhat starts the soundInstruments**Strings**A stretched string, set moving by a bow, finger, plectrum or hammerViolin, viola, cello, double bass, harp, guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele**Brass**The player’s lips buzzing against a cup mouthpieceTrumpet, French horn, trombone, tuba, euphonium, cornet, bugle**Woodwind**Air split at an edge, or a cane reed vibratingFlute, piccolo, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, saxophone, recorder, tin whistle**Percussion**One object striking, shaking or scraping anotherTimpani, snare, bass drum, cymbals, xylophone, marimba, triangle, tambourine**Keyboards**A key, connected to whatever actually makes the noisePiano, organ, harpsichord, clavichord, accordion, synthesizer If this is going on a classroom wall rather than into an essay, [Sproutbrite’s six-poster set](https://amzn.to/4xjd9rD) covers the families the same way for around $17. They are 11.5 by 16 inches, which is a reading-corner size rather than something legible from the back row. ## The five families ### Strings A string under tension is set moving — bowed, plucked, struck — and the body of the instrument turns that small movement into something audible. On its own a string is nearly silent; the box, soundboard or head does the amplifying, which is why two instruments with identical strings can sound nothing alike. Pitch comes from the string’s length, thickness and tension. Shortening it against a fingerboard raises the note, which is the whole technique of the left hand on a violin, and a harp gets around the problem by giving every note its own string. **[Full string instrument list](/string-instruments/)** ### Brass Brass instruments are the ones you buzz into. The lips vibrate against a cup-shaped mouthpiece and the tube amplifies and shapes what they produce, so the player is the reed. Everything else about the instrument — valves, a slide, a length of coiled tubing — exists to change which notes that buzz can reach. The name is a historical accident. Cornetts and serpents were made of wood and leather, alphorns are carved from a tree, and a didgeridoo is a hollowed branch, but all of them are played with a buzzing lip and all of them belong to the same group. **[Full brass instrument list](/brass-instruments/)** ### Woodwind Woodwinds split into two mechanisms that have almost nothing in common except the family name. In the flutes, air is aimed at a sharp edge and splits across it, setting the column inside the tube oscillating — that covers the concert flute, the piccolo, the recorder and the tin whistle. In the reeds, a shaved piece of cane beats against a mouthpiece or against a second reed, and that covers the clarinet, saxophone, oboe and bassoon. Material has nothing to do with it. Concert flutes are metal, clarinets are often plastic, and the saxophone has been brass since the day Adolphe Sax built the first one. [The flute-versus-reed split](/do-flutes-have-reeds/) is the division that actually matters when you are learning one. **[Full woodwind instrument list](/woodwind-instruments/)** ### Percussion Percussion is probably the oldest family and certainly the loosest one: anything struck, shaken or scraped. It divides by pitch rather than by material. Timpani, xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel and tubular bells play written notes; snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle and tambourine play rhythm and color instead. The orchestral percussion section is a job description as much as a family. A siren, a wind machine, a whip or an anvil goes to the percussionists because somebody at the back has a hand free, not because anything is being percussed. **[Full percussion instrument list](/percussion-instruments/)** ### Keyboards A keyboard is a control surface, not a way of making sound, and that is why this family is the odd one out. Press a key on a piano and a hammer hits a string. On an organ, the key opens a valve and air goes down a pipe. On a harpsichord, a quill plucks. On a synthesizer, nothing physical happens at all. Grouping them together is a convenience for players — the skill transfers, the repertoire overlaps, the layout is the same — rather than a statement about how any of them work. It is also the one family no formal classification system recognizes. **[Full keyboard instrument list](/keyboard-instruments/)** ## The instruments that look like they are in the wrong family Every awkward case comes back to the same rule — the mechanism decides, the material does not. InstrumentFamilyWhySaxophoneWoodwindBrass body, cane reed. The reed makes the sound, so it sits with the clarinetConcert fluteWoodwindSilver or nickel, no reed at all — an edge-blown tube, which is what a flute isDidgeridoo, cornett, serpent, alphornBrassWood, but played with a buzzing lipHarpStringsPlucked strings. It sits in the string section, not with the percussionistsPianoKeyboardsStrings struck by hammers, driven from a keyboard — all three answers describe part of itAccordion, harmonicaFree reedsReeds vibrated by bellows or breath. The accordion’s keys are a coincidencePipe organKeyboardsA keyboard instrument that is mechanically a wind instrumentElectric guitarStringsNothing about the string changes; the pickup only replaces the soundbox ### The saxophone The saxophone is a woodwind. Adolphe Sax built it in the 1840s to bridge two sections — the carrying power of brass with the agility of a clarinet — and gave it a brass body for volume and durability. But the mouthpiece takes a single cane reed, the fingering system descends from the oboe, and the player’s lips never buzz. On paper and in the seating plan it is a woodwind, and a saxophonist doubling on clarinet is a routine sight where a saxophonist doubling on trumpet is not. The [trumpet and the saxophone](/trumpet-vs-saxophone/) have less in common than the metal suggests. ### The piano, and why the argument dissolves A piano has around 230 strings, and those strings are hit by hammers. String instrument or percussion instrument is a question that has been argued for two centuries, and the formal answer is that both halves are true and the question is badly posed. Hornbostel–Sachs gives the piano the number **314.122-4-8**, and the number is the answer spelled out: 3 for a string instrument, 314.122 for a board zither with a resonator box, *-4* for struck with hammers, *-8* for operated by a keyboard. It is a struck zither with keys. Nothing has to be chosen. We have gone into the case in full under [is the piano a string instrument](/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/). ### The harp The harp is a string instrument by every scheme there is, and it sits with the strings in the orchestra. It gets mistaken for percussion because it is plucked rather than bowed and because it is parked at the back on the left, away from the rest of the strings. Neither is a classification. [The harp’s place in the orchestra](/is-harp-percussion-instrument/) is a chair in the string section, and it is the one string instrument in that section with a string per note rather than a fingerboard. ### The accordion and the harmonica Both work by free reeds: a thin metal tongue set swinging through a slot by moving air, from bellows on an accordion and from the player’s breath on a harmonica. That makes them wind instruments in every formal system, whatever the accordion’s right hand looks like. Grouping the accordion with keyboards is a shop-floor convention, and it is why a [concertina and an accordion](/concertina-vs-accordion/) are the same instrument with different buttons. ### The electric guitar Hornbostel–Sachs adds a category for electrophones, and taken literally it would move the electric guitar out of the strings. Most organologists have refused, on the grounds that a pickup is a replacement for a soundbox and the instrument is still a plucked string. The usual position now is that only instruments where electricity *generates* the sound — synthesizers, the theremin — belong in that category, which leaves the electric guitar exactly where common sense puts it. ## An orchestra uses four of the five families A full symphony orchestra runs to roughly 85–100 players in four sections, and the numbers are heavily lopsided. SectionPlayersWho is in it**Strings**~6016 first violins, 14 seconds, 12 violas, 10 cellos, 8 double basses, plus 1–2 harps**Woodwind**~8–12Flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons in pairs or threes, plus piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet, contrabassoon**Brass**~10–124 French horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba**Percussion**~3–5Timpani, plus two to four players covering everything else Strings are around two-thirds of the room, and that is a volume decision rather than a musical one. A single trumpet will carry over sixteen violins without effort, so the string section has to be enormous to hold its own. The seating follows the same logic: strings in an arc at the front, woodwind behind them in the middle, brass behind the woodwind, percussion at the back where distance does the balancing. Keyboards have no section. A piano or celesta appears when a particular piece calls for it, and sits at the side as a guest. A concert band inverts the whole arrangement — no violins at all, woodwind and brass carrying everything — which is [the real difference between an orchestra and a band](/orchestra-vs-band/). What separates a symphony orchestra from a philharmonic is [nothing about the instruments at all](/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/). ## Hornbostel–Sachs, the system museums actually use Families work for an orchestra and fall apart everywhere else. They have no place for a mbira, a gamelan, a jaw harp or a bullroarer, and they are built around the instruments of one continent. The system that replaced them for museum and academic work groups instruments by what physically vibrates. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Victor-Charles Mahillon, curator of the instrument collection at the Brussels Conservatory, set out four such groups in 1888 to catalogue what he had. Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs extended his scheme into a full taxonomy and published it in 1914; Sachs added a fifth category in 1940 for instruments that had not existed when he started. CategoryWhat vibratesExamples**1 Idiophones**The body of the instrument itselfXylophone, cymbals, bells, mbira, castanets, singing bowl**2 Membranophones**A stretched membraneAll drums — and the kazoo**3 Chordophones**A stringViolin, guitar, harp, banjo, piano, harpsichord**4 Aerophones**A column or body of airFlute, trumpet, clarinet, organ, accordion, bullroarer**5 Electrophones**An electrical circuitSynthesizer, theremin Two things about that table catch people out. The piano and the harpsichord are string instruments here, because a string is what moves. And the accordion is a wind instrument, because a reed is being blown. ### Reading the numbers Each category subdivides by decimal, on the model of the Dewey system used in libraries, so that every digit added narrows the description. A violin is **321.322-71**: - **3** — chordophone, a string vibrates - **32** — composite: the resonator cannot be removed without destroying the instrument - **321** — lute: the strings run parallel to the soundboard - **321.3** — handle lute: it has a neck - **321.32** — the neck is a separate piece, not carved through the body - **321.322** — the body is a box, not a bowl or a shell - **-71** — played with a bow Change *-71* to *-5* or *-6* — plucked with fingers, plucked with a plectrum — and you have described a guitar. That is the point of the notation: instruments that no orchestra would seat together end up next to each other on the shelf if they are built and played the same way, and a scheme designed in Berlin can file an instrument from anywhere without anyone having to decide which European family it most resembles. The full tree runs to thousands of entries and several levels deeper than this. It is a cataloguing tool, and unless you are accessioning a collection there is no reason to read past the first digit. ## The other classification systems Hornbostel–Sachs is the one in use. The rest are worth knowing for what the list shows as a whole: sorting instruments is something cultures do without being taught to, and they keep landing in similar places. SystemWhenDivides instruments by**Bayin** (China)By the 9th–5th c. BCMaterial: metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, leather, wood — tied to the seasons and compass directions**Natya Shastra** (India)4th–3rd c. BC*Tata* strings, *sushira* air columns, *avanaddha* drum skins, *ghana* solid bodies**Mahillon**1888Strings, membranes, air, and the body itself — the four Hornbostel and Sachs built on**Schaeffner**1932Two categories only: vibrating solids, and vibrating air**Reinhard**1960How the instrument behaves rather than how it is built — one voice or many, fixed or variable pitch, continuous or not**Mann**2007Schaeffner extended through states of matter: earth, water, air, plasma, and a fifth for electronic and optical sound The Indian scheme is the striking one. Bharata Muni’s four categories — strings, air columns, membranes, solid bodies — are the same four Mahillon reached in 1888 and Hornbostel and Sachs formalised in 1914, arrived at more than two thousand years earlier from a completely different musical tradition. When two cultures with no contact between them sort instruments the same way, the sorting is telling you something real about how sound gets made. Instruments also get grouped in looser ways that are not taxonomies at all: by vocal range (soprano, alto, tenor, bass — which is how saxophones and recorders are named), by the job they do (military, ceremonial, signaling), and by where they come from. These are useful labels and nothing more; a trombone plays across alto, tenor and bass range and cannot be filed under one of them. ## Common questions ### How many types of instruments are there? Five families — strings, brass, woodwind, percussion, keyboards — or four if you are talking about the orchestra, which has no keyboard section. By Hornbostel–Sachs, the system used in museums, there are five categories, and they are drawn differently: idiophones, membranophones, chordophones, aerophones and electrophones. ### Is the saxophone brass or woodwind? Woodwind. The body is brass, but a cane reed makes the sound and the family is decided by the sound source. Brass instruments are the ones where the player’s lips do the vibrating, and a saxophonist’s never do. ### What is the difference between brass and woodwind? Where the vibration starts. On a brass instrument the player’s lips buzz against a cup mouthpiece and the tube amplifies it. On a woodwind, either a cane reed vibrates or air splits across an edge, and the player’s lips only steer the air. Neither definition mentions what the instrument is made of. ### What is the difference between a family and a classification? Families are a seating plan. They come from how Western orchestras are organized and they work well for the hundred or so instruments in one, which is why school music teaches them. A classification system is a taxonomy meant to file every instrument on earth by physical principle, without reference to any particular ensemble. That is why the piano is a keyboard instrument in one and a string instrument in the other, and why both are correct. ### What is the largest section in an orchestra? The strings, by a long way — around 60 of roughly 90 players. Everything else together comes to about a third of the orchestra. ### Is the clarinet the same as a saxophone? They share a mechanism and little else. Both are single-reed woodwinds, which is why players double on them, but a clarinet is a cylindrical tube and a saxophone is a cone, and that changes which notes the tube naturally produces. The clarinet overblows a twelfth where the saxophone overblows an octave, so the fingerings diverge as soon as you leave the bottom register. ### Is the piano percussion or a string instrument? Formally, a string instrument — Hornbostel–Sachs files it as a zither struck with hammers. In practice it is treated as a keyboard instrument, and when an orchestra needs one the part is usually covered by the percussion department. All three answers describe something true about it. ### How do percussion instruments make sound? By being struck, shaken or scraped. On a drum, the vibration is in the stretched skin; on a cymbal, triangle or xylophone bar it is in the metal or wood itself. Hornbostel–Sachs separates those two into membranophones and idiophones, which is a more useful distinction than “percussion” — it puts drums in one group and everything you hit that is not a drum in another. ## Where to start if you are choosing one Families are a reasonable way to narrow the field, because the skill transfers within one and rarely across. Learn any bowed string and the next is close; learn any single-reed woodwind and the clarinet and saxophone both open up; learn any valved brass instrument and the fingerings are largely the same on all of them. Which family suits you is not really answerable in the abstract, and the cheap way to settle it is to buy the least expensive real instrument in the family you are drawn to and find out. Only one of the five can be tested for the price of a sandwich. Cheapest honest way in### Yamaha YRS-24B soprano recorder Eight dollars buys a real instrument rather than a toy — this is the recorder school programs issue by the classful, and it is in tune with itself, which the supermarket ones are not. If the question is whether you enjoy practicing at all, this answers it for less than the parking costs at a music shop. Take the **24B** specifically: the YRS-23 is the same recorder with German fingering, which teaches you a fingering pattern the rest of the woodwind family does not use. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fZ3ArB) For the other four, the cheapest instrument worth owning is the one to buy. None of these is a compromise you grow out of in a month — they are the instruments teachers put in front of beginners. FamilyThe way inWhy this onePrice**Woodwind**Yamaha YRS-24B recorderA real instrument at toy money, and the fingering carries over to flute and clarinetAround $8[Check price](https://amzn.to/4fZ3ArB)**Strings**Kala KA-15S ukulele bundleFour soft nylon strings and a chord in the first hour. The bundle adds the tuner and bag you would buy anywayAround $100[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gw37x0)**Brass**Eastar ETR-380 trumpetHard case, 7C mouthpiece and cleaning kit in the box, so nothing else is needed to startAround $140[Check price](https://amzn.to/3TOhUdR)**Percussion**Evans RealFeel 12″ practice padWhere every drummer actually starts. Two surfaces, silent, and it is what you keep using after the kit arrivesAround $45[Check price](https://amzn.to/3U0aAf5)**Keyboards**Yamaha PSR-E38361 touch-sensitive keys — press harder, get louder, which is the thing cheaper boards cannot doAround $200[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wmheK1)**Free reeds** (the family the list above has no slot for)Hohner Special 20, key of CThe standard beginner harmonica, and C is the key everything is taught inAround $47[Check price](https://amzn.to/4i8AGGD) Two of those rows need a caveat. The keyboard is the one place where the cheapest option is a trap: the $115 bundles that throw in a stand, a bench and headphones almost all list touch sensitivity as *No*, which means the keys ignore how hard you press. Everything you learn about playing quietly and loudly on one of those has to be learned again later. And the practice pad is a pad, not an instrument — if you want percussion you can play music on tonight rather than technique you can drill silently, a [Meinl Headliner cajon](https://amzn.to/4wrtGYW) at around $130 is the cheapest thing in the family that makes a tune. Once a family has won, the choice narrows fast. Within strings, the [ukulele](/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/), the [banjo](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) and the [mandolin](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) all produce a chord in the first session, while the [fiddle](/best-fiddles-for-beginners/) and the [harp](/best-harps-for-beginners/) take longer to sound good and go further. In the winds, the [trumpet](/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) is the usual first brass instrument, and the [accordion](/best-accordions-for-beginners/) is the one people underestimate. If you already know the family and are working out which variant, we have broken down the [types of banjo](/types-of-banjos/), the [types of mandolin](/types-of-mandolins/) and the [types of bagpipe](/types-of-bagpipes/). **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [Trumpet vs. Saxophone: The First Note Is Easier, the Bill Is Not](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-vs-saxophone/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Trumpet vs. Saxophone: The First Note Is Easier, the Bill Is Not Both are made of brass, both live in the same three rooms — concert band, jazz band, marching band — and both are blown down a mouthpiece. Then a beginner picks each one up, and one of them makes a note that afternoon while the other makes nothing at all for a fortnight. The saxophone is the easier instrument to start. It is also the one that costs nearly three times as much to buy, and considerably more than that to keep. The short answer### Start on the trumpet if the budget matters, the saxophone if the sound does A saxophone has a reed doing the hard part, so a first note arrives immediately. A trumpet has no reed — the player’s lips are the reed — and that takes weeks. Everything else runs the other way. From the same maker’s own price list, a student trumpet is around $250 and a student alto around $675, and the gap holds at every level above that. The trumpet burns a $7 bottle of valve oil every few months; the saxophone eats reeds. And when a saxophone’s pads finally go, the bill is larger than a new trumpet. Trumpet ~$250 · Alto sax ~$675 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UeUfU6) **Wants to play a tune this month:** the saxophone, comfortably **Braces are coming:** the saxophone, and it is not close **Wants an orchestra seat:** the trumpet — the saxophone barely has one **Not sure it will stick:** rent either, and decide in a year ## The differences that decide it TrumpetAlto saxophone**Family**Brass — the player’s lips vibrateWoodwind — a cane reed vibrates**First clean note**Weeks. The buzz has to be learned before the instrument does anythingThe same afternoon**Student instrument**~$250~$675**Intermediate**~$400~$1,080**Professional**~$940~$1,800**Consumable**Valve oil — about $7, lasts monthsReeds — about $29 for ten, measured in weeks**Parts that must seal**Three pistons, and no pads at allA couple of dozen leather pads, plus springs, rods and corks**Biggest routine shop job**Chemical clean, around $125Full repad, from about $1,050**Rental, per month**About $20–40About $25–55**Pitched in**B♭E♭**How it is carried**Held up in both hands; small caseHangs from a neck strap; the case is luggage**Orchestra**Two to four in nearly every scoreThree well-known works, mostly as a solo**Concert band and jazz band**Central to bothCentral to both ## Which one makes a sound on the first afternoon The reed is the whole of it. On a saxophone, a blade of cane sits against the mouthpiece and vibrates when air passes over it; blowing is enough to start it. On a trumpet there is nothing in the mouthpiece but the player. The lips have to be made to buzz, and until they do, the instrument is a length of tube that returns air and nothing else. Yamaha’s own first lesson for the trumpet is unusually blunt about this. It opens with breathing, then buzzing the lips with no instrument at all, then buzzing into the detached mouthpiece — and the test of success is *“if your lips vibrate as the instrument emits a buzzing sound, you’re doing well.”* Only after that does a trumpet appear. Their first saxophone lesson never covers making a note happen at all; it covers where the instrument rests, how the lower lip covers the lower teeth, and how to breathe. The note is taken for granted, because it is. That gap does not close after week one, and this is the part worth understanding before choosing. On a trumpet the three valves give seven combinations, and each one plays a whole series of notes. Which note actually comes out is decided by the lips, not the fingers — Yamaha puts it as changing the sound *“just by how your lips vibrate when blowing—no fingers required,”* slower for low notes and quicker for high ones. A trumpeter with perfect fingering can still play the wrong note. On a saxophone the keywork does that job: there is broadly a fingering per note, and the fingering that is pressed is the note that sounds. None of which makes the saxophone easy. It has far more keywork to learn, it reads in E♭ against a piano’s concert pitch, and its low register will not speak cleanly until the pads are sealing and the embouchure has settled. What is true is narrower and more useful: the saxophone puts its difficulty later, and the trumpet puts almost all of its difficulty in the first month. A student who quits does so in that first month. ## What each one costs, on one maker’s own price list Comparing prices across brands proves very little, because the brands are not aiming at the same buyer. One maker builds both instruments at all three levels and publishes the lot, which makes the steps mean something. LevelB♭ trumpetE♭ alto saxophoneGap**Student**~$250~$6752.7×**Intermediate**~$400~$1,0802.7×**Professional**~$940~$1,8001.9× The ratio holding steady across the range is the tell. This is not one instrument being marketed harder; it is what the two things cost to build. A trumpet is a brass tube with three machined pistons and no pads anywhere on it. A saxophone is a brass tube carrying a couple of dozen leather pads that each have to seal against a tone hole, plus the springs, rods, posts and corks that hold them there. Every one of those has to be set by hand at the factory, and set again by hand every time the instrument is serviced. ### The running cost, which is where the gap widens A trumpet’s only consumable is valve oil. A bottle is about $7 and lasts a school year of regular use. Past that, a trumpet needs wiping and the water key emptying. A saxophone eats reeds. A box of ten student alto reeds is around $29, so a reed is worth about three dollars, and a beginner gets through them — they soften, they chip, and a played-out reed stops speaking cleanly. A student will spend somewhere between $60 and $120 a year on cane, every year, for as long as they play. The daily care splits the same way. Yamaha’s routine for a trumpet is three steps: empty the slides and the water key, put two or three drops of oil on the pistons, wipe the surface. For a saxophone it is four steps every single day — swab the mouthpiece, swab the neck, blot the moisture out of every pad with cleaning paper, then swab the body and wipe the keys — with weekly work on top and a warning attached: *“We do not recommend disassembling your instrument on your own. Instead, take it in to a music shop for maintenance.”* That sentence is the ownership difference in miniature. ### And what happens when something breaks Repair shops that publish their rates make this unmistakable, because the brass menu and the woodwind menu are not the same shape. Brass work is a list of individual jobs: a chemical clean at roughly $125 for a student trumpet, a soldered joint at about $25, a stuck slide about the same, dent work billed by the quarter hour at around $100 an hour. That is the whole menu. There is nothing on it that costs more than a few hundred dollars, because a trumpet has nothing in it that wears out on a schedule. The woodwind menu has an entire tier above that. Below it sit the same small jobs and a clean-oil-adjust at $250–650; above it sits a **full repad, which on an alto starts around $1,050**, and above that a full overhaul from about $1,550. Leather pads run up to $24 each fitted, and an alto needs the lot replaced eventually, because pads are a wearing part that fails on condition rather than on a schedule. Labor is around $100 an hour either way. Put the two numbers together and the decision is easy to see: **a full repad on a student alto costs more than a new student trumpet.** That is the real reason to be careful at the bottom of the saxophone market, and it is covered in more detail in [what a saxophone costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/). It also means a cheap trumpet is a survivable mistake in a way a cheap saxophone is not — a $250 trumpet that needs $125 of work is still worth the work. ## Where you actually get to play it In a school concert band and a jazz band, both instruments are load-bearing and neither is short of music. A big band is built around a saxophone section and a trumpet section facing each other. A concert band wants both. For most beginners, this part of the question is a tie. The orchestra is where they separate, and it is not close. Yamaha’s own page of famous orchestral works for the saxophone names three: Bizet’s *L’Arlésienne*, Ravel’s *Bolero*, and Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s *Pictures at an Exhibition* — and they note that Ravel used it *“mostly as a solo instrument.”* Three works is the list. A symphony orchestra has no standing saxophone chair; when a score calls for one, a player is hired for that concert. The trumpet has two to four seats in essentially every orchestral score written since the eighteenth century. The reason is chronology rather than merit. The saxophone was patented in Paris in 1846, by which time the orchestra’s instrumentation had been settled for a century, and the repertoire that fills concert halls was largely already written. It arrived in time for the concert band, the military band and then jazz, and those are the places it went. [Orchestra vs. band](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) sets out who plays what where. ## The practical things that decide it more often than tone ### Braces This settles more of these decisions than any argument about sound. A brass mouthpiece is pressed against the lips, and the lips against the teeth. The British Orthodontic Society puts it plainly: a player of *“a woodwind instrument such as a clarinet or saxophone… may adjust to your new brace very quickly,”* while a player of *“a brass instrument such as a trumpet or trombone… may have problems playing high notes, especially soon after your brace is first fitted.”* A saxophone embouchure rests the upper teeth on the mouthpiece and folds the lower lip over the lower teeth, which keeps the brackets out of it. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Worth keeping in proportion: the orthodontists do not tell anyone to give up brass, and school trumpet sections are full of players in braces who worked through it with wax and a larger mouthpiece. But if a first instrument is being chosen the same year braces are going on, that is a real factor and the saxophone is the softer landing. ### Size, weight and getting it to school A trumpet is held up in front of the player by both arms and goes home in a case the size of a small holdall. An alto saxophone hangs from a neck strap, with the right thumb taking the rest, and its case is luggage. For a small ten-year-old walking to a bus, that difference is worth more thought than it usually gets. Neither instrument is quiet, and neither is a good choice for a flat with thin walls. ### Renting first Both rent, at roughly $20–40 a month for a trumpet and $25–55 for an alto, usually with the payments applying against a purchase if the student stays with it. On the saxophone side a repair plan is normally offered at $5–7 a month, and it is worth taking, because it covers precisely the failure that is otherwise unaffordable. A good number of beginners stop inside the first year, and renting is what makes that outcome cheap. ## What to buy Both instruments below come from the same maker, which is deliberate: it publishes a dated warranty, sells individual replacement parts, names its service centers, and play-tests each instrument before it ships. At the budget end of both markets that combination is what separates something worth repairing later from something that is not. № 1 · If it is the trumpet ### Jean Paul TR-330 student B♭ trumpet - Two-piece yellow brass bell, 4.92″ diameter - Stainless steel pistons, standard-taper leadpipe - First-valve thumb saddle and fixed third-valve ring - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case included - Play-tested in the US before shipping; one-year warranty - Around $250 The cheapest new trumpet with a real support structure behind it — a written warranty, replacement parts sold individually, and somewhere to send it. The two-piece yellow brass bell is what a school band expects a student to sound like, and the stainless pistons matter more than they look: a valve that hangs is indistinguishable from a beginner who cannot play, and it is the fault most likely to end the whole experiment. It is a student horn. Anyone still playing in three years will want more instrument, and the thumb saddle and fixed third-valve ring that suit a small hand are exactly what an advancing player replaces with an adjustable one. **Pros**- A third of the price of the school-standard trumpet, with parts and a warranty behind it - Checked and adjusted before it ships rather than sent as it left the line - Thumb saddle gives a small hand something stable to hold - Nothing on it wears out on a schedule **Cons**- Outgrown within a few years by anyone who keeps at it - Fixed third-valve ring, where a step-up horn has an adjustable slide - Warranty runs to the original buyer with proof of purchase - The supplied 7C is a starting mouthpiece, not a permanent one Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UeUfU6) № 2 · Buy this with the trumpet ### Al Cass Fast valve oil - 2 oz bottle - Odourless, and does not separate in the bottle - Sold as a valve, slide and key oil - Made in Milford, Massachusetts - About $7 The entire consumable budget for a trumpet. Two or three drops on each piston, worked in, every week or so — Yamaha’s own maintenance instructions say to undo the cap, draw the piston halfway without letting it rotate, oil it and work it back in. A bottle lasts most of a school year. Sticky valves are the single most common reason a student trumpet stops being played, and they are almost always dry rather than broken. This is a seven-dollar fix for a problem that otherwise reads as a faulty instrument. **Pros**- Fixes the fault most likely to make a beginner give up - One bottle covers a school year - Same oil works on the slides **Cons**- Petroleum-based, so it needs keeping away from small children - Nothing about it is exciting to give a ten-year-old Around $7[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4d9RMAG) № 3 · If it is the saxophone ### Jean Paul AS-400 student E♭ alto saxophone - Yellow brass body, gold lacquer finish - High F♯ key - Play-tested and set up before shipping - Mouthpiece, ligature, reed, strap and case included - Individual spare parts available from the maker - Around $675 The price a real beginner saxophone costs, and the number to argue with everything cheaper against. It arrives already set up, which on a saxophone is not a courtesy — an instrument whose pads have never been seated will have dead notes at the bottom of the range, and the player will assume the fault is theirs. It has a High F♯ key, which the obvious step-up student alto does not. It plays like the student horn it is: the intonation needs managing at the extremes, and someone still going in three years will want a better neck. That is the normal arc of a first saxophone, and it ends with an instrument that is still worth repairing and still worth selling. **Pros**- Cheapest alto here with parts, a warranty and a repair route behind it - Set up before it ships, so it plays out of the case - High F♯ key at a price that usually does not include one - Case and mouthpiece are usable rather than placeholders **Cons**- Nearly three times the price of the trumpet on this page - Roughly three times the price of the cheapest saxophones sold - Reeds are a permanent running cost the trumpet does not have - Warranty runs to the original buyer with proof of purchase Around $675[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i1rm7z) № 4 · Buy this with the saxophone ### Vandoren JUNO alto saxophone reeds, strength 2½ - Box of ten, each reed individually sealed - Also made in 1½, 2, 3 and 3½ - Cut in Vandoren’s own French factory from the same cane as their professional lines - Carries the maker’s anti-counterfeit ID code - About $29 for ten A saxophone arrives with one reed and a beginner will finish it inside a fortnight. Vandoren cuts the JUNO specifically for players starting out, and 2½ is the strength a new embouchure should begin on — a harder reed will not close against lips that have not built up yet, and a softer one goes flat and thin as the player climbs. Buy one box in one strength. A variety pack tells a beginner nothing, because they cannot yet tell a reed problem from their own playing. **Pros**- Cut by the maker for players who are still building an embouchure - Individually sealed, so the box does not dry out in a locker - Ten reeds is a term’s worth for most students **Cons**- A recurring cost with no end to it - Strength has to be revisited as the embouchure develops - Cane is inconsistent; some reeds in any box are duds Around $29[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gIjC8d) ## Common questions ### Which is easier for a beginner, trumpet or saxophone? The saxophone, in the first month, by a wide margin. Its reed makes the sound, so blowing produces a note straight away. A trumpet makes no note until the player can buzz their lips, which takes most beginners a few weeks. After the first year the two converge, and the trumpet’s habit of playing several notes on one fingering keeps it demanding for a long time. ### Which is cheaper? The trumpet, at every level and in every direction. From one maker’s list, a student trumpet is about $250 against about $675 for a student alto, and the same ratio holds at intermediate and professional. The trumpet also has no consumable beyond a $7 bottle of oil, where a saxophone burns $60–120 of reeds a year, and its biggest routine shop bill is about $125 against $1,050 upward for a saxophone repad. ### Are they both made of brass? Yes. A saxophone has been made of brass since Adolphe Sax patented it in 1846, and it is still classified as a woodwind. The families are named for how the sound starts, not what the tube is made of: brass instruments are driven by the player’s vibrating lips, woodwinds by a reed or an air jet. On that test the saxophone belongs with the clarinet, which is why saxophonists routinely double on clarinet and almost never on trumpet. ### Can you play the saxophone in an orchestra? Rarely. There is no standing saxophone chair in a symphony orchestra; players are brought in for the handful of scores that call for one, most famously *Bolero*, *Pictures at an Exhibition* and Bizet’s *L’Arlésienne*. The trumpet is in nearly every orchestral score there is. If an orchestra seat is the goal, that alone settles the question. ### Which is better for jazz? Neither, and a big band is built out of both — a saxophone section and a trumpet section, facing each other. Choose on the sound you want to make rather than on the genre, because the genre wants both. ### Should a ten-year-old start on trumpet or saxophone? Ask the band director first, because school programs balance their sections and may want one more than the other. Failing that, the trumpet is the lower-risk start: it is a third of the price, it fits a small player more easily, and there is nothing in it that can produce a four-figure repair bill. If the child has already decided they want the saxophone, rent one for a year rather than arguing. If the trumpet is winning, [which trumpet brands to avoid](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/) covers the bottom of that market and [the fingering chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) covers the first few weeks. If it is the saxophone, [what a saxophone costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) goes through the sizes and the repair arithmetic in full. The rest of each family sits under [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) and [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [Tonette vs. Recorder: One of Them Is an Ocarina](https://promusicvault.com/tonette-vs-recorder/) **Published:** December 27, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Tonette vs. Recorder: One of Them Is an Ocarina A recorder is a pipe with holes in it. A tonette is a sealed chamber with holes in it. They are played the same way, they were sold to the same schools, and they belong to two different families of instrument — which is why a tonette is seven inches long, stops after nine notes, and sounds nothing like the recorder it is always compared to. Almost everything people remember about the tonette comes out of that one difference. If you are buying for a child### Yamaha YRS-24B soprano recorder — Baroque fingering, about $8 Two octaves and a tone, the fingering every method book prints, and cheap enough that it barely counts as a decision. Nothing currently made sounds like a tonette, and nothing made today is meant to — if it is the sound you are after, the instrument you want is an ocarina. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gpo90z) **For the sound you remember:** a plastic alto C ocarina, ~$10 **For very small hands:** Suzuki Precorder, raised holes, ~$14 **Range:** tonette C5–D6, recorder C5–D7 **Check before you order:** the YRS-23 is the same recorder with German fingering ## The end of a tonette is closed Look down the far end of a soprano recorder and you can see through it. Look down the end of a tonette and you cannot, because there is nothing there — the body is a sealed cavity, and the flared bell some models wear is molded decoration over a closed end. That single feature is how the instrument is identified. Something that looks like a tonette and has an open end is a song flute, which is a different instrument by a different inventor. A sealed chamber with holes in it is a vessel flute — the family that contains the ocarina, the gemshorn and the Chinese xun. It makes its note the way a bottle does when you blow across the top: the air inside the whole cavity springs back and forth as one body. Open a hole and you shorten nothing; you simply give that trapped air a wider way out, and the pitch rises. The consequence is the thing worth understanding. On a vessel flute the pitch depends on how much hole area is open against how much air is inside — and not at all on *where* the holes are. On a recorder, an open pipe, the position of each hole is the pitch. Move a recorder’s third hole half an inch and you have detuned the instrument. Move a tonette’s third hole half an inch and nothing happens. So the tonette’s designer could put the seven finger holes wherever a seven-year-old’s fingers naturally fell, cluster them close together, ring each one with a raised collar so a soft fingertip could feel and seal it, and build the whole instrument at a length no pipe pitched in C could ever be. The two tonettes in the Library of Congress flute collection, both acquired in 1938, measure 18.9 and 18.7 centimeters. Aulos publishes lengths for their whole soprano recorder line and every model is between 32.4 and 33.2 centimeters. The tonette is a little over half as long and plays the same bottom note. ## Nine notes against two octaves and a tone A tonette starts on C5 and runs to D6 — nine notes, chromatic within them, though the low C sharp has to be half-holed and never came out cleanly. A soprano recorder starts on that same C5 and reaches D7. The recorder gets there by uncovering a sliver of the thumb hole and pushing a little harder, which drops it into a second register an octave up. The tonette has no second register to drop into. A pipe divides neatly into octaves and fifths because it has a harmonic series; a sealed cavity does not have one in any usable form. Blow harder on a tonette and the note goes sharp, then thin, then stops. There is no technique that opens the upper octave, because there is no upper octave there. Nine notes covers the first year of a school music class and a good deal of folk song. It runs out in the second year, and it runs out permanently. TonetteSoprano recorder**Instrument family**Vessel flute — an ocarina in a straight lineOpen pipe with a fipple**Far end**Closed, even under a decorative bellOpen**Range**C5–D6 — an octave and a toneC5–D7 — two octaves and a tone**Second register**NoneThumb-hole pinch, an octave up**Length**About 19 cm32–33 cm**Holes**Seven front, one thumb, raised rims, close togetherSeven front, one thumb, drilled flush, doubled at the bottom two**What sets the pitch**Total open hole area against cavity volumeWhere each hole sits along the bore**Low C sharp**Half-hole, awkwardlyIts own hole**Tone**Round, hooting, no edge — an ocarinaBright and reedy with an audible breath**Material**Tenite, a cellulose plasticABS resin**Method books in print**NoneEvery school catalogue ## It never sounded like a flute Swanson set out to build something with the tone of a flute in a body a child could hold, and got the first half wrong. The closed end is the reason. A pipe’s tone carries the odd and even harmonics that make a recorder sound bright and slightly breathy at the top. A sealed cavity throws away nearly all of them and leaves something close to a pure tone — round, hollow, a little hooting, with no edge on it at all. That is an ocarina, and it is why people who played one as children cannot place the sound when they hear it again. Peter Schickele, who scored a tonette into his *Gross Concerto* under the P.D.Q. Bach names, called it a cheap synthetic recorder with amusing pretensions. Cream put one on *Pressed Rat and Warthog*, on *Wheels of Fire*, where Felix Pappalardi plays the thin, floating line behind the vocal. Nothing on a recorder makes that noise. Which matters if you are shopping. A recorder is the better instrument and the right one for a child learning to read music. It is not a replacement for a tonette in the only respect the tonette was distinctive. ## Three instruments, three different reasons № 1 · For learning music ### Yamaha YRS-24B Soprano Recorder - Key of C, Baroque fingering - C5–D7 - Double holes, low C/C♯ and D/D♯ - Three-piece ABS, washable - Cotton case and fingering chart - ~$8 The instrument that took the classroom off the tonette in the 1980s and has kept it since. It plays twice the music for the same money, and every method book, wall chart and school program in English is written for it. Check the fingering before you order. The YRS-23 is the same recorder built with German fingering, it sits one click away, and it costs slightly more. German fingering makes the note F easier and everything with a sharp in it harder, and it is not what the charts print. **Pros**- Two octaves and a tone, with a real second register - Doubled bottom holes, so the low chromatics play in tune - Cheaper than either alternative on this page **Cons**- Flush holes are harder for a small hand to seal - A digit away from the German-fingered version Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gpo90z) № 2 · For the sound ### OcarinaWind 12-Hole Plastic Alto C Ocarina - Alto C, twelve holes - A4–F6 - Molded plastic - ~$10 The tonette’s own family, at the tonette’s own price. A sealed chamber, the same hooting round tone with the harmonics stripped out, and a wider range than the tonette ever had — it reaches four notes below the tonette’s bottom C and a minor third above its top. The fingering is not the tonette’s. Twelve holes across two hands is its own system and you learn it from the chart, which takes an afternoon rather than a term. Nothing about it is a school instrument: there is no class repertoire, no grade syllabus and nowhere it leads. It is the one instrument here that will make the noise you are thinking of. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Actually a vessel flute, so the tone is right - Wider range than a tonette, and fully chromatic - Plastic, so it survives being dropped **Cons**- Twelve-hole fingering has nothing in common with a recorder - A dead end musically — nothing transfers out of it - Needs firmer breath at the top than a child expects Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4izDAEH) № 3 · For hands that are not ready ### Suzuki PRE-1B Precorder - Key of C, chromatic - C5–D6 - Raised tone holes, short reach - Doubled lowest two holes - ABS, with bag, strap and chart - ~$14 The closest thing still built to what the tonette was for. Raised collars around every hole so a small finger finds and seals it without looking, holes set close enough together for a three- or four-year-old’s span, and the two lowest doubled so the low C sharp and D sharp are proper notes rather than a half-holing exercise. It is not a tonette. The end is open, which you can see in Suzuki’s own photograph, so it is a short pipe rather than a sealed chamber and it sounds like a recorder — quieter, breathier, but a recorder. And it costs nearly twice what the Yamaha does while playing an octave less. Buy it for the hands or do not buy it. **Pros**- Raised holes solve the one thing that defeats small fingers - Fully chromatic across its nine notes, with real low C♯ and D♯ - Fingering transfers straight onto a recorder later **Cons**- Costs more than the recorder it is preparing a child for - Nine notes, and no way to extend them - Tone is thin next to either other instrument here Around $14[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gpohx5) ## Which one a child should start on From about five, the recorder, without hesitation. The argument that used to be made for the tonette — that it is cheaper, and a child who loses interest has cost you less — no longer holds anywhere, because a plastic soprano recorder costs about eight dollars and is just as hard to break. Below five it is worth thinking about the hand rather than the instrument. What stops a small child on a recorder is not the fingering or the breath; it is that a soft fingertip laid over a flush hole leaves a crescent of daylight, and the note squeaks. Raised rims fix that, and they are the reason the whole pre-band family existed. The Precorder has them. Either way, the transfer works. Left hand on top, right hand below, holes released from the bottom upward — the tonette, the song flute, the flutophone, the Precorder and the recorder all share that, which was the point of the design in the first place. A child who has spent a year on the smaller instrument picks up a recorder already knowing where the notes are. ## Where the tonette came from, and where it went Ziegner Swanson designed it in 1938 and the Chicago Musical Instrument Co. made it, in Tenite — a cellulose plastic from Eastman Chemical, which is why old tonettes have that faintly waxy feel and why some of the surviving ones have warped. The idea was an instrument with the tone of a flute, small enough for a child, at a dollar. It was not the first of its kind: the Library of Congress holds a French cast-metal *Ocariflute* by Ch. Mathieu of Paris, acquired in 1930, and their own catalogue note says the tonette may have derived from it. It moved extraordinarily fast. By 1941 over half the grammar schools in the United States had adopted it as standard equipment, and during the war it was produced in camouflage green for the armed forces, who found it a cheap way for idle troops to pass an afternoon. Over the following decades the name was carried by half a dozen companies in turn. What ended it was the eight-dollar plastic recorder. Once a recorder cost the same as a tonette and played twice the music, the argument was over, and by the 1980s the classroom had changed hands. Tonettes were last made decades ago; they exist now as things in drawers. Of the four American pre-band instruments only Suzuki’s Precorder is in general circulation now; the song flute and the flutophone survive on school supply lists. ## If you already have one Most tonettes have a removable mouthpiece, and that is the tuning: slide it out to flatten, in to sharpen. Take it off to wash the instrument in warm water with a little dish soap, and let it air dry — never hot water, which distorts the fit. Two shallow molded pads sit on the body, one on top under the left little finger and one beneath for the right thumb, put there as rests. On many tonettes they are thin enough to be opened out into real holes, which adds E and F above the top D. It is irreversible and it will not improve a good instrument’s tone, but on a battered one it turns nine notes into eleven. Quality varied enormously over fifty years and several manufacturers. The good ones are hard, dense and glossy; the poor ones are light, matte and textured, and they sound airy and struggle to hold pitch. The finish is the tell before you play a note. ## FAQs ### Is a tonette just a short recorder? No. A recorder is an open pipe and a tonette is a sealed cavity, which makes it a vessel flute — the ocarina family. They share a whistle mouthpiece and a fingering order and nothing else that matters. The closed end is what lets a tonette be half a recorder’s length while playing the same bottom note. ### Which is easier to play? The tonette, for a small child, and for two specific reasons: the raised hole rims seal under a soft fingertip, and the holes sit close enough together for a short hand. For anyone whose fingers reach, the recorder is no harder and does considerably more. ### Do they sound alike? They do not, and it is not a close call. The recorder is bright and reedy with the breath audible in the tone. The tonette is round and hollow with almost no harmonics above the note, which is the characteristic ocarina sound. Anyone who has heard both can tell them apart instantly. ### Can you overblow a tonette into the upper octave? There is no upper octave to reach. Blowing harder sharpens the note and then chokes it. The only way anyone ever extended a tonette’s range was to cut the two molded finger rests open into holes, which adds two notes at the top. ### What is the difference between a tonette and a song flute? The end. A song flute — Elver Fitchhorn’s design, from the same years — has a long tapered tail with a small opening at the tip, so it is not fully sealed. A tonette is closed. They are the same length, the same black plastic and the same nine notes, and the open end is how you tell them apart in a photograph. ### What is a tonette worth? Very little. They were made in enormous numbers over half a century and almost none is rare. The exceptions are early Swanson examples in clear Tenite and wartime camouflage-green ones, which collectors of plastics take an interest in. A black one from a school cupboard is worth what somebody will pay for the memory. ### Do any schools still use them? Not tonettes. Some primary programs still run a year of flutophones or Precorders with the youngest classes before moving everyone onto recorders in third or fourth grade, but the recorder has had the classroom for forty years. If the recorder is where you are heading, the next two decisions are the brand and the fingering system — both are covered under [Aulos vs Yamaha](https://promusicvault.com/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) and across the [plastic recorder picks](https://promusicvault.com/best-plastic-recorder/). For the neighboring comparisons, see the recorder against the [flutophone](https://promusicvault.com/recorder-vs-flutophone/), the [penny whistle](https://promusicvault.com/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/) and the [flute](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/), or the wider family under [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/). **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Symphony vs. Concerto vs. Sonata: Who Plays, and Who Stands in Front](https://promusicvault.com/symphony-vs-concerto-vs-sonata/) **Published:** January 6, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Symphony vs. Concerto vs. Sonata: Who Plays, and Who Stands in Front A symphony is written for the orchestra and nobody else. A concerto is written for one player set against the orchestra. A sonata is written for one or two players and no orchestra at all. That is the whole distinction, and it survives every edge case you can throw at it. Count the people on the platform, then look at whether one of them is standing out in front of the rest. SymphonyConcertoSonata**Who plays**Full orchestra, roughly 60–100 playersSoloist plus full orchestraOne or two players**Anyone out front?**No — only the conductorYes, and that is the pointThere is no “front” to stand in**Movements**Usually fourUsually threeTwo to four**Typical length**25–45 minutes20–40 minutes15–30 minutes**Written for**A concert hallA concert hallA room, originally**One you know**Beethoven’s FifthRachmaninov’s Second Piano ConcertoBeethoven’s *Moonlight* ## Sonata is two words wearing one coat The confusion in this subject is almost all in one place. *Sonata* names a kind of piece, and *sonata form* names the internal shape of a single movement, and the two are not the same thing. Sonata form is a plan for one movement. A theme and a contrasting second theme are laid out in the exposition, pulled apart and moved through distant keys in the development, then brought back with the argument settled in the recapitulation. It is the most common way a first movement is built, and it turns up everywhere. So the first movement of a symphony is usually in sonata form. So is the first movement of a concerto, and of a string quartet, and of a sonata. That is why the older textbooks describe a symphony as a sonata for orchestra: the word once covered any piece played rather than sung, from the Italian *sonare*, to sound, as against *cantata*, sung. Concertos and symphonies both grew out of that family. The narrow modern use is the one on a concert program. There, a sonata is a piece for a soloist, or for one instrument and piano, and it is the small end of the repertoire. ## The symphony The symphony came out of the opera house. The Italian *sinfonia* was the overture played before the curtain went up, in three sections — fast, slow, fast — and by the middle of the eighteenth century composers had begun writing them as concert pieces with nothing attached. It happened in three places at once: Milan around Sammartini, Mannheim around Johann Stamitz, and Vienna. What settled was a four-movement scheme, and knowing it is most of what you need to follow one: - **A quick first movement** in sonata form, sometimes with a slow introduction bolted on the front. - **A slow movement**, the lyrical one, often the part people remember. - **A dance movement** — a minuet and trio in the eighteenth century, replaced by the faster and rougher scherzo as the nineteenth went on. - **A fast finale**, usually a rondo or another sonata-form movement. Haydn wrote more than a hundred symphonies, Mozart forty-one, Beethoven nine. The falling count is the story of the form: each one got longer, heavier and more individual, until by Mahler a single symphony could run to an hour and a half and need a choir. A Classical symphony sits at twenty-five to thirty-five minutes. A late Romantic one runs to an hour. Mahler’s Third takes about a hundred minutes on its own. The orchestra that plays it is four families of instrument — strings, [woodwind](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/), [brass](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) and [percussion](https://promusicvault.com/percussion-instruments/) — and the strings outnumber everything else put together. ## The concerto A concerto sets a soloist against the band. The Italian word comes from *concertare*, which carries both senses at once — to agree, and to contend — and both are audible: the soloist and the orchestra trade the same material, interrupt each other, and race for the finish. Three movements, fast–slow–fast, standard from the early eighteenth century. No dance movement, which is the quickest way to tell a concerto from a symphony on paper: four movements with a minuet or scherzo in third place is a symphony, three movements without one is usually a concerto. The older form is the **concerto grosso**, where the soloist is not one player but a small group. Corelli’s set the pattern with a *concertino* of two violins and cello playing against the full band, the *ripieno*. Bach’s Brandenburgs are the ones everybody knows, and the third of them has no soloist at all in the usual sense. The **solo concerto**, one player against everyone, is Vivaldi’s doing, and it is the model that won. The moment worth waiting for is the cadenza. Near the end of the first movement the orchestra stops on a held chord and the soloist plays alone, unaccompanied and out of time, before a long trill brings everyone back in. It was improvised on the night for most of the eighteenth century. Composers began writing them out in the nineteenth — Beethoven notated the one in the *Emperor* Concerto rather than leave it to the pianist — and today a soloist normally plays a cadenza somebody else wrote and they have practiced for months. Anything can be the soloist. Violin and piano dominate the repertoire, but there are concertos for cello, clarinet, trumpet, oboe, [harp](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/), organ and tuba, and plenty for two or three players at once. ## The sonata The sonata is the domestic one. It was written for a room with people in it rather than a hall with an audience in it, and that shows in the scale of everything about it. In the Baroque it came in two kinds. The *sonata da chiesa*, the church sonata, ran slow–fast–slow–fast with a fugal second movement and kept dance titles off the page. The *sonata da camera*, the chamber sonata, was a prelude followed by a run of dances in the same key, which makes it a suite in all but name. The commonest Baroque scoring is the **trio sonata**, and the name misleads reliably: it has three written parts — two melody instruments and a bass line — but four players, because the bass is realized by a cello or bassoon on the notes and a harpsichord or organ filling in the chords above them. Corelli published four sets of them and half of Europe copied him. The sonata everyone now means arrived with the piano. Haydn was the first to put the word on a keyboard piece, in 1771, and it became the standard term through that decade. From there it is either a piece for keyboard alone or a piece for keyboard and one other instrument. Beethoven wrote thirty-two piano sonatas across his life, and they are the closest thing the instrument has to a complete map of what it can do. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) One thing to get right about the second kind. In a violin sonata the piano is not accompanying the violin; the two parts are equal, and in the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas the piano frequently has the harder job. The old title was “sonata for piano and violin”, in that order, and it meant it. ## Telling them apart in the hall Before a note is played, the stage has already told you: - **Orchestra, conductor, nobody in front.** Symphony. - **Orchestra, conductor, and one chair or a piano turned sideways at the front edge.** Concerto. The sideways piano is the giveaway — the lid is opened toward the audience and the soloist faces the conductor. - **Two people and a piano, or one person and a piano.** Sonata. By ear it is the texture. A symphony hands its tune around the orchestra and nobody keeps it for long. A concerto is a conversation with two speakers, one of whom is louder than they should be able to be, and it stops dead for the cadenza. A sonata never has more than two voices going and you can hear both of them the whole time. ## The rest of the program A concert rarely holds only these three, and the neighboring words are the ones that catch people out. WordWhat it is**Overture**A single opening movement, originally before an opera. Ten minutes, no soloist.**Suite**A set of short movements, usually dances, with no development. The order is a sequence rather than an argument.**Symphonic poem**One continuous orchestral movement telling a story or painting a scene. Orchestra of a symphony, structure of nothing in particular.**Sinfonietta**A small or light symphony. Shorter, smaller orchestra, same idea.**Concertino**Two meanings. A short, light concerto — and the solo group inside a concerto grosso.**String quartet**Four string players, four movements, built exactly like a symphony. It is chamber music, not orchestral.**Partita**A Baroque suite by another name, most famously Bach’s for solo violin and for keyboard. ## Where to go next if you want to hear it Reading the definitions is the easy half. Recognizing sonata form while it is happening takes somebody walking you through a piece, and there are two books that do the job from opposite directions. Start here### Aaron Copland — What to Listen for in Music A working composer explaining what the shapes are for, with chapters on sonata form and the fundamental forms that do more in thirty pages than most course notes manage in a term. It is a small paperback and costs less than a coffee. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x7HN7b) **If you would rather look than read:** DK’s The Classical Music Book — around $16 Copland wrote it in 1939 and revised it twice, and the prose is of its period — it addresses a reader who owns a gramophone. That is the only thing wrong with it. Nothing since has explained the difference between hearing music and listening to it as plainly, and the chapters on form are the ones this page has been circling. [The Classical Music Book](https://amzn.to/4zoEjyv) does something different and should not be mistaken for a rival. It is a large illustrated hardback that maps the repertoire — who wrote what, when, and what they were reacting against — in double-page spreads with timelines and diagrams. It will not teach you to follow a development section. It will tell you where the piece you just heard sits among four hundred years of other pieces, which is the question that arrives second. Around $16, and it is 352 pages of paper worth having in print rather than on a screen. BookWhat it doesFormatPrice band[Copland, What to Listen for in Music](https://amzn.to/4x7HN7b)Teaches you to hear form as it happensPaperback, 304 pages~$8[DK, The Classical Music Book](https://amzn.to/4zoEjyv)Maps the repertoire and the history around itIllustrated hardback, 352 pages~$16 ## Common questions ### Is a concerto part of a symphony? No. They are separate pieces and a concert usually contains one of each, with the concerto before the interval and the symphony after it. Both are played by the same orchestra, which is where the idea comes from. ### Can a symphony have a soloist? Players inside the orchestra take solos constantly — the oboe and the horn especially — but they play from their seats and the piece is still a symphony. A named soloist brought on and placed in front of the orchestra makes it a concerto, whatever the title says. The pieces that sit awkwardly between the two, like Berlioz’s *Harold in Italy* with its solo viola, tend to be argued about for exactly this reason. ### Who invented the sonata? Nobody. The word was in use by 1600 and the Baroque types were established by Corelli in the 1680s, a century before Beethoven was born. Haydn was the first to apply it to a keyboard piece in 1771. Beethoven inherited the form and pushed it further than anyone, which is a different claim. ### Is Clair de Lune a sonata? No, and neither are most of the piano pieces that turn up on lists of famous sonatas. *Clair de Lune* is the third movement of Debussy’s *Suite bergamasque*. Satie’s *Gymnopédies* are three short standalone pieces, Liszt’s *La Campanella* is a study, and Chopin’s nocturnes are nocturnes. A sonata is a multi-movement work; a single famous piano piece almost never is one. ### How long is each of them? A symphony runs twenty-five to forty-five minutes, a concerto twenty to forty, a sonata fifteen to thirty. The ranges overlap because the era matters more than the form: an early Haydn symphony is shorter than a late Beethoven sonata. ### Why do concertos have three movements and symphonies four? The concerto kept the three-part shape of the Baroque original. The symphony gained a fourth when composers slotted a minuet in before the finale during the middle of the eighteenth century, and the extra movement stuck. ### What is a sonatina? A small sonata. Shorter, easier, and usually written for students — the Clementi and Kuhlau sets are what most piano pupils meet first. The structure is the same in miniature, which makes a sonatina the cheapest way to see sonata form whole. ## Also read - [Orchestra vs. Symphony vs. Philharmonic](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/) — why two orchestras in the same city have different words in their names - [Orchestra vs. Band](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) — the instruments each one has and the other does not - [Types of Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/) — the five families, and the ones that sit in the wrong one **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [Schoenhut Pink Harp Review: Lovely Toy, Expensive First Harp](https://promusicvault.com/schoenhut-harp-review/) **Published:** May 24, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Schoenhut Pink Harp Review: Lovely Toy, Expensive First Harp Schoenhut has been building children’s instruments since 1872, and the pink harp is the most photographed thing they make. It stands 27 inches tall on its own feet, comes with a matching bench, and carries fifteen nylon strings across two octaves. The strings sit on zither pins, there are no levers, and the ceiling on what a child can play with it is fixed on the day it arrives. Whether that matters depends entirely on which child you are buying it for. The verdict### The same fifteen strings, for the same money, in something a child can carry The Schoenhut gives a child two octaves of C major, a red-and-blue string code and a bench to sit on. The AKLOT gives the same two octaves and the same string code for about the same money, weighs under three pounds, and arrives with a gig bag and a strap. Unless the floor stand and the bench are the point of the present, that is the better fifteen strings. Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UoCfqb) **For a child under six:** [Roosebeck Lily, 8 strings — around $80](https://amzn.to/4cuYMb2) **If lessons are the plan:** [Roosebeck Pixie, 19 strings with full levers — around $440](https://amzn.to/4cAoTNR) **Whatever you buy:** [a clip-on tuner — around $22](https://amzn.to/4bYGQ8y) ## What the Schoenhut actually is It is model C1019, sold in pink and in cherry, and it is a harp rather than a lyre — a curved neck, a wedge-shaped soundbox and a pillar closing the triangle, which is the shape a child will meet again if they ever sit down at a full-size instrument. Schoenhut rates it for ages six and up. The published dimensions are 27 inches high on a footprint of roughly 9 by 13½ inches, and it arrives with a bench and a zither pin wrench. Fifteen strings, tuned diatonically from one C to the C two octaves above. Every C is red and every F is blue, which is the color code used on every lever and pedal harp built, and it is the single most useful thing about the instrument for a child who cannot yet read music. InstrumentStringsRangeHeightLeversPrice bandSuitsSchoenhut 15-String Harp with bench15Two octaves, C to C27″, floor standingNone~$150A gift for a child of six or moreAKLOT 15-String Harp15Two octaves, C4–C615″ tall, lap or tableNone~$150Most childrenRoosebeck Lily Harp8One octave, C5–C615″None~$80Three to sixRoosebeck Pixie Harp19Two and a half octaves, F3–C631″On every string~$440A child taking lessons ## Two octaves of one key Fifteen diatonic strings give a child the white notes and nothing else. There are no sharps or flats available, and without levers there is no way to borrow one mid-piece, so the harp lives in C major from the day it is tuned until the day it is put away. That is enough for nursery songs, for hymn tunes, for anything a six-year-old will want to pick out by ear, and it runs out at roughly the point a tutor book introduces its second key. This is not a fault peculiar to the Schoenhut. Every fifteen-string harp at this price has the same ceiling, including the one recommended above. It is worth being clear about it before spending the money, because the harp that clears the ceiling costs about three times as much — a lever on every string is the expensive rung on the ladder, and our [lever and pedal harp explainer](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) covers what that buys. If you want to know where the string counts land, [how many strings a harp has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) lays out the whole range. ## Zither pins are the part people underestimate The strings are held by zither pins — plain square-drive pins set into the neck, turned with the little wrench in the box. There is no geared machine head and nothing to fine-tune with, so a quarter turn is a large interval and finding the note takes a delicate hand. An adult does this, not the child. Nylon strings also stretch. A new nylon-strung harp of any make will drift flat for weeks before it settles, which means daily retuning at first and regular retuning forever after, since the pitch moves with the weather as well. This is the single most common reason a small harp stops being played: nobody tunes it, it sounds wrong, and the child loses interest in something that is not their fault. The habit that fixes it costs about twenty dollars. Clip a tuner to the shank of the tuning wrench rather than to the harp itself, so the display sits an inch from the pin you are turning and no metal jaw ever touches the soundboard. Our [guide to tuning a harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/) goes through the order to work in, and the [tuner comparison](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/) explains why a guitar tuner is not a shortcut here. The one accessory it needs### Snark ST-2 Clip-On Tuner - Reads vibration rather than room noise - Rechargeable over USB — no coin cell to die - Clips to a tuning pin or to the wrench itself - Around $22 Lever harp makers point their own customers at the Snark, which is a stronger recommendation than any specification. On an instrument with no fine tuners it does most of the work of keeping the thing playable. Around $22 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bYGQ8y) ## The bench is the real difference At 27 inches on a floor stand, the Schoenhut is played the way a harp is actually played: the child sits, the harp leans back against the right shoulder, and both hands go inside the strings. Small lap harps do not teach that. A child holding a 15-inch harp on their knees learns to pluck at strings from the front, which is a habit a teacher will later have to undo. That is a genuine argument for a floor-standing instrument, and it is the one thing the Schoenhut does that the cheaper harps do not. The catch is that posture only starts to matter once a child is having lessons, and by then the fifteen strings are the limiting factor rather than the seat. A child who is serious enough to need the posture has outgrown the harp attached to it. The bench itself is a four-legged stool that needs putting together, and it is sized for a small child rather than adjustable, so it is outgrown on its own timetable. If seat height is the problem you are solving, our [harp seat guide](https://promusicvault.com/harp-stool-and-bench/) covers the heights and the adjustable options — a twelve-inch stool is the usual answer at that age. ## Why it ended up in so many nurseries A 2018 piece in Refinery29 counted Chrissy Teigen, Mariah Carey, P!nk, Kourtney Kardashian and Busy Philipps among the parents who had bought one. Schoenhut’s own explanation, given to that article, was hand coordination: a child playing colored strings is learning that notes have positions and that positions have order. The article’s explanation was that the harp is a whimsical prop that suits a well-designed room. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Both are true. The colored strings really are pedagogy rather than decoration, and the instrument really is beautiful in a way that the mahogany-colored alternatives are not. Neither of those is worth $150 on its own, and it is worth knowing which of the two you are buying. ## What owners make of it The two colors between them have gathered fewer than thirty ratings in more than a decade, averaging around three and a half stars, and they split rather than cluster: a little over half at five stars and nearly a fifth at one. That shape usually means an instrument that is fine when it arrives right and infuriating when it does not, and on a strung instrument sold as a toy that is what you would expect. For comparison, the AKLOT has more than a thousand ratings at 4.3. That is not a claim that one sounds better than the other — neither has been in our hands — but a thousand buyers is a far better guide to whether an instrument arrives playable than thirty. ## What to buy instead № 1 · Best for most children### AKLOT 15-String Harp - 15 nylon strings, C4–C6, two full octaves - Red C strings, blue F strings - Mahogany, satin finish - 2.8 lb, about 15 inches tall - Gig bag, strap and tuning wrench included The same fifteen notes as the Schoenhut and the same color code, at about the same money, in something a child of six can pick up and take to a lesson. Two octaves is the point at which both hands have something to do — a melody in the right, a bass note in the left — which is where a child starts playing the harp rather than plucking at it. It is a proper harp shape rather than a lyre, so nothing has to be unlearned later. What it does not have is the floor stand and the posture that comes with it, and it ships without spare strings, which are worth ordering alongside because the first one always goes at the worst moment. #### Pros - Two full octaves and the standard red-and-blue string code - Light enough for a child to carry, with bag and strap included - Nylon strings, so no sore fingertips - Far more owner feedback than anything else at the price #### Cons - No levers, so it stays in C major - Played on a lap or a table rather than in harp posture - No spare strings in the box - Plain to look at next to the carved and painted harps Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UoCfqb) For a child younger than the Schoenhut’s own age rating, spend less rather than more. The [Roosebeck Lily](https://amzn.to/4cuYMb2), eight nylon strings and a single octave for around $80, does everything a three- to six-year-old needs, which is to learn that strings make notes and that notes go up and down. An octave does that as well as two do, and half the money is the right amount to risk on a child who may lose interest by spring. If lessons are already arranged, skip the whole category. The [Roosebeck Pixie](https://amzn.to/4cAoTNR) carries nineteen strings and a sharping lever on every one of them for around $440, stands 31 inches so it is played in proper posture from the first lesson, and covers two and a half octaves in whatever key the music asks for. It is the cheapest instrument here that a teacher can actually teach on, and it is three times the price for exactly that reason. Our [guide to harps for kids](https://promusicvault.com/harps-for-kids/) takes all of this by age, and [the beginner harp comparison](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/) goes further up the range for an adult starting out. ## Questions people ask ### Is the Schoenhut harp a real instrument or a toy? Both, and the distinction matters less than it sounds. It has real nylon strings at real tension tuned to real pitches, so a child can play recognisable tunes on it. It is also built to toy safety standards rather than to instrument standards, and it is quiet, because a small box does not move much air. Treat it as a well-made toy harp and it will not disappoint you. ### What age is it for? Schoenhut says six and up, and that is about right — it is also roughly the age most harp teachers want before formal lessons start. Below six, the eight-string harps are the better buy, because a smaller child gets the same lesson from one octave and you spend half as much finding out whether the interest lasts. ### Does it have levers? No. Nothing at this price does. A sharping lever raises one string by a semitone, and a harp without them plays in the one key it is tuned to. The cheapest harps with a lever on every string sit around $440. ### Is it a harp or a lyre? A harp. The test is the frame: a harp is a triangle, with strings running from a curved neck down into a soundbox and a pillar closing the third side. A lyre is two arms and a crossbar with the strings stretched across the face of the body. The Schoenhut has the pillar, so it is a harp, and the difference matters because the two are played quite differently — our [lyre and harp comparison](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/) goes through it. ### How often will it need tuning? Daily for the first few weeks while the nylon settles, then before most sessions. That is normal for any nylon-strung harp and not a defect. Budget for a clip-on tuner and five minutes, and decide in advance which adult is doing it. ### Will a child outgrow it? Quickly, if they take to it. Fifteen strings in one key is a year or so of pleasure for most children and a few months for a determined one. That is an argument for spending either much less or much more, and not very much for spending $150 in the middle. ## So which one? If what you want is the object — a pink harp standing in the corner of a bedroom with a matching bench, beautiful in a photograph and pleasant to pluck at — the Schoenhut does that better than anything else, and no argument about specifications touches it. If what you want is a child playing the harp, buy the [AKLOT](https://amzn.to/3UoCfqb) and put the difference toward lessons, or go straight to the [Pixie](https://amzn.to/4cAoTNR) if the lessons are already booked. And whichever arrives, buy the [tuner](https://amzn.to/4bYGQ8y) at the same time. An untuned harp is the reason most of them end up in the loft. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Pyle Banjo Review: The PBJ60 Arrives Unfinished, and Is Still Worth Buying](https://promusicvault.com/pyle-banjo-review/) **Published:** April 1, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Pyle Banjo Review: The PBJ60 Arrives Unfinished, and Is Still Worth Buying Pyle makes two banjos you can actually buy, and this review is mostly about the cheaper one. The PBJ60 is a full-size five-string resonator banjo at around $160, and at that price it has the two parts that decide whether a cheap banjo can be rescued: a genuine Remo head and an adjustable truss rod. It also arrives with the bridge loose in the carton, the head at whatever tension the factory left it, and a fifth-string peg that is not the geared tuner Pyle’s own feature list promises. Buy it, budget for a setup, and it will play. Buy it expecting an instrument, and it will sit in a corner. The verdict### Pyle PBJ60 The cheapest full-size resonator banjo with parts worth adjusting. Everything wrong with it out of the carton is fixable in one visit to a shop; nothing wrong with it is built into the instrument. That combination is rarer at this money than the spec sheet suggests. Around $160 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HzCRAn) **If you want it fully dressed:** Jameson 5-String — around $175 **If clawhammer is the plan:** AKLOT Open Back — around $150 **If you want it to arrive playing:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 ## At a glance BanjoBackFifth pegArmrestAdjusted before shippingPrice band[Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/3HzCRAn)ResonatorFrictionNoNo~$160[Pyle PBJ140](https://amzn.to/4gyqUvm)ResonatorGearedYesNo~$200[Jameson 5-String](https://amzn.to/4wQ4bAT)Removable resonatorGearedYesNo~$175[AKLOT Open Back](https://amzn.to/4y5mTFO)Open backGearedNoNo~$150[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4y3fOFH)Open backGearedNoYes, in Florida~$315 ## The fifth peg is a friction peg Pyle’s feature list for the PBJ60 says “Features Additional 5th Geared Tuner Side-Peg”, and calls it an upgrade over the common friction tuner. The banjo does not have one. In Pyle’s own photographs the fifth peg is a plain white button on a bare tapered shaft pushed into the side of the neck — no gear housing, no mounting plate, no screw holding it to the wood. That is a friction peg, and the difference matters, because a friction peg holds by wedge pressure alone and the fifth string is the one that drifts. Pyle’s own maintenance manual settles it from the other direction. It gives two separate warnings about knocking the fifth peg — “after several bumps the fifth peg might suddenly fall out” — and tells you to glue it back in with wood glue if it keeps happening. A geared fifth tuner is screwed to the neck and cannot fall out of it. Owners report the same thing: one describes the peg arriving not anchored in the neck at all, springing back the moment the string came up to tension. This is not a reason to skip the banjo, and it is the single most useful thing to know before buying one. A geared fifth peg is a stock part costing under twenty dollars, and fitting one is a few minutes’ work for a shop that already has the banjo on the bench for its setup. Go in knowing that and the fifth string stops being the thing that makes you think you cannot tune. Go in believing the feature list and you will spend a fortnight blaming your ears. ## Pyle’s other banjo does have the geared peg The PBJ140 is the same company’s dearer banjo at around $200, and it carries word for word the same feature line: “Features Additional 5th Geared Tuner Side-Peg”. On this one it is true. The photographs show a chrome gear housing bolted to the side of the neck behind the button, which is what a geared fifth tuner looks like and what the PBJ60 does not have. Same maker, same sentence, two different instruments — which is the clearest possible demonstration that the sentence is not evidence. It is a genuinely different banjo rather than a PBJ60 with extras: 38.6 inches overall, 24 brackets, a sapele plywood resonator, an armrest, a Remo head, a truss rod, and a bundle with a gig bag, a strap, spare strings, three picks, a cloth and a wall hanger. Owners describe it arriving with the bridge already seated and the intonation right, which the PBJ60 does not do. Two things to know before you take the upgrade. The fingerboard is **high-density man-made wood** — engineered board, in Pyle’s own words — where the cheaper PBJ60 has rosewood, so the dearer banjo has the worse fretboard. And the “tuner” in the bundle is a **phone app**, not a device: Pyle’s own list of what is in the box runs banjo, bag, strings, strap, hanger, cloth, picks and wrench, with no tuner among them, and the box art advertises an app with the Apple and Android logos beside it. Budget for a real clip-on either way — there are [picks here](/best-banjo-tuner/). Pyle’s other banjo### Pyle PBJ140 Around $200 for the geared fifth peg, an armrest, 24 brackets and a bag of accessories. Worth the forty dollars over the PBJ60 if you want one box with everything in it, and not worth it if you would rather have the rosewood fingerboard and spend the difference on a setup. Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gyqUvm) ## What actually comes out of the carton A printed cardboard box, the banjo, a maple bridge lying loose, and a truss rod tool. No case, no gig bag, no strap, no tuner. In Pyle’s own product photograph the strings run flat across the head from the tailpiece to the nut with no bridge under them, which is exactly how it turns up. Fitting that bridge is the first job and there is a number for it. Pyle’s manual gives the scale length as 26 1/4 inches and tells you to stand the bridge 26 3/16 inches from the nut, perpendicular to the strings, then fine-tune the position by harmonics. That single measurement is the difference between a banjo that plays in tune up the neck and one that does not, and nothing marks it on the head for you. After that comes the head tension, the action and the tailpiece height, none of which the factory sets. Owners who like this banjo describe the same sequence almost word for word — tighten the head, set the action, seat the bridge, and then it sounds good. Owners who describe it as unplayable describe none of it. A shop does the lot for $50 to $100, and on a $160 banjo that is the most productive money you will spend. The maintenance manual is unusually frank about this: Pyle’s own advice is to take the instrument to a repairman and watch, rather than start turning things yourself. ### The supplied bridge is not the one to keep It is a plain maple bridge, and which plain maple bridge varies — owners who have had two of these describe getting a decent maple-and-hardwood-capped one in the first and a noticeably cheaper one in the second. A proper five-eighths maple bridge with an ebony cap is $10 to $30 and changes the tone more than a set of strings does. Buy one with the banjo and hand both to whoever does the setup. Our [string guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers the other half of that first upgrade. ## What Pyle publishes, and what they leave out SpecWhat Pyle statesWhat it meansScale length26 1/4″Full standard five-string scale — not a short-scale or travel instrumentTotal length37.9″Normal for a full-size banjoHeadRemo, 11.4″ drum diameterA real Remo, not an unbranded plastic sheet — the part hardest to fakeFrets22, rosewood fingerboardStandard; the fifth string starts at the fifth fretTruss rodAdjustable, tool includedA bowed neck can be corrected rather than written offBody“Shabili wood”A veneer trade name. Pyle’s own feature bullets say mahogany insteadTone ringNot listedThere isn’t one, which is why it will not carry over a jamWeightNot publishedResonator banjos of this build run about 6 to 8 lbCountry of originNot publishedPyle says nothing about where it is made Two of those deserve a sentence. Pyle’s technical specification calls the body shabili wood; their marketing bullets on the same product call it mahogany. Shabili is a veneer trade name rather than a species, so nobody can tell you with confidence what the shell actually is, and it matters less than it sounds — an owner who looked inside reports a plied wooden rim, which is the construction you want at this price and better than the aluminum pot the price might suggest. On a banjo with no tone ring, the head, the bridge and the head tension decide the tone far more than the shell wood does. The weight is the other one. Pyle publishes no figure for the instrument, and the number circulating for this banjo is a package weight rather than a measurement of the banjo. It is a resonator instrument without a flange or an armrest, so expect something in the ordinary 6 to 8 lb range and about a pound less if you take the resonator off — a long way from the Gold Tone AC-1’s published 3.75 lb. There are figures across the whole range in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ## What it will and will not do musically It is a resonator banjo, so it throws its sound forward and it is loud in a room. That makes it the right shape for bluegrass and three-finger picking, and the wrong shape for clawhammer, where an open back is quieter, lighter and sits better against the body. Pyle does not offer the resonator as a removable feature the way some banjos at this price do, so treat the back as fixed when you choose. The full argument is in [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) What it will not do is hold its own next to a mandolin and a guitar in a jam, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of setup. There is no tone ring — no cast bell brass, no rolled brass hoop, nothing under the head but the wooden rim — and no flange, so the volume and the cut that let a bluegrass banjo be heard over a band are simply not in the instrument. Nothing you do to a $160 banjo puts them there. That ceiling is where [bluegrass banjos](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) start, and it is a different budget entirely. Inside a room, learning rolls, playing along to records, taking it to a campfire, it is fine. One owner puts it better than a spec list can: it sounds like a loud, brassy student instrument, which is what it is, and you can take it outside without worrying about it. ### Where the hardware gives out first The small metal parts are the weak point rather than the banjo. Owners report strap-button screws pulling out of the wood within a day, and the fifth peg working loose. Neither is expensive to fix and both are worth pre-empting: have the strap button re-seated properly rather than hanging a strap on the factory screw, and have the fifth peg replaced at the same time as everything else. Get all of that done in one visit and the instrument is settled. ## The warranty is a year, and it is yours alone Pyle’s standard cover is a one-year limited warranty on defects in materials and workmanship, with no registration needed. It applies only to the original purchaser and is not transferable, you pay the freight to send the instrument in for evaluation, and it covers US addresses only. On a $160 banjo, boxing one up and shipping it across the country is a real fraction of the price, so in practice the warranty covers a fault you find in the first fortnight and very little after that. It is worth knowing what the next rung up buys, because the difference is larger than the price gap. Gold Tone cover their AC models for five years and the cover transfers to whoever you sell the banjo to. That is a company standing behind an instrument, rather than a distributor honouring a defect claim. ## Three banjos to weigh it against № 1 · If you want the full checklist ### Jameson 5-String - Removable mahogany resonator - Five-ply maple and mahogany shell, mahogany neck - Remo Weatherking head, 24 brackets, chrome armrest - 5/8″ maple and ebony bridge, adjustable tailpiece - Adjustable truss rod, hinged tailpiece - Geared fifth tuner — a real one - ~$175 Fifteen dollars more than the PBJ60 and it has everything the PBJ60 leaves off: the armrest, the better bridge, a padded gig bag, the resonator that unbolts so you can try clawhammer without buying a second banjo, and the geared fifth peg the PBJ60 only claims. It still arrives unadjusted, so the setup money is the same either way — but nothing else has to be bought afterward, which is why it beats the Pyle on total cost despite the higher sticker. It also has by far the longest record of anyone at this price — this is the banjo people have been buying to answer this question for more than a decade. On an instrument nobody inspects before it ships, a long history of average outcomes is the only evidence available that yours will be fine. **Pros**- Everything on the checklist, including a genuine geared fifth peg and a bag - Resonator comes off in a few minutes - Armrest and a proper capped bridge included - The longest track record in the bracket **Cons**- Dearer than the Pyle, and still needs the same setup - Two can arrive playing quite differently Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wQ4bAT) № 2 · If clawhammer is already the plan ### AKLOT 5-String Open Back - Open backed by design, not a resonator conversion - Maple body and neck - Remo head, 18 brackets - Two-way truss rod - Tuner, strap, picks, spare strings and gig bag included - ~$150 Cheaper than the Pyle and a genuinely different instrument. An open back is lighter, more comfortable seated, and has the shorter, drier voice old-time and clawhammer playing want. Buying a resonator banjo and taking the back off is not the same thing, and on the Pyle it is not offered anyway. The tuners are the first thing owners replace and the bundled clip-on tuner is worth what it costs, so see our [tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/) for something that will actually hold you to pitch. What it gets right is the maple pot, which is the part you cannot upgrade cheaply later. **Pros**- A real open back for less than the Pyle - Maple pot — the part that cannot be retrofitted - Light and comfortable to hold - Arrives with a bag and the accessories you would otherwise buy **Cons**- Tuners are the first upgrade - Too quiet for a bluegrass jam Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y5mTFO) № 3 · If you want it to arrive playing ### Gold Tone AC-1 - 11″ composite rim, open back - 26-3/16″ scale, 22 frets, rosewood fingerboard - 1-3/16″ Zero Glide nut - Remo LC frosted head, 16 brackets - Maple bridge with an ebony cap, two-way truss rod - 3.75 lb, gig bag included - Twelve-point setup in Titusville, Florida before it ships - ~$315 Twice the money, and what it buys is the thing this whole page is about: somebody adjusts it before it is boxed. It arrives with the bridge in place, the head at tension and the action set, which is the largest single difference between a cheap banjo and a good one, and it comes from a company that draws its own instruments rather than commissioning them. It is an open back with a composite rim, so it is not louder than the Pyle and it is not a bluegrass banjo either. What it is, is finished. Five-year transferable cover, a Zero Glide nut, and 3.75 lb on your knee. If you already know you are going to stick with this, start here and skip the setup bill. **Pros**- Arrives adjusted and playing — nothing else here does - Lightest banjo on this page by a wide margin - Zero Glide nut, so the open strings are in tune - Five-year warranty that transfers with the instrument **Cons**- Twice the price of the Pyle - Composite rim rather than wood - Open back only — no resonator model offered Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y3fOFH) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the Pyle PBJ60 a good beginner banjo? Yes, once it has been set up, and no before that. Everything a beginner needs is present — a full 26 1/4 inch scale, 22 frets, a Remo head and a truss rod — and everything that defeats beginners is unset: action, head tension, bridge placement. Treat the price as $160 plus $50 to $100 and it is a straightforward recommendation. Treat it as $160 and it is a gamble on your own patience. More on the learning curve in [how hard the banjo is to learn](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). ### Does the Pyle really have a geared fifth tuner? Not the PBJ60. Pyle’s feature list says it does and the instrument has a friction peg — a plain button on a tapered shaft, visible in Pyle’s own photographs, and described as a friction peg by owners who have one in their hands. The replacement part costs under twenty dollars and goes in while the banjo is being set up, so it is a small problem with a cheap fix — but it is not a feature you are getting for your money. Pyle’s dearer PBJ140 does have a real one. ### Can you play clawhammer on it? You can play clawhammer on anything with five strings, but this is not the banjo for it. A resonator makes the instrument heavier, brighter and longer-sustaining, and clawhammer wants the opposite of all three. If old-time is what drew you in, spend less and get an open back — our [clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) and [open back guide](/best-open-back-banjo/) cover that side properly. ### Is it worth upgrading rather than replacing? Up to a point. A setup, a geared fifth peg, a decent bridge and a fresh set of strings come to well under a hundred dollars on top and turn it into a properly usable instrument. Beyond that you run into the pot: no tone ring and no flange, and neither is worth retrofitting to a $160 banjo. When that ceiling starts to annoy you, the answer is a different instrument, and [under $300](/best-banjo-under-300/) is where the next rung sits. ### How does it compare to the Jameson? The Jameson is fifteen dollars dearer and better appointed on every point where they differ: armrest, capped bridge, removable resonator, and a fifth peg that really is geared. The Pyle’s case is that none of those decide whether you learn to play, and the money saved goes toward the setup that does. Both are covered alongside the rest of the bracket in [the best banjos under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/). ## So should you buy it? If you are finding out whether the banjo is going to stick, yes. The [Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/3HzCRAn) at around $160, plus $50 to $100 of setup and a geared fifth peg, gets you a full-size resonator banjo that plays properly for a little over two hundred dollars, and you lose very little if you stop. Nothing in that sentence is a compromise you will regret; it is simply the honest price of the instrument. If you would rather have the better-dressed banjo for the same trouble, take the [Jameson](https://amzn.to/4wQ4bAT). If old-time is already what you want, the [AKLOT open back](https://amzn.to/4y5mTFO) is the right shape and costs less. And if you already know this is going to last, the [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4y3fOFH) arrives adjusted and skips the whole argument. Where to go from here: [beginner banjos](/best-banjo-for-beginners/), [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/), and [what a banjo really costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/). **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Plectrum vs. Tenor Banjo: What You Already Play Decides It](https://promusicvault.com/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) **Published:** March 12, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Banjo Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/banjo-comparisons/ "Banjo Comparisons")› Plectrum vs. Tenor Banjo: What You Already Play Decides It Both are four-string banjos built on the same eleven-inch pot, and hanging side by side on a wall they look like one instrument in two lengths. Everything that separates them is the neck. A plectrum banjo has 22 frets on a scale of about 26 inches and is tuned CGBD. A tenor banjo has 17 or 19 frets on a scale between 20 and 23 inches and is tuned in fifths — CGDA, or GDAE if it is going to a session. Neither one plays bluegrass. That is the five-string, and no change of technique will get you there on four. The split exists because two different sets of musicians walked into the same 1920s dance band from different instruments. Five-string banjo players took the drone string off and kept their tuning and their scale length, and that is the plectrum. Mandolin and banjo-mandolin players wanted their own fingering to come with them, so they got a shorter neck tuned in fifths, and that is the tenor. A century later it is still the fastest way to the answer. If you want one answer### A 19-fret tenor — the Deering Goodtime Openback is the one to buy The tenor is the four-string banjo with a living tradition behind it on both sides of the Atlantic, it is what almost every professional Irish player is holding, and it is far easier to find, sell and get taught on than a plectrum. Nineteen frets rather than seventeen is the part to insist on. This one is built in California, weighs four and a half pounds and costs what Deering charges for it. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SvEFmp) **If you play guitar or five-string:** a plectrum instead — the shapes already fit your hands **If you play fiddle or mandolin:** a tenor, tuned GDAE, and you can already play it **If your hands are small:** a 17-fret tenor, for that reason and no other **If you want bluegrass or clawhammer:** neither — you want a five-string ## The neck is the whole difference PlectrumTenorFrets to the body2217 or 19Scale length26 to 26 1/4″19 3/4″ to 23″Standard tuningCGBDCGDAIntervalsFourth, third, fourth — a guitar’s spacingFifths throughout — a viola’sCommon alternativeDGBE, the top four guitar stringsGDAE, a fiddle an octave downPlayed withA flat pickA flat pickHome groundTrad jazz rhythm, solo chord-melodyIrish trad melody, trad jazz rhythmComes naturally toFive-string banjo and guitar playersMandolin and fiddle players The pot is shared. Both take an eleven-inch head, both are sold with and without a resonator, and a plectrum and a tenor from the same maker are usually the same instrument from the rim down. Weight, tone ring and resonator are decisions you make on either one, and our [open back versus resonator comparison](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) applies to both without modification. If you have inherited a four-string banjo and do not know which it is, count the frets from the nut to where the neck meets the body. Twenty-two is a plectrum, seventeen or nineteen is a tenor, and the proportions give it away in a photograph — a plectrum neck is as long as a five-string’s, while a tenor’s looks short against the same size pot. ## What carries over from the instrument you already play You playBuyTunedWhat comes with youFiddle or mandolinTenorGDAEEvery scale and every tune you know, an octave lower, with the same fingersViola or mandolaTenorCGDAThe same again, and you can read your own parts off the pageGuitarPlectrumDGBEThe top four strings of a guitar, so your chord shapes are already correctFive-string banjoPlectrumCGBDSame scale, same 22 frets, same shapes as dropped C without the droneNothing yetEither—Choose by the music instead The five-string row is worth spelling out, because it is stronger than a table makes it look. A plectrum banjo *is* a five-string with the short drone string left off — same 26-inch scale, same 22 frets, same pot — and CGBD is that instrument’s dropped C tuning minus the string you removed. If you own one, you can find out this afternoon whether plectrum playing suits you: pick up a flat pick and leave the fifth string alone. ## The tuning decides the music Tuning in fifths spreads four strings across two octaves. That is a great deal of range under one hand, which is why the tenor became a melody instrument in Irish music — a fiddle tune sits in first position with open strings doing much of the work, and the fingering belongs to the fiddler who brought it. The cost is chords. Notes a fifth apart are far apart on the fingerboard, so tenor chord shapes need stretches a guitarist would call unreasonable, and they get worse the further up the neck you go. What comes back in return is symmetry. Every gap between strings is the same interval, so a chord shape or a scale pattern keeps its form when you slide it across the strings or up the neck. A tenor player learns a handful of shapes and moves them; a guitarist learns a great many and stays put. CGBD is the opposite bargain. The strings sit close together in pitch, so four-note chords fall under the hand in compact shapes and ring out without a stretch — which is precisely what a rhythm banjo in a jazz band is for, and what makes unaccompanied chord-melody playing possible at all. Melody is the harder half here: less range, and more shifting to reach notes a tenor would have had sitting on an open string. Chicago tuning is the shortcut past all of it. Tune a plectrum DGBE and it is the top four strings of a guitar, so every shape you already know is right as it stands. It takes no different banjo and no different strings, and plenty of players who bought a plectrum meaning to learn CGBD never leave it. ## For Irish playing, the fret count matters more than the label An Irish tenor banjo is not a separate instrument. It is a tenor banjo tuned GDAE with heavier strings on it — a fiddle an octave down, the tuning Barney McKenna made standard — and nothing in the construction changes. A tenor sold for jazz becomes an Irish tenor the moment you restring it. The neck length does change the instrument, and it is the decision that costs money to get wrong. Gold Tone’s 17-fret model is the one with “Irish Tenor” in its name and it leaves the factory tuned GDAE, which makes the short scale look like the Irish standard. Among players you would hear on a record, it is not. The 19-fret neck at 22 to 23 inches is what most professionals use, and Deering’s own write-up on the question, drawing on the members of We Banjo 3, puts the 17-fret as the choice for children and for players with small hands. The reason is tension. GDAE is already lower than the tenor banjo was designed around, and a shorter scale drops the tension further, so a 17-fret neck in Irish tuning needs thick strings to feel like anything under the fingers and still gives up punch and some intonation on the low G. Buy the short scale because your hands want it, not because the box says Irish. Our [Irish banjo picks](/best-banjo-for-irish-music/) go further into the instruments themselves. ## Which one is easier For chords, the plectrum, comfortably. The shapes are compact, they resemble a guitar’s, and in Chicago tuning they are a guitar’s. For single-line melody, the tenor, because fifths put more notes within one hand position and the open strings land where tunes need them. Physically the plectrum is the gentler of the two in spite of the longer neck. It carries low strings over 26 inches, which works out slack and easy to press down; a tenor pulls higher pitches across a much shorter scale and feels tight by comparison. Against that, the tenor’s frets are closer together, so a small hand covers more of the fingerboard — the same trade the 17-fret question turns on. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Neither is picked with the fingers. Clawhammer and three-finger rolls belong to the five-string and the drone it has that these do not; both of these are flat-picked, strummed or played with alternating down-up strokes. ## What to buy once you have decided Deering builds the same banjo in both necks at the same price, which makes the comparison unusually clean: identical rim, identical head, identical warranty, and the only thing your money buys differently is the neck the argument above is about. Around $600 is roughly where four-string banjos worth owning start, from either of the two makers building them in quantity. The tenor ### Deering Goodtime Openback 19-Fret Tenor - 19 frets, 23″ scale - Tunes CGDA or GDAE - 11″ violin-grade maple rim, open back - No tone ring - 4.5 lb - Built in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 The 19-fret neck is the one to have, and this is the cheapest way to get it from a maker whose instruments arrive playing in tune with themselves. Twenty-three inches gives Irish tuning enough tension to sound like something, keeps the intonation honest on the low G, and leaves the fingerboard long enough to go up the neck when a tune asks you to. There is no tone ring — the head bears straight onto the wooden rim — and no resonator. In a room, in a session, or against a fiddle, that reads as clear and woody and perfectly loud enough. In a jazz band with a horn section it will get buried, and playing harder is not the fix; that is what the resonator models further up the Goodtime range are for, at around $850 and $1,200. The four-and-a-half pounds are worth a mention because banjos are not usually this light, and it changes how long a session lasts before your shoulder complains. **Pros**- 19 frets, which is what Irish players actually use - Built and set up in California - Light enough to stand up with all evening - Retunes to jazz CGDA with a string change **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited cut in a band - Open back — adding Deering’s resonator kit later costs more than buying the Goodtime Two Tenor outright - No case at this price Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SvEFmp) The plectrum ### Deering Goodtime Plectrum - 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale - Tunes CGBD or Chicago DGBE - 11″ violin-grade maple rim, open back - No tone ring - 4 lb - Built in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 The same banjo with the long neck on it, for the same money. If you came from a guitar or a five-string, this is the one where your hands already know what to do, and four pounds is genuinely unusual — it is the lighter of the two despite carrying four more frets. The same caveat applies and it bites harder here. A plectrum banjo was designed to be heard over a brass section without amplification, and an open back with no tone ring is the quietest way to own one. As a first plectrum for playing at home that is the sensible trade; as the banjo you take to a trad jazz gig it is not, and the resonator models are the answer there. New plectrum banjos come from a very short list of makers, which is the real constraint on this side of the decision. Our [plectrum banjo guide](/best-plectrum-banjos/) covers what exists. **Pros**- Guitar and five-string shapes transfer directly - Four pounds, the lightest banjo Deering makes - Chicago tuning needs nothing but a retune - Built and set up in California **Cons**- No tone ring, and quiet is the wrong answer for jazz - Open back only - No case at this price Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zkLIPq) ## The strings are not interchangeable, and this catches people out Both instruments take four steel strings and there the similarity ends. A plectrum’s are long and tuned low; a tenor’s are short and tuned high; and within the tenor, moving between jazz tuning and Irish tuning means changing gauge, not just turning the pegs. Put a standard CGDA set on and tune it down to GDAE and you get four slack strings that buzz on the frets and will not hold pitch. Instrument and tuningGaugesSetTenor, CGDA — jazz and standard.009–.030[Dunlop DJN0930](https://amzn.to/4wrDl1S), around $9Tenor, GDAE — Irish.012–.036[Dunlop DJN1236](https://amzn.to/4qi9KpW), around $9Plectrum, CGBD or DGBE.011–.026A plectrum set, or the four long strings of a five-string set The plectrum row is the useful one to know. Because the scale is identical to a five-string’s, an ordinary five-string set fits a plectrum exactly — you fit four of them and have the short drone string left over. If you already keep banjo strings in a drawer, you are already stocked. On a 17-fret tenor in Irish tuning, go heavier again. The short scale needs it, and a set built for 19 frets will feel loose on 20 inches. ## If you wanted bluegrass or clawhammer, you want neither of these The banjo sound in bluegrass and the one in old-time both come from the five-string, and specifically from the short fifth string that starts at the fifth fret and rings as a drone under everything else. Rolls are built around it; clawhammer cannot be played without it. A plectrum will give you the same scale length and a good deal of the same tone, and it still will not do that, because the string is not there to do it with. If that is the music you are after, start with our [beginner banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) or the [rundown of banjo types](/types-of-banjos/). Four strings is a different tradition, not an easier door into this one. ## Common questions ### Can I tune a tenor banjo like a plectrum? Into DGBE, yes, and plenty of guitarists do exactly that because tenors are easier to find. Full CGBD on a 21-inch scale ends up slack, so it wants a heavier set if you try. What you cannot change is the neck, and the long scale is where most of the plectrum’s tone comes from. ### Which is more common secondhand? Tenors, by a wide margin. They were built in enormous numbers through the 1920s and they are still in production for the Irish market. New plectrums come from a very small number of makers, which is worth knowing before you set your heart on one — our [tenor banjo picks](/best-tenor-banjo/) cover the other side of the shelf. ### Is a plectrum banjo louder than a tenor? No, and if anything the reverse. Volume on a banjo comes from the pot — head tension, tone ring, resonator — and those are the same choices on both. The tenor’s higher tuning across shorter, tighter strings gives it a harder and more cutting attack, which is how it took the rhythm chair in dance bands. The plectrum’s longer scale and lower tuning make it the warmer of the two. ### Can I fit a fifth string to a plectrum banjo? Not without a luthier. The neck has no fifth-string tuner and no nut slot for one, so it means drilling the neck and fitting a geared peg at the fifth fret. It costs more than the difference between a plectrum and a five-string. ### Which should a complete beginner choose? Follow the music. Sessions and Irish tunes mean a tenor in GDAE; trad jazz rhythm works on either, and the tenor is easier to find; chord-melody and anything you want to play on your own favor the plectrum. If the honest answer is that you like the sound of a banjo and have no particular tradition in mind, a five-string is the better first instrument — more material, more teachers, and more people to play with. **Categories:** Banjo Comparisons --- ### [Piccolo vs. Fife: Two Small Flutes, Two Different Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/piccolo-vs-fife/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Piccolo vs. Fife: Two Small Flutes, Two Different Instruments Both are little transverse flutes you hold sideways and blow across. After that they part company completely: the piccolo is a Boehm instrument in concert C with a full set of keys, and the fife is a keyless tube with six holes that usually sounds in B♭. Put a fife part in front of a piccolo player and almost nothing comes out right. The bores even run in opposite directions, which is what gives each of them its voice. The short answer### What you are playing with decides it, not which one you prefer A concert band, a wind ensemble or an orchestra wants a piccolo, and it is a flute player’s second instrument — the fingering is identical. A fife and drum corps, a reenactment unit or a folk session wants a fife, and it is the tin whistle player who already knows the fingering. If you simply want to hold one of these and find out what it feels like, the fife is the one you can buy properly for the price of a takeaway — a plain nickel-plated brass tube with six holes in it, which is what an American fife has looked like for well over a century. About $30 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xSlfHg) **Playing with a corps:** it has to be a B♭ fife — nothing else will fit **Playing in a band:** a piccolo in C, and expect four figures for a real one **Already play flute:** the piccolo needs no new fingerings at all **Just curious:** $15 of plastic answers it in a fortnight ## The differences that decide it PiccoloFife**Length**About 12½ inches, two piecesAbout 16–17 inches, usually one piece**Bore**Conical body, cylindrical headCylindrical throughout, and narrow — around 11 mm**Holes and keys**Boehm keywork, split E on better modelsSix open holes, no keys at all**Pitch**In C, sounding an octave above the pageTransposing — the standard is B♭**Fingering system**Boehm — the same as a fluteSimple system, as on a tin whistle**Lowest usable note**D5, and it speaks properlyThe bottom octave barely sounds and is not written**Top of the range**C8Around G7 in ordinary playing**Accidentals**A key for every semitoneCross and half-hole fingerings**Materials**Resin, grenadilla, nickel silver, silverPlastic, nickel-plated brass, cocuswood, rosewood**What one worth playing costs**Around $1,000 for the standard student model$15 plastic, $30 metal, $70–200 wood**Where it is played**Orchestras, concert bands, marching bandsFife and drum corps, reenactment, folk ## The bores are shaped opposite ways round A modern concert flute has a cylindrical body and a headjoint that tapers — Theobald Boehm’s arrangement, settled in 1847. The piccolo never made that switch. Its body stays conical, narrowing toward the foot, with a cylindrical head above it, which is the shape the baroque flute used and the reason the piccolo’s lowest note is D rather than the flute’s C. Everything else about it is Boehm: the keywork, the fingering, the concert pitch. The fife is a straight cylinder from end to end, and the number that matters is how narrow it is against its length. A traditional B♭ fife runs about 43 cm with a bore of 11 mm or less. A tube that thin favors its upper register so heavily that the bottom octave hardly speaks at all — and that is deliberate, because a fife was built to be heard across a field over drums and, by report, over artillery. So the old idea that a fife is just a cheap piccolo has it backward. They are two different acoustic designs that happen to end up in the same part of the register. ## Which octaves each one actually lives in The piccolo sounds an octave above what is written, from D5 up to C8, and all three octaves are usable — the bottom one is quiet and hard to place, but it is there and composers write it. The split E mechanism found on decent piccolos exists to make the top of the second octave behave. A B♭ fife has a written low note of D just below the staff, and that is not its lowest note — it is an octave above it. Fife methods print fingerings for the working range and simply leave the bottom octave off the chart, because those notes cannot be heard over a drum line. The top of the ordinary written range comes out around G7, which is within a fourth of the piccolo’s ceiling on an instrument four inches longer. The practical consequence: a piccolo can play a quiet low phrase and a fife cannot. A fife can be heard outdoors without amplification in a way that costs a piccolo player real effort. ## One reads flute fingering, the other reads whistle fingering This is the part that decides how quickly you can switch. A flute player can pick up a piccolo and play it the same afternoon, because the fingering is the fingering they already have and the part is written the way flute parts are written. What has to be learned is the embouchure: the hole is far smaller, the air stream has to be faster and better aimed, and the tuning moves under you until you have built the control. That is the whole of the piccolo’s difficulty, and it takes months rather than weeks. The fife is the opposite trade. The embouchure comes sooner — the hole is larger and more forgiving — but nothing else transfers. Six holes give you a diatonic scale, sharps and flats come from cross-fingerings and half-covered holes that are never exactly in tune, and the notation is a fingering convention rather than a statement of pitch. On a B♭ fife, the note the chart calls D sounds a concert B♭. A flute player reading a fife part gets neither the key nor the octave they are expecting. If you have played a tin whistle, the fife’s six-hole pattern is already yours and only the transverse embouchure is new. That is the fastest route onto either instrument, and it is the reason a lot of fifers arrive from the [whistle side](/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/) rather than the flute side. ## The instrument that is neither: the band flute There is a third small flute in the middle of this, and it has been muddying the question since the 1850s. A band flute is a small conical-bored flute with one, four or six keys, pitched just below the piccolo, and it started being sold under the name "fife" well over a century ago. A treatise on military band instrumentation from 1860 was already calling them "so-called fifes". It plays quite differently from either instrument here: a warm, usable low octave and a difficult top, which is the reverse of what a fife does. If you want the fife sound, the test is simple and visible in the photographs — a fife has six plain holes and no mechanism on it anywhere. Anything with keys on a small transverse body is a band flute or a piccolo, whatever the title on it says. ## Which one to buy The fife is one of the few instruments where the cheap version is the real thing. The piccolo is not one of those, and the gap between the two ends of the piccolo market is the largest on this page. № 1 · The traditional American fife ### American Plating 150CN metal fife - Key of C - Nickel-plated brass - Six holes, no keys - One piece, nothing to service - About $30 Sears were selling metal fifes by mail order in 1908 — cylindrical, keyless, six holes — and the design has not needed changing since: one piece of nickel-plated brass, nothing to service and nothing to break. It is bright and it is loud, which is the entire point of the design. Note the key — this one is in C, and a C fife and a B♭ fife look identical, so if the plan involves playing with other fifers you need to know which pitch the group uses before you order. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- A genuine narrow-bore fife rather than a keyed band flute - Metal body shrugs off weather and travel - Costs less than a set of flute pads **Cons**- In C, so it will not sit in a B♭ corps - Nothing on it says which key it is - Cross-fingered accidentals are approximate, as on any keyless fife About $30[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xSlfHg) № 2 · The cheapest honest way in ### Yamaha YRF-21Y plastic fife - Key of C - German recorder fingering - Two-piece ABS resin - Flute-style molded lip plate - About $15 Yamaha files this one under recorders, which tells you what it is for: it is the instrument Japanese children are given when they intend to take up flute or piccolo. The embouchure hole is cut wider than a piccolo’s, so a note arrives in days rather than weeks, and the skill it builds is exactly the one the piccolo is going to demand. What it is not is a fife in the corps sense — the fingering is the recorder’s, not the fife’s. **Pros**- Builds the transverse embouchure a piccolo needs - Far more forgiving to blow than a piccolo - Cheap enough that a wrong answer costs nothing **Cons**- Recorder fingering, so nothing transfers to a real fife - Key of C, and not a corps instrument - Plastic tone, as you would expect at the price About $15[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xTSr1h) № 3 · If you are playing with a corps ### Brittania cocuswood fife in B♭ - Key of B♭ — the corps standard - Cocuswood body with brass ferrules - Cylindrical bore, six holes, no keys - Also made in C and D - Around $110 Cocus is the wood the classic nineteenth-century American fifes were turned from, and this is the same specification: a narrow cylindrical bore, six holes, brass at both ends to stop the wood splitting. The B♭ pitch is the one that matters — a corps plays in B♭ and a C fife simply cannot join in, which is the single most expensive mistake available on this page. Wood needs the same care any wooden flute needs: swab it out, and let it acclimatise before you play it hard in the cold. **Pros**- Correct pitch for corps and reenactment playing - Traditional material rather than a modern substitute - Warmer than metal or plastic without losing the carry **Cons**- Seven times the price of the plastic one - Wood moves with humidity and wants looking after - The same model is sold in three keys, so the pitch has to be chosen deliberately Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gKMIVD) № 4 · The standard student piccolo ### Yamaha YPC-32 - Key of C - ABS resin body, conical bore - Silver-plated nickel silver headjoint - Split E mechanism, undercut tone holes - Around $1,000 This is what a school program means when it says piccolo. The resin body will not crack the way grenadilla does when it goes from a warm room to a cold field, which is why it is the marching-band answer as well as the beginner one, and the metal headjoint gives a flute player the response they are used to. The split E and the undercut tone holes are the parts you are actually paying for: they are what make the upper register land where it is supposed to instead of somewhere near it. **Pros**- Resin body handles outdoor playing without splitting - Split E and undercut holes do real work on the intonation - Familiar response for anyone coming off a flute **Cons**- Thirty times the cost of a fife that does its own job perfectly well - Resin will not satisfy a player heading for orchestral work - Needs pads, corks and a technician like any keyed woodwind Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4c5qaMF) № 5 · Trying a piccolo without spending four figures ### Eastar EPC-1 - Key of C - Cupronickel body, nickel-plated - Hard case, rod, cloth and chart included - Twelve-month warranty - Around $110 Worth being straight about what this is. It plays, it is put together well enough for the money, and it will tell you whether you enjoy the instrument — which is a reasonable thing to spend a hundred dollars finding out before spending a thousand. What it will not do is the fine work: no split E, and the intonation in the top octave is yours to fix with your face rather than the instrument’s to help with. Fine as a first month or as a spare that lives in a marching case. **Pros**- A tenth of the price of the student standard - Complete kit, so nothing else has to be bought - Cheap enough to march with in bad weather **Cons**- No split E, so the upper register is harder work - Intonation asks more of the player than a good piccolo does - Not the instrument to learn on if a real piccolo is affordable Around $110[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gbPXVX) ## Common questions ### Is a fife just a cheap piccolo? No. The fife has a narrow cylindrical bore and no keys; the piccolo has a conical body, a cylindrical head and full Boehm keywork. They are different designs with different fingerings and different pitches that happen to occupy a similar part of the register. ### Which is easier to learn? The fife gets a note out of you sooner, because the embouchure hole is bigger and more forgiving. The piccolo is easier to play accurately once the embouchure exists, because it has a key for every note instead of cross-fingerings. If you already play the flute, the piccolo is far easier; if you already play the tin whistle, the fife is. ### What key is a fife in? B♭ is the American and British standard and the pitch every corps uses. C fifes are common as beginner and folk instruments, and fifes in G, D, E♭ and F are used in France. Nothing on the outside of a fife tells you which one you are holding, so it is worth confirming before buying. ### What key is a piccolo in? C, sounding an octave above the written note. Piccolos in D♭ were built in the early twentieth century and were the marching-band instrument of their day — Sousa wrote the famous solo in *The Stars and Stripes Forever* for one — but nobody makes them now, and that solo is played on a C piccolo today. ### Can you learn the piccolo without learning the fife first? Yes, and most piccolo players never touch a fife. What genuinely helps is time on any transverse instrument, because the embouchure is the shared skill and it is the slow part. A cheap fife is one way to build it; a flute is the more usual one, and it also gives you the fingering. ### Which is louder? The fife, for its size, and more piercingly. That narrow bore concentrates everything into the upper register, which is what let a fife carry across a battlefield. A piccolo has a wider dynamic range and can be played quietly, which a fife essentially cannot. If you are weighing this up against the full-size instrument, we have written on [piccolo vs. flute](/piccolo-vs-flute/) and [fife vs. flute](/fife-vs-flute/), and on [what a piccolo costs](/how-much-does-a-piccolo-cost/). Both instruments sit in the [woodwind family](/woodwind-instruments/) despite having no reed, and if the six-hole fingering is the part that appeals, the same pattern is waiting on the [Irish flute and tin whistle](/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/). **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Orchestra vs Band: The Real Differences and Which One to Join](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) **Published:** February 13, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Orchestra vs Band: The Real Differences and Which One to Join An orchestra is built around strings. A band has none. Almost every other difference between them — the size, the music, the room they rehearse in, what they are doing on a Friday night in October — follows from that one fact. If you are choosing which to join, though, the ensemble is the smaller half of the decision. You will spend the next four years holding one particular instrument, and that choice decides how much you enjoy it, what it costs, and how many people you are competing with for a seat. If you want one answer### Choose the instrument, then join whichever ensemble it lives in Band is easier for the first year — a clarinet or a trumpet sounds like itself within weeks. Strings take months to stop sounding rough and pay it back later, and they are the only realistic route into a professional symphony. Both teach the same musicianship, and both are led by a conductor. What actually decides whether a student is still playing in year three is whether they like the sound coming out of the thing in their hands. **Strings:** orchestra only **Saxophone:** band only **Marching and jazz:** band only **Can start at six:** orchestra only ## Orchestra vs band, side by side OrchestraBand**Core sound**Bowed strings, who make up over half the playersWoodwinds and brass, in roughly equal weight**Typical size**60–100 for a symphony, 15–40 for a chamber orchestra40–80 in a concert band; the biggest marching bands run past 300**What you play**Two and a half centuries of repertoire, Haydn through ShostakovichMostly 20th- and 21st-century wind writing, plus jazz, film and pop arrangements**Instruments found only here**Violin, viola, cello, double bass, harpSaxophone, euphonium, sousaphone, marching percussion**First year**Slow — months before it sounds pleasantFast — recognisable tunes within weeks**Youngest realistic start**Five or six, on a 1/16-size violinNine to eleven, once lungs, hands and teeth are ready**What else it gets you**Chamber groups, the musical’s pit, youth symphonyMarching band, jazz band, pep band**Rental, per month**About $15–35About $20–40, $25–55 for a saxophone, $40–70 for the large brass ## Which instruments are in each An orchestra is [strings](/string-instruments/) first — violins split into two sections, then violas, cellos and double basses — with [woodwinds](/woodwind-instruments/), [brass](/brass-instruments/) and [percussion](/percussion-instruments/) behind them, plus a harp and a piano when the score asks. The proportion is the part worth noticing. A symphony carries sixty-odd string players and two or three flutes. A concert band carries none of the former and ten of the latter. A band is woodwinds, brass and percussion: flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon and the whole saxophone family; trumpet, French horn, trombone, euphonium and tuba; snare, bass drum, mallets and timpani. Most school bands also keep one double bass at the back, and wind ensemble scores regularly call for piano or harp — so “bands have no strings” is a very good rule with a quiet exception. The saxophone is the cleanest dividing line. It is the backbone of jazz band and a full section in concert band, and it appears in the orchestral repertoire perhaps a dozen famous times in total. If a student wants to play saxophone, the decision is already made. The same goes in reverse for anyone drawn to the cello. ### The part nobody mentions: some sections are full and some are empty Every school program in the country is oversubscribed on flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet and percussion, and short of viola, double bass, oboe, bassoon, French horn and tuba. This is worth more than it sounds. Choosing a short-supply instrument means you get a chair, you get the solos, you get into the auditioned ensembles, and years later you are competing against a much smaller field for college money. Choosing alto saxophone means joining a line of fourteen. Nobody should play an instrument they dislike for tactical reasons. But if a student is genuinely torn between two, the scarcer one is the better bet almost every time. ## Which is actually harder to start Band, for the first year, and the people selling lessons rarely say it plainly. A [clarinet](/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) or a trumpet gives you a note as soon as you can make the air behave, and it is the right note, because the fingering decides the pitch for you. A violin has no frets. The left hand has to find the pitch by ear while the right hand draws a bow straight across the string, and until both are true it does not sound like a beginner — it sounds actively unpleasant. That stage lasts months rather than weeks, and it is the most common reason a young string player gives up. What you get in exchange is a longer runway. By year three the gap has mostly closed, and strings then lead somewhere winds do not: orchestras hire string players in numbers and wind players in ones and twos. If you want to be paid to play a wind instrument full time, the largest employer in the country is the military bands, and those seats are fiercely contested. One practical thing to weigh before committing, because it catches families out: braces. A new set puts a brass or woodwind player back weeks and sometimes months, since the embouchure is built against the front teeth. String players are unaffected. If orthodontics are coming in the next two years, that belongs in the decision. ## What the year actually looks like Band’s fall belongs to marching season, and it is a real commitment — summer camp before term starts, evening rehearsals, Friday night games and Saturday competitions. Some students join for exactly that and others are blindsided by it. Marching also moves people sideways onto different instruments: French horn players switch to [mellophone](/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) on the field, and tuba players carry a [sousaphone](/tuba-vs-sousaphone/). Winter and spring are concert season, with jazz band running alongside for those who want it, and clarinet players discover that the outdoor instrument is [not the one they play indoors](/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/). Orchestra has no marching and a quieter shape: concert cycles through the year, chamber groups for the stronger players, and auditions for youth orchestras outside school. The school musical is where the two worlds finally meet, because a pit needs strings and winds together. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## What it costs, and why year one should be rented Rent the first instrument. A beginner flute, clarinet or trumpet runs roughly $20–40 a month, a saxophone roughly $25–55, something large $40–70, and a student violin $15–35, usually with the payments applying to the purchase if the student stays with it. A good number of beginners stop within the first year, and renting is what makes that outcome cheap rather than expensive. The shop also handles the repairs, which on a school instrument is not a small clause. Buying makes sense once a student has a year behind them and has stopped asking whether they want to continue. These are the sensible first purchases — past the point of being a toy, short of the money a serious player eventually spends. InstrumentThe one to buyTypical price**Trumpet**Jean Paul TR-330 — every horn play-tested before it ships, which is why they turn up in school rental fleetsAround $250[Check price](https://amzn.to/3S8jxCz)**Clarinet**Jean Paul CL-300 — the sensible step up from a rental without spending Buffet moneyAround $250[Check price](https://www.amazon.com/Jean-Paul-USA-CL-300-Clarinet/dp/B006WAVPR4?crid=1DV99XSDGJRU6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.P-oKp7SR9QCLoaeyhTg4GijGEkXqR7NaGVSk6nZVt11TiDHXhoMFAQp1l7lcdFf7.vPB0JxdE1c7Om_wqroXWxvIfyTn4lUpNfySXuetFee4&dib_tag=se&keywords=jean%2Bpaul%2Bcl%2B300&qid=1745368145&sprefix=jean%2Bpaul%2Bcl%2B300%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.5998aa40-ec6f-4947-a68f-cd087fee0848&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=ab927d0866a74ffc2cfbb1fdb5340b6a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)**Alto saxophone**Jean Paul AS-400 — play-tested before it ships, and the maker sells individual spare partsAround $675[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gTlEDD)**Violin**Cecilio CVN-300 in 3/4 size — solidwood, with D’Addario Prelude strings fittedAround $150[Check price](https://www.amazon.com/Cecilio-CVN-300-Solidwood-DAddario-Prelude/dp/B00EOYKH5Q?crid=2ZWQN2S5JXHOX&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.74JPf3IreKyagQhfQEBOOnalnREIhcPpiSzONEtuvs0ZsaRlO_J_3BcJrJGeX89sWwrsdA3kKcZ4WvbfDO9sxAB3OMhLdQcSKVA-qxWBx7WPF4Ln7bCAYhDW0CdSiCUsPl7IYoArJBduTuWwAINKmVUA0giiWxdti6zxa38qH9U2vuUUyqP7kF6D5zR7UacaV8X_CiCoOwb8YpPgtmfi8gMyG-8WAWM41-hotAlrtEg.DM9gzX_6UHihj6AO79wbY5HdF0pv8bEIgeinJzdUv94&dib_tag=se&keywords=cecilio%2Bcvn-300&qid=1745368286&sprefix=cecilio%2Bcvn%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-6&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=b50b63ffe862ceb4ebc39fc6da144765&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) The alto saxophone is the expensive row and there is no way around it. Cheaper altos exist at around a third of that, but a saxophone lives or dies on two dozen leather pads sealing against their tone holes, and resealing them costs more than a thousand dollars — so an instrument nobody sells spare parts for is worth nothing the first time one goes. We have broken the whole range down in [what a saxophone really costs](/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/). Violins are the one line above where size is not a detail. They come in fractions measured against the player’s arm rather than their age, and most nine- to twelve-year-olds need a 3/4. That Cecilio listing carries the child sizes only — 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4. An older teenager or an adult needs a full size, which is a different instrument rather than a different option on the same page, and our [beginner violin picks](/best-fiddles-for-beginners/) cover those. Expect to trade up at least once on the way. The trumpet worth knowing about beyond the Jean Paul is the Yamaha YTR-2330, which is what most school programs standardize on and what a student can keep for a decade. It runs somewhere between $700 and $950, and it is not a first-year purchase — rent until you are certain, then skip straight to it if the student is serious. For the rest of the wind side, we have run the numbers separately on what a [trumpet](/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/), a [clarinet](/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/), a [saxophone](/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) and a [flute](/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) really cost across the range. ## Two things people get wrong ### “Band” means three different things Concert band is the seated, conducted ensemble that meets as a class. Marching band is largely the same people, outdoors, in the fall. A rock band is four people in a garage, and it is not something a school timetables. When a fifth-grader is asked to choose band or orchestra, only the first two are on the table — which is also why the old claim that bands play without a conductor is wrong. School bands have a director on a podium, exactly as orchestras do. ### The orchestra did not come from ancient Greece The word did. The *orchestra* was the semicircle of floor where the chorus danced in a Greek theater. The ensemble is far younger: it took shape in Italian opera houses around 1600, and the familiar layout of strings, paired winds, brass and timpani settled in the second half of the 18th century with Haydn and Mozart. Wind bands grew up separately, out of military and town musicians, and the American school band program is younger again — largely a 20th-century creation that followed the military bands home after the First World War. If the terminology is the confusing part, we have untangled [orchestra, symphony and philharmonic](/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/) too. ## FAQs ### What is the main difference between an orchestra and a band? Strings. An orchestra is built around violins, violas, cellos and basses, which make up more than half the players; a band has effectively none and is built on woodwinds and brass. The differences in size, repertoire and season all follow from that. ### Is band or orchestra easier for a beginner? Band, for the first year or so. Wind instruments produce a correct pitch as soon as the fingering is right, while a violin requires the player to find the note by ear and control a bow at the same time. By the third year the difficulty is comparable. ### Can you be in both band and orchestra? Often, yes — many schools let a student take both, and wind and percussion players are needed in the orchestra as well. The obstacle is usually the timetable rather than the music. Percussionists have the easiest time of it, since they are wanted in every ensemble in the building. ### Does an orchestra have saxophones? Very rarely. A handful of standard works ask for one — Ravel’s *Boléro* and Bizet’s *L’Arlésienne* among them — but there is no permanent saxophone chair in an orchestra. It is a band and jazz instrument, and anyone set on playing it should choose band. ### Which instrument should a beginner choose? Whichever one they like the sound of, tested in person if the school runs an instrument trial. Where two are genuinely tied, take the less popular of the pair — viola, double bass, oboe, bassoon, French horn and tuba all open doors that flute and alto saxophone do not, simply because far fewer people play them. ### Can you switch from band to orchestra later? Yes, and it is more common than families expect. Reading, rhythm, intonation and ensemble discipline all transfer intact; only the physical technique starts over. Switching is easiest in the first two years and hardest once a student is auditioning for chairs, when time spent rebuilding is time not spent competing. **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [Open Back vs. Resonator Banjo (And What the Resonator Costs)](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) **Published:** March 18, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Banjo Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/banjo-comparisons/ "Banjo Comparisons")› Open Back vs. Resonator Banjo (And What the Resonator Costs) A resonator is a wooden bowl bolted to the back of the banjo. It closes off the pot, stops the sound escaping backward into your chest, and throws it at whoever is standing in front of you. That is the entire mechanical difference, and everything else — the volume, the weight, the price, the kind of music each one ends up playing — follows from it. On the same banjo from the same maker, that bowl costs about $250 and adds about a pound and a half. Deering builds the Goodtime both ways, identical from the rim down, so the number is unusually easy to pin: around $600 open back, around $850 with the resonator on it. If you want one answer### Bluegrass needs the resonator. Old-time does not. If you are not sure yet, buy the resonator. An open back will not keep up with a guitar, a mandolin and a fiddle in a jam, and playing harder is not the fix. A resonator banjo, meanwhile, plays clawhammer perfectly well — slightly louder and brighter than an old-time player would choose, but nothing stops you. The mistake that costs money runs one way only, which is why the resonator is the safer buy for anyone still deciding. Around $850 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xBK7D6) **Definitely clawhammer or old-time:** the Deering Goodtime open back — the same banjo, around $600 **Genuinely undecided:** the Gold Tone CC-100R+, whose resonator unbolts in a few minutes **First banjo, tight budget:** the Gold Tone AC-1 open back, around $315 **Already own an open back:** adding a resonator later costs more than buying one — see below ## What the resonator actually does A banjo head radiates in both directions. On an open back, the sound leaving the rear of the pot goes straight into your body and your clothing, which absorbs a good deal of it and scatters the rest around the room behind you. You hear more of your own playing than the audience does. The resonator puts a hard reflective surface where your stomach was and a flange around the rim to seal the gap, so that rearward sound turns around and leaves through the front with the rest of it. The banjo gets louder in the direction of the listener and the player hears comparatively less. It also gets brighter, because the bowl reflects the higher frequencies more efficiently than it does the low ones and because a sealed pot sustains longer. Worth being clear about the direction of the effect: the open back is not a quieter instrument so much as a less focused one. Standing next to a player, the difference is smaller than you would expect. Standing in an audience thirty feet away, it is enormous. ## The resonator costs about $250 and a pound and a half Most comparisons will tell you open backs are cheaper because there is less material in them. That is true and it is not the useful way to think about it, because open backs and resonator banjos are not two rungs of one ladder — a $2,000 open back is a serious instrument and a $200 resonator banjo is not. The number worth knowing is what the bowl costs on an otherwise identical banjo, and the Deering Goodtime line answers it directly. GoodtimeGoodtime TwoBackOpen3-ply resonatorRim11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple — the same partNeckRock maple, 22 frets — the same partTone ringNone on eitherWeight4.5 lb6 lbBuiltCalifornia, eight-year warrantyPrice band~$600~$850 A pound and a half sounds trivial written down and does not feel trivial after an hour standing up with a strap on. It is the reason a lot of old-time players who could happily afford a resonator do not own one, and it is worth weighing against the volume before you assume louder is better. ## The tone ring is not the resonator, and confusing them wastes money These are two different parts doing two different jobs, and the sound people are usually chasing when they say “bluegrass banjo” comes mostly from the one they are not looking at. The resonator is the bowl on the back and it governs projection — how much of the sound reaches the audience and from what direction. The tone ring is a heavy metal hoop that sits between the wooden rim and the head, and it governs the note itself: whether it rings, cuts and sustains, or lands with a soft woody thud. A rolled brass or bell brass ring is what gives a bluegrass banjo its hard bright attack. A resonator banjo with no tone ring is louder than an open back but still sounds soft, and the Goodtime Two above is exactly that instrument. This matters at the point of purchase because the two features are priced independently and sold together in the marketing. At around $850 you can have an American-built resonator banjo with no ring, or an import with a rolled brass ring and a removable resonator. Neither is the wrong answer; they are answers to different questions. If bluegrass volume and attack is the actual goal, the ring is the part to insist on, and our [bluegrass banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) is built around instruments that have one. ## Can you add a resonator to an open back banjo? Sometimes, and it is rarely worth doing as a plan. Deering sells a retro-fit kit for the Goodtime — resonator, flange, screws and an armrest — for around $280, made to order in a couple of weeks. It fits the standard 11-inch Goodtime pots, including the four-string tenor and plectrum necks, and does not fit the 12-inch Americana models. Add that to the open back and you are at roughly $880 for a banjo Deering will sell you finished at around $850. Buying the open back with the intention of converting it later is therefore the most expensive route to a resonator banjo, and it is worth saying plainly because “you can always add one later” is advice that gets handed to beginners constantly. Below the Goodtime price bracket the option usually does not exist at all. Import banjos in the $150 to $400 range are not built to a standard that a flange kit is made for, and no manufacturer offers one. If the possibility of changing your mind is genuinely worth paying for, buy a banjo designed to convert rather than one you hope to modify. ## Can you take the resonator off? Physically, yes, on almost any resonator banjo — it is held on by a handful of thumbscrews. Whether it leaves you with something you want to play is another matter, and it depends on how the banjo was built. On a bluegrass banjo with a one-piece cast flange, taking the bowl off leaves a metal ring standing proud all the way around the pot. It is uncomfortable against the body, it looks wrong, and the banjo underneath is still a heavy pot with a tone ring in it, so it does not sound like an old-time instrument either — just a quieter bluegrass one. On banjos built with a two-piece flange the flange comes off with the resonator, which is much closer to the real thing. A small number of banjos are designed around this and say so. Gold Tone’s Cripple Creek models take the resonator off with four bolts and are light enough underneath that the result is a banjo you would genuinely choose to play clawhammer on. That is the honest hedge for anyone who cannot yet answer the question this page is about. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## The scoop is what really stops a banjo switching sides Beyond the back of the pot, the one specification that ties a banjo to a style is the end of the fingerboard. Open backs built for clawhammer often have a scoop: the frets above about the seventeenth are removed and the board is thinned underneath them, so the striking hand can move up over the neck without catching. Playing there gives the soft, warm, woody tone old-time music is built on, and it is the single most style-specific feature you can buy. It is also a one-way door. A scooped banjo cannot play the melodic bluegrass passages that live in exactly those missing frets, so a scoop commits the instrument in a way the resonator never does. If you are hedging, hedge on the resonator and leave the fingerboard alone. Action height is a smaller and more flexible version of the same story. Clawhammer generally wants the strings a shade higher than three-finger bluegrass picking does, but that is a setup adjustment measured in fractions of a millimeter, not a property of the instrument, and any competent shop will change it in an afternoon. ## Which one for which music If you playBuyWhyBluegrass, in a band or a jamResonator, with a tone ringVolume and attack against guitar, mandolin and fiddleClawhammer and old-timeOpen backLighter, warmer, and the scoop is availableIrish, on a four-string tenorEither — usually open backSessions are close-quarters; see [plectrum vs. tenor](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/)Trad jazz on a plectrum banjoResonatorWritten to be heard over a horn sectionSinging and playing at homeOpen backYou are the audience, and it will not drown youNot yet decidedRemovable resonatorFour bolts settle it later ## Three banjos that make the decision concrete The resonator ### Deering Goodtime Two - 3-ply resonator, 11″ violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Rock maple neck, 22 frets - 6 lb - Built in California, eight-year warranty - ~$850 A Goodtime with the bowl on the back, and the cleanest illustration of what this page is about — every other part is shared with the open back model. It is set up properly before it ships, which at this price does more for how a banjo plays than any specification on the list, and it holds its value better than anything else in the bracket. The absence of a tone ring is the thing to understand rather than the thing to be talked out of. This will sit comfortably in a jam and it will not produce the hard metallic ring of a bluegrass banjo costing twice as much. For most people buying their first resonator banjo that is the right trade, and the full picture is in our [under $1,000 guide](/best-banjo-under-1000/). **Pros**- American built and set up before shipping - Six pounds, which is light for a resonator banjo - Best resale value at this price - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited bluegrass cut - A pound and a half heavier than the open back - No case in the box Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xBK7D6) The open back ### Deering Goodtime - Open back, 11″ violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Rock maple neck, 22 frets - 4.5 lb - Built in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 The same instrument for $250 less and a pound and a half lighter, and the one to buy if old-time is the plan. Four and a half pounds is unusual enough to change how long you play in a sitting, and the unscooped fingerboard means it will still play anything you ask of it later. If you want the deeper, drier old-time voice specifically, Deering’s 12-inch Americana is the model built for it — with the caveat that the 12-inch pot puts it outside the retro-fit kit, so that one really is open back for life. There is more on the range in our [Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/). **Pros**- The lightest way into an American-built banjo - Same setup, warranty and resale as the Goodtime Two - No scoop, so no style is closed off - A resonator kit exists if you change your mind **Cons**- Will be buried in a bluegrass jam - Converting later costs more than buying the Two - No case in the box Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U14smP) Both, for now ### Gold Tone CC-100R+ - Removable resonator - Rolled brass tone hoop - 24 hooks, planetary tuners - SMP+ pickup fitted - 6.5 lb - Made in Asia, set up in Florida - ~$850 Gold Tone’s own description is the reason this one is here: a resonator “easily removed for true openback playing”. The bowl comes off with the flange rather than leaving a ring of metal behind, and at six and a half pounds the banjo underneath is light enough that the open back configuration is something you would actually choose — which is not true of most convertibles. It also has the rolled brass hoop the Deerings do not, so for bluegrass specifically it is the louder and brighter instrument at the same money. What you give up is the California build, the eight-year warranty and the resale value. Two things to get right at the checkout. The plus in the name is a fitted pickup, along with the sunburst finish — if you have no intention of ever plugging in, the plain CC-100R converts identically for about fifty dollars less. And the listing sells a three-quarter size on the same page at a lower price, so check the size selector says full before you order. **Pros**- Genuinely converts, flange included - Rolled brass tone hoop at this price - Set up in Florida before it ships - Planetary tuners **Cons**- Heaviest of the three - Import build, and resale reflects it - You pay for a pickup you may not want - Shorter warranty than the Deerings Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gxxS4L) ## Questions that come up ### Is an open back banjo harder to learn on? No. The neck, the tuning and the fingering are identical, and the lighter weight is a small advantage in the first few months. The only learning difference is the style each one steers you toward. ### Can you play bluegrass on an open back? Alone or recorded, yes, and some players prefer the sound. In a jam with a guitar and a fiddle you will not be heard, and there is no technique that fixes it. Plenty of old-time players use fingerpicks on an open back; that changes the attack, not the projection. ### Does an open back need different strings? No, though old-time players often go a gauge lighter for a looser feel under a striking hand. Our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers the gauges. ### Which holds its value better? The maker decides that far more than the back does. An American-built open back will out-resell an import resonator banjo comfortably, and the reverse is also true. Once the choice is made, the rest of the shopping is on our [open back banjo guide](/best-open-back-banjo/) and [clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/), or [the bluegrass side](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/). If this is a first banjo of any kind, start with the [beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) instead. **Categories:** Banjo Comparisons --- ### [Mandolin vs Violin: Same Tuning, and Which One to Learn First](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-violin/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Mandolin vs Violin: Same Tuning, and Which One to Learn First A mandolin and a violin are tuned to exactly the same four pitches — G, D, A, E, in fifths — and their fingerboards are almost the same size. A semitone at the nut measures about 20mm on a mandolin and about 18mm on a violin. Everything the left hand learns on one is worth something on the other, and a book of fiddle tunes plays on either without changing a note. The right hand shares nothing at all. One holds a pick and the other holds a bow, and that is where the entire difference in difficulty lives. So the question is not really which instrument is harder. It is whether you are willing to spend six months sounding bad in exchange for the sound you actually want. If you want one answer### The mandolin — unless the sound in your head is a bowed one Frets mean the notes are in tune on the first afternoon, a pick is a tool you already know how to hold, and the instrument makes an acceptable noise before you have any technique at all. Six months in you will be playing tunes. Six months into a violin you will be playing slow tunes, scratchily, and you will have needed a teacher to get there. The Donner DML-1 is the cheapest mandolin that is genuinely worth owning, and it arrives with a tuner, a bag and picks. If it is the bowed sound you want, none of this applies and the mandolin will not scratch the itch. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gnJ5na) **If it is the violin:** Eastar EVA-3 outfit — around $140 **Buying for a child under ten:** the violin, and it is not close **Play guitar already?** The mandolin starts halfway in **Orchestra, or classical lessons?** The violin, obviously ## Side by side MandolinViolin**Strings**8 steel, in 4 pairs4, synthetic core or steel**Standard tuning**G–D–A–EG–D–A–E**Frets**20None**String length**13⅞” (352mm)12.8″ (325mm)**Nut width**About 1⅛”, carrying eight stringsAbout 1″, carrying four**String tension**About 181 lb across eight stringsMuch lower, across four**Played with**A stiff pickA bow, rosined**Held**Across the body, like a small guitarBetween collarbone and jaw**Sound**Percussive attack, short decaySustains as long as the bow moves**Chords**Four notes at once, easilyTwo at once easily, three or four with effort**Sizes made**One adult size4/4 down to 1/16, and smaller**Realistic entry price**~$100 laminate, ~$400 carved~$115–160 as an outfit with bow and case**Setup**$60–125, and it usually needs one$50–80, and it usually needs one**Strings**~$10 a set, every few months~$26 a set, once or twice a year**Teacher**OptionalClose to compulsory in year one ## The tuning is identical, and it is worth less than it sounds Both instruments are tuned G3, D4, A4, E5 — the same pitches, in the same order, a fifth apart each time. This is not a coincidence or a near-miss. The Neapolitan mandolin was deliberately given the violin’s tuning in the eighteenth century, and every mandolin built since has kept it. What follows from that is genuine and useful. Sheet music crosses over untouched: a fiddle tune written for one is playable on the other with no transposition, no capo, no thinking. Scale patterns land in the same relative places. A mandolin player who picks up a fiddle already knows where every note is supposed to be. Knowing where a note is supposed to be and being able to put your finger there are different achievements. The mandolin’s frets have been doing the precision work the whole time, so a mandolin player’s left hand has learned the map and not the aim. And the bow — the thing that produces the sound, controls the volume, shapes every note and separates one from the next — is not on the mandolin at all. The shared tuning is a shortcut into the theory. It is no shortcut into the playing. ## Frets buy you the first six months Put a finger anywhere behind a mandolin fret and the note is in tune. It is in tune on the first day, when you are tense and looking at your hand and pressing too hard, and it is in tune on the thousandth day. That single fact is why a beginner mandolin sounds like music almost immediately. A violin has no such guarantee. Every note is a decision made by the fingertip, judged by ear, on a board with nothing printed on it — and it has to be made while the other hand is drawing a bow at the right angle, the right distance from the bridge, with the right weight, at a steady speed, without letting it wander or bounce. Beginner violins sound scratchy and sour for months because both of those problems are unsolved at once. That is the instrument working as designed, not a bad instrument or a slow learner. The unflattering half is that frets guarantee pitch and nothing else. The mandolin’s difficulties simply arrive later: a clean tremolo that does not sound like a sewing machine, the chop chord that has to be choked dead the instant it sounds, and pressing two strings at once cleanly enough that the pair rings as one note rather than a shimmer. Nobody quits the mandolin in week three. Plenty of people plateau on it in year two. ## Eight steel strings pull 181 pounds, and you press them two at a time A medium mandolin set — D’Addario’s EJ74 is the standard — runs .011 to .040 and, doubled across four courses, pulls about 181 pounds against the top. Every note you fret means clamping two of those steel strings down onto a fret with one fingertip. New mandolin players get sore fingers, then blisters, then calluses, in that order, over about three weeks. Small hands and wide fingertips both struggle at the nut, where eight strings are crowded into a little over an inch. The violin asks almost nothing of the fretting hand by comparison. There is no fret to clamp against, so the finger only has to stop the string against the board, and the strings themselves are softer and under far less tension. The physical complaint in a violinist’s first month is somewhere else entirely: the neck and jaw, from holding an instrument in place with the side of your head for half an hour at a time. A shoulder rest fixes most of that and a teacher fixes the rest, which is a fair summary of the violin generally. ## What you can do with other people in six months This is the part that decides whether anyone is still playing in a year, and it splits the two instruments more sharply than difficulty does. The mandolin has a rhythm job. Learn four or five chord shapes and the chop — a short, damped chord on the backbeat — and you can sit in a circle of players and be genuinely useful before you can play a single tune from start to finish. That is an enormous head start on motivation, and it is available within weeks. The violin has no such role. There is no rhythm part to hide inside: you are playing the melody, or you are not playing. Six months of honest practice gets you slow tunes played recognisably, which is a real achievement and does not feel like one when the fiddler next to you is running triplets. The compensation is that the ceiling is somewhere else entirely — the violin is the instrument of the orchestra, the string quartet and the whole classical repertoire, and the mandolin is not. The tunes themselves are shared. Old-time, bluegrass, Irish and Scottish repertoire belongs to both instruments equally, and the same session will happily contain both. If your picture of the end result is a room of people playing *Salt Creek*, either instrument gets you there. ## Buying for a child, the violin is the only one that fits Violins are built in a graduated range of fractional sizes, and string makers publish the string lengths to match: 325mm for a full size, about 295mm for a 3/4 or 1/2, about 242mm for a 1/4 or 1/8, and about 198mm below that. A five-year-old can be properly fitted, and re-fitted every year or two as their arm grows. Mandolins are built in one size. A handful of small makers offer a short-scale instrument aimed at children, but there is no fractional sizing convention and nothing you can walk in and be measured for. A child too small for a full-size mandolin neck has no smaller mandolin to move to. If the player is under about ten, that settles it on its own, whatever the rest of this page says. Measure from the base of the neck to the middle of the left palm with the arm extended sideways, and buy the size that matches — an instrument that is too big is the reliable way to make a child give up. ## What each one costs to get playing MandolinViolin**Instrument**~$100 to start, ~$400 for a carved top~$140 as an outfit with bow, case and rosin**Before it plays properly**$60–125 setup$50–80 setup**Needed on day one**Picks, about $10 — a tuner is in the boxNothing; a decent outfit arrives complete**Strings**~$10 a set, every few months~$26 a set, once or twice a year**Lessons**Optional$35–50 per half hour, weekly, for the first year**First year, self-taught**Around $225Around $230**First year, weekly lessons**Around $2,000Around $2,000[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The totals are level and the lesson row is not. On the mandolin it is a choice; on the violin, the bow hold and the posture are the sort of thing that a book cannot correct and a bad habit in month two costs a year to undo. Budget for a teacher if you choose the violin, or budget for a plateau. Protect the setup line on either instrument. A cheap mandolin arrives with the action high and the floating bridge sitting wherever it landed in the box; a cheap violin arrives with the bridge lying loose in the case and pegs that will not hold. In both cases an instrument that has been through a shop plays better than one twice the price that has not. If you choose the mandolin### Donner DML-1 A-Style - Mahogany laminate body, A-style - Eight strings in four courses, 13⅞” scale - Clip-on tuner, gig bag, spare strings and picks included - ~$100 The cheapest mandolin that is worth owning rather than merely worth buying. The action is low enough out of the box that you are not fighting it, the tuners hold, and the bundle covers everything you need on day one. It is a laminate instrument and it will not be your last one, but it removes every excuse not to start — and if the mandolin turns out not to be for you, you have spent about the price of two lessons finding out. **Pros**- Plays comfortably straight out of the box - Everything needed to start is in the bundle - Cheap enough to be a low-stakes experiment **Cons**- Laminate top has a ceiling you will hear within a year - Factory strings are the first thing to replace - Wants a setup to sound like itself Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gnJ5na) If you choose the violin### Eastar EVA-3 4/4 Violin Outfit - Spruce top, maple back and sides - Four integrated fine tuners - Finger positions printed on the fingerboard - Hard case, bow, rosin, shoulder rest, tuner and spare strings included - ~$140 Of the affordable outfits this is the one that turns up right most often, which matters more than specification at this price. The printed finger guide is a crutch and a good one — it gets a beginner’s intonation close enough to hear when it is wrong, which is the skill the whole first year is built on, and it peels off when it has done its job. Everything needed on day one is in the box. **Pros**- Solid spruce top at a laminate price - Fine tuners on all four strings, so tuning is not a fight - Complete outfit — nothing else to buy **Cons**- Needs a setup to sound like itself - The included bow is the weak link and will want replacing - Factory strings are ordinary Around $140 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gnW4p4) ## The one thing worth buying before you have decided Because the two instruments are tuned identically, a book of tunes is not a bet on either of them. [The Fiddler’s Fakebook](https://amzn.to/3S4872O) holds around 500 jigs, reels, hornpipes and breakdowns in standard notation, and every one of them plays on a mandolin exactly as written for the fiddle. It is the book that turns up on music stands at sessions on both sides of this decision, and at around $30 it costs less than one lesson. What you do not need is a tuner. Both instruments above arrive with a clip-on one in the box, and a clip-on chromatic tuner does not care what it is clipped to — the same unit reads a mandolin, a fiddle, a guitar or a banjo. If you end up owning both instruments, you still own one tuner. ## Two instruments, two histories, one tuning The violin settled into its modern form first. Andrea Amati, working in Cremona, is credited with fixing the four-string violin as we know it — the f-holes, the scroll, the proportions — around 1560, and the instrument has changed remarkably little since. A player from that century would recognize a modern violin instantly. The mandolin took the long way round. It descends from the lute by way of the small Baroque mandolino, and its recognisable form starts in Naples: Gaetano Vinaccia is credited with a bowl-back prototype around 1744, and Pasquale Vinaccia refined it into the deep-bodied, steel-strung Neapolitan instrument in 1835. That is where the violin tuning comes from, and it was a deliberate borrowing. The mandolin most people buy today is neither of those. Orville Gibson patented the carved, arched top in 1898 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and every A-style and F-style since is built on that idea — a plate carved and graduated like a violin’s, which is louder and holds its shape better than a flat one. So the two instruments borrowed from each other twice, three centuries apart: the mandolin took the violin’s tuning, and then took the violin’s arched top. What they have never shared is a way of being played. ## So which one Take the mandolin if you want to be playing tunes with other people this year, if you are teaching yourself, if you already play a fretted instrument, or if you are not sure and want to find out cheaply. It rewards early and it rewards fast. Take the violin if the sound you keep hearing in your head is bowed, if the destination is an orchestra or classical repertoire, if you are buying for a child, or if you are prepared to work with a teacher and wait. Nothing about the mandolin substitutes for a bow, and no amount of early progress on the easier instrument will scratch that itch. Where it is genuinely a tie, take the mandolin — and know that the shared tuning means the fiddle is still there afterward, with your left hand already half-taught. ## FAQs ### Is the mandolin easier to learn than the violin? To an acceptable standard, yes, by a wide margin — frets remove intonation from the problem and a pick is far easier to control than a bow. To a high standard the gap narrows a great deal, because the mandolin’s own hard skills, tremolo and clean chording, arrive after the beginner stage rather than during it. ### Can I play violin sheet music on a mandolin? Directly, with no transposition — the instruments share both tuning and range for most written music. What will not translate is the bowing: long sustained notes, slurs and swells are written for an instrument that can hold a note, and a mandolin’s note dies within a couple of seconds. Fiddle tunes cross over perfectly; a slow movement written for violin does not. ### Should I learn the mandolin first and switch to the violin later? Only if you want to play the mandolin. It is a poor preparation dressed up as a good one: it teaches you to read, to hear tunes and to know where notes live, and it teaches you nothing about the bow and nothing about finding pitch without frets, which is the whole of what makes the violin hard. If the violin is the goal, start on the violin. ### Can a violin only play one note at a time? No. Two strings sounded together — a double stop — is ordinary technique, and three- and four-note chords are standard writing, most famously across Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas. The violin’s curved bridge means chords have to be rolled rather than struck, so a mandolin plays them more easily, but the violin is not a one-note instrument. ### Is a fiddle the same thing as a violin? The same instrument, and the word tells you the music rather than the object. Fiddlers sometimes flatten the bridge slightly to make double stops easier and often prefer steel strings, but a violin bought for classical lessons and a fiddle bought for old-time are the same purchase. ### How many strings does each one have? A violin has four. A mandolin has eight, arranged in four pairs tuned in unison, so it produces four pitches from eight strings — which is why it is louder and why it shimmers. Both are tuned G–D–A–E. ### Which is louder? The mandolin has the sharper attack and cuts through a room of instruments better; the violin is louder over time because a bow keeps feeding the note. In a jam the mandolin’s chop is heard through everything, and a fiddle playing the melody is heard over everything. ### Do the fingerings match between the two? The note positions correspond, because the tuning and the string lengths are close. The spacing is not identical — a semitone at the nut is about 20mm on a mandolin against 18mm on a violin — so a mandolin player crossing over will find every note about where they expect and slightly sharp of it. ### Which is better for an adult starting from nothing? Adults do well on both, and the honest split is time. If you can practice twenty minutes a day and have no teacher, the mandolin will give you far more back. If you can commit to weekly lessons and a longer horizon, the violin is not out of reach at any age. Deciding on the mandolin? The [beginner mandolins worth buying](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) go further up the range, [A-style and F-style](https://promusicvault.com/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) covers the shape question, and [tuning a mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) is four decisions made twice. Deciding on the fiddle? Start with the [beginner fiddles](https://promusicvault.com/best-fiddles-for-beginners/). Still weighing it up: [banjo vs fiddle](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-fiddle/), [mandolin vs guitar](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-guitar/) and the wider [string instrument family](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/). **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Mandolin vs Lute: The Real Differences, and Which One You Can Actually Buy](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-lute/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Mandolin vs Lute: The Real Differences, and Which One You Can Actually Buy A mandolin has eight steel strings, is played with a pick, and is tuned like a violin. A lute has anywhere from eleven to twenty-four gut or nylon strings, is played with the fingertips, and is tuned like a guitar. The mandolin is a distant descendant of the lute, and almost every other difference between them follows from those two sentences. The part that decides it for most people has nothing to do with sound. One of these is a $100 instrument you can have in your hands this week. The other is a commissioned object with a waiting list. If you want one answer### Learn the mandolin, unless you already know you want Renaissance music specifically A beginner mandolin costs about as much as a pair of shoes, its tuning is the same as a violin’s, and there are teachers and tutorial videos everywhere. A playable lute starts somewhere north of $1,000, is built to order by a handful of specialist makers, and its music is written in a notation you will have to learn from scratch. That is not a quality judgement — the lute is the finer instrument and has the deeper repertoire. It is a judgement about what you can realistically start on. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wwPLZM) **Tuned like:** mandolin = violin, lute = guitar **Strings:** mandolin = steel, lute = never steel **Music written in:** notation vs tablature **Cost to start:** ~$100 vs ~$1,000+ ## Mandolin vs lute, side by side MandolinLute**Strings**8, in 4 pairs11–24, in 6–13 courses — single top string, pairs below**String material**Steel, wound in phosphor bronzeGut, or modern nylon and fluorocarbon. Never steel**Tuning**G–D–A–E, in fifths, identical to a violinFourths with one major third — a guitar with its G string dropped a semitone**Played with**A plectrumBare fingertips, thumb and fingers alternating**Body**Flat or gently arched back, 14-inch scaleDeep ribbed bowl, 23–26-inch scale, often lighter than a mandolin despite the size**Soundhole**Open — two f-holes, or one oval holeA rose carved into the soundboard itself, not cut through**Frets**Fixed metal, like a guitarGut, tied around the neck, movable by hand**The music is written in**Standard notation and guitar-style tabLute tablature — letters or numbers on lines that are the courses**Where it belongs**Bluegrass, old-time, Irish, country, folk-rockRenaissance and Baroque song, solo repertoire, continuo**Realistic entry price**$100 for a laminate, $500 for a solid top$1,000–$1,500 for a student instrument, $3,000+ from a maker**Where you buy it**AnywhereA specialist early-music dealer, a luthier, or the second-hand ads of a lute society ## A lute has no metal strings, and a mandolin has nothing else This is the difference the two instruments are built around, and it decides almost everything else about them. A mandolin is strung with steel under real tension, which is why it is loud, bright and percussive enough to cut through a bluegrass band, and why it has a heavy adjustable bridge and a truss rod to survive the pull. A lute is strung with gut, or with the modern synthetics that stand in for it, at a fraction of that tension. Its soundboard is a sheet of spruce a millimeter and a half thick with no bracing to speak of and no truss rod at all. Fitting steel strings to one would not sound wrong. It would fold the instrument in half. That low tension is also where the sound comes from. Gut and fluorocarbon give a soft, quick decay with almost no attack — the note appears rather than being struck. Steel struck with a plastic pick does the opposite. It is why the mandolin needs [tremolo](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/), rapidly re-picking one note, to sustain anything: the sound dies too fast to hold otherwise. *Lute strings are bought by course count, so check yours before ordering — this is the [8-course set](https://amzn.to/3YXhTkW), and it is wrong on a 6-course instrument. A mandolin is far simpler: [D’Addario EJ74s](https://amzn.to/3EkbMz8), around $10, are what most players use and what most mandolins ship with.* ## The mandolin is tuned like a violin, the lute like a guitar A mandolin looks like a small guitar and is tuned nothing like one. It runs G–D–A–E in fifths, note for note the same as a [violin](/mandolin-vs-violin/), which is why fiddle players pick one up and are playing tunes the same afternoon and why [guitarists](/mandolin-vs-guitar/) find every shape they know is suddenly useless. The lute is the one tuned like a guitar. A six-course Renaissance lute runs G–c–f–a–d’–g’: fourths all the way up with a single major third in the middle, which is the guitar’s own interval pattern with the third sitting one string further down. Take a guitar, drop the G string a semitone to F♯, put a capo at the third fret, and you are at lute pitch in lute intervals. Four hundred years of solo repertoire opens up on an instrument you already own. The intervals, then, are the easy part of a lute. What makes one demanding to keep in tune is the count: eleven to twenty-four gut strings in unison and octave pairs, all of them drifting with the room, and a real fraction of every practice session spent fixing that. ## Lute music is not written in notes This catches people out more than the price does. The lute has the largest surviving body of written music of any instrument from before 1750 — tens of thousands of pieces — and essentially none of it is in standard notation. It is in tablature: horizontal lines standing for the courses, with a letter or a number on each line telling you which fret to stop. French sources use letters, Italian sources use numbers upside down relative to each other, and neither tells you the pitch. It is learnable in an evening or two, and once learned it is faster to read than notation because it tells your hand exactly where to go. But it means that on day one you cannot read a note of your own instrument’s music, and it means the enormous printed catalogue of guitar and mandolin method books is closed to you. Mandolin players get standard notation and guitar-style tab, both of which they probably already half-know. ## What you can actually buy This is where the comparison stops being academic. Search a general marketplace for “lute” and count what comes back. Chinese pipas, described as lutes because they belong to the same broad family. Turkish ouds. Lyres, which are not related at all — we have pulled [those two apart separately](/lute-vs-lyre/). Miniature wooden props for photographs. Books and recordings about the lute. Somewhere down the list there may be one instrument that is genuinely a Renaissance lute, at six hundred dollars and a handful of reviews, and it is not the one to learn on. Real lutes come from a small number of specialist makers. The honest floor is around $1,000–$1,500 for a student instrument from an early-music dealer, and $3,000 upward for something built to order, usually with months of waiting attached. Budget makers building in Pakistan and sold under a few European brand names sit below that and have improved a great deal from their reputation of a decade ago, but you are buying at a distance from people who will tell you frankly that the instrument needs setup work. The best route into a first lute is not a marketplace at all — it is the classified ads of the Lute Society of America or the UK Lute Society, where people who are upgrading sell instruments that were built properly and are already playing. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A mandolin is the opposite in every respect. Around $100 buys a laminate A-style that is a perfectly real instrument for learning on, about $500 buys a solid top you would keep, and the whole range is [predictable enough to plan around](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/). Our [beginner picks](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) go through the ones worth owning, and the [A-style versus F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) question is worth settling before you buy, because the scroll costs several hundred dollars and changes nothing about the sound. What to getPrice**First mandolin**Donner DML-1 — laminate A-style, the standard cheap way to find out whether the instrument suits youAround $100[Check price](https://amzn.to/3wwPLZM)**Strings**D’Addario EJ74 phosphor bronze, 11–40 — the set most mandolins leave the factory withAround $10[Check price](https://amzn.to/3EkbMz8)**Tuner**D’Addario NS Micro clip-on — small enough to leave on the headstock, and it will read a lute’s low courses as well as a mandolin’sAround $20[Check price](https://amzn.to/3EeghLG) ## Which one is easier to play? The mandolin, for the first few months, and by a wide margin. Four pairs of strings instead of a dozen courses, metal frets that put the note where it belongs, a pick doing the work instead of five fingers, and a body small enough that holding it is not a skill in itself. Someone with no background can play recognisable tunes inside a month. The mandolin’s difficulty arrives later, and it is real. The frets are so close together that clean fingering is unforgiving, both strings of a pair have to be stopped properly or the note buzzes, and the techniques that make it sound like a mandolin rather than a small guitar — sustained tremolo, crosspicking — take a long time. We have gone into [how hard the mandolin really is](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/) in more detail, and the short version is that it is easy to start and hard to finish. The lute front-loads all of its difficulty. The right hand has its own historical technique, with the thumb passing under or over the fingers depending on the period you are playing. The left hand is working across a wide neck with movable gut frets that you have to place yourself. The tuning takes minutes at the start of every session. Tablature has to be learned before anything else can be. And the practical obstacle is bigger than any of those: almost nowhere has a lute teacher, so unless you live near an early-music program you are learning from books, recordings and an online society. Which is why almost every lutenist arrives from somewhere else — usually classical guitar, sometimes voice. Very few people make the lute their first instrument, and the ones who try mostly stop. ## How they are actually related The lute reached Europe from the Arab world — the word comes through Spanish from *al-ʿūd*, the oud — and by the sixteenth century it was the instrument of educated European musical life, the way the piano would be three hundred years later. Six courses at first, then more as composers wanted deeper bass, until Baroque players were carrying instruments with thirteen courses and, in the theorbo, a second pegbox on a neck extension long enough to be awkward in a doorway. The mandolin comes off a side branch of that family. Italian makers built small treble lutes — the mandolino, the mandola — and in eighteenth-century Naples one of them acquired metal strings, a pick and violin tuning. That bowl-backed Neapolitan mandolin is the direct ancestor of the instrument you can buy today, though the American flat-backed [A-style and F-style](/types-of-mandolins/) shapes that Gibson developed around 1900 have almost entirely replaced it outside classical playing. So the family resemblance is real but distant, and the lute contributed the shape rather than the sound. Everything that makes a mandolin sound like a mandolin — steel, plectrum, fifths, arched top — arrived after the two instruments had already parted company. The mandolin’s nearest living relatives are not lutes at all: the violin by tuning, and the [Irish bouzouki](/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/) by construction. ## If what you want is the music, not the instrument If what drew you here was Dowland, or the sound of Renaissance song, you do not need a lute to get at it. Most of the solo repertoire transfers to a classical guitar with the third string dropped to F♯ and a capo at the third fret, which is a five-minute change costing nothing, and the printed editions for doing exactly that are easy to find. It will not sound like a lute — nylon on a braced flat-top guitar is a louder, longer, heavier sound than gut on a bowl — but it is the same music under your hands, and it is a far better test of whether you want to spend $1,500 than reading about it is. If after a year of that you still want the real thing, you will know why, and you will know what to ask a maker for. ## FAQs ### Is a mandolin a type of lute? In the museum sense, yes — organologists file both under the lute family, meaning a plucked instrument with strings running along a neck over a resonating body. In the practical sense, no. A mandolin descends from small Italian treble lutes but acquired steel strings, a plectrum and violin tuning along the way, and none of those belong to a lute. ### How many strings does each one have? A mandolin has eight, always, arranged as four pairs tuned in unison. A lute varies with its period: a six-course Renaissance lute has eleven strings, because the top course is single and the rest are paired, and a thirteen-course Baroque lute or a theorbo runs past twenty. [The mandolin’s eight](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) is one of the few things about it that never changes. ### Which is bigger? The lute, substantially — roughly a 24-inch string length against the mandolin’s 14. It is not heavier, though. A Renaissance lute is built so thin that it often weighs less than the mandolin it dwarfs. ### Can you play the same music on both? Rarely worth it. The tunings are unrelated, so nothing transfers by fingering, and the instruments do opposite things — a mandolin has attack and no sustain, a lute has sustain and no attack. Lute music played with a pick on steel loses the counterpoint that is the point of it. Mandolin tunes on a lute lose the drive. ### Should a complete beginner start on either? The mandolin, comfortably. It is cheap, small, well supplied with teachers and tutorials, and it rewards a beginner quickly. The lute is a second or third instrument for nearly everyone who plays one, usually reached through classical guitar. ### What does a lute sound like compared with a mandolin? Soft, warm and quick to fade, with the note seeming to appear rather than be struck — gut plucked by a fingertip at low tension. A mandolin is bright, hard-edged and percussive, loud enough to sit on top of a full band, and it holds long notes only by tremolo. Put plainly, one is a room instrument and the other is a stage instrument. ### Where do you buy a lute? From a specialist early-music dealer, direct from a luthier, or second-hand through a lute society’s members’ ads. General marketplaces mostly return pipas, ouds, lyres and decorative props under the word “lute”. Expect $1,000–$1,500 for a student instrument and $3,000 upward from a maker. ### Can I put nylon strings on a mandolin, or steel on a lute? Neither. Nylon on a mandolin will not drive an arched top built for steel tension, and the result is barely audible. Steel on a lute is worse than useless — the soundboard is a millimeter and a half of unbraced spruce and the tension would destroy the instrument. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Mandolin vs Guitar: Which to Learn First, and What Transfers](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-guitar/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Mandolin vs Guitar: Which to Learn First, and What Transfers A mandolin has eight steel strings arranged in four pairs, a scale length of 13⅞ inches, and is tuned G–D–A–E, every gap a perfect fifth. A steel-string acoustic guitar has six strings, a scale of about 25½ inches, and is tuned E–A–D–G–B–E, which is four fourths, a major third, and another fourth. The mandolin is less than half the length and pulls the harder of the two: a medium mandolin set puts about 181 pounds on the neck, a light guitar set about 160. Those two tunings are the whole story. They mean the instruments do different jobs — the guitar sits underneath a voice, the mandolin plays the line on top — and they mean that if you already play one, none of what your left hand knows carries over to the other. If you want one answer### The guitar, if there is going to be singing Most people weighing this up want to play songs with other people, and songs are written down in guitar chords. That is not a claim about which instrument is harder — the mandolin is the easier of the two to start on — it is a claim about what you will be able to do in month three. The Yamaha FG800J is the one to beat at the price: a solid spruce top, which is the specification that separates a guitar you keep from one you replace, on a dreadnought body that Yamaha has been refining since 1966. If you want to play the tune rather than back it, buy the mandolin instead. Around $260 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xTt0wI) **Cheapest sensible guitar:** Jasmine S35 — around $120 **If you want to play melodies:** Donner DML-1 mandolin — around $100 **Small hands:** Yamaha FS800J, 25″ scale — around $260 **Play fiddle already?** The mandolin is the same tuning ## Side by side MandolinSteel-string guitar**Strings**8 steel, in 4 pairs6 steel**Standard tuning**G–D–A–EE–A–D–G–B–E**Intervals**Fifths throughout, same as a violinFourths, with a major third between G and B**Pairs tuned**In unison, not in octavesNot applicable — every string is its own note**Scale length**13⅞”25½” on most steel-strings, 25″ on a smaller body**Nut to first fret**About 20mmAbout 36mm**Nut width**About 1⅛”, carrying eight strings1 11/16″, carrying six**Total string tension**About 181 lbAbout 160 lb**Bridge**Floating — held on by string tension aloneGlued to the top**Played with**A stiff pick, 1mm and upFingers, a pick, or both**What it mostly does**Carries the tuneAccompanies a voice**Realistic entry price**~$100 laminate, ~$400 carved~$120 laminate top, ~$260 solid top**Strings**~$10 a set~$10 a set**Setup**$60–125, and it usually needs one$50–100, and a cheap one usually needs one ## One carries the tune, the other sits underneath it A guitar’s six strings span two octaves and are spaced so that a hand laid across them produces a chord. Almost everything about the instrument — the wide body, the long sustain, the range low enough to sit under a singing voice — is built for accompaniment. That is why the songbooks are written in its chords and why a guitar is the instrument somebody brings to a room where people intend to sing. A mandolin does the opposite job. It sounds four pitches, it is loud out of all proportion to its size, and each note dies within a couple of seconds. Put it in a band and it goes where the melody is, or it strikes the offbeat and gets out of the way. In bluegrass and in an Irish session the guitar and the mandolin are both present and neither is doing the other’s work. So the useful question is not which is easier. It is what you picture yourself doing. Singing and playing at once, or playing along to records: guitar. Fiddle tunes, reels, bluegrass breaks, the line rather than the backing: mandolin. If both sound appealing, the guitar is the one that will also do a passable job of the other — a mandolin makes a poor accompaniment instrument, and no amount of practice changes that. ## Nothing your left hand knows will transfer Every gap between adjacent mandolin courses is a perfect fifth — seven frets. On a guitar the gaps are five frets, five, five, then *four* between G and B, then five again. That irregular step is there so that common chord shapes fall under one hand, and it is the reason a guitarist’s shapes are memorized rather than derived. The practical consequence is absolute. No chord shape, no scale pattern and no arpeggio moves from one instrument to the other. A guitarist picking up a mandolin is a beginner again from the wrist down, and the familiar feel of a fretted neck makes that worse rather than better, because the hand keeps proposing shapes that are wrong. The trade goes the mandolin’s way, though. Because every interval is identical, one scale shape works on every pair of strings, and moving it up two frets gives you the same scale in a different key with the same fingers. The guitar’s fretboard has an exception built into it; the mandolin’s has none. That regularity is the main reason a beginner gets to a recognisable tune faster on a mandolin than on a guitar. What does transfer is the right hand — pick grip, strumming, keeping time — along with everything that was never really about the instrument: chord names, keys, reading, and fingertips that have already been through the callus stage. And because the mandolin is tuned exactly like a violin, a book of fiddle tunes plays on it without changing a note, which is a whole repertoire the guitar cannot borrow. That relationship is the subject of [mandolin vs violin](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-violin/). ## The frets are half the size, and every note is doubled Between the nut and the first fret there is about 20mm on a mandolin and about 36mm on a guitar. Everything follows from that. First-position chords on a mandolin need no stretch at all, usually two or three fingers, and a small hand is an advantage rather than something to work around. The cost is precision: a finger two millimeters off center is a wrong note rather than a slight buzz, where the same error on a guitar is inaudible. Then there is the doubling. Mandolin strings come in pairs tuned to the same note — in unison, not in octaves, which is what separates a mandolin from a twelve-string guitar. One fingertip has to press both strings of a pair with even pressure, and a fingertip that rolls slightly leaves one of them half-fretted and buzzing. It is pure muscle memory and it resolves in two to four weeks; if it has not resolved after a month, the action is too high and the instrument needs a setup rather than more practice. The full timeline is in [how hard the mandolin is to play](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/). The guitar’s version of the same wall is reach. Six strings across a 43mm nut, a neck long enough that first-position chords are a genuine stretch for a small hand, and the barre chord — one finger flattening all six strings — which is where a good many beginners stop. Neither instrument is free. The mandolin charges you precision; the guitar charges you span. ## The mandolin’s bridge is not glued down A guitar’s bridge is glued to the top and its saddle drops into a slot, so changing strings is a job you can do badly and still end up in tune. A mandolin’s bridge is held in place by nothing but the pressure of the strings, and it sets the instrument’s intonation by exactly where it sits. This is less alarming than it sounds. Change the strings one at a time and the remaining seven hold the bridge exactly where it was; the bridge only moves if you slacken everything at once. Mark its position with a strip of masking tape the first time and the problem disappears for good. It does show up in the running costs, though — a floating bridge is why a mandolin setup runs about $30 above the rate for a guitar. ## What each one costs to own The two ladders are shaped differently. On a guitar, around $120 buys something genuinely playable with a laminate top, and around $260 buys a solid top, which is the one specification worth paying for: a solid top is solid wood that flexes as one piece and opens up over years of playing, while a laminate is thin layers glued together and sounds the same in ten years as it does today. On a mandolin the equivalent step is much further up. Around $100 gets a laminate instrument that is fine to learn on, but the change that matters — a top carved from solid wood and graduated by hand, which is what makes an American mandolin sound like one — does not really arrive until about $400. Between those two figures you are mostly buying appearance. [How much a mandolin costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) has the whole ladder, and [A-style vs F-style](https://promusicvault.com/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) covers why the scrolled ones cost more without sounding better. After that the two are close. Strings are about $10 a set either way. A setup — the adjustment that lowers the action and makes a cheap instrument feel like a real one — runs $50–100 for a guitar and $60–125 for a mandolin, and on anything at the bottom of either ladder it is the best money you will spend. ## What to buy ### If you go with the guitar Best first guitar### Yamaha FG800J - Solid spruce top, scalloped bracing - Nato and mahogany back and sides, rosewood fingerboard - Dreadnought body, 650mm (25 9/16″) scale, 43mm nut - ~$260 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Yamaha’s own description calls it the model they can confidently recommend to any beginner, and for once that is not just copy — the FG has been the default answer to this question for decades and the current revision has a solid top, which the cheaper tier does not. Everything else about it is deliberately ordinary: no cutaway, no electronics, no figured wood. That is the correct set of choices for a first guitar, because none of those things make it easier to play and all of them cost money that is better spent on a setup. The dreadnought body is loud and strong in the low end, which is what you want under a voice. **Pros**- Solid top at a price where most rivals laminate it - Consistent — the reason it has been recommended for so long - Holds its value and stays worth keeping as a second guitar **Cons**- A full dreadnought is a big body against a small frame - Steel strings hurt for a fortnight before the calluses arrive - Plain to look at, if that matters to you Around $260 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xTt0wI) Same guitar, smaller body### Yamaha FS800J - Solid spruce top, scalloped bracing - Concert body, 634mm (25″) scale, 43mm nut - Nato and mahogany back and sides - ~$260 The FS is the FG with a smaller waist and half an inch off the scale, at the same price and the same specification. If part of what drew you to the mandolin was its size, this is the honest middle option — it is far easier to get an arm around than a dreadnought, the shorter scale takes a little of the stretch out of first-position chords, and it gives up only some low-end volume in exchange. Fingerpicking suits it better than heavy strumming. **Pros**- Much more comfortable seated, and for a smaller frame - Shorter scale eases the reach without going down to a child’s guitar - Same solid top and same price as the dreadnought **Cons**- Less bass and less volume than the FG - Not the sound people picture when they picture a strummed acoustic Around $260 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xid0ob) Cheapest sensible guitar### Jasmine S35 - Sitka spruce top, mahogany back and sides - Nato neck, rosewood fingerboard, 20 frets - 25.5″ scale, 43mm nut, satin finish - ~$120 The long-standing answer to “what is the least I can spend without buying something that puts me off”. Full size, ordinary dimensions, and a satin finish rather than the thick gloss that usually signals a corner cut. One thing to be clear about, because it is stated both ways in different places: the top is *not* solid. Jasmine write “Solid Spruce” in the specification of the models that have one and plain “Sitka Spruce” for this one, so the omission is deliberate. That is exactly what you would expect at the price and it is not a reason to avoid the guitar — it is the reason the FG800J costs twice as much. **Pros**- Full-size guitar at roughly half the price of the Yamaha - Standard 25.5″ scale and 43mm nut, so nothing to unlearn later - Low enough stakes to find out whether you will stick with it **Cons**- Laminate top, so the tone will not develop with age - Almost always wants a setup to play its best - Factory strings are the first thing to change Around $120 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ghrwqi) ### If you go with the mandolin Cheapest way in### Donner DML-1 A-Style - Mahogany laminate body, A-style - Eight strings in four courses, 13⅞” scale - Clip-on tuner, gig bag, spare strings and picks included - ~$100 The cheapest mandolin worth owning rather than merely worth buying. The action is low enough out of the box that you are not fighting it, the tuners hold, and the bundle covers everything needed on day one — including the clip-on tuner, which matters more here than on a guitar because eight strings in four pairs is not something a beginner can tune by ear. It is a laminate instrument and it will not be your last, but at around the price of two lessons it removes every excuse not to find out. **Pros**- Plays comfortably straight out of the box - Tuner, bag, spare strings and picks included - Cheap enough to be a low-stakes experiment **Cons**- Laminate top has a ceiling you will hear within a year - Factory strings are the first thing to replace - Wants a setup to sound like itself Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zC8m60) The one to keep### Ibanez M510 - Spruce top, sapele back and sides, A-style - Okoume neck, purpleheart fingerboard - Adjustable bridge, chrome tuners - ~$200 Twice the Donner and it shows in the parts that are hard to fix later: the neck is straighter, the tuners are geared well enough to hold a fifth in tune, and the fretwork does not need dressing before it stops catching a fingertip. If you are reasonably sure the mandolin is the one you want and you would rather not buy twice, start here instead. Worth knowing when you compare specifications: Ibanez builds this with sapele back and sides and a purpleheart fingerboard, not the mahogany and rosewood it is often credited with. **Pros**- Noticeably better built than the sub-$150 tier - Tuning stability good enough to stop being an issue - Enough instrument to take to a session without apology **Cons**- Nothing included — no bag, tuner or picks - Pressed top, not a carved one, so it has a ceiling too - Twice the price of a mandolin you may decide against Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4guBlzV) More options either way: [the best mandolins for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-beginners/), and [the best mandolins for bluegrass](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) if that is where you are headed. ## FAQs ### Can you play a mandolin like a guitar? No. The tunings share no interval pattern, so a guitar chord shape put on a mandolin produces something that is not a chord. The right hand is another matter — strumming, picking and rhythm all move across intact, which is why a guitarist tends to sound competent on a mandolin within days and correct within months. ### Can you tune a mandolin like a guitar? Not usefully. With four courses there is nowhere to put six pitches, and the strings are gauged and the bridge compensated for G–D–A–E specifically — pulling them to guitar intervals means either slack courses that will not sound or tension the top was never built for. If a guitar’s tuning is what you are after in a small instrument, that is a [ukulele’s](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-ukulele/) job, or an octave mandolin’s. ### Are guitar and mandolin chords the same? The names are, the shapes are not. A G chord is the same three notes on both instruments and it is fingered completely differently. The compensation is that mandolin chords are simpler — two or three fingers for most of the common ones, against four for several guitar shapes — and that the movable ones work in every key without learning anything new. ### Is the mandolin harder than the guitar? Easier to start, harder to finish. The regular tuning and the short neck get you to a recognisable tune faster than a guitar will. What arrives later is tremolo — the fast repeated picking that stands in for sustain — and that takes most players a year or more before it sounds like music rather than counting. ### Which is better for a child or for small hands? The mandolin, on size alone — 20mm between frets against 36mm, and chords that need two fingers rather than a stretch. The counterweight is that steel strings in pairs are hard on soft fingertips at first. If a guitar is wanted anyway, a smaller body and a shorter scale like the FS800J solves most of it without dropping to a three-quarter-size instrument. ### Why does a mandolin have eight strings for four notes? Volume and shimmer. Two strings tuned to the same pitch are louder than one and never perfectly in phase, which gives the instrument its characteristic sparkle. It is the same idea as a twelve-string guitar with one difference that matters: a twelve-string doubles its lower courses an octave apart, while a mandolin’s pairs are in unison. [How many strings a mandolin has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) covers the rest of the family. ### I already play guitar — is the mandolin worth adding? It is one of the better second instruments a guitarist can pick, precisely because so little transfers. Your ear, your timing and your right hand come with you; the fretboard is a genuinely new problem rather than a variation on the old one, which is why it stays interesting. A hundred dollars is a cheap way to test that. ### Which is louder? For its size, the mandolin, by a distance — eight strings under 181 pounds of tension on a small stiff top is a very efficient way to make noise, and it is built to cut through a band. In absolute terms a dreadnought guitar moves more air and has far more low end. They are loud in different registers, which is why they sit together well. ### Do I have to change mandolin strings differently? Only in one respect: change them one at a time, because the bridge is not glued down and is held in place by the tension of the strings that are still on. Do that and it is no harder than a guitar, just eight strings instead of six. [Tuning a mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) covers the order and the tricks. ## The short version If there is going to be singing, buy the guitar. If the sound in your head is a melody line — a reel, a bluegrass break, a fiddle tune — buy the mandolin, and do not let anyone tell you it is the harder instrument to begin. And if you already play one of them, the other is further away than it looks: the neck is familiar, the map is not. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek Review: Hand-Carved at $400](https://promusicvault.com/loar-lm-310f-review/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Mandolin Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/mandolin-reviews/ "Mandolin Reviews")› The Loar LM-310F Honey Creek Review: Hand-Carved at $400 The [Loar LM-310F](https://amzn.to/3HxHJ9q) is the cheapest F-style mandolin you can buy with a top that was carved and graduated by hand rather than pressed into shape, and that one line on the spec sheet decides everything else about it. It is why a $400 instrument produces a real bluegrass chop instead of a polite thump, and it is why the rest of the parts list is so plain. Three things settle the purchase and none of them appear in the specs. It wants a setup before it plays the way it should. Nothing comes in the box with it. And the same build in the A-style body costs the same money, which is unusual enough to be worth a moment’s thought before the scroll wins the argument. The short version### Buy it, and put another $60 to $125 aside for a setup Nothing else at $400 gives you a hand-graduated solid spruce top, a bone nut and an adjustable ebony bridge in an F-style body. Those three parts are the ones that make sound. The padauk fingerboard, the unbranded tuners and the flat satin finish are where the money came off, and every one of them is the right corner to cut. What the factory could not afford at this price is labor, so the last hour of the build is yours to pay for. Around $400 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j0fBCp) **Same build, no scroll:** the A-style LM-110, at the same price **Not included:** a case — and an F-style needs an F-shaped one **Budget for:** a setup, roughly $60–125 **Buy something else if:** you want gloss, ebony and binding you can see ## The specification, from The Loar **Model**LM-310F-BRB, Honey Creek series**Body**F-style, f-holes**Top**Hand-carved solid spruce, graduated**Bracing**Longitudinal tone bars**Back & sides**Maple**Neck**Maple, thin “V” profile**Fingerboard**Padauk, 20 frets**Nut**Bone, 1-1/8″**Bridge**Compensated adjustable ebony**Tuners**Nickel with pearl buttons**Truss rod**Two-way adjustable**Scale length**13-29/32″**Body / total length**12-3/4″ / 27-1/4″**Finish**Satin brownburst**Made in**China**Case**Sold separately One entry there is worth pinning down, because the published specifications disagree about it. The fingerboard is described in some places as radiused rosewood, and older spec sheets called it Revebond, a composite. The Loar’s own current sheet says padauk, and padauk is the answer — a hard, open-pored African hardwood used across the budget end of the industry as a rosewood substitute. It plays fine. It is not ebony, and nobody claimed it was. ## Carved and graduated is not the same as solid A mandolin top can be solid wood and still be dead. Most inexpensive ones are pressed: a flat solid plate is heated and forced into an arch of even thickness. It is fast, it is cheap, and the resulting plate is stiff in all the wrong places. Carving means the arch is cut out of a thick block, so the wood keeps its own grain running through the curve instead of being bent across it. Graduating means the thickness is then varied deliberately — heavier in the middle under the bridge, thinner out toward the recurve where the plate needs to flex. That distribution is what lets the top move quickly enough to give a chop its bark and its abrupt stop. The LM-310F gets both. It is the entire argument for the instrument, and it is the reason a mandolin at this money can sit in a jam and be heard. ## Where the $400 went, and where it did not The parts that touch the string are good. The nut is bone rather than molded plastic, so the strings sit in cut slots and stay in tune through a bend. The bridge is ebony, compensated and adjustable, which means the intonation can be corrected and the action set without shimming anything. On a great many mandolins under $300 both of those are plastic, and both are why those instruments never quite play in tune above the fifth fret. The parts that only have to look right are ordinary. The tuners are unbranded nickel with pearl buttons — several sources still say Grover, and The Loar’s own sheet does not. They hold pitch and turn stiffly. The satin finish is thin and plain, which is honestly a small acoustic advantage over a thick gloss, but it will never gleam under a stage light. The back and sides are the place to be careful. The Loar’s own sheet says simply “maple”, without the word solid, while the LM-520 above it in the same line is specified as all-solid. Treat the carved top as the specification you are buying and the rest of the body as where the price came down. It matters less than it sounds: on a mandolin the top does most of the work. ## It arrives needing a setup, and that is part of the price A mandolin bridge is not glued down. It stands on the top held there by string tension alone, and where the factory left it is where it stays until somebody moves it. If it is even a few millimeters out of position the instrument plays sharp or flat up the neck no matter how carefully it is tuned, and owners of this model have reported finding it well over a centimeter forward of where it belongs. The rest of the list is the usual one: truss rod tightened to a sensible relief, action dropped at the twelfth fret, fret ends dressed, nut slots checked for depth. A luthier does the whole job for somewhere around $60 to $125, and on this instrument the difference is not subtle. This is not a fault peculiar to The Loar. Every carved-top mandolin under roughly $700 arrives this way, because the labor to finish one properly costs more than the margin on it. The only real choice is whether to pay a shop for that hour or spend it yourself. Budget it in and the LM-310F is a $475 instrument that plays like one costing considerably more; skip it and it is a $400 instrument that feels stiff and sounds vague, and a fair number of the disappointed reviews of mandolins in this class are describing exactly that. The Loar LM-310F — around $400 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j0fBCp) ## Nothing comes with it No case, no bag, no tuner, no picks. The strings on it are D’Addario and perfectly serviceable, but they have been under tension in a warehouse for a while and a fresh set is the cheapest improvement available to the instrument. The case is the one that catches people out. A case is cut to the outline of the body, so an F-style will not close inside an A-style case and will not sit still in one — the scroll and the two points need their own shape. Anything advertised for a mandolin without saying which, assume A. What to addWhyRoughly**[A hard case](https://amzn.to/4gy4YS4)**Cut to the F outline, scroll and points included. Worth it if the instrument ever leaves the house~$60**[Or a padded gig bag](https://amzn.to/4wysaEH)**Enough for carrying it between rooms and to a lesson. Cut wide enough to take either body shape~$23**[A fresh set of strings](https://amzn.to/4wrsN2E)**D’Addario EJ74 mediums are the default for chop. Lights are kinder to new fingers and quieter~$10**[A clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4hvTVdb)**Eight strings in four pairs drift constantly, and a course that is out with itself sounds worse than one that is flat~$22**A setup**A local luthier, not a purchase — see above$60–125[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Who should buy something else Three cases where the money is better spent elsewhere. The first is the one most people reading a review of this instrument have not considered. If you do not specifically want the scroll ### The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek - A-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - Padauk board, bone nut, ebony bridge - ~$400 The same carved top, the same woods, the same hardware and the same price in the plain body — braced with an X rather than tone bars, which rounds the note off a little. That parity is unusual. Almost everywhere else in the market the scroll is a surcharge, and paying it means accepting a lesser instrument underneath. The A-style is lighter, and it sits flat on the thigh instead of levering the neck up on a point. If the F outline is not something you actively want, this is the more comfortable way to own the same carved top. **Pros**- Same carved top and same maple body, for the same money - Lighter and easier to hold sitting down - Cases and bags for it are cheaper and easier to find **Cons**- Needs a strap button fitted, or a tie behind the nut - Sells on more slowly in bluegrass circles Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qjQh8C) If you are still finding out whether you like the mandolin ### Ibanez M510 - A-style - Spruce laminate top - Gloss finish - ~$200 Half the money, and the best-made of the genuinely cheap mandolins. The top is laminate, so it will not open up with playing and it will sound the same in ten years as it does now — but Ibanez builds consistently, and a well-made laminate beats a badly made solid top every time. Spending $400 to discover you do not enjoy the instrument is an expensive way to find out. Spending $200 is not. **Pros**- Consistent build quality at a price where that is rare - Half the outlay while you decide - Stable laminate that shrugs off humidity swings **Cons**- Laminate top — no chop, and no improvement over time - Ships with the action high; wants the same setup Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ilBhF7) If you already know you are keeping it ### Kentucky KM-150 - A-style - Hand-graduated solid German spruce top - Solid alpine maple back & sides - ~$595 All solid wood rather than a carved top over a laminated body, and the instrument experienced players name when a beginner says they are certain. Two hundred dollars more than the Loar, and the difference is in how the whole box responds rather than just the top. It also holds its value, which the budget F-styles do not. If the LM-310F is going to be replaced within two years anyway, buying this instead is the cheaper route. **Pros**- All-solid construction at well under $600 - Hand-graduated top, not pressed - Resells at roughly two-thirds of new **Cons**- Two hundred dollars more, and plainer to look at - A-style — no scroll at this price from Kentucky Around $595[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gbtvLc) ## The Loar changed hands Worth knowing if you go looking for support. The Music Link, which built and distributed The Loar for years, shut down in July 2025. St. Louis Music — the company behind Alvarez, among others — has been the brand’s exclusive global distributor since that August, and the LM-310F-BRB is still a current model in a line of six mandolins. The practical consequence is that the old theloar.com address, including its warranty page and the info@theloar.com contact still returned by search engines, is a dead domain. The brand’s site is now theloar.co, described there as a temporary home pending a new one later this year, and warranty questions go through St. Louis Music. Keep the receipt. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the Loar LM-310F good for a beginner? Yes, if the beginner is fairly sure they will stick with it. It is more instrument than a first mandolin strictly needs, and the reward for that is not having to replace it in a year. Someone testing whether they like the mandolin at all is better served spending a third as much and losing less if the answer is no. ### Is the top really solid? Yes — solid spruce, carved and graduated rather than pressed. The back and sides are the part not described as solid. ### What is the difference between the LM-310F and the LM-110? The body shape and the bracing. The LM-110 is the A-style version of the same Honey Creek build — same carved spruce top, same maple, same neck, same bone nut and ebony bridge — and it costs the same. It sits flatter on the thigh. The scroll on the LM-310F is solid wood outside the sound chamber, so it changes the look and adds an ounce or two rather than changing the tone. What does change the tone is underneath: The Loar braces this one with longitudinal tone bars and the LM-110 with an X, so the F-style chops harder and stops sooner while the A-style rings rounder and longer. There is more on that in [A-style vs F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). ### What does spending more actually get you? The next real step is a solid, carved back and sides rather than a carved top over a laminated body, and it lands somewhere around $550 to $600. It changes how the whole instrument responds rather than just the top. It is worth paying for if you are keeping the mandolin, and not worth stretching for if it means skipping the setup. [Best mandolins for the money](/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) lays out where each jump in price stops buying anything. ### Is the fingerboard rosewood? No. It is padauk, whatever some retailer listings say. It is harder than rosewood and more open-grained, and it darkens with age and handling. ### Does it come with a case? No. Some dealers put together a bundle with one, and the case has to be F-shaped. ### Who makes The Loar mandolins? They are built in China to The Loar’s designs. The brand is named for Lloyd Loar, the Gibson acoustic engineer whose 1922–24 F-5 mandolins are the instruments every F-style since has been measured against. Distribution has been St. Louis Music’s since August 2025. ## The verdict The LM-310F does one thing that nothing else at the price does, and it does it well. A hand-carved, graduated spruce top in an F-style body for $400 is the cheapest honest route to a bluegrass chop, and The Loar spent the money in the places that make sound rather than the places that catch the light. Buy it with the setup and the case counted into the price, not as afterthoughts — call it around $600 all in, and it is still the best-sounding thing available for that. Buy it without them and you have a stiff, vague instrument in a cardboard box, which is a fair description of most of the disappointed reviews this class of mandolin attracts. And look at the [LM-110](https://amzn.to/4qjQh8C) once before you commit. It is the same carved top for the same money in a body that is easier to hold; the scroll and the tone bars under the top are what you would be giving up. If you want the scroll, that is a perfectly good reason — it just helps to know that this is the one place in the market where wanting it costs nothing. Next: [A-style vs F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) on what the scroll is worth further up the range, [how to tune a mandolin](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) once it arrives, and [best mandolin for bluegrass](/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) if the chop is the whole point. **Categories:** Mandolin Reviews --- ### [Lever Harp vs. Pedal Harp: What Actually Differs, and Which to Learn First](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) **Published:** February 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Harp Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/harp-comparisons/ "Harp Comparisons")› Lever Harp vs. Pedal Harp: What Actually Differs, and Which to Learn First A harp has seven notes to the octave and no black keys. Every harp ever built has needed some way of getting at the other five, and there are exactly two answers: a lever on each string, moved by hand, or seven pedals under your feet. That single choice decides the price, the weight, the music you can play, the maintenance bill, and whether the instrument comes to the lesson with you. If you are choosing one to learn on### Start on a lever harp — and pay for a lever on every string Almost every harpist starts here, including the ones who end up in orchestras. A lever harp is a twentieth of the price, an eighth of the weight, and asks nothing of your feet while both hands are already busy. What matters far more than the size is whether every string has its own lever: a half-levered harp locks you out of most published arrangements, and that is the gap you notice in month three, not the string count. **Entry price:** ~$600 vs. $15,500 **Weight:** 11–44 lb vs. 62–90 lb **Keys:** eight vs. all fifteen **Regulation:** every few years vs. every year or two ## Lever harp vs. pedal harp, side by side Lever harpPedal harp**The control**One sharping lever per string, on the neckSeven pedals in the base, one per note name**What one movement changes**That single stringEvery octave of that note at once**Which hand does it**Whichever one you can spareNeither — it is a foot, mid-phrase**Direction of travel**Up a semitone onlyFlat, natural or sharp — three notches**Keys available**Eight majors and their relative minorsAll fifteen, and you can change mid-bar**Strings**19–40, commonly 26–3644, 46 or 47**Height**36–66 inches for a floor harp65–75 inches**Weight**11 lb for 22 strings, 44 lb for 4062 lb for 40 strings, 78–90 lb for 47**String tension across the soundboard**Around 900–1,200 lbClose to a ton**Price, new**$600 to about $8,800$15,500 to six figures**Mechanism service**Levers re-regulated after about five years, then rarelyFull regulation every year or two**Getting it to a lesson**Gig bag, back seat, one personPadded cover, trolley, usually two people**Maker’s warranty**3 years from Lyon & Healy, 5 from Camac5 years from Lyon & Healy, 10 from Camac ## What a lever actually does Rees, who build the Harpsicle line in Indiana, put it about as plainly as it can be put: a sharping lever “is a device that raises the pitch of the string one half step”. It does that by clamping a small movable fret against the string, shortening the speaking length and stretching it very slightly — the same idea as the first fret on a guitar, except that you can take this fret off again. Two consequences follow, and they are the whole character of the instrument. A lever only goes up, never down. And it moves one string, so raising every C on a 34-string harp means flipping five levers, one after another. That “up only” restriction is why lever harpists do not tune to C. Tuned in C, the B lever is dead weight — B sharp is C, and nobody writes it. So the B string gets tuned down to B flat instead, the lever now produces B natural, and the harp has gained the key of F. Push that logic across the whole instrument and you arrive at E flat tuning, which Rees describes as “increasingly common”, and which is what a modern lever harp is set up in. From E flat, every lever down is E flat major and every lever up is E major. Everything you can play lives between those two positions: **E flat, B flat, F, C, G, D, A and E**, plus the relative minors. Three flats to four sharps, eight keys, and that is the maker’s own list rather than a rule of thumb. ### Levers are sold by the string, and it shows in the price The Harpsicle family is the clearest illustration anywhere, because it is one 26-string harp offered with four different amounts of hardware. Bare, it is about $650 and plays in C and A minor. Add levers to the C and F strings only and it is about $955 — those two levers buy you G and D as well. Levers on every string takes it to about $1,320. So roughly $670 of a $1,320 harp is the levers, on the same wood, the same soundboard and the same strings. It is the single most expensive step on the lever-harp ladder and the one most worth taking, because published harp arrangements assume you can produce an accidental. Our [review of the Roosebeck Minstrel](https://promusicvault.com/minstrel-harp-review/) works through what full levers change in practice. ## What seven pedals actually do A pedal harp is strung so that with every pedal in its top position the instrument is in C flat — all seven notes flattened. Each pedal drops into three notches, and Camac’s owner’s manual names them in exactly those terms: flat at the top, natural in the middle, sharp at the bottom. Seven pedals, three positions each, and the harp reaches all fifteen major keys. The mechanism underneath is the reason for most of the price. Each string passes two forked brass discs on the neck — a natural disc and a sharp disc. Pressing a pedal pulls a cable that runs up through the hollow column, into the action inside the neck, and rotates one or both discs against every string of that note name at once. Move the C pedal and all five or six C strings change together, in the time it takes to move a foot, without either hand leaving the strings. That is what a lever harp cannot do, and it is not really about the number of keys. It is about changing a note in the middle of a bar while both hands are playing. Orchestral harp writing takes it for granted, which is why the concert repertoire needs pedals and why folk and Celtic repertoire, written for the other instrument, generally does not. ### The mechanism is also the running cost Those cables stretch. Camac is blunt about it in the manual: “these can only be stretched longer over time”, and whatever the symptom, “always start by checking the cable length”. As they lengthen, the discs stop finishing their rotation exactly where the pedal reaches its notch, and the harp begins playing sharp notes flat and buzzing at the discs. Fixing that is a regulation, and on a pedal harp it runs around $510–545 every year or two, plus $150–275 of technician travel if the harp does not come to them. A lever harp has none of it. Rees puts lever regulation at “after about five years and again, perhaps ten years later” — “in other words, not very often at all”. [Why harps cost what they do](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) itemises the rest of the bill. ## The real price ladder Lyon & Healy is the one major maker who publishes a full list price, which makes the steps unusually easy to see. Salvi’s student range starts at $2,390 for the 25-string Juno. Lyon & Healy’s own lever harps run $3,490 for the 34-string Drake, $4,690 for the Ogden, $5,690 for the Troubadour and $6,790 for the 40-string Prelude. Then the mechanism arrives and the number roughly triples. The Chicago Petite 40 — 40 strings, the smallest pedal harp they make — is $15,500. A Style 100, a 47-string professional instrument, is $30,900. The top of the catalogue is a gilded Louis XV Special at $270,000. InstrumentStringsWeightList priceRees Harpsicle, no levers265.8 lb$650Rees Fullsicle, full levers266.4 lb$1,320Salvi Juno 2525—$2,390Lyon & Healy Drake, lever tension3422 lb, 49″$3,490Lyon & Healy Ogden, pedal tension3428 lb, 53″$4,690Lyon & Healy Prelude 404044 lb, 64″$6,790Lyon & Healy Chicago Petite 40 **(pedal)**4062 lb, 65″$15,500Lyon & Healy Style 100 **(pedal)**4778 lb, 73.5″$30,900 One thing the sticker does not say. Every harp on that list ships with a cover, a tuning key and a shipping carton, but the heavy-duty trunk a pedal harp needs to go anywhere by freight is $2,450 on top of the price, which is more than a Salvi Juno costs outright. ## Renting, which is how most people meet a pedal harp Lyon & Healy rent lever harps to anybody: $49 a month for a Salvi Juno up to $99 for a Prelude 40, a $100 processing fee, and shipping of $266–349 depending on where you live. The first six months of a 24-month term come off the purchase price if you decide to keep it, and there is no penalty for stopping early. Ten to fourteen days from payment to harp. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Pedal harps are a different arrangement entirely. Rentals go to educational institutions, billed monthly, or to artists and events, billed by the week — and the program states outright that it cannot serve “individuals seeking long-term pedal harp rentals”. A student renting a pedal harp is doing it through their school or conservatoire, with the contract in the institution’s name. If you are not attached to one, the pedal harp is a purchase, and the purchase is $15,500. ## If the pedal harp is where you are heading This is the part that changes which lever harp you should buy, and almost nobody is told it before they have already bought one. Pedal harp strings are under noticeably more tension than folk-harp strings, and the hands have to be built for it. Makers sell for this directly. Lyon & Healy’s Drake and Ogden are both 34-string lever harps; the Drake is strung at lever tension for $3,490 and the Ogden at *pedal* tension for $4,690. Salvi does the same thing — the 38-string Titan is $3,790, the pedal-tension Gaia is $4,690. That is roughly a thousand dollars at the same string count, and what it buys is a technique that transfers. Camac makes the same point about material: gut strings carry “heavier tension to help prepare a solid playing technique for the pedal harp”. Nylon is lighter, brighter and easier, and is what most folk harps and most budget instruments are strung with. If a conservatoire is the plan, tell whoever is teaching you before you choose, because going from pedal technique to lever is easy and the reverse is not. Two more constraints worth knowing in advance. Camac notes that good pedal technique needs the player’s heels in contact with the floor — so a child who can reach a pedal harp’s strings may still not be able to work it, and the answer is a smaller harp rather than a taller stool. And ABRSM’s syllabus assumes at least 46 strings for pedal harp pieces from Grade 4 onward, which a 40- or 44-string petite pedal harp does not have. The [string-count question](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) has the rest of the exam requirements. ## The lever harp is not a small pedal harp It has its own repertoire, its own soloists and its own exam stream, and the makers build professional instruments for it — Camac lists the Mademoiselle, Ulysse, Aziliz, Janet, Concert Melusine and Excalibur as professional lever harps, and Salvi’s Ana deluxe is $8,790. Celtic, Breton, Welsh and Latin American music is written for it; so is a growing body of contemporary work. Camac says it themselves: the lever harp “is absolutely an instrument in its own right”. Nothing about starting there is a compromise unless the destination is an orchestra pit. The one honest limitation is the flat keys. From E flat tuning you cannot reach A flat, D flat or G flat without retuning strings by hand, and a piece that modulates into them mid-movement is simply not playable. Everything else — the range, the volume, the seriousness of the instrument — is a question of which lever harp, not of lever versus pedal. ## What to buy The lever harp to start on ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 strings, carved rosewood - 22 DuPont nylon strings, C3–C6, three full octaves - A Chelby lever on every string — 22 of them - Solid rosewood frame, plywood soundboard - 36″ × 18″ × 9″, 11 lb - Tuning tool and a spare string set in the box - ~$600 This is the cheapest instrument that satisfies the one specification that matters, which is a lever on every string. Three octaves is enough for the whole first-year folk-harp repertoire and most of the second, and at eleven pounds it goes to a lesson under one arm. Chelby levers engage the string from the side rather than pinching it from above, so they do not lift strings off the bridge pins, and the caps are color-coded red for C and blue for F — the same convention the concert makers use on their strings. The honest limits: the soundboard is plywood rather than solid spruce, so it is warm rather than loud; the strings are nylon, which is the light-tension choice and the wrong one if a pedal harp is the plan; and 22 strings stops short of the 34 that ABRSM assumes for lever-harp exam pieces from Grade 3. It is a first harp, and a good one, rather than a harp for life. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qHExN9) If you want the range now ### Roosebeck Minstrel Harp, 29 strings, carved rosewood - 29 DuPont nylon strings, C3–C7, four full octaves - A Chelby lever on every string - Finnish birch plywood soundboard, solid rosewood frame - 36.5″ × 22.75″ × 9.5″, 14.6 lb - ~$775 The extra seven strings are all at the bottom, which is where the left hand lives, and four octaves is the point at which most published Celtic and classical arrangements stop needing to be simplified. It is three and a half pounds heavier than the Heather and still a one-person carry. For about $175 more than the smaller harp it removes the main reason people trade up within two years. The honest limits: the same nylon stringing and plywood soundboard as the Heather, so the step up is range rather than voice, and it is still short of the 34 strings the exam boards assume. The carving on the side panels is the only difference between the vine, thistle and knotwork versions, and the maker says so outright. Around $775[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ceTO28) The method that works on either instrument ### Sylvia Woods — Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp - 12 lessons, 44 pieces, all in the key of C - Fingering and placing brackets marked throughout - 80 pages, spiral-bound so it lies flat - Written for lever or pedal harp - ~$16 Everything in it is in C, which means it works on a harp with no levers at all and transfers unchanged to a pedal harp with the pedals left alone. The sequencing is what makes it the standard first book: one technique per lesson, drilled in short pieces before the next arrives, at a pace that suits a lesson a fortnight. It will not answer the lever-versus-pedal question, but it is the same first year either way. Around $16[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SD0S1Y) Whichever you land on, budget for a chromatic tuner as well — a harp wants tuning before every session and daily for weeks when it is new. [The tuners worth having](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/) covers the clip-on and orchestral options, and [the beginner buying guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/) goes wider on instruments. ## Questions people ask ### Can you play classical music on a lever harp? Yes. ABRSM grades it as its own instrument, Grade 1 to Grade 8, in a non-pedal stream separate from the pedal one. What you cannot play is orchestral harp writing, which changes key inside the bar and expects a foot to do it. Baroque and early classical repertoire, which mostly stays put, sits on a lever harp very comfortably. ### Can a lever harp play flats? Only the flats built into its tuning. A lever raises a string and never lowers it, so a harp tuned in E flat gives you E flat, B flat and A flat as its resting notes and can sharpen any of them. Keys with four or more flats need strings retuned by hand before you start. ### How many strings does each one have? Lever harps run from 19 to 40, with 26 to 36 covering most of the market. Pedal harps come in 44, 46 and 47. Camac add a warning worth repeating: a genuine full-size 47-string harp is at least 185 cm tall, and one that has 47 strings in a shorter frame has had its string lengths shortened, with a corresponding effect on the sound. ### Is a Celtic harp the same as a lever harp? In current usage, near enough — makers use “Celtic harp”, “folk harp” and “lever harp” for the same instrument, and Rees’ own glossary lists Celtic harp as a term for a lever harp. [The Celtic harp comparison](https://promusicvault.com/celtic-harp-vs-regular-harp/) goes into where the names came from. ### Can I move a pedal harp myself? A 47-string harp is 78 to 90 pounds and about six feet tall, so it moves on a trolley, in a padded cover, usually with a second person for stairs and the car. It does not travel as airline baggage at all — the flight trunk alone weighs about 140 pounds. [Flying with a harp](https://promusicvault.com/fly-airplane-with-harp/) works through the numbers, and [the weights by size](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) covers the rest of the range. ### Which is harder to play? The hands do the same thing on both. The pedal harp adds a third limb’s worth of coordination and a heavier string tension, which is why it is added later rather than first. [How long the harp takes](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) sets out the usual timeline. **Categories:** Harp Comparisons --- ### [Learn to Play the Harp: Your First Year, Step by Step](https://promusicvault.com/learn-to-play-the-harp/) **Published:** July 8, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› Learn to Play the Harp: Your First Year, Step by Step The harp is unusually kind at the start and unusually strict afterward. Run a hand down the strings on day one and it sounds like music, which almost no other instrument allows. Then progress stops, because everything past that first gliss depends on decisions you made before you played a note: which instrument you bought, how you are sitting, which fingers you are using, and whether the thing is in tune. Start here### Sylvia Woods — Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp Twelve lessons, 44 pieces, every one of them in the key of C so no lever or pedal ever gets in the way of the technique. Fingering and placing brackets are marked throughout, which is the part a beginner cannot work out alone, and it is spiral-bound so it stays open on the stand. One book covers the whole first year for the price of a fifth of a lesson. Around $16 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g5l7yj) **The instrument:** a levered 22-string, around $600 — or rent one for $50–80 a month **The one accessory:** a clip-on tuner that reads vibration — around $22 **A teacher:** around $65 an hour, and worth it for the first three months if nothing else ## Get the instrument question right first Half of what sells online as a beginner harp is a [lyre](/lyre-vs-harp/): a flat wooden soundbox with strings stretched across the face of it. Lyres are lovely and start around $35, and nothing you learn on one transfers — different posture, different hand position, no bass to speak of. If the plan is to play the harp, you need a harp. Two specifications decide whether an instrument can carry you through a first year. **Strings**, because strings are range: from about 19 both hands have room to work, and at 22 the beginner repertoire fits without rearranging. **Levers**, because a lever harp string plays one note until a lever raises it a semitone, and a harp without them lives in a single key. Our [string count guide](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) goes deeper, and the [lever versus pedal explainer](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) covers why the orchestral kind is not a beginner decision. The cheapest harp that clears the bar ### Roosebeck 22-String Heather Harp with Chelby Levers - 22 strings - C3–C6, three octaves - Full sharping levers - Color-coded strings - Spare string set, tuning tool and play book included - ~$600 Twenty-two strings and a lever on each of them is the specification a first year needs, and this is the least money that buys it. Three octaves is enough for both hands to do real work rather than taking turns, the levers mean a piece in G or D is a flick of the wrist rather than a retuning session, and the strings are color-coded so you can find your way around from the first evening. The bundle covers the tuning tool and a spare set, so the only thing missing on day one is a tuner. Roosebeck harps are made in Pakistan for an American importer, and the fit and finish is not what the photographs promise. Expect a fortnight where it will not hold pitch while the new strings stretch, and the occasional lever that needs a small adjustment before it sharps cleanly. Harps built to a noticeably better standard start about a thousand dollars up, so the trade is a fair one — but go in expecting a settling-in period rather than an instrument that arrives finished. Our [beginner harp guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) puts it against the alternatives at every price. **Pros**- Levers on every string, which most harps at this price skip - Three octaves is enough range to take lessons on - Tuning tool, spares and a first play book in the box **Cons**- Quality control varies unit to unit - Wants daily tuning for the first couple of weeks Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x7urHT) If there is a harp teacher or a harp shop within driving distance, ask about renting before you buy anything. A lever harp rents for roughly $50 to $80 a month, usually on a four-month minimum, and the payments normally credit against a purchase if you go on to buy. That puts a considerably better instrument under your hands for the year in which you are least able to tell a good one from a bad one. Renting is ordinary in the harp world in a way it never is with guitars — [the reason harps cost what they do](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) is the same reason. ## How to sit at it The harp is played sitting down, and it leans back onto your **right shoulder**. Your right arm wraps around the instrument to reach the treble strings, which are the short ones nearest you; your left arm stays outside it and takes the bass. Nothing supports the harp except that contact with your shoulder and its own feet, so it wants to be tipped back far enough to be stable and no further. Sit on something firm and flat — a bench or a stool, not an armchair or a dining chair with a sloping seat. Padding you sink into is the enemy here, because you brace against the seat every time you reach into the bass, and a soft cushion gives that force nowhere to go. Height matters more than comfort: you want your feet flat and your forearms roughly level when your hands are in the middle of the strings. [Getting the seat right](/harp-stool-and-bench/) is worth more attention than it sounds. The music stand goes on your left, where the harp is not in the way. ## The hand: four fingers, thumbs up, short nails Both hands are numbered the same way, and the numbering runs outward from the thumb: **1 is the thumb, 2 the index, 3 the middle, 4 the ring finger**. The little finger is not used at all. It is too short to reach the string from the harp’s sideways hand position, and turning the hand to bring it in costs you the strength of the other three, so it simply rides along out of the way. The shape to aim for is fingers pointing down toward the soundboard and the thumb pointing up at the ceiling. The note is made by closing the finger into the palm — a squeeze rather than a pluck — and the hand opens again immediately afterward. Fingernails are kept short, because the harp is played on the pads of the fingers. A nail that touches the string first produces a thin, clicky sound instead of a round one, and it will do it consistently enough to convince you the instrument is at fault. This is the one piece of preparation to do before the harp arrives. ## Your first session, in order Everything below happens on one hand at a time, in the middle of the instrument where the strings are a comfortable length. 1. **The index finger alone.** Point it down along the string, squeeze the string gently, let it come away. Walk up and down a few strings until the sound stops surprising you. 2. **Add the thumb.** Set index and thumb on two strings at once, finger pointing down, thumb pointing up, and release them together so both notes sound at the same moment. 3. **Then separate them.** Set both fingers on their strings first, then play one, then the other. This is the whole idea the harp is built on: the hand arrives before the note does. 4. **Three fingers.** Thumb, index, middle on three consecutive strings, placed together and closed in sequence. Now you have a broken chord, which is most of what harp music consists of. 5. **A glissando, as a reward.** A finger run up the strings, the thumb run down. It costs nothing to learn and it is the sound that made you want the instrument. Ten minutes is the right length for that session and for every session in the first month. The limit is not concentration, it is skin: taut string against an untoughened fingertip raises a blister faster than beginners expect, and the calluses that fix it take a few weeks to build. Stop just before a fingertip starts to feel hot. [Our practice guide](/harp-tips/) goes further into what to do with those ten minutes. ## The strings tell you where you are Harp strings are color-coded, and the code is near enough universal: **C is red**, **F is blue or black**, and everything else is plain. That is the whole map. Find a red string, and the notes above it are D, E, F — the blue or black one — then G, A, B, and the next red C. Harpists navigate by those two colors rather than by counting, which is why sight-reading on the harp arrives sooner than it does on most instruments. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It also means reading music is optional at first and unavoidable later. Plenty of beginners play their first tunes by ear or by following a demonstration, and that is a perfectly good fortnight. The point at which it stops working is when both hands are doing different things, because the coordination is easier to read than to remember. ## Tuning is not maintenance, it is the first two minutes of practice A harp does not hold its tuning the way a guitar does. There are twenty to forty strings pulling on a wooden soundboard, the nylon moves with the temperature of the room, and a new instrument will drift audibly overnight. Practicing on an out-of-tune harp teaches your ear to accept it, which is a harder habit to undo than any technical fault. So it gets tuned before every session, and on a new harp two or three times a day for the first fortnight, which also settles the strings faster. Set all the levers down and tune the whole instrument to the key of C to begin with — no sharps, no flats, and the levers then raise notes out of it when a piece asks. [The full method is here](/how-to-tune-a-harp/), including the order to work in so the soundboard settles evenly. The accessory you cannot skip ### Snark ST-2 Chromatic Clip-On Tuner - Vibration sensor and microphone - Color display, rotates 360° - USB rechargeable - Calibration 415–466 Hz - ~$22 A tuner for a harp has one hard job: reading a single string while thirty others ring in sympathy with it. A microphone-only tuner hunts and flickers in that wash, especially low down. Anything that senses vibration through the wood ignores most of the noise, and the Snark is the one lever-harp makers point their own customers at. Clip it to the shank of your tuning key rather than to the harp itself. The display then sits an inch from the pin you are turning instead of across the room on a stand, no metal jaw ever grips the soundboard, and the head swivels to face you while both hands are busy. It charges over USB, so there is no coin cell to die halfway down the instrument. [The alternatives, including what pedal harps need](/best-harp-tuner/), are on the tuner page. **Pros**- Vibration sensing cuts through a ringing instrument - Clips to the tuning key, which is the fast way to work - Cheap enough that a spare is not a decision **Cons**- Not precise enough for temperament work later on - The lowest strings on a large harp need a moment to settle Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xSz88E) Strings also break, usually in that first settling fortnight and usually at three in the afternoon on a Sunday. [Replacing one](/changing-harp-strings/) takes about ten minutes once you have done it, and the Heather above ships with a spare set. ## A teacher, or on your own Private harp lessons average around $65 an hour in the US, with most teachers falling between $60 and $100 for the hour and $35 to $55 for a half. Online lessons run cheaper and work better on the harp than they have any right to, because a camera aimed at the strings shows a teacher exactly what your hands are doing. What that money buys is worth being specific about, because it is not repertoire. It is placing, hand shape and posture — three things you cannot see yourself doing and which are miserable to unlearn once they have set. A month of weekly lessons at the start does more for a self-taught player than a year of them in the middle. If lessons are not an option at all, they are not the only route: this instrument is unusually well served by written methods, and the harp is quiet enough that nobody minds you practicing. The book to work through ### Sylvia Woods — Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp - 12 lessons - 44 pieces, all in the key of C - Fingering and placing brackets marked - 80 pages, spiral-bound - Lever or pedal harp - ~$16 The standard first method for the lever harp, and the reason it has stayed standard is the sequencing. Each lesson introduces one technique, drills it in a short exercise, then hands you a folk or classical piece that needs exactly that technique and nothing you have not met. It assumes no previous musical training, so the notation is taught alongside the playing rather than presumed. Every piece sits in C and needs no sharping levers, which sounds like a limitation and is in fact the point: for the first year the hand is the difficulty, and the book removes everything that would compete with it. The placing brackets printed over the notes are the part worth the money, because placing is the technique a beginner cannot invent and the one that separates harp playing from picking at strings. It lies flat on a stand. A companion recording and DVD exist separately if you want to hear the pieces played slowly. **Pros**- Teaches placing and fingering explicitly, not just the notes - Real tunes from lesson one, so practice is not all exercises - Costs less than a fifth of a single lesson **Cons**- Staying in C means levers go untouched until you finish it - A book cannot see your hand position, which is what a teacher is for Around $16[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g5l7yj) Work through it in order and resist skipping ahead to the piece you actually want to play; the technique in lesson nine assumes the one in lesson four. When you want tunes alongside the method rather than instead of it, [the beginner books are covered separately](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/). ## What the first year costs WhatCostWhy it is on the list[A 22-string lever harp](https://amzn.to/4x7urHT)~$600 to buyEnough range and enough keys to take lessons on…or renting one$50–80 a monthBetter instrument, easy exit, payments usually credit against a purchase[A clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4xSz88E)~$22The harp is tuned before every single session[A method book](https://amzn.to/4g5l7yj)~$16Sequenced technique, which video tutorials are bad atA bench or stool$35 and upFirm and flat, at the right height — [the options](/harp-stool-and-bench/)Lessons, if you can~$65 an hourPlacing and posture, for the first three months at least A tuning key and spare strings belong on that list too, and the Heather bundle includes both, as most harps at this price do. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can you teach yourself to play the harp? Yes, and more people do on the harp than on most instruments, because the written methods are good and the instrument rewards you early. The parts that suffer without a teacher are hand position and placing, since neither is visible to the person doing it. A handful of lessons at the very start, then the book, is the best of both. ### How long does it take to learn the harp? Your first simple tune arrives inside a fortnight and both hands together somewhere between two and four months. Playing at a level a listener would call competent takes one to three years, and which end of that you land on is decided by how many days a week you sit down at it rather than how long each session runs. [We have put proper numbers on that here.](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) ### How many strings should a beginner harp have? Twenty-two or more, with levers, if lessons are the plan. From about 19 both hands have room to work; below that you have bought a taster rather than a study instrument. The [full reasoning is here](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ### Do you need to read music to start? Not for the first few weeks. The colored C and F strings make the instrument easy to navigate by eye, and plenty of beginners start by ear. It becomes necessary about the time the two hands start playing different things at once, which is also about the time a method book becomes necessary. ### Is the harp hard on your fingers? For the first month, yes. It is played on the pads of the fingers with nails kept short, and untoughened skin blisters before it calluses. Ten minutes a day, stopping before anything feels hot, gets you through that phase in a few weeks; longer sessions just delay it. ### Should I start on a lyre harp instead? Only if what you want is a lyre. They are pleasant, portable and cheap, and none of the posture or technique carries over to a harp — the two instruments share a name and very little else. [The comparison is here](/lyre-vs-harp/), and if the appeal is portability rather than price, [small harps are a different question again](/best-lap-harps/). **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Is the Harp a Percussion Instrument? No — and Here Is the Line That Decides It](https://promusicvault.com/is-harp-percussion-instrument/) **Published:** September 8, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› Is the Harp a Percussion Instrument? No — and Here Is the Line That Decides It No. The harp is a string instrument. Its sound comes from a stretched string, and that is the only thing any classification system asks about. Everything else — how you touch it, where the player sits, what it looks like — is decoration. The short answer### The harp belongs to the string family, in every system that classifies instruments Formally it is a **chordophone** — Hornbostel–Sachs 322–5, “composite chordophone sounded by the bare fingers”. In an orchestra it is counted with the strings. There is no scheme, scientific or orchestral, that files the harp under percussion. The question comes up for reasons that are real but have nothing to do with what the instrument is. **Family:** strings **Formal class:** chordophone **What vibrates:** a stretched string **How it is played:** plucked with bare fingers ## What decides an instrument’s family is what vibrates The system musicologists actually use, Hornbostel–Sachs, has five classes. Percussion is not one of them. ClassWhat makes the soundExamples**Idiophone**The body of the instrument itselfCymbal, xylophone, triangle, cowbell**Membranophone**A stretched skinSnare drum, timpani, bass drum**Chordophone**A stretched string**Harp**, violin, guitar, piano**Aerophone**A vibrating column of airFlute, trumpet, harmonica, bagpipes**Electrophone**ElectricitySynthesiser, theremin Striking appears in that system, but as a subdivision *inside* each class rather than as a class of its own. A struck skin is a struck membranophone. A struck bar is a struck idiophone. A struck string is still a chordophone. So “percussion” describes a way of playing and a section of an orchestra — it is a job description, not a family. Which means the harp never had a case to answer. Forty-seven strings under tension, plucked with the pads of eight fingers: string instrument, and not a marginal one. The same test sorts every other instrument you might wonder about, and there is a fuller walk through it in our guide to [the instrument families](/types-of-instruments/). ## The piano is the instrument that proves the rule A piano has hammers. Press a key and a felt hammer flies at a string and hits it. If striking a string were enough to make an instrument percussion, the piano would be the clearest case on earth. It is classified 314.122-4-8: a simple chordophone with a keyboard, sounded by hammers. A string instrument, with the striking recorded as a detail of how it is played. If actual hammers do not move an instrument out of the string family, ten fingertips certainly do not. The piano is also where the two ways of talking visibly part company. Plenty of orchestras hand the piano chair to the percussion section, because a pianist in a symphony plays like a percussionist does — occasional entries, counted bars, one part among the colors at the back. That is a rota, not a reclassification, and it is a large part of why the same question gets asked about the harp sitting a few feet away. We put the two instruments side by side in [harp vs. piano](/harp-vs-piano/). ## Why the harp looks like it is in the percussion section Because on most seating charts it is standing in the same row. The harp goes at the back on the conductor’s left, alongside the piano, the timpani and the rest of the percussion, and a printed seating plan will often group all of them onto one line. The reasons are practical. The harp plays in the same register as the upper strings and woodwinds and spends most of its time decorating their lines, so it wants to be near them. It is quiet, so it needs to be kept clear of the brass, which would swallow it. And harp parts are full of cues that have to be caught from the conductor, so the player needs a clean sight line. Put those three requirements together and the harpist ends up at the back left — visually among the drums, musically with the violins. Notation software adds its own confusion. Several scoring programs file the harp under pitched percussion in their instrument lists, next to the marimba and the tubular bells, which is a decision about how the software groups staves rather than a statement about the instrument. ## The harp does get hit — and it is still a string instrument This is the part with a genuine grain of truth in it. Twentieth-century harp writing is full of percussive effects, most of them codified by the harpist Carlos Salzedo: knocking on the soundboard, slapping the flat of the hand against the low wire strings for a gong-like crash, and the technique he named *xylophonic sounds*, where a finger stops a string near its base while the other hand plucks it, producing a dry wooden knock instead of a ringing note. A harpist doing all of that is playing percussively on a string instrument. So is a guitarist slapping the body between chords, and nobody moves the guitar. What an instrument is and what a player does to it are separate questions, and only the first one decides the family. ## A harp is a string stretched between two points, and always has been The oldest harps that survive are bow harps: a curved wooden arm with strings running along the inside of the curve into a hollow body, unmistakably the shape of a hunting bow. There is no soundboard trickery and no mechanism — just tension between two ends of a stick, which is the definition of a chordophone with nothing left over. ![Ancient Egyptian bow harp with a curved wooden neck and strings running into a hollow body](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/bow-harp-495x1024.jpg "bow harp")Egyptian bow harp, ca. 2030–1640 BC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1919 (19.3.17)Everything since has been an answer to one problem: a harp string plays one note, so a harp needs as many strings as it has notes, and changing key means changing strings. Levers and pedals exist to solve that, and they are the only real difference between the instruments below. ## Three instruments are sold as harps, and only two are harps The same geometry that settles the family question also settles which of these is which. On a harp the strings rise away from the soundboard at close to a right angle and pass through it. On a lyre they lie flat across the face of the instrument and cross a bridge, the way a guitar’s do. Lyre “harp”Lever harpPedal harp**Actually a harp?**No — it is a lyreYesYes**Strings**7–1922–3847**Strings meet the soundboard**Flat across it, over a bridgeAt a right angle, through itAt a right angle, through it**Range**1–2 octaves3–5 octaves6½ octaves**Changing key**Retune string by stringFlip levers between piecesMove pedals mid-bar**Weight**2–4 lb11–30 lbAbout 80 lb**Price**~$80~$150–$1,500$15,500 and up[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## If the answer made you want to try one The cheap plucked thing — but it is a lyre ### Donner DLH-003, 16-String Lyre Harp - 16 steel strings - G3–A5, two octaves, tuned to C major - Mahogany, hollow resonance box - Tuning wrench, spare strings and gig bag included - ~$100 Sold as a lyre harp, and it is a lyre: the strings lie across the soundboard over a copper saddle rather than rising out of it. That is not a criticism at the price. It is the most enjoyable eighty dollars in this whole subject, it sounds good within an hour, and sixteen strings is enough to carry a folk tune where a seven-string runs out of notes halfway through. The same model is sold in 7-string and 10-string versions too, so check the string count before you order. The tone is bright and metallic, nearer a zither than the soft wash the word harp suggests — that is what steel over a small box sounds like, and it is true of every lyre at this money. Our [lyre vs. harp comparison](/lyre-vs-harp/) takes the distinction apart properly, and the [lyre harp guide](/best-lyre-harps/) puts this one against the alternatives. Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xEBWG3) The cheapest thing that is genuinely a harp ### AKLOT 15-String Harp - 15 strings, two octaves - Mahogany, about 21″ long and 15″ tall - Strings knotted through the soundboard, harp geometry - Tuning wrench, gig bag and strap included; no spare strings - ~$150 Harp-shaped and harp-strung — a closed frame with a pillar taking the upward pull, and strings that pass through the soundboard rather than over a bridge. Built well for the money, tensioned sanely, and light enough to play on a sofa. Two octaves and no levers is the limit of it. Both-hands harp technique does not fit into fifteen strings, so treat this as finding out cheaply whether plucked strings make you happy rather than as a first step toward lessons. Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gDZKDp) The one to buy if you mean it ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings with Chelby Levers - 22 DuPont hard nylon strings - C3–C6, three full octaves - Full Chelby sharping levers on every string - About 36 inches tall, 11 lb - Extra strings, tuning tool and play book included - ~$600 This is where a harp starts being a harp you can learn on. Three octaves is enough room for both hands to work independently, and a lever on every string means you can change key between pieces instead of spending twenty minutes with a tuning wrench. The bundle covers the things a beginner does not know to buy. Expect a few weeks of daily tuning while new nylon strings stretch and settle — that is every harp at every price, not this one. Our [beginner harp guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) puts it against five alternatives, and [tuning a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the settling-in period. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xLr4q5) ## The concert harp, and what those seven pedals do The instrument in the orchestra has 47 strings covering six and a half octaves, against a piano’s seven and a quarter. It stands about six feet tall and weighs around 80 lb. With every pedal up, the strings sound the scale of C♭ major. Three pedals sit under the left foot — D, C and B — and four under the right: E, F, G and A. Each one has three notches. Top is flat, middle is natural, bottom is sharp, and moving a pedal shortens every string of that letter across the whole instrument at once. Two positions per pedal was the older single-action design; Sébastien Érard’s double action, launched in 1811, added the third, and that is what lets a harpist play in any key and change key inside a bar. It is still the mechanism on every concert harp built today. There is more on the mechanism in our guide to [the pedals on a harp](/pedals-on-harp/), and on the choice between the two kinds in [lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the harp in the string family? Yes, both ways of counting. Orchestrally it is grouped with the [strings](/string-instruments/); formally it is a chordophone, class 322–5. ### Is the piano a string or a percussion instrument? A string instrument that is often administered as a percussion one. Its strings are struck by hammers, which is why it gets described both ways, but the classification is unambiguous: chordophone. ### Is a lyre a harp? No, though most of the cheap wooden instruments online are sold as “lyre harps”. Both are chordophones, so both are string instruments, but the strings cross a bridge on a lyre and pass through the soundboard on a harp. ### Is a blues harp a harp? No. A blues harp is a harmonica, and it has no strings at all — the sound comes from reeds vibrating in a moving column of air, which makes it an aerophone, class 412.132. The nickname is old slang and nothing more. ### Is an autoharp a harp? No, it is a zither. The strings run flat across a soundboard and are strummed, with chord bars damping everything you do not want. Still a string instrument, still not a harp. We cover them in the [autoharp guide](/best-autoharps-for-beginners/). ### How many strings does a harp have? Seven to nineteen on a lyre, 22 to 38 on a lever harp, 47 on a concert pedal harp. The full breakdown is in [how many strings a harp has](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ### Why does the harp sit at the back of the orchestra? To keep it away from the brass, which would drown it, and to give the player a clear view of the conductor for the cues harp parts are full of. It ends up beside the [percussion](/percussion-instruments/) as a consequence, not as a classification. So: strings. If the question came from a homework sheet, the answer is the string family. If it came from watching an orchestra and wondering why the harpist is standing next to the timpani, the answer is that they are there for the sight lines. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Ibanez M510BS Review: Buy It, Then Set It Up](https://promusicvault.com/ibanez-m510bs-review/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Mandolin Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/mandolin-reviews/ "Mandolin Reviews")› Ibanez M510BS Review: Buy It, Then Set It Up The [Ibanez M510BS](https://amzn.to/3JfZlrF) is the brown sunburst version of the M510, an A-style mandolin that has sat at around $200 for years and is the best-made instrument at that money. It is also a laminate-top mandolin that arrives with the action high enough to be discouraging, and both halves of that sentence matter more than anything on the spec sheet. What you are buying is factory consistency: level frets, a straight neck, a nut cut to the right depth, and a body that will not come apart. What you are not buying is a top that makes the instrument better as you play it, or a bridge anybody has bothered to position. The short version### Buy it, and put $60 to $125 aside for a setup At $200 nothing else is built this carefully. Ibanez cuts the cost in the one place a factory can cut it without the instrument going wrong — a pressed laminate top instead of a carved solid one — and spent what was left on the parts that decide whether a beginner sticks with it. The catch is that the last hour of the build is missing. The bridge floats, it ships loose and roughly placed, and the strings sit high until somebody fixes it. Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JfZlrF) **Same mandolin with a pickup:** the M510E, around $230 **Half the money:** Donner DML-1, around $100 **Solid top from Ibanez:** M522S, around $350 **Budget for:** a setup, roughly $60–125 ## The specification, from Ibanez **Model**M510, BS finish (Brown Sunburst High Gloss)**Body**A-style, f-holes**Top**Spruce — laminate, not solid**Back & sides**Sapele**Neck**Okoume**Fingerboard**Purpleheart, 20 frets, flat — no radius**Bridge**Purpleheart, adjustable, floating**Saddle**Purpleheart**Inlay**White dot**Tuners**Chrome mandolin tuners**Scale length**350 mm / 13.8″**Nut width**30 mm (1.18″)**Neck depth**22 mm at the 1st fret, 24.5 mm at the 7th**Factory strings**.010 / .014 / .024 / .034**Tuning**G D A E**Other finishes**DVS dark violin sunburst, OVS open pore vintage sunburst**Case**Sold separately Two entries there are worth pinning down. Ibanez’s current specification is sapele back and sides, an okoume neck, and purpleheart for the fingerboard, bridge and saddle. A description giving the M510 mahogany and rosewood is describing an earlier build of the same model, which matters if you are looking at a used one — the two are identical in every dimension, and neither wood choice changes how it sounds at this price. ## The laminate top is the whole instrument Ibanez writes “Spruce top” for the M510 and “Solid sitka Spruce top” for the M522S, and that one missing word is the entire difference between a $200 mandolin and a $350 one from the same factory. A laminate top is thin layers of wood bonded together and pressed into an arch. It is stiff, it is stable, and it does not care about humidity — all genuinely useful in an instrument that will spend its first year being left on a sofa. What it will not do is move. A solid top flexes under the strings, and a carved one has been thinned by hand so it flexes differently in different places, which is where a mandolin’s volume and its bark come from. A laminate top sounds the same on the day you buy it as it will in ten years, and no amount of playing changes that. In practice the M510 is clear, bright and quiet. It records fine, it sits under a voice fine, and it holds a chord shape cleanly. What it cannot do is chop — the dry percussive stab that carries mandolin rhythm through a bluegrass band. If chop is what you are after, that is a solid, hand-graduated top and it starts at roughly twice this money. We go through where each price step actually lands in [how much a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/). The trade is a real one and it goes both ways. A well-made laminate beats a badly made solid top, and under about $250 badly made solid tops are what you are choosing between. Ibanez’s advantage is that it builds to a price with machine precision instead of trying to fake hand work. ## It arrives needing an hour of work This is the part that decides whether people keep the instrument, and none of it is visible in a price comparison. A mandolin bridge is not glued down. It is a floating bridge held in place by string tension alone, which means it ships loose, packed in the box with a foam strip under it, and it has to be positioned by hand before the instrument will play in tune. Get it wrong by a couple of millimeters and every note above the seventh fret is sharp or flat, however carefully you tune the open strings. On top of that, the M510 leaves the factory with the strings high. Owners report finding the action at the twelfth fret at around double what is comfortable even with the bridge wheels wound all the way down, which means the fix is not an adjustment but taking material off the bottom of the bridge. Playable is roughly 1.5 mm at the twelfth fret. Fretting two strings at once at twice that height is hard work for a beginner’s hand, and it is a common reason a cheap mandolin ends up in a cupboard. None of this is a defect and none of it is specific to Ibanez — it is what a factory setup costs when the factory is building to $200. A repair shop will place the bridge, sand it down, check the nut slots and the neck relief for **$60 to $125**, and that is money far better spent than the difference between this mandolin and the next one up. Budget it as part of the purchase rather than as a repair, and the M510 becomes a genuinely easy instrument to learn on. Skip it and you are learning on something that fights you. ## Change the strings while the bridge is off The M510 ships on .010/.014/.024/.034, which is a light set with an unusually thin G. Light strings are gentler on new fingers, so there is an argument for leaving them — but a thin G is exactly what makes a laminate top sound weak in the bass, and it is why some owners describe the low course as thudding rather than ringing. The standard mandolin gauge is medium, 11–40, and it is what the instrument is designed around. [D’Addario’s EJ74](https://amzn.to/4ikMaqK) is the set most players fit and it costs about $10 — phosphor bronze, loop end, and a noticeably fuller instrument at the bottom. It is more tension under the fingers than the factory set, so if you are starting from nothing and your hands are complaining, that is a reason to wait a few months rather than a reason not to. Do it at the same time as the setup. The bridge has to come off for both jobs and its position depends on the strings you settle on. ## What the letters mean M510BS, M510DVS and M510OVS are the same mandolin in three finishes: brown sunburst, dark violin sunburst, and an open-pore vintage sunburst that is satin rather than gloss. Nothing else changes. The [M510E](https://amzn.to/4xWkHjS) is a different thing — the same body and neck with a magnetic single-coil pickup and a quarter-inch jack fitted, for about $30 more. If you will ever need to be heard over a drummer, buy that one now rather than retrofitting later; if you are playing at home, the pickup is $30 of nothing. The M522S is the F-style with the scroll, and it is also the one with a solid top — so the two upgrades are bundled together whether or not you want the shape. Our [A-style vs F-style comparison](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) goes through what the scroll does and does not do, and the short answer is that it does nothing at all for the sound. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Who should buy something else MandolinStyleTopPrice bandWhy instead[Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3JfZlrF)ASpruce laminate~$200Best build at the price, once set up[Donner DML-1](https://amzn.to/4hFKibU)ALaminate~$100Half the outlay, with a bundle in the box[Ibanez M510E](https://amzn.to/4xWkHjS)ASpruce laminate~$230The same mandolin, with a pickup[Ibanez M522S](https://amzn.to/4qtgmBW)FSolid sitka spruce~$350A solid top without leaving the brand[The Loar LM-110-BRB](https://amzn.to/4gt0Z89)AHand-carved solid spruce~$400A top that was carved rather than pressed If $200 is more than you want to risk ### Donner DML-1 - A-style - Laminate top - Tuner, spare strings, bag and picks included - ~$100 Donner’s whole business is the cheapest version of an instrument that is still genuinely playable, and the DML-1 clears that bar. It comes with everything you need to start, which at this end of the market is worth more than the wood it is made of. Against the Ibanez it is less consistent unit to unit, the finish work is rougher, and the hardware is what $100 buys. It also needs the same bridge placement and the same setup, and a $100 mandolin plus a $90 setup is awkward arithmetic. It is the right choice if the honest answer is that you might not stick with this. **Pros**- Half the price of the Ibanez - Everything needed to start is in the box - Nothing lost if the mandolin does not take **Cons**- Build varies noticeably between instruments - Basic tuners that need retuning more often Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hFKibU) If you want a solid top and like the scroll ### Ibanez M522S - F-style - Solid sitka spruce top - Flamed maple back & sides, maple neck - 24 frets, gold tuners - ~$350 The same factory, the same 13.8″ scale and the same purpleheart fingerboard, built to a spec that actually moves. A solid top over a flamed maple body is where a mandolin starts to sound like a mandolin rather than a small guitar, and the M522S is the cheapest way to get there without changing brands. The F-style body comes along whether you want it or not, and it brings a more awkward instrument to hold sitting down and a case that costs more. It is $150 over the M510, and unlike most $150 steps at this end, all of it lands somewhere audible. **Pros**- Solid top, which the M510 is not - Flamed maple body and 24 frets - Same build consistency as the cheaper Ibanez **Cons**- Pressed rather than hand-graduated, so not a bluegrass chop - F-style body is harder to hold and dearer to case Around $350[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qtgmBW) If you already know you are keeping it ### The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek - A-style - Hand-carved, graduated solid spruce top - Maple back & sides - Bone nut, adjustable ebony bridge - ~$400 Carved and graduated by hand rather than pressed, which is a different thing again from merely solid. It is the cheapest mandolin that produces a real chop, and it gets better the more it is played — the one thing the M510 will never do. Twice the money, and the parts you can see are plainer than the Ibanez’s: satin finish, unbranded tuners, a padauk fingerboard. All of that is the right corner to cut. It wants the same setup, so budget the same again on top. **Pros**- Hand-graduated solid top at a laminate-adjacent price - Bone nut and adjustable ebony bridge - Opens up with playing, and holds its value **Cons**- Twice the outlay before the setup - Plain satin finish and basic hardware Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gt0Z89) ## What else you need Nothing comes with the M510 but the mandolin. The setup is the first call on the budget and the only one that is not optional. After that it is a case and a set of strings. A mandolin is the easiest instrument in the string family to carry — under three and a half pounds in a bag, and short enough to sit across the top of a rucksack, as we set out in [how much a mandolin weighs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-weigh/). The [Crossrock CRSG107MAFDG](https://amzn.to/4i4mKxJ) is about $45 and has 10 mm of rigid foam rather than the thin quilting most bags at this price use, which is the difference between a knock in a doorway and a dent. The backpack straps are the reason it earns its keep: they are what gets an instrument out of the house. Then a set of [EJ74 mediums](https://amzn.to/4ikMaqK) at about $10, and you have a $200 mandolin that plays like a $400 one for a little over $300 all in. That is the cheapest route to an instrument that will not put you off, and it is the arithmetic the price tag hides. ## Who the M510 is for Buy it if you are starting and you want the decision to be about your practice rather than about your instrument. It is the mandolin to learn chord shapes on, to build the finger strength that eight strings in four courses demands, and to find out over a year whether you actually like this. It is also enough instrument for a folk session, a song circle or a recording where the mandolin is a texture rather than the engine. Buy something else if you already know you want bluegrass rhythm, because the chop needs a carved top and no setup will conjure one out of laminate. Buy something else, too, if you will not get it set up — a $100 mandolin you enjoy beats a $200 one that hurts. And if you play out plugged in, buy the M510E and skip the retrofit. If you are still deciding between shapes and budgets, our [best mandolins for beginners](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) covers the range around this price, and [how hard the mandolin is to play](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/) is the more useful question to settle first. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the Ibanez M510 top solid or laminate? Laminate. Ibanez’s specification says “Spruce top” for the M510 and “Solid sitka Spruce top” for the M522S, and the distinction is deliberate. A solid top is the upgrade the M522S is charging $150 for. ### What does the BS in M510BS stand for? Brown Sunburst, the gloss finish. DVS is dark violin sunburst and OVS is an open-pore satin vintage sunburst. The instrument underneath is identical in all three. ### Does the M510 really need a setup? Yes, and more than most. The bridge is not fixed to the top — it floats, ships loose, and has to be positioned before the instrument will play in tune up the neck. The action is high enough that the bridge usually needs sanding rather than just adjusting. Reckon on $60 to $125. ### Can you play bluegrass on it? You can play the notes. You cannot get the chop, because that comes from a hand-graduated solid top flexing under the pick and a laminate does not flex. For learning tunes and playing at home it is fine; for cutting through a band it is not, and that is a wood problem rather than a setup one. Our [bluegrass mandolin guide](/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) starts where this instrument stops. ### Is the M510 mahogany? Not currently. Ibanez’s specification gives sapele back and sides and an okoume neck, with purpleheart for the fingerboard and bridge. Older M510s were built with mahogany and rosewood, which is why both descriptions are still in circulation. Sapele is a close relative of mahogany and behaves much the same. ### What strings does it take? Loop-end mandolin strings, eight of them in four pairs, tuned G D A E low to high. It ships on a light .010–.034 set; medium 11–40 is the standard gauge and what most players fit. More on the string layout in [how many strings a mandolin has](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/). ### Is it worth $200 when a mandolin costs $100? If you are going to keep it, yes — the extra hundred buys consistency, which is the thing that varies most at the bottom of the market and the thing you cannot check before it arrives. If you are unsure whether you will keep it, no. Spend $100, find out, and put the difference toward a solid top later. **Categories:** Mandolin Reviews --- ### [How To Tune a Harp, Step by Step (Lever and Pedal)](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/) **Published:** November 3, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How To Tune a Harp, Step by Step (Lever and Pedal) Put every lever down before you touch a pin. On a pedal harp, every pedal up. Then start at middle C — the red string nearest the middle of the harp — and work outwards *by note name*: every C on the instrument, then every D, then every E. A settled harp takes about three minutes that way. Two of those instructions are the ones that catch people out. A harp tuned with its levers engaged goes out of tune the moment you flip them back, and a harp tuned straight up the row leaves you trusting a clip-on tuner in the bass, which is exactly where a clip-on tuner is least reliable. ## Table of Contents - [What you need](#what-you-need) - [Levers down, pedals up](#levers-down-pedals-up) - [Which notes your harp should read](#which-notes-your-harp-should-read) - [The steps](#the-steps) - [Why by note name and not straight up the row](#why-by-note-name-and-not-straight-up-the-row) - [The two mistakes that break strings](#the-two-mistakes-that-break-strings) - [Turning the wrong pin](#turning-the-wrong-pin) - [Turning too far](#turning-too-far) - [Pedal harps: let the tuner do the transposing](#pedal-harps-let-the-tuner-do-the-transposing) - [When the tuner will not settle](#when-the-tuner-will-not-settle) - [Check the levers when you have finished](#check-the-levers-when-you-have-finished) - [How often, and how long it takes](#how-often-and-how-long-it-takes) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [Which way do I turn the key to sharpen a string?](#which-way-do-i-turn-the-key-to-sharpen-a-string) - [Can I use a guitar tuner?](#can-i-use-a-guitar-tuner) - [Do I need a contact microphone?](#do-i-need-a-contact-microphone) - [Where exactly should the clip go?](#where-exactly-should-the-clip-go) - [My new harp will not hold its tuning at all. Is something wrong?](#my-new-harp-will-not-hold-its-tuning-at-all-is-something-wrong) - [Should I tune to something other than A=440?](#should-i-tune-to-something-other-than-a440) - [In short](#in-short) ## What you need The tuner to buy if you do not own one### Snark ST-2 Chromatic Clip-On Tuner Clips to a tuning pin — or better, to the shank of the tuning key — so the screen faces you while both hands are busy. It reads vibration through the frame rather than sound through the air, which is what keeps it steady while thirty other strings ring in sympathy. Lever-harp makers point their own customers at it. Around $22 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SAmyM9) **Also:** a tuning key that fits your pins **Not needed:** a contact mic, for tuning at home **Not enough:** a guitar tuner — it must be chromatic That is the whole kit. A phone app will get a small lyre into tune and will struggle on anything with a bass register, because the free ones listen through the phone’s microphone and the room is full of the notes you are not trying to tune. If you want the full comparison — handhelds, strobes, the ones that behave on low strings — that is our [guide to harp tuners](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/). The key matters more than people expect. Harp tuning pins are tapered squares and the square is not one size: lyres take about 4 mm, most lever and Celtic harps somewhere between 4.5 and 5 mm, and larger instruments more again. A key one size up rounds the corners off your pins permanently. A key one size down will not go on at all. The spare key to keep in the case ### Roosebeck Harp Tuning Key, Medium - L-shaped steel - Square socket, medium size - Covers Roosebeck’s own range from the Baby Harp to the 38-string round back - ~$17 If your harp came with a key, that key is the right size and there is nothing to work out — buy a second one so there is always one in the case. If it did not, this is the size that covers most full-size lever and Celtic harps, and Mid-East make a smaller one for lyres and specialty instruments. Measure across the flat top of one of your pins before ordering anything, or ask whoever built the harp. “Harp tuning key” on its own is not a specification, and the published measurements for any given key are worth treating as a starting point rather than a guarantee. **Pros**- Fits the range most lever harps sit in - Cheap enough that owning two is sensible - Short enough to live in a case pocket **Cons**- An L-handle gives less controlled leverage than a T-handle - Wrong size for lyres, which want the small version Around $17[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gf9Iuv) T-handle keys exist in 4.5 mm and 5 mm and are worth the swap if your wrist complains, because they turn a pin in smaller, steadier increments than an L-key does. They are also the easier shape to clip a tuner onto. Both are compared alongside the tuners in the [tuner guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/). ## Levers down, pedals up A sharping lever and a pedal disc do the same job: they grip the string partway down and shorten its speaking length by a precise amount, raising it a semitone. Tune a string with that mechanism engaged and you have tuned the shortened string. The open string underneath it is now flat, and the tension sitting behind the lever bleeds out slowly over the next hour of playing and pulls the whole note down with it. So every lever goes down before you start, and every pedal goes to the top of its slot. Tune the full length of the string, every time, and let the mechanism do its own arithmetic afterward. ### Which notes your harp should read With the levers down, a small lever harp reads the plain white notes of C major. A larger one very often does not, and that surprises people the first time. Most lever harps past about thirty strings are strung in E flat, so that the levers reach a wider set of keys — which means that with everything disengaged the B, E and A strings read B flat, E flat and A flat. The tuner is not wrong and neither is the harp. HarpMechanismStrings readC stringsF stringsSmall lever harp, beginner setupAll levers downC major — all naturalsRedBlueLever harp strung in E flatAll levers downThree flats — B, E and A read flatRedBluePedal harpAll pedals upC flat major — set the tuner to transpose −1RedBlueParaguayan harpNo levers or pedalsC major — geared tuners, no key neededBlueRed The color coding is the fastest way to find your place on an instrument with thirty-odd identical-looking strings, and it is worth committing to memory in the form “red is C, blue is F” — with the exception in the last row. A Paraguayan harp reverses them, so a player moving between the two has to stop counting from habit. If the colors have faded on an older instrument, our guide to [how many strings a harp has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) covers the octave numbering harpists use to name them instead. ## The steps 1. Levers down, pedals up. Sit at the harp as though you were going to play it. 2. Clip the tuner to a tuning pin near the string you are working on, or to the shank of the key. Keep metal jaws off bare wood. 3. Find middle C — the red string nearest the middle — and pluck it firmly with the pad of a finger. 4. Fit the key onto the pin for that string. Turn it a few degrees and watch the display: if the pitch does not move, you are on the wrong pin. 5. Clockwise raises the note, anticlockwise lowers it. Work in small movements, checking the display between each. 6. When middle C sits centered, move to the next C — down an octave, not up a step — and tune that. Then the next, to the bottom of the harp, then back through the middle and up to the top. 7. Repeat for every D, then every E, and so on through the seven note names. 8. Go through the whole harp a second time. The strings you tuned first will have dropped while you worked on the rest. ## Why by note name and not straight up the row Tuning C, then D, then E all the way up the instrument is the obvious method and it works. Tuning every C, then every D, is better, for a reason that has nothing to do with speed. An octave is the easiest interval in music to hear. Two strings an octave apart either lock together or they beat against each other audibly, and you do not need training to notice it. That gives you a second opinion on every string you tune — one you can use precisely where the tuner is at its weakest. A 34-string lever harp bottoms out around 65 Hz and a concert pedal harp near 33 Hz. Down there the fundamental is quiet and slow to develop, so a clip-on hunts for a second or two before it settles and will sometimes lock onto an overtone and show you a confident, wrong answer an octave up. Tune the bass by working down in octaves from a middle-register string you have already set, use the tuner to confirm rather than to decide, and the problem stops being a problem. The same order helps at the top of the harp, where the strings are short, quiet and quick to die away. Pluck those lightly with a fingernail for a clear bell tone instead of digging in with the pad of the finger — a hard pluck on a top string is mostly attack noise, and the tuner has to wait for it to clear before it can read anything. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## The two mistakes that break strings ### Turning the wrong pin The pins sit far closer together on the neck than the strings do at your hands, and each string leaves its pin at an angle, so the pin nearest where you are looking is often one out. Tighten the wrong one and you are raising a string you are not listening to, with nothing to warn you until it goes. The check takes a second: turn a few degrees and confirm the display moves. If the note you are plucking does not respond, stop and find the right pin before you turn anything further. ### Turning too far Harp pins are geared far more directly than machine heads on a guitar. A few degrees of key is a large change in pitch, and the movement that feels like nothing at all is usually already too much. If a string is reading a whole tone flat, bring it up in several small movements and let it speak between each — a string dragged up in one pull tends to overshoot, and pulling it back down again leaves it slack against the pin, where it will not hold. Nylon and gut also creep for a few seconds after you move them. Tune slightly, pause, listen, then adjust again. That pause is most of the difference between a harp that stays in tune for a session and one that does not. ## Pedal harps: let the tuner do the transposing With every pedal in the top position, a pedal harp’s strings sit in C flat major. Read literally, that means tuning to B, C sharp, D sharp, E, F sharp, G sharp and A sharp, and translating those in your head string after string is how mistakes happen at eleven o’clock at night. Set the tuner’s transpose to −1 instead. The display then shows plain naturals — C, D, E, F, G, A, B — while the harp sits where it belongs, and you can work through the strings without converting anything. Most chromatic tuners past the cheapest tier have this, and it is the single setting that makes tuning a pedal harp straightforward. Everything else is the same job on a bigger instrument, with more strings and more of them below the range where a tuner is confident. If you are still deciding between the two mechanisms, we compare them in [lever harp versus pedal harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). ## When the tuner will not settle Three different faults look identical on the display, and they have different fixes. What you seeWhat it isWhat to doThe reading jumps between two notes a step or two apartSympathetic resonance — the strings you are not playing are ringing alongMute the strings below with your palm, pluck more lightly, move the clip nearer the pinThe reading is steady but an octave outThe tuner has locked onto an overtone rather than the fundamentalCheck it against the octave above, which you have already tunedOne string hunts back and forth and never centersA false string — the diameter has gone uneven along its lengthReplace it. No amount of tuning will fix a false string The third is worth knowing because it is invisible otherwise. A false string sounds slightly dull and slightly sour next to its neighbors, and it is the string in every harpist’s instrument that they have quietly stopped using. Our guide to [changing a harp string](https://promusicvault.com/changing-harp-strings/) covers replacing it, and the other three signs that a string is finished. ## Check the levers when you have finished A harp in tune with its levers down is not necessarily in tune when you play it. Once you have finished, go back through and engage each lever in turn, watching the display as you do. The sharped note should land on the semitone above. If it consistently reads sharp or flat when the lever goes up — the same amount, on the same strings, every time — the harp needs regulating, which means adjusting the levers themselves so the pitch they produce is correct. That is a technician’s job rather than a tuning problem, and it is not something to attempt with the key in your hand. It is also the reason a harp that “will not stay in tune” sometimes turns out to be perfectly in tune with everything down. Pedal harps get the same check with each pedal moved through its three positions, and they need regulating more often, because there is far more mechanism to drift. ## How often, and how long it takes Before every session. Not because harpists are fussy, but because a lever harp carries somewhere around 900 to 1,200 pounds of pull across a thin wooden soundboard and a concert pedal harp closer to a ton, and that structure responds to every change in temperature and humidity in the room. A guitar shrugs those off. A harp does not. A settled instrument takes about three minutes once the order is habit. A new one takes considerably longer and there is no shortcut: new gut and nylon stretch enormously at first, and a freshly strung harp can want fifty tunings before it stabilises. Gut and nylon settle over a week or two of daily retuning, wire-wound strings in a couple of days. Tuning it often makes it settle faster, not slower. The other consequence of that is a habit worth building early: tune, play through the instrument once, then tune again. The second pass takes thirty seconds and is the difference between a harp that sounds in tune and one that nearly does. More of that kind of thing is in our [harp practice tips](https://promusicvault.com/harp-tips/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Which way do I turn the key to sharpen a string? Clockwise, as you look at the head of the pin. That tightens the string and raises the pitch on tapered, threaded and zither pins alike. Confirm it on the display anyway — a few degrees and a glance costs nothing, and it doubles as the check that you are on the right pin. ### Can I use a guitar tuner? Only if it has a chromatic mode, and even then only for the middle of the instrument. In guitar mode a tuner is looking for six specific notes and will drag everything you play toward one of them. Guitar-oriented tuners also often stop detecting below the low E at 82 Hz, which leaves the entire bottom register of a full-size harp invisible. ### Do I need a contact microphone? Not for tuning at home. A clip-on tuner already reads vibration through the frame, which is the same principle. A wired pickup into a tuner’s quarter-inch jack earns its place backstage or in a room with other instruments playing — the same setup covered in our guide to [recording a harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-record-a-harp/). ### Where exactly should the clip go? On a tuning pin near the string you are adjusting, or on the shank of the tuning key — which has the advantage of traveling with you as you work. Not on bare wood: the jaws mark a soundboard and read no better for it. For the top octave, where vibration gets faint, the access hole in the back of the body or the midrib inside gives a stronger signal. ### My new harp will not hold its tuning at all. Is something wrong? No. New strings stretch and a new soundboard settles under load, so the first few weeks are relentless. Tune the whole instrument, then immediately go through it again. Gut and nylon come good after a week or two of daily tuning, wire-wound strings in a couple of days. ### Should I tune to something other than A=440? Only if you are playing with people who are. A=440 Hz is the default on every chromatic tuner and the right answer for practicing alone or with almost any ensemble. Early-music groups sometimes ask for A=415 for Baroque repertoire, occasionally A=392 for French Baroque, and any tuner with a calibration setting will move to meet them. ## In short Levers down, pedals up, transpose −1 if it is a pedal harp. Start at middle C and tune by note name rather than up the row, so that every string in the bass has an octave above it to check against. Turn the key in small movements and confirm the display moves before you commit to a pin. Then go round again. Three minutes, before you play, every time. If you are still choosing an instrument, start with our guide to the [best harps for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/). **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How To Tune a Banjo: Open G, and Every Other Tuning You'll Meet](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) **Published:** March 22, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How To Tune a Banjo: Open G, and Every Other Tuning You’ll Meet A five-string banjo is tuned **gDGBD** — an open G chord, which is why strumming it without fretting anything already sounds like music. The lowercase g is the short fifth string, and it is the highest-pitched string on the instrument, not the lowest. That one fact is behind most broken strings in a beginner’s first month. ## The five notes, in order StringNotePitchFrequencyWhat it is5th (short)GG4392.0 HzThe drone. Highest string on the banjo4thDD3146.8 HzThe lowest string, wound3rdGG3196.0 HzAn octave below the fifth string2ndBB3246.9 HzThe third of the chord — see below1stDD4293.7 HzThe thinnest of the four long strings Strings are counted from the thinnest long string upward, so the first string is the one nearest the floor when you are holding the banjo and the fifth is the short one with its own peg partway up the neck. The frequencies are for standard A=440 pitch, which is what every tuner and every piano you are likely to meet is set to. ## Tuning with a clip-on tuner Clip it to the peghead, set it to chromatic, and work from the fourth string to the first, leaving the fifth until last. Pluck one string at a time over the end of the neck rather than down by the bridge, and rest your palm on the other strings so the tuner only hears the one you mean. Always come up to the note. If the string is sharp, wind it below the pitch and bring it back up, so the peg finishes under tension and the tuning holds. Read the first steady moment of the display rather than the last — a banjo note is over in about a second, and what a tuner shows as the sound dies is the head ringing, not the string. **The fifth string is where this goes wrong.** A chromatic tuner shows G in every octave, so it will sit there reading a contented G while you wind that short string toward a pitch an octave above where it belongs — and it will snap before it gets there. Open, the fifth string should sound the same note as the first string fretted at the fifth fret. If the tuner says G and the string feels frighteningly tight, stop and check that. The tuner to get### KLIQ UberTuner Reads the string’s vibration through the clip instead of listening to the room, which is what a banjo needs — the head, the rim and the four strings you did not pluck are all ringing at once, and a tuner with a microphone hears every bit of it. Bright enough to read outdoors, and it settles before the note dies. Around $19 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bVXy8z) **If the open chord bothers you:** Peterson StroboClip HD — around $60 **Fuller comparison:** [banjo tuners](/best-banjo-tuner/) ## Tuning without a tuner You need one note from somewhere to start — a piano, a phone, another instrument, or whatever the rest of the room is already tuned to. Get the fourth string to D, then the banjo tunes itself against that. Fret thisIt should matchNote4th string, 5th fret3rd string, openG33rd string, 4th fret2nd string, openB32nd string, 3rd fret1st string, openD41st string, 5th fret5th string, openG4 The fifth fret is the odd one out here. Every other string on a banjo tunes at the fifth fret the way a guitar does, but the third string goes to the second at the *fourth* fret, because the gap between G and B is a major third rather than a fourth. Getting that one wrong is the usual reason a banjo tuned by ear comes out sounding almost right. Listen for the beating rather than the pitch. Two notes that are close but not identical produce a slow wobble underneath them, and it slows down as you get closer. When the wobble stops, you are there. Fretted notes always ring slightly sharp of open ones, so check your work by strumming the whole chord at the end. ### Tuning to a piano Middle C on a piano is C4. The banjo’s first string, D4, is the white key immediately to the right of it, and the third string’s G3 is the third white key below middle C. The fifth string’s G4 is the next G above middle C — a fourth above the first string, and still comfortably in the middle of the keyboard. If you find yourself hunting for it down at the left-hand end, you are in the wrong octave. ## Every string reads perfect and the chord still sounds sour This is the second string, and it is not your fault or the tuner’s. B is the third of a G chord, and the third is where the compromise built into modern tuning shows up most: a B tuned dead center on a chromatic tuner sits about 14 cents sharp of the note a pure G chord actually wants. Strum all five strings and you hear it as a slow beat in an otherwise clean chord. Players have always fixed it by ear — ease the second string down a hair until the beating stops, and accept that it will now read very slightly flat. The other fix is a tuner with a banjo setting, which moves the targets for you. That is a Peterson feature rather than a general one, and its five-string preset exists specifically to counter what the manual calls the typical sharp B string. The upgrade that changes how it sounds ### Peterson StroboClip HD - Clip-on strobe - ±0.1 cent - Sweetened presets for five-string and tenor banjo - Around $60 Three times the price of a tuner that will get you in tune, and the accuracy figure is not what you are paying for. The banjo preset is. It is the one upgrade here that changes how the instrument sounds rather than how quickly you finish tuning it, and it is wasted on a first month with the banjo — buy it when you already know the open G chord is sitting slightly wrong and want to know why. Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bTIMPN) ## In tune open, wrong up the neck If the open strings are perfect and everything you fret above the fifth fret sounds sharp or flat, the tuning is not the problem — the bridge is. A banjo bridge is not glued down. It sits on the head held only by string tension, and it moves: when you change strings, when the head is tightened, when the case gets knocked about. Setting it is a two-minute job. Measure from the nut to the twelfth fret, then place the bridge the same distance again beyond the twelfth. To fine-tune it, touch the first string lightly directly above the twelfth fret and pluck — that chimed harmonic and the same string fretted at the twelfth should be the same note. Fretted sharp means the bridge moves toward the tailpiece; fretted flat means it moves toward the neck. Check the fourth string too, and let the bridge sit very slightly angled if the two disagree. Worth redoing every time you change strings. ## It will not stay in tune ### If it is the fifth string Most inexpensive banjos use a friction peg for the fifth string — a tapered shaft held by pressure alone, with no gears. It slips as the string settles and it slips when the weather turns, and no amount of careful tuning changes that. A geared peg cures it permanently, but the hole usually has to be re-tapered to take one, so it is a job for whoever does your setups rather than an afternoon at the kitchen table. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### If it is all of them New strings stretch. For the first day or two, tune up, then take each string between finger and thumb and pull it gently away from the fingerboard along its length, and tune again. Three or four rounds of that gets most of the stretch out; skip it and you will be retuning every few minutes for a week. Old strings behave the same way for the opposite reason. A tired string will not settle at a pitch, reads dull and unstable on any tuner, and sounds flat on the higher frets no matter where the bridge is. A set costs less than a coffee and rules it out in ten minutes. The set most banjos want ### D’Addario EJ55 - Five-string set - Medium gauge, .010 to .023 - Phosphor bronze wound fourth string - Loop end - Around $6.50 Medium phosphor bronze suits a resonator banjo and an open back equally, and the bronze-wound fourth adds warmth without dulling the top three. Check the packet says medium and .010 to .023 — the light sets look almost identical on the shelf and feel noticeably slacker under the fingers. More on gauges and materials in our guide to [banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/). Around $6.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4giyB8Q) ### If it happens every fall A banjo head is a membrane under tension, and it responds to humidity faster than a wooden soundboard does. Damp weather slackens it and the pitch drops; dry heat tightens it and the pitch creeps up. That is normal, it affects all five strings together, and it is why a banjo wants tuning at the start of every session and often once more partway through. ## The other five-string tunings Open G covers bluegrass and nearly every piece of tab you will be handed. Old-time playing uses several others, and a tab that sounds wrong in G is usually asking for one of these. TuningNotesWhat changes from open GWhat it is forOpen G — standardgDGBD—Bluegrass, most tab, most of everythingDouble CgCGCD4th up to C, 2nd up to COld-time tunes in C, and in D with a capo at 2Sawmill, or G modalgDGCD2nd up to CModal old-time tunes — neither major nor minorDrop CgCGBD4th down to CPlaying in C without retuning three stringsOpen Df#DF#AD5th, 3rd and 2nd all moveOld-time D tunes, and Scruggs’s “Reuben” Any chromatic tuner handles all of them, because it names whatever note it hears rather than expecting a particular one. The only tuners that object are ones left sitting in a guitar preset. Open D is the one to be careful with: it takes the fifth string up from G to F sharp, which is the wrong direction for the thinnest string on the instrument to be going, so bring it down to F sharp from above rather than winding up to it. ## If it is not a five-string BanjoStringsTuningNotesFive-string5gDGBDThe standard banjo, in every style[Tenor](/best-tenor-banjo/)4CGDATuned in fifths, like a viola. Trad jazz and dance bandsIrish tenor4GDAEThe same instrument dropped a fifth, on heavier strings — fiddle tuning an octave down[Plectrum](/best-plectrum-banjos/)4CGBDA five-string’s dropped-C tuning without the drone[Six-string](/best-6-string-banjo/)6EADGBEGuitar tuning exactly. Every shape you know already fits[Banjolele](/banjo-vs-banjolele/)4gCEAUkulele tuning, ukulele chord shapesBanjo mandolin8GDAEFour pairs, tuned like a mandolin or fiddle A tenor and an Irish tenor are the same banjo — the difference is the string set and where you put it. Standard tenor gauges tuned down to GDAE go slack, buzz on the frets and will not hold pitch, so an Irish tuning needs a heavier set cut for it. There is more on which is which in [plectrum vs tenor](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) and [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/). ## Capos, and what happens to the fifth string A capo across the four long strings moves the key, and the fifth string does not come with it — it starts at the fifth fret, past where the capo sits, so it stays on G while everything else has moved. Left alone, it turns a bright drone into a wrong note. Capo atKeyFifth string goes toSpike at2nd fretAA7th fret3rd fretB flatB flat8th — rarely fitted4th fretBB9th fret5th fretCC10th fret Spikes are tiny model-railroad spikes tapped into the fingerboard, and you hook the string under one to hold it at the higher pitch. Frets 7, 9 and 10 are the three nearly everybody has fitted, because they cover the keys of A, B and C. Fitting them means drilling the fingerboard, so it is a setup-shop job. Without spikes, simply tune the fifth string up by ear to match — capo at the second fret and it wants to be an A, which is the first string fretted at the seventh. It works perfectly well and costs nothing, and it is what to do before deciding whether you capo often enough to have the neck drilled. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is standard banjo tuning? Open G, written gDGBD — fifth string G4, then D3, G3, B3 and D4 from the fourth string to the first. Strummed open it is a G major chord. ### Can you tune a banjo with a guitar tuner? Yes, if it is chromatic — every banjo string sits inside the range of any modern clip-on. What does not work is a tuner left in guitar mode, which is looking for E, A, D, G, B, E and will try to drag your fifth string toward something it recognizes. Switch it to chromatic and forget it has modes. ### How often should I tune? At the start of every session, and again partway through if you are playing hard or the room is warming up. New strings need it far more often than that for the first couple of days. ### Is a phone app good enough? For one string in a quiet room, yes. The weakness is the microphone: a phone hears the head, the room and anyone else tuning nearby, and on a banjo that is exactly what makes a reading dance between sharp and flat. A clip-on that reads vibration through the peghead ignores all of it. ### Which string is the fifth string? The short one, with its own peg sticking out of the side of the neck at the fifth fret. It is the string nearest you when you are playing, and the highest-pitched on the instrument — an octave above the third string. ### Why does my banjo go out of tune so much faster than a guitar? Three things a guitar does not have: a skin head that moves with the weather, a bridge held on by nothing but string tension, and usually a friction peg on the fifth string. All three are normal, and all three are why a tuner lives in the case rather than the drawer. ## Where to go next Tune it, then leave it alone and play. The tuning is not the hard part of this instrument, and a beginner who checks it twice a session is doing everything that needs doing. Open G hands you a G chord for nothing, so [the chords](/banjo-chords-ultimate-guide/) are the next thing to learn. If you are still choosing the banjo itself, start with [the beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/). If you have one and want to know what you are in for, [how long it takes to learn](/how-long-to-learn-the-banjo/) is the honest version. And if the tuner is the thing you are shopping for, [the four worth buying](/best-banjo-tuner/) are compared in full. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [How to Record a Harp at Home: Start With Distance, Not Microphones](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-record-a-harp/) **Published:** March 4, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How to Record a Harp at Home: Start With Distance, Not Microphones Move the microphone back before you spend anything on a better one. The working rule from the people who make measurement microphones is that you stand off at least as far as the instrument is tall — a concert grand pedal harp is 74 inches, so that is around six and a half feet, and a 34-string lever harp on its legs is about four and a half. Most thin, boxy, honky home harp recordings are a microphone sitting three feet from the strings, and no upgrade fixes that. The reason is that a harp is not a point source. Forty-odd strings and a soundboard nearly five feet long are all radiating at once, and they do not become the sound you hear from the bench until they have had a couple of meters to combine. Closer in you are not recording the harp, you are recording one region of it — which is why a close microphone gives you either a bass-heavy thud near the bottom of the board or a room full of fingernails up at the top. Our pick for recording yourself at home### Zoom H4essential Records 32-bit float, which means there is no recording level to set and nothing you play can clip. On an instrument that goes from a fingertip harmonic to a two-handed glissando inside one bar, that removes the single most common way a home harp take gets ruined. It has a built-in stereo pair, two XLR inputs with 48V for when you want better microphones, and it doubles as a USB interface later. Around $220 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Scua7s) **Best stereo pair on a budget:** Behringer C-2 — around $50 **If you record into a computer:** Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen — around $225 **One microphone, mono:** Audio-Technica AT2020 — around $100 ## The kit at a glance GearWhat it isPrice bandWhy it is here[Zoom H4essential](https://amzn.to/3Scua7s)32-bit float recorder, built-in stereo mics, 2 XLR/TRS in with 48V~$220The entire rig in one box[Behringer C-2](https://amzn.to/4qwxNSj)Matched pair of cardioid pencil condensers, stereo bar included~$50Real stereo you can position yourself[Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (4th Gen)](https://amzn.to/3U29akm)Two-input USB-C interface, 48V, bundled recording software~$225Recording straight into a computer[Audio-Technica AT2020](https://amzn.to/3H9BO93)Single cardioid condenser, XLR~$100One microphone, mono, very forgiving ## Where to put the microphone ### Distance: as far back as your harp is tall Measure your instrument and use that as your minimum. A Lyon & Healy concert grand is 74 inches to the top of the column, so about two meters of air. A Dusty Strings Ravenna 34 stands 49 inches, or 54 with the legs and base, so four and a half feet is enough. A lap harp needs less again. The rule scales because the problem scales: bigger instrument, longer for the sources to blend. Treat that as the floor rather than the target. If the room sounds good, going further back keeps working for a while, and the recording gets rounder as it goes. If it does not, see below — the rule quietly assumes there is something out there worth picking up. ### Height: level with your hands Put the capsules at roughly the height of the player’s hands and aim them at the middle of the string band. Too low and you collect the floor bouncing back at you, which muddies everything below about 300 Hz; too high and the bass strings start to disappear because you are above the part of the soundboard driving them. This is the practical reason a desk stand or a tripod on a table will not do. You need something that reaches about four feet with the microphone six feet from the instrument, which in practice means a tall boom stand — and if you are working with a pair, either two stands or a stereo bar on one. ### Width comes from the room, not from the harp A harp has almost no horizontal stereo image. Its sound field runs vertically, from the long bass end of the soundboard up to the short treble strings, so pulling two microphones wide apart does not capture the instrument in stereo the way it would a piano or a drum kit. What a spread pair actually captures is the room. That gives you a clean decision. In a room worth recording — high ceiling, hard surfaces, some life to it — spread a pair a foot or two apart at the distance above and let the room supply the width. In an ordinary carpeted bedroom there is nothing out there you want, so move in to around three feet and stack the two microphones vertically instead, one above the other at the same distance. Sessions run that way come out balanced rather than wide, which on a harp is the better trade. ### What close-miking the soundboard actually does Pointing a microphone straight at the soundboard from a few inches away produces a boomy recording with a hump in the bass and low mids. It is a useful sound as one ingredient underneath a distant pair, blended low, and it is a poor one on its own. If you want detail rather than weight, a spot microphone around the top of the pillar looking down across the strings gets you the attack of the fingers without the box resonance. Cardioid microphones also get bassier the closer they are, which compounds the problem. Omnidirectional capsules do not do this at all, which is why they are the classical engineer’s default on harp — but they hear the room in every direction, so they are a reward for having a good room rather than a fix for a bad one. There is more on individual positions in our guide to [micing a harp](/how-to-mic-a-harp/). ## What to record with № 1 · The whole rig in one box ### Zoom H4essential - 32-bit float, no gain to set - Built-in stereo XY pair - 2 XLR/TRS combo inputs, 48V phantom - 4 tracks - Works as a 4-in/2-out USB interface - ~$220 A harp covers an enormous dynamic range and the loud moments arrive without warning, so the classic home mistake is a take that is perfect until the glissando in bar nine tears the top off it. Recording in 32-bit float removes that failure mode outright: there is no level to set, nothing clips, and you pull the volume to where you want it afterward with no penalty. For an instrument you are recording alone, with no one at a desk riding the fader, that is worth more than any microphone upgrade at this price. The built-in pair is fixed in an XY arrangement, which is the honest limitation — you cannot stack or spread those two capsules, you can only move the whole recorder. At the distances above that matters less than it sounds, because a harp is not asking for a wide image anyway. When you do want control, the two XLR inputs take a proper pair and supply the 48V they need, so this stays useful rather than becoming the thing you replace. **Pros**- Cannot clip, which is the failure this instrument invites - No computer, no interface, no cables in the room - Grows into a two-microphone setup without being replaced **Cons**- Built-in capsules cannot be positioned independently - Costs more than a pair of microphones and an interface would Around $220[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Scua7s) № 2 · Stereo for the price of a set of strings ### Behringer C-2 (matched pair) - Two matched cardioid pencil condensers - 16 mm diaphragm - 20 Hz – 20 kHz - Requires 48V phantom power - Stereo bar, clips, windscreens and case included - ~$50 Matched pairs normally start several times higher than this, and the C-2 is the reason a harpist has no real excuse for recording in mono. The two capsules are selected to behave the same as each other, which is the only thing that matters for stereo — mismatched microphones produce an image that wanders. The stereo bar in the box is not a throwaway either, since stacking or spacing a pair accurately is the whole technique described above. They are not subtle microphones. The top end is a little forward and glassy, which on a nylon-strung harp shows up as extra fingernail, and the noise floor is audible if you record something very quiet and then lift it a long way. Against that, they cost about the same as a set of harp strings, and the difference between a matched pair placed properly and one expensive microphone placed badly is not close. **Pros**- A genuinely matched pair at a price that makes stereo automatic - Stereo bar included, so the technique is available out of the box - Cardioid pattern keeps an ordinary room out of the recording **Cons**- Forward top end emphasizes fingernail contact - Audible self-noise on very quiet passages - Needs phantom power from a recorder or interface Around $50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qwxNSj) № 3 · If you would rather record into a computer ### Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (4th Generation) - Two microphone preamps, 48V - 24-bit / 192 kHz - USB-C - Auto Gain and Clip Safe - Ableton Live Lite, Pro Tools Intro and Cubase LE included - ~$225 The alternative to a recorder is to put the microphones straight into the machine you will edit on, and the 2i2 is the default for good reason. Two inputs is exactly a stereo pair, the preamps are quiet enough that the C-2’s own noise is the limiting factor rather than theirs, and the bundled software means you are not buying a recording program separately. Clip Safe watches the input and pulls the gain down before a peak lands, which is the 24-bit answer to the problem 32-bit float solves outright. Be careful which generation you buy, because the third is still sold alongside this one and looks near enough identical. The real question, though, is whether you want a computer running in the room at all — a harp is quiet and a laptop fan is not, and at six feet the microphones will hear it. If your recording position and your editing position are not the same room, the recorder is the easier instrument to live with. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Two clean preamps with the phantom power a condenser pair needs - Recording software included, so nothing else to buy - Straight into the machine you edit on **Cons**- Puts a computer and its fan noise in the recording room - The previous generation is still on sale and easily confused with it - 24-bit, so levels still have to be watched Around $225[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U29akm) № 4 · One microphone, and no shame in it ### Audio-Technica AT2020 - Single large-diaphragm cardioid condenser - XLR, requires 48V phantom power - 20 Hz – 20 kHz - Also sold in a USB version — the XLR one is this - ~$100 Since a harp carries so little horizontal stereo information, mono costs you less here than it would on almost any other instrument. What you lose is the sense of the room around the instrument, not the instrument itself, and in a bedroom that is not much of a loss. One microphone is also markedly easier to get right: there is no matching, no bar, no phase relationship to worry about, and one decision about where to stand it. The AT2020 is the sensible version of that. It has been the standard first condenser for years, it is quieter than the C-2, and at six feet in cardioid it captures a harp without editorialising. It needs phantom power and an interface or recorder to plug into, so it is not a cheaper route than the pair — it is a simpler one. Note that the same model number is sold as a USB microphone as well; that one plugs directly into a computer and skips the interface, but it cannot be part of a stereo pair later. **Pros**- Far fewer ways to get it wrong than a pair - Quieter than budget matched pairs on soft playing - Mono is a small loss on this particular instrument **Cons**- No stereo, so no sense of the room - Costs twice a matched pair for one capsule - Proximity effect means it must be kept back Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3H9BO93) ## The room is doing more than the microphone Put the harp between a corner and the middle of the room rather than against a wall, and keep the microphone nearer the center. A harp close to a corner gets a bass lift from the two surfaces behind it, which sounds impressive from the bench and turns to mud on playback. An untreated square room is the common case and it is workable. Soft furnishings help — a sofa, a rug, curtains drawn, a duvet over a clothes airer behind the microphone if you are willing to look silly. A dry recording with a small artificial space added afterward beats a live recording of a bad room, because the reflections from a small room arrive too early and too identically to sound like anything but a small room. One thing worth trying before you rearrange furniture: raise the harp. Sitting the instrument on a low platform, or the player on a lower stool, changes where the soundboard sits relative to the floor bounce and can clean up the lower octaves on its own. Our guide to [harp stools and benches](/harp-stool-and-bench/) covers the seating side of that. ## The noises you cannot fix afterward Get the harp properly in tune first, and not approximately — a chorus of sympathetic strings makes a harp less forgiving of a flat note than an instrument with six of them, and nothing in a recording program will retune a chord after the fact. If you are working through your own instrument, our guides to [tuning a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) and [choosing a harp tuner](/best-harp-tuner/) cover it. Then listen for the mechanism. Pedal changes clunk, levers click, and both are far louder through a microphone six feet away than they are to the player, who has stopped hearing them. Finger damping is the same — the squeak of a hand stopping a wire-wound bass string is inaudible while you are concentrating and obvious on playback. Some of this you fix by pulling the microphone back a little further, and some of it you fix by choosing where in the bar to change. Buzzes are worth chasing down before you record rather than after. A string sitting badly in its slot, a lever that is not quite clearing, a loose bolt in the column — all of them produce a rattle that survives everything you can do to a file afterward. If a buzz appeared with a recent string change, [the string is usually where to look](/changing-harp-strings/). ## After you hit record ### Compression Less than you think. A harp’s dynamic range is a large part of what makes it worth listening to, and squashing it flat is the quickest way to make a recording sound like a sample library. One gentle compressor with a slow-ish attack, so the pluck gets through before the gain reduction arrives, and a few decibels of reduction on the loudest moments is enough for most material. The one thing a harp genuinely does unevenly is decay. The short nylon trebles die away quickly while the long wire-wound basses ring on, so a passage that moves down the instrument can feel like it is thickening as it goes. That is a job for a little compression on the low band specifically, or more simply for turning the bass notes down where they pile up. Reaching for a multiband compressor before you have tried either is solving a problem you have not diagnosed. ### Reverb Also less than you think, and for a specific reason: the instrument already generates its own. Every string on a harp is undamped unless a hand is on it, so any note sets thirty others ringing in sympathy and the sustain is enormous before you add anything. Pile a long hall on top and the result is not spacious, it is smeared. A short room or plate at a low mix, enough to stop the recording sounding like a cupboard, is usually the whole job. Set it while listening to a fast passage rather than a slow one — a slow piece will let you add far too much before it complains. ### Software GarageBand on a Mac and Audacity on anything are both free and both entirely adequate for recording a harp, trimming the ends and adding a touch of compression and reverb. Audacity is the plainer of the two and better for straightforward captures; GarageBand is easier if you want to layer parts. The Scarlett arrives with Ableton Live Lite, Pro Tools Intro and Cubase LE, so buying an interface tends to settle the question by itself. ## Common questions ### Can I just use my phone? For hearing back what you played, yes, and it is genuinely useful for practice. For anything you want to share, no — phone microphones apply aggressive automatic level control that pumps on a dynamic instrument, and they roll off exactly the low end a harp needs. Put the phone at the distance described above and it will still sound better than a phone held close. ### Should I use a pickup instead of microphones? Not for recording. A pickup hears the soundboard vibrating rather than the instrument speaking into a room, and the result is direct and slightly synthetic — very useful on stage where a microphone would feed back, much less so when nothing is stopping you putting a microphone up. That is the subject of [amplifying a harp](/how-to-amplify-a-harp/) rather than this one. ### Do I need two microphones? No. A harp carries very little horizontal stereo information, so a single well-placed microphone gets you most of the way and is easier to place well. Two are worth it for the sense of space around the instrument, and for the option of stacking them vertically to cover the bass and treble ends of the soundboard evenly. ### Does it matter whether it is a lever harp or a pedal harp? Mainly for distance and for mechanism noise. A pedal harp is taller, so it wants more room between it and the microphone, and its pedal action is louder than a lever click. A lever harp is small enough that four or five feet is plenty, which is what makes it the easier of the two to record in a domestic room. The differences are set out in [lever harp vs pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). ### Why does my recording sound nothing like the harp does when I play it? Because you are sitting inside the instrument. The player’s ears are about a foot from the soundboard and roughly level with the middle of the strings, which is a position no listener ever occupies, and it is unusually flattering. A recording made from where an audience sits will always sound less immediate to the person who played it. That is the recording being right, not wrong. ## So what do you actually buy If you want one purchase and no computer in the room, the [Zoom H4essential](https://amzn.to/3Scua7s) is the answer, and the fact that it cannot clip matters more on a harp than on anything else you might point it at. Add the [Behringer C-2](https://amzn.to/4qwxNSj) pair when you want to place the capsules yourself — around $270 for the two together, and the recorder already supplies their phantom power. If you would rather record into a computer, the [Scarlett 2i2](https://amzn.to/3U29akm) and the same pair come to roughly $275 and include the software. And if all of this sounds like more than you want to think about, one [AT2020](https://amzn.to/3H9BO93) on a tall stand, six feet back and level with your hands, will beat almost every home harp recording made with better equipment placed worse. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How to Mic a Harp: The Pillar, the Sound Hole and Six Feet Back](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-mic-a-harp/) **Published:** February 13, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How to Mic a Harp: The Pillar, the Sound Hole and Six Feet Back Most of what goes wrong when a harp is miked is the position, not the microphone. The instrument is five feet of radiating soundboard and forty-odd strings that do not become a harp until they have had some air to combine in, so a capsule two feet from the strings is not recording the harp — it is recording one region of it, usually the boomy one. Where it goes depends on what else is making a noise. Alone in a room, the microphone belongs a long way back and high up. In an orchestra it belongs at the top of the pillar, angled down. On a loud stage it belongs on the instrument itself, an inch from the wood. Those are the three positions, and choosing between them costs nothing. Buy this before you buy a microphone### On-Stage MS7701B Euro Boom Stand A harp wants the capsule at hand height and several feet back, and a short stand is why the microphone ends up three feet from the strings instead. Five feet of column and a thirty-inch boom costs about the same as a set of strings and improves the sound more than any microphone on this page. Around $32 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zwdOr9) **One microphone for a room and a spot:** Shure SM81-LC — around $440 **Cheapest way to try an omni:** Behringer ECM8000 — around $26 **For a loud stage:** Myers Pickups The Feather — around $225 ## The kit at a glance GearWhat it isPrice bandPosition it serves[On-Stage MS7701B](https://amzn.to/4zwdOr9)Tripod boom stand, 32″–61.5″, 30″ boom~$32All of them — it is what makes distance and height possible[Shure SM81-LC](https://amzn.to/4qjVlJW)Small-diaphragm cardioid condenser, switchable rolloff~$440Six feet back in a room, or a spot at the pillar[Behringer ECM8000](https://amzn.to/4bS8STd)True omnidirectional condenser, 48 V phantom~$26Distant in a room worth hearing[Myers Pickups The Feather](https://amzn.to/4xO1yk0)Gooseneck omni mic, built-in preamp, suction and clip mount~$225Half an inch off the soundboard on a loud stage ## Three jobs, three positions Where the microphone goes depends on one thing: whether anything else in the room is making a noise. On its own, a harp wants distance. In an ensemble, it wants a close directional microphone that hears the harp and not the cellos. On a stage with a band and a monitor pointed at you, it wants to be inside the instrument. Those are three different sounds, and none of them is a compromise version of the others. ### Alone: back off, and get the stand up A harp is not a point source. Forty-odd strings and a soundboard nearly five feet long all radiate at once, and they need a couple of meters of air to become the instrument you hear from the bench. The working rule is to stand off at least as far as the harp is tall — around six and a half feet for a concert grand, four and a half for a lever harp on legs — with the capsule at the height of the player’s hands, aimed at the middle of the string band. The part that catches people out is the stand rather than the microphone. Four feet of height at six feet of distance is a tall boom, not a desk tripod, and a short stand is why the microphone ends up three feet from the strings by default. Our guide to [recording a harp at home](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-record-a-harp/) goes further into distance, room and what to record onto. ### In an ensemble: the top of the pillar, pointing down When a main stereo pair is already capturing the group, the harp gets a spot microphone to lift it out of the texture, and distance is no longer available — the further back it goes the more of the orchestra it collects. The starting position that works is level with the top of the pillar, the tall front post, angled down across the strings toward the soundboard. From up there the microphone is looking at the whole compass at an angle instead of at one region of the board head on, which is what keeps it out of the boom. The rule of thumb is that the more isolated the harp is, the less directional the microphone needs to be. A harp sitting alone at the back of a section can take a wide pattern and some distance. A harp wedged between the percussion and the second violins needs a tight cardioid close in, and you accept the tone you lose for the spill you keep out. If you can spare two channels, a useful pair is one microphone directly behind the instrument facing the soundboard from about a foot away, and a second at the same distance but level with the strings. Mix the upper one roughly twice as loud as the lower and you get the attack of the fingers with enough body underneath it to sound like a harp rather than a zither. ### On a stage: onto the instrument Distance is not available on a stage and neither is a quiet room, so the microphone goes onto the harp: a miniature capsule on a short flexible gooseneck, held on by a soft suction cup or a clip. Within an inch of the instrument the harp is so much louder than everything else that the monitor stops mattering, and there is no stand to be knocked over on a crowded stage. It moves when the harp moves and it stays where you set it between numbers. There are two places to put it. Around the back, the soundbox carries a row of oval holes — the ones you reach through to change strings — and a capsule set into the second one up from the bottom hears the body of the instrument working. On the front, the gooseneck can hold the capsule half an inch off the soundboard, level with the middle of the strings. The back is warmer and harder to make feed back; the front is more articulate and gets more of the fingers. Either way, height on the instrument is the control that matters. Too low and the bass strings dominate; too high and it thins out. The gooseneck exists so you can point the capsule in, angle it along the board, or pull it back into the air, each of which is a different amount of low end — so set it, play the full compass through the system, move it an inch, and do it again before you decide the microphone is the problem. If the bottom of the instrument is still overwhelming everything above it, plug one or two of the lowest sound holes with a piece of foam. It is a crude fix and it works, because what you are damping is a cabinet resonance rather than the strings themselves. ## Cardioid or omni A cardioid microphone hears mostly what is in front of it, and it gets bassier the closer it gets — the proximity effect, which is a feature on a voice and a problem on an instrument that already has too much low end when you crowd it. An omnidirectional capsule has no proximity effect at all and generally a flatter, more natural response, which is why it is the classical default and why the harp placement guidance published by microphone manufacturers is written around omni capsules. The catch is that an omni hears the room in every direction with no way to turn any of it down. It is a reward for a good room rather than a fix for a bad one, and on a stage it is close to unusable, because a pattern with no rear rejection and a monitor behind it is a feedback loop with a microphone in the middle. So the honest split is: omni when the harp is alone in a room worth hearing, cardioid everywhere else. Diaphragm size matters less than people expect on this instrument, but it is not nothing. A small-diaphragm pencil condenser holds its pattern consistently off-axis, which is what you want on something five feet tall being covered by one capsule at an angle. A large diaphragm is quieter and flatters the tone, and it narrows as the frequency rises, so the top of the harp goes dull if the strings are not more or less in front of it. ## What a harp does to a microphone Three things about the instrument decide all of that, and they are worth knowing rather than rediscovering one microphone position at a time. **The sound field runs vertically.** Long bass strings at one end of the soundboard, short trebles at the other, and almost nothing spread left to right. Pulling two microphones wide apart therefore captures the room rather than the instrument — a harp does not image in stereo the way a piano does. If you want two capsules to cover the instrument itself, stack them vertically rather than spreading them. **The soundboard is loud in patches.** It does not vibrate as one piece; it flexes in different patterns at different pitches, so a capsule a few inches away is hearing one region of an instrument that has several. That is the real reason close microphones sound wrong on a harp, and the reason a single close microphone always favors one part of the range over another. Angling in from the top of the pillar, or getting far enough back for the regions to combine, are the two ways out of it. **There is a cabinet resonance in the low mids.** A pedal harp has a strong fundamental and a lump somewhere around 180 Hz that a directional microphone close in will exaggerate until the instrument sounds like it is playing inside a wardrobe. Move the microphone before you reach for the EQ; a narrow cut there is the fix of last resort, not first. ## Feedback, and why a microphone is the harder path A harp is a large, light, hollow box built to resonate, sitting a few feet from a loudspeaker. That is the definition of a feedback problem, and it is why most working harpists gig with a pickup rather than a microphone — a transducer bolted to the soundboard is deaf to the room, and [amplifying a harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-amplify-a-harp/) that way is the easier evening. If it has to be a microphone, the order to fix it in is position, then phase, then EQ. Get the capsule onto the instrument rather than out in the air in front of it. Put the speaker several feet to the side and angled across the room rather than behind you into the back of the instrument, and get it up off the floor. Use the phase switch if there is one, which flips the signal against itself and kills a howl outright at no cost to the tone. Only then start pulling frequencies out, because every cut you make is sound you do not get back. ## The noises a microphone finds that you do not Pedals clunk, levers click, and a hand stopping a wire-wound bass string squeaks. The player stopped hearing all three years ago and a microphone has not. Where the microphone goes decides which of them you get. Up at the pillar it is level with the neck, so it hears every lever; down at the sound holes it is nearest the body and the pedal action at the base; six feet away it hears all of it more quietly but in the same proportion, which is why distance is not the cure people expect it to be. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Buzzes are the ones to deal with before the microphone goes up rather than after, because nothing removes them later. A string sitting badly in its slot, a lever not quite clearing, a loose bolt in the column — all of them survive everything you can do to a recording. If a buzz arrived with a recent string change, that is where to look first, and [changing harp strings](https://promusicvault.com/changing-harp-strings/) covers the seating. Tune before you record, too, not approximately: sympathetic strings make a harp far less forgiving of one flat note than an instrument with six strings, and there is [a proper way to tune a harp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/). ## What to put up № 1 · Before any microphone ### On-Stage MS7701B Euro Boom Stand - 32″–61.5″ height - 30″ boom arm - 23″ tripod base spread - 5/8″-27 thread - Folds flat - ~$32 Every position on this page needs the capsule at about the height of the player’s hands and several feet away from the strings, and that combination is what a desk tripod cannot do. Five feet of column with a thirty-inch boom on top reaches over the instrument without the legs ending up under the harp, and the wide base is what stops it going over when someone walks past it in a dark church. Nothing else here except the omni costs less, and none of the microphones changes the sound as much as putting one of them in the right place does. If you already own a microphone and your recordings sound boxy, this is almost certainly the purchase rather than a better capsule. **Pros**- Tall enough for a pedal harp at a proper distance - Boom reaches out over the instrument, legs stay clear - Wide base, which matters on a stage full of cables - Costs less than a set of harp strings **Cons**- Steel and heavy for its size - The clip supplied with your microphone may need an adapter - Not the stand for a heavy large-diaphragm microphone at full boom extension Around $32[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zwdOr9) № 2 · One microphone for all three positions ### Shure SM81-LC - Small-diaphragm cardioid condenser - 20 Hz – 20 kHz - Low-frequency switch: flat, 6 or 18 dB/octave - Lockable 0/10 dB attenuator - Swivel adapter, windscreen and case included - ~$440 Two things make this the harp microphone rather than merely a good one. Its cardioid pattern stays consistent off-axis, which matters when a single capsule is covering five feet of soundboard from an angle at the top of the pillar — a pattern that narrows with frequency puts the treble strings outside it. And the low-frequency switch gives you two rolloff slopes at the capsule, which is the correct place to deal with the cabinet resonance rather than three plug-ins later. It works at six feet in a room, at the pillar as a spot microphone, and behind the instrument as one half of a pair. The thing it cannot do is go inside a sound hole, so a harpist whose problem is a loud stage is buying the wrong microphone. The price is the honest objection: it is a professional microphone and it costs like one, and if you are recording at home the cheaper condensers in our [home recording guide](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-record-a-harp/) get you most of the way. **Pros**- Pattern holds its shape off-axis, so one capsule covers the whole compass - Rolloff switch tackles the harp’s low-mid lump before it is recorded - Quiet enough for soft playing at a distance - Works in every position here except inside the instrument **Cons**- Costs more than everything else on this page put together - Cardioid, so it still gains bass if you crowd the soundboard - One microphone, so stereo means buying two Around $440[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qjVlJW) № 3 · The cheap way to hear what an omni does ### Behringer ECM8000 - True omnidirectional electret condenser - 20 Hz – 20 kHz, within about 2 dB - Needs 15–48 V phantom power - Self-noise around 22 dBA - Clip and case included - ~$26 Omnidirectional capsules are the classical default on harp because they have no proximity effect at all — the whole business of the instrument getting boomy as the microphone approaches simply does not happen. This one is a measurement microphone, built flat for tuning rooms rather than for making records, and flat is exactly what a distant omni placement wants. What twenty-six dollars costs you is the noise floor. Around 22 dBA is fine on a full glissando and audible as a soft hiss under a quiet passage six feet away, which is the one thing a harp does more than most instruments. Treat it as the cheapest possible answer to “would an omni sound better in this room”, and a genuinely useful second microphone underneath a cardioid rather than the only one you own. **Pros**- No proximity effect, so distance is a free choice rather than a correction - Flat response with nothing added to the tone - Cheap enough to own alongside a directional microphone **Cons**- Audible self-noise under quiet playing - No rejection at all, so it is unusable near a monitor - Needs phantom power from an interface or recorder - Rewards a good room and punishes a bad one Around $26[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bS8STd) № 4 · When the stage is louder than the harp ### Myers Pickups The Feather — Concert Harp - Miniature omnidirectional capsule - Flexible micro-gooseneck - Active preamp built in, no phantom power - 1″ soft rubber suction mount and saddle clip - 1/4″ output with a volume knob - ~$225 This is what makes the stage position possible. The capsule is small enough to sit half an inch off the soundboard, the gooseneck bends it to point into a sound hole or up across the board, and the whole thing is held on by a one-inch soft rubber suction cup or a clip — nothing glued, nothing drilled, and nothing left behind when it comes off. The preamp is inside the unit, so it goes straight into an amp or a desk with no phantom power and no direct box. The capsule is omnidirectional, and that is the honest catch. At half an inch the harp is so much louder than the room that the pattern barely matters, but there is no rear rejection to fall back on, so it gives up before a soundboard transducer would if the monitors come up. Myers list a version per harp type rather than one model with adapters, so order the one named for your instrument. If what you want is the simplest possible amplified rig rather than a microphone, [a pickup and a small acoustic amp](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-amplify-a-harp/) is the easier evening and about the same money. **Pros**- Puts a real microphone where a harpist would normally have to accept a pickup - Suction cup and clip, so nothing is adhered to or drilled into the instrument - Preamp built in — no phantom power, no direct box, no second gadget - Repositioning it is a two-second job, so the tone is adjustable during a soundcheck **Cons**- Omnidirectional, so it feeds back earlier than a transducer does - Seven times the price of the stand and it only solves the one position - Close in, it hears every lever click and pedal change - Listed per harp type, so the version has to match the instrument Around $225[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xO1yk0) ## Common questions ### One microphone or two? One, unless you have a reason. A harp carries very little horizontal stereo information, so the second capsule mostly buys you the room rather than the instrument, and it brings a phase relationship to get wrong. Two earn their place in an ensemble, where a top-and-bottom pair covers a five-foot soundboard better than any single position does. ### Can I put a microphone right up against the soundboard? You can, and it gives you a thick, boomy sound with a hump in the bass and low mids. It is useful as one ingredient mixed quietly underneath a distant microphone, and poor on its own. If what you want from close placement is detail rather than weight, go to the top of the pillar and look down across the strings instead — that gets you the fingers without the box. ### Does it matter whether it is a lever harp or a pedal harp? For distance and for mechanism noise, yes. A pedal harp is taller, so it needs more air between it and the capsule, it has a stronger bass resonance, and its pedal action is much louder than a lever click. A lever harp is small enough that four or five feet is plenty and quiet enough that the mechanism is a minor problem. The rest of the differences are in [lever harp vs pedal harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). ### The venue says they will mic me. What should I ask for? Time, mostly. Ask to be set and checked before the room fills, because a harp behaves differently with sixty people absorbing the top end. Ask for the monitor to your side rather than in front of you, and ask for it low. If they arrive with a vocal microphone on a short stand pointed at your soundboard from two feet, ask instead for a capsule on the instrument, or for the stand to go back and up. ### Is a microphone better than a pickup? It sounds better and behaves worse. A microphone hears air moving, which is what a harp actually sounds like; a soundboard transducer hears wood moving, which is drier and more direct. In a quiet room the microphone wins easily. In a loud one the pickup wins, because it cannot feed back and it does not care about the conversation at the bar. ## So what actually goes up If the harp is alone in a decent room, one capsule at hand height, six feet back, on a stand tall enough to put it there. If it is one instrument among many, a cardioid at the top of the pillar angled down across the strings, as close as isolation demands and no closer. If it is a stage with a monitor on it, a miniature capsule on the instrument itself — second sound hole from the bottom for warmth, half an inch off the soundboard for articulation — and foam in the lowest holes if the bass runs away. Get the position right with whatever you already own before you buy anything. A borrowed microphone in the correct place beats a good one in the wrong one, on this instrument more than on most, and the whole of the rest of it is a stand and about twenty minutes of moving things an inch at a time. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How to Amplify a Harp: Buy the Pickup First, the Amp Second](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-amplify-a-harp/) **Published:** March 3, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How to Amplify a Harp: Buy the Pickup First, the Amp Second The pickup decides what you sound like. The amp only decides how far it carries. It is easy to buy them in the wrong order — a few hundred on the amplifier, and whatever is cheapest to stick on the harp. A good pickup through a modest amp still sounds like a harp. A bad pickup through an expensive one sounds like a bad pickup, reproduced faithfully. The whole rig comes to somewhere between $400 and $700, and about a quarter of that is the part that matters most. The pickup to fit### Fishman SBT-HP Soundboard Transducer Made for harp and piano rather than adapted from a guitar part, passive so there is no battery to die mid-ceremony, and it mounts with an adhesive pad instead of a drill. Plugged into any acoustic amp it needs nothing else — no preamp, no phantom power, no direct box. At a fifth of what a purpose-built multi-element harp pickup costs, it is the sensible first pickup for anyone who is not gigging every week. Around $120 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Hxqkxx) **Amp for most harpists:** Fishman Loudbox Micro — around $290 **If you play where there is no power:** Loudbox Mini Charge — around $550 **Nothing glued to the harp:** Myers Pickups The Feather — around $225 ## The kit at a glance GearWhat it isPrice bandWhy it is here[Fishman SBT-HP](https://amzn.to/3Hxqkxx)Passive soundboard transducer, adhesive mount, 1/4″ jack~$120The pickup to start with[Myers Pickups The Feather](https://amzn.to/4geqNEW)Gooseneck condenser mic, active preamp built in, clamps on~$225Nothing adhered to the soundboard[Fishman Loudbox Micro](https://amzn.to/4g35szx)40 W, 9.1 lb, instrument + mic channels, XLR out~$290Light enough to carry with a harp[Fishman Loudbox Mini](https://amzn.to/3Jjo0ve)60 W, 21 lb, PRO-LBT-500, Bluetooth~$440Headroom for bigger rooms[Fishman Loudbox Mini Charge](https://amzn.to/4hFBm6q)60 W, 21.8 lb, PRO-LBC-500, rechargeable~$550Gigs with no mains socket[Behringer Ultra-DI DI400P](https://amzn.to/4xJLMGP)Passive direct box, 1/4″ in, balanced XLR out~$30Plugging into a venue’s own system ## Pickup or microphone A pickup is bolted to the instrument, so it hears the harp and almost nothing else. It ignores the room, the chatter, the band and the loudspeaker pointed at you, which is why it is what most working harpists end up using. The cost is realism: a transducer hears wood moving, not air, and the result is a little drier and more direct than the instrument sounds from the bench. A microphone hears the actual sound, and it is unquestionably the better tone. It also hears everything else, and a harp is a large hollow resonator sitting a few feet from a speaker, which makes feedback a live problem rather than a theoretical one. Unless there is a sound engineer in the room, a microphone is the harder path — and if what you want is a recording rather than a gig, the distance rules that make a harp sound right on a microphone are a [different job entirely](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-record-a-harp/), as is [micing one properly](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-mic-a-harp/). ## The two worth fitting № 1 · The one to start with ### Fishman SBT-HP Soundboard Transducer - Passive piezo, no battery - Adhesive pad mount, removable - Voiced for harp and piano - 42″ lead, 1/4″ jack - ~$120 Fishman make a soundboard transducer for several instruments and this is the harp and piano version, which matters because the two share a problem — a large flat radiating board rather than a small resonant body. It sticks to the underside of the soundboard, runs its lead out through the back, and that is the installation. Nothing is drilled and nothing is permanent. Fishman recommend pairing it with an impedance-matching preamp, and their own preamps run from about $200 to $360, which is more than the pickup and more than some of the amps below. You almost certainly do not need one. That advice exists for people plugging a passive piezo into a mixer or a guitar amp, where the input is the wrong impedance and the tone comes out thin and quacky. Every acoustic amp on this page has a high-impedance instrument input designed for exactly this pickup — the preamp is already inside the amp. Buy the preamp only if you are going straight into a PA desk and hate how it sounds. What you are accepting for the money is that one sensor cannot hear a five-foot soundboard evenly, which is the honest limitation of every single-element transducer and the reason placement below is not optional. **Pros**- Built for a harp soundboard rather than adapted from a guitar part - No battery, so nothing to fail during a set - Comes off again without a trace - Immune to room noise and to a speaker pointed at you **Cons**- One sensor covers the whole compass, so the balance depends entirely on where you put it - Drier and more direct than the harp sounds acoustically - Picks up lever clicks and pedal mechanism along with the strings Around $120 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Hxqkxx) № 2 · If nothing may touch the finish ### Myers Pickups The Feather — Concert Harp - Condenser mic on a flexible gooseneck - Active preamp built in - No phantom power needed - Clamps on, no adhesive, no drilling - ~$225 This is a microphone rather than a transducer, hung on a bendable gooseneck that positions the capsule wherever you want it over the strings or the soundboard. All the mounting hardware is included and none of it is permanent, so on a harp you would rather not glue anything to — a fine instrument, a rented one, or one you intend to sell — it solves the problem the Fishman creates. Being a microphone, it is the better sound and the worse behaved. The capsule is omnidirectional, so there is no rear rejection to fall back on: it will feed back sooner than a soundboard transducer will, and it hears the room, so it wants a stage rather than a noisy drinks reception. The preamp is inside the unit, so it goes straight into an amp with no extra box. Myers list it under a separate heading for each kind of harp — concert, lever, pedal — all at the same price, so order the one named for your instrument. What arrives is a saddle clip and a one-inch soft rubber suction cup, and it comes off again leaving nothing behind. **Pros**- Nothing adhered to or drilled into the harp - More natural tone than any soundboard transducer - Reposition it in seconds to change the sound - Preamp built in, so it needs nothing else **Cons**- Feeds back at lower volumes than a transducer does - Hears the room as well as the harp - Nearly twice the price of the Fishman - A gooseneck near the strings is one more thing to knock Around $225 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4geqNEW) The multi-element pickups built specifically for harps — three or four sensors spaced up the soundboard to even out the response — are the step up from both of these, and they cost three to four times the Fishman. If you are playing for money most weeks, that is where you will end up. For everyone else the difference does not justify the gap. ## Where the pickup goes on the soundboard A soundboard transducer hears the piece of wood it is stuck to, and a harp soundboard does not vibrate as one thing. It flexes in different patterns at different pitches, so the board has loud regions and quiet regions that move as you go up the range. Put the sensor in the wrong place and the amplified harp has a hole in the middle of its compass, or a bass end that thuds while the top disappears. Start at about a third of the way up the soundboard, on the center strip, slightly to one side of the string line. If the bass is heavy, move up. If the top is thin, move down. There is a genuine disagreement among harp makers about how many sensors you want — some space three or four elements up the board to average the problem out, and at least one argues the opposite, that a single sensor placed correctly gives a more even result because multiple elements overbalance the mid and high range. With one transducer you are in the second camp whether you meant to be or not, so placement is the whole job. ### Putty first, adhesive last Mount it temporarily with poster putty, or a loop of low-tack tape if you are nervous about the finish, and play the full range of the instrument through the amp. Move it an inch, play again. It takes twenty minutes and it is the difference between a harp that sounds like itself and one that sounds like a cardboard box. Only once you have found the spot should you clean the wood with an alcohol wipe and commit to the adhesive pad. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Do not drill your harp for a jack socket. A harp [holds its value](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) in a way that few instruments do, and a hole in the body is permanent in a way that a pickup is not. The lead can run out through the sound holes in the back, and the jack can sit in a clamp or simply be taped to the soundbox for the evening. ## The amp Look for an amp built for acoustic instruments rather than for electric guitar. A guitar amp is voiced to add character and to distort pleasantly, which is the opposite of what a harp needs; an acoustic amp is built to stay flat and clean. Three things matter beyond that — what it weighs, whether it runs off a battery, and whether it has a phase switch, which flips the signal against itself and will kill a feedback howl outright without costing you any tone. № 1 · Right for most harpists ### Fishman Loudbox Micro (PRO-LBT-400) - 40 W bi-amplified - 9.1 lb - Instrument + mic channels - Phase switch, reverb, chorus - Balanced XLR output - ~$290 Nine pounds is the argument. You are already carrying a harp, a stool, a stand and a bag of strings, and the difference between this and the Mini is twelve pounds on every trip from the car — which on a wet Saturday matters more than twenty watts ever will. It has the same phase switch, the same high-impedance instrument input and the same balanced XLR output as its bigger siblings, plus a second channel if you sing. Forty watts is genuinely enough for a solo harp in a restaurant, a small ceremony, a care home or a studio corner. It runs on mains only, so it is the wrong choice if your gigs happen in fields. **Pros**- Less than half the weight of the alternatives - Phase switch and XLR out, same as the dearer models - Cheapest way into a proper acoustic amp - Second channel for a voice or a second instrument **Cons**- Mains only - Runs out of headroom in a marquee or against other instruments - Smaller driver, so less weight at the bottom of the harp’s range Around $290 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g35szx) № 2 · When the room is bigger ### Fishman Loudbox Mini (PRO-LBT-500) - 60 W bi-amplified - 21 lb - 6.5″ woofer, 1″ tweeter - Phase switch, 3-band EQ, reverb, chorus - Bluetooth 5.1, balanced XLR output - ~$440 The extra twenty watts and the bigger woofer buy headroom rather than volume, which on a harp is the right thing to buy — the peak of a two-handed glissando is many times the level of everything around it, and an amp running near its limit turns that peak into a crunch. This is the one to have if you play marquees, halls, or alongside a flute or a singer. Bluetooth means backing tracks without another box. The weight is the price: at 21 lb it is a second trip to the car, and it is worth being honest with yourself about how often you actually need the extra power before paying for it in pounds as well as pounds sterling. **Pros**- Real headroom for glissandi and full rooms - Bigger driver handles the bass strings properly - Bluetooth for backing tracks - Three-band EQ on the instrument channel **Cons**- 21 lb, and awkward rather than heavy - Half as much again as the Micro - Mains only — the battery version is separate and dearer Around $440 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Jjo0ve) № 3 · For gigs with no socket ### Fishman Loudbox Mini Charge (PRO-LBC-500) - 60 W, rechargeable - 21.8 lb - 4 hrs at full volume, 12 at average, 18 at low - Phase switch, reverb, chorus, Bluetooth - ~$550 Mechanically the Mini with a sealed lead-acid battery inside it, and the letter in the model number is the whole difference — LBC rather than LBT. Harpists need this more than most musicians do, because the work turns up in gardens, on lawns, in cloisters and at outdoor ceremonies where the nearest socket is a hundred yards of extension lead away. Twelve hours at a sensible volume covers a whole wedding with the ceremony, the drinks and the breakfast in it. If all your playing happens indoors near a wall socket, this is the thick end of a hundred dollars and an extra pound of weight for nothing. **Pros**- Plays a full day’s work away from mains - Same 60 W and same controls as the Mini - Removes the extension lead and the trip hazard **Cons**- The dearest thing on this page by a distance - Lead-acid cell, so it wants charging before it is stored - Ten hours to charge from flat - Pointless if you always play indoors Around $550 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hFBm6q) ## How much power you actually need Less than you would think, but with more headroom than you would think. A harp is not loud, so raw volume is rarely the constraint. What it has is enormous dynamic range, and the wattage is there to stay clean on the peaks rather than to fill the room. Forty watts covers a solo harp in a restaurant, a small ceremony or a care home. Sixty covers a marquee, a garden, a hall with a hundred people in it, or a harp that has to hold its own next to a flute or a voice. Past that you are no longer buying an amp, you are buying a small PA, and the money is better spent on the pickup. ## Feedback, and why the amp goes to the side A harp is a large, light, hollow box built to resonate, which is exactly what you do not want in front of a loudspeaker. The soundboard picks up the amplified sound, passes it back through the pickup, and the rig starts to howl on one note — usually low, usually the note you least want to lose. Three things fix most of it, in this order. Put the amp several feet to your side rather than behind you, angled across the room instead of into the back of the harp. Get it up off the floor onto a chair, a case or a stand, because floor coupling is where the boom comes from and height lets the sound travel over the audience instead of into the first row. Then use the phase switch. Only after all three should you start pulling frequencies out with the EQ — cutting is what people reach for first, and it is the one that costs you sound. One more habit worth having: turn the amp down before you plug or unplug anything. A quarter-inch jack going into a live input produces a bang that is capable of damaging the speaker. ## When the venue already has a system Churches, hotels and function rooms often have a system and someone running it, and then an amp is dead weight. What the engineer needs is a balanced signal on an XLR, which a pickup on a quarter-inch jack cannot deliver down a long cable without collecting hum along the way. If you own any of the amps above you already have the answer — the balanced XLR output on the back sends your sound, EQ and all, to the desk, and the amp doubles as your own monitor. If you are traveling light with just a pickup, a passive direct box does the same conversion for about thirty dollars and weighs nothing. The [Behringer Ultra-DI DI400P](https://amzn.to/4xJLMGP) is the one to keep in the case and forget about; it needs no power and there is nothing to set. ## When not to bother A pedal harp in a stone church, or a good [lever harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) in a room of forty people who are listening, needs nothing at all. Harpists play a great many weddings unamplified and are heard perfectly well. Amplification earns its place when the room is fighting you rather than when it is merely large — an outdoor ceremony with wind and traffic, a reception where a hundred people are talking, a marquee whose canvas roof swallows everything, or any situation where you are playing next to instruments that are simply louder than you are. The other reason is control. Once you are amplified you can play quietly and still be heard, which is a better way to work a room for two hours than pushing the instrument hard the whole time. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Published:** October 21, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Saxophone](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/saxophone/ "Saxophone")› How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More A saxophone has more than six hundred parts and about two dozen leather pads, and every one of those pads has to seal against its tone hole or the notes underneath it stop working. That is the fact the price of a saxophone is really about. The brass is cheap. Making two dozen pads sit flat, and keeping them flat, is not. So there are two numbers, and most people only ask about the first one. There is what the instrument costs, and there is what it costs to keep it playing — and on a saxophone the second number can be larger than the first. The short answer### Around $650–900 buys a new student saxophone worth repairing. Under about $300 buys one that is not An alto — the size school bands start on — runs about $675 new from a maker that publishes a warranty and sells spare parts. A tenor is roughly $900. The cheap end of the market starts at about $200, and a full repad costs more than a thousand, which is the whole problem: the first serious repair on a $200 saxophone costs five times what the saxophone did. **Student alto:** ~$675 **Student tenor:** ~$900 **Rental:** ~$25–55/month **Full repad:** from ~$1,050 ## Table of Contents - [Saxophone prices by size and level](#saxophone-prices-by-size-and-level) - [What the extra money actually buys](#what-the-extra-money-actually-buys) - [Why a $200 saxophone is the expensive option](#why-a-200-saxophone-is-the-expensive-option) - [What a first saxophone actually costs](#what-a-first-saxophone-actually-costs) - [The running costs nobody quotes](#the-running-costs-nobody-quotes) - [How much does it cost to rent a saxophone?](#how-much-does-it-cost-to-rent-a-saxophone) - [How much does a used saxophone cost?](#how-much-does-a-used-saxophone-cost) - [Why are saxophones so expensive?](#why-are-saxophones-so-expensive) - [So what should you spend?](#so-what-should-you-spend) ## Saxophone prices by size and level Most makers of serious saxophones — Yamaha, Conn-Selmer, Jupiter — sell through dealers and publish no prices at all, which makes a straight comparison hard to come by. Jean Paul is the exception: they list every model on their own site, from student to professional, in all four common sizes. One maker, one price list, so the steps between the tiers mean something. SizeStudentIntermediateProfessional**Alto** (E♭)~$675~$1,080~$1,800**Tenor** (B♭)~$900~$1,500~$2,070**Soprano** (B♭)~$650 (curved)—~$1,620**Baritone** (E♭)none made~$3,150— Two things in that table are worth more than the numbers themselves. The first is that **there is no student baritone**. The cheapest bari from a maker with a proper range is an intermediate instrument at around $3,150, and that is not an accident of marketing. Henri Selmer Paris describe their own process: alto and tenor bells are pressed as two halves and argon welded together, but “for the larger sizes like the baritone, the bell is hand-shaped using only one piece, then welded.” More metal, more hand work, no shortcut. Baritone is a school-owned instrument almost everywhere for exactly this reason. The second is that **the size moves the price more than the level does**. A student tenor costs more than an intermediate alto. If budget is the constraint and the size is genuinely open, alto is the cheap answer twice over — cheaper to buy, and cheaper to feed, because tenor reeds cost roughly double alto reeds for the rest of the instrument’s life. Above all of this sits the professional market proper. Selmer Paris, whose horns are the reference point most players measure others against, list their entry professional Axos alto at about €3,075 and their top Supreme tenor at over €9,000. That is the ceiling worth knowing about, and it is nowhere near a first instrument. ## What the extra money actually buys Here is where a cost page normally waves at “better materials”. Yamaha publishes full specifications for their student and intermediate altos, and the two spec sheets disagree in five rows out of twenty. SpecificationYAS-26 (student)YAS-480 (intermediate)Body, bell, key materialYellow brassYellow brassTone holesDrawnDrawnPadsLeather and wool feltLeather and wool feltSpringsStainless steelStainless steelMouthpiece suppliedYamaha 4CYamaha AS-4C**Neck**StandardAnnealed, YAS-62 design**High F# key**No — front F onlyYes**Bell decoration**StampedHand engraved**Pivot screws**HeadlessWith head, adjustable**Finish**Nickel-plated keysFull gold lacquer The brass is the same. The tone holes are drawn the same way. The pads and springs are the same. Yamaha fits the **same 4C mouthpiece to their student alto, their intermediate alto and their professional YAS-62III** — a $40 part on a $2,900 instrument. What the step up buys is a redesigned neck, one extra key, engraving done by a person rather than a press, and screws that a technician can adjust. That last one matters more than it reads: the professional models go further again, adding separate key guards with screw-cap stoppers and an F key adjustable to the player’s hand. The money buys **adjustability** — the ability to have the instrument set up to you, and set up again after it moves. It does not buy different metal. Which is why the honest advice for a first saxophone is to buy at the bottom of the supported market and spend nothing else on the instrument until you know you are staying. ## Why a $200 saxophone is the expensive option Saxophones under about $250 exist, they arrive in a case with reeds and a strap, and they will make a saxophone noise. The problem is not the first week. It is what happens when a pad goes. Repair shops that publish their rates are consistent about the numbers. Labor runs about $85–100 an hour with a minimum charge around $50. Individual pads are roughly $15–25 each, parts and labor together. Getting a neglected instrument back into playing condition is commonly quoted from about $250. A clean, oil and adjust — keys off, body washed, pads cleaned, everything re-oiled and reseated — runs somewhere between $250 and $650. And a **full repad starts at around $1,050**, with a proper overhaul from about $1,550. Put those next to the price list above. A full repad on a saxophone costs more than a new student alto and roughly what a new student tenor costs. That single comparison decides most of the questions people actually have: - **A $200 saxophone is worth nothing the day it needs real work**, because nobody sensibly spends $1,050 on it. It is a consumable, priced like an instrument. - **A $675 saxophone is worth a $250 setup** and, eventually, worth a repad. That is the line, and it is a long way below the price of a good instrument. - **A cheap used saxophone is priced by what it needs**, not by what it is. More on that below. The same logic runs through [the budget end of the brass market](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/), but it bites harder on a saxophone, because a trumpet has three moving parts and a saxophone has two dozen sealed ones. ## What a first saxophone actually costs The two instruments below are the cheapest saxophones from a maker that publishes a dated warranty, sells individual replacement parts — springs, pads, pearls, key guards, a whole neck — and has named service centers. That combination is what makes an instrument worth repairing later, and almost nothing under $500 has it. The standard first saxophone ### Jean Paul AS-400 Student Alto Saxophone - E♭ alto, yellow brass, gold lacquer - High F# key - Play-tested and set up before shipping - Mouthpiece, ligature, reed, strap, case included - Individual spare parts available from the maker - ~$675 This is the price a real beginner saxophone costs, and it is the number to argue with everything else against. It arrives already set up, which on a saxophone is not a courtesy — an instrument that has never had its pads seated will have dead notes in the low register and the player will assume it is their fault. It is a student horn and it plays like one. The intonation needs managing at the extremes, and a player who is still going in three years will want an intermediate neck and a High F# they can rely on. That is the normal arc of a first saxophone, and it ends with an instrument still worth selling. **Pros**- Cheapest alto here with parts, a warranty and a repair route behind it - Set up before it ships, so it plays out of the case - High F# key, which Yamaha’s student alto does not have - Case and mouthpiece are both usable rather than placeholders **Cons**- Roughly three times the price of the cheapest saxophones sold - Outgrown within a few years by anyone who keeps at it - Warranty runs to the original buyer with proof of purchase Around $675[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qJtkvQ) If it has to be a tenor ### Jean Paul TS-400 Student Tenor Saxophone - B♭ tenor, yellow brass, gold lacquer - High F# key - Play-tested and set up before shipping - Mouthpiece, ligature, reed, strap, case included - Individual spare parts available from the maker - ~$900 The same instrument one size up, and about $225 more. That gap is the honest cost of choosing tenor, and it does not stop at the purchase: tenor reeds run roughly double alto reeds, the case is heavier to carry to school, and the neck strap becomes something you notice. Tenor is worth it when the player wants it specifically — it is the jazz sound most people are actually picturing — and a poor answer when it is chosen because it looks more impressive. A child who is not yet big enough to hold one comfortably will play less, which costs more than the $225 does. **Pros**- Same warranty, parts and setup as the alto, one size up - The sound most beginners have in mind - Easier to pitch at the very bottom of the range than an alto **Cons**- Costs more to buy and more to feed than the alto - Heavy enough to be a real consideration for a younger player - Harder to place in a school ensemble, which mostly wants altos [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $900[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ix5PDS) ## The running costs nobody quotes Reeds are the recurring one. A reed lasts a few weeks of regular playing and then goes soft and stops speaking cleanly, and beginners get through them faster because a new player chips them. A box of ten at around $29 is roughly a term. Call it $60–90 a year on alto, double that on tenor. Everything else is a one-off, and the total is smaller than people fear: a swab and care kit at around $25, and a decent mouthpiece if the supplied one is poor. On a saxophone from a real maker, it will not be. ItemCostHow oftenReeds (box of 10)~$29 alto, ~$30–60 tenorEvery term or soCare kit and swab~$25Once, then odd replacementsMouthpiece, if needed~$40OnceNeck cork replacement~$30Every few yearsSetup / play condition~$100–300On a used instrument, or after neglectClean, oil and adjust~$250–650Every few years of hard use Reeds ### Vandoren JUNO Alto Saxophone Reeds, 2½, Box of 10 - Model JSR6125 — strength 2½, box of ten - Also made in 1½, 2 and 3 - Each reed individually sealed - ~$29 Vandoren says they made the JUNO “specially designed for those musicians starting to play the clarinet or saxophone”, cut in their own factory in France from the same cane as the rest of their line. It is the beginner reed from the maker most professionals use, which is a rarer combination than it sounds. Strength 2½ is the usual starting point on alto. A player who cannot get a note out at all is better served by a 2, and a player whose sound is thin and squeaky after a few months is ready for a 3. Buy one box and one strength; buying a variety pack before you have an embouchure tells you nothing. Around $29[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qEkyz3) Mouthpiece ### Yamaha 4C Alto Saxophone Mouthpiece - Phenol resin, standard series - Fits any standard alto saxophone - The mouthpiece Yamaha supplies with the YAS-26, YAS-480 and YAS-62III - ~$40 This is the single cheapest way to fix a saxophone that will not speak. Budget instruments are frequently let down by the mouthpiece in the box rather than by the horn, and the 4C is the piece Yamaha themselves fit to everything from their student alto to their professional one. It is also the reason to ignore mouthpiece upgrades for the first couple of years. A player who has not yet built an embouchure will not hear what a $220 jazz piece does, and the harder facings that come with those pieces make the early months worse rather than better. Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i2jSRX) Care ### Yamaha Alto/Tenor Saxophone Maintenance Kit - Body swab, mouthpiece brush, polishing cloth and key oil - Fits any alto or tenor saxophone - ~$25 Twenty-five dollars, and it is the item on this page with the best return. Pads are leather. Left wet after every session, they harden, curl and stop sealing, and the repair that follows is the thousand-dollar one. Swabbing the body out takes about fifteen seconds. Nothing here is exotic and any equivalent set does the same job. The point is having one in the case rather than meaning to buy one. Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hWAnPp) ## How much does it cost to rent a saxophone? Rental programs advertise alto saxophones at roughly **$25 to $55 a month** and tenors a few dollars higher, with the spread depending on whether the instrument is new or a returned one. Paying a year up front is usually cheaper — one program charges $25 monthly or $190 for the year, which works out at under $16 a month. A maintenance or repair plan is almost always extra, at around $5 to $7 a month. At $40 a month, a year of renting an alto is about $480 and two years is close to $1,000. Set against roughly $675 to buy one outright, plain rental loses badly over any real length of time. But most programs are not plain rental, and this is the part that decides it: - **Ask what proportion of the rent applies to a purchase, and for how long.** Some apply 100% of everything paid in the first twelve months and nothing after that. Others apply it over twenty-four or thirty-six months. The difference between those two terms is several hundred dollars. - **Ask whether the credit is against the instrument you are renting or against retail price on a new one.** These are not the same offer. - **Take the repair plan.** On a saxophone it covers precisely the failure that is otherwise unaffordable, and at $5–7 a month it is the cheapest insurance available on a saxophone. Renting is the right answer for a beginner under about twelve, for a player who has not chosen the instrument yet, and for anyone whose school specifies what it wants. It stops being the right answer at roughly the point the accumulated rent passes what a supported student instrument costs, unless the credit is still converting. Our [guide to school band and orchestra](https://promusicvault.com/orchestra-vs-band/) covers the rest of what a first year costs. ## How much does a used saxophone cost? Used student saxophones from the recognized makers turn up constantly, and they are frequently the best value on this page — but the price you see is not the price you pay. A used saxophone costs its asking price plus whatever it needs, and what it needs is invisible in a photograph. Work the arithmetic in this order: - **Assume a setup.** Anything that has sat in a loft needs one, at roughly $100–300. Budget it as part of the price rather than as a surprise. - **Find out when it was last repadded.** Pads fail on condition rather than on a schedule — a few years under daily use, fifteen or twenty on a lightly played horn that was dried out after every session. An instrument still on its original pads after two decades is a repad waiting to happen, and that is $1,050 upward. - **Check for leaks yourself.** The test the factory uses is a light: Selmer’s final quality check shines a lamp down the bore and looks for light escaping between a pad and its tone hole. You can do a rough version with a phone flashlight in a dark room. Light at the edge of a closed pad is a pad that is not sealing. - **Then compare against new.** A $350 used student alto needing a $250 setup is $600, which is close enough to a new one that the warranty and the known history decide it. Where used genuinely wins is a step up. An intermediate or professional horn that has been looked after holds its value and does not become disposable, which is why second-hand professional saxophones from the 1960s and 70s still change hands for thousands. Nothing in the budget tier behaves that way. ## Why are saxophones so expensive? Because of the part count and the fact that most of the work at the end cannot be automated away. Henri Selmer Paris publish an account of how theirs are built, and the numbers are the argument on their own: a saxophone is “made up of more than 600 parts”, and “its production requires more than 2,000 operations.” The body starts as a brass sheet six or seven tenths of a millimeter thick, cut as a trapezoid, rolled, welded and drawn out over a conical chuck. The tone holes are not soldered on — they are drawn out of the body itself from oblong holes cut into it. The bow is pressed as two half-shells, brazed together and then sized by injecting liquid into it under pressure inside a mold. The bell halves are argon welded, a method chosen because it keeps the metal uniform, and a brass wire is set into the bell’s edge to let it vibrate. Then the part that costs: the keywork goes on, and **each key is individually adjusted and checked for leakage**, one at a time, with a light shone down the bore. Bell engraving is cut by hand with a tool half a millimeter wide. Every finished instrument is played and tested in a soundproofed booth. Stamping a key out of brass gets cheaper the more you make. A person seating two dozen pads and looking for light does not. That is why a saxophone costs what it does at the factory, and it is the same reason the repair bill later is what it is — a repad is that final stage of manufacture, done again, one pad at a time, at $85 to $100 an hour. It also explains the shape of the market. The saxophones that cost $200 have skipped that stage, not found a cheaper way through it. ## So what should you spend? - **A child starting in school band:** rent, take the repair plan, and ask about the purchase credit before signing. Roughly $30–60 a month all in. - **An adult beginner who knows they will stick at it:** buy a supported student alto at around $675, add reeds and a care kit, and stop. About $730 gets you playing with nothing else to buy for a year. - **A player two or three years in:** an intermediate horn at $1,000–1,500 buys a better neck, a reliable High F# and screws a technician can work with. It is the step that lasts longest. - **Anyone considering a saxophone under $300:** rent instead. The rental will be a better instrument and somebody else carries the repair. If you are still choosing between instruments entirely, our comparison of [the trumpet and the saxophone](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-vs-saxophone/) covers which is actually easier to start on, and [the woodwind family guide](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) puts the saxophone in context alongside the clarinet and flute. For the reed question in more depth, we cover [choosing a beginner reed strength](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) and [what filed and unfiled actually mean](https://promusicvault.com/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/). Prices for the neighboring instruments are in our guides to [clarinet costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) and [flute costs](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/). **Categories:** Saxophone --- ### [How Much Does a Mandolin Weigh? Two and a Half Pounds, and the Case Is Heavier](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-mandolin-weigh/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/mandolin/ "Mandolin")› How Much Does a Mandolin Weigh? Two and a Half Pounds, and the Case Is Heavier A full-size acoustic mandolin weighs about two and a half pounds. Every maker’s published figure sits between 1.8 and 2.8 lb, and most land within a few ounces of 2.3 — roughly half the weight of a dreadnought guitar, and a quarter of a bluegrass banjo. Figures of three, four and five pounds get quoted a great deal, and those are shipping weights: the instrument plus a bag, a box and some cardboard. ## Table of Contents - [What a mandolin weighs, model by model](#what-a-mandolin-weighs-model-by-model) - [Why the figure you found was too high](#why-the-figure-you-found-was-too-high) - [The shape does not decide the weight](#the-shape-does-not-decide-the-weight) - [Does a heavier mandolin sound better?](#does-a-heavier-mandolin-sound-better) - [What you actually carry: add the case](#what-you-actually-carry-add-the-case) - [If weight is the reason you are asking](#if-weight-is-the-reason-you-are-asking) - [The rest of the family is where the weight is](#the-rest-of-the-family-is-where-the-weight-is) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [How much does a mandolin weigh in kg?](#how-much-does-a-mandolin-weigh-in-kg) - [Is a mandolin heavier than a ukulele?](#is-a-mandolin-heavier-than-a-ukulele) - [Why is my mandolin heavier than that?](#why-is-my-mandolin-heavier-than-that) - [Do players remove weight from a mandolin?](#do-players-remove-weight-from-a-mandolin) The short answer### About 2½ pounds, for a $200 beginner instrument and a $5,000 one alike. The case decides what you actually carry, and it can weigh twice as much as the mandolin in it. A wooden hard case is four and a half to five pounds, so a mandolin in one is a seven-pound object. The same mandolin in a padded backpack bag is under three and a half, which is the difference between an instrument that travels and one that stays on its stand. Around $45 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qnMFCj) **Comparing an A-style to an F-style on weight:** don’t — the shape is worth ounces, and not always in the direction you would guess **Buying for a child:** two and a half pounds is not the constraint; the scale length is **Worried a light mandolin is a cheap one:** it is the other way round — carving a top well removes wood **Still choosing a shape:** [A-style vs F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) covers what the scroll actually costs ## What a mandolin weighs, model by model Every figure here is the maker’s own published weight for the instrument itself. Gold Tone puts a weight row on every spec sheet, which is why so much of the table is theirs — most makers do not. Eastman, Kentucky, The Loar and Collings all publish full specifications for their mandolins, down to the fret wire and the nut width, and none of them lists a weight. MandolinBodyWeightGold Tone GM-10 FrypanFlat body, round hole1.8 lbGold Tone GM-70+F-style, carved2.1 lbGold Tone GM-80F-style, carved2.1 lbNorthfield F5F-style, carved2.2 lbGold Tone GM-50+A-style, carved2.4 lbGold Tone GM-55A-style, carved2.4 lbGold Tone GM-35F-style, carved2.8 lb That is the whole range: a pound of spread across everything from a budget instrument to a professional one. Nothing built as a standard mandolin comes in under a pound and a half or over three pounds. Which is worth sitting with for a moment, because it means weight is not a specification you can shop on. Two mandolins four ounces apart feel identical in the hands. The differences that matter — the top, the graduation, the scale, the setup — do not show up in this column at all, and [what a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) tracks them far more closely. ## Why the figure you found was too high A weight quoted alongside a price is nearly always a shipping weight. It is measured for the courier rather than the player, and it counts whatever else is in the carton — which for a beginner mandolin is usually a gig bag, a tuner, a spare set of strings and a handful of picks. That is where three, four and five-pound mandolins come from. A carton holding a two-and-a-quarter-pound instrument, a pound-and-a-half padded bag and the box itself lands near five pounds, and five pounds is then copied onward as the weight of the mandolin. Sometimes the figure is not a measurement at all: couriers bill on dimensional weight, so a long thin box can be assigned a weight worked out from its size. The tell is a bundle. If the instrument comes with accessories and the quoted weight is over three pounds, the accessories are in the number. ## The shape does not decide the weight An F-style has a carved scroll at the upper bout and two points, all of it solid wood, so the reasonable expectation is that it weighs more than the plain teardrop of an A-style. The published figures say otherwise. Within one maker’s own catalogue, built in one factory to one set of drawings, the F-styles come in at 2.1, 2.1 and 2.8 lb and the A-styles at 2.4 and 2.4. The heaviest instrument is an F and so are the two lightest. The spread among the F-styles alone is seven ounces, which is larger than any gap between the shapes. The scroll is worth an ounce or two. How thin the top has been carved, how much wood is left in the neck and the blocks, and whether the tailpiece is stamped or cast are each worth more than that, and they vary model by model rather than shape by shape. So if you are choosing between the two outlines, weight is not one of the reasons — the price is, and the way an F-style sits against your ribs is. Both are in [the A-style versus F-style comparison](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). ## Does a heavier mandolin sound better? No, and on the part that produces the sound the relationship runs the other way. A carved-top mandolin has its top graduated — thinned by hand to different thicknesses across its area, thicker under the bridge and thinner toward the edges. That is the most skilled operation in building one, it is most of what separates a $400 instrument from a $4,000 one, and doing it well removes wood. A top that has been graduated properly is lighter than one pressed to a uniform thickness, and it moves more freely under the strings, which is the entire point. The figures bear it out. The most expensive instrument above weighs 2.2 lb, six ounces less than one of the cheapest, and the very lightest is an all-solid flat-body at 1.8. Heft in the hand tells you a mandolin has wood in it somewhere. It does not tell you the wood is anywhere useful. Nor is a heavier neck a better one. A wide, deep neck profile suits some hands and not others, and it adds a couple of ounces at the end of a lever, which makes the instrument feel neck-heavy rather than better-sounding. Fitting the neck to your hand is a real consideration; [learning the instrument](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/) is hard enough without fighting the one you bought. ## What you actually carry: add the case Anyone asking this question because the mandolin has to go somewhere is asking about the smaller half of the load. The instrument is two and a half pounds. The case is the decision. - **A wooden hard case is about 4½ lb** — plywood shell, vinyl outside, plush inside. Nearly double the instrument. - **A molded ABS or fiberglass case runs to 6 lb or more**, particularly in F-shape, where the case has to be cut around the scroll. - **A padded gig bag is about a pound**, and a thickly padded backpack bag a little over. So the same mandolin is a seven-pound object or a three-and-a-half-pound one depending on nothing but what it travels in. On a bus, up stairs, or across an airport, that is the whole difference — and a bag you can wear on your back changes the arithmetic again, because two hands stay free. The trade is protection. Nothing soft will survive something heavy landing on it, and a mandolin’s most vulnerable part is a headstock that snaps at the nut if the instrument goes over. If it lives at home and travels to a lesson, a bag is right. If it goes in a car boot with other things, or under a bus, it needs a shell. № 1 · For keeping the carry weight down ### Crossrock CRSG107MAFDG Padded Backpack Bag - 10mm foam padding - Fits A-style and F-style - Backpack straps and a padded handle - Water-resistant exterior, accessory pocket - Around a pound - ~$45 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Ten millimeters of rigid foam is a great deal more than the thin quilting most bags at this price use, and it is enough to stop a knock in a car or a doorway becoming a dent. The reinforced bottom is where the endpin sits, which is the corner that takes the impact every time a mandolin is stood down carelessly. The backpack straps are the real reason to choose it over something cheaper. Three and a half pounds on your shoulders disappears entirely, and it is the configuration that gets an instrument out of the house on a bicycle or a train. It fits both body shapes, so it survives changing your mind about the scroll. **Pros**- Real padding, not token quilting - Backpack straps leave both hands free - Takes an A-style or an F-style - Reinforced where the endpin sits **Cons**- Foam will not stop a crushing impact - Costs about twice what a plain padded bag does Around $45[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qnMFCj) № 2 · When it needs a shell ### Ktaxon Hard-Shell Mandolin Case - Wooden shell with a leather-look covering - Plush lining with neck support block - Locking latch, accessory compartment - About 4.5 lb - Made in an A-style and an F-style version - ~$60 A wooden case is what the instrument wants if it is going to be handled by anyone other than you. The shaped neck block is the part that matters — it holds the headstock off the shell so a knock to the outside is not transmitted to the join above the nut, which is where mandolins break. Buy the version that matches your body shape. An F-style will not go into an A-style case, and an A-style rattles around inside an F-shaped one, which defeats the object. Four and a half pounds is the price of the protection, and it is worth being honest that it nearly triples what you are carrying. **Pros**- Wooden shell, not molded plastic, at a low price - Neck block supports the weak point - Lockable, with room for picks and strings - A-style and F-style versions **Cons**- 4.5 lb, so the load nearly triples - Handle only — no strap or backpack option - Shape-specific, so it does not follow you to a different mandolin Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gfjjBx) ## If weight is the reason you are asking Two questions bring most people here, and the answer to both is better than they expect. **For a child**, the weight is not a constraint at all. Two and a half pounds is less than a full water bottle, and a mandolin is played resting on the thigh rather than held up. What limits a young player is the reach: a 13⅞-inch scale with eight strings on it needs a hand that can stretch a fret span and enough finger strength to press two strings at once. That is why children who bounce off a mandolin usually do so in week two rather than minute one, and it is a matter of hand size and string tension, not mass. **For traveling**, a mandolin in a gig bag is the easiest instrument in the string family to take anywhere. It is under three and a half pounds all in, it goes in an overhead bin without argument, and it is short enough to sit across the top of a rucksack. Nothing about a mandolin needs a travel version of itself. If either of those is why you are here and you have not bought the instrument yet, the cheap end is genuinely good now. The cheap, full-size one ### Ibanez M510 - A-style, spruce laminate top - Sapele back and sides, okoume neck - Purpleheart fingerboard - 13.8″ scale - ~$200 The best-made cheap mandolin going, and a useful demonstration that the cheap end costs nothing in portability: it is a full-size instrument in the same two-to-three-pound band as everything above it. Ibanez builds to a price with machine precision rather than hand work, so the top is pressed to an even thickness rather than graduated — a real limit on the tone, and the reason it costs what it does. What you get for the money is consistency. The frets are level, the nut is cut properly and the neck is straight, which is not true of everything at this price and is what actually decides whether a beginner keeps going. It is a first mandolin rather than a last one, and there is nothing about it that will hold anyone back for a year or two. **Pros**- Full 13.8″ scale, so technique transfers - No weight penalty for buying at the bottom of the market - Consistently built, with far fewer duds than the field - Purpleheart board and a proper nut at the price **Cons**- Laminate top, pressed rather than carved - Will not keep up with carved-top instruments in a group - Usually needs a setup to play its best Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3TYJvZS) Spending more buys a carved top rather than a lighter instrument — the weight barely moves between $200 and $2,000. [The beginner guide](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) covers what each step up actually changes. ## The rest of the family is where the weight is Go up in size from the mandolin and the numbers move properly, because the body and the scale both grow. InstrumentScaleWeightMandolin13¾–14″1.8–2.8 lbMandola17″About 3 lbSolidbody electric mandolin13⅞–14″3.4–4.5 lbOctave mandolin22½”About 4.5 lb The electric is the odd one. It has a mandolin’s scale and a mandolin’s string count and weighs what an octave mandolin does, because a slab of alder or basswood with no cavity in it is simply much denser than a carved box full of air. If you have only ever picked up acoustics, the first solidbody feels wrong in the hands before it makes a sound. A bowlback — the old Neapolitan shape, built from a couple of dozen thin ribs bent over a mold — is the lightest thing in the family. There is no carved plate in it and no truss rod, and the ribs are thinner than anything on a modern instrument, so an antique one can feel almost hollow in the hands. [The types of mandolins](/types-of-mandolins/) lays out the shapes and what each is for. For context outside the family: a concert [ukulele](/mandolin-vs-ukulele/) is about a pound and a half, an acoustic guitar four and a half to five, and a bluegrass [banjo](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) eleven. The mandolin is at the bottom of that list and the banjo player is carrying four of them. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does a mandolin weigh in kg? About 1.1 kg. The published range across makers is 0.8 to 1.3 kg, and most instruments are within a hundred grams of a kilogram. ### Is a mandolin heavier than a ukulele? Slightly. A concert ukulele is around a pound and a half against a mandolin’s two and a half, the difference being a carved top, eight steel strings and the harder-built neck they require. What you notice holding them is not the pound — it is the 181 pounds of string tension on the mandolin against 33 on the ukulele. ### Why is my mandolin heavier than that? Weigh it out of the case on a kitchen scale before assuming anything, because almost every reported figure includes a case. If it genuinely is over three pounds it will be a pressed-top instrument with a thick body and heavy hardware, or an electric. Neither is a fault, and neither is worth doing anything about. ### Do players remove weight from a mandolin? Builders do, and not for the sake of the weight. Graduating the top and hollowing the neck and tail blocks are done to control how the instrument responds, and losing a few ounces is a side effect. It is work done inside the box before it is closed, not a modification anyone makes to a finished mandolin. The mandolin belongs to the lute family and is one of the smallest members of the [string instruments](/string-instruments/). If the weight question was really a portability question, the answer is that this is about as portable as a fretted instrument gets — and that [what it costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) is the number worth researching properly instead. **Categories:** Mandolin --- ### [How Much Does a Mandolin Cost? Every Price Band, and the $120 Nobody Quotes](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/mandolin/ "Mandolin")› How Much Does a Mandolin Cost? Every Price Band, and the $120 Nobody Quotes A mandolin worth owning costs around $400. You can spend $95 and get something playable, you can spend $6,000 and get something extraordinary, and between those two numbers there is exactly one step that changes how the instrument sounds. Almost everything else you can pay for is finish, hardware and resale value. The price most people should pay### Around $400 — The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek This is where a mandolin stops being a laminate box and becomes a carved instrument. The Loar charges the same for its A-style and F-style Honey Creek models, so at this one price the scroll — the most expensive thing on a mandolin to make — comes free. Around $400 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x2aGla) **Finding out if you like it:** around $95 **Buying once and keeping it:** around $595 **Add for strings, tuner, case and a setup:** around $120 ## The ladder, rung by rung BudgetWhat the money buysExampleWorth paying?**Under $100**Laminate top, basic hardware, and — if you choose carefully — an adjustable truss rod[Hola! Music HM-3TS](https://amzn.to/3TTUlQQ), ~$95Yes, as an experiment**$150–250**The same laminate top, built properly: clean frets, a comfortable neck, tuners that hold[Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/4hAepBE), ~$200Only if $400 is out of reach**$350–450**A carved solid spruce top. The instrument gets louder, drier and starts to improve with playing[The Loar LM-310F-BRB](https://amzn.to/4x2aGla), ~$400This is the rung to aim for**$550–650**Solid back and sides behind the solid top, and a name with resale value[Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/4ciYFPO), ~$595Yes, if you are keeping it**$700–900**Ebony fingerboards, gloss lacquer, better fret dressing, tidier binding[Eastman MD305](https://amzn.to/3RXcQhZ), ~$730Diminishing, and audible only to you**$1,000–1,500**Flamed maple, nitrocellulose finish, gold hardware, an F-style body carved with more care[Kentucky KM-750](https://amzn.to/3lsm5L3), ~$1,325A want, not a need**$3,000–6,000**American and boutique building — Northfield from about $3,350, a Collings MT around $4,775, a Gibson F-5G about $6,000Professional instrumentsWhen it is your living**$6,000 and up**Single-luthier and top-line work; Collings’ dearer models run $8,600–9,000 and there is no ceiling above thatCommissioned buildsA different conversation ## Only two of those steps change the sound **Laminate to carved solid top, around $350.** A laminate top is thin layers glued together. It is stiff, it damps its own vibration, and it will sound the same in twenty years as it does today. A carved top is one piece of spruce thinned to different depths across its area so it flexes where it should. It is louder, it has character, and it opens up as it is played. This is the only price on the ladder that buys a different instrument rather than a nicer one. **Solid back and sides, around $550.** Much smaller. The top decides what the instrument sounds like; the back and sides color what the top has already decided. Worth the money if this is the mandolin you intend to keep, and not worth stretching for if the extra $200 would otherwise have paid for a setup and a year of lessons. Everything above roughly $750 is workmanship, materials you can see, and how much the instrument will fetch when you sell it. Those are real things to want. They are not tone. Our guide to [where your dollar stops buying tone](/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) goes through the individual picks. ## The scroll costs more than the wood An F-style mandolin — scroll at the top, two points on the lower bout — costs more than an A-style with identical timber inside it, because carving that shape is hours of skilled work. None of it reaches the sound. Ibanez charges about $150 for the shape. Most brands charge something similar. The Loar is the exception worth knowing about: the A-style LM-110 and the F-style LM-310F have the same hand-carved top, the same maple body and the same $400 price. If the bluegrass outline is what you want, that is the one place it is free. The full comparison is in [A-style vs F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). ## What it costs after you have bought it A mandolin arrives needing about $120 of things that no price list mentions, and one of them matters more than any upgrade you could buy with the same money. WhatCostWhy**A setup**$60–125String height, bridge fit, nut slots, neck relief. Some shops add about $30 over their guitar rate because a mandolin’s floating bridge takes longer**[Clip-on chromatic tuner](https://amzn.to/3SgkybA)**~$22Eight strings in four matched pairs. [Tuning](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) by ear on day one is how beginners quit**[D’Addario EJ74 strings](https://amzn.to/3I0oC6T)**~$10Factory strings are the weakest part of most cheap mandolins, and this is the set nearly everyone replaces them with**[A-style hard case](https://amzn.to/4qo231S)**~$70Buy for the shape you own — an F-style case will not hold an A-style, and F-style cases cost more**[A first songbook](https://amzn.to/3jMUTX6)**~$17Cheaper than one lesson, and it gets you playing tunes rather than exercises The setup is the one to protect in the budget. Factory setups on inexpensive mandolins are done in minutes by someone paid by volume, and the usual result is action high enough to be tiring and nut slots shallow enough to pull first-position chords sharp. Both are short jobs for someone with the right files. On anything under about $400, an afternoon at a repair shop does more than another $200 of instrument would — which is also the honest answer to whether [the mandolin is hard to play](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## What comes in the box changes the real price Two mandolins at the same price are not the same purchase. One that has been set up has already had the $60–125 job above done to it, and plays properly the day it arrives; one that has not is a fortnight away from a shop appointment. A hard case is another $70 on top, and a gig bag is not the same protection. The Kentucky KM-505 shows how far that reaches. At [around $895](https://amzn.to/3XrnEWL) it is an all-solid instrument — carved spruce top, solid flamed maple back and sides — against Saga’s own list price of $1,250. Count the setup and the case into whatever you are weighing up, because between them they move the real figure by more than most of the gaps on the ladder above. ## An electric mandolin is a different budget Solid-body electric mandolins start around $600 — the [Gold Tone GME-4](https://amzn.to/3RY7EKR) sits at the maker’s own list price of about $610 — and that is before an amplifier and a cable, which add $100 to $300 more. Nothing about the price is unreasonable; there are simply far fewer of them made. The cheaper route to a plugged-in mandolin is an acoustic with a pickup fitted, which most makers offer for about $80 to $150 over the acoustic version. That is the better buy unless you specifically want the solid-body sound, and the rest of the family — bowl-backs, mandolas, octave mandolins — is laid out in [types of mandolins](/types-of-mandolins/). ## Buying used Mandolins hold their value well. A well-kept instrument typically sells for 70–75% of what it cost new, and a carved top that has been played for a decade sounds better than the same model in a box. That arithmetic puts an all-solid Kentucky or Eastman inside the budget of a new carved-top Loar. What it does not tell you is whether the neck has warped, the bridge has lifted, or the top has sunk under string tension. None of the three photographs well, and all three cost more to put right than the saving. Buy from a dealer who sets instruments up and accepts returns, or take someone who plays. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does a good beginner mandolin cost? Around $95 if you are only finding out whether you enjoy it, and around $400 if you already know you do. The stretch between $200 and $350 buys a nicer laminate rather than a solid top, so it is the least rewarding place on the ladder to land. Our [beginner mandolin guide](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) works through the individual instruments. ### Why are some mandolins $100 and others $6,000? Hand work, mostly. A $100 mandolin has a pressed laminate top and was assembled on a line; a $6,000 mandolin has a top carved and graduated by a person who has done it for years, and a finish that took weeks. In between, the price tracks how much of the instrument a human being touched. ### Do F-style mandolins cost more than A-styles? Usually by about $150, for the carved scroll and points. The shape does nothing for the sound, so at a fixed budget an A-style puts more of your money into the parts that make noise. The Loar is the exception, pricing both bodies the same at around $400. ### Is a $500 mandolin twice as good as a $250 one? It is a different instrument rather than a better version of the same one, provided the $500 buys a carved solid top. If it buys a fancier laminate — and at $500 it sometimes does — then no. Read the top specification before the price. ### How much does a professional mandolin cost? Working players are generally somewhere between $3,000 and $6,000: Northfield from about $3,350, a Collings MT at around $4,775, a Gibson F-5G near $6,000. Above that, Collings’ upper models reach $8,600 to $9,000 and commissioned builds have no fixed ceiling. ### What does it cost to keep a mandolin going? About $10 a set for strings, changed every few months if you play regularly, and a setup every year or two at $60–125. There are no moving parts and no electronics, so nothing else routinely wears out. ### Does a more expensive mandolin play more easily? Only because dearer instruments tend to arrive better adjusted. Comfort comes from the setup, not the price. A $200 mandolin that has been through a repair shop plays better than a $600 one straight out of the carton. ### How much should I spend for bluegrass? Around $400, and spend it on a carved top with f-holes rather than on the F-style outline. The dry, percussive chop that bluegrass rhythm is built on comes from the top and the soundhole; the scroll is decoration. There is more in [best mandolin for bluegrass](/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/). ## So what should you spend? Four hundred dollars on the instrument and about $120 on the things around it. That combination clears the only line on the ladder that changes what a mandolin sounds like, and it leaves you with something that gets better rather than staying where it started. If $400 is more than you want to commit before you know, $95 buys a mandolin with a truss rod, which means a repair shop can still rescue it. If you are certain this is permanent, $595 gets you an all-solid instrument you will not need to replace. The [eight strings](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) are the same on all of them. **Categories:** Mandolin --- ### [How Much Does a Harp Weigh? 4 Pounds to 90, Model by Model](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) **Published:** December 15, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How Much Does a Harp Weigh? 4 Pounds to 90, Model by Model A concert pedal harp weighs between 78 and 90 pounds. A lever harp with 34 strings weighs 19 to 28. A lap harp you can hold on your knee weighs 4 to 11. Those are figures published by the people who build them, and the spread is the whole story: two instruments both called a harp can differ by a factor of fifty. The short answer### Eleven pounds is the line between a harp you carry and a harp you move. Below about 11 pounds a harp goes under one arm, up stairs, into a car boot, out to a gig on your own. Above it you are using both hands and thinking about the route. A 34-string lever harp at 25 pounds is a two-handed lift; a 47-string pedal harp at 80 is a two-person job or a trolley. The Roosebeck Heather sits exactly on that line — 22 strings, a lever on every one of them, and 11 pounds. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ztT0QV) **Lightest thing that is really a harp:** Roosebeck Baby Celtic, 12 strings — 4.1 lb, around $170 **The step up:** Roosebeck Minstrel, 29 strings — 14.6 lb, around $745 **What you actually carry it in:** padded nylon case — 3 lb, around $90 ## The weight ladder Every figure below comes from the manufacturer’s own specification sheet — Lyon & Healy, Camac, Rees and Roosebeck. Metric weights are converted from the kilogram figure the maker publishes. ClassStringsHeightWeightExamples**Mini and lap harp**8–2215–30″**1.6–9 lb**Roosebeck Lily 1.7 lb · Baby Celtic 4.1 lb · Lute Harp 6.3 lb · Pixie 8.7 lb**Small lever harp**22–2630–36″**5.8–11 lb**Rees Harpsicle 5.8 lb · Fullsicle 6.4 lb · Roosebeck Heather 11 lb**Mid lever harp**29–3440–54″**12–28 lb**Grand Harpsicle 12.4 lb · Roosebeck Minstrel 14.6 lb · Camac Ulysse 18.7 lb · Lyon & Healy Drake 22 lb · Ogden 28 lb**Full lever harp**36–4054–66″**31–49 lb**Camac Isolde 31 lb · Excalibur 33 lb · Lyon & Healy Troubadour VI 38 lb · Prelude 40 44 lb · Camac Mademoiselle 48.5 lb**Small pedal harp**40–4665–71″**62–73 lb**Lyon & Healy Chicago Petite 40 62 lb · Camac Clio 66 lb · Schola 73 lb**Concert pedal harp**4770–75″**78–90 lb**Lyon & Healy Style 100 78 lb · Style 30 81 lb · Salzedo 85 lb · Camac Vendôme 79 lb · Canopée 90 lb The bands overlap because string count and weight are not the same axis. A 34-string Camac Ulysse is 18.7 pounds and a 34-string Lyon & Healy Ogden is 28 — half again as much, same number of strings, both excellent harps. What separates them is how much wood is in the body and how the column is built. ## Height tells you almost nothing Camac’s EC Llanera, a Venezuelan-style harp, stands 62 inches tall — taller than most lever harps and only a foot shorter than a concert grand — and weighs 21 pounds. A Lyon & Healy Prelude 40 is two inches taller and weighs 44. A Camac Canopée is a foot taller again and weighs 90. The Llanera is light because it is a thin-walled body with nylon strings and no mechanism at all. The Prelude has levers, a heavier soundbox and a laminated column. The Canopée carries seven pedals, seven rods running the length of the column, and forty-seven pairs of rotating discs in the neck. That hardware is most of the difference between a 21-pound harp and a 90-pound one, and it is why you cannot estimate a harp’s weight by looking at it. ## What adds the weight ### Levers add less than you would think Rees builds four versions of the same 26-string harp, identical but for how many strings carry a sharping lever, and publish a weight for each. The bare Harpsicle is 5.8 pounds. The Sharpsicle, with levers on the F and C strings, is 6. The Flatsicle is 6.2. The Fullsicle, with a lever on all 26 strings, is 6.4. Six-tenths of a pound for a full set. Levers are the single most useful thing you can add to a small harp — they let you [change key without retuning](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-harp/) — and they cost you almost nothing to carry. If you are choosing between a lever harp and a plain one on portability grounds, that is not a real trade-off. ### Pedals add a great deal The jump from the heaviest lever harp to the lightest pedal harp is from about 49 pounds to about 62, and the two instruments are similar sizes. What arrives with the pedals is a hollow column full of steel rods, a brass action plate, a pedal box with seven slotted pedals and their springs, and the discs themselves. [Seven pedals with three positions each](https://promusicvault.com/pedals-on-harp/) is a mechanical assembly of several hundred parts, and it lives inside the instrument you are lifting. ### Wood choice moves it by pounds Rees publishes two weights for their larger models because the same harp comes out at different weights depending on the timber. The 33-string Grand Harpsicle is 12.4 pounds in cherry or walnut and 13.7 in maple. The 34-string Brilliant is 16 to 17 pounds in cherry or walnut and 18 to 19 in maple — a swing of up to three pounds on one model, decided by a finish option. Most makers do not break this out, which means a single published figure is a nominal one. Two harps off the same bench, same model, can differ by a pound or more. ## The weight you actually carry Every figure above is the bare instrument. Nobody moves a bare instrument. HarpCase or coverBenchWhat you are actually moving**22-string lever harp**11 lb3 lb padded nylon— plays on the knee**14 lb****29-string lever harp**14.6 lb3 lb padded nylon18 lb folding bench**18 lb, or 36 with the bench****47-string pedal harp**78–90 lbpadded cover for the car; ~140 lb hard case to fly18 lb bench**About 100 lb to a local gig; about 240 lb crated** The proportions are what catch people. A 3-pound case on an 11-pound harp is a 27% increase, and it is the difference between an instrument you can carry a mile and one you would rather not. At the other end a hard flight case for a pedal harp weighs more than the harp inside it, which is the arithmetic that [keeps pedal harps off aeroplanes](https://promusicvault.com/fly-airplane-with-harp/) entirely. The [bench is the item people forget](https://promusicvault.com/harp-stool-and-bench/). A folding harp bench is around 18 pounds, and on a 29-string harp that is more than the instrument. ## Harps you can carry If weight is the constraint, the useful question is not what the lightest harp is but what the heaviest one you will still take out of the house is. Three rungs, and a published weight against each. 4.1 lb### Roosebeck Baby Celtic Harp, 12 strings, walnut - 12 strings, F4–C6, one and a half octaves - 21 inches tall - Solid walnut, carved knotwork - No levers Four pounds is the weight of a full water bottle, and this is the point at which a harp stops being luggage. An octave and a half is enough for melodies and not enough for accompaniment, so it is a harp for someone who wants the sound in their hands rather than a first instrument to progress on. Take it as an ornament that plays, and it is honestly good at that. **Pros**- Genuinely one-handed — a child can carry it - Solid wood, not a laminate shell - Cheapest way to have a real strung harp in the house **Cons**- Twelve strings runs out fast - No levers, so it stays in one key - Too small to sit at properly — it lives on a table or a lap Around $170 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gHiUJv) 11 lb### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 strings, full Chelby levers - 22 strings, C3–C6, three octaves - 36″ × 18″ × 9″ - A Chelby lever on every string - Solid rosewood frame, plywood soundboard, DuPont nylon strings Three octaves is the point at which the two hands stop competing for the same strings, and a lever on every string means you can play in eight keys rather than one. That combination at eleven pounds is the most harp anyone gets to carry one-handed — the next rung up is half again as heavy for one more octave. It is also the largest harp that has any chance of fitting an [aircraft overhead bin](https://promusicvault.com/fly-airplane-with-harp/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Levers on all 22 strings, not just F and C - Eleven pounds with three full octaves - Plays on the knee or on a stand **Cons**- Three octaves is still short for standard harp repertoire - Needs a stand or a strap to play comfortably standing - Plywood soundboard, not solid — the compromise at this price Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ztT0QV) 14.6 lb### Roosebeck Minstrel Harp, 29 strings, Chelby levers - 29 strings, C3–C7, four octaves - A Chelby lever on every string - Stands on its own feet - Solid wood frame, vine carving Four octaves puts most beginner and intermediate harp music within reach, and fourteen and a half pounds is still a one-person lift with a case on. This is where a harp starts being furniture rather than an object: it stands on the floor and you sit at it. Roosebeck builds a 45-inch version of it on a pedestal, and that one weighs the same 14.6 pounds — nine inches of extra height for no extra mass at all. **Pros**- Four octaves for under fifteen pounds - Stands unsupported, so no stand to buy or carry - Still fits across a back seat **Cons**- Weeks of daily tuning before new strings settle - Awkward rather than heavy — the shape is the problem, not the mass - Four times the price of the 12-string Around $745 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45W2TJP) Above about fifteen pounds the question changes from what you can lift to what you can lift *repeatedly*, which is a different and much lower number. If you intend to take a harp somewhere weekly, the honest ceiling for most people is nearer twenty pounds than forty. The wider range is covered in our guides to [lap harps](https://promusicvault.com/best-lap-harps/) and [harps for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/). ## Carrying it A padded nylon case adds three pounds to a small lever harp and changes what you can do with it completely: a bare harp is carried in front of you with both arms, a cased one goes on a shoulder. That is the difference between a harp that leaves the house and one that does not. 3 lb### Padded nylon case for a 22-string harp - Fits a 36″ harp — 32.5″ back, 35″ pillar side, 20″ tuning arm - Padded nylon with a shoulder strap - 3 lb empty Cut to the Heather’s dimensions rather than a generic bag, which matters more on a harp than on most instruments: the levers are the part that stands proud of the frame, so a loose case lets the harp shift onto exactly the components you least want it landing on. Soft padding is protection against knocks and weather, not against a drop — nothing in this weight class is. **Pros**- Turns an 11 lb harp into a 14 lb shoulder carry - Shaped to the harp, so nothing shifts onto the levers - Light enough that it does not undo the point of a light harp **Cons**- Soft — no impact protection - Sized to one harp, so it will not do for the next one up Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S3MiQW) ## Moving a harp that is too heavy to carry A pedal harp is not lifted so much as tipped, walked and lowered. The instrument rests on its base, the base has a natural pivot, and every part of the job is done by balancing the harp rather than holding it up. The mass is only half the difficulty; the other half is that eighty pounds is arranged into a shape six feet tall with the weight high up. - **Tip it onto your shoulder, do not lift it.** The harp leans back against the collarbone with the column across the shoulder and one hand on the neck. Your legs take the weight through the base. - **Into a car it goes flat, disc side up.** Laid on its back in the boot with the mechanism facing the ceiling, resting on a folded blanket. Never on the soundboard, and never on the discs. - **If it will not lie flat, it goes column-down on padding**, supported so it cannot roll onto the neck when the car turns. - **A cover goes on before it moves, every time.** Not for the drop — for the door frames, the boot lid and the temperature change. - **Do not improvise a trolley.** A general-purpose sack truck has its lip and its strap in the wrong places for a harp base, and the load it is built to carry is a box. Harp trolleys are shaped around the base for a reason. - **Retune when it arrives, and again an hour later.** A harp that has been in a cold car moves as it comes back up to room temperature, and it keeps moving after the first pass. The one that catches people out is stairs. Eighty pounds on a flat floor is manageable alone; the same harp on a staircase is a two-person job, and the person at the bottom is taking almost all of it. ## Common questions ### Can one person move a concert pedal harp? On the flat, yes — professional harpists do it daily, on the shoulder and on a trolley. Up or down stairs, no. And getting one into and out of a car alone is possible but is where most damage happens, because the lift is at full arm extension over a boot lip. ### How much does a Celtic harp weigh? Celtic harp is another name for a lever harp, so the answer depends entirely on the size: 11 pounds for a 22-string, around 25 for a 34-string, and up to about 49 for a 40-string. There is no separate weight class for it. Our [Celtic harp comparison](https://promusicvault.com/celtic-harp-vs-regular-harp/) covers what the name does and does not mean. ### Is a lyre a light harp? A lyre is a different instrument. Its strings run across a flat frame between two arms and a crossbar, with no curved neck and no soundbox behind the strings, which is why one weighs a pound or two. It is light because it is built differently, not because it is a small harp — and it plays differently too. [The full distinction is here.](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/) ### Does a heavier harp sound better? Not directly, but the things that make a harp sound better tend to be heavy. Volume and low-end come from a bigger soundbox and longer strings, and the string tension that comes with them — a lever harp pulls 900 to 1,200 pounds across its soundboard, a concert pedal harp closer to a ton — needs a frame stout enough to resist it for decades. That frame is the weight. What does not help is a thick soundboard; makers spend a great deal of effort making that part as light as it can safely be. ### How much does a harp weigh in kilograms? A concert pedal harp is 35 to 41 kg. A 34-string lever harp is 8.5 to 13 kg. A lap harp is 1 to 5 kg. European makers publish in kilograms and American ones in pounds, which is why the same harp is quoted two ways depending on where you read about it. ### Will a harp fit in my car? Weight is rarely what stops it; length is. A 47-string pedal harp is around six feet from base to the top of the column and needs a wagon, an SUV or a hatchback with the rear seats folded. A 34-string lever harp goes across a back seat in most cars. Anything up to 29 strings fits an ordinary boot. Measure the diagonal of the opening, not the boot floor — the harp goes in at an angle. ## Where to go next If the weight figures have decided something for you, the next question is usually which side of the lever-and-pedal line you want to be on — that is covered in [lever harp versus pedal harp](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). If you are still working out how big a harp you want, [how many strings a harp has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) maps string count onto what you can actually play, and [why harps cost what they do](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) explains why the weight and the price rise together. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How Much Does a Flute Weigh? About a Pound, and the Case Weighs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-flute-weigh/) **Published:** November 17, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Flute](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/flute/ "Flute")› How Much Does a Flute Weigh? About a Pound, and the Case Weighs More A concert flute weighs about a pound. Yamaha puts a solid silver flute at roughly 440 grams and a 14-carat gold one at roughly 500 grams, and composite flutes come in a good deal under that — Guo lists their Tocco at 235 grams and their Grenaditte C flute at 340. Across every material a concert flute is built from, that is a spread of about eight ounces to twenty. The professional flutes in the largest published test averaged a little over a pound. The case weighs more than the flute does. And the ache flute players get is not caused by the mass at all — it is caused by where the mass sits, which is why a lighter instrument is rarely the fix. ## Table of Contents - [What a C flute weighs, by material](#what-a-c-flute-weighs-by-material) - [The rest of the family](#the-rest-of-the-family) - [What actually moves the number](#what-actually-moves-the-number) - [Three things people get wrong](#three-things-people-get-wrong) - [Where the weight lands, and why that is the real question](#where-the-weight-lands-and-why-that-is-the-real-question) - [Flute case weight, and what you are really carrying](#flute-case-weight-and-what-you-are-really-carrying) - [If a lighter flute really is the answer](#if-a-lighter-flute-really-is-the-answer) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [How much does a flute weigh in kg?](#how-much-does-a-flute-weigh-in-kg) - [How much does a piccolo weigh?](#how-much-does-a-piccolo-weigh) - [Is a flute too heavy for a 9-year-old?](#is-a-flute-too-heavy-for-a-9yearold) - [How much does a flute weigh for shipping?](#how-much-does-a-flute-weigh-for-shipping) - [Does a heavier flute sound better?](#does-a-heavier-flute-sound-better) - [Where to go next](#where-to-go-next) The short answer### About 440 grams — 15½ ounces — for a silver concert flute, and roughly two and a half pounds for the flute and case together. A pound is nothing to carry and quite a lot to hold out sideways on three small contact points for an hour. The thing that changes how that pound feels is a molded saddle that clips to the body under the left index finger, at around eleven dollars. Around $11 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3T14zi4) **Buying for a nine-year-old:** the obstacle is reach and balance, not the pound **Told wooden flutes are lighter:** it is the other way round, and the tube is ten times thicker **Piccolo:** 118 to 148 grams — roughly a third of a flute **Shipping one:** budget two and a half to three pounds boxed ## What a C flute weighs, by material Almost no flute maker publishes a weight. Yamaha, Gemeinhardt, Pearl, Altus and Trevor James all put out specifications — wall thickness, key style, headjoint model, footjoint options — with no weight row anywhere. Guo is the exception and lists one for every instrument they build, so the composite figures below are theirs. The silver and gold figures come from Yamaha’s own guide to the instrument, and the two professional averages from a study that weighed 42 flutes and headjoints across 14 brands. FluteMaterialWeightGuo ToccoComposite235 g · 8.3 ozGuo New VoiceComposite250 g · 8.8 ozGuo GrenaditteComposite, wood density340 g · 12 ozTypical solid silverSterling silverabout 440 g · 15.5 ozTypical 14-carat goldGoldabout 500 g · 17.6 ozProfessional average, 42 flutesMixed513 g · 18.1 ozProfessional wooden averageGrenadilla562 g · 19.8 oz The whole ladder is about eleven ounces wide, and the expensive end is the heavy end. Platinum sits above the gold figure again. Nobody publishes a number for the silver-plated student flute most people actually own, but plating is a coating rather than a layer of metal you would feel on a scale, and what is under it is copper-nickel rather than sterling — so the beginner instrument is not the heavy one, whatever else is wrong with it. ## The rest of the family InstrumentMaterialWeightGuo Shining Piper (fife)Composite113 g · 3.9 ozGuo New Voice piccoloComposite118 g · 4.2 ozGuo Grenaditte piccoloComposite, wood density148 g · 5.2 ozGuo New Voice treble G fluteComposite156 g · 5.5 ozGuo New Voice tenor fluteComposite970 g · 34.2 ozGuo Grenaditte tenor fluteComposite, wood density1,248 g · 44 ozHeadjoint aloneComposite54–66 g · 1.9–2.3 oz Two things fall out of that. A piccolo is roughly a third of a flute, which is why it is the doubling instrument nobody complains about — and a tenor flute is two to three times a C flute, which is why the players who use one hold it on a crutch or a peg rather than in the air. The metal versions of all of these are heavier again. The headjoint line is worth noting if you have been told to buy a lighter one. Between Guo’s two, the difference is twelve grams, about the weight of two sheets of paper folded over. A headjoint changes the sound; it does not meaningfully change the load. ## What actually moves the number Wall thickness, first. Yamaha roll their metal flutes from sheet in three thicknesses — 0.28 mm on their thinnest model, 0.30 mm as standard and 0.35 mm on heavyweight models — and their wooden flutes from a tube 3 mm thick. Ten times the wall, in a material that Yamaha describes as heavy enough to sink in water. Then the mechanism, which is where the surprises are. A B footjoint adds an extra tube and an extra key over a C foot. A split E mechanism adds a rod and a cup where a donut — a small ring dropped into the left-hand G tone hole to do a similar job — adds almost nothing. A C sharp trill key is another lever and another spring. The 42-flute study found those choices moved the scales more reliably than the metal did, and that a player set on a heavy material can claw a lot of it back by ordering the instrument without them. ## Three things people get wrong **Wooden flutes are not the light option.** They came out heaviest of every category in the study, averaging nearly twenty ounces, and the reason is the 3 mm tube above. Grenadilla is dense enough that a composite made to imitate it — Guo’s Grenaditte — is deliberately built to match wood’s density and still lands nearly half a pound under a real wooden professional flute. **Higher-karat gold is not automatically heavier.** The study’s lightest gold flute was a 9-carat instrument with a standard wall, at 16.7 ounces — lighter than several silver flutes in the same test. Karat sets the alloy, not the amount of metal in the tube. **Solid silver is heavier than silver-plated, not lighter.** They are the same instrument with a different tube alloy, and sterling is the denser of the two. The plating on a student flute is a coating; the metal doing the work underneath is copper-nickel. ## Where the weight lands, and why that is the real question A saxophone hangs from the neck. A clarinet sits on one thumb but hangs straight down. A flute is held out to the right on three contact points — the base of the left index finger, the right thumb, and the chin under the lip plate — with the mass a long way from the body. Held that way, a pound behaves like several. Add that the arms are raised and rotated for the whole time you are playing and you have a posture that a small instrument can genuinely injure you with. It is not a rare complaint. A 2011 study of skilled flute players by Ackermann, Kenny and Fortune found 95% reporting some form of performance-related musculoskeletal problem. Guo sells their composite flutes to players with shoulder pain and RSI in as many words. The two flutists who ran the 42-flute weighing project were both doing it while managing injuries of their own, and both reported that hand size and key placement mattered as much to comfort as the scales did. Which is why the fixes worth having cost ten to thirty dollars and change the balance rather than the mass. № 1 · The eleven-dollar fix, and the one to try first ### Bo Pep A13BP601 Flute Finger Saddle - Molded saddle that clips onto the body between the keys - Sits under the base of the left index finger - No tools, nothing to modify, comes off in seconds - Around $11 The left index finger is the pivot the whole instrument turns on, and on a bare tube it is a curved metal surface with nothing to locate against. The saddle gives it a shaped seat, so the flute stops rolling forward and you stop squeezing to hold it still. Most of what players call weight is that squeezing. It is also the change that helps a child most, and for a reason that has nothing to do with strength: a small hand cannot span the tube well enough to balance it, so it grips. Fit the saddle before you go looking for a lighter instrument. **Pros**- Changes how the flute sits without changing the flute - Fits in under a minute and is entirely reversible - Cuts grip pressure, which is what usually hurts - Works on student and professional instruments alike [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Takes a session or two to find the right position on the body - Changes where the hand sits, so relearn the position slowly - Rubber perishes eventually Around $11 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3T14zi4) № 2 · For the right thumb specifically ### Faxx Thumb Positioning Rest for Flute - Small molded rest that clamps to the body - Locates the right thumb in one repeatable place - Positioned by hand, then tightened in place - Around $9 The right thumb is the point that takes the outward push, and it is the one that quietly moves. A thumb that creeps under the tube instead of behind it turns a support into a lever you have to fight, and the first sign of it is usually an ache in the forearm rather than in the hand. This does the opposite job to the saddle above rather than the same one, so the two are worth having together on an instrument that is genuinely uncomfortable. On a flute that only aches after long sessions, start with one and see. **Pros**- Fixes thumb position, which drifts without anyone noticing - Position is set by you, not by the maker of the flute - Costs less than a packet of reeds does on any other woodwind **Cons**- Needs setting up carefully or it makes things worse - Small and easy to lose off the instrument - Not a fix for a hand that is simply too small yet Around $9 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UmsNDT) № 3 · For the half of rehearsal you are not playing ### Hercules DS460B Travlite Flute Stand - 5.8 inches tall folded — shorter than the headjoint - Rated to 5.5 lb — five times what it will ever hold - Velvet base, so it does not mark the finish - Around $29 A pound held for two hours is a different proposition from a pound held for forty minutes, and in an ensemble rehearsal most of the difference is bars you are counting rather than playing. A stand is the only thing on this page that reduces the actual time under load. The folding design is the reason to take this one rather than a full-size stand: collapsed it is under six inches, so it goes in the case rather than being something else to remember. **Pros**- Takes up no case space at all - Stops the flute being laid on a chair, which is how they get sat on - Steady enough on a hard floor **Cons**- Legs are small; a carpeted riser can make it tippy - Fiddly to unfold quickly mid-piece - Costs more than either of the balance fixes above Around $29 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4yc8dor) ## Flute case weight, and what you are really carrying Case makers do publish weights, which makes this the easy half of the question. Gator lists their lightweight beginner flute case at 1.4 lb and their older soft case design at 2.0 lb. Put a 440-gram flute inside the lighter of those and the case is still the bigger number — more than half of what leaves the house is the box. So if you are carrying a flute to school every day and it feels like a lot, the flute is not the thing to change. Two and a half pounds all in is the figure to plan around, and boxed for shipping with padding around the case, call it three. № 4 · The lightest case with a real shell ### Gator Cases Largo Series GBB-FLUTE - 1.4 lb, published by the maker - EPS foam shell in a fabric shoulder bag - Fits B and C footjoint flutes - Around $43 EPS is the material bicycle helmets are made from: rigid, protective and almost weightless. That is how this comes in lighter than a soft gig bag while still being something you could drop. The subway handle and shoulder strap matter more than they sound if the flute travels on public transport. Worth being honest about the trade. EPS crushes where a molded ABS shell flexes back, and this is a shoulder bag rather than something that clips to a rucksack. If the flute lives in a school locker and gets sat on, the molded case is the better buy and the extra weight is the price. **Pros**- Genuinely light, and the maker publishes the figure - Rigid shell rather than padding alone - Room for a cleaning rod and a cloth without bulging **Cons**- EPS dents permanently where ABS springs back - Shoulder strap only - Costs more than a plain zip bag Around $43 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y3rlVq) ## If a lighter flute really is the answer For a small child, sometimes it is — not because a pound is too much to lift, but because a short arm cannot reach the end of the footjoint and hold the tube steady at the same time. Two things solve that: a curved headjoint, which shortens the reach, and a plastic body, which Nuvo says comes in at just over half the weight of a traditional flute. № 5 · The light one, for a player who is genuinely small ### Nuvo Student Flute - ABS body with silicone key pads - Straight headjoint and C footjoint, standard flute fingering - Two lip plates — a normal one and a recorder-style Firstnote - Around $200 This is a real instrument rather than a toy: chromatic, standard fingering, and it transfers to a metal flute without relearning anything. The plastic body is washable, which matters more than it should for an instrument a seven-year-old carries. The unflattering part is the price. It costs about as much as a perfectly good metal student flute, so it is not the budget option — it is the option for a child too small for the metal one, and a stage they will grow out of. If the player is nine or older with normal-sized hands, buy the metal flute instead: [Jean Paul’s FL-220](https://amzn.to/4wReTHv) is the usual one, silver-plated, closed hole, around $250, and set up before it ships. **Pros**- Materially lighter than any metal flute - Washable, and survives being dropped - Standard fingering, so nothing is wasted later **Cons**- Costs the same as a metal student flute - Outgrown rather than kept - Tone is thinner than metal, and audibly so Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zEI4zX) For an adult with a diagnosed problem rather than a child with short arms, the serious answer is a composite instrument. Guo builds theirs to the same density as grenadilla and sell them in as many words to players with shoulder pain and RSI, and at 235 to 340 grams they are a third lighter than the silver flute they would replace. They are professional instruments at professional prices. ## Common questions ### How much does a flute weigh in kg? About 0.44 kg for a solid silver concert flute and about 0.5 kg for 14-carat gold, both figures Yamaha’s. Composite flutes run 0.24 to 0.34 kg. A professional wooden flute is around 0.56 kg. ### How much does a piccolo weigh? Guo publishes 118 grams for their composite piccolo and 148 for the denser Grenaditte version — roughly a third of a C flute. Most piccolos are grenadilla rather than composite and will be heavier than those figures, but they remain the smallest thing in the flute family by a wide margin. ### Is a flute too heavy for a 9-year-old? No. A pound is less than a full water bottle. What stops a nine-year-old is the reach to the end of the footjoint and the span needed to balance the tube, which is why curved headjoints exist and why lighter instruments so often fail to help. A finger saddle costs about eleven dollars and addresses the balance directly, which no lighter instrument does. ### How much does a flute weigh for shipping? Flute and case together are about two and a half pounds; boxed with padding, call it three. Get the dimensions as well as the mass, because carriers price on volumetric weight and a flute case in an outer carton is long and awkward for what it weighs. ### Does a heavier flute sound better? Heavier tubes give more resistance and more carry, which is what heavyweight models are sold on. The two flutists in the 42-flute study both reported that the difference in sound between lightweight and heavy-wall instruments was not large enough to rule the light ones out. It is a real difference and a smaller one than the price gap suggests. ## Where to go next For what one costs rather than what it weighs, [how much a flute costs](/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) covers the bands from student to handmade. [Piccolo vs flute](/piccolo-vs-flute/) and [clarinet vs flute](/clarinet-vs-flute/) are the comparisons people usually want next, [flute vs recorder](/flute-vs-recorder/) is the honest one if you are choosing a first instrument for a child, and [woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/) puts the whole family in order. **Categories:** Flute --- ### [How Much Does a Clarinet Weigh? About a Pound and a Half](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/clarinet/ "Clarinet")› How Much Does a Clarinet Weigh? About a Pound and a Half A B♭ soprano clarinet weighs about a pound and a half — 740 grams assembled, without the mouthpiece. Fit a mouthpiece and ligature and you are holding a shade under two pounds. That figure barely moves. A synthetic student instrument and a ten-thousand-dollar grenadilla one are separated by about seven ounces, and everything in between sits in a band two hundred grams wide. What changes is the case. A clarinet in a light modern case is a four-pound object; the same clarinet in an older lockable hardshell is over five. And because the whole of that weight hangs off one thumb in one position, a pound and a half is enough to hurt. ## Table of Contents - [What a clarinet weighs, model by model](#what-a-clarinet-weighs-model-by-model) - [Why the number you found was too big](#why-the-number-you-found-was-too-big) - [Plastic is lighter than wood, not heavier](#plastic-is-lighter-than-wood-not-heavier) - [What you actually carry](#what-you-actually-carry) - [The weight lands on one thumb](#the-weight-lands-on-one-thumb) - [The rest of the clarinet family](#the-rest-of-the-clarinet-family) - [Does a heavier clarinet play better?](#does-a-heavier-clarinet-play-better) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [How much does a clarinet weigh in kg?](#how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh-in-kg) - [How much does a clarinet and its case weigh together?](#how-much-does-a-clarinet-and-its-case-weigh-together) - [How much does a bass clarinet weigh?](#how-much-does-a-bass-clarinet-weigh) - [Is a plastic clarinet lighter than a wooden one?](#is-a-plastic-clarinet-lighter-than-a-wooden-one) - [Why does my clarinet feel heavy after ten minutes?](#why-does-my-clarinet-feel-heavy-after-ten-minutes) - [Is a clarinet too heavy for a young child?](#is-a-clarinet-too-heavy-for-a-young-child) - [How much does a clarinet weigh for shipping?](#how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh-for-shipping) - [Where to go next](#where-to-go-next) The short answer### 740 grams — about 1.6 pounds — for the instrument, and roughly four pounds for the clarinet, case and kit you actually carry. The weight is not the problem. Where it lands is: a right thumb under a small metal rest takes all of it, for the whole rehearsal, in a fixed position. A neck strap moves that load onto your shoulders and costs about twenty dollars. Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zwzX8w) **Buying for a nine-year-old:** a pound and a half is not the obstacle — reaching the lower joint is **Told plastic clarinets are heavy:** it is the reverse, and the gap is about three ounces **On bass clarinet:** five and a half to ten pounds, and it rests on a peg rather than on you **Marching with it:** [best clarinet for marching band](/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) covers what survives a field ## What a clarinet weighs, model by model Almost no clarinet maker publishes a weight. Buffet Crampon, Yamaha, Selmer and Jupiter all put out full specifications — bore, tone holes, key plating, pad material — with no weight row anywhere. Backun is the exception, and lists one for every clarinet they build, which is why the table below is theirs. ClarinetBodyWeightAlpha B♭Synthetic656 g · 1.45 lbAlpha ASynthetic726 g · 1.60 lbProtégé B♭Grenadilla741 g · 1.63 lbBeta B♭Grenadilla743 g · 1.64 lbQ Series B♭ and AGrenadilla or cocobolo744 g · 1.64 lbAlpha Plus AGrenadilla754 g · 1.66 lbEssence B♭ and AGrenadilla or cocobolo810 g · 1.79 lbCG Carbon B♭ and ACarbon fiber over hardwood830 g · 1.83 lbLumière B♭ and AGrenadilla or cocobolo852 g · 1.88 lbMoBa B♭ and AGrenadilla or cocobolo866 g · 1.91 lb That is the entire range: 210 grams, or seven and a half ounces, between the cheapest instrument on the list and one costing more than a car. Nothing built as a standard B♭ clarinet comes in much under a pound and a half or much over two. Two things in the table are worth reading twice. An A clarinet is heavier than the B♭ of the same model — 726 grams against 656 for the Alpha — because it is a longer instrument. And weight climbs with price rather than falling with it, because the expensive instruments carry more metal: extra keys, heavier posts, thicker plating. None of these figures includes a mouthpiece. Professional clarinets are sold without one, and a mouthpiece and ligature add roughly 80 grams. That is where the difference between “740 grams” and “about two pounds in my hands” comes from. ## Why the number you found was too big Retail weight figures are shipping weights. They are measured for a courier, they include the case, the packaging and sometimes a carton holding several units, and couriers bill on volume as well as mass, so the figure is not always a measurement of anything at all. Gator prints both numbers on the same page, which makes the gap easy to see. Their Largo clarinet case is listed at an exterior weight of **1.80 lb** and a shipping weight of **12.68 lb** — the same product, seven times apart, because the second figure is a box of them. Weigh the instrument instead. Kitchen scales handle a clarinet comfortably, and a joint at a time is easier than balancing the whole thing. ## Plastic is lighter than wood, not heavier Backun builds two clarinets with the same keywork, the same adjustable thumb rest and the same bore treatment, one in a proprietary synthetic and one in grenadilla. The synthetic Alpha is 656 grams; the grenadilla Beta is 743. The wood adds about three ounces. That is what you would expect from the materials. Grenadilla is one of the densest woods in commercial use — dense enough to sink — and the resins clarinets are molded from are appreciably lighter. A plastic clarinet is the lighter instrument, not the heavier one. Carbon fiber does not behave the way the word suggests either. Backun’s carbon-bodied clarinet is 830 grams, heavier than their grenadilla one, because the carbon is wrapped around a hardwood core and the instrument carries professional keywork. Carbon buys stability in cold and damp, not lightness. ## What you actually carry Nobody carries a bare clarinet. The object that goes to school is the instrument, the mouthpiece, a case and whatever has accumulated in the accessory pocket, and the case is the biggest single component of it. CaseConstructionWeightGator Largo GBB-CLARINETEPS hybrid, zip closure1.80 lbGator Pro GBPC-CLARINETPadded bag, backpack straps2.40 lbGator GC-CLARINETABS hardshell, lockable3.00 lb Add it up. Instrument 1.6 lb, mouthpiece and ligature 0.2, case 1.8 to 3.0, and a quarter of a pound of reeds, swab, cork grease and a spare screwdriver: **between about three and three-quarter pounds and five and a quarter**, depending almost entirely on which case it lives in. Swapping a heavy hardshell for a light modern case takes a quarter of the total off. It is a small object as well as a light one. Gator gives the interior of that Largo case as 11.5 by 7.5 by 2 inches — a disassembled clarinet packs into roughly the footprint of a laptop. ## The weight lands on one thumb A flute is held between three points, a saxophone hangs from the neck, a trumpet is cradled in a whole left hand. A clarinet rests on the top joint of the right thumb, against a metal bar an inch long, and stays there. A pound and a half through that contact patch is a great deal of pressure, and the thumb cannot move, because moving it moves the instrument. That is why a clarinet can ache after twenty minutes when a heavier instrument held differently does not, and why the weight becomes a subject at forty when it never was at eighteen. Three things fix it, and they run from about six dollars to about fifty. № 1 · The six-dollar fix, and the one to try first ### BG France A21 Thumb Rest Cushion - Molded flexible rubber, slips over the existing rest - A21 is the small size; A23 is the large - No tools, no modification, nothing to adjust - Around $6 It does not reduce the weight by a gram. It spreads it, turning a one-inch metal bar into a broad, slightly grippy pad, and it stops the instrument sliding forward so you grip less hard to hold it still. Most of what people call thumb pain is the edge of the bar and the gripping, not the mass above it. Size is the only thing to get right, and it is worth two minutes with a ruler. The small A21 fits the narrow fixed metal rests on most student and older B♭ clarinets and on oboes. The large A23 fits the wider adjustable rests now standard on newer instruments — if your thumb rest slides up and down on a track, that is the one you want. Order the wrong size and it either will not go on or will not stay on. On the A21 listing, take the Classic version. **Pros**- Cheapest useful thing you can do about clarinet weight - Fits in thirty seconds and comes off as fast - Reduces grip pressure as well as contact pressure - Nothing to break and nothing to set up **Cons**- Two sizes, and the wrong one is useless - Rubber perishes eventually and needs replacing - Will not help a player whose hand is genuinely too small yet Around $6 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gJXYBB) Wider or adjustable thumb rest? [The large A23 is here](https://amzn.to/4inH2SF). № 2 · For taking the weight off the thumb entirely ### Protec NCS2 Clarinet Neck Strap - Adjusts 17 to 22 inches, neck pad to hook - Neoprene pad with stitched trim so it does not stretch - Open metal hook and a one-hand slider - Leather tabs included for clarinets with no strap ring - Around $20 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A neck strap moves the load from a thumb joint to the trapezius, which is built for it. For anyone playing more than half an hour at a stretch, or coming back to the instrument with a wrist that already complains, it is the difference between practicing and stopping early. The detail that decides whether a strap works is the attachment. Many clarinets have a small ring on the thumb rest to hook onto; plenty do not, and the strap is then useless. Protec includes leather tabs that loop around a bare thumb rest and give the hook something to catch, which is why this is the one to buy if you do not know what your instrument has. The stitched trim matters more than it sounds — a neoprene pad that stretches under load lets the instrument creep downward, and your embouchure follows it. Set the length so the mouthpiece arrives at your mouth with your head level. A strap adjusted to make you reach down is a neck problem swapped for a thumb one. **Pros**- Removes essentially all the load from the right thumb - Works on clarinets with no strap ring, thanks to the tabs - Adjusts one-handed while playing - Rubber-free metal hook will not mark the key **Cons**- Takes a week to stop feeling strange - Set too long or too short it causes its own problems - Some teachers want beginners to build the hand first Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zwzX8w) Prefer a fixed leather tab and a quick adjuster? The [D’Addario Rico clarinet strap](https://amzn.to/4c5hu9b) does the same job for about the same money. № 3 · For cutting the carry weight, not the playing weight ### Gator Largo GBB-CLARINET Case - 1.80 lb, against 3.00 lb for a lockable ABS hardshell - Rigid EPS shell under a nylon exterior - Contoured plush-lined nest for the joints - Interior 11.5 × 7.5 × 2 in, shoulder strap included - Around $50 This is the one change that alters the number on the scale. A pound and a fifth off a four-pound load is more than a quarter of it, and it is the load a twelve-year-old carries between four classrooms and a bus. Rigid expanded polystyrene under a fabric skin gives most of the crush resistance of a molded shell at roughly half the mass, and the molded nest stops the joints moving, which is what actually bends keys. It is not the case for an instrument that travels in a car boot under other luggage — foam will not survive being stood on — but for the trip a student clarinet actually makes it is a straight improvement over the box it came in. Check the shoulder strap before the first walk with it. A strap worn across the body rather than on one shoulder stops the case swinging into a doorframe, which is how cases get dropped. **Pros**- Genuinely lighter, with the maker’s own figure to prove it - Molded nest holds the joints still - Shoulder strap included - Small enough to go inside a backpack **Cons**- Foam is crushable in a way ABS is not - No lock - Costs about what a cheap clarinet’s whole outfit does Around $50 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gq6Mey) ## The rest of the clarinet family The B♭ soprano is the standard clarinet, and the rest of the family runs from a sopranino you could post in an envelope to instruments that need their own trolley. The **E♭ clarinet** is the small one at the top of an orchestral clarinet section — roughly two-thirds the length of a B♭ and correspondingly lighter, with the same keywork condensed onto a shorter body. The **A clarinet**, the B♭’s twin in a slightly lower key, runs about 70 grams heavier than the B♭ of the same model. The **bass clarinet** is the one people get badly wrong. Makers put it at **2.5 to 4.5 kilograms — five and a half to ten pounds**, with a plastic instrument that stops at low E♭ at the bottom of that range and a wooden one extended to low C at the top. It is heavy for something you hold; it is not heavy for something you own. Packed with its case you are lifting something in the region of fifteen to twenty pounds. Seated, though, a bass clarinet is not held up at all. A metal **peg** screws into the bottom of the lower joint and takes the instrument’s weight onto the floor or the chair, exactly as a cello endpin does, and the player balances it rather than supporting it. Standing, or in a marching context, it goes on a neck strap or a shoulder harness instead. So the bass clarinet’s weight is a carrying problem rather than a playing one. Below that, the **alto clarinet**, **contra-alto** and **contrabass** get progressively larger, and every one of them is played on a peg or a stand for the same reason. The published weights for these are scarce enough that any single figure is worth treating with suspicion, but the practical answer is consistent: nobody carries their weight while playing, and nobody carries them any distance without a case on wheels. ## Does a heavier clarinet play better? Not in any way you can act on. Within the two hundred grams the whole B♭ family occupies, the weight is a by-product of bore geometry, tone hole placement and how much key metal a maker fits — nobody designs to a weight, and no maker sells one clarinet as heavier than another. The one place it shows up honestly is the wood-versus-synthetic question, and even there weight is the side effect and not the cause. Grenadilla is chosen because of what dense, oily, close-grained wood does to a bore and because it can be finished to a tolerance resin cannot hold; being heavier comes with that. Choosing a clarinet by mass is choosing by the least informative number on the instrument. If you are deciding between materials for real reasons rather than weight ones, [why marching bands play on plastic](/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) is the case for synthetic put plainly, and [clarinet brands to avoid](/clarinet-brands-to-avoid/) covers the instruments where the material is the least of the problems. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does a clarinet weigh in kg? A B♭ soprano clarinet is about 0.74 kg. The published range across an entire professional line runs from 0.656 kg for a synthetic body to 0.866 kg for the heaviest grenadilla model. With a mouthpiece and ligature fitted, add roughly another 0.08 kg. ### How much does a clarinet and its case weigh together? Between about 3¾ and 5¼ pounds, or 1.7 to 2.4 kg. The case is the variable: light modern cases are around 1.8 lb and a lockable ABS hardshell is 3 lb. A packed student outfit sits near four pounds. ### How much does a bass clarinet weigh? Between about 5½ and 10 pounds — 2.5 to 4.5 kg — with plastic low E♭ models at the light end and wooden low C models at the heavy end. Cased, expect something around fifteen to twenty pounds to carry. Seated, the instrument’s weight goes onto a peg rather than onto the player. ### Is a plastic clarinet lighter than a wooden one? Yes, by about three ounces. Comparing two instruments from one maker with identical keywork, the synthetic body is 656 g and the grenadilla 743 g. Grenadilla is dense enough to sink in water; clarinet resins are not. ### Why does my clarinet feel heavy after ten minutes? Because all of it is on one thumb, against a metal bar, in a position you cannot shift. It is a pressure problem rather than a mass problem, which is why a rubber cushion costing a few dollars helps so much more than it ought to, and why a neck strap ends the complaint entirely. ### Is a clarinet too heavy for a young child? Weight is rarely the limit. A pound and a half is less than a full lunchbox. What stops small children is reach — the stretch to the lower joint rings and the little finger keys — and hand strength for sealing tone holes, neither of which a lighter instrument solves. [Is the clarinet hard to play](/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) goes through what actually decides readiness. ### How much does a clarinet weigh for shipping? Boxed with its case and packing, budget five to seven pounds for a B♭ clarinet, and get the dimensions as well as the mass — carriers price on volumetric weight, and a clarinet case in a padded outer box is bulky for what it weighs. ## Where to go next For what one costs rather than what it weighs, [how much clarinets cost](/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) covers the bands from student to professional. [Clarinet vs flute](/clarinet-vs-flute/) and [oboe vs clarinet](/oboe-vs-clarinet/) are the two comparisons people usually want next, and [reeds for beginners](/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) is where the difference between a comfortable instrument and an exhausting one actually lives. **Categories:** Clarinet --- ### [How Much Does a Banjo Weigh? Real Weights, Model by Model](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How Much Does a Banjo Weigh? Real Weights, Model by Model An open back five-string banjo weighs about four and a half pounds. A bluegrass banjo with a resonator, a one-piece flange and a cast bell bronze tone ring weighs about eleven. Those are the same instrument — same rim diameter, same scale length, often the same neck — separated by roughly six pounds of metal. So the answer depends on almost nothing except what is inside the pot. The resonator, which gets the blame, accounts for about a pound and a half of it. ## Table of Contents - [What a banjo weighs, model by model](#what-a-banjo-weighs-model-by-model) - [The weight is in the tone ring and the flange](#the-weight-is-in-the-tone-ring-and-the-flange) - [Cheap resonator banjos are heavy for the opposite reason](#cheap-resonator-banjos-are-heavy-for-the-opposite-reason) - [Does a heavier banjo sound better?](#does-a-heavier-banjo-sound-better) - [What you actually carry: add the case](#what-you-actually-carry-add-the-case) - [If a banjo is too heavy to play, fix the strap first](#if-a-banjo-is-too-heavy-to-play-fix-the-strap-first) - [If you are buying on weight](#if-you-are-buying-on-weight) - [Weights for the other banjos](#weights-for-the-other-banjos) The short answer### Open back, 4 to 6 pounds. Bluegrass resonator, 8 to 13. The tone ring and the flange are the difference, and they are about three pounds each. If you already own the heavy one and it is hurting after an hour, the fix is almost never a different banjo. A two-inch cradle strap threads through four bracket hooks instead of hanging the whole instrument off two points, which spreads eleven pounds across your shoulder and stops the neck diving toward the floor. It costs about a fortieth of what a lighter banjo costs. Around $40 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ibfoIy) **Buying the lightest full-size banjo there is:** the Gold Tone AC-1 at 3.75 lb **Worried a heavy banjo means a better banjo:** it does not, and the arithmetic below shows why **Flying with it, or carrying it far:** add the case — that is five to eight pounds nobody counts **Still choosing:** [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) settles the weight and the volume together ## What a banjo weighs, model by model Every figure below is the maker’s own published weight for the instrument itself, not a shipping weight. Deering and Gold Tone both put weight on their spec sheets, and between them they build most of what a beginner or intermediate player is choosing between. BanjoPotTone ringWeightGold Tone AC-1Composite, open backNone3.75 lbDeering Goodtime PlectrumOpen back, 11″None4 lbDeering GoodtimeOpen back, 11″None4.5 lbDeering Goodtime AmericanaOpen back, 12″None4.5 lbDeering Goodtime 19-Fret TenorOpen back, 11″None4.5 lbDeering Goodtime Six-RResonator, 11″None5.5 lbGold Tone CC-Carlin12Open back, 12″Rolled brass5.8 lbDeering Goodtime TwoResonator, 11″None6 lbGold Tone CC-PlectrumRemovable resonatorRolled brass6.3 lbGold Tone CC-100R+Removable resonatorRolled brass6.5 lbGold Tone BG-150FResonator with flangeRolled brass8.5 lbDeering Goodtime SpecialResonator, 11″Steel8.75 lbDeering SierraResonator with flangeCast bell bronze11 lbGold Tone PS-250Resonator with flange, 14″Bell brass12 lb Read down the tone ring column and the weight column together and the pattern is hard to miss. Nothing without a tone ring gets past six and a half pounds. Nothing with a cast ring and a flange comes in under eight and a half. The heaviest production banjos land around twelve to fourteen pounds. That is the top of the range. ## The weight is in the tone ring and the flange Deering publishes the component weights, and they are worth knowing because they account for nearly the whole spread: - **A cast bell bronze tone ring is about 3 lb.** This is the heavy one — the Mastertone-style hoop that gives bluegrass its bark. - **A one-piece cast zinc flange is about 3 lb.** The ring of metal that seals the resonator to the pot and carries the bracket hooks. - **A tube-style ring, like a Vega Tubaphone, is nearer 2 lb.** - **A wooden tone ring is about a pound, maybe a pound and a quarter.** - **The resonator itself is about a pound and a half.** That last figure is easy to check, because Deering builds the Goodtime both ways from identical parts. Open back, 4.5 lb. Bolt on the resonator and it is a Goodtime Two at 6 lb. A pound and a half is the entire cost of closing the back. Keep going up the same line and the arithmetic holds. Add a steel tone ring to that resonator banjo and you get a Goodtime Special at 8.75 lb. Swap in a cast bell bronze ring and a one-piece flange and you are at a Sierra’s eleven pounds — same 11″ three-ply maple rim, same 26 1/4″ scale, six and a half pounds heavier than the open back it started as. ## Cheap resonator banjos are heavy for the opposite reason A budget import with a resonator will often weigh eight to ten pounds, and it will not have a tone ring in it at all. The weight is in cast pot-metal hardware, a thick heavy rim and a plywood resonator — mass that arrives as a consequence of cheap manufacturing rather than as a design decision. This is the case that breaks any rule of thumb linking weight to quality. A $180 banjo can outweigh a $1,000 one and sound worse in every respect that matters. If you are shopping at that end, [the best banjos under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) covers what the money actually buys. ## Does a heavier banjo sound better? No — though the correlation is real, so it is worth being precise about which way the causation runs. A cast bell bronze tone ring makes a banjo louder, brighter and longer-sustaining. It also happens to weigh three pounds. The weight is a side effect of the metal, not the mechanism — the ring works because of how a dense casting couples to the head and the rim, not because the instrument is hard to hold. Nobody has ever improved a banjo by making it heavier without changing anything else, and the budget imports above are the proof: eight pounds of nothing in particular. Plenty of first-rate banjos are light on purpose. A wooden-ring open back is around five pounds and is exactly the right instrument for old-time and clawhammer, where a bell bronze ring would be actively wrong. [Clawhammer players](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) spend real money going lighter, not heavier. ## What you actually carry: add the case Anyone asking this question because they have to get a banjo onto a bus, up three flights of stairs or through an airport is asking about the wrong number. The instrument is the smaller half of the problem. - **A hardshell banjo case adds 5 to 8 lb.** The lightweight molded ones sit at the bottom of that; a traditional plywood-and-tolex case sits at the top. - **A padded gig bag adds 2 to 3 lb** and almost no protection against anything being dropped on it. So an eleven-pound bluegrass banjo in a traditional hard case is a nineteen-pound object, carried one-handed, in a shape that does not balance. A four-and-a-half-pound open back in a gig bag is under seven. That gap decides how often the banjo actually leaves the house, and it is a bigger practical difference than the six pounds of tone ring that caused it. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It is also why weights quoted secondhand are so often too high — a figure lifted off a shipping carton includes the case and the packaging, and sometimes it is a dimensional weight that was never a measurement of anything at all. ## If a banjo is too heavy to play, fix the strap first Eleven pounds is not much to lift and it is a great deal to hang off one shoulder for two hours. A heavy banjo on a bad strap is a different problem from a heavy banjo, and it is much cheaper to solve. Two things matter: how the strap attaches, and how wide it is. A **cradle strap** threads through four of the bracket hooks around the rim, so the load spreads around the pot and the banjo sits at a stable angle on its own. A **two-point strap** hangs the instrument from two hooks, which is fine on a light open back and lets a heavy resonator banjo rotate and nose-dive, so you end up holding it up with your fretting hand. Width does the rest: two inches across the shoulder is roughly twice the contact area of a one-inch strap carrying the same weight. № 1 · For a heavy resonator banjo ### D’Addario Leather Cradle Banjo Strap - Cradle style, threads through the bracket hooks - 2″ wide - Leather - Adjustable length - ~$40 The default answer for anything with a resonator on it. Two inches of leather across the shoulder and four attachment points around the rim is the combination that makes an eleven-pound banjo feel like it is sitting on you rather than pulling on you, and leather stops sliding around on a shirt in a way woven nylon never quite manages. It needs a few minutes with the bracket hooks the first time, and leather takes a week or two of playing to soften and take a shape. Neither is a reason to buy something else. **Pros**- Cradle attachment keeps the neck from diving - 2″ wide, so the weight spreads - Leather grips rather than slips **Cons**- Fiddly to fit the first time - Stiff until it breaks in Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ibfoIy) № 2 · For a shoulder that already hurts ### Neotech Super Banjo Strap - Padded neoprene with a stretch section - Loops thread through the brackets - Side-release buckles for taking it off - Made in USA - ~$40 Neoprene padding and a deliberate bit of stretch built into the shoulder section, so the strap absorbs the small shocks of moving around instead of transmitting them into your neck. If the complaint is a specific sore spot rather than general fatigue, this is the one that addresses it directly. The stretch is a genuine trade-off — the banjo moves a little more than it does on a fixed leather strap, which some players dislike for precise right-hand work. Try it before a gig rather than at one. **Pros**- Real padding, not just extra width - Stretch section takes the shock out - Quick to take off between sets **Cons**- The banjo shifts more than on a rigid strap - Neoprene is warm against a shirt Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xHciR0) № 3 · For a light open back ### Levy’s Hootenanny Woven Banjo Strap - 2″ jacquard weave cotton - Two-point attachment - Tri-glide height adjustment - Several patterns - ~$25 Four and a half pounds does not need engineering. A two-inch woven strap holds an open back at the height you set it and costs a good deal less than the cradle straps above, which are solving a problem a light banjo does not have. Do not put this on a bluegrass banjo and expect the shoulder ache to go away — two attachment points and no padding is exactly the setup that makes eleven pounds unpleasant. **Pros**- Right tool for anything under about six pounds - 2″ wide despite the price - Height stays where you set it **Cons**- Two-point, so wrong for a heavy resonator banjo - No padding at all Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xJNdoF) ## If you are buying on weight Buying light is a legitimate priority, and not only for players with a bad shoulder. It is the right call for a child, for anyone who plays standing, and for anyone whose banjo has to travel — an instrument that stays in its case because carrying it is a chore makes no sound at all. The lightest full-size banjo worth owning ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Composite rim, open back - No tone ring - Nato neck, 22 frets, 26 3/16″ scale - 3.75 lb - Gig bag included - ~$315 Three-quarters of a pound lighter than a Goodtime and around two-thirds the price, because the rim is a composite molding rather than three plies of violin-grade maple. That is a real compromise in tone and it is the whole reason the number is what it is. What you get for it is a full-scale banjo — not a short-scale travel instrument — that a small player can hold up indefinitely. It is a first banjo and an around-the-house banjo rather than a lifetime one, and it will not keep up in a bluegrass jam. Set against that, it is built by a company that draws its own banjos, it is set up in Florida before it ships, and a gig bag is in the box. **Pros**- 3.75 lb — the lightest full-size banjo there is - Full 26″ scale, so technique transfers - Set up before shipping, gig bag included - Light enough for a child to hold up **Cons**- Composite rim, so a thinner voice than a wooden one - No projection for playing with others Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cHMj3M) Spending more buys weight back in the form of wood rather than metal. A Deering Goodtime open back is 4.5 lb with a three-ply maple rim and a considerably rounder tone, and a Goodtime Americana is the same 4.5 lb with a 12″ pot built for old-time. Both are covered in [the best banjos under $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/). If the reason for buying light is portability rather than comfort, [travel banjos](/best-travel-banjos/) go smaller still, at the cost of the scale length. ## Weights for the other banjos The four-string banjos are built on the same pots as the five-strings and weigh accordingly. An open back plectrum or tenor is around four to four and a half pounds; a tenor with a resonator, a flange and a cast ring — the classic trad-jazz setup — runs nine to twelve, the heaviest thing in the family for its size. [Tenor](/best-tenor-banjo/) and [plectrum](/best-plectrum-banjos/) banjos have their own guides. Six-string banjos are lighter than their size suggests: a Goodtime Six-R is 5.5 lb with a resonator on it, because there is no tone ring and the extra hardware is two tuners and a wider neck. A [banjolele](/banjo-vs-banjolele/) is the featherweight of the family at two to three pounds, being an eight-inch pot and a ukulele neck. For how these instruments differ in everything other than weight, [the types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) lays them out side by side, and [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) covers the other number worth knowing before you buy. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [How Much Do Accordions Cost? The Reeds Set the Price, Not the Size](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-accordions-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Accordion](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/accordion/ "Accordion")› How Much Do Accordions Cost? The Reeds Set the Price, Not the Size Hohner builds three accordions with 41 piano keys, 120 bass buttons and four sets of reeds. On their own price list one is €3,326, one is €9,800 and one starts at €31,939. Same key count, same bass count, same number of voices. What separates them is the quality of the reeds inside. That is the answer to what an accordion costs, and it is not the answer most price guides give. Size barely moves the number once you are past the beginner shelf. The reeds move it by a factor of ten. The short answer### A new accordion worth learning on starts around $600. Everything under about $300 is a toy, and the ceiling is about €40,000 Around $600 buys a three-row diatonic button accordion from a real accordion company. A piano accordion with a complete left hand starts near $860. From there the ladder runs to roughly $3,500 for a full-size instrument with ordinary machine-made reeds, about $10,000 once the reeds are hand-finished, and past $30,000 for a made-to-order concert instrument. The second number nobody quotes is servicing: a full overhaul costs $850–1,100, which is more than most accordions people own. **Entry button:** ~$600 **Entry piano:** ~$860 **Full-size, machine reeds:** ~$2,000–3,500 **Hand-finished reeds:** ~$10,000 **Full overhaul:** $850–1,100 ## Table of Contents - [Accordion prices, tier by tier](#accordion-prices-tier-by-tier) - [Why the reeds set the price](#why-the-reeds-set-the-price) - [What under $300 buys](#what-under-300-buys) - [The ladder, rung by rung](#the-ladder-rung-by-rung) - [The costs that come after the accordion](#the-costs-that-come-after-the-accordion) - [What it costs to keep one playing](#what-it-costs-to-keep-one-playing) - [Buying used](#buying-used) - [The top of the market](#the-top-of-the-market) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [How much should I spend on my first accordion?](#how-much-should-i-spend-on-my-first-accordion) - [Why is a bigger accordion not much more expensive?](#why-is-a-bigger-accordion-not-much-more-expensive) - [Is a concertina a cheaper way in?](#is-a-concertina-a-cheaper-way-in) - [Do accordions hold their value?](#do-accordions-hold-their-value) - [What is a cassotto and is it worth paying for?](#what-is-a-cassotto-and-is-it-worth-paying-for) - [Are digital accordions cheaper?](#are-digital-accordions-cheaper) ## Accordion prices, tier by tier Two families of instrument sit under the word accordion. A **piano accordion** has a keyboard on the right and a grid of bass buttons on the left, and it plays in every key. A **button accordion** has buttons on both sides, and it splits again: a **diatonic** one plays only in the two or three keys printed on the box, which is what conjunto, nortñeo, vallenato, Cajun and a great deal of European folk want, while a **chromatic** one plays everything. If what you are pricing is small and hexagonal, that is a concertina, and it is [a different instrument with a different price ladder](https://promusicvault.com/concertina-vs-accordion/). TierPriceWhat it isToy$60–30022 keys, 8 bass, no maker name. Not a small accordion — an accordion with most of it left outEntry diatonic~$60031 buttons, 12 bass, two reed sets, three keys. Hohner PantherEntry piano~$860–94026–34 keys, 48–72 bass, two reed sets. Hohner HohnicaWorking diatonic~$1,200–1,600Same 31 buttons and the same reed grade, better fittings. Hohner Compadre, Corona IIFull-size piano~$2,000–3,50041 keys, 120 bass, three or four voices — and still machine reedsDigital~$2,400Roland FR-1x. No reeds at all, and the price is why it existsHand-finished reeds~$9,000–10,000Cassotto tone chamber, five bass voices. Hohner MattiaHandmade reeds~$9,500–13,000The floor for a genuine *a mano* concert instrumentFlagship€31,939+Hohner Gola, built to the individual player’s specificationTop of market~€40,000Pigini Nòva The euro figures are Hohner’s and Pigini’s own European list prices, which is the only place in this market where a maker publishes anything. Everything in dollars is what the instrument sells for in the United States today. The two are not directly comparable — American distribution sets its own prices, sometimes above the European list and sometimes below it — so treat the euro figures as the shape of one maker’s range rather than as a price you can pay. ## Why the reeds set the price An accordion reed is a steel tongue riveted to an aluminum plate, with a leather or mylar flap acting as a one-way valve. Each plate carries two tongues, one for the push and one for the pull. A 41-key accordion with four voices sounds four separate reeds every time a key goes down, and every one of those has to be fitted individually. There are three grades of them, and the Italian names are on the spec sheets. **Machine reeds** (*voce a mechanica*) are stamped and riveted by machine on a softer plate. **Hand-finished** reeds (*voce tipo a mano*) are stamped from sheet steel but filed, fitted and riveted by hand. **Handmade** reeds (*voce a mano*) start as a ribbon of Swedish blue spring steel, and each tongue is cut, profiled and honed to its own plate by an artisan. Joe Petosa, whose family firm has manufactured accordions and made reeds since 1922, states the manufacturing rule outright: “The cost of complete finished reed assembly should be minimally equal to roughly thirty percent of the price.” He follows it with a figure — a standard-quality 41-note, four-treble, five-bass instrument on genuine handmade reeds “will be around $9,500 plus.” Against that, hand-finished reeds cut the cost by 30 to 60 percent, and machine reeds cut it by 60 to 90 percent. Run those percentages and the whole ladder falls out of one component. Hohner’s own catalogue is the cleanest demonstration of it, because they publish a reed-plate quality row on every model. Amica Forte IV 120Mattia IV 120Gola**Piano keys**414141**Voices**444**Standard basses**120120120**Cassotto**none2 voices, 16′ + 8′2 voices, 16′ + 8′**Bass voices**455**Reed plate quality**standardH2A Mano**Hohner’s list price**€3,326€9,800from €31,939 Three times the price for the second one and ten times for the third, with the key count, the bass count and the voice count identical. The cassotto — a chamber inside the body that two of the reed banks speak into, rounding off the tone — accounts for some of the first step. The reeds account for the rest of it and effectively all of the second. One thing Hohner does not publish anywhere, on any accordion, is where it is built. That is worth knowing before reading anything into a price: for this maker, country of origin is not a specification you can check. The other thing that row shows is where the grades actually sit. Everything Hohner makes from the $600 Panther up to a full-size 41-key, 120-bass, four-voice Amica Forte reads **standard**. Getting past machine reeds costs about three thousand euros of list price on its own, and no amount of extra keys and buttons gets you there. That is the single most useful thing to know before spending money on an accordion: a bigger instrument is not a better one. ## What under $300 buys The bottom of the market runs from about $60 to about $270, and it is the same handful of unbranded boxes rebadged: 22 keys, 8 bass, and a weight low enough to tell you what is missing. A real 26-key student piano accordion weighs about twelve pounds because it contains two full sets of reeds, a reed block for each, wax, valve leathers and a bellows built to hold pressure for years. What fails first on these is the reeds, and it fails in a way that reads as the player’s fault. A reed with too large an air gap needs a shove of bellows pressure before it will speak, and too much pressure chokes it into silence. The tolerance a good reed is set to is around five ten-thousandths of an inch. The window between mute and choked is exactly the thing a beginner has not learned to find yet, so a cheap box teaches them they cannot play. Eight bass buttons is the other half of it. A complete Stradella left hand needs 48 at minimum to give you root, counter-bass, major and minor in every key. Eight gives you a handful of chords in one key, so most written accordion music is simply unplayable on it. ## The ladder, rung by rung ~$600 · The floor for a real instrument ### Hohner Panther G/C/F - 3-row diatonic - 31 buttons - 12 bass - Two reed sets - 4 kg / 9 lb - ~$600 Designed in Germany, built in China, and that is the whole reason a genuine accordion company’s instrument lands here rather than at $1,300. You get the layout, the bellows and the reed voicing of the boxes people gig with, at the price of a mid-range guitar. It has also been reviewed by more buyers than everything else here put together, at 4.6 stars across that whole body — deep enough that a bad batch would show. Two honest limits. It plays in G, C and F and nothing else, chosen when you buy — the F/B♭/E♭ version costs about a hundred dollars more for the same instrument in the nortñeo keys. And Hohner lists the case as a “color carton”, which is a cardboard box. Straps and a method book are in it; a bag is not. **Pros**- The cheapest instrument here that is actually an instrument - Reviewed by more buyers than the rest of this page combined - Light enough to practice standing - Straps and Hohner’s own method book included **Cons**- Three keys only - No register switches — one voice - Ships in a cardboard carton Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gXDw0b) ~$860 · The floor for a piano accordion ### Hohner Hohnica 1304 - Piano accordion - 26 keys - 48 bass - Two reed sets, 3 registers - 12 lb - ~$860 Forty-eight bass is the number that matters. It is where the left hand becomes complete — root, counter-bass, major and minor in all twelve keys — so the method books and the sheet music start working. Below it you are transposing round missing chords forever. The reason to start at 26 keys rather than 34 or 41 is weight. Twelve pounds is manageable for a teenager or a smaller adult through an hour of practice, and a full-size 41-key instrument is over twenty. The compromise is real: 26 keys runs out at the top of the range eventually, and there is no low reed set, so all three register switches are variations on one basic voice. This is the weakest-reviewed thing on the page, and the complaints are consistent — mechanical faults on arrival, sticking keys, a note or two out. That is what an $860 piano accordion is; the same money buys nothing better from anyone. Play every key and every button on the day it arrives. **Pros**- A complete 48-bass left hand at the lowest price it exists for - Light enough for a smaller player - Three register switches **Cons**- Faults on arrival are not rare — check it immediately - No low reed set, so one basic voice - 26 keys is a ceiling you will meet Around $860[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hUJb8m) ~$940 · What another $80 buys ### Hohner Hohnica 1305 - Piano accordion - 34 keys - 72 bass - 5 treble registers - 17 lb - ~$940 Eight more keys, twenty-four more bass buttons and five treble registers instead of three, for about eighty dollars — the best value step on the whole ladder, and it is worth spelling out why the cheaper one is still usually right. Seventeen pounds against twelve is the difference between an instrument you pick up and one you decide to pick up. For an adult who already knows they will stick with it, this is the better buy. For a beginner, a child, or anyone who has not yet built the habit, the extra five pounds costs more practice than the extra range is worth. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Build quality is the same tier as the 1304, so the same first-week inspection applies. **Pros**- 72 bass, 34 keys and five registers for a small step up in money - Range enough for most written accordion music **Cons**- 17 lb is a lot to practice with - Same entry-level build as the 1304 - Too much instrument for a child Around $940[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zL7zzK) ~$1,190 · The next diatonic rung ### Hohner Compadre G/C/F - 3-row diatonic - 31 buttons - Two treble reed sets - 12 bass, 5 bass reed sets - 4 kg / 9 lb - ~$1,190 Roughly double the Panther for the same 31 buttons, the same 12 bass and the same two treble reed sets. The reed grade is the same too — Hohner’s spec row reads standard on both. What the money buys is fittings: an adjustable bass strap, a celluloid fingerboard, a wide-open grille, and a gig bag in the box rather than a cardboard carton. That is a thin justification for six hundred dollars, and it is worth saying so plainly. Hohner themselves describe the Compadre as an instrument for beginners and experienced players alike, which is not a claim that it is a better one. If the Panther’s three keys are the right three, the Compadre gives you nothing you can hear. **Pros**- Adjustable bass strap and celluloid fingerboard - Adjustable bass strap - Gig bag included - Same 9 lb as the Panther **Cons**- Twice the Panther for the same buttons, bass and reed grade - Still three keys only - Nothing here changes how it plays Around $1,190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Uf77tp) ~$1,600 · Where the specification stops explaining the price ### Hohner Corona II G/C/F - 3-row diatonic - 31 buttons - Two treble reed sets - 12 bass, 5 bass reed sets - 4 kg / 9 lb - ~$1,600 Put Hohner’s own spec rows for the Corona II and the Compadre side by side and they are the same instrument. Thirty-one buttons, twelve bass, five bass reed sets, two voices, four kilos, standard reed plates, gig bag. Every published number matches. The Corona costs about four hundred dollars more. What Hohner claims for the difference is noise damping in the buttons — button clatter is audible on a close-miked recording and inaudible in a room — and Ergoline straps rather than plain ones. They also sell the two differently: the Compadre is written up as a beginner’s instrument and the Corona as one for advanced players and professionals. The Corona is the older, better-known name, and it is the one on a great many nortñeo and vallenato records. So this is the honest limit of the diatonic ladder. Above the Compadre you are buying a reputation, a strap and a quieter action, not more instrument, and the reeds stay machine-made all the way to the top of Hohner’s diatonic range. If you want the Corona because it is the Corona, that is a real reason and it is worth knowing it is the only one. **Pros**- Noise-damped buttons - Ergoline straps included - Still only 9 lb - The name most players in this music know **Cons**- Identical to the Compadre on every published spec - Still standard reed plates at $1,600 - Three keys only, like everything below it Around $1,600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y8dQUz) ## The costs that come after the accordion Straps come with every Hohner on this page, so that is one accessory nobody needs to buy. A case is the real one, and only for the models that ship without: the Panther comes in a cardboard carton, and the Hohnica pair come bare. ~$46 · The one accessory that is not optional ### Padded gig bag, 48–72 bass - 18.1″ × 16.5″ × 10.2″ - Fits 48, 60 and 72 bass - Padded, shoulder straps An accordion is a box of wax-mounted reeds and a paper bellows. Knocks, and worse, temperature swings, are what put one out of tune, and a tuning costs more than ten of these. Hohner’s own advice is blunt about the second one: leaving an accordion in a car in summer can reach 70 °C, which warps the wood and cracks the bellows. Sized for the Hohnica 1304 and 1305 and anything else in the 48–72 bass range. A 31-button diatonic needs a smaller bag than this one. Around $46[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wYguLB) ## What it costs to keep one playing This is the half of the answer that decides whether a cheap accordion is cheap. Repair shops publish their rates, and they are consistent across the market: JobTypical priceTuning, piano or chromatic accordion$500–750Tuning, one- to three-row diatonic~$350Spot tuning$5–10 per reed plate, from ~$65One broken reed replaced~$120, then ~$40 each afterLeaking bellows resealed~$175Bass mechanism repair$150–350Full overhaul — tune, re-wax, re-valve$850–1,100 Set those against the ladder and the arithmetic is brutal at the bottom. A piano-accordion tuning costs about what a whole Hohner Panther costs. A full overhaul costs more than any accordion under about $900 — which means that when a $600 instrument goes seriously out, nobody fixes it. That is not an argument against buying one; it is an argument for treating it as a consumable and keeping it out of the sun. Two things follow for a new instrument. Hohner’s own answer to whether you can tune it yourself is one word: “No. Accordions should only be tuned by experienced professionals!” And a new accordion is expected to move — a fine-tuning and reed adjustment after the first twelve months is normal as the reeds break in and the instrument settles into its climate. One quirk worth knowing before you buy a tuner to check anything against. The accordion trade does not use A440. Most instruments are tuned to A442 or A444, so an accordion that reads sharp against a chromatic tuner is very likely correct. ## Buying used Accordions were a mass-market instrument in America until the 1960s, and a great many are still in attics. Serviced second-hand instruments start around $500 for a small 12-bass box and around $1,000 for a mid-century Italian full-size one — Sonola, Titano, Morelli and the rest — which puts a tuned, working vintage accordion at about the price of a new entry-level one, with far better materials in it. That is the good version. The bad version is the free one from a relative, and the repair rates above are why. An unserviced accordion that has sat for thirty years needs the wax renewed, the valve leathers replaced and the whole thing retuned, because wax hardens and cracks and leather curls whether the instrument is played or not. That is the $850–1,100 job, on an instrument you were given for nothing. So the rule for used is the same as for new, inverted: pay for the work, not the instrument. Something already serviced at $1,000 is a genuine bargain. The same accordion unserviced at $200 costs $1,200 and takes several weeks. The signs are audible before you commit. Fluttering, buzzing and popping on sustained notes mean the reed valves need work. A note that will not speak until you shove the bellows, or that dies when you press hard, is a reed problem. Air escaping when everything is closed is a bellows problem. Any one of those is several hundred dollars. ## The top of the market Hohner’s Gola is the most expensive instrument they list, from €31,939. It is 41 keys, four voices and 120 basses — the same numbers as a €3,326 Amica Forte — with *a mano* reeds, two voices in cassotto and eleven registers. Hohner does not build one and put it on a shelf. Each is made to the individual player’s specification, which is why the price begins rather than ends there. It is named after Giovanni Gola, the Italian accordion builder, and Hohner’s own copy points to a rehearsal photograph from the Beatles’ 1967 *Our World* broadcast showing John Lennon holding one. The dearest production accordion is Pigini’s Nòva, at close to €40,000. Pigini puts the difference in parts: over 12,000 individual pieces against a few hundred in an ordinary accordion, each one installed by hand, and more than a year of work — in which their craftspeople complete about twenty of them. Neither is a Stradivarius story. Both are current catalogue instruments from companies that will build you one, and the reason for the price is the same reason as everywhere else on this page, scaled up: reeds cut from steel ribbon and fitted one at a time to a tolerance of about five ten-thousandths of an inch. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much should I spend on my first accordion? Around $600 for a three-row diatonic or around $860 for a piano accordion. Both buy an instrument that will not fight you. If that is out of reach, a serviced second-hand accordion beats anything new under $400 comfortably. [Which one suits which music](https://promusicvault.com/best-accordions-for-beginners/) is a separate question and it matters more than the money. ### Why is a bigger accordion not much more expensive? Because keys and buttons are cheap and reeds are not. Going from 26 keys to 41 adds reed plates of the same grade, which is roughly linear and roughly modest. Going from machine reeds to handmade ones replaces every reed in the instrument with one that took an artisan’s time, and reed assembly is about thirty percent of what a maker charges. ### Is a concertina a cheaper way in? At the very bottom, yes, and clearly. Around $315 buys a 20-button Anglo that is a real instrument with real limits, where $315 spent on an accordion buys nothing. Then the two converge and cross over. It is a [different instrument rather than a small accordion](https://promusicvault.com/concertina-vs-accordion/), so the choice should be about the music, not the price. ### Do accordions hold their value? The good ones do, and the reason is the reeds again. A hand-made instrument from the 1950s still has hand-made reeds in it, and handmade reeds improve with playing rather than wearing out. What dates is the wax, the leathers and the tuning, all of which are serviceable. A machine-reeded instrument has no such floor under it, which is why a $600 accordion is worth very little the moment it needs work. ### What is a cassotto and is it worth paying for? A tone chamber built into the body that two of the reed banks sound into, rounding off the higher harmonics and giving the darker voice associated with jazz and classical playing. It is worth paying for if that is the sound you want, and it is never sold on its own — every instrument that has one also has better reeds, so the two costs arrive together. ### Are digital accordions cheaper? No, and their price tells you what reeds are worth. A Roland FR-1x is about $2,400, which puts it against a full-size acoustic instrument with machine reeds. It never needs tuning, never needs re-waxing and weighs less, and it will not sound like the accordion on the record. More on where the accordion sits among the [keyboard instruments](https://promusicvault.com/keyboard-instruments/). **Categories:** Accordion --- ### [How Many Strings Does a Harp Have? From 7 to 47, and What Each Buys](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) **Published:** July 18, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How Many Strings Does a Harp Have? From 7 to 47, and What Each Buys The harp you are picturing — gold, six feet tall, parked at the back of the orchestra — carries **47 strings**. Lyon & Healy fixed that number around 1900 and nobody has moved it since. Everything else sold as a harp lands somewhere between 7 strings and about 99, and the number is the single most useful thing on the spec sheet. The short answer### 47 on a concert harp. 34 if you want to sit exams. 22 if you just want to learn. Count the strings and divide by seven. A harp gives you seven notes per octave, not twelve — the black notes come from levers or pedals, not from extra strings — so the number in the listing converts directly into octaves, and octaves are what decide whether a piece of music fits on the instrument. **Concert pedal harp:** 47 **Lever harp:** 19–38, usually 34 **Lap harp:** 8–29 **Lyre “harp”:** 7–21, and it is not a harp ## Every kind of harp, by string count InstrumentStringsOctavesWhere you meet it**Concert grand pedal harp**476½Orchestras and conservatoires. Seven pedals, fully chromatic.**Semi-grand / petite pedal harp**40, 44, 465½–6½Same seven pedals on a shorter body, for smaller players and smaller rooms.**Full-size lever harp**34, 36, 385Folk and Celtic playing, therapy work, graded exams. 34 is the standard.**Mid-size lever harp**26–334The usual first floor-standing harp.**Small lever harp**19–253Lap or short stand. Proper technique, narrower repertoire.**Lap harp**8–221–3Children, travel, and finding out cheaply whether you like it.**Welsh triple harp**~95, in three rows5Welsh tradition. Chromatic with no mechanism at all.**Double-strung harp**44–763–5Two matching rows. Improvisers and duet-with-yourself playing.**Cross-strung harp**~60–74, two crossing rows4–5Chromatic like a keyboard, no levers.**Paraguayan harp**32–46, usually 365Latin American folk. Diatonic, no levers.**Kora** (West Africa)213Gourd-bodied bridge harp, played by griots.**Saung** (Burma)162Arched harp with no pillar. One of the oldest designs still played.**Lyre, sold as “lyre harp”**7, 10, 16, 19, 211–2½Sold everywhere online. Structurally not a harp. ## Why the number tells you so much Sit at a piano and play only the white keys. That is a harp. There is no string waiting to give you an F♯ — the instrument runs C, D, E, F, G, A, B and starts again, seven strings to the octave, all the way up. Divide and you get the range: - **7–8 strings** — a single octave. Nursery tunes, and not much beyond them. - **12–19 strings** — two octaves. A tune in the right hand, a sparse accompaniment beneath it. - **22–26 strings** — three octaves. Enough space that the hands stop competing for the same strings. - **29–33 strings** — four octaves. Most printed folk and Celtic arrangements will fit as written. - **34–38 strings** — five octaves. Exam pieces and ensemble parts, no transposing. - **40–47 strings** — six and a half. Orchestral writing, which keeps reaching below anything a lever harp owns. So where do the sharps and flats live? In hardware. A lever harp puts a small metal lever at the top of each string; engaging it pinches the string shorter and raises it a semitone. You set them before you start, and flip one mid-piece if you have a spare hand. A pedal harp does the same job with seven foot pedals, each governing every string of one letter across the whole instrument, each with three positions — flat, natural, sharp. That is why an orchestral harpist can play anything while both hands stay on the strings. We compare the two systems in [lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/), and count the pedals in [how many pedals a harp has](/pedals-on-harp/). ## How many strings you need If exams are anywhere in the plan, the syllabus has already answered this and the answer is unusually precise. ABRSM states that its non-pedal harp pieces **from Grade 3 onward are generally written for an instrument with at least 34 strings**, in E-tuning, with the lowest string a C two octaves below middle C. Grades 1 and 2 can be managed on around 27. The pedal-harp line in the same syllabus is the one that catches people out: pieces **from Grade 4 assume a minimum of 46 strings**. A 40- or 44-string petite pedal harp has all seven pedals and still falls short of that bar, which is worth knowing before spending five figures on one. Outside the exam system, 22 is the number to beat. Three octaves is roughly where the left hand stops being decorative, and a levered 22 lets you change key rather than retune the instrument. Below that you are buying something to try, not something to study on — a 15-string harp will be short of notes inside a few months, and the money does not come back. Musicmakers, who have sold harp kits for decades, push back on all of this, and they have a point: you no more need 36 strings to learn the harp than you need a 300-page book to learn to read. Levers can be fitted later, and wanting to play matters more than the specification. That argument is convincing about the gap between 34 and 36. It is much less convincing about the gap between 15 and 22, where you are choosing whether the left hand has anywhere to go. Three instruments mark out the affordable end of the range. Each is a true harp — pillar, neck, soundbox, strings passing through the board — rather than a lyre with “harp” in its title. 15 strings · two octaves ### AKLOT 15-String Mahogany Harp - 15 strings - 2 octaves - No levers - Mahogany, 21″ long - Gig bag, strap, wrench - Around $150 Two octaves on a frame about 21 inches long. That is enough to carry a melody with something simple underneath it, and not enough for two hands to work independently. The strings follow the standard color convention, so the navigation habits you build here transfer intact to a larger harp. No levers, which means one key and no way out of it, and no spare string set in the box. Around $150[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/AKLOT-Mahogany-Beginner-International-Standard/dp/B093L65Z2R?crid=3G8U0GDBGELIW&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qwVxOjNvWhM8ALLIA3BPmSnNKnLSrf236msv_sYacBK_5mb3NIaTaFX5biX2eD264J9o5g8h3qR_AYO9ScZ7n_Ru9t01I-w5HwxJ6WoXK1XVXMhXah5-DTevWUNoItrvHYch6YJ0lHjYou2ky611chKZt1qTkm0tZCQ-rUAVpciMS8jsKf9TebNd4af25QW60k2UtGCkwL_rQq_KDFSmHLAyuMeo0CaVTUKLTsCR-tbcrBYUM2wx1-sRcuNccOybDbRBh85b9k0kp-sBJMXJs6fOAXKxIWGy2yiodcPxc_U.DLE5D0AlzFXUCY4qyJYMisBLWfhgpJFo3sIUZhpXI6k&dib_tag=se&keywords=beginner%2Bharp&qid=1745369903&sprefix=beginner%2Bharp%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-2&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=1ef9b6fba411f197bc991eff00ccbcf5&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) 19 strings · F3 to C6 ### LOTKEY 19-String Mahogany Harp - 19 strings - F3–C6, just under 3 octaves - No levers - Solid mahogany, 29in - Gig bag, strap, wrench, tutor book - Around $220 The extra $70 over the AKLOT buys four more strings and a solid mahogany body in place of laminate. The more valuable difference is the height: at 29 inches this one stands on the floor and leans back against your shoulder, which is how a real harp is played, so the posture you learn is the posture you keep. F3 to C6 takes in a lot of hymn and folk material. Still no levers. Around $220[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Lotkey-Strings-Beginner-Tuning-Wrench/dp/B0BFDLVWNT?crid=3BW526RNHA5IR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.2Lg2GiyMztWQYYFjoOrewI83Gslq2oQiywC-3mijlKgNIXT_wdxa2KYQmLlLawdnWJgRJc7MsLEBUQvyEXs5vw58ERGr-ZTc6o_nL9DewXgGzPWTy5dozIVQ-8yRv8kRHu2xOkS_zEDd_9znexFH22AhO5IaWK5ajI2HMLeNteFU1rvLYeyQ8l4z94vk_BRzrr0bCAo4MVSYhBmza6HLupZDeu5h66Qziz-bZ6Y0BOFEEfYa6_KJD73u4FLR1FoYYTzQ99ngzUqxXoLdbnb3jd4Ni7KFaR0UNM9xszws4ME.95ry7gLUSF5yq0Q_4fVAG4VRnqH-NGkdt8jY19mPijM&dib_tag=se&keywords=beginner%2Bharp&qid=1745370084&sprefix=beginner%2Bharp%2Caps%2C148&sr=8-3&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=62dd1fd205d98f50356997566ae0ff1a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) 22 strings · three octaves, fully levered ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings, with Chelby Levers - 22 strings - 3 octaves - Chelby lever on every string - Sheesham - Wrench, spare strings, method book - Around $600 Three times the price of the LOTKEY, for the two things none of the cheaper harps can do: a third octave, and a lever on all 22 strings so the key is a decision rather than a tuning session. It is the smallest harp here that plays the standard beginner repertoire as printed, and the one to buy if lessons are booked. On price it is unremarkable rather than a steal — around $550 is what this harp costs, and nobody at any price includes a case. Roosebeck also sells the Heather without levers, so check the lever count on whatever listing you land on. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2) Larger instruments, including the 29-string Minstrel, are in [the best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/). If the player is a child, [harps for kids](/harps-for-kids/) deals with sizes and reach. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Why a concert harp stops at 47 Six and a half octaves is an odd place to stop, and both ends of the instrument explain themselves. A concert harp spans C♭1 to G♭7 — from three octaves below middle C to three and a half above. It gives up one note short of a seventh complete octave because the strings up there are a couple of inches long and barely speak; the top of a harp is already closer to a tap than a tone, and another string would be one nobody could use musically. The bass end is limited by physics rather than musicality. Those strings are wire-wound and roughly five feet long, and everything on the instrument adds up to about a ton of tension pulling the frame together. That load is what the front pillar is for, and it is most of why a concert harp weighs 80 pounds. Extra bass strings cost length, mass and money all at once — which is exactly why the smaller pedal harps shed strings from the bottom and leave the treble alone. The rest of that bill is itemised in [why harps are so expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/), and the figures by size are in [how much a harp weighs](/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/). ## How harpists count the strings Harp octave numbers run backward compared with everyone else’s: they get *larger* as the pitch gets *lower*. Each octave is counted downward from E to F, so the top E on a full-size harp is first-octave E and the E below it is second-octave E. The handful of strings sitting above that top E belong to the **0 octave**. Middle C is fourth-octave C. The number is written first, so harpists say and write 4C, never C4 — which in ordinary pitch notation would be a different note entirely. Applied to a concert harp, the bottom string is 7C and the top is 0G, and those labels account for the whole instrument: two strings in the 0 octave, six full octaves of seven, and three strings left over at the bottom. Two, plus forty-two, plus three. This is worth learning before you need a replacement, because string packets, gauge charts and dealer part numbers are all labeled this way. Asking for a fourth-octave C when you meant C4 gets you a string of the wrong gauge and often the wrong material — gut, nylon and wire-wound all appear at different points up the instrument. Finding your place is handled by color, and the scheme is universal: **every C is red, every F is black** (blue on some makes). Everything else is left natural. With no frets and 34 near-identical strings, those two colors are the entire navigation system, and sight-reading depends on them. It also puts the budget listings in perspective — the ones selling “colored strings for easy learning” are not adding a feature, they are doing what every harp ever built already does. When one goes, [changing a harp string](/changing-harp-strings/) has the procedure and [tuning a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) has the rest. ## The harps that go past 47 Anything with more than 47 strings belongs to a design that answered the chromatic problem with strings instead of machinery. The **Welsh triple harp** stacks three rows on one neck. The two outer rows are tuned identically and diatonically; the middle row holds the sharps and flats, and you reach them by pushing a finger through the gap between the outer strings. A typical instrument comes to about 95 strings — roughly 37, 34 and 27 across the three rows — with surviving examples up near 99. It is completely chromatic, has no moving parts, and arrived in Wales from Italy late in the 17th century, decades before anyone built a pedal. The catch is obvious the moment you try it: the notes you want are behind the notes you do not. A **double-strung harp** is a gentler idea — two identical diatonic rows, one on each side of the neck, letting both hands reach the same note and producing echoes a single harp cannot. Twenty-six courses means 52 strings. A **cross-strung harp** separates naturals and accidentals into two rows that cross at an angle in the middle, buying keyboard-style freedom at the cost of a technique you will not find a teacher for easily. ## “Lyre harps” are lyres, and they have 7 to 21 strings Search for a cheap harp and most of what comes back is a lyre: a flat wooden frame, often heart-shaped, at $40 to $100. The naming is not the interesting part — the construction is. A harp’s strings enter the soundboard almost perpendicular to it and pull against it. A lyre’s strings lie flat across the face of the board and pass over a bridge, the same arrangement as a guitar. That single difference is why a lyre weighs two pounds instead of twenty, costs what it costs, and sounds bright and quick where a harp sounds warm and long. They come with 7, 10, 16, 19 or 21 strings. Seven is one octave, which exhausts itself almost immediately; 16 is the first size that can carry ordinary tunes. None of them has levers, so a change of key means going string by string with a tuning wrench. [Lyre vs. harp](/lyre-vs-harp/) sets the two side by side, and [the best lyre harps](/best-lyre-harps/) covers which ones are worth the money if a lyre is genuinely what you are after. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the standard number of strings on a harp? Forty-seven, on a concert pedal harp, unchanged for over a century. Lever harps have no equivalent standard — 34 is the most common full size, but 19 through 38 are all ordinary. ### How many strings does a beginner harp have? Most land between 22 and 29. Twenty-two is the practical floor for playing real harp music; 26 to 29 gives you somewhere to grow. Make it 34 if graded exams are the destination. ### Why are there no strings for the black notes? Forty-seven strings already sit close enough together to demand accurate hands. Adding the chromatic notes would mean about 80 strings in the same width, too tight to pluck cleanly and impossible to navigate at speed. Levers and pedals retune existing strings instead. The instruments that did take the other route, like the Welsh triple harp, ended up with 95 strings and a technique to match. ### Can I learn on a 47-string pedal harp? You can, and any serious classical student ends up there. It is rarely where people start: a concert harp is roughly $20,000 new, weighs 80 pounds, and asks you to learn footwork alongside two independent hands. The usual path is a lever harp first, with a pedal harp rented once the repertoire insists. ### Are more strings better? To about 34, yes, because each seven is another octave of playable music. After that the returns flatten: the additional strings are bass notes the lever repertoire seldom calls for, and they arrive with weight, length and cost. For most players a 38 is not a better harp than a 34, just a heavier one to move. ### How many strings does a lyre harp have? Seven, 10, 16, 19 or 21 — though it is a lyre, not a harp, whatever the product title claims. Sixteen is the smallest worth owning; a seven-string runs out of notes before most tunes finish. ### What do the red and black strings mean? They are landmarks. Red marks every C and black — blue on some instruments — marks every F, on every lever and pedal harp made. Without them there would be no way to tell one string from another while your eyes are on the music. ## The short version Forty-seven on a concert harp, 34 for exam work, 22 for a first instrument worth practicing on, and seven strings to an octave everywhere. Under 19 strings you are buying a taster or a lyre; over 47 you are buying extra rows of strings in place of a mechanism. Divide by seven and you will know what any listing is actually offering you. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How Many Strings Does a Mandolin Have? Eight, in Four Courses](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/mandolin/ "Mandolin")› How Many Strings Does a Mandolin Have? Eight, in Four Courses A mandolin has eight strings, arranged as four pairs and tuned G–D–A–E — the same four pitches as a violin, low to high. Each pair is one *course*, and both strings in a course are tuned to exactly the same note and fretted and picked together. So a mandolin has eight strings but only four notes of open tuning, and a player thinks in four, not eight. The short answer### Eight strings, in four doubled courses, tuned G–D–A–E That covers effectively every mandolin sold today, from a $100 laminate to a hand-carved bluegrass instrument. The pairs are tuned in unison rather than in octaves, which is what separates a mandolin from a 12-string guitar. Everything else on this page — the four-string electrics, the six-string Milanese, the twelve-string tricordia — is either historical or a specialist instrument, and none of it is what a shop means by “a mandolin”. Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qwa6K3) **Strings:** 8 **Courses:** 4 **Tuning:** G3–D4–A4–E5 **Pairs tuned:** in unison, not octaves ## Every string count a mandolin has ever had StringsArrangementInstrumentTuningWhere you meet it**8**4 courses of 2**The standard mandolin**G–D–A–EEverywhere. This is the answer.44 singleBrescian and Cremonese mandolins; most solid-body electricsG–D–A–EMuseums, and plugged-in players55 singleFive-string electric mandolinC–G–D–A–EJazz and Western swing66 singleMilanese, or Lombard, mandoling–b–e′–a′–d″–g″18th and 19th century Italy105 courses of 2Extended-range mandolinC–G–D–A–EA handful of modern builds124 courses of 3Tricordia, or mandriolaG–D–A–EMexican folk music126 courses of 2Genoese mandoline–a–d′–g′–b–e″Historic Italian, effectively extinct Two things fall out of that table. The instruments with fewer strings are not simplified mandolins — a four-string Brescian is tuned G–D–A–E exactly like the modern one, it just has one string per note instead of two. And the six-string Milanese is not a mandolin with three pairs. It is six single strings tuned in fourths, closer to a small guitar than to anything with a G–D–A–E neck. ## Why Does a Mandolin Have 8 Strings? Because a plucked steel string dies fast, and the mandolin had to be heard in a room with no amplification in it. Strike a note on a mandolin and it is most of the way to silence in about a second. That is the instrument’s whole character — the reason it chops and jangles instead of ringing like a bowed [violin](/mandolin-vs-violin/). Doubling each string is the fix that was available in the 1700s: two strings put roughly twice the energy into the top, so the note is louder before it starts decaying. The second effect is the one you actually hear. No two strings are ever in perfect agreement — they land a few cents apart and drift as they warm — so a doubled course beats gently against itself. That shimmer is the mandolin sound. Take one string out of each pair and the instrument still plays every note, but it goes thin and dry. It also explains tremolo. A mandolin holds a long note by picking it many times a second across a doubled course, and eight strings give that technique something to work with that four would not. The bill for all this arrives at tuning time. Eight strings is eight tuning pegs, and a pair that is three cents out sounds sour in a way that is hard to locate by ear — you hear that something is wrong without hearing *which* string is wrong. That is the honest downside of the design, and it is why almost every mandolin player owns a clip-on tuner. ## Four strings and five: the single-strung mandolins Two separate traditions land on four strings, three centuries apart. The historical one is the Brescian and Cremonese mandolin, which carried four single gut strings tuned in fifths — the same G–D–A–E as today, without the doubling. It was a quieter, softer instrument than the Neapolitan that replaced it, which is precisely why the Neapolitan replaced it. The modern one is electric. Once a pickup is doing the work of being loud, the doubled courses stop earning their keep and start costing you: they are harder to bend, harder to intonate and muddier through an amp. So solid-body mandolins are commonly built with four single strings in the same G–D–A–E. Fender’s Mandocaster ran from 1956 to 1976 on that pattern; Kentucky’s KM-300E is a current one, four single strings on a 13.87-inch scale, which is mandolin length exactly. Five single strings is the same idea with a low C added below the G, giving C–G–D–A–E and covering the mandolin’s range plus the [mandola’s](/types-of-mandolins/) in one neck. Paul Bigsby built one for Tiny Moore in 1952 and it became the Western swing sound. Neither is a beginner instrument, and neither takes a standard string set. A four-string electric needs four singles rather than a set of eight, and a five-string needs a low C that no mandolin set contains. ## Six strings: the Milanese mandolin The Milanese mandolin — also called the Lombard, and descended fairly directly from the mandore — has six single strings, not three pairs. Three are wire trebles, three are gut or wire-wrapped silk basses, and they are tuned in fourths rather than fifths: g–b–e′–a′–d″–g″, which is a guitar’s intervals rather than a mandolin’s. That tuning is the point. Everything you learn on a modern mandolin neck transfers to a mandola, an octave mandolin or a mandocello, because they are all in fifths. None of it transfers to a Milanese. It is a different instrument with a similar body, it belongs to a repertoire that ended in the nineteenth century, and Pietro Armanini wrote a whole method book for it that nobody now uses. If you have inherited a bowlback with six tuners and no pairs, that is probably what you have, and it is not going to take a standard mandolin string set. ## Ten strings: five courses and a low C Add a fifth doubled course below the G and you get ten strings tuned C–G–D–A–E. Gold Tone’s F-10 is the best-known example, on a mandola-sized body so the low C has enough air behind it to speak. The idea is to get a mandolin and a mandola out of one instrument, and it half works. You do get the range. What you also get is a wider neck, ten strings to keep in tune, no string sets made for it, and a low C that on anything smaller than a mandola body sounds tubby rather than deep. It is a second or third instrument for someone who already knows what they want from it, not a smarter way to buy your first mandolin. ## Twelve strings, arrived at two different ways The **tricordia** keeps the mandolin’s four courses and puts three strings in each. It is Mexican, it is built for the fuller, thicker tremolo that [folk ensemble playing](/best-banjo-for-folk-music/) wants, and it comes in two flavors: Mexican tricordias are almost always tuned in unison, while the European mandriola usually has the lowest string of each course dropped an octave. That octave version is much closer to a 12-string guitar in effect. The **Genoese** mandolin got to twelve from the other direction — six courses of two, tuned e–a–d′–g′–b–e″, which is guitar tuning an octave up. It is the same idea as the Milanese with the strings doubled, and like the Milanese it is essentially extinct outside collections. So “twelve-string mandolin” does not identify an instrument on its own. Four courses of three and six courses of two are different instruments, in different tunings, from different countries. ## Where the count stops Twelve is the top. There is no eight-course mandolin, historical or modern, and nothing in the family goes past four courses of three or six courses of two. The instrument that beats it is the Mexican **bandolón**, which has eighteen strings in six courses of three, tuned in fourths across roughly a guitar’s range. It looks like an oversized flatback mandolin and it sat at the center of the *orquesta típica* from the 1880s, but it is a bandolón — different tuning, different range, different music. Counting it as a mandolin is how the number keeps creeping upward. ## Eight strings does not tell you which instrument it is Every full-sized member of the mandolin family has eight strings in four courses. What separates them is scale length and where those four courses sit. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) InstrumentStringsTuningScale length**Mandolin**8G3–D4–A4–E513⅞–14″Mandola8C3–G3–D4–A415½–17″Octave mandolin8G2–D3–A3–E419–24″Mandocello8C2–G2–D3–A324¾–27″Mandobass4, singleE1–A1–D2–G2~42″ The mandobass is the exception that proves the rule: at that length and tension, doubling the strings would be unplayable, so it does not. It is also the one member of the family you will almost certainly never see. The [full breakdown of the family and the body shapes](/types-of-mandolins/) covers the rest. ## What eight strings means when you buy strings This is where the string count stops being trivia. A mandolin set contains eight strings — two identical E, two identical A, two wound D, two wound G — and you replace all eight together. Putting one fresh string next to a played-in one inside the same course is what makes a pair beat audibly instead of shimmering, and no amount of tuning will fix it. Three things to know before you order: - **Gauge is named for the E string.** Light sets run 10–38, mediums 11–40. Mediums are the standard for bluegrass and give the chop its bite; lights are easier under the fingers and kinder to an older or lightly built instrument. - **Mandolin strings are loop end.** The tailpiece has hooks, not pin holes, so a guitar-style ball end is no use. Every set sold as a mandolin set is loop end. - **Both strings of a course are the same gauge.** That is what makes it a unison course rather than an octave one — an important difference if you ever find yourself buying singles for a ten-string or a tricordia, neither of which has a set made for it. The default eight-string set ### D’Addario EJ74 Phosphor Bronze, Medium - 8 strings - 11–40 medium - Loop end - Phosphor bronze - ~$10 The set most mandolins leave the shop with and most players come back to. Phosphor bronze on the wound D and G, plain steel on the A and E, with enough tension to drive a top properly without making the instrument hard work. If your mandolin is old, lightly built, or you simply find mediums stiff, the EJ73 is the same set in 10–38. **Pros**- The reference set — almost every setup guide assumes it - Warm on the wound courses, bright on top - Cheap enough to change on schedule rather than when they die **Cons**- Mediums are a lot of tension for a light vintage bowlback - Phosphor bronze dulls faster than coated strings on sweaty hands Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3xwwWX7) ## Eight strings, four pitches Tuning a mandolin is four decisions made twice. You bring both strings of a course to the same pitch, and the accuracy that matters is not the note being right — it is the two strings agreeing with each other. A pair a few cents apart still reads as “G” on a tuner needle and still sounds wrong in the room. Which is why a clip-on chromatic tuner is close to mandatory here in a way it is not on a guitar. It reads the vibration through the headstock rather than the sound, so it works one string at a time in a noisy room, and a display fine enough to show cents is what lets you close a pair properly. [The full tuning walkthrough is here.](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) For closing the pairs ### D’Addario NS Micro clip-on tuner - Chromatic - Piezo, not microphone - 410–480Hz - Tri-color display - ~$20 Small enough to live behind the headstock permanently and stay there with the mandolin in its case, which matters more than it sounds — the tuner you own but left at home is worth nothing. It reads vibration through the clamp rather than picking up sound, so a second instrument playing nearby does not confuse it, and the screen goes red, yellow and green as you close in. D’Addario builds the NS Micro in several variants, and the names are not obvious: the **Clip-On** is the headstock clamp described here, and it is the one you want on a mandolin. **Pros**- Fine enough resolution to match the two strings of a course - Ignores ambient noise entirely - Stays on the instrument in the case **Cons**- The display is genuinely small - CR2032 battery rather than rechargeable Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3YHGFFU) ## The eight-string to buy if you are starting Nothing on this page changes the recommendation: buy a standard eight-string A-style. Every teacher, every tab book, every string set and every piece of advice on this site assumes four courses of two in G–D–A–E, and stepping outside that at the start means solving problems nobody else in the room has. The standard configuration, built well ### Ibanez M510 - 8 strings, 4 courses - A-style - Laminated spruce over sapele - Purpleheart board, 13.78″ scale - ~$200 Around $200 is where a mandolin stops feeling like a toy. The M510’s fretwork and neck are a clear step above the sub-$150 field, and the tone is bright and defined enough to hold its own against other instruments rather than disappearing behind them. Laminated spruce over sapele, purpleheart board and bridge, twenty frets on a 13.78-inch scale — an entirely ordinary specification, executed properly. It ships with light factory strings, which flatters the action and undersells the top. A set of mediums is the first upgrade and it costs ten dollars. **Pros**- Fretwork well ahead of the budget field - Bright and articulate in an ensemble - Standard scale, so every tab and method book fits **Cons**- Nothing in the box — no case, no tuner, no picks - Laminated throughout, so it will not open up with age Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qwa6K3) Below that there are decent laminates around $100 — the [beginner picks are here](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) — and above it the money goes into a carved solid top, which is a real difference rather than a cosmetic one. [What each budget actually buys](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) is worth reading before you commit, and if you are choosing between shapes, [A-style versus F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) settles that in one page. ## FAQs ### How many strings does a mandolin have? Eight, arranged as four pairs called courses and tuned G–D–A–E. Both strings in a pair are tuned to the same pitch and played as one, so the instrument has eight strings but only four notes. ### Are all mandolins 8-stringed instruments? Effectively every mandolin sold today has eight. The exceptions are historical types — the four-string Brescian, the six-string Milanese, the twelve-string Genoese — plus the Mexican tricordia with twelve, rare ten-string builds, and solid-body electrics, which are often single-strung with four or five. ### Why are mandolin strings in pairs? Volume and shimmer. A plucked steel note decays in about a second, and two strings put roughly twice the energy into the top before that decay starts. Because the two are never in perfect agreement, the pair also beats gently against itself, which is the characteristic mandolin ring. ### What is the tuning for a mandolin? G3–D4–A4–E5, low to high, in fifths — the same pitches as a violin. Each pair is tuned in unison, not in octaves. ### Is a mandolin the same as a 12-string guitar with doubled strings? No. A 12-string guitar doubles its lower four courses at the octave, which is where its jangle comes from. A mandolin doubles all four courses in unison, on a 14-inch scale, tuned in fifths rather than fourths. ### What is the difference between a mandolin and a mandola? Both have eight strings in four courses. The mandola is tuned C–G–D–A, a fifth below the mandolin, on a 15½ to 17 inch scale rather than about 14. The fingering patterns are identical, so the notes simply move. ### Can you play a mandolin with a broken string? Yes — every note is still there, because the missing string has a twin. The instrument goes noticeably thinner and quieter on that course, and the surviving string will pull the bridge slightly out of balance, so it is a way to finish a gig rather than a way to carry on. ### How often should I change mandolin strings? It depends entirely on playing time and hand chemistry, not on the calendar. The tell is the wound G and D going dull and refusing to intonate cleanly up the neck. An hour a day usually means every couple of months; playing out several nights a week means far more often. Always change all eight together. **Categories:** Mandolin --- ### [How Many Strings Does a Banjo Have? Five, and One of Them Is Short](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) **Published:** March 30, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How Many Strings Does a Banjo Have? Five, and One of Them Is Short A banjo has five strings. Four of them run the length of the neck like any other stringed instrument, and the fifth stops at the fifth fret, where it has its own tuning peg poking out of the side of the neck. That short fifth string is the whole instrument in miniature — it is why a banjo sounds like a banjo, and it is the reason the count is odd in the first place. Four- and six-string banjos are also real instruments in wide use, and they are not stripped-down or added-to five-strings. They are different instruments, tuned differently and played with different hands. The short answer### Five strings, tuned gDGBD — and the short fifth is the highest-pitched of them That is the banjo in bluegrass, in clawhammer, in old-time and in almost every photograph of one. A four-string banjo is a tenor or a plectrum, both of them jazz and Irish instruments played with a flat pick. A six-string is a banjo body with a guitar neck, tuned EADGBE. If nobody has told you otherwise, five is the answer. Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bRNdui) **Strings:** 5 **Tuning:** G4–D3–G3–B3–D4 **Fifth string:** starts at the 5th fret **Scale:** about 26 inches ## Every banjo, counted StringsInstrumentTuningWhat it playsWhere you meet it**5****The standard banjo**gDGBDBluegrass, old-time, clawhammer, folkEverywhere. This is the answer.4Tenor banjoCGDA, or GDAE for IrishTrad jazz, Irish session tunesDance bands and sessions4Plectrum banjoCGBDTrad jazz, ragtime, chord melody1920s repertoire, still played4BanjoleleGCEAUkulele songs, louderMusic hall, and travel6Six-string banjo, or banjitarEADGBEWhatever a guitarist already playsGuitarists crossing over5Long-neck five-stringeEBEG#BFolk revival songs in low keysPete Seeger’s design, still built5Zither banjogDGBDVictorian and Edwardian parlour musicBritain, mostly secondhand8Banjo-mandolinGDAE, in four pairsMandolin and fiddle tunes, with cutAttics, and the secondhand market Two of those rows look like the same instrument and are not. A plectrum banjo has 22 frets on a neck about 26 inches long — the same neck as a five-string, without the short string. A tenor has 17 or 19 frets on a scale between about 20 and 23 inches, and is tuned in fifths. [Plectrum versus tenor](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) works through the difference, and [the full family](/types-of-banjos/) covers the bodies, the resonators and the rest. ## The fifth string is the strange one On a five-string banjo in standard open G tuning, the strings from the fourth to the first are D3, G3, B3 and D4 — low to high, as you would expect. The fifth string is G4. It is the highest-pitched string on the instrument, and it sits closest to your thumb rather than furthest from it. That inversion is the point. The fifth string is a drone: your thumb strikes it on the way past, at the same pitch every time, while the fingers underneath it play the melody. Roll the right hand through a repeating pattern with that high G falling in the gaps and you have the sound people mean by “banjo”. Take the string away and the same right hand produces something else entirely. The construction follows from the tuning. To get a plain .010 steel string up to G4 you have to shorten it, so the fifth string leaves the neck at the fifth fret instead of the nut — about 19¾ inches of speaking length against the 26¼ inches of the others. Its tuning peg cannot live on the headstock either, so it is mounted in the side of the neck at the same fret, which is why a banjo headstock carries four tuners and a banjo neck has one growing out of it. - **You cannot fret it below the fifth fret.** There is no neck under it there. The drone is fixed at G unless you retune it. - **A capo does not catch it.** Clamp a normal capo at the second fret and the fifth string is still in open G against a banjo now in A. The fixes are a sliding fifth-string capo on a rail, or small spikes set into the fingerboard at the seventh and ninth frets that the string hooks under. - **It is the same gauge as the first string.** In a medium set both are .010. The length is doing all the work, which is worth knowing the first time you have a set open in front of you and two identical strings in your hand. ## Which banjo do you have? Count the tuners If you have inherited something, or are looking at a photograph, the tuners settle it faster than the strings do — strings go missing, tuners do not. - **Four at the headstock, one in the side of the neck:** five-string. The commonest banjo by a wide margin. - **Six at the headstock, no side peg:** six-string banjo. The headstock will be guitar-shaped, usually three a side. - **Four at the headstock, no side peg, long neck:** plectrum. Count the frets — 22, and the neck is about as long as a guitar’s. - **Four at the headstock, no side peg, short neck:** tenor. 17 or 19 frets, and the whole instrument looks slightly compressed next to a plectrum. - **Four tuners on something the size of a ukulele:** banjolele. The pot is typically 8 inches across rather than 11. - **Eight tuners, four either side:** banjo-mandolin. The strings run in four pairs. - **Five tuners, all at the headstock, closed back:** zither banjo. The fifth string runs through a tunnel bored under the fingerboard from the fifth fret and comes out at the peghead, so the peg that would be in the side of the neck is not there. That last one is a British instrument. Alfred Cammeyer built the first in the late 1880s and took it to London in 1888, where it became the parlour banjo of the period; the tunnelled fifth string was his solution to the peg that catches on everything. They turn up regularly in the UK secondhand market and almost never anywhere else. ## So which one should you buy? Five strings, unless you have a specific reason not to. It is the instrument every tutorial, every tab book and every online lesson is written for, and it is the only one that will get you to the sound most people are imagining when they decide they want a banjo. The four- and six-string instruments are for players arriving from somewhere else — from a mandolin, a tenor guitar, a jazz band or a guitar. The cheap way to find out if you like it ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - 5 strings - Geared 5th tuner - Removable resonator - Remo head - ~$175 A budget import, and honest about it, but it has the two things that matter at this price: a geared fifth-string tuner rather than a friction peg, and a resonator that unbolts, so the same banjo can be loud for bluegrass or open-backed for clawhammer while you work out which you are. Maple and mahogany shell, mahogany neck, purpleheart fingerboard. Put another $50 to $100 aside for a setup — the bridge placement and the head tension decide whether a cheap banjo plays in tune, and no factory at this price sets them properly. **Pros**- Geared fifth tuner holds the drone where a friction peg slips - Resonator comes off, so it covers both playing styles - Cheap enough to find out whether the instrument suits you **Cons**- Needs a setup before it plays properly - Heavy — most of the weight is in the resonator - Nothing about it will still satisfy you in three years Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bRNdui) The one you keep ### Deering Goodtime Openback - 5 strings - 26¼” scale - 22 frets - 4.5 lb - ~$600 Made in California, and the instrument most players who stay with the banjo end up owning early. It is light enough to practice with for an hour without your shoulder complaining, it arrives playable, and the fifth-string peg and the geared tuners hold. Openback means no resonator, which is the old-time and clawhammer configuration; the resonator model is heavier and louder and aimed at bluegrass. Deering sells it at their own list price, so there is no discount to hunt for. **Pros**- Plays properly out of the box, which nothing at $175 does - Four and a half pounds — light for a five-string with 22 frets - Holds its value if you decide the banjo is not for you **Cons**- Three times the money of a first-instrument import - Openback is the wrong end of the family for bluegrass volume - No fifth-string capo or spikes, so playing in other keys is a job for later Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x59KfS) Between $175 and $600 sit a good many instruments worth having. [The beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) compare six of them, and [the under-$200 guide](/best-banjo-under-200/) covers what the cheap end is really like. ### If four strings is what you actually want Two questions decide it. Are you playing Irish tunes or trad jazz, and do you want to bring a mandolin or fiddle player’s fingering with you? Tuned in fifths, a tenor banjo hands a fiddler everything they already know. A plectrum keeps the five-string’s neck and scale and simply drops the drone, which suits chord-melody jazz and anyone arriving from a five-string. The four-string to start on ### Deering Goodtime Openback 19-Fret Tenor - 4 strings - 19 frets - ~23″ scale - 4.5 lb - ~$600 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The 19-fret neck is the one most professional Irish players use, and the extra scale length over a 17-fret tenor gives the notes more body under a bow-driven session. Same American-made pot and neck as the five-string Goodtime, same weight. Restring it GDAE and it is an Irish tenor — nothing in the construction changes, and the label on the box is not what makes the difference. **Pros**- The fret count Irish players actually use - Light enough for a long session - Takes either tuning without modification **Cons**- 17-fret necks suit small hands better - Four-string banjos worth owning start around this money - Openback, so it will not cut through a loud band Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fXuLD2) There are dedicated picks for [tenor banjos](/best-tenor-banjo/) and [plectrum banjos](/best-plectrum-banjos/) if you already know which of the two you are after. ### If six strings is what you actually want A six-string banjo is tuned EADGBE, so every chord shape and every scale a guitarist knows is correct on it from the first minute. That is the entire appeal and it is a real one. What it will not give you is the five-string’s sound, because that sound comes from the drone and from rolls played around it — a six-string in a guitarist’s hands produces guitar music with a banjo’s attack. The six-string to try the idea on ### Jameson 6-String Banjo Guitar - 6 strings - EADGBE - Removable resonator - Gig bag included - ~$175 The same instrument as the five-string above with a guitar neck on it, and at this price that is the sensible way to discover whether a banjo body under your existing chord shapes is something you will use. Serious six-strings start at three or four times the money. Take the resonator off and it becomes a quieter, dryer thing worth playing in a room. **Pros**- Playable in the first minute if you play guitar - Bag included, which the five-string does not have - Cheap enough to treat as an experiment **Cons**- Needs a setup, same as its five-string sibling - Wants lighter strings than a guitar — around .010–.046 - Will not teach you to play the banjo Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bV1xlQ) [The six-string guide](/best-6-string-banjo/) goes into the models properly. ### And the four strings that are not a banjo at all A banjolele has four strings tuned GCEA — ukulele tuning, ukulele scale, ukulele chord shapes — on a small banjo pot. It was built in the 1920s so that a ukulele could be heard past the third row, and that is still what it is for. It is not a route into banjo playing, and anyone buying one expecting to reach bluegrass later will be disappointed. The four-string banjolele ### Kmise Concert Banjolele - 4 strings - GCEA - 23″ concert size - Bag, tuner, strap, spares - ~$90 Concert scale rather than soprano, which gives adult hands room without making it any less portable, and it arrives with the bag, clip-on tuner, strap and spare strings that a first one needs. The pickup fitted inside is more use than it sounds — a banjolele is quiet next to a real banjo, and it means you can plug in rather than fight for volume. **Pros**- Everything you need in the box - Smallest and lightest thing on this page - Ukulele players can play it immediately **Cons**- Nylon strings, so none of the five-string’s bite - Teaches you nothing transferable to a five-string - Nylon stretches, so it wants retuning several times over the first week Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hDHcVU) [Banjo versus banjolele](/banjo-vs-banjolele/) sets the two side by side properly. ## What the string count means when you buy strings This is where the number stops being trivia, because the sets are not interchangeable. A five-string set has five strings cut for gDGBD at a 26-inch scale. Put one on a tenor and you have a spare string and four wrong gauges. The default five-string set ### D’Addario EJ55 Phosphor Bronze, Medium - 5 strings - .010–.023 - Loop end - Phosphor bronze 4th - ~$6.50 Plain steel .010, .013 and .016, a phosphor bronze wound .023 for the fourth, and a second .010 for the fifth. It is the set most five-strings are set up around, and mediums are the standard for bluegrass because the extra tension is what drives the head. Loop end, which is what a banjo tailpiece takes — a guitar-style ball end is no use. **Pros**- The reference set — most setup advice assumes it - Warm on the wound fourth, bright on the plain strings - Cheap enough to change on schedule rather than when they break **Cons**- Mediums are a lot of tension for an old or lightly built banjo - Phosphor bronze dulls faster than coated strings Around $6.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hyZsQd) For everything else, match the set to the tuning rather than to the word on the box. A standard tenor in CGDA takes a tenor set — D’Addario’s EJ63 at 9–30 is the reference. An Irish tenor is the same instrument dropped a fifth to GDAE, where standard tenor gauges go slack, so it wants a heavier set like the EJ63i at 12–36. A plectrum in CGBD has its own set again; GHS’s 190 is a light stainless one at 11–26. A six-string tunes like a guitar but wants lighter strings than a guitar does — around .010–.046 rather than the .012 an acoustic light set starts at, and loop-end or ball-end according to the tailpiece. [The full string guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers the materials and the gauges. ## The rarer counts Five, four and six account for effectively everything sold. A handful of others exist and are worth being able to name. - **Long neck, 5 strings.** Pete Seeger had three extra frets spliced into a neck so he could tune the whole instrument down a minor third and sing in lower keys. The result is a 25-fret five-string on a scale of about 32 inches, tuned eEBEG#B, and it is still made. - **Banjo-mandolin, 8 strings.** Four pairs tuned GDAE on a banjo pot, so a mandolin or fiddle player gets their own fingering with far more cut. They sold in enormous numbers during the 1920s mandolin and banjo orchestra boom, which is why so many survive and why the secondhand market is where you find one. - **Cello and bass banjos.** Built to fill the lower parts in banjo ensembles, tuned an octave or so below the instruments above them. Specialist purchases. - **Twelve strings.** These have been built, in six doubled courses, but essentially nothing is made now. One thing to watch while searching: a model number containing “12” almost always refers to a twelve-inch pot rather than twelve strings. If you want the whole family laid out — the bodies, the resonators, the scale lengths and what each one is for — [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) is the page for it. [Mandolins](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) answer the same question rather differently, with eight strings in four pairs. ### Why does a banjo have 5 strings? Because the fifth is a drone rather than a melody string. It is fixed at a high G, struck by the thumb on the way through a right-hand roll, and it rings under the notes the fingers are playing. The idea is older than the American banjo. The akonting, a gourd-bodied folk lute played by the Jola people of Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, has two long melody strings and one short drone struck by the thumb, and it is the closest known African relative of the instrument. ### Is the 5th string the thickest string on a banjo? No — it is the thinnest, tied with the first, and the highest in pitch. In a medium set both are .010. It sounds high because it is short, not because it is light. ### Can you play a 5-string banjo with only 4 strings? You can, and it becomes a different instrument. Taking the fifth string off a five-string is roughly what a plectrum banjo is, and the four remaining strings are tuned DGBD rather than a plectrum’s CGBD. Every note is still available; the rolls that make the banjo sound like itself are not. ### How many strings does a bluegrass banjo have? Five, with a resonator on the back to throw the sound forward. Bluegrass is played three-finger style on a five-string in open G, and the fifth-string drone is central to it. [The bluegrass picks](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) cover the instruments. ### How many strings does a clawhammer banjo have? Five, the same as a bluegrass banjo — usually openback rather than with a resonator. Clawhammer uses the fifth string even more heavily than bluegrass does: the thumb catches the drone on almost every beat. [Clawhammer banjos](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) go into the instruments. ### What is the standard tuning for a 5-string banjo? Open G, written gDGBD. The lowercase g is the short fifth string at G4; the others are D3, G3, B3 and D4. Strum the open strings and you get a G chord, which is why it is called an open tuning. [The tuning walkthrough](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) has the rest. ### How many strings does a banjolele have? Four, tuned GCEA — standard ukulele tuning. A banjolele is a ukulele neck on a small banjo pot, and it is played with ukulele chord shapes rather than banjo technique. ### How many strings does a banjo mandolin have? Eight, in four pairs tuned GDAE — the same tuning and fingering as a mandolin or a fiddle, on a banjo pot. Both strings of each pair are tuned to the same note and picked together, so a player thinks in four notes rather than eight. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [How Long Does It Take to Learn the Harp? The Real Timeline](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) **Published:** June 29, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How Long Does It Take to Learn the Harp? The Real Timeline You will make a sound worth hearing on the first evening. You will play a recognisable tune inside a fortnight. Getting both hands doing different things at once takes a few months, and playing at a level a listener would call accomplished takes somewhere between one and three years — with the wide end of that range decided almost entirely by how many days a week you sit down at it. Nobody publishes a timetable for this, and anybody who gives you a single number is guessing. What does exist is a published *standard*: the ABRSM harp syllabus sets out exactly what a player has to do at each of eight grades, and it is specific enough to tell you what the early stages actually consist of. That, plus what harpists say about their own first years, is as close to an honest answer as the question has. The short answer### A tune in two weeks. Both hands by about three months. Genuinely good in one to three years. The single thing that compresses all three is following one sequenced method instead of assembling a course out of video lessons. Sylvia Woods’s book is twelve lessons and forty-four pieces, in order, and working through it at a lesson a fortnight is a realistic first year on its own. Around $16 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cyurbF) **Ten minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday** — and for the first month your fingertips will enforce it anyway **Lever harp is faster to start;** the pedal harp is a different timetable entirely **Coming from the piano?** Reading and theory transfer, hand technique does not **Haven’t bought one yet?** Our [beginner harp guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) settles that first ## The milestones, and roughly when they arrive These assume ten to fifteen minutes a day, most days, which is the figure harp teachers keep landing on for a first-year adult. It is a smaller number than other instruments get quoted, and there is a physical reason for it below. What you can doHow longWhat is actually holding you upMake a sound you are happy withFirst eveningNothing. The string is plucked with the pad of the finger and it rings on its own — no bow, no reed, no embouchure between you and a clean noteA simple melody, one hand at a time1 to 2 weeksFinding the strings. The C strings are red and the F strings blue or black, so the instrument comes with its own mapPlace three fingers and close them in sequence — a broken chord2 to 6 weeksPlacing: setting the fingers on the strings *before* the notes are wanted. It is the whole basis of harp technique and it is unnatural at firstBoth hands playing different things2 to 4 monthsCoordination, and it is the first real wall. This is where a method book earns its money, because it is easier to read the two parts than to remember themThree short pieces prepared to a standard an examiner would passRoughly a yearConsistency rather than difficulty. The first ABRSM lever-harp grade wants three pieces, one-octave scales hands separately, and six bars of sight-reading in C majorPlay for people and enjoy it1 to 3 yearsRepertoire and nerve. The technique to play pleasantly at a wedding arrives well before the technique to play the pieces you fell in love withPlay what you hear, sight-read at the instrument, arrange your own4 years and upHours. A professional harpist on the Harp Column forums puts very good playing at about four years for someone arriving from the piano or organ, and rather longer for everyone else Two rows are worth reading twice. The first one is the harp’s genuine advantage: on almost every other instrument the beginner’s problem is producing an acceptable note at all, and here that problem does not exist. The fourth is where the advantage runs out, and it catches people by surprise precisely because the first month went so well. ## What the exam boards will tell you, and what they will not ABRSM runs graded harp exams from Grade 1 to Grade 8, in two separate streams: non-pedal, which means the lever harp most beginners own, and pedal. Grades are standards, not stages of a timetable — the board publishes what you must play and never how long it should take you — but the requirements are concrete enough to be useful even if you never sit an exam in your life. The first grade asks for three pieces, one from each of three lists; C and F major scales and A minor, one octave, hands separately; the matching arpeggios; and a sight-reading test of up to six bars in C major, single notes, one hand at a time. At Grade 2 the sight-reading brings the hands together and adds two-note chords. That is the real shape of a first year on the harp: not repertoire, but the two hands learning to cooperate. There is a detail in the Grade 1 scales that tells you something about the instrument. F major needs a B flat, and a lever raises a string by a semitone — it cannot lower one. So a flat is not a lever, it is a decision about how the whole harp is tuned before you start. Learning that is a first-year job, and it is why a beginner method that stays in C is doing you a favor rather than short-changing you. ### The gates further up are worth knowing about now Two of them change what you buy rather than how you practice. From Grade 3 the lever-harp requirements are written for instruments of at least 34 strings, with a bottom string of C two octaves below middle C. And to enter Grade 6 at all you must already hold a pass at Grade 5 in music theory or an accepted equivalent — a paper exam, sat at a desk, that catches a lot of players who assumed the whole thing was about playing. The pedal harp raises the bar again: its requirements assume at least 46 strings from Grade 4. That is a full concert instrument, and it is the point at which the timeline stops being about your hands and starts being about your budget. ## Five things that move the number more than talent does ### How many days, not how many minutes Ten minutes on six days beats an hour on one, and it is not close. Most of the first year is muscle memory — where the strings are, what the hand shape feels like, how hard to squeeze — and muscle memory decays between sessions. Three days off undoes more than the fourth day’s practice puts back. ### Your fingertips, for the first month The harp is played on the pads of the fingers with the nails kept short, and a taut string against untoughened skin raises a blister faster than beginners expect. The calluses take a few weeks to build, and until they do, the length of a practice session is set by your hands rather than your enthusiasm. Stop just before a fingertip feels hot. This is the honest reason the recommended sessions are so short, and pushing through it costs you days rather than saving them. Cut the nails before the harp arrives. A nail that reaches the string first gives a thin, clicky note instead of a round one, consistently enough to convince a beginner the instrument is at fault. ### Whether you are following one method or forty videos Free harp tutorials are plentiful and almost all of them start from the beginning, which means a year of them can leave you very well practiced at week one. A sequenced method fixes that by refusing to let you skip: the technique in lesson nine assumes the one in lesson four, and the pieces are chosen to need exactly what you have just been taught and nothing else. The first year, in twelve lessons ### Sylvia Woods — Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp - 12 lessons, 44 pieces - Everything in the key of C - Fingering and placing brackets marked - 80 pages, spiral-bound - Lever or pedal harp - ~$16 The standard first method for the lever harp, and the reason it works as a clock is that the lessons are evenly weighted. A lesson a fortnight is a comfortable pace for an adult practicing most days; a lesson a week is brisk and achievable if you already read music. Either way you finish it inside a year and you can see where you are, which is the thing self-teaching normally cannot give you. Every piece sits in C and needs no lever changes at all. That sounds like a limitation and is the point: for the first year the difficulty is the hand, and the book removes everything that would compete with it. The placing brackets printed over the notes are the part worth paying for, because placing is the technique a beginner cannot invent and the one that separates harp playing from picking at strings. It assumes no previous musical training, so the notation is taught alongside the playing. **Pros**- Sequenced, so progress is measurable rather than a feeling - Teaches placing and fingering explicitly, not just the notes - Real tunes from the first lesson, so practice is not all exercises **Cons**- Staying in C means levers go untouched until you finish it - A book cannot see your hand position, which is what a teacher is for Around $16[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cyurbF) When the method runs out, the next step is graded repertoire rather than another method, and the classic beginner collection is still on the current exam syllabus. What year two looks like ### Betty Paret — First Harp Book - 40 pages - Exercises and short pieces - Lever or pedal harp - Published by G. Schirmer - ~$10 Two of the twelve pieces on ABRSM’s current Grade 1 List A for the lever harp come out of this book, which is an unusually direct answer to “am I getting anywhere”. Work through the Sylvia Woods method, then take a couple of these to a standard you would be happy to be marked on, and you have covered a recognized first grade whether or not you ever book the exam. It is a slim book of exercises and short pieces rather than a course, so it does not teach you technique from nothing and it is not the one to start on. What it does is give the first year somewhere to go: material that is properly graded, still in print after four decades, and cheap enough that buying it before you are ready costs nothing. The [beginner harp books](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/) guide covers what sits alongside it. **Pros**- Still drawn on by a current exam syllabus, so the grading is real - Short pieces, which suits ten-minute practice - Costs about the same as a fortnight of coffee **Cons**- Assumes someone has already taught you to hold your hands - Forty pages goes by quickly once you are moving Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wEWQUL) ### Whether the harp is in tune A harp does not hold pitch the way a guitar does. Twenty to forty strings pull on a wooden soundboard, nylon moves with the temperature of the room, and a new instrument drifts audibly overnight. Practicing on an out-of-tune harp trains your ear to accept it, and that is a slower thing to undo than any fault of the hands. So it gets tuned at the start of every session — two minutes, not maintenance — and on a new harp two or three times a day for the first fortnight, which settles the strings faster as a side effect. Our [tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the order to work in, and the [tuner page](/best-harp-tuner/) explains why a clip-on that senses vibration beats a microphone on this instrument. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### Whether anybody is watching your hands Private harp lessons run around $65 an hour in the US, with most teachers between $60 and $100 for the hour and $35 to $55 for a half. What that buys is not repertoire. It is hand shape, placing and posture — three things you cannot see yourself doing and which are miserable to unlearn once they have set. A month or two of weekly lessons at the very start does more for a self-taught player than a year of them in the middle, and online lessons work better on the harp than they have any right to, because a camera pointed at the strings shows a teacher exactly what your fingers are doing. ### What you are sitting at The instrument sets a ceiling, and it arrives sooner than most people expect. A harp needs enough strings for both hands to work at once — from about nineteen — and it needs levers, because without them it lives in one key and a great deal of beginner repertoire is simply unavailable. A 22-string levered harp covers the first two grades comfortably. After that the requirements are written for something bigger, and no amount of practice gets round it. Enough instrument for the first two years ### Roosebeck 22-String Heather Harp with Chelby Levers - 22 strings, C3–C6 - Full sharping levers - Color-coded strings - Spare set, tuning tool and play book included - ~$600 Twenty-two strings with a lever on each is the least money that buys a genuine study instrument, and three octaves is enough for both hands to do real work rather than take turns. The color-coded strings matter more in the first fortnight than anything else on the specification, because finding your way around is the whole of week one. The bundle includes the tuning tool and a spare string set, so the only thing missing on day one is a tuner. Roosebeck harps are built in Pakistan for an American importer and the finish is not what the photographs promise. Expect a couple of weeks where it will not hold pitch while the strings stretch, and the occasional lever wanting a small adjustment before it sharps cleanly. Instruments built to a noticeably better standard start about a thousand dollars higher, so the trade is fair — but if there is a harp teacher or shop within reach, ask about renting first. A lever harp rents for roughly $50 to $80 a month on a four-month minimum, payments normally credit against a purchase, and it puts a better instrument under your hands during the year you are least able to judge one. Our [beginner guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) puts it against the alternatives at every price. **Pros**- Levers on every string, which most harps at this price skip - Enough range to take lessons on and sit the first grades - Tuning tool, spares and a play book in the box **Cons**- Quality control varies unit to unit - Wants daily tuning for the first couple of weeks - Twenty-two strings runs out at about the third grade Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g69Uxt) ## Lever or pedal changes the answer completely On a lever harp each string plays one note until you flip a lever and raise it a semitone, and you do that with a hand, which means you do it between phrases. Everything above assumes this instrument. It is why a first tune arrives in a fortnight. The pedal harp puts that job on seven pedals, each with three positions, operated by both feet while both hands are busy. Nothing about the plucking hand changes; what changes is that the feet are now playing too, and the repertoire that needs them is written for a 46-string concert instrument that starts several thousand dollars up. Most players who end up there begin on a lever harp and move across, and the year or two spent on levers is not wasted. Our [lever versus pedal explainer](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) covers the decision properly. And a lyre is a third thing again. It is a flat soundbox with strings across the face, usually under $50, and none of the posture or hand position carries over — so time spent on one does not count toward any of the timeline above. That is fine if a lyre is what you want; it is a poor plan if the harp is. The [comparison is here](/lyre-vs-harp/). ## If you already play something else Pianists get the largest head start, and it is worth being precise about which parts transfer. Reading two staves at once, key signatures, counting, and the habit of practicing hands separately all come across intact, and they are a substantial fraction of the first year. Hand technique does not come across at all: the harp uses four fingers per hand and never the little finger, the note is made by closing the finger into the palm rather than striking downward, and the fingers are placed on the strings before they are played. Piano habits actively fight all three, which is why some experienced keyboard players find the first month more frustrating than absolute beginners do. Guitarists arrive with tougher fingertips and an understanding of what a plucked string does, and then have to give up their nails and their fretting hand’s entire vocabulary. Wind and brass players bring reading and musicianship and start from zero on everything physical, but they also skip the tone-production problem that dominated their own first instrument. ## What the time costs WhatCostWhen you need it[A 22-string lever harp](https://amzn.to/4g69Uxt)~$600Day one, unless you rent…or renting one$50–80 a monthUsually a four-month minimum, and it normally credits against a purchase[A sequenced method book](https://amzn.to/4cyurbF)~$16Week one, and it lasts the yearA clip-on tuner that reads vibration~$22Day one — the harp is tuned before every session[Graded repertoire](https://amzn.to/4wEWQUL)~$10Around the time the method runs outA firm, flat [bench or stool](/harp-stool-and-bench/)$35 and upDay one. An armchair will hurt youLessons~$65 an hourThe first two or three months matter most Strings break, usually during the settling-in fortnight and usually at an inconvenient hour, and replacing one takes about ten minutes once you have done it before — [here is how](/changing-harp-strings/). ## What “learned” means to people who play Ask working harpists how long it took them and you get a consistent non-answer. One professional on the Harp Column forums describes finishing a music degree and realizing the playing was not really there yet, then being thoroughly impressed with it ten years later, then laughing at that judgement ten years after that. Another player, six years in, reports still learning something every time they sit down. A third, pressed for a figure, puts very good playing at around four years for someone arriving from the organ or piano, and notes that transferring from another instrument brings problems of its own. That is not evasion and it is not modesty. It is that “learned the harp” is a threshold nobody crosses, while “can play this piece” and “can hold a hand shape for four minutes” and “can read at the instrument” are all things that arrive on schedule. Pick one of those as the target and the timeline stops being mysterious. ## Common questions ### Can I learn the harp in a month? You can learn to play a few simple tunes in a month, one hand at a time and probably not yet together, and they will sound better than a month of any other instrument would. What you will not have in a month is a hand position that survives contact with anything harder, which is the thing worth getting right while there is nothing to unlearn. ### Is the harp harder than the piano? It is easier at the start and narrower afterward. A beginner gets a beautiful note out of a harp immediately and a fairly ugly one out of a piano for some time, and the harp asks for four fingers per hand where the piano asks for five. But the piano gives you every note under your hands at all times, and the harp gives you seven per octave until a lever or a pedal says otherwise — so anything chromatic becomes a planning exercise. Our [harp and piano comparison](/harp-vs-piano/) goes through it. ### How much should I practice a day? Ten to fifteen minutes for the first month, because your fingertips will not tolerate more, and twenty to thirty after that. The number that matters is days per week, not minutes per day. There is more on making short sessions count in our [practice guide](/harp-tips/). ### Do I need to read music? Not for the first few weeks. The C strings are red and the F strings blue or black, so the instrument can be navigated by eye, and plenty of beginners start by ear. It becomes necessary at about the point the two hands start playing different things, which is also the point a method book becomes necessary — the two arrive together for the same reason. ### Am I too old to start? No, and the harp is a better late start than most. It is played sitting down, it is not loud, it makes a pleasant sound before you are any good, and nothing about it depends on the joint flexibility that makes a late start hard on the violin. What adults have less of is patience with the plateau at three to six months, and that is worth knowing about in advance. ### Does the size of the harp change how long it takes? Not for the first year, and considerably after that. Nineteen strings is about the minimum for both hands to work at once, twenty-two is comfortable, and the lever-harp exam requirements assume at least thirty-four from the third grade onward. A smaller instrument does not slow down what you can learn on it — it just runs out sooner. Our [guide to harp string counts](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) has the detail. ### Can I teach myself? Yes, and more people do on the harp than on most instruments, because the written methods are unusually good. What suffers without a teacher is hand position and placing, neither of which is visible to the person doing it. A handful of lessons at the very start and then the book is the best of both. Our [step-by-step first year](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) lays out what to do in what order. ## The honest version The harp gives you more in the first fortnight than any comparable instrument and less in the second year. That is the whole shape of it. If what you want is to sit down at a beautiful object most evenings and make something worth listening to, you are about two weeks away. If what you want is the sound in your head that made you look this up, budget three years, buy the book, and cut your nails tonight. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [How Long Does It Take to Learn the Banjo? The Real Timeline](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-banjo/) **Published:** March 25, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How Long Does It Take to Learn the Banjo? The Real Timeline Half an hour a day gets you one tune played from memory in about ten weeks. Six months in you can hold your end up at a slow jam. Somewhere past fifteen hundred hours — four years at an hour a day — you stop planning what to play and just play it. Those are real numbers from people who teach this and from players who counted their own hours. They are not the same as the number you want, which is how long until the banjo sounds like the record. But they are checkable, and the gap between them is where most people quit. ## Table of Contents - [The milestones, and roughly when they arrive](#the-milestones-and-roughly-when-they-arrive) - [Clawhammer arrives sooner. Bluegrass goes further.](#clawhammer-arrives-sooner-bluegrass-goes-further) - [Clawhammer: a tune in weeks](#clawhammer-a-tune-in-weeks) - [Bluegrass: slower to start, and the rolls are the first year](#bluegrass-slower-to-start-and-the-rolls-are-the-first-year) - [Four things that change the number more than talent does](#four-things-that-change-the-number-more-than-talent-does) - [How often you pick it up, not how long for](#how-often-you-pick-it-up-not-how-long-for) - [Whether the thing is in tune](#whether-the-thing-is-in-tune) - [Picks, if you are going the bluegrass route](#picks-if-you-are-going-the-bluegrass-route) - [Whether anybody is watching your right hand](#whether-anybody-is-watching-your-right-hand) - [If you already play guitar](#if-you-already-play-guitar) - [Where the 10,000 hours came from](#where-the-10000-hours-came-from) - [If you have not bought the banjo yet](#if-you-have-not-bought-the-banjo-yet) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [Can I learn the banjo in a month?](#can-i-learn-the-banjo-in-a-month) - [Is the banjo harder than the guitar?](#is-the-banjo-harder-than-the-guitar) - [How much should I practice a day?](#how-much-should-i-practice-a-day) - [Do I need a teacher?](#do-i-need-a-teacher) - [Am I too old to start?](#am-i-too-old-to-start) - [Does the number of strings change how long it takes?](#does-the-number-of-strings-change-how-long-it-takes) - [The honest version](#the-honest-version) The short answer### A first tune in about ten weeks. A slow jam at six months. Fluent somewhere past four years. The one thing that reliably compresses all three is having a single method to follow instead of forty YouTube videos that each start over. Bill Evans covers both clawhammer and Scruggs-style picking in one book, with the audio and video online, so you can pick a direction after you have tried each rather than before. Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g3JRHh) **Want the fastest route to a tune:** clawhammer, and you can be playing one in half the time **Want it to sound like Earl Scruggs:** longer to start, and the rolls are the whole first year **Already play guitar:** the left hand transfers, the right hand does not **Have not bought one yet:** our [beginner banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) settles that first ## The milestones, and roughly when they arrive These are half an hour a day, most days — the figure banjo teachers keep landing on. Frequency matters more than the total: three hours on Sunday is worth noticeably less than half an hour on six days, because most of what you are building in the first year is muscle memory, and muscle memory decays between sessions. What you can doHow longWhat is actually holding you upTune it, and get a clean chord out of itFirst weekAlmost nothing. Standard gDGBD tuning is an open G chord, so the banjo hands you one note-perfect chord before you have fretted anythingG, C and D, and change between them in time3 to 6 weeksThe left hand. Not the shapes — the changes. Getting to the C without the music stopping is the actual skillOne whole tune, from memory, slowlyAbout 10 weeksGetting the two hands to agree. One teacher’s breakdown puts it at roughly 35 hours of practice, most of it spent on the right hand alonePlay along at a beginners’ slow jam4 to 6 monthsTime, not technique. Four chords is enough to join in — staying in the groove when nobody slows down for you is notClean rolls at speed, or a break of your own1 to 2 yearsRight-hand accuracy at tempo. This is the stretch where progress stops feeling like progressPlay most of what you hear, and back up other people1,500 to 2,000 hoursNothing technical. Hours. About four years at an hour a day, and players who have tracked it report the pieces snapping together somewhere in there rather than gradually Two of those rows are worth reading twice. The first one is the banjo’s genuine head start over the guitar — an open tuning means your very first sound is a chord in tune with itself, and a handful of old-time tunes need barely any left hand at all. The second-to-last is where people give up. Around a year in, the tunes you can play have stopped getting harder and the ones you want to play have not got any closer, and nothing about that stretch feels like it is working. ## Clawhammer arrives sooner. Bluegrass goes further. The single biggest fork in your first six months is which right hand you learn, and it is worth understanding before you start rather than after. ### Clawhammer: a tune in weeks The frailing stroke is one downward motion of the hand — nail on the string, thumb on the fifth — repeated. There are no picks to fit, no roll patterns to memorize, and the rhythm carries the tune. Beginners get a recognisable old-time piece out of clawhammer in a few weeks, which is a real advantage when the thing most likely to stop you is losing interest. The hard part arrives later, and it is the left hand: hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides doing the melodic work while the right hand keeps its metronomic thump. Getting past competent-at-parties into drop-thumb and melodic playing takes as long as anything in bluegrass does. Ken Perlman’s tutor is the standard book for that whole arc — it starts at the bare strum and ends somewhere most players never reach. For the clawhammer route### Clawhammer Style Banjo — Ken Perlman - 208 pages, tablature throughout, over 40 tunes - Basic strum and brush stroke through drop-thumb, harmonics and improvisation - In print since 1989 and still the book most clawhammer teachers point at - Takes you from the first stroke to melodic clawhammer without needing a second book - Tune-led rather than exercise-led, so you are playing music from early on - Print only — no audio, so you need a recording to hear how a tune should go - Denser than a beginner’s book has to be; the later chapters are years away Around $30 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hExJNY) ### Bluegrass: slower to start, and the rolls are the first year Scruggs style is three fingers in fixed eight-note patterns, and the patterns have to be automatic before any melody can sit on top of them. That is why the first month feels like homework rather than music, and why a bluegrass beginner is often still on exercises when the clawhammer player next to them is playing a tune. What you get for the wait is that the rolls transfer. Once forward, backward and forward-reverse are in the hands, new songs stop being new techniques and start being rearrangements of things you can already do, and the curve bends the other way. If Scruggs style is already what you are after, Bill Evans has a bluegrass-only book that goes deeper into roll patterns and backup than the general one does. For the bluegrass route### Bluegrass Banjo For Dummies - Roll patterns, backup and Scruggs-style technique only - Over 100 audio files and 35 video lessons online - Tablature throughout, so it works with no teacher - Goes further into backup playing than any general beginner book - The audio is at multiple speeds, which is what makes tab usable alone - Assumes you have committed to three-finger picking - Costs more than the general volume and covers less ground Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S82ikR) If you genuinely do not know which one you want, learn clawhammer first. It gets you playing sooner, and almost nothing about it makes Scruggs style harder later — whereas a year of frustrated rolls has ended a lot of banjo careers. Our guides to the [best banjos for clawhammer](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) and the [best banjos for bluegrass](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) cover the instrument side of the same decision. ## Four things that change the number more than talent does ### How often you pick it up, not how long for Fifteen minutes every day beats two hours on Saturday, and it is not close. Teachers set fifteen minutes as the floor and thirty as the target for exactly this reason. The corollary is worth acting on: leave the banjo out on a stand where you can reach it, because the single largest cause of a skipped practice is a case with clasps on it. ### Whether the thing is in tune A banjo drifts. Five strings under tension on a skin-tension head move with the weather, and the fifth string in particular goes sharp for no reason you will be able to identify in your first year. A beginner practicing on an out-of-tune banjo learns nothing, because the ear has nothing correct to lock onto — and cannot yet tell that is what is happening. A clip-on tuner reads the vibration through the headstock rather than the sound in the room, so it works with the television on and it works before your ear is any good. At around $20 it is the cheapest thing on this page and the one that changes the most. The one accessory to buy first[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### KLIQ UberTuner - Clip-on, chromatic, reads vibration not sound - Bright display that stays readable outdoors - Settles fast enough to keep up with a fifth string being tweaked - Chromatic, so it handles double C and sawmill tunings as well as standard G - Nothing to learn — clip it on and turn the peg until it turns green - Not accurate enough to set intonation, which is a job for a shop anyway - The clamp will mark a high-gloss headstock over years of use Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4idzxOa) The other half of this is the setup. A cheap banjo shipped in a box usually has the action high enough to hurt and a bridge sitting where the packer left it, and a beginner blames their hands. Fifty to a hundred dollars at a shop that knows banjos buys lower action, a bridge in the right place and a properly seated head, and it does more for how fast you learn than the next two hundred dollars of instrument would. Our guide to [tuning a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers the part you can do yourself. ### Picks, if you are going the bluegrass route Fingerpicks feel wrong for about two weeks and then stop. Learning rolls bare-fingered and adding picks afterward means relearning the right hand rather than adding to it — the attack is harder, the contact point moves off the fingertip, and the angle of approach changes with it. Start in picks. A plastic set is about ten dollars and forgiving while you work out how tight to bend them; metal fingerpicks come later, when you want the volume. Start in these### Dunlop Shell Fingerpicks and Thumbpick, Medium - Three fingerpicks and one thumbpick, plastic, medium - Softer attack than metal, and gentler on a new head - Bend to fit — plastic reshapes in warm water without cracking - Cheap enough to lose, which you will - Plastic forgives a beginner’s over-tight grip in a way metal does not - Quieter than metal, so you will replace the fingerpicks eventually - Medium fits most adults, but not everyone — small hands may need to reshape them Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xEHXma) ### Whether anybody is watching your right hand The habits that cost people years are all right-hand habits — anchoring wrong, curling the fingers in, moving the whole arm instead of the fingers — and they are invisible from the inside. A handful of lessons in the first three months, or a video of yourself played back, catches things a book cannot. This is the difference the research on skill acquisition actually keeps finding: hours only pay when something is correcting the execution, which is why two players with the same practice log end up in very different places. ## If you already play guitar You are ahead, but by less than you expect, and the part that transfers is not the part you think. What comes with you: fretting cleanly, calluses, reading a chord shape, keeping time, and a general ear for whether a note belongs. That is genuinely a head start, and it is why a guitarist is usually weeks ahead through the first chord changes. What does not come with you is the entire right hand. Strumming is not rolling, and Scruggs patterns bear no relation to anything a guitarist does — a flatpicker often finds this harder than a complete beginner, because there is a reflex to unlearn. The tuning is open G rather than standard, so every shape you know is in the wrong place. And there is a fifth string that starts at the fifth fret and is played by the thumb, which has no guitar equivalent at all. Expect to be fast through the first two months and then to arrive at the same wall as everybody else. ## Where the 10,000 hours came from The figure comes from Anders Ericsson’s study of violin students at a Berlin music academy, in which the best group had accumulated around ten thousand hours by age twenty. Ericsson spent the rest of his career objecting to what was done with it. His finding was about deliberate practice — effortful work aimed at a specific weakness, with feedback — among people already at the top of a conservatoire, and it was never a threshold that anybody crosses into mastery by clocking up time. For the banjo it is the wrong yardstick twice over. Ten thousand hours is twenty-seven years at an hour a day, which describes nobody’s question. And the number that players who have actually tracked their own practice report is closer to fifteen hundred, at which point backup, improvising and working out breaks stop being separate problems. That is a long time. It is not twenty-seven years. ## If you have not bought the banjo yet The instrument affects the timeline in exactly one way: a banjo that will not stay in tune, or that hurts to fret, gets practiced less. Beyond that, nothing under a thousand dollars is going to hold back a first-year player. The usual starting point is a five-string with a removable resonator at around $175, which lets you take the back off for old-time and put it on for bluegrass while you work out which one you are. Budget for the setup on top — that is the part that decides whether it gets picked up. The common first banjo### Jameson 5-String - 24 brackets, removable resonator, geared fifth-string tuner - Remo head, mahogany-finish rim - Right-handed as standard; a six-string version shares the listing - Geared fifth-string tuner, which is what makes the drifting string tunable - More than a decade of buyers behind it, so the failure modes are known - Arrives needing setup, like everything at this price - Heavy for clawhammer with the resonator on — take it off Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x5MkXu) If you want the full field rather than one answer, our [beginner banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) compares the six that are actually worth buying, and [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) explains what each price band buys. ## Common questions ### Can I learn the banjo in a month? You can play something recognisable in a month, particularly in clawhammer, and you can certainly get three chords changing in time. You will not be playing a tune up to speed. A month is enough to find out whether you like it, which is the only decision that matters at that stage. ### Is the banjo harder than the guitar? Easier to start, harder to get good at. The open tuning hands you chords a guitarist has to earn, and the first tune comes sooner. But the right hand is a far more precise mechanism than strumming, and there is no banjo equivalent of getting by on four chords forever. Our [how hard is the banjo](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) guide goes into the specific difficulties. ### How much should I practice a day? Thirty minutes, most days. Fifteen works if that is what is realistic, and daily fifteen beats occasional ninety every time. Once you are past the first year, longer sessions start to pay because you can spend them on something specific rather than on getting your hands back. ### Do I need a teacher? Not to start, and books with audio at multiple speeds have made self-teaching genuinely viable. But a few lessons early on are the highest-value money on this page, because right-hand faults are cheap to fix in month two and expensive in year two. ### Am I too old to start? No. An adult learner has advantages a child does not: they can practice deliberately rather than by repetition, they already know what they want to sound like, and nobody has to make them do it. What does decline with age is raw speed at the very top end, and that is a concert-banjoist’s problem rather than a ten-week one. ### Does the number of strings change how long it takes? A six-string banjo tuned like a guitar is much faster if you already play guitar, because you are learning a new sound rather than a new instrument. A four-string tenor or plectrum is a different job again, played with a flatpick and usually chordal. Every timing on this page is for the five-string. Our guide to [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) covers the differences. ## The honest version Ten weeks to a tune, six months to a jam, four years to fluency — if you play most days and somebody occasionally tells you what your right hand is doing wrong. Miss those two conditions and the numbers do not stretch so much as stall — irregular practice on uncorrected technique builds the wrong habit deeper rather than building the right one slower. The good news is at the front of the table. The banjo gives up a chord and a first tune faster than almost any other stringed instrument, and there is a lot of playable old-time music available to somebody ten weeks in. You do not have to be good at this to enjoy it, which is fortunate, because you will not be good at it for a while. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [How Hard Is It to Play the Mandolin? Easy in Week One, Hard in Year Two](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/mandolin/ "Mandolin")› How Hard Is It to Play the Mandolin? Easy in Week One, Hard in Year Two The mandolin is one of the easiest stringed instruments to start and one of the slowest to finish. Two weeks of daily practice gets you a recognisable tune. The technique that makes a mandolin sound like a mandolin — tremolo — takes most players a year before it stops sounding like a mistake. The short answer### Easier than a guitar to start. Harder than a guitar to play well. Four pairs of strings tuned in fifths mean every scale shape you learn works identically on every pair, and the neck is short enough that first-position chords need no stretch at all. What is hard is physical: pressing two strings cleanly with one fingertip, and the right-hand control that comes years later. **Hardest thing in week one:** fretting a doubled string pair without buzzing **Hardest thing overall:** tremolo **Biggest shortcut:** a setup, not more practice ## What is hard, and when At 30 to 60 minutes a day, most adults move through it roughly like this. StageWhat you can doWhat is holding you back**Days 1–7**Tune it, hold it, fret single notesFingertips hurt, and half your notes buzz because only one string of the pair is pressed down**Weeks 2–4**A simple melody, and two- or three-finger chordsCalluses are still forming. Changing chords is slow rather than difficult**Months 2–3**Play through a tune at speed, strum along to a songAccuracy at tempo. The frets are small, so a near miss is a wrong note**Months 4–9**The chop chord, double stops, playing with other peopleGrip strength for closed chord shapes, and timing tight enough to sit in a band**Year 1–2**Tremolo that sounds like sustain rather than repeated notesRight-hand looseness. This one is not solved by trying harder**Year 3+**Improvising, playing breaks, your own phrasingMusicianship, which is no longer about the mandolin Almost nothing goes wrong in the first three months except sore fingers and slow chord changes, and both of those fix themselves. The wall arrives later, and it is a right-hand wall. ## The four things that are genuinely difficult ### Pressing two strings with one fingertip A mandolin has [eight strings arranged as four pairs](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/), and each pair is tuned to the same note. One finger frets both strings of a pair at once. They sit two to three millimeters apart, so finger size is not the problem — the problem is that both strings need equal pressure, and a fingertip that rolls slightly to one side leaves the other string half-fretted and buzzing. It is entirely a matter of building the muscle, and it resolves in two to four weeks. If it has not resolved after a month, the instrument’s action is too high, and no amount of practice will fix that. ### The frets are half the size you expect A mandolin’s scale length is about 13⅞ inches. A guitar’s is about 25½. The frets are therefore roughly half as far apart, which cuts both ways: first-position chords need no stretch whatsoever, and a finger placed two millimeters off is now a mistake rather than a slight buzz. Precision replaces reach as the thing you are training. Large hands are a real inconvenience above the seventh fret and almost irrelevant below it, which is where you will spend your first year. Small hands are an advantage here. ### Tremolo A mandolin note dies almost immediately. To hold a note, you pick it repeatedly and fast — down, up, down, up — until the ear hears one sustained tone instead of a string of separate attacks. That is tremolo, and it is what makes the instrument sound like itself on anything slower than a reel. It is difficult in an unusual way. Speed is not the obstacle; tension is. A tight wrist produces a fast, mechanical, obviously-counted tremolo, and the fix is to relax, which is not something you can do by concentrating harder. Most players describe a year or more before it sounds musical, and it is common to be playing decent melodies and reasonable rhythm long before tremolo settles. ### The chop chord In a bluegrass band the mandolin plays the backbeat: a chord struck on beats two and four, then instantly damped by releasing finger pressure so the sound stops dead. It uses closed four-finger shapes with no open strings, which is what makes it movable — learn one shape and it works in every key. The difficulty is grip. You are clamping four courses hard enough to sound, releasing to silence, and doing it in strict time. Hands ache for the first few weeks. Most players get a usable chop somewhere between month four and month nine, and it is the skill that gets you invited back to a jam. ## Tuning in fifths is the part that makes it easy The four courses are tuned G–D–A–E, low to high, a perfect fifth apart each time. Because the interval between every adjacent pair is identical, a scale or arpeggio shape learned on one pair of strings transfers unchanged to every other pair. Move it up two frets and it is a different key with the same fingers. Guitar tuning does not work this way — the gap between the third and second strings is a third rather than a fourth, so shapes distort as they cross it, and guitarists spend a long time learning the exceptions. The mandolin has none. This is why a beginner can be playing melodies in several keys within a couple of months, and it is the strongest single argument for the instrument. Tuning eight strings by ear is a different matter. Two strings of a pair sitting a few cents apart sound worse than either one being out of tune on its own, and the beating between them is hard to hear out until you know what you are listening for. Use a clip-on tuner from the beginning; our [step-by-step tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) covers the order to do it in. ## What you already play changes the answer You already playHow much transfersWhat is new**Violin or fiddle**Almost everything in the left handA violin is tuned to the same G–D–A–E, so you already know where the notes are — and frets remove the intonation guesswork. The pick is the only genuinely new skill**Guitar**Rhythm, pick grip, reading tabThe tuning and every chord shape. Guitarists often find this harder than expected, because the familiar shapes actively mislead**Tenor banjo or bouzouki**Most of itVery little. Both are commonly tuned in fifths, and the [bouzouki is close to a long-scale mandolin](/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/)**Five-string banjo**Musical vocabulary and jam repertoireBoth hands. Fingerpicks and a five-string’s tuning have nothing in common with a flatpick and fifths**Nothing**—All of it, and this is a perfectly reasonable first instrument. Nothing about the mandolin assumes prior playing[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The violin row is the one worth dwelling on: the two instruments share a tuning and very nearly a scale length, so a fiddler picking up a mandolin can usually play a tune on it the same afternoon. We go through the differences in detail in [mandolin vs violin](/mandolin-vs-violin/), and the guitar comparison in [mandolin vs guitar](/mandolin-vs-guitar/). Age is not on that list. Adults learn stringed instruments perfectly well, and what changes over a lifetime is available practice time rather than capacity. ## A lot of the difficulty is the instrument, not you A cheap mandolin leaves the factory with the strings sitting too far above the fingerboard, and on a mandolin the bridge is not glued down — it stands on the top held by string tension alone, so wherever the factory left it is where it stays. High action makes the doubled-string problem several times worse, and a misplaced bridge makes the instrument play out of tune up the neck no matter how carefully you tuned it. A setup at a repair shop costs **$60 to $125** and takes an afternoon: action dropped at the twelfth fret, bridge positioned, nut slots checked, fret ends dressed. On a beginner instrument it changes how hard the thing is to play more than another $200 of budget would, and an unplayable setup is easy to mistake for a lack of aptitude. ### If you have not bought one yet Where most people should start### Donner DML-1 A-Style A mahogany A-style that arrives with a gig bag, spare strings, picks and a clip-on tuner, so the tuning problem is solved before you open the case. It is a laminate instrument and it will need the setup described above, but nothing at this price plays better for the money. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qhHFzc) **Six more options:** [best mandolins for beginners](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) **Every price band:** [what a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) **Body shape:** [A-style vs F-style](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) ### If you already own one Three things cost under $50 together and remove most of the friction from the first month. WhatWhy it makes the mandolin easierPrice[D’Addario NS Micro clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4xJwSjQ)Eight strings in four unison pairs. Tuning by ear on day one is how people give up in week one~$22[D’Addario EJ74 strings](https://amzn.to/4wAiSIa)Factory strings on a budget mandolin are usually its weakest part, and dead strings make tuning unstable. EJ74 is medium gauge, 11–40, and the standard replacement~$10[Hal Leonard Mandolin Method](https://amzn.to/4ww6w3Q)Covers the chop, double stops and tremolo in an order that works, with play-along audio. Cheaper than a single lesson~$11 If your fingertips are still raw after a month of daily playing, the other lever is gauge. D’Addario makes the same phosphor bronze set in light, the EJ73 at 10–38, and the lower tension is noticeably kinder while you build calluses. You give up a little volume, which at that stage does not matter. ## Frequently asked questions ### How long before I can play a song? A simple melody in about two weeks, and a song you would play in front of someone in two to three months, at half an hour a day. Chords come faster than melody because the shapes are small. ### Is the mandolin harder than the guitar? Easier for the first six months and harder after that. Fifths tuning and a short neck make the early going quicker than a guitar’s, and then tremolo and the chop take longer to master than anything a beginner guitarist meets. ### Do I need to read music? No. Mandolin tablature shows which fret on which pair of strings, and most method books print both notation and tab on the same line, so you can read one and absorb the other slowly. ### Will my fingers stop hurting? Yes, in two to four weeks of regular playing. Short daily sessions build calluses faster than occasional long ones, and stopping when it genuinely hurts is better than pushing through. If the pain lasts past a month, the action is too high. ### Can I teach myself? Yes, and most mandolin players did. A method book covers everything through the first year. Where a teacher earns their fee is tremolo and pick grip, because both are right-hand habits that are hard to diagnose in yourself and expensive to unlearn later. ### Is the mandolin a good first instrument for a child? It is one of the better ones. The body is small and light, there is no bow and no embouchure, and the short neck suits small hands better than a full-size guitar does. The steel strings are the limiting factor rather than the size — light gauge and a low action make the difference. ## So, is it hard? Not for the first three months, and that is the part most people are really asking about. You will be playing tunes before your fingers stop hurting, and the tuning system means the second key you learn costs almost nothing after the first. The mandolin gets hard at the point where you are trying to sound like a mandolin player rather than someone playing a mandolin, and that is a good problem to have arrived at. Buy something playable, spend $60 to $125 having it set up, and put the difference into half an hour a day. If you are still choosing, start with the [beginner guide](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) or read up on the [different types of mandolin](/types-of-mandolins/). **Categories:** Mandolin --- ### [How Hard Is It To Learn the Banjo? What's Easy and What Isn't](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› How Hard Is It To Learn the Banjo? What’s Easy and What Isn’t Your first banjo chord takes no fingers at all. The second one takes two. Nothing else with strings on it is that generous in the first ten minutes, and it is the reason people who have never played anything walk out of a first lesson having played something. The difficulty is real, but it sits somewhere unexpected. On a guitar the first year is a fight with the fretting hand. On a five-string banjo the fretting hand is nearly free and the picking hand is the entire job — and that hand does not start paying out for months. One thing changes the answer completely, so it is worth settling first: which banjo. Everything easy about the instrument belongs to the five-string. A four-string tenor is a different proposition and a harder one. ## Table of Contents - [Your first chord needs no fingers](#your-first-chord-needs-no-fingers) - [The hard part is the right hand, and it is nearly all of the hard part](#the-hard-part-is-the-right-hand-and-it-is-nearly-all-of-the-hard-part) - [Bluegrass: the rolls have to be automatic before any tune fits on top](#bluegrass-the-rolls-have-to-be-automatic-before-any-tune-fits-on-top) - [Clawhammer: a motion you have never made before](#clawhammer-a-motion-you-have-never-made-before) - [The fifth string belongs to the thumb, and to nothing else](#the-fifth-string-belongs-to-the-thumb-and-to-nothing-else) - [Timing is exposed, because a banjo note dies fast](#timing-is-exposed-because-a-banjo-note-dies-fast) - [How it compares to the instruments people weigh it against](#how-it-compares-to-the-instruments-people-weigh-it-against) - [Which banjo you mean changes the answer](#which-banjo-you-mean-changes-the-answer) - [Six-string: trivially easy, and barely banjo](#sixstring-trivially-easy-and-barely-banjo) - [Tenor and plectrum: harder to start, and honest about it](#tenor-and-plectrum-harder-to-start-and-honest-about-it) - [Four things that make it harder than it needs to be](#four-things-that-make-it-harder-than-it-needs-to-be) - [A banjo that has never been set up](#a-banjo-that-has-never-been-set-up) - [Practicing on something out of tune](#practicing-on-something-out-of-tune) - [No route through the material](#no-route-through-the-material) - [Nobody looking at your right hand](#nobody-looking-at-your-right-hand) - [If you already play something else](#if-you-already-play-something-else) - [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions) - [Is the banjo harder than the guitar?](#is-the-banjo-harder-than-the-guitar) - [Can I teach myself, or do I need a teacher?](#can-i-teach-myself-or-do-i-need-a-teacher) - [How long before I can play a tune?](#how-long-before-i-can-play-a-tune) - [Do I have to wear fingerpicks?](#do-i-have-to-wear-fingerpicks) - [Do I need long fingernails for clawhammer?](#do-i-need-long-fingernails-for-clawhammer) - [Is a cheap banjo good enough to learn on?](#is-a-cheap-banjo-good-enough-to-learn-on) - [Am I too old to start?](#am-i-too-old-to-start) - [So, how hard is it?](#so-how-hard-is-it) The short answer### Easier than a guitar to start. Harder to get fast. Almost all of the difficulty is in the picking hand. What decides it more reliably than talent does is whether the banjo in your hands plays properly. A five-string with a truss rod, a geared fifth peg and a real head is the difference between practice that works and an evening spent fighting the action, and it does not cost much. Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bTnQZe) **Never played anything:** the five-string, and you get a chord in tune in the first minute **Already play guitar:** the left hand transfers, the right hand starts from nothing **Want a tune soonest:** clawhammer — no picks to fit and no roll patterns to memorize **You meant a four-string tenor:** none of the easy part applies, and there is [more than one of those](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) ## Your first chord needs no fingers A five-string banjo is tuned gDGBD, which is a G major chord. Strum it open, in tune, and you have played a chord — not an approximation of one, the actual thing. Then it keeps going: - **G** — nothing. Open strings. - **D7** — two fingers. Index at the first fret of the second string, middle at the second fret of the third. - **C** — two or three, depending on which voicing you learn first. Those three chords carry an enormous amount of old-time and bluegrass repertoire. The comparison that matters is a guitar, where the equivalent first three all need three fingers each, and the fourth one you meet is an F that needs a barre and stops a lot of people permanently. The instrument helps physically too. A Deering Goodtime measures 1¼ inches across the nut and carries five light strings; a standard steel-string guitar is 111⁄16 inches with six heavier ones. A medium five-string banjo set runs .010 to .023, against .012 to .053 for a light acoustic guitar set. Thinner strings under less tension on a narrower neck means less pain in the first fortnight, and calluses that arrive sooner. One thing runs the other way, and it catches people who were promised an easy instrument. The banjo’s scale is *longer* than a guitar’s — 26¼ inches against about 25½ — so the frets are further apart, not closer. A narrow neck is easier to reach around; it does not shorten the stretch from the second fret to the fifth. ## The hard part is the right hand, and it is nearly all of the hard part This is the genuine inversion. Whatever you have heard about the banjo being simple applies to the hand on the neck. The hand over the head is doing something no other common instrument asks for, and it takes months rather than weeks. ### Bluegrass: the rolls have to be automatic before any tune fits on top Scruggs style is thumb, index and middle in fixed patterns of eight notes to the bar — forward, backward, forward-reverse — and the pattern has to run without attention before a melody can be threaded through it. That is why the first month is exercises rather than music. The compensation is that it compounds: once the rolls are in the hands, new tunes stop being new techniques and start being rearrangements of things you already do. ### Clawhammer: a motion you have never made before The frailing stroke goes *down*, striking the string with the back of the fingernail, with the thumb catching the fifth string on the way back. Every instinct built by a lifetime of picking things up says to pluck upward, and that instinct has to be dismantled before anything else happens. It takes a couple of weeks and then it is gone — after which clawhammer gets you to a recognisable tune sooner than three-finger picking does, because there are no picks to fit and no patterns to memorize. ### The fifth string belongs to the thumb, and to nothing else The short string starts at the fifth fret, is tuned higher than the string next to it, and is played almost entirely by the thumb as a drone. It is not part of the melody and it is not something you fret for a long while. Beginners either forget it exists or try to include it in everything, and both take a while to unlearn. If bluegrass is where you are heading, start in fingerpicks rather than adding them later. Picks move the contact point off the fingertip and change the angle of attack, so learning rolls bare-fingered and fitting picks afterward means relearning the right hand instead of extending it. Plastic first — it is forgiving while you work out how tightly to bend them. Start in these### Dunlop Shell Fingerpicks and Thumbpick, Medium - Three fingerpicks and one thumbpick, plastic, medium - Softer attack than metal, and easier on a new head - Bend to fit — plastic reshapes in warm water without cracking - Forgives the over-tight grip every beginner starts with, which metal does not - Cheap enough to lose, which you will - Quieter than metal, so the fingerpicks get replaced eventually - Medium suits most adult hands but not all — small hands need to reshape them Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ztspU5) ## Timing is exposed, because a banjo note dies fast A banjo has very little sustain. On a guitar a chord change that lands slightly late is covered by strings still ringing from the last one; on a banjo the note has already stopped, and a late change is an audible hole. Nothing is hidden, which makes the instrument unusually honest about your rhythm and unusually unforgiving in the first year. The practical consequence is that a metronome earns its place from about week two, earlier than it would on most instruments. Slow and even beats fast and approximately right, and on a banjo the difference is plainly audible to you, which is the useful part. ## How it compares to the instruments people weigh it against InstrumentTo a recognisable tuneWhat is actually hardWhere it gets hard**5-string banjo**Weeks to a couple of monthsThe picking hand — rolls or the frailing strokeAround a year, when speed and clean rolls stop arriving on their own**Ukulele**DaysVery little. Four soft nylon strings and one- and two-finger chordsIt does not, much. That is both the appeal and the ceiling**Guitar**A month or twoThe fretting hand — three-finger chords from the start, then barresImmediately, and then it eases. The banjo does the reverse**Mandolin**WeeksFour courses of doubled steel under high tension. It hurtsTremolo and the chop, both of which take a long time to sound like music**Tenor banjo**A month or twoTuned in fifths with no open chord to lean on, played with a flatpickFrom the beginning. There is no free first chord here**Fiddle**MonthsNo frets and a bow. You are responsible for the pitch and the tone at onceThe first year, all of it Read across the banjo row and the guitar row together and the shape of the whole question appears. They are about equally hard in total; they are hard at different times. The banjo front-loads the reward and back-loads the work, which suits people who need an early win and frustrates people who expected the early win to keep coming. Our [banjo and guitar comparison](/banjo-vs-guitar/) goes further into that, and there is a [banjo and ukulele](/banjo-vs-ukulele/) one as well. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Which banjo you mean changes the answer Everything above is the five-string. The [other banjos](/types-of-banjos/) answer this question differently. ### Six-string: trivially easy, and barely banjo A six-string banjo is tuned EADGBE and built to guitar dimensions — Deering’s Goodtime Six has the same 111⁄16-inch nut a steel-string guitar does. A guitarist can play one this afternoon, which is exactly the point of it. What you will not be doing is playing banjo: no rolls, no fifth string, no clawhammer, and none of the sound those things make. As a way to get a banjo tone into a guitarist’s hands it is excellent, and our [six-string guide](/best-6-string-banjo/) covers it. As a way to learn the banjo it sidesteps the entire instrument. ### Tenor and plectrum: harder to start, and honest about it Four strings, a flatpick, and no fifth string. A tenor is tuned in fifths, CGDA — the same intervals as a viola, and nothing like a guitar, so every shape has to be learned from scratch. Irish players retune it GDAE and play melody rather than chords, which is harder again. A plectrum banjo is CGBD and closer to familiar territory, but still gives you no free chord on the open strings. None of that makes them bad instruments — they are the right choice for trad, for jazz, and for anyone who wants to strum chords hard behind a band. It does mean the first month is more like starting a guitar than starting a five-string. ## Four things that make it harder than it needs to be ### A banjo that has never been set up Most inexpensive banjos arrive with the action high enough to hurt, the head slack, and the bridge sitting wherever it landed in the box — and the bridge is not glued down, so its position is genuinely arbitrary until somebody places it. A beginner fighting all three concludes their hands are the problem. A setup runs $50 to $100 and below about $400 it does more for how a banjo plays than the next $200 of instrument would. Our guide to [what a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) puts that in context. ### Practicing on something out of tune Banjos drift. Five strings pulling on a tensioned head move with temperature and humidity, and the fifth string in particular goes sharp for reasons you will not be able to diagnose in your first year. An out-of-tune banjo teaches nothing, because the ear has no correct reference to lock onto and cannot yet tell that is what is wrong. A clip-on tuner reads vibration through the headstock rather than sound in the room, so it works with the television on and before your ear is any good — and it is the cheapest thing here by a distance. Our [tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers the part you do by hand. The first accessory to buy### KLIQ UberTuner - Clip-on and chromatic, reading vibration rather than sound - Color display that rotates, so it stays readable from a playing position - Settles fast enough to keep up with a fifth string being tweaked - Chromatic, so double C and sawmill tunings work as well as standard G - Nothing to learn — clip it on, turn the peg until it goes green - Not precise enough for setting intonation, which is a shop job anyway - The clamp will mark a high-gloss headstock over years of use Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4glQKCz) ### No route through the material The banjo is well served by free video and badly served by the order it comes in. Forty lessons from forty teachers each start at the beginning, none of them agree on what comes second, and the beginner ends up with a collection of first steps. One method followed in sequence beats better individual lessons taken at random, and it is the single biggest reduction in difficulty available to somebody teaching themselves. If you are teaching yourself### Banjo For Dummies — Bill Evans - Covers clawhammer and three-finger picking in one book - Audio and video hosted online, keyed to the tablature - Starts at how to hold it, so no prior musical background is assumed - Lets you try both right hands before committing to one, which no style-specific book does - Written by a working teacher, and it shows in the order things arrive - A dedicated bluegrass or clawhammer book goes deeper once you have chosen - Tablature only — it will not teach you to read music Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gFNWBt) ### Nobody looking at your right hand The habits that cost people years are right-hand habits — anchoring in the wrong place, curling the fingers in, driving from the forearm instead of the fingers — and they are invisible from the inside, because from where you sit the hand looks fine and the noise is roughly correct. A few lessons in the first three months, or simply filming yourself and watching it back, catches things no book can. There are more of these in our [beginner tips](/banjo-tips-for-beginners/). ## If you already play something else **Guitar.** You are ahead, but by less than you expect and not everywhere. Fretting cleanly, calluses, keeping time and reading a chord diagram all come with you. The picking hand does not — rolls and the frailing stroke are new from zero regardless of how well you fingerpick a guitar. And the open tuning actively works against you for a fortnight, because you know where G lives on a guitar neck and it is not there. **Ukulele.** A good jump. Small neck, light strings and a right hand used to a rhythmic figure rather than a strum. Four strings become five and the fifth is the odd one, but nothing you learned gets in the way. **Mandolin or fiddle.** Your ear and your repertoire transfer completely — you already know the tunes, and at a jam that is most of it. Your hands do not: fifths tuning gives you no map for gDGBD, and the pick hand is unrelated. Curiously this makes the tenor banjo the natural jump for you rather than the five-string, since it is tuned in fifths too. There is a [comparison of the two](/banjo-vs-mandolin/) if you are choosing. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the banjo harder than the guitar? Easier for the first six months and harder after that. The banjo gives you a chord for nothing and asks for the harder picking hand; the guitar does the reverse. Total effort to a decent standard is roughly the same. ### Can I teach myself, or do I need a teacher? You can teach yourself the notes. What a teacher is genuinely for is the right hand, because its faults are invisible to the person making them. A handful of lessons early is worth more than a standing weekly slot a year in. ### How long before I can play a tune? About ten weeks at half an hour a day for one tune played from memory, sooner in clawhammer than in bluegrass. Our [full timeline](/how-long-to-learn-the-banjo/) breaks down the rest of it. ### Do I have to wear fingerpicks? For bluegrass, effectively yes — the volume and attack the style depends on are not available bare-fingered. For clawhammer, no: the stroke uses the back of the nail, and picks get in the way. ### Do I need long fingernails for clawhammer? A little length on the middle or index finger helps, but a few millimeters is plenty and plenty of players use none. If your nails split, a plastic clawhammer pick that fits over the fingertip does the same job. ### Is a cheap banjo good enough to learn on? Under about $150 the compromises start to bite — a heavy pot, tuners that will not hold pitch, a head tensioned by nobody in particular. Above that, and with a setup on top, you have something that stays in tune and will not be the reason you stop. The setup matters more than the next hundred dollars of instrument does. See our [picks under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) and the fuller [beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/). ### Am I too old to start? No. The banjo is unusually well suited to starting late, precisely because the early wins are quick and the hardest technical work is repetitive rather than athletic. Old-time jams are full of people who began in their sixties. ## So, how hard is it? Easy enough that you will play a chord today and a tune by the spring. Hard enough that the year after that is mostly the same eight notes, played slightly better each week, until one day they are fast. What decides how it goes is almost never talent. It is whether the instrument is set up, whether it is in tune, whether you follow one method instead of forty, and whether anyone ever looks at your right hand. All four are cheap to fix, and all four are usually why somebody found it hard. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [Best Harps for Kids: What Actually Fits a Child, by Age](https://promusicvault.com/harps-for-kids/) **Published:** September 16, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Harps for Kids: What Actually Fits a Child, by Age Two things decide this, and neither is the price. The first is whether your child is starting lessons or finding out whether they like the idea — those are different instruments about $290 apart. The second is physical: a child has to reach across the strings and let the harp lean against their shoulder without holding it up. Get both right and a $35 instrument can be the correct purchase. Get them wrong and a beautiful carved one sits in the corner. Our pick for most children### AKLOT 15-String Harp Two full octaves, nylon strings that do not hurt small fingertips, and every C string dyed red and every F blue — the same color code used on every harp made, which is how a child finds their place without reading a note. It weighs under three pounds and comes with a bag, a strap and a tuning wrench. Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ggmIzX) **If lessons are the plan:** Roosebeck 19-string Pixie with full levers — around $440 **For under-sixes:** Roosebeck Lily Harp, 8 strings — around $80 **Cheapest worth owning:** AKLOT 7-string lyre — around $35 ## The five at a glance InstrumentStringsRangeHeightStrings arePrice bandSuits[AKLOT 15-String Harp](https://amzn.to/4ggmIzX)15Two octaves, C4–C621″ long, 15″ tallNylon, color-coded~$150Most children, 6 and up[Roosebeck Pixie, 19 strings, full levers](https://amzn.to/466oCP3)19Two and a half octaves, F3–C631″Nylon~$440A child taking lessons[Roosebeck Lily Harp](https://amzn.to/3HCut3q)8One octave, C5–C615″Nylon~$80Three to six[Roosebeck Baby Harp, Walnut](https://amzn.to/3JjiTeL)12An octave and a half, F4–C621″Nylon~$180A child who wants a carved harp[AKLOT 7-String Lyre](https://amzn.to/4ws2Srz)7One octaveLap-sizedSteel~$35Gifts, toddlers, trying it out ## Three things that decide it ### How old, and what for Harp teachers mostly want a child to be six before formal lessons start, and some will take a well-coordinated five-year-old. It is not really an age rule — it is about whether a child can sit still, follow an instruction and stretch a hand across four strings. Below that, a harp is a toy in the good sense. A three-year-old plucking eight strings is learning that strings make notes and that notes go up and down, and an eight-string harp does that as well as a three-hundred-dollar one. Buy small, buy light, and do not spend for a future that may not arrive. From six or seven with a teacher in the picture, the requirements change completely, and they change in one direction: more strings and levers. A lever lets one string play two notes a semitone apart, which is how a harp changes key without being retuned. Without levers a child is confined to one key, and the tutor books run out fast. Our [lever and pedal harp explainer](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) covers what they do and why the orchestral kind costs as much as a car. ### The reach test This decides more than the specification does. A harp is played leaning back against the right shoulder, with both hands inside the strings. So the child’s right arm has to reach around the neck to the shortest strings at the top, and their feet have to be flat on the floor while the harp rests on the floor or on their lap. If they are holding the instrument up, the harp is too big, no matter how good the price was. In practice a harp under about 22 inches sits on a lap or a table and suits a child of five to eight. A 30-inch harp like the Pixie stands on the floor next to a low chair and suits seven and up — a twelve-inch stool is the usual height at that age, against the 19 or 20 inches an adult uses. Our [harp seat guide](/harp-stool-and-bench/) goes into the heights, and both Roosebeck and Harpsicle sell adjustable stands that lift a small harp 10 to 21 inches off the floor if the sums do not work out. ### Nylon or steel, and why the colors matter Harps are strung with nylon; small lyres are strung with steel. On an adult that is a matter of taste. On a seven-year-old it is the difference between practicing and not, because steel cuts into soft fingertips and nylon does not. Every harp on this page is nylon. The one lyre is steel, which is worth knowing before it arrives — a week of short sessions rather than long ones gets a child through it. The other thing to look for is colored strings. On every lever and pedal harp built, every C is red and every F is blue or black, with the rest left natural. It is not decoration: it is how anyone finds a note on thirty identical strings, and for a child who cannot yet read music it turns the instrument into something navigable. Two of the harps here have it and it is a genuine reason to prefer them. ## The picks in full № 1 · Best for most children ### AKLOT 15-String Harp - 15 nylon strings - C4–C6, two full octaves - Red C strings, blue F strings - Mahogany, satin finish - 2.8 lb - Gig bag, strap and tuning wrench - ~$150 This is the most instrument a child can get for the money, and the color-coded strings are why it beats the carved Roosebecks for a beginner. Two octaves is enough for both hands to do something — a melody in the right, a simple bass note in the left — which is the point at which a child is playing the harp rather than plucking at it. One octave is not. It is a proper harp shape: a curved neck, a wedge-shaped soundbox and a pillar closing the triangle, so a child who moves up to a full-size instrument later finds everything where they left it. At 2.8 lb it is light enough to carry to a lesson, and the strap means it can be played standing as well as sitting. What it does not have is levers, so it lives in C major, and it ships without a spare string set — worth ordering one alongside, because the first string to go always goes on a Sunday. The listed “22 inch” is the diagonal across the frame; it stands about 15 inches on a table. **Pros**- Two full octaves at a price where rivals give one - Color-coded strings a child can actually navigate - Light enough to carry, with the bag and strap included - Nylon strings — no sore fingertips **Cons**- No levers, so no key changes - No spare strings in the box - Plain next to the carved harps below Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ggmIzX) № 2 · If lessons are the plan ### Roosebeck Pixie Harp, 19 Strings, Full Chelby Levers - 19 DuPont hard nylon strings - F below middle C to high C - A lever on every string - About 31″ high - Birch soundboard, engraved inlaid frame - Extra string set and tuning wrench - ~$440 Everything else on this page is an instrument to enjoy. This is the one a teacher can teach on. Nineteen strings covers two and a half octaves, which is most of the beginner repertoire, and a lever on every string means the child can play in whatever key the music is written in instead of the one key the harp happens to be tuned to. That is the whole difference between a harp lesson and a harp-shaped object. At 31 inches it stands on the floor beside a low chair, which is the posture a teacher will want from the first lesson — it can be played on the lap, but a child growing into it is better off on the floor. Sized for a seven- to twelve-year-old, and small adults play them happily too. The Roosebeck caveat applies and it is worth saying plainly: these are made in Pakistan for an American importer, and the finish and setup vary between examples. Expect a fortnight of daily retuning while new nylon stretches, and the occasional lever that needs a small adjustment to sharp cleanly. It is still the cheapest honest route into lessons. **Pros**- Levers on all 19 strings — no key is off limits - Two and a half octaves covers real beginner music - Floor-standing at a child’s height - Spare strings and tuning wrench included **Cons**- Variable quality control between examples - Long settling-in period on new strings - Nearly three times the price of the AKLOT Around $440[Check current price](https://amzn.to/466oCP3) № 3 · Best for three to six ### Roosebeck Lily Harp, 8 Strings, Knotwork - 8 DuPont hard nylon strings - C above middle C to high C — one octave - About 15″ high, around 4 lb - Hand-engraved rosewood frame - Tuning tool included - ~$80 For a small child, eight real strings on a carved frame beats anything from a toy shop. It tunes properly and holds its tuning, the strings are spaced for small fingers, and one octave is exactly the range of the songs a four-year-old wants to play. It is light and short enough to sit on a lap without being propped up, which is the test that matters at this age. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) One octave is also its limit, and a child who takes to it will be asking for more inside a year. That is fine — at eighty dollars this is the cheapest way to find out whether the interest is real, and by then you will be choosing the next one with much better information. The strings are undyed, so there are no color landmarks. On eight strings that hardly matters; on fifteen it would. **Pros**- A real, tunable instrument at pocket-money money - Small and light enough for a three-year-old to hold - Nylon strings, spaced for small fingers **Cons**- One octave is a short leash - No case and no spare strings included - Tuning pins and tool are small parts — not for under-threes Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HCut3q) № 4 · The carved one ### Roosebeck Baby Harp, 12 Strings, Walnut - 12 DuPont hard nylon strings - F above middle C to high C - About 21″ high - Engraved walnut frame, birch soundboard - Extra string set and tuning tool - ~$180 Wanting a harp because harps look like this is a perfectly good reason to buy one. The engraved walnut Baby Harp is a lovely object that also plays in tune, which is more than most decorative harps manage, and it arrives with a spare string set and the tuning tool already in the box. Musically it sits between the Lily and the AKLOT: twelve strings and an octave and a half is enough for melodies and simple two-hand patterns, and short of what two full octaves allows. It also costs thirty dollars more than the AKLOT while giving three fewer strings and no color coding, so the case for it is the carving and the walnut rather than the music. Buy it on those terms and it is a fine thing to own. **Pros**- Genuinely beautiful engraved walnut - Tunes properly and holds it - Spare strings and tuning tool in the box **Cons**- Fewer strings than the cheaper AKLOT - No color-coded strings - Same import quality-control variation as the Pixie Around $180[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JjiTeL) № 5 · Cheapest worth owning ### AKLOT 7-String Lyre Harp - 7 steel strings - One octave - Mahogany with a bone saddle - Tuning wrench and gig bag - ~$35 This is a lyre rather than a harp — an open frame with the strings running across the face instead of into a soundboard — and at thirty-five dollars it is the right answer to several questions. A gift for a child who has mentioned harps once. A second instrument for a sibling. A way of finding out whether any of this is going to stick before spending real money. Plucked with the thumbs it sounds lovely immediately, which is exactly what a child needs on the first evening. Go in knowing two things: one octave will not carry most tunes, and the strings are steel, so small fingertips will complain for the first week. Nothing learned on it transfers to harp technique — the posture and the hand position are different — but nothing is lost either. Our [lyre and harp comparison](/lyre-vs-harp/) sets out how far apart they really are, and the [lyre harp guide](/best-lyre-harps/) covers the 16-string models if one octave sounds thin. **Pros**- Instantly rewarding — good sounds from minute one - Bag and wrench included, nothing else to buy - Cheap enough to be a present rather than a decision **Cons**- Steel strings are hard on small fingertips - One octave runs out of notes quickly - Not a harp, and not a route to one Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ws2Srz) ## What a child’s harp costs to keep Very little, which is the good news after the price of the instrument. A new harp of any price goes out of tune every day for two or three weeks while the nylon stretches, and then settles into needing a few minutes before each practice. That is normal and it is not a fault in the harp. WhatWhy it matters[Snark ST-2 clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4gCs4Hd), around $22Clips to the frame and reads vibration rather than room noise, so it works with a child practicing in a house with other people in it. The alternatives are in our [harp tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/), and [how to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the order to work in.A spare string setBudget harps break a string or two while settling in, and a child’s practice week should not end because of it. The AKLOT ships without spares; both Roosebecks include a set. [Changing a harp string](/changing-harp-strings/) takes about ten minutes.A stool at the right heightAbout twelve inches for a six- to eight-year-old at a floor-standing harp, against the 19 or 20 inches an adult uses. Getting this wrong pushes the harp away and takes the knees out of the position. See [harp stools and benches](/harp-stool-and-bench/).A first bookSmall-harp arrangements exist in quantity and are far more use than a general method book. Our [beginner harp books guide](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/) has the ones written for instruments this size. ## Frequently asked questions ### What age can a child start the harp? Six is the usual answer from teachers, with five possible for a child who concentrates well. Before that, a small harp is a good toy and a real introduction to pitch, but not a lesson instrument. There is no upper limit worth worrying about — starting at ten or twelve is completely normal. ### How many strings does a child’s harp need? For play, eight is enough. For anything a teacher will set, fifteen is the floor and nineteen with levers is where it stops being a compromise. Below fifteen the left hand has nothing to do, which is half of harp playing. Our guide to [how many strings a harp has](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) explains what each range buys you. ### Is a lyre harp a good first instrument for a child? As a gift or a first taste, yes, and the price makes it hard to argue with. As a way into harp lessons, no — it is a different instrument played in a different position, and the technique does not carry over. The mistake is not buying one; it is buying one under the impression that it is a small harp. ### Are the small carved harps safe for young children? The instruments themselves are, but tuning pins, levers and the tuning tool are small hard parts, and a loose string end is sharp. Under three, an adult should be doing the tuning and holding onto the key afterward. From about four, a child can be shown to leave the pins alone, which they mostly will once they hear what happens. ### Should we rent instead? If there is a harp teacher within reach, ask them first — renting a lever harp runs roughly $50 to $80 a month, the payments usually credit against a purchase, and it puts a better instrument under a child than anything at this price. Harp teachers are thin on the ground, which is why the harps above exist. ### How long before it sounds like anything? Days, honestly. The harp is unusually kind at the start: pluck two strings together and it already sounds like music. Sounding genuinely good is one to three years of steady practice, the same as anything else. We set out the realistic timeline in [how long it takes to learn the harp](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/), and [learning without a teacher](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) covers going it alone. ## So which one? For a child of six or more who is curious, buy the AKLOT 15-string: two octaves, colored strings and a bag for a hundred and fifty dollars is the strongest thing here by a distance. For a child under six, the Lily at eighty is the right size and the right money. For a present, the seven-string lyre at thirty-five does the job and never pretends to be more. And if lessons are already booked, skip all of that and buy the levered Pixie. Everything cheaper will be outgrown inside a year, and a child who has to play in one key learns that the harp is limited when the truth is that their harp was. If the budget will not stretch today, the AKLOT is a good year of playing and loses very little on resale — but the Pixie is where this ends up. Our [beginner harp guide](/best-harps-for-beginners/) covers the adult-sized versions of the same decision, and [why harps cost what they do](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) explains the numbers further up the range. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Harp vs. Piano: Full Comparison, and Which One to Learn First](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-piano/) **Published:** August 4, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› Harp vs. Piano: Full Comparison, and Which One to Learn First Both instruments sit in front of you, both are read from two staves, and both put a lot of strings in a wooden box. After that they stop resembling each other. A harp is plucked with bare fingers and gives you seven notes an octave. A piano is hit with hammers and gives you all twelve. That one difference sets the price, the weight, the tuning routine, the music each one can play, and how long it takes before you sound like anything. If you are choosing one to learn### Start on the piano — unless it is the harp sound you are after The piano is cheaper to start, needs no tuning if you buy a digital one, and has a teacher on every high street. It also teaches two-clef reading and hand independence, which are most of what a harp asks for later, so a year of piano is never wasted on a future harpist. The reverse is not true. But no cost argument has ever talked anybody out of wanting a harp, and if that is the sound in your head, a piano will not scratch it. **Notes per octave:** 7 on a harp, 12 on a piano **Entry price:** ~$310 vs. ~$600 **Weight:** 24 lb digital, 384+ lb upright, vs. 11–90 lb **Tuning:** 2–4 times a year vs. before every session ## Harp vs. piano, side by side HarpPiano**How the string sounds**Plucked by the bare finger or thumbStruck by a felt hammer thrown at it by a key**Strings**22–38 on a lever harp, 47 on a concert pedal harpAround 230, sounding 88 notes**Notes per octave**Seven. The other five need a lever or a pedalAll twelve, under your fingers**Range**Three octaves on a 22-string lever harp; six and a half on a pedal harpSeven and a quarter**Changing key**Flip levers by hand, or move seven pedals with your feetNothing to change**Stopping a note**Put a hand back on the string, or it rings onRelease the key and a damper lands on the string**Notation**Grand staff, two clefsGrand staff, two clefs**Fingers used**Four per hand. The little fingers never playAll ten**Tuning**You do it, before every session, in ten to fifteen minutesA technician does it, two to four times a year**Weight**11 lb for a 22-string lever harp; 78–90 lb for a concert pedal harpAbout 24 lb for a portable digital; 384–523 lb for an upright**Entry price**~$600 for a lever harp with levers on every string~$310 for a fully weighted 88-key digital**A full set of strings**$150–400, and specific to your modelNot a consumable. They outlast the felt**Finding a teacher**Often the nearest one is a drive awayEvery town has several ## Are the harp and the piano the same instrument? No, and the difference is not cosmetic. On a harp your finger touches the string; there is nothing else in the chain. On a piano there is an entire machine between you and the string. Yamaha describes it flatly in their own guide to how the instrument works: when a key is pressed, a hammer inside the piano strikes the strings from below. A Steinway concert grand has more than 7,500 moving parts arranging that. Instrument classification splits them the same way. Both are chordophones — boxes with stretched strings — but the harp is a plucked one and the piano is a struck one. It is the reason a piano ends up in arguments about whether it belongs with the percussion, which we go through under [is the piano a string instrument](/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/). They are also separated by about four and a half thousand years. Arched harps appear in Mesopotamian and Egyptian art from around 3000 BCE. Bartolomeo Cristofori built the first piano in Florence around 1700 and called it a *gravicembalo col piano e forte* — a harpsichord with soft and loud — because being able to play quietly and loudly by touch alone was the new thing about it. The harp had been doing that since the beginning. ## Seven notes an octave against twelve This is the difference that decides what music you can play, and it is the one most comparisons skip. A harp’s strings are laid out like the white notes of a piano: seven per octave, with red Cs and dark Fs as landmarks in place of the piano’s groups of black keys. There are no black strings. Reaching a G sharp is a mechanical operation, not a finger movement. On a lever harp, each string carries a sharping lever that raises it a semitone when you flip it by hand — which means taking a hand off the strings mid-piece, so accidentals get planned into the arrangement or arranged out of it. On a pedal harp, seven pedals each raise every octave of one note at once, in three positions, and the feet do it while both hands keep playing. That is why orchestral harp parts move through keys freely and lever-harp parts mostly do not. [Lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) goes through the rest of it. A pianist never thinks about any of this. Every semitone is already there, in every octave, permanently. Play a piece in five flats and then the same piece in five sharps and the instrument does not care. The practical upshot for a beginner: a harp with levers on only some of its strings — usually the Fs and Cs, which is how a lot of budget models are sold — will stop you dead at the first B flat. Levers on every string is the single specification to check before buying one. ## Nothing stops a harp string except your hands Release a piano key and a damper drops onto the string and silences it. Hold the sustain pedal and every damper lifts, so the notes ring on and the undamped strings start sympathising. The instrument’s default is silence, and the pedal buys you sound. A harp has no dampers. Every string you pluck rings until it dies away or until you put a hand back on it, and the default is a wash of overlapping sound. Beginners love this for about a fortnight, because everything sounds lush. Then they discover that playing cleanly means learning to damp — going back and stopping strings you have already played, with the same fingers that are supposed to be playing the next thing. It is a whole technique in itself and it has no piano equivalent. The two glissandi come from the same fact. Run a hand down a harp and you get the famous sweep, because there are no black strings to avoid and nothing damps what you have passed. Run a hand down a piano and you get a C major scale and sore knuckles. ## The tuning gap is the biggest practical difference A harp is tuned before every playing session, by you, and with 22 to 47 strings that is a real ten to fifteen minutes each time. A new one wants doing daily for its first few weeks while the strings stretch and the soundboard settles. This is not a fault; it is what a lightly built wooden frame under high tension does. [How to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the order to work in, which matters more than people expect when there are that many pegs. A piano is tuned by a professional. Kawai recommend at least twice a year, and two to four is the standard interval; Steinway’s own service guidance sets a six-month minimum and puts an hour-a-day instrument at two to four tunings a year. Between visits you do nothing. A piano holds pitch because a cast-iron plate is carrying the load — a Steinway concert grand’s strings pull with 45,373 pounds of force, and the plate is there to make that a non-event. A digital piano removes the question entirely. It does not go out of tune, ever, which is worth weighing if the reason you are reading this is that you want to sit down and play rather than maintain something. ## What each one actually costs Around $310 buys a full-size digital piano with 88 weighted keys, and around $470 buys a better action from a maker whose name means something. Either is a real instrument you can take to grade exams. An acoustic upright is a different conversation — thousands of dollars, 384 to 523 pounds on Yamaha’s own published figures, and a technician’s visit two to four times a year on top. Harps do not have a cheap end in the same way. About $600 is the least that buys an instrument which behaves like a harp rather than a souvenir, and that is a 22-string with three octaves. Above that, the hand-built lever harps the specialist makers list begin near $1,300, and most of their range sits between $2,000 and $5,000. Pedal harps start around $15,500, because the pedal mechanism is a machine in its own right. [Why harps are so expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) takes that apart properly. Then there is the part nobody budgets for. A full set of lever-harp strings is $150–400 and specific to your instrument, and strings break — gut and nylon under tension on a settling frame is a consumable. Piano strings are not a consumable at all; they will outlast the hammer felt and usually the owner’s interest. [Changing harp strings](/changing-harp-strings/) walks through the job. Lessons follow the supply of teachers. Private harp lessons average around $65 an hour in the US, with most teachers between $60 and $100, and the nearest one may be a drive rather than a walk. Piano teachers are the most abundant music teachers there are, which shows up in the price and in how easy it is to change teacher when the first one does not suit. Renting is also normal in the harp world and almost unheard of in the piano one, at roughly $50–80 a month on a four-month minimum — a difference that exists because a harp costs several times what a first piano does. ## The harp wins on portability, but only against an acoustic piano An 11-pound lever harp goes under one arm, up a flight of stairs and into a car. A Yamaha b1 upright is 384 pounds, a U1 is 503, and a Steinway concert grand is 1,064 pounds and just under nine feet long. On that comparison the harp is the portable instrument by a wide margin, and it is the one thing the old wisdom about harps being unwieldy gets backward at the small end. Scale up and it reverses. A 34-string lever harp is 19 to 28 pounds, a concert pedal harp is 78 to 90, and a pedal harp travels with a padded cover, a trolley and usually a second person. Meanwhile a portable digital piano weighs 24 pounds and folds into a car boot without a second thought. So the honest ranking by how easily the instrument moves is: small lever harp, digital piano, large lever harp, pedal harp, upright, grand. [How much a harp weighs](/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) has the figures by size, and [flying with a harp](/fly-airplane-with-harp/) covers the case where it has to leave the county. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Which is harder depends on when you ask In the first hour the harp is easier and it is not close. Its strings are already in tune with each other and there are no wrong notes in the key you are in, so almost anything you pluck sounds like music. A beginner at a piano spends that same hour finding middle C and playing one note at a time. After that the harp gets harder and the piano gets easier. Harp technique is counter-intuitive in a way that mimed piano playing never is — the fingers pull in toward the palm and the thumb pushes away, then the hand closes, and getting that wrong quietly caps your speed for years. Add damping, add the levers, add the fact that you cannot see the string you are about to play because your hands are behind the instrument. Piano technique asks for more independence between the hands than a beginner expects, but the motion itself is obvious, and the notes stay where you left them. Both take the same length of time to play well, which is to say years. The difference is where the wall is. [How long it takes to learn the harp](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) puts numbers on the harp side. ## Learning one first, then the other Piano to harp transfers well. Both are read from the grand staff, both want the hands doing different things at once, and a pianist arrives at a harp already able to read the music in front of them. What they have to unlearn is the little finger, which never plays on a harp, and the assumption that a note stops when you stop pressing it. Harp to piano transfers less. The reading carries over, but harp fingering uses four fingers and a closing hand, and the piano wants five fingers staying open and level. Harpists tend to find the piano’s sustain pedal genuinely strange for a while, because on a harp sustain is the thing you spend your effort switching off. If a child is the one choosing, size decides more than preference does. A small lever harp can be played by a seven-year-old; a pedal harp cannot be reached by one. [Harps for kids](/harps-for-kids/) covers the sizes. ## So which should you buy? The piano to start on ### Yamaha P-145BT Digital Piano - 88 fully weighted keys, GHC action, matte black keytops - 64-note polyphony - 24 lb 8 oz, 52 inches wide, 5 inches deep - Sustain foot switch and music rest included - ~$470 Graded hammer action means the bass keys are heavier than the treble ones, as they are on an acoustic, and that is the specification that decides whether the technique you build will survive being moved to a real piano. Yamaha’s is the benchmark at this price. It never needs tuning, it has a headphone socket, and at 24 pounds and five inches deep it lives on a table or a stand rather than owning a wall. The honest limits: 64-note polyphony will clip on dense pedalled passages a few years in, there is no built-in stand or three-pedal unit, and no digital action is the same object as an acoustic one — a serious student eventually wants the real thing. The P-45 and its Amazon-exclusive twin the P71 are the previous generation of the same line and sit within about twenty dollars of this, so there is little reason to save the difference. Around $470[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qE98vk) If the budget is the deciding factor ### Donner DEP-20 Digital Piano - 88 fully weighted hammer-action keys - Sustain pedal and power supply included - Triple-pedal unit and stand sold separately - ~$310–400 Eighty-eight weighted keys is the bar a first piano has to clear, and this clears it for about half the cheapest harp on this page. Everything a beginner does for the first two years — scales, both hands, reading, the first exam — this will do. What you give up is refinement rather than function. The action is heavier and less even than Yamaha’s across the keyboard, the built-in speakers are ordinary, and resale is poor because the name carries nothing second-hand. It also spends a lot of its life at a discount, so the price swings by about ninety dollars; the argument for it holds at either end. Around $310[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ipGHPo) If it is the harp you want ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings with Chelby Levers - 22 hard nylon strings, C3–C6, three full octaves - A Chelby sharping lever on every string - Color-coded strings - About 36 inches tall, 11 lb - Spare string set, tuning tool and play book included - ~$600 This is the cheapest instrument that behaves like a harp rather than a souvenir. Three octaves is enough for a melody with a left hand under it, nylon is kind to fingertips that have never plucked anything, and levers on all 22 strings keep you out of the trap the cheaper Roosebecks set — those carry levers on the F and C strings only. Roosebecks are made in Pakistan for an American importer and the consistency is not what the photographs imply, so expect a settling-in period and an evening of tuning it into submission. The three octaves will eventually cap the repertoire; the 29-string Minstrel is the step up if the budget allows. [Best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/) compares it against everything else at the price. Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45GktRT) ### What to buy alongside either one Harp only, and on day one ### Snark ST-2 Chromatic Clip-On Tuner - Reads vibration through the clip, not sound through a microphone - Full-color display, rotates 360° - Rechargeable — no cell to replace - ~$22 A harp is tuned before every session, so this is not an accessory, it is part of the instrument. It reads vibration rather than sound, which matters here more than on a guitar: pluck one harp string and several of its neighbors start humming, and a tuner listening through a microphone will chase them around instead of settling. [Our harp tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/) compares the alternatives, including the pedal-harp case where the tuner has to transpose. A digital piano needs none of this, which is the whole point of the comparison above. Around $22[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xioZ5f) A method book, whichever you chose ### Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course, Level One · Sylvia Woods, Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp - Alfred’s: 112 pages, written for adults starting from nothing, ~$8 - Woods: 80 pages, spiral-bound so it stays open, ~$16 - Both assume no prior music reading Alfred’s adult course is the default first piano book for a reason — it starts an adult at an adult’s pace rather than a child’s, and it gets to playing with both hands quickly. Sylvia Woods’ book is the harp equivalent, works on an instrument with or without levers, and is spiral-bound, which matters when both your hands are busy and there is nobody to turn the page. More harp titles, including what to move to when the method runs out, are in [beginning harp music books](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/). $8 and $16[Piano book](https://amzn.to/3UBSQXH)[Harp book](https://amzn.to/4c2mVWs) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a piano just a harp in a box? No. Both stretch strings over a soundboard, but a harp’s strings are plucked directly by the finger and a piano’s are struck by felt hammers thrown at them by a key mechanism. That single difference produces everything else: the piano’s twelve notes an octave, its dampers, its 7,500-odd moving parts and the cast-iron plate needed to hold 45,000 pounds of string tension. ### How many strings does a harp have compared to a piano? A concert pedal harp has 47 strings and a lever harp has 22 to 38, depending on size. A piano has around 230 strings, but they sound only 88 notes — most notes are given two or three strings tuned together for volume. Counting notes rather than strings, the piano’s seven and a quarter octaves against the pedal harp’s six and a half is the fairer comparison. [How many strings a harp has](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) breaks it down by model. ### Which is more expensive, a harp or a piano? The harp, at every level that matters to a beginner. A fully weighted 88-key digital piano starts around $310; the cheapest harp with a lever on every string is around $600, hand-built lever harps begin near $1,300, and pedal harps start around $15,500. Running costs widen it further — a set of harp strings is $150–400 against nothing at all for a digital piano. ### Should I learn piano before harp? It helps if you have the time, because the reading and the hand independence transfer directly and are most of what slows a harp beginner down. But it is not a prerequisite, and a year spent on the wrong instrument is a year of motivation spent. If the harp is what you want and you can get to a teacher, start on the harp. ### Can you play piano music on a harp? Some of it, arranged. The notation is the same and the ranges overlap, but anything chromatic has to be rewritten around lever or pedal changes, and piano writing assumes ten fingers and a sustain pedal where a harp has eight fingers and hands that have to go back and stop the ringing. Harp arrangements of piano pieces are published for exactly this reason. ### Does a harp need tuning more than a piano? Far more. A harp is tuned by the player before every session, taking ten to fifteen minutes, and daily for the first few weeks of a new instrument. A piano is tuned by a technician two to four times a year and needs nothing from the owner in between. A digital piano never needs tuning at all. ### Which is easier for a child? The piano, mostly for practical reasons rather than musical ones: the instrument is the same size whatever the child is, teachers are easy to find, and nothing has to be tuned before a practice session. A small lever harp works well for a child who wants one, but it has to be sized to them, and a pedal harp is out of the question until they can reach the pedals. ## The short version The piano is the cheaper, easier, better-supported instrument, and it teaches skills the harp will later ask you for. The harp is the one people actually want, and no amount of arithmetic changes that. If either would make you happy, buy a digital piano and start this week. If only a harp will do, buy one with a lever on every string, find the teacher before the instrument, and put a tuner in the same order. **Also read:** - [Harp vs. guitar](/harp-vs-guitar/) - [Piano vs. harpsichord](/piano-vs-harpsichord/) - [Learning to play the harp](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) - [Keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/) **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [10 Harp Practice Tips to Get Better Faster](https://promusicvault.com/harp-tips/) **Published:** October 25, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› 10 Harp Practice Tips to Get Better Faster Most practice advice would work just as well for the piano. The harp has its own problems, and they are the ones that decide how fast you improve: it goes out of tune between sessions, every note you play keeps ringing until you stop it by hand, and in the first few weeks your skin gives out long before your concentration does. The short version### Tune it before you touch it, place your fingers ahead of the note, and stop after ten minutes. Those three cover most of what separates a beginner who improves from one who plateaus. After that, the fastest single change you can make is to spend part of every session on exercises rather than on repertoire — the same patterns come back in every piece you will ever play, and drilling them directly is quicker than meeting them one tune at a time. Around $18 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4geTktZ) **For exercises:** Friou, *Harp Exercises for Agility and Speed* — around $18 **For tempo:** Korg MA-2 metronome — around $20 **For tuning first:** a clip-on that reads vibration — [the options](/best-harp-tuner/) ## 1. Tune it before every session, without exception A harp does not hold its tuning the way a guitar does. Nylon and gut move with the weather, the soundboard is under constant pull, and a room that warms up over the afternoon will take the top octave with it. Practicing on an out-of-tune harp trains your ear to accept it, which is a hard habit to undo later. On a new instrument, or after [a restring](/changing-harp-strings/), this is not a five-minute job for the first fortnight. New strings stretch, and a freshly strung harp can want fifty tunings before it settles. Tune it two or three times a day while that is happening and it stabilises sooner — the strings reach their working length faster the more often you bring them up to pitch. The trick that makes this quick is where you clip the tuner. Put it on the shank of your tuning key rather than on the harp, and the display sits an inch from the pin you are turning instead of across the room on a music stand. [The full method is here](/how-to-tune-a-harp/), and we compare the options on [the tuner page](/best-harp-tuner/). What to tune with matters less than you would think, so long as it reads string vibration rather than room sound. A harp puts thirty-odd strings into sympathetic motion every time you play one, and a microphone-only tuner spends the bottom octave changing its mind about which note it is looking at. Anything with a vibration sensor and a head that swivels will do. ## 2. Ten minutes a day, and stop before the blisters The harp is played on the pads of the fingers, and at the start those pads are not ready for it. The friction of a taut string against untoughened skin raises a blister, and it happens sooner than beginners expect. There is a dermatology case report of exactly this — a six-year-old a few weeks into lessons, an 8 × 6 mm blister on the pad of the left index finger, which flattened, shed and became a callus. The published advice was simply to increase practice time gradually. So the useful target in the first month is not a long session. It is ten minutes, every day, with the length going up only as the skin allows. Stop just short of the point where a finger starts to feel hot, and come back tomorrow. A thin, almost invisible callus forms over a few weeks and then the limit moves to your attention span instead. Daily also beats long for a plainer reason: it is the frequency that fixes things, not the duration. Three ten-minute sessions across a week do more than one thirty-minute session, and a marathon on Sunday after six days off mostly produces sore fingers. If you are trying to work out what a realistic timeline looks like, [we have put numbers on it here](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/). ## 3. Place your fingers before you play them This is the single technique that separates harp playing from poking at strings. You do not strike a note and then look for the next one. You put the fingers onto the strings they are about to play — all of them, together — and then close them in sequence. The hand is already in position before a single note sounds. Practice it on its own, away from any piece. Descending through four notes, place all four fingers on their strings at once rather than walking down one at a time; then play them. It feels slower and it is enormously faster, because the hand stops traveling between every note. Two related things worth fixing early. You have four playing fingers, not five: the little finger is too short to reach the string in the harp’s sideways hand position, and rotating the hand to bring it in costs you the strength of the other three. And when a finger is not playing, it should not be clenched into the palm — the hand opens again between placings. A hand that stays tight tires quickly, and that is what ends a lot of practice sessions early. ## 4. Learn to stop notes, not just start them A harp string rings until something stops it. Nothing on the instrument does that for you, so a passage that looks clean on paper turns to mud in the bass, where the long strings go on sounding under everything that follows. Muffling — damping — is the fix, and beginners are usually taught it far too late. The basic move is the left hand laid flat against the strings, the way you would push open a swinging door. The palm and the whole length of every finger make contact at once. Gaps are what produce the buzz; done properly a muffle is silent. Place and play at the same moment rather than one after the other, and the new note covers whatever noise the muffle makes. If your harp has more than about an octave below middle C, this stops being optional. Below that — on [a lap harp](/best-lap-harps/) or a small lyre — the strings are short enough to die away on their own and you can leave it for later. ## 5. Choreograph your lever changes On [a lever harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) an accidental is a physical act performed by one of the hands that is currently busy playing. Which hand, on which beat, and what it drops in order to get there is a decision, and if you do not make it deliberately the piece makes it for you badly. Work the changes out before you learn the notes, and mark them in the score. Look for a rest, a long note or a moment when the other hand can carry the line alone. Then muffle the string before you flip its lever — a lever moved on a ringing string produces an audible slide up to the new pitch, which is the noise that gives away an under-rehearsed arrangement. ## 6. One hand at a time, one measure at a time Right hand alone through a single measure. Left hand alone through the same measure. Both together. Then move to the next measure — not back to the beginning. The measure-sized unit is the part people skip. Playing a whole page right-hand-only and then a whole page left-hand-only is a different exercise, and a much less useful one, because the two hands never meet until the end. On the harp the coordination problem is usually local — one crossing, one awkward simultaneity — and working measure by measure puts the repetitions exactly where the difficulty is. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## 7. Drill the patterns, not just the pieces Harp writing is unusually repetitive at the level of the hand. Rolled chords, four-finger arpeggios, cross-unders and cross-overs, triads and their inversions, jumps — the same dozen shapes come back in almost everything, transposed and rhythmically rearranged. Learning them one piece at a time means relearning each shape from scratch every time it appears in a new key. Ten minutes of exercises at the start of a session also warms the hands up, which matters more on the harp than on instruments where the fingers are not doing the work directly. Get the shapes into the hands away from the music and the pieces start arriving half-learned. The exercise book to own ### Deborah Friou — Harp Exercises for Agility and Speed - 93 pages - Spiral-bound - Lever and pedal harp - All in the key of C - around $18 The standard technique book for non-pedal and pedal players alike, and it is organized the way you would actually practice: two-note chords, then two-, three- and four-finger exercises, triads and inversions, playing without the thumb, 4-2-1 patterns, four-finger arpeggios, rolled chords, slides, cross-overs and cross-unders, jumps, finger independence. Four short pieces at the end apply the lot. Everything sits in C, which is the point — no levers, no pedals, nothing between you and the hand shape. It spiral-binds flat on a stand, and it is graded gently enough that a first-year player and someone returning after a decade can both open it at the front. Friou’s own instruction throughout is to work at whatever speed keeps the hand relaxed and the tempo even, and to let the speed follow. **Pros**- Covers the shapes that actually recur in harp writing - Lies flat, so you are not fighting the page - Works for lever and pedal harps without modification **Cons**- Exercises, not tunes — it is dry by design - Staying in C means no practice at reading accidentals Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4geTktZ) If you want repertoire alongside it rather than pure technique, [the beginner books are covered separately](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/). ## 8. Slow until it is clean, then let a metronome do the climbing The speed to practice a passage at is the speed at which you can play it without a mistake and without tightening up. That is usually far slower than feels dignified. Playing it fast and wrong six times teaches your hands the wrong version six times. Once it is clean, stop guessing at the tempo. Set a metronome below the speed you managed, play the passage twice cleanly, move it up a notch, repeat. When you miss, drop back two notches rather than one. The whole point is that the increments are small enough that you never practice the mistake — which is exactly what happens when you judge the speed by ear and creep up whenever it feels easy. For tempo work ### Korg MA-2 Digital Metronome - 30–252 bpm - Digital needle beat indicator - Pendulum-step and full-step tempo - ~400 hours on two AAAs - 3.5 mm headphone jack - around $20 A harp is loud, resonant and sitting against your shoulder, which is enough to bury a small metronome. The MA-2 gives you something to look at instead: a digital needle swings left and right across the display, with a triangular marker showing where you are in the bar. Watching a beat is easier than listening for one under a ringing bass string, and your eyes are already on the music. Its pendulum-step mode is the one to use for the method above. It moves the tempo in the same numbered increments a mechanical metronome has — so “up a notch” means something definite, and dropping back two notches is a real distance rather than a guess. Full-step mode gives single-bpm control when you want it. It runs around 400 hours on a pair of AAAs, so it lives on the stand rather than in a drawer, and there is a headphone jack for when the click really will not cut through. **Pros**- Visual beat indicator for when the harp drowns the click - Pendulum-step increments make the climb method concrete - Battery life long enough that it is always ready **Cons**- A phone app does the same job for nothing, if you can ignore the phone - A 15 mm piezo speaker is not going to beat a full-size pedal harp Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xKrEEo) ## 9. Work in sections, and learn them backward Take two or three beats. Play them until they are right five or ten times in a row, then join them to the section before. That is the whole method, and the number of repetitions matters less than the requirement that they be correct ones — a section played ten times with the same fumble in the middle is ten repetitions of the fumble. Then build the piece from the end. Learn the last phrase first, then the phrase before it, then join them; carry on until you reach the beginning. Played straight through, the opening gets a hundred repetitions and the ending gets ten, which is why so many performances fall apart in the last line. Working backward inverts that, and it has the useful side effect that you are always playing toward familiar ground rather than away from it. ## 10. Keep a pencil on the stand Fingerings, lever changes, the bar you keep missing, the thing your teacher said about your wrist. A pencil never forgets what you might, and the harp generates more to write down than most instruments do — because fingering and lever choreography are decisions you make once and then have to reproduce identically every time. Finish each session by writing the next one’s first task at the top of the page. It removes the five minutes you would otherwise spend tomorrow deciding what to work on, which on a ten-minute practice day is half the session. ## Common questions ### How long should a beginner practice each day? Ten minutes daily to start, extended as the skin on your fingertips toughens. The constraint in the first month is physical rather than mental, and pushing through a hot spot on a fingertip buys a blister and several days off. ### Do I need to tune the harp every single time? Yes, and on a new or newly strung instrument more than once a day. A settled harp in a stable room may only drift slightly between sessions, but checking takes two minutes with the tuner clipped to your key, and practicing against a flat string is worse than not practicing. ### Should I grow my nails? No. Harp strings are plucked with the pads of the fingers, and a nail catching the string produces a thin, clicking tone and cuts into the string besides. Keep them short enough that they never touch. ### Why only four fingers? The little finger cannot reach the strings from the harp’s hand position without rotating the wrist, and rotating the wrist weakens the other three. On some very light-tension folk harps with narrow string spacing it occasionally gets used, but the standard technique — and every exercise book you will meet — assumes four. [The strings themselves are another matter](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ### Does it matter what I sit on? More than most beginners expect. The harp leans on your shoulder, and a seat at the wrong height changes the angle of both forearms and therefore your whole hand position. A flat, level seat at a height that leaves your thighs roughly parallel to the floor is the target — [the options are here](/harp-stool-and-bench/). Still choosing an instrument, or thinking about a second one? [Start here](/best-harps-for-beginners/). **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Best Harp Stool and Bench: Five Seats, Chosen by Height](https://promusicvault.com/harp-stool-and-bench/) **Published:** August 10, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Harp Stool and Bench: Five Seats, Chosen by Height A harp seat is not a comfort purchase. The height you sit at decides where the soundboard meets your right shoulder, how far your arms have to travel to reach the middle of the strings, and how much of the instrument’s weight ends up on your collarbone. Get it wrong by two inches and you will feel it in your back long before you hear it in your playing. So the useful question is not stool or bench — it is what height you need, and which seats actually reach it. Our pick### Adjustrite Musician’s Chair, Standard The only seat here designed for the job. Telescoping legs set the front edge anywhere from 15 to 20 inches in one-inch steps, the seat slopes three degrees forward so your pelvis stays upright instead of rolling back, and it folds flat for a gig. A cellist designed it, harp teachers have been recommending it for years, and it is the one seat on this page you will not replace. Around $275 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wr3TQI) **Best value:** CAHAYA CY0257 — around $35, 16.3–19.6″ **Pedal harp or over six foot:** Adjustrite Tall — around $280, 21–26″ **Best bench for home:** SONGMICS ULPB57H — around $100, 18.5–21.7″ ## The five at a glance SeatHeight rangeTypeBackFoldsPrice bandBest for[Adjustrite Standard](https://amzn.to/4wr3TQI)15–20″Folding chairYesYes~$275Almost anyone under six foot[Adjustrite Tall](https://amzn.to/4xHpR32)21–26″Folding chairYesYes~$280Pedal harp, and players over six foot[Gibraltar 6608](https://amzn.to/3UxOJvG)18–24″Drum throneNoYes~$80The widest range for the least money[SONGMICS ULPB57H](https://amzn.to/3XFHi29)18.5–21.7″Bench, with storageNoNo~$100A harp that lives in one room[CAHAYA CY0257](https://amzn.to/4woMoAv)16.3–19.6″X-frame benchNoYes~$35Reaching low, cheaply ## Finding your height ### There is no correct number, and that is the point Seat height for a harpist is a function of two things that vary independently: the length of your torso, and the height of your harp’s soundboard where it meets your shoulder. That second figure runs from about 24 inches on a small lap harp to 38 inches and more on a pedal harp. Two players of the same height sitting at two different harps need two different seats, which is why every teacher who writes about this refuses to give a number. What you can do is recognize when you are wrong. Pull the harp back onto your right shoulder and sit up. If the harp keeps drifting away from your shoulder and you find yourself bending forward to hold it there, you are too high. If it presses down and your shoulders creep toward your ears, or you are reaching upward to get at the middle of the string band, you are too low. Feet flat on the floor, or on the pedals. Shoulders down. Both knees available to the instrument — the harp balances on a triangle of your right shoulder and both knees, not on your shoulder alone. ### Adjustability beats any single height Your ideal height is not even fixed for you. Spines compress over the course of a day, so the setting that felt right at ten in the morning can be an inch out by evening, and an hour into a long practice session an inch of adjustment does more for your back than any amount of cushioning. Shoes change it. A second harp changes it entirely. That is the case for buying range rather than a number. A fixed 19-inch piano bench is right for exactly one player at exactly one harp, and everyone else is compromising. Every seat on this page moves at least three inches, and the two Adjustrite chairs move five, in one-inch steps you can actually repeat. ### With a small harp, raise the harp instead A lap harp or a small lever harp sits at whatever height your knees put it, and the instinct when it feels too tall is to lower yourself. Resist it. Dropping your seat to 14 inches to meet a 26-inch harp leaves your knees above your hips, your pelvis rolled back and your feet unable to carry any weight, and you will have traded a shoulder problem for a lower-back one. The fix is a stand. Harp makers sell adjustable ones — Harpsicle’s lifts the base of the harp 10 to 18 inches off the floor, Roosebeck’s covers roughly 12 to 21 — and either lets you sit at a normal, healthy height and bring the instrument up to you. Buy the stand first and the seat second, because the stand changes which seat you need. Our [lap harp picks](/best-lap-harps/) and [harps for children](/harps-for-kids/) go further into the small-instrument end of this. ## What rules a seat out **Wheels.** A harp leaning on your shoulder is a lever, and every time you reach for the bass strings you push against it. On castors the seat simply moves. Office and drafting stools are the usual offenders, and they fail on height as well — most start at 23 inches and climb from there, which is a standing-desk range, not a harp one. **Arms.** Your left arm crosses in front of the instrument and your right elbow needs to travel behind your body line. Anything with armrests will catch one or the other within a bar. **A seat that slopes backward.** Dining chairs and most desk chairs tip the seat pan back a few degrees to hold you in place. That rolls the pelvis back and rounds the lower spine, which is the opposite of the tall, forward-sitting posture the harp asks for. A flat pan is fine; a slight forward slope is better. **Too much padding.** A deep soft cushion feels kind for ten minutes and then works against you, because you cannot brace through it — the abdominal support that holds you upright needs something solid underneath. Two to three inches of firm foam is the useful amount. And if you play a pedal harp, watch the depth of the seat as well as the height. Sitting well back on a deep bench pins your thighs and takes the pedals out of easy reach; pedal players sit forward, which is a habit a shallow seat encourages and a deep one fights. There is more on that side of the instrument in [lever harp vs pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) and [how harp pedals work](/pedals-on-harp/). ## The five picks № 1 · The one to buy ### Adjustrite Musician’s Chair, Standard - 15–20″ at the front edge, 1″ steps - 14″ square seat, 2.5″ padding - 3° forward slope - Padded back - Folds flat to 6″, 18 lb - 250 lb limit - ~$275 A cellist designed this chair, and the things a cellist needs — sit tall, sit forward, get the instrument’s weight through your frame rather than your shoulders — are the things a harpist needs. The legs telescope with push buttons in one-inch increments, with screw-in tips underneath for the half inch between settings, so you can find a height, write it down and return to it exactly. The seat pan is tipped three degrees forward, which is the single most harp-appropriate thing about it: it opens your hip angle and keeps your lower back where it should be without you having to think about it. The back is low enough to support you between pieces and stay out of the way while you play, and the whole thing folds to six inches thick and 18 pounds, which is what makes it the gigging answer as well as the practice-room one. The Standard covers 15 to 20 inches and is built for players under six foot; taller than that and you want the Tall below. The price is the obvious objection, and it is fair — this is roughly seven times what the CAHAYA costs, and it is what the chair goes for wherever you find it. What the money buys is a five-inch range in repeatable steps, a seat angle nothing else here offers, and a chair that will still be the right one when you change harps. **Pros**- Widest useful range, in repeatable 1″ steps - Forward-sloping seat, which is what the posture wants - Folds flat and travels - Back support without getting in the way **Cons**- By far the most expensive seat here - Tops out at 20″, so no use at a pedal harp - Eighteen pounds is not light for a folding chair Around $275 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wr3TQI) № 2 · For pedal harp and tall players ### Adjustrite Musician’s Chair, Tall - 21–26″ at the front edge, 1″ steps - Same seat, padding and 3° slope - Padded back - Folds flat, 18 lb - 250 lb limit - ~$280 Mechanically identical to the Standard; the legs simply start where the other one stops. That matters because a pedal harp puts the shoulder rest well above where a lever harp does, and the players who report being comfortable at a concert grand tend to land around 21 or 22 inches at the front of the seat — above the ceiling of every piano bench and X-frame stool on the market. It is also the answer if you are over six foot at any harp. A tall player squeezed onto a 19-inch bench ends up with knees higher than hips, which pushes the harp away and takes both knees out of the triangle that steadies it. **Pros**- Reaches the height pedal harpists actually use - Same forward slope and 1″ steps as the Standard - Folds flat, so it travels to lessons and gigs [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Starts at 21″, so too tall for most lever harps - Fewer buyers behind the rating than the Standard Around $280 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xHpR32) № 3 · Most range per dollar ### Gibraltar 6608 Drum Throne - 18–24″, threaded post - 15.5″ × 13.25″ saddle seat, 3.25″ foam - No back - Double-braced tripod, folds - 175 lb limit - ~$80 Six inches of adjustment for eighty dollars, which nothing else here comes close to. Drummers have wanted a stable seat with a wide height range for decades and the market solved it long ago; the threaded post screws to any height in the range rather than stepping between fixed holes, so you can chase a half inch if you need to, and the double-braced tripod does not shift when you lean into the instrument. It is the practical choice for a pedal harpist who does not want to spend $280, and it covers most lever harp players too. The compromise is the shape. This is a motorcycle-style saddle, dished in the middle with a raised lip at the back, so you sit *in* it rather than on the front edge of it. For a lever harpist who sits back that is comfortable and stable. For a pedal harpist working the pedals it fights you slightly, because the lip discourages exactly the forward seat position you want. The 175-pound limit is also the lowest here and worth checking against your own weight before ordering. **Pros**- Six-inch range, infinitely adjustable within it - Genuinely stable base - A quarter the price of the Adjustrite - Collapses for transport **Cons**- Saddle shape discourages sitting forward - 175 lb limit - No back at all Around $80 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UxOJvG) № 4 · The bench, if you want a bench ### SONGMICS ULPB57H - 18.5–21.7″, side dials - 21.6″ × 13.2″ flat top - Storage under the seat - No back - 300 lb limit - ~$100 Flat, solid, three inches of adjustment on a dial at each end, and a hinged lid with room for music underneath. If the harp lives in one room and never leaves it, this is a more pleasant thing to sit on than a throne and a more pleasant thing to have in a sitting room than a folding chair. The top is a shade under 14 inches deep, which is shallow enough that sitting forward comes naturally. Two cautions. It does not fold and it is not light, so it is a furniture purchase rather than a gig bag one. And the listing sits in a family of five SONGMICS benches that look nearly identical — only this model number adjusts. The others are fixed at 19.5 or 19.7 inches and cost $40 to $80, and it is easy to click the cheaper one and receive a bench you cannot change. Check the code reads ULPB57H before you order. If you want a bench but need to reach a little higher, [Donner’s adjustable bench](https://amzn.to/4ghsrWx) is the same idea at around $120, going to 22.4 inches and rated to 400 pounds — worth the extra if you are at a pedal harp and set on a bench. **Pros**- Flat top, shallow enough to sit forward on - Music storage under the lid - 300 lb limit and no wobble - Looks like furniture **Cons**- Three inches of range, the narrowest here - Does not fold or travel - Four near-identical fixed-height siblings to avoid Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XFHi29) № 5 · The cheap one that reaches lowest ### CAHAYA CY0257 - 16.3–19.6″, three fixed levels - 20.8″ × 11.4″ flat top - X-frame, folds - 370 lb limit - ~$35 Thirty-five dollars, and it goes lower than anything else here. That combination is the reason it is on the page: a beginner on a 26- or 29-string lever harp often needs to be at 17 inches, and the drum thrones start at 18 and the piano benches at 18.5. The top is flat, the frame folds down to nothing, and the rubber feet do not slide. It adjusts in three fixed steps rather than continuously, so you get 16.3, something in the middle, and 19.6 — if your right height falls between two of them you are out of luck. The top is also only 11.4 inches deep, which is shallow enough to sit forward on and shallow enough to feel perched. And an X-frame is an X-frame: the 370-pound rating is honest about vertical load, but it has more lateral give than a four-legged bench, which you notice when a heavy harp leans into you. None of that stops it being the right first purchase for most people learning on a small harp. Buy it, find the height that works, and if you later want that height held more solidly you will at least know what you are buying. The listing has a couple of color options and an “upgrade” version at slightly different prices; the standard black is the one these figures describe. **Pros**- Reaches 16.3″, lower than anything else here - Around $35 - Folds flat, weighs almost nothing - Flat top, no backward slope **Cons**- Three fixed heights, not continuous - Narrow top and some lateral flex - Thin padding compared with the rest Around $35 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4woMoAv) ## Stool or bench? The word matters less than the specification. A bench is wider, usually flat, usually has storage and usually stays put; a stool or throne is narrower, adjusts further and packs down. Neither is more professional than the other — pedal harpists in orchestras sit on benches because orchestras buy benches, and plenty of them practice at home on a throne. Choose on three things instead. Does it reach your height, with room either side of it? Is the top flat or sloping forward rather than back? And does it stay where you put it when a harp leans on you? Everything else is preference. If you gig, add folding to the list, and that narrows it to the Adjustrite or the throne. ## Frequently asked questions ### What height should a harp bench be? For an adult at a full-size lever harp, usually somewhere between 18 and 21 inches; at a pedal harp, often 21 or 22; at a small lap harp, lower still, though a stand is the better answer there. Those are starting points, not answers. Set the seat so that with the harp on your shoulder your feet are flat, your shoulders are down, and your forearms reach the middle of the strings without lifting — then adjust an inch either way over a few sessions and keep whichever you stop noticing. ### Can I just use a piano bench? If it adjusts, yes — a flat, stable, height-adjustable piano bench is a perfectly good harp seat, which is why one is on this page. A fixed one is the problem. Standard piano benches are built at about 19.5 inches for a keyboard, and that is a number chosen for a different instrument that happens to be right for some harpists by coincidence. ### Is a drum throne a good harp seat? Yes, with one caveat. Thrones are built for exactly what a harpist needs — a wide height range on a stable tripod, no arms, no back, no wheels — and they cost a fraction of anything sold as harp furniture. The caveat is seat shape: a dished motorcycle saddle holds you back in the seat, which suits a lever harpist and mildly obstructs a pedal harpist. A flat or round-topped throne avoids that if you can find one in your height range. ### Do I need a backrest? Not while you are playing — you sit forward of it. It earns its place in the gaps: rehearsals with long rests, teaching, an evening of background music where you are seated for three hours. If you mostly practice in half-hour blocks, a backless seat costs you nothing and gives you more freedom to turn. ### Why not an adjustable office chair? Castors, mostly. A harp on your shoulder pushes back every time you reach across the strings, and a chair on wheels answers by moving. Beyond that, office seats tilt the pan backward to stop you sliding out, they usually have arms, and drafting stools — the ones that look most promising because they are adjustable — generally start around 23 inches, well above harp height. ### Should the seat tilt forward? A small forward tilt helps. It opens the angle between thigh and torso, which lets the pelvis sit upright and the lower back keep its natural curve rather than collapsing into a C. Three degrees is enough; harpists who set their own benches often end up an inch lower at the front than the back. Flat is fine. Backward is the one to avoid. ## So which one? If you are settling in for years at a lever harp and can spend it, the [Adjustrite Standard](https://amzn.to/4wr3TQI) is the seat that stops being a decision. At a pedal harp, or if you are over six foot, the [Tall](https://amzn.to/4xHpR32) is the same chair in the right range. Working to a budget, the [Gibraltar 6608](https://amzn.to/3UxOJvG) gives you six inches of adjustment for eighty dollars and is the best-value seat here by a distance. If the harp never leaves the house and you would rather have furniture, the [SONGMICS bench](https://amzn.to/3XFHi29) is flat, solid and swallows your music. And if you are three weeks into a small lever harp and just want to stop playing in a kitchen chair, the [CAHAYA](https://amzn.to/4woMoAv) costs less than a month of lessons and reaches lower than anything else on the page. Still choosing the instrument itself? Start with our [beginner harp picks](/best-harps-for-beginners/), and [harp tips](/harp-tips/) covers the rest of what to sort out early. Once you are playing, a [decent tuner](/best-harp-tuner/) is the next thing worth owning. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [How to Fly With a Harp: What Fits in the Cabin, and What the Law Actually Says](https://promusicvault.com/fly-airplane-with-harp/) **Published:** September 11, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How to Fly With a Harp: What Fits in the Cabin, and What the Law Actually Says Whether your harp flies is decided before you book anything, by one measurement: how tall it is with the case on. Everything else — which airline, which fare, how early you get to the gate, how politely you ask — moves the odds a little. The height decides the outcome. The short answer### Under about 24 inches it travels like a suitcase. Over about 40, it needs its own seat or its own crate. A lap harp goes in the bin and nobody asks a question. A small lever harp — 22 to 26 strings, three feet tall — is over every airline’s stated carry-on size and still fits some bins, so it comes down to whether there is room when you board. Above that you are buying the harp a seat or checking it in a hard case. A concert pedal harp does not fly as baggage at all. Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4znGmmw) **Cabin case for a 22–26 string harp:** Roosebeck padded nylon — around $90 **The harp that genuinely fits a bin:** Roosebeck Baby Harp — around $180 **Put one in the case:** Apple AirTag — around $25 ## What the rule actually gives you There is a federal rule, it is short, and it is worth reading before you argue with anyone about it. Section 403 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 told the Department of Transportation to write one; the rule that resulted is **[14 CFR Part 251](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-II/subchapter-A/part-251)**, and it took effect on 6 March 2015. It has three operative paragraphs. SectionWhat it coversWhat the airline must doThe condition**§ 251.3**Small instrument, carry-onLet you bring it into the cabin, with no fee beyond the standard carry-on feeIt stows safely in a bin or under a seat under FAA rules, **and there is space when you board****§ 251.4**Large instrument, carry-onLet it occupy a seatYou have bought that seat, and instrument plus case weighs **165 lb or less****§ 251.5**Large instrument, checkedCarry it as checked baggageLength plus width plus height, case included, is **150 inches or less**, and it weighs **165 lb or less** Three things follow from the exact wording, and they are the three that decide how a day at the airport goes. - **It does not exempt instruments from size limits.** Section 251.3 protects an instrument that fits. It says nothing about one that does not. - **It does not reserve you any space.** The obligation runs only if there is room in the bin at the moment you step on the aircraft. A late boarding group can extinguish it entirely, which is why the boarding position matters more than the paperwork. - **It does not make anything free.** Section 251.3 rules out a surcharge *on top of* whatever the carrier charges for comparable carry-on baggage, so on a fare where a bin bag costs money, it still costs money. Checked instruments under § 251.5 attract the usual oversize fees. One more limit that catches people on international itineraries: Part 251 applies to U.S. certificated carriers, U.S. commuter carriers, air taxis and U.S. indirect carriers. A flight operated by a foreign airline is outside it, whatever the code on your ticket says. Read that carrier’s own instrument policy instead, and read it for the operating airline rather than the one that sold you the seat. Printing those five short sections and taking them with you is still worth doing. Not as a trump card — as a way of settling a disagreement with a gate agent who has never had to answer the question about a harp. ## Which harps fit where A standard domestic carry-on allowance is about 22 × 14 × 9 inches. Measure your harp against that and the tiers fall out on their own. HarpHeightWeightCabinHold**Lyre and small lap harp** 7–19 strings15–24″1.6–9 lbUnder the seat in front of youNever needs to go there**Small lever harp** 22–26 strings30–36″6–11 lbFits some bins lengthways. Over the stated limit, so it depends on spaceLegal to check — 64 linear inches on a 22-string — but needs a hard case to survive it**Mid and full lever harp** 29–40 strings40–65″12–49 lbOnly on a seat you have paid forWithin the limits in a flight case, and this is the usual answer**Pedal harp** 40–47 strings64–74″62–90 lbNoNo — see below The middle row is where all the anxiety lives, and the reason is that two different measurements of the same harp give two different answers. A Harpsicle is 36 inches from the top of the pillar to the foot, which is nowhere near a carry-on allowance — but only 28.5 inches from shoulder to base, and the shoulder measurement is the one that decides whether it goes in a bin. Harps taper. Yours may slide into a space that its longest dimension says it cannot. The bins themselves have grown. A modern narrowbody swallows a bag on its edge that an older cabin would not, and the bin runs the length of the aircraft, so a harp laid along it displaces less than its size suggests. What it cannot do is get in there after twenty other people have filled it, which is the whole reason the boarding group matters. ## The case There are two purchases here and they are not interchangeable. A padded nylon case keeps a harp from getting scuffed while you carry it, put it in a bin or strap it into a seat. It will not save a harp from the hold. A flight case will, and it is a different order of money: carbon fiber, about 22 pounds empty for a 34-string harp, north of $3,000, and the best-known of them went out of production in 2025. There is very little between the two prices, and the gap is the awkward part of flying a harp. So the honest sequence is: if the harp can travel with you, buy a soft case and get good at boarding early. If it cannot, the flight case is not an accessory, it is the cost of flying that harp, and it is usually cheaper to leave the instrument at home and rent one at the other end. № 1 · For a 22–26 string harp in the cabin ### Roosebeck Nylon Padded Case for the Heather Harp - Padded nylon, full-length zip - 32.5″ down the back, 35″ down the pillar - 20″ tuning arm, 4″ across, 7.5″ foot - Shoulder carry - ~$90 Cut for the shape of a 22-string Celtic harp rather than adapted from something else, which matters more than the padding does: a harp in a bag that does not follow its outline gets carried by its neck, and the neck is the part you least want loaded. The dimensions above are the ones to check against your own instrument before ordering, because “22-string harp” covers a range of frames. What it is for is the journey to the gate, the bin, and a seat you have bought. It is a soft case doing a soft case’s job, at the going rate for one. What it is not for is a baggage belt, and no amount of extra clothing packed around the harp changes that. If your harp is a Baby Harp or another instrument in that class, there is a smaller version of the same case at around $56. **Pros**- Shaped for the harp, so the frame carries the weight - Light enough that it costs you nothing against a weight allowance - Ninety dollars is not much against what it is protecting **Cons**- Soft padding only — not a hold case in any circumstance - No wheels, and 11 pounds of harp on one shoulder is a long walk through a terminal Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4znGmmw) № 2 · For a lap harp ### Roosebeck Nylon Padded Case for the Baby Harp - Padded nylon - Cut for a 21″ 12-string frame - Shoulder strap - ~$56 The same construction, sized for the small end of the range. A 21-inch harp goes under the seat in front of you, so this case never has to argue with anyone — it is there to stop a nylon-strung instrument from being crushed by the bag next to it and to give you something to carry. Fifty-six dollars on a hundred-and-eighty-dollar harp is a real proportion of the purchase, and worth thinking about rather than adding reflexively. If the harp lives at home and flies twice a year, it earns its place. If it flies every month, it earns it twice over. **Pros**- Fits the frame it is made for - Small enough to be a personal item in its own right **Cons**- A third of the price of the harp it protects - Soft, like everything else at this price Around $56 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UhBL59) ## Buy a harp that flies If you fly more than a couple of times a year, the cheapest fix is not a better case. It is a second, smaller harp that never generates the conversation in the first place. That is the whole reason travel harps exist as a category, and the reason they are built to the sizes they are. № 3 · The largest harp with a real cabin chance ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings, Chelby Levers - 22 strings, C3–C6, three octaves - Full Chelby levers - 36″ × 18″ × 9″ - 11 lb - 64 linear inches with nothing on it - ~$600 Three octaves is the point at which the hands stop competing for the same strings, and a full set of levers means you can change key rather than transposing everything into C. That combination in something you can lift with one arm is what makes this the practical ceiling for cabin travel. The numbers are the argument. Eleven pounds and 64 linear inches put it a long way inside both federal limits — the checked-baggage rule allows 150 inches and 165 pounds — so on a U.S. carrier the airline has to take it in the hold if it comes to that. Thirty-six inches tall is still over every carry-on allowance published, so the bin is a matter of space and timing rather than entitlement. That is the trade at this size and no harp escapes it. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It is the same harp we pick for people starting out, so if you are buying a first instrument and already know you will be flying with it, this decision makes itself. Read the fuller write-up in our [guide to beginner harps](/best-harps-for-beginners/). **Pros**- Three octaves and full levers at eleven pounds - Comfortably inside both the weight and the size limits for checking - A case cut for it exists **Cons**- Thirty-six inches is over every stated carry-on allowance - Three octaves runs out on anything written for a full lever harp Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xIwySi) № 4 · The one that actually meets the allowance ### Roosebeck Baby Harp, 12 Strings, Walnut - 12 strings, F4–C6 - 21″ × 12″ × 6.25″ - 4.1 lb - Solid walnut, knotwork carving - Spare string set and tuning tool included - ~$180 Twenty-one inches by twelve by six and a quarter. Hold that against a 22 × 14 × 9 carry-on allowance and it clears on all three dimensions, which is a thing almost no harp can say. It goes under the seat in front of you, no bin space required, no gate agent involved, four pounds on your shoulder through the terminal. What you give up is most of the instrument. Twelve strings is an octave and a half, no levers, and a range starting at F above middle C, so this is a melody line with a thin accompaniment underneath and not much else. It is a keep-your-hands-in-practice harp, not a performance one, and buying it as your only harp because it is easy to fly would be the wrong way round. As a second instrument for the road it is genuinely useful, and at four pounds it costs you nothing to bring. If you want more music out of something this portable, the [lap harp guide](/best-lap-harps/) covers the larger frames in the same class. **Pros**- Inside a standard carry-on allowance on every dimension - Four pounds, and it fits under a seat - Solid walnut rather than ply at this price **Cons**- An octave and a half, and no levers - Range starts above middle C, so the left hand has little to do Around $180 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UmPvM1) ## A pedal harp is not baggage Work the numbers and the answer is arithmetic rather than judgement. A Lyon & Healy Style 100 is 73.5 inches tall, 38.75 across and weighs 78 pounds. Bare, that is about 134 linear inches — under the 150-inch ceiling, which is the fact that gives people hope. Then put it in the hard case it would need, and a flight case for a pedal harp weighs about 140 pounds empty. Two hundred and seventeen pounds against a 165-pound limit. The airline is not obliged to take it and will not. So a concert harp moves by freight, or it stays home and you play a rented one at the other end. Renting is what orchestras and touring soloists do, and the reason is not fragility — it is that the instrument plus its case exceeds what an aircraft hold accepts as baggage. If you want the full picture of what these instruments cost to own before you cost out moving one, we cover it in [how much a grand harp costs](/grand-harp-cost/) and [why harps are so expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). ## Packing it ### Leave the strings alone A guitar gets slackened for a flight. A harp does not. A 34-string lever harp pulls around 1,200 pounds against its arch, and that load is what holds the soundboard, neck and body in the shape they were built to sit in. Releasing it and putting it back stresses the instrument more than the journey will, and a harp brought down and retuned takes days to settle. Tune it at home, fly it, tune it again when you land. ### Put a tracker in the case Twenty-five dollars, and it converts “the airline has lost my harp” into “my harp is at the wrong airport and here is which one”. If the instrument is going in the hold this is the highest-value thing you will pack, and it is worth doing even for a cabin harp that ends up gate-checked at the last minute — which happens, and happens with no warning. № 5 · The cheapest insurance on the page ### Apple AirTag - Second generation - Locates through Apple’s Find My network - User-replaceable coin cell, about a year - Buy the single, not the four-pack - ~$25 It needs an iPhone or an iPad — there is no Android version and no way around that, so if you carry an Android phone this is not your tracker and you want one built for Google’s Find Hub instead. On an iPhone it takes about thirty seconds to set up and then does nothing until the day you need it. Drop it in the accessory pocket rather than taping it to the harp. Coin cells are fine in checked baggage under the airlines’ battery rules, and the tag draws almost nothing. **Pros**- Works anywhere there is an iPhone nearby, which at an airport is everywhere - Battery you change yourself - Cheap enough that there is no argument **Cons**- Apple devices only - Tells you where the harp is, not what has happened to it Around $25 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ichE27) ### Do not pack clothes in the harp case It is old advice and it is bad advice. Padding pressed against a soundboard transfers whatever hits the outside straight into the wood instead of letting the case absorb it, and a soft case stuffed to bulging is a soft case that no longer fits the bin you were counting on. Take a spare string set and a tuning key in the pocket. Leave the rest out. ## At the airport - **Buy the boarding position, not the reassurance.** Section 251.3 gives you nothing once the bin is full, so early boarding is the only part of this you can actually purchase. On a fare that boards last, a harp in the cabin is a coin toss. - **Ask about the second seat by phone.** Airlines that sell a seat for an instrument almost never let you do it online, and they have their own procedures on top of § 251.4 — a window seat, not an exit row, and a way of strapping the case in. Get it booked properly rather than turning up hoping. - **Take the operating carrier’s own policy, printed, alongside the regulation.** The airline’s page is what a gate agent will accept as binding, and on a codeshare it is the operating airline’s page that counts. - **Do not check a harp in a soft case, whatever anyone at the desk suggests.** If the cabin falls through and the only option offered is the belt, a gate check at the aircraft door is a shorter and gentler journey than the hold. - **If you are refused something the rule requires, the complaint goes to the DOT** at aviationconsumer.dot.gov, afterward. It will not get you on the plane, and arguing at the gate rarely does either. ## When you land Rees, who build the Harpsicle, tell owners that a harp arriving on a day of 40°F or colder should be left in its box until the outside of it feels close to room temperature, and then given a couple more hours before it comes out. That is written for a delivery van, and it applies exactly as well to a case coming off a baggage belt in January. Wood that is cold on the inside and warming on the outside is wood under stress, and opening the case early is what turns a cold journey into a cracked soundboard. Then expect it to be out of tune, badly, and not to hold the first tuning. A change of climate moves a soundboard for days, so tune it on arrival, tune it again before you play, and carry the spare set — [changing a string](/changing-harp-strings/) in a hotel room is easier than finding one. Our [harp tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/) covers what to travel with. ## Questions people actually ask ### Can I take a harp as carry-on? A lap harp under about 24 inches, yes, routinely — it goes under the seat in front of you. A 22 to 26 string lever harp, sometimes: it exceeds the stated size allowance, and a U.S. carrier only has to take it in the cabin if it fits and there is space when you board. Anything above 26 strings, no, unless you buy it a seat. ### Do I have to pay to bring my harp on board? Not on top of what the carrier charges anyone else for carry-on baggage. That is the whole of what § 251.3 promises. On a fare that includes a cabin bag, the harp is free; on a fare that does not, you pay the same as anyone with a suitcase. ### How much does a seat for a harp cost? An ordinary fare in the same cabin, bought as a second passenger seat. Airlines handle it under their own cabin-seat-baggage procedure, so it has to be arranged by phone, and the instrument plus case has to come in under 165 pounds — which any lever harp does easily. ### Will the airline pay if they break it? Assume not. Carriers limit liability on checked baggage and exclude fragile items as a matter of course, and a harp in a soft case is the definition of what that exclusion is written for. Insure the instrument separately if you fly with it, and insure the flight case too — on a mid-size lever harp the case is a meaningful part of what is at risk. ### Should I loosen the strings before flying? No. The tension is structural, and releasing it costs the harp more than the flight does. ### Does the rule work on international flights? On the segments operated by a U.S. carrier, yes. On segments operated by a foreign airline, no — those run on that airline’s own policy, and some of them are more generous than the federal rule while others are considerably less. If you are still choosing an instrument and portability is part of the decision, [lever harp vs. pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) and [how much a harp weighs](/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) are the two that bear on it most directly. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Flugelhorn vs. Cornet: Same Fingerings, Different Jobs](https://promusicvault.com/flugelhorn-vs-cornet/) **Published:** January 10, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Brass Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/brass-comparisons/ "Brass Comparisons")› Flugelhorn vs. Cornet: Same Fingerings, Different Jobs A cornet and a flugelhorn are both pitched in B♭, both use three piston valves, and both are built from about four and a half feet of tubing. Every note is fingered the same way on both, and the same way again on a trumpet. Hand any of the three to a trumpet player and the right notes come out immediately. What separates them is where the tube starts widening and how wide it finishes. The bell gives it away across a room — 6″ on a flugelhorn against under 5″ on a cornet — while the bore figures overlap so badly between makers that they settle nothing at all. The short version### The cornet is a section instrument, the flugelhorn is one color A British brass band seats ten cornets and one flugelhorn. That ratio is the honest answer to which one to learn: the cornet is agile, secure across its whole range, and there is always a chair for it. The flugelhorn does one thing — a soft, covered, almost vocal sound that will not cut through anything — and it does it better than any other brass instrument. Nearly everyone who plays one plays trumpet or cornet first and picks it up as a second horn. **Key:** both B♭ **Fingerings:** identical **Bore:** .459″ vs .433″ **Bell:** 4⅔″ vs 6″ **Brass band seats:** 10 vs 1 ## Table of Contents - [The numbers, with a trumpet for scale](#the-numbers-with-a-trumpet-for-scale) - [The bell is the reliable difference; the bore is not](#the-bell-is-the-reliable-difference-the-bore-is-not) - [The cornet is the agile one](#the-cornet-is-the-agile-one) - [The mouthpieces do not interchange, and the flugelhorn's is worse than that](#the-mouthpieces-do-not-interchange-and-the-flugelhorns-is-worse-than-that) - [Where each one actually gets played](#where-each-one-actually-gets-played) - [The brass band, which is the cornet's home](#the-brass-band-which-is-the-cornets-home) - [The orchestra, where the cornet has been quietly replaced](#the-orchestra-where-the-cornet-has-been-quietly-replaced) - [Jazz, where the flugelhorn actually lives](#jazz-where-the-flugelhorn-actually-lives) - [Which one to buy](#which-one-to-buy) - [The cornet](#the-cornet) - [The flugelhorn](#the-flugelhorn) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## The numbers, with a trumpet for scale CornetFlugelhornTrumpet**Key**B♭B♭B♭**Valves**3 pistons3 pistons3 pistons**Fingerings**The same on all three**Bore**.459–.462″.401–.460″, no standard.459″**Bell**4⅔″–4⅞″6″–6½″About 4⅞″**Bore profile**Widens from about halfwayWidens almost the whole wayCylindrical until the bell**Mouthpiece**Cornet shank, deep-ish cupDeep funnel, three incompatible shanksTrumpet shank**Top register**SecureSlippery above written G5Secure**Brass band seats**10 of 281 of 28None — there are no trumpets in one**Orchestra**Real parts, mostly written before 1950A handful of piecesStandard**Decent one costs**From about $800From about $700[See trumpet prices](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) The trumpet and cornet figures are Yamaha’s for the YTR-2330 and YCR-2330III, and Bach’s 184 cornet agrees at .459″ or .462″ depending on which you order. ## The bell is the reliable difference; the bore is not Cornet bores barely move between makers: .459″ on Yamaha’s student cornet, .459″ or .462″ on Bach’s 184, .460″ on Blessing’s BCR-1230. Flugelhorn bores are all over the place. Bach’s 183 is .401″, Jean Paul’s FH-430 is .441″, Yamaha’s YFH-631G is .433″, and Getzen’s 895 Eterna is .460″ — wider than the bore of Bach’s own cornet. Six hundredths of an inch of disagreement is a lot on a tube you can close your hand around, and it means a bore figure on its own will not tell you which of the two instruments you are holding. The bell will. Cornet bells run from about 4⅔″ to 4⅞″, which is the same range a trumpet lives in. Flugelhorn bells start at 6″ — 6″ on the Bach and the Yamaha, 154 mm on the Jean Paul, 6½″ on the Getzen. No overlap, no borderline case, and it is why you can settle the question from across a room without picking either one up. What the two facts add up to is the taper. Take the same four and a half feet of tubing, keep the starting diameter roughly similar, and finish one at 4⅞″ and the other at 6½″: the second has to spend far more of its length widening. On a flugelhorn the valves sit right up against the leadpipe, leaving nearly all the tubing after them free to expand into the bell. A cornet keeps a longer straight leadpipe and puts its valves after the first bend, so a good half of it is still cylindrical. A trumpet holds one diameter until the bell throat and does the whole flare in the last few inches. A long taper feeds energy into the lower harmonics and starves the upper ones, which is what “warm”, “dark” and “mellow” are describing when people reach for those words. The cornet is the middle case and sounds it: rounder than a trumpet, brighter than a flugelhorn. There is an old rule of thumb that puts the cornet at half cylindrical and half conical and the flugelhorn at one third to two thirds — no maker builds to it, but it gets the ranking right. The wide bell does something on its own account too. It throws sound in a broad, diffuse pattern rather than a beam, which is why a flugelhorn blends into a section instead of sitting on top of it, and why it is almost impossible to make one sound aggressive. ## The cornet is the agile one Of the three, the cornet moves fastest. The conical bore makes it more agile than the trumpet through quick passages, and the trade is that correct pitching is less assured — the note will let you place it slightly wrong without complaining. That combination is exactly why the nineteenth-century cornet repertoire is full of variations that no trumpet player would attempt, and why Jean-Baptiste Arban wrote his method for it in 1864. The flugelhorn takes both halves of that further. In the middle of the staff it is the most forgiving brass instrument there is. From about written G5 upward the notes stop locking in, because the partials above the bell’s cutoff frequency are no longer well defined and the lip has to find them unaided. Continuous glissandi are possible on a flugelhorn, which is a charming party trick and a fair warning about how loosely it holds a pitch. Low D and C♯ run sharp on any three-valve B♭ instrument, because the third valve slide is a compromise length. The fix is an adjustable third valve slide ring or a trigger, and it is the single feature most worth checking before you buy either horn — the difference between a cheap instrument and a decent one is usually that ring rather than anything about the tone. ## The mouthpieces do not interchange, and the flugelhorn’s is worse than that A cornet mouthpiece has a shorter, narrower shank than a trumpet’s so that it fits the cornet’s smaller receiver, and its cup is usually deeper. It will not go into a trumpet and a trumpet mouthpiece will not seat in a cornet. Bach settles this with the catalogue number rather than the model name: **351 is the trumpet series, 349 is the cornet series, 342 is the flugelhorn series**. A 7C exists in all three and they are three different objects, so read the part number. The flugelhorn is the difficult one, because there is no single flugelhorn shank. There are three in general use and they are not compatible. ShankAlso calledHorns that take it**Standard**Large morse taperYamaha, Getzen, Conn, King, Adams, Benge**Bach**Small morse taper, AmericanBach, B&S, Besson, Courtois, Holton, Selmer, Schilke**French**Couesnon taper — no taper at allCouesnon, French Besson, Kanstul, Miraphone, Flip Oakes A French shank is not tapered: the last inch is cylindrical with a shoulder that stops it, so it will not seat properly in anything else, and nothing else will seat properly in a French receiver. A standard shank is too big for a Bach receiver. A Bach shank will physically go into a French horn’s receiver but sits at the wrong depth. The rule is simple and expensive to learn the other way: **buy the mouthpiece for the instrument, not for yourself**, and find out which shank yours takes before you order anything. None of this applies to the cornet. One cornet shank, all cornets, and the mouthpiece that came in the case is a fine place to start. The cornet mouthpiece ### Bach 3497C Classic Cornet Mouthpiece, 7C - 349 cornet series - Cornet shank - Medium cup - Medium-wide rim - ~$60 A 7C is the size most cornets are supplied with and the one nearly every method book assumes, so this is the replacement rather than the upgrade. The part number is the point. **3497C** is the 349 cornet series; a 3517C is the trumpet version with the same rim on a shank that will not go into a cornet, and the two sit next to each other under names that differ by nothing you would notice. If you have been playing a while and the top of the staff is a fight, a shallower cup will help more than a new 7C will. If you have just been handed a cornet with no mouthpiece in the case, this is the one. **Pros**- Right shank for any cornet, with no compatibility question to answer - The size the instrument and the books were built around - Cheap enough to keep a spare in the case **Cons**- A middle-of-the-road size — it will not fix a struggling upper register - No improvement at all if your cornet already came with a 7C Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SENWIO) The flugelhorn mouthpiece, if your horn takes a standard shank ### Yamaha 14F4 Flugelhorn Mouthpiece - Standard shank - 16.76 mm inner diameter - V-shaped cup - Semi-flat rim - ~$55 The cup is a true V rather than the shallow bowl a cheap flugelhorn tends to arrive with, and that shape is doing most of the work in making a flugelhorn sound like one. The wide rim suits it: this is a mouthpiece for long lines, not for pecking at high notes. Yamaha states the taper outright — standard shank — which is more than most makers manage, and it is why this is the one worth naming. That covers Yamaha, Getzen, Conn, King, Adams and Benge. **Check your own receiver before ordering**: a Bach, Besson, Courtois or Schilke takes the smaller Bach taper, and anything French takes neither. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- The shank type is stated plainly, which settles the only hard question - Deep V cup — the flugelhorn sound rather than a soft trumpet one - Extra-thick silver plating, so it survives being carried loose **Cons**- Wrong shank for Bach, Besson, Courtois, Schilke and every French-taper horn - 16.76 mm is a wide rim; coming off a small trumpet piece it will feel like a lot Around $55[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xNO5c0) ## Where each one actually gets played ### The brass band, which is the cornet’s home A full band is twenty-eight players. Ten of them are cornets — nine in B♭, split four solo, one repiano, two second and two third, plus one E♭ soprano on top — and exactly one is a flugelhorn. There are no trumpets in it at all. The cornets carry the melody the way first violins do in an orchestra, and the flugelhorn sits between them and the tenor horns, softening the join. If the reason you are reading this is that you want to join a band, that paragraph is the whole decision. Ten seats against one, and the flugelhorn chair usually goes to a cornet player the conductor already knows. ### The orchestra, where the cornet has been quietly replaced Berlioz scored two cornets into the *Symphonie fantastique*, and added a solo cornet line to his autograph score that was never published in his lifetime — it is thought to have been written for Arban, and it is usually cut. Stravinsky’s 1911 *Petrushka* gives the Ballerina her toy-trumpet tune on a cornet. When he revised the score in 1946 he removed the cornets and handed that tune to a trumpet, which is the history of the instrument compressed into one editorial decision. The flugelhorn has a shorter orchestral list and a more interesting one: Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony, Tippett’s Third, Stravinsky’s *Threni*. Vaughan Williams called it “a beautiful and neglected instrument not usually allowed in the select circles of the orchestra”, and noted that once inside them it would have to play straight, without vibrato. ### Jazz, where the flugelhorn actually lives Joe Bishop was playing one in Woody Herman’s band by 1936, but the instrument arrived properly with Miles Davis’s *Miles Ahead* in 1957 and Clark Terry’s work with Ellington around the same time. Chuck Mangione then spent the 1970s playing nothing else, which is unusual — the normal pattern is a trumpet player who keeps a flugelhorn on a stand for ballads and reaches for it two or three times a set. That is worth being blunt about, because it decides whether you buy one. The flugelhorn is a doubling instrument. Almost nobody’s first horn, and almost nobody’s only horn. ## Which one to buy Joining a brass band or a school band: the cornet, and the ten-to-one seat count is the whole reason. Already playing trumpet or cornet and after the ballad sound: the flugelhorn, bought as a second horn rather than a replacement. Wanting one instrument that will do everything asked of it: neither — a trumpet. On either horn the feature worth paying for is the third valve slide. A ring or a stop rod lets you pull low D and C♯ down where they belong; without one you are lipping two notes into tune every time they appear. ### The cornet The cornet to buy ### Blessing BCR1230S Student Cornet, Silver-Plated - .460″ medium-large bore - 4⅞″ bell - Monel pistons - Third valve slide stop - Hard case and 7C mouthpiece - ~$800 Built in Elkhart, Indiana, which is where most of the American brass industry has always been, and specified like an instrument meant to last a decade of school use. Monel pistons rather than nickel plating — monel does not gall as it wears, so the valves stay fast instead of getting sticky in year three. There is a first valve slide thumb hook and a third valve slide stop, and that stop is the difference between a cornet you can play in tune and one you have to fight. The outfit is complete: molded hard case, Blessing 7C, valve oil. Yamaha’s student cornets are the other standard school answer and are built to the same .459″ bore, but they cost roughly twice this and are no easier to play. **Pros**- Monel pistons at a student price - Third valve slide stop, so low D and C♯ can be tuned rather than lipped - Hard case and mouthpiece in the box — nothing else to buy - Made in Elkhart rather than assembled from unmarked parts **Cons**- Thumb hook on the first valve slide, not a trigger — you can nudge it between phrases, not during one - Silver plate wants wiping down after every session or it marks - $800 is a committed purchase; renting for a year costs a fraction of it Around $800[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3RSAOj9) ### The flugelhorn The flugelhorn to buy ### Jean Paul FH-430 Flugelhorn - .441″ bore - 154 mm bell - Stainless steel valves - Cupronickel slides - 7C mouthpiece and semi-hard case - ~$720 The bore sits in the middle of the range flugelhorns are actually built to, which matters more than the number itself: it is neither the very tight Bach profile that wants a strong player nor the wide Getzen one, so it responds the way a beginner on the instrument expects. Bell at 154 mm, comfortably past the 6″ mark that separates a flugelhorn from a large cornet. Jean Paul lists it at $799.99 themselves and it usually sells for a little under that, so there is no premium to hunt for. Stainless valves, cupronickel slides, a 7C and a semi-hard case in the box, and a year of warranty from the maker. The unflattering half: a flugelhorn at this money is loose in the top octave, and that is the instrument rather than the price — a $3,000 one is looser than a $700 cornet up there. It is also not a first horn. If you do not already play trumpet or cornet, buy the cornet and come back to this in a year or two. **Pros**- Bore and bell both sit where a flugelhorn’s should - No premium over the maker’s own list price - Complete outfit — case, mouthpiece, oil - A year of warranty from Jean Paul themselves **Cons**- Vague above written G5, which is the instrument’s nature and not a fault of this one - Low D and C♯ need lipping unless you fit or work the third slide - A doubling instrument — a poor choice as anyone’s only horn Around $720[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cMmuQb) ## FAQs ### What is the difference between a flugelhorn and a cornet? Both are B♭ instruments with three piston valves and identical fingerings, built from the same length of tubing. The flugelhorn has a narrower bore — .433″ against the cornet’s .459″ on Yamaha’s figures — but a much larger bell, 6″ against 4⅔″, because its tubing tapers outwards for almost its whole length. That long taper gives the flugelhorn a soft, covered sound that blends rather than cuts. The cornet sits between the flugelhorn and the trumpet. ### Is a flugelhorn harder to play than a cornet? In the middle of the staff, no — it is the more forgiving of the two. Above about written G5 it is considerably harder, because the notes stop locking into place and the lip has to find them without help from the instrument. The cornet is secure across its whole range and moves faster through quick passages, which is why it is the one taught first. ### Do a cornet and a flugelhorn read the same music? Yes. Both are in B♭, both sound a whole tone below what is written, and every fingering is the same. A cornet player can read a flugelhorn part on sight and the other way round, and both can read trumpet parts unchanged. ### Can I use my cornet mouthpiece in a flugelhorn? No. A flugelhorn takes a longer, more deeply funnel-shaped mouthpiece, and there are three different flugelhorn shanks that are not interchangeable with each other either — Standard, Bach and French. Find out which one your instrument takes before ordering. Bach’s catalogue numbers separate the families: 351 for trumpet, 349 for cornet, 342 for flugelhorn. ### Which is better for a beginner, a cornet or a flugelhorn? The cornet, without much argument. It is secure across its whole range, it is what beginner method books are written for, and a brass band has ten cornet chairs to the flugelhorn’s one. The flugelhorn is almost always taken up as a second instrument by someone who already plays trumpet or cornet. ### Is a cornet just a small trumpet? It is the same length of tubing wrapped more tightly, so it is shorter end to end, but the bore is the thing that differs. A trumpet holds one diameter until the bell throat; a cornet widens gradually from about halfway along. That is what makes it sound mellower, and it also takes a different mouthpiece, with a shorter and narrower shank. ### Can a flugelhorn replace a trumpet in a band? It can play the notes, but it will not do the job. A flugelhorn is built to blend and will disappear underneath a section rather than lead it, and it gets unreliable in the register where trumpet parts spend most of their time. Substituting one for a ballad is common; substituting one for a whole concert is not. ### Why are there no trumpets in a British brass band? The instrumentation was fixed in the nineteenth century around conical-bore instruments, when the cornet rather than the trumpet was the standard soprano voice, and it never changed. A full band of twenty-eight uses nine B♭ cornets, one E♭ soprano cornet and one flugelhorn on top, then three tenor horns, two baritones, two euphoniums, three trombones, four tubas and percussion. The trombones are the only cylindrical-bore instruments in the room. **Also Read:** - [Brass Instruments: The Whole Family](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) - [Trumpet Fingering Chart](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-fingering-chart/) - [How Much Does a Trumpet Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) - [Trumpet vs. Bugle](https://promusicvault.com/trumpet-vs-bugle/) - [Mellophone vs. Trumpet](https://promusicvault.com/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) **Categories:** Brass Comparisons --- ### [Fife vs. Flute: What Separates Them, and Which to Start On](https://promusicvault.com/fife-vs-flute/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Woodwind Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/woodwind-comparisons/ "Woodwind Comparisons")› Fife vs. Flute: What Separates Them, and Which to Start On A fife is a flute. Not a relative of one — a flute, held sideways, blown across a hole cut in the side, with the air column behaving exactly as it does in the instrument sitting in a school band. What makes it a fife is what has been left off it. That is the whole comparison, and it has one consequence that decides most of the buying: fifes are pitched for playing with other fifes, and most of the cheap ones sold as fifes are not. The short answer### The flute — but spend fifteen dollars on a fife first The flute plays everything and gets you a seat in a band, an orchestra or a jazz group. The fife plays one repertoire, brilliantly, in a corps. For almost everybody the answer is the flute. What decides whether either of them will work is the embouchure, and a plastic fife is the cheapest way to find out in a fortnight whether yours is going to come — Yamaha built this one for exactly that purpose. It is in C with recorder-style fingering, so it is a trainer rather than a corps instrument. About $15 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3IVbJwB) **Fife and drum corps:** a B♭ fife — the key is the whole decision **School band or orchestra:** a flute, rented before it is bought **Buying a flute online anyway:** around $250, not $90 **Already play tin whistle:** the fife’s fingering is the one you know ## The differences that decide it FifeConcert flute**Length**About 15–17 inches, usually one pieceAbout 26 inches, three sections**Bore**Cylindrical, around 10 mmCylindrical body around 19 mm, tapered head**Holes and keys**Six open holes, no keysSixteen tone holes under Boehm keywork**Range**About two octavesThree octaves**Accidentals**Cross and half-hole fingeringsA key for every semitone**Pitch**Transposing — the standard is B♭Concert pitch, in C**Fingering system**Simple system, as on a tin whistleBoehm**What one worth playing costs**$15–20 plastic, $70–200 wood$450–1,300 new, or $20–40 a month rented**Where it is played**Fife and drum corps, reenactment, folkBands, orchestras, jazz, pop, film scores**Upkeep**Wipe it outPads, springs and a technician about once a year ## Both bores are cylindrical; the keywork is the difference The Library of Congress, cataloguing the Dayton C. Miller flute collection, defines a fife as any cylindrically bored transverse flute, usually in one piece, with six fingerholes and no keys, intended for outdoor music. Every word of that is doing work. The modern concert flute is cylindrical through the body too. Theobald Boehm settled on that shape in 1847 and paired it with a tapered headjoint, and every flute in a band room since has been built to it. Conical bores belong to the instruments Boehm replaced — the baroque flute, and the nineteenth-century band flute that fifes were usually contrasted with, which narrowed toward the foot and carried anywhere from one to eight keys. Scale and mechanism separate them, not the shape of the tube. A fife is a short cylinder with six holes you cover with your fingertips. A flute is a longer one with sixteen tone holes, most of them spaced too far apart for a hand to reach, operated through a linkage of keys, rods and springs. Everything else follows. Six open holes give a diatonic scale and about two octaves, with sharps and flats coming from cross-fingerings and half-covered holes that are never quite in tune and never quite the same color as the notes on either side of them. Boehm’s keywork gives all twelve semitones evenly across three octaves, which is the price of admission to written music that modulates. ## A fife transposes, and that is what decides which one to buy The standard American fife is called a B♭ fife, and the name describes what you hear rather than what you read. Cover all six holes, read that note as D on the fingering chart, and a concert B♭ comes out — a minor sixth above the written note. Written C sounds A♭, which is why fifers occasionally argue the instrument ought to have been called an A♭ fife. None of that matters until you play with somebody. Then it is the only thing that matters. Fife and drum corps are in B♭ throughout, the sheet music is written for it, and a fife in any other key is a solo instrument whether you intended one or not. This is where the cheap ones catch people. The plastic fife most likely to come up in a search is a school instrument in C with recorder-style fingering — a good product for what it was designed to do, and the wrong thing to carry into a corps rehearsal. ## What transfers if you already play one The embouchure does, in both directions, and it is worth more than it sounds. Forming a flat, narrow airstream with your lips and aiming it at the far rim of a hole is the part of the flute that takes weeks before there is anything to show for it. A fife asks for the same action on a smaller hole, so a fifer picking up a flute has already served that fortnight. The fingering does not. A fife uses the simple system — the same six-hole pattern as a tin whistle, a low whistle and an Irish flute — which opens that whole family to a fifer and means a whistle player can already finger a fife. Boehm fingering is a separate mechanical language, and the resemblance in the left hand is a coincidence rather than a head start. Reading transfers with a caveat. A flute player reading fife music hears everything a minor sixth above the page, which is disorienting for a few tunes and then becomes simply how the instrument works. ## If it is fife and drum you want, the key is the whole decision Buy a plastic B♭ fife. Under twenty dollars buys the instrument starter corps hand to beginners, usually with an instruction sheet in the packet. Wood becomes worth considering after a few months, at $70–200; the professional instruments the Old Guard play run past $600. The one thing to check before parting with money is that the key is printed on the instrument or in its specification. A B♭ fife and a C fife are the same length of tube to look at, they cost the same, and a great many are sold with no key stated anywhere. On the single specification that decides whether you can play with anybody, that is not a detail to guess at. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## The fife that is worth buying online is a flute trainer Yamaha files its fife under recorders, which tells you what it is for. It is in C, it uses German recorder fingering, and Yamaha designed it as the first lesson on the way to a flute — in Japan it is the standard instrument for children who intend to take up flute or piccolo. The embouchure hole is cut wider and more forgiving than a piccolo’s, so a note arrives sooner, and the skill it builds is the one the flute is going to demand. № 1 · Finding out whether the embouchure will come ### Yamaha YRF-21Y plastic fife - Key of C - German recorder fingering - Two-piece ABS resin - Fingering chart and bag included - About $15 For the price of a couple of coffees this answers the only question that matters before a flute purchase: can you get a clean note out of a hole in the side of a tube, and do you enjoy it enough to keep going. Two octaves, decent intonation for plastic, washable, and small enough to live in a bag. It will not play corps music and it is not pretending to. **Pros**- Builds the exact embouchure a concert flute needs - More forgiving to blow than a piccolo - Cheap enough that a wrong answer costs nothing **Cons**- Key of C, so it cannot play with a B♭ corps - Fingering is the recorder’s, not the fife’s - Plastic body will not satisfy anyone moving on from a starter instrument About $15[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3IVbJwB) ## If the destination is a band or an orchestra, it is the flute Rent one. Twenty to forty dollars a month puts a properly regulated student flute in a beginner’s hands, keeps a technician behind it, and ends without a resale problem if the interest does not last. Bought new, a Yamaha, Gemeinhardt, Pearl or Jupiter runs $450–1,300, and that instrument is still fine in eighth grade. What does not work is the ninety-dollar flute. Glory, Mendini, Lazarro, Cecilio and Eastar all sell silver-colored flutes under $150, plenty of school programs will not accept one, and several repair shops publish the brands they refuse outright because parts cannot be sourced. The damage is subtler than a poor tone: a beginner cannot tell a leaking pad from an embouchure that has not formed yet, and a month of unfixable airiness teaches a child that they have no aptitude. № 2 · If it is going to be bought online anyway ### Jean Paul FL-220 student flute - Closed hole, offset G - Split E mechanism - Silver-plated cupronickel - Semi-hard case - Around $250 Every one is set up and play-tested by a certified band-instrument technician before it ships, which is the single thing separating it from the hundred-dollar flutes it sits beside in the search results. Closed hole, offset G and a split E are the configuration a beginner wants, and there is a real company behind it with a warranty and spare parts. Choose the Student option on the listing — the Intermediate one is a different flute at a different price. **Pros**- Regulated by a technician rather than shipped as assembled - Warranty and parts actually exist - Split E at a fraction of what the reference student flutes cost **Cons**- A committed student will outgrow it in a few years - A year of rental puts a better instrument in the same hands for similar money Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hFAOxr) ## Something to play out of Fife repertoire is not sitting in a general woodwind book, and the tunes are most of the reason anybody takes the instrument up. Mizzy McCaskill and Dona Gilliam’s [Fun with the Fife](https://amzn.to/3EEEuLp) is the Mel Bay volume that covers it — graded studies, a proper set of traditional tunes and online audio to play against, for around fifteen dollars. On the flute side the useful purchase is not a tune collection but Trevor Wye’s [Practice Book for the Flute](https://amzn.to/3XZN6mB), whose omnibus edition gathers all six volumes for about the price of one lesson. The first book is tone, which is where a beginner’s problem actually lives, and the set stays useful for years after the point at which a method book has been outgrown. ## Common questions ### Is a fife just a small flute? It is a small flute of an older design. Size is the visible difference; the absence of keywork is the real one, and it is what holds the fife to a couple of octaves and a home key while the concert flute plays anything put in front of it. ### Is the fife easier to learn than the flute? The hard first step is identical, because both are blown across a hole and neither makes a sound until the embouchure forms. After that the fife is easier — six holes under six fingers, nothing to regulate and nothing to break. It gets difficult again at the point where the music asks for a note the six holes do not give you. ### What key is a fife in? The standard is B♭: the six-finger note sounds a concert B♭ while the chart calls it D. Fifes in C and D are sold as beginner and folk instruments. If the plan involves other fifers, it has to be B♭. ### Can a flute player pick up a fife? The tone arrives almost immediately, since the embouchure is the same skill on a smaller hole. The fingering has to be learned from scratch, and everything sounds a minor sixth above the page. ### Is a fife the same as a piccolo? No, though they are close in length and both sit high. A piccolo is a Boehm instrument in concert C with full keywork, built for an orchestra; a fife is keyless, transposing and built to be heard across a field. There is more on this in [piccolo vs. fife](/piccolo-vs-fife/). ### Can a fife play sharps and flats? Most of them, through cross-fingerings and half-covered holes, at some cost in tuning and evenness. Keyed and ten-hole chromatic fifes exist for players who need the accidentals to be dependable, and they are an upgrade rather than a starting point. ### Is a fife a woodwind? Yes. Like the flute it is an edge-blown aerophone with no reed, which puts both of them in the [woodwind family](/woodwind-instruments/) despite the modern flute being made of metal. If the six-hole fingering is the part that appeals, the same pattern is waiting on the [Irish flute and tin whistle](/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/). If it is the flute you are heading for, we have written on [what flutes cost](/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) and how it compares with the [piccolo](/piccolo-vs-flute/), the [clarinet](/clarinet-vs-flute/) and the [recorder](/flute-vs-recorder/). **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [Donner DML-1 Mandolin Review: The Cheapest Way to Find Out](https://promusicvault.com/donner-mandolin-review/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Mandolin Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/mandolin-reviews/ "Mandolin Reviews")› Donner DML-1 Mandolin Review: The Cheapest Way to Find Out The [Donner DML-1](https://amzn.to/4y1inIg) is a hundred-dollar A-style mandolin that arrives with a gig bag, a clip-on tuner, a spare set of strings and a handful of picks. That bundle is most of why it sells, and it is a better reason than it sounds: the accessories a beginner forgets to buy are the ones that decide whether the instrument gets played. What it is not is a mandolin you keep. The top is mahogany rather than spruce, the bridge is floating and arrives roughly placed, and the action is usually higher than it should be. None of that is a scandal at this price. It just means the DML-1 answers one question — do you actually want to play the mandolin — and hands you over to something better once you know. The short version### Buy it to find out, and expect to spend a little more making it play Nothing else at a hundred dollars puts a working mandolin, a tuner and a bag in the same box, and the tuner matters more than a beginner expects — a mandolin has eight strings in four pairs and goes out of tune faster than anything else you have owned. The catch is the last hour of the build, which is missing. The bridge is not glued down, nothing has located it, and the strings sit high until somebody fixes that. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y1inIg) **The one to keep:** Ibanez M510, around $200 **Buy once:** Kentucky KM-150, around $595 **Budget for:** a setup, $60–125 **Change first:** the strings, about $10 ## DML-1 and DML-100B are the same mandolin Worth settling before anything else, because the two names are used interchangeably and it looks like a choice. Donner’s own product record carries the model as the DML-1 and the part number as DML-100B, in two finishes — sunburst and black. One instrument, two colors, one specification. If you have been comparing a DML-1 against a DML-100B you have been comparing a mandolin against itself. ## The specification, from Donner **Model**DML-1, part number DML-100B**Body**A-style, f-holes**Top**AAA African mahogany, pressed — not spruce, not carved**Back & sides**AAA African mahogany**Neck**AAA African mahogany, “C” profile**Fingerboard**Not stated by Donner**Frets**20 brass, markers at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th and 17th**Inlays**Dots**Bridge**Compensated, height-adjustable on two thumbwheels, floating**Truss rod**Yes, adjustable**Tuners**Chrome open-gear, four a side**Pickguard**PVC, raised on a bracket**Overall length**28″**Tuning**G D A E, the same as a fiddle**Finishes**Sunburst, black**Donner’s list price**$159.99 Two gaps in that table are worth naming. Donner does not publish a fingerboard material for this mandolin, and they do not publish a weight. The fingerboard is a dark hardwood of some description and behaves like one; the weight will be in the ordinary [two-and-a-bit pounds](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-mandolin-weigh/) a mandolin of this size weighs, whatever the shipping figures say, because those are measured with the bag and the tuner and the box. The truss rod is real, which is not something to take for granted at this money — plenty of hundred-dollar mandolins have a fixed neck and no way to correct it when the relief goes. Owners have photographed the access point on this one. ## A mahogany top is the compromise, and the marketing calls it a feature “AAA grade African mahogany” appears in the first line of every description of this instrument, and it reads like a premium specification. It is worth knowing what those words mean before they do any persuading. Mandolins are built with spruce tops. Every rung above this one — the Ibanez at $200, the Loar at $400, the Kentucky at $595 — is spruce, pressed at the bottom of the range and carved at the top, and the reason is that spruce is stiff for its weight and gives a mandolin the bark it is supposed to have. Mahogany is a legitimate tonewood with a real character of its own: drier, warmer, more midrange, less top-end sparkle and less headroom when you dig in. On a mandolin, whose whole job in a group is to cut through, that character works against the instrument. “AAA” is a grading term for how the wood *looks* — figure, color, consistency of grain. It says nothing about stiffness and nothing about tone, and it is applied here to the wood that was chosen because it costs less than the wood the instrument wants. Nor is it solid. Donner never uses the word anywhere in their catalogue for an acoustic top, so the omission is not the usual tell it would be with another maker — but a pressed arched top at a hundred dollars is laminate, because a solid one bent into that arch would crack. The practical consequence is the one that matters: a laminate top does not open up. Carved spruce instruments sound better after five years of playing. This one will sound in 2031 exactly as it sounds the week it arrives. That is the ceiling, and it is a real one. It is also not a reason to avoid the instrument, because you will hear the ceiling long before it stops you learning anything. ## The bundle is the actual product Bought separately, the accessories in this box come to a meaningful fraction of the price of the mandolin. What arrives: **Gig bag**Padded, zipped, with a front pocket. Not a case — it will not survive being sat on — but it keeps dust off and makes the thing portable.**Donner DT-2 clip-on tuner**A real chromatic clip-on with an LCD display, not an app and not a voucher. This is the piece that earns the bundle its keep.**Spare string set**A full second set. You will want it: a first-timer breaks strings while learning how much tension is enough.**Picks**Two celluloid picks. Thin ones. A mandolin wants something stiffer, and they cost almost nothing.**Polishing cloth**A cloth. The tuner is the one to notice. A mandolin has [eight strings tuned in four pairs](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/), and both strings in a pair have to agree with each other as well as with the tuner, which is twice the tuning work of a guitar and considerably less forgiving. Handing a beginner a mandolin without a tuner is handing them an instrument that sounds wrong for reasons they cannot diagnose. Our [guide to tuning a mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) covers the pairs properly. ## What owners actually run into Across nearly a thousand ratings the DML-1 averages 4.2 out of 5, and the shape of that is more useful than the number: two thirds give it five stars, and a little over one in five gives it three or fewer. That spread is the honest summary of a hundred-dollar instrument. Most arrive fine. Enough arrive needing work that you should plan for it rather than be surprised by it. The complaint that recurs is the bridge. It is not glued or pinned — it is held in place by nothing but string tension, which is how almost every mandolin works — and it leaves the factory sitting wherever it landed. If it is in the wrong place the instrument plays in tune with itself at the open strings and progressively out of tune as you go up the neck, which is maddening and very easy to mistake for your own bad fretting. The other two that come up often: the action is high out of the box on a good proportion of them, and the instrument arrives badly out of tune after a spell in a warehouse and a lorry, sometimes by most of an octave. The second is not a fault. The first is the setup problem below. ## The setup, and the arithmetic it creates A setup is a repair shop putting the parts where they should have been: the bridge located and its feet fitted to the curve of the top, the action dropped at the twelfth fret, the nut slots cut to depth, the neck relief set, the fret ends dressed. On a mandolin it runs **$60 to $125** — a little above the guitar rate at most shops, because the floating bridge is fiddly work. Our [cost breakdown](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) goes through where the rest of the money goes. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) On an instrument like this a setup does more for how it plays than another hundred dollars of budget would. It is also the thing that makes the sums awkward, and it would be dishonest not to say so: a $100 mandolin plus a $90 setup is $190, and at $190 the [Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3SjllJ7) is sitting right there, better built in every respect, and needing the same setup on top. Which way that cuts depends on one thing only, and it is not a question about mandolins. If you are reasonably sure you will still be playing in a year, the Ibanez is the cheaper instrument, because it is the one you will not replace. If you genuinely do not know — and most people buying a first mandolin genuinely do not know — then a hundred dollars is the right amount to risk, and you can put off the setup until you have decided the instrument is worth it. Plenty of people learn their first chords on an unset-up DML-1 perfectly happily. ## Where it sits MandolinStyleTopPrice bandWhat the money buys[Donner DML-1](https://amzn.to/4y1inIg)ALaminate mahogany~$100Finding out, with the accessories included[Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3SjllJ7)ALaminate spruce~$200Factory consistency and the right wood[The Loar LM-110-BRB](https://amzn.to/4wS9CiE)AHand-carved solid spruce~$400A top that was carved rather than pressed[Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/4chx0yR)ASolid spruce, solid maple~$595Buying once All four are A-styles. The scroll on an F-style costs several hundred dollars and changes nothing about the sound, which is worth knowing before you spend it — our [A-style versus F-style comparison](https://promusicvault.com/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) goes through what it does and does not do. ## If the DML-1 is not the right one If you already know it will stick ### Ibanez M510 - A-style, f-holes - Spruce top, sapele back and sides - Purpleheart fingerboard, 20 frets - ~$200 Twice the money and the best-built mandolin at anything near it. The frets are level, the neck is straight, the nut is cut to the right depth, and the top is the wood a mandolin is supposed to be made of. It is still a laminate and it still needs the same setup, so it is not a shortcut past the shop — it is simply a better instrument to have that work done to. Against the Donner it arrives with nothing in the box, so add a tuner and a bag to the price when you compare them. Our [full M510 review](https://promusicvault.com/ibanez-m510bs-review/) has the detail. **Pros**- Spruce top rather than mahogany - Noticeably more consistent unit to unit - The one you are least likely to replace **Cons**- No tuner, bag or strings included - Still a laminate top, so still a ceiling - Twice the outlay on something you may not stick with Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SjllJ7) If you would rather buy once ### Kentucky KM-150 - A-style, f-holes - Solid German spruce top - Solid alpine maple back and sides - ~$595 The rung where a mandolin stops being a compromise. Solid spruce over solid maple, which means the instrument gets better as it is played rather than staying where it started, and enough volume and bite to hold its own in a room full of other players. This is the standard answer to “what should I buy if I am not going to do this twice”. It is six times the price of the Donner, and worth it only if the honest answer is that you are serious. Bought at the start it saves you the Donner and the Ibanez both. **Pros**- Solid top and solid back, so it improves with age - Loud enough to play with other people - Holds its value **Cons**- Six times the outlay - Plain appointments for the money - Wants a setup like everything else Around $595[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4chx0yR) ## The first thing to change Ten dollars, and the biggest single improvement ### D’Addario EJ74 phosphor bronze, 11–40 - Medium gauge - Phosphor bronze wound - One full set, eight strings - ~$10 Factory strings on a cheap instrument have usually been on it for months before it reaches you, and they sound dull and feel stiff long before they break. The EJ74 is the set most mandolins leave a decent factory wearing, and putting one on a DML-1 does more for the tone than anything else you can do for the money. Change them one at a time rather than taking all eight off at once. The bridge is held on by string tension alone, and if you remove every string it falls over and you lose whatever position it was in. Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/46rHOqE) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the Donner DML-1 a good mandolin for a complete beginner? Yes, with one caveat. It is playable, it is cheap enough that abandoning it costs nothing much, and the tuner and bag remove two of the excuses people use to stop practicing. The caveat is that a proportion of them arrive with the action too high and the bridge in the wrong place, and a beginner cannot tell the difference between a badly set-up instrument and their own lack of progress. If it feels unreasonably hard, that is worth checking before you conclude anything about yourself. ### Does it need an amplifier? No. It is a fully acoustic instrument with f-holes and no pickup, no jack and no electronics of any kind. It makes its noise on its own and it is louder than people expect. ### Does it have a truss rod? It does, and it is adjustable. That matters more than it sounds: it means a neck that develops too much or too little relief can be corrected rather than lived with, which is not true of every mandolin at this price. ### What tuning does it use? G D A E, low to high, in four pairs — identical to a violin. If you play the fiddle, every note is already where you expect it. If you play the guitar, almost nothing transfers except your sense of rhythm. ### Is the sunburst or the black one better? They are the same instrument to the same specification, so pick the one you would rather look at. Gloss black shows fingerprints in a way the sunburst does not. ### How long will I want to keep it? Longer than a year if you play casually, and less than that if you get serious, because a laminate mahogany top has a ceiling you will hear once your right hand knows what it is doing. That is the instrument working as intended rather than failing — it is there to get you to the point where you can tell what you want next. ## So, should you buy it? Buy the [DML-1](https://amzn.to/4y1inIg) if you want to find out whether the mandolin suits you and would rather risk a hundred dollars than four hundred. It plays, it comes with the things you would otherwise have to go back and buy, and if it turns out the instrument is not for you the experiment cost about the same as two lessons. Buy the [Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3SjllJ7) instead if you already know this is going to stick, and the [Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/4chx0yR) if you would rather do it once and properly. Either way put $60 to $125 aside for a setup and treat it as part of the price rather than an upgrade — it is the difference between an instrument you pick up every evening and one that sits in the corner reproaching you. Still deciding? Our [beginner mandolin guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) covers the cheap end properly, [best mandolin for the money](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) goes further up the ladder, and [how hard the mandolin is to play](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/) is the honest answer to the question underneath all of this. **Categories:** Mandolin Reviews --- ### [Deering Artisan Goodtime Review: What the Extra $350 Buys](https://promusicvault.com/deering-goodtime-artisan-review/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Deering Artisan Goodtime Review: What the Extra $350 Buys The Artisan Goodtime is a Deering Goodtime open back with planetary tuners, fifth-string spikes, a dark Midnight Maple fingerboard and vintage-style inlays. Around $950, against around $600 for the plain Goodtime. The rim, the neck wood, the head, the scale length, the bridge, the tailpiece, the weight and the warranty are the same on both. So the question is whether $350 is the right price for four pegs, three spikes and a nicer-looking neck. For a player who retunes constantly it is closer than it sounds. For everyone else it is not. The short version### Deering Artisan Goodtime Open Back An excellent American-made open back, and the same instrument underneath as the $600 Goodtime. Buy it for the planetary tuners and the spikes at frets 7, 9 and 10 — both are things old-time players use every evening and both are awkward to retrofit. Buy the plain Goodtime if you play in G and stay there. Around $950 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WFswra) **Same banjo, less money:** Deering Goodtime — around $600 **If it is bluegrass:** Goodtime Two — around $850, resonator ## What Deering actually built An eleven-inch pot made from three-ply violin-grade maple, with the head bearing directly on the wood. There is no tone ring — Deering’s specification sheet leaves that row blank, and it stays blank all the way up the Goodtime line. That is the defining thing about how this banjo sounds. A tone ring is a hoop of metal under the head that adds brightness, volume and sustain; without one you get a dry, woody, quick-decaying note with a plunk to it that old-time and clawhammer players choose on purpose. The neck is rock maple in Deering’s rounded “D” profile, twenty-two nickel silver frets pressed into it, a one-and-a-quarter-inch nut, and a twenty-six-and-a-quarter-inch scale. Sixteen flat J-hooks pull the head down. The armrest, the smile bridge and the patented Goodtime tailpiece are all standard fittings. It weighs about four and a half pounds, which is genuinely light for a banjo and is the reason people play these for hours. What the Artisan badge adds is a short list. Planetary tuners instead of sealed geared ones. Fifth-string spikes fitted at frets 7, 9 and 10. A separate Midnight Maple fingerboard, where Deering’s specification for the standard Goodtime names no fingerboard at all and simply gives the neck as rock maple. Vintage Artisan inlays rather than the art deco hardwood ones. A dark red mahogany stain instead of natural maple, and nickel plating instead of a bronze powder finish on the hardware. Artisan GoodtimeGoodtimeGoodtime TwoBackOpenOpen3-ply resonatorRim11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple11″ 3-ply violin-grade mapleTone ringNoneNoneNoneNeckRock maple, dark red mahogany stainRock maple, naturalRock maple, naturalFingerboardMidnight MapleNot listed separatelyNot listed separatelyTunersPlanetarySealed gearedSealed geared5th string spikesFrets 7, 9, 10None fittedNone fittedInlaysVintage ArtisanArt deco hardwoodArt deco hardwoodScale26 1/4″26 1/4″26 1/4″Weight4.5 lb4.5 lb6 lbWarrantyEight yearsEight yearsEight yearsPrice band[~$950](https://amzn.to/3WFswra)[~$600](https://amzn.to/4c4MyWy)[~$850](https://amzn.to/4imDhNp) ## The tuners are the real upgrade A planetary peg has its gearing inside the shaft, so the button sits behind the peghead pointing backward, the way a banjo has looked since the 1920s. A sealed geared tuner has the gearing in a housing on the back with the button out to the side, like a guitar. Both hold pitch perfectly well. The difference is in the hand: planetary pegs turn on the same axis as the string post, so a quarter turn is a quarter turn, and you can find a retune by feel without looking. Old-time players dropping from G into double C or sawmill between tunes do this dozens of times an evening. Deering sells the Goodtime planetary tuner as a replacement part for $25, singly, so a set of four is $100 plus whatever a shop charges to fit them. That number is the honest frame for the $350. You are paying $100 of tuners, a few dollars of spikes, and about $250 for a darker fingerboard, better inlays and nickel plating. Which is not the same as saying it is bad value. Fitting tuners means reaming peg holes to a different taper, and a botched job on a maple peghead is not something you undo. If you already know you want planetary pegs, having them arrive fitted, in tune and under warranty is worth something. ## The spikes matter more than they look The fifth string is short — it starts at the fifth fret and drones. To change its pitch for a different tuning you either retune it every time, which is fiddly on a peg that short, or you hook it under a small spike driven into the fingerboard so it stops at a fixed fret. The Artisan comes with those spikes at 7, 9 and 10, which covers the common alternate tunings without you touching the peg. They are trivially cheap parts. Fitting them is not trivial: each one goes into a hole drilled into the side of the fingerboard at an angle, and getting the height and the angle right is the difference between a string that seats cleanly and one that buzzes or slips off mid-tune. Most people take this to a luthier, which puts the job in the same bracket as the tuners. The pattern here is worth noticing. Every difference between these two banjos that costs real money is a neck modification. Nothing about the pot, which is where a banjo’s voice comes from, changes at all. ## How it sounds, and what it will not do Dry, woody and quick, with the note dying away rather than ringing on. That is the sound of a wooden pot with nothing under the head, and it is the correct sound for old-time, clawhammer and frailing. It sits well under a fiddle without fighting it, and it is quiet enough to practice in a flat at eleven at night. It will not do bluegrass. There is no resonator to throw the sound forward and no ring to give it cut, so in a band with a guitar and a mandolin you will not be heard. That is a design decision rather than a shortcoming, but it is the single most common way people buy the wrong banjo — [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is the thing to settle before spending anything. Two other limits are worth stating plainly. The fingerboard is not scooped, so there is no cut-away section over the head to strike over — if clawhammer is definitely the destination, a scooped neck is the one feature that genuinely cannot be added later, and [the clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) cover the instruments that have it. And nothing comes in the box but the banjo. No case, no strap, no tuner. № 1 · The Artisan itself ### Deering Artisan Goodtime Open Back - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, 11″ frosted high-crown head - Rock maple neck, Midnight Maple fingerboard, 22 frets - Planetary tuners, geared 5th-string tuner - Spikes fitted at frets 7, 9 and 10 - 26 1/4″ scale, 1 1/4″ nut, 4.5 lb - Made in California, eight-year warranty - ~$950 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Taken on its own it is very hard to fault. Four and a half pounds, a proper wooden pot, a neck that stays where you put it, and it arrives set up and playing in tune with itself. The dark stain and the inlay work make it the best-looking banjo Deering sells under a thousand dollars by some margin, and the resale on a Goodtime of any kind is unusually strong. The case against it is entirely the case for the cheaper one. Everything that decides how a banjo sounds is shared with a model costing $350 less, and if you play in one tuning you will never use the two features you paid for. **Pros**- Planetary tuners fitted and set up properly - Spikes at 7, 9 and 10 for alternate tunings - 4.5 lb, light enough to play all evening - American built, eight-year warranty, holds its value **Cons**- Same pot, scale and weight as the $600 model - No tone ring, so it will not carry a band - Unscooped neck, so not ideal for committed clawhammer - Nothing in the box but the banjo Around $950[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WFswra) № 2 · The one most people should buy ### Deering Goodtime Open Back - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, 11″ frosted high-crown head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets - Sealed geared tuners, geared 5th-string tuner - 26 1/4″ scale, 1 1/4″ nut, 4.5 lb - Made in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 The cheapest banjo built in America, and the instrument every open back under $700 gets measured against. Identical pot, identical neck timber, identical scale, identical weight, identical warranty. It arrives set up. It sounds the same, because the parts that make the sound are the same parts. It is plainer — natural maple rather than the dark stain, art deco hardwood inlays, bronze-finished hardware — and it has no spikes and no planetary pegs. If neither of those is something you will use in the first two years, this is $350 that would be better spent on a hard case, a proper setup and lessons. **Pros**- The same pot and neck for $350 less - Cheapest American-built banjo there is - 4.5 lb, same eight-year warranty - Commits you to no particular style **Cons**- Geared guitar-style tuners, not planetary - No spikes, so alternate tunings mean retuning the fifth - Plain to look at Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4c4MyWy) № 3 · If bluegrass is where this is heading ### Deering Goodtime Two - 3-ply poplar and maple resonator, 11″ maple rim - No tone ring, 11″ frosted head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale - Sealed geared tuners, geared 5th-string tuner - 6 lb - Made in California, eight-year warranty - ~$850 The same banjo with a maple bowl bolted to the back, which throws the sound forward instead of letting it escape behind you. It is the difference between an instrument you can be heard on in a room of players and one you cannot, and it costs a pound and a half in weight. Worth putting next to the Artisan directly, because it is the cheaper of the two and it is the one that changes what the banjo can do. There is still no tone ring, so it is not a full bluegrass pot — but it is the right shape and the right projection to learn the style on, and the ring can come later or never. **Pros**- Projection the open backs simply do not have - Cheaper than the Artisan and more useful - Same American build, setup and eight-year warranty **Cons**- 6 lb, and you feel it standing up - Still no tone ring, so it will not cut like a Mastertone - Wrong instrument if old-time is the destination Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4imDhNp) ## The rest of the Artisan line Artisan is a trim level rather than a model, and Deering apply it across most of the Goodtime range — the open back reviewed here, a resonator Artisan Goodtime Two, an Artisan Goodtime Special with the steel tone ring, an Artisan Americana on the twelve-inch rim, and seventeen- and nineteen-fret tenors. Each is its standard counterpart with the same set of neck upgrades and roughly the same premium attached. The Americana is the one worth knowing about. It puts the Artisan neck on a twelve-inch pot with a Renaissance head, which drops the pitch of the whole instrument and gives the deep, thumpy voice fiddle tunes sit on. Same four and a half pounds. For an old-time player it is a more meaningful upgrade than anything the Artisan badge does to the eleven-inch banjo. The Artisan line has not replaced the standard Goodtime line. Deering builds both, side by side, and the plain Goodtime is still their entry instrument. ## Setup, strings and what to spend the difference on Every Goodtime is set up in California before it leaves, which is not true of most banjos at any price and is a large part of what you are buying. It ships strung with Deering light gauge — .010, .011, .013, .021 wound and .010 — and tuned to open G. That is a sensible gauge for an open back; heavier sets drive a wooden pot harder but make the first months of clawhammer harder on the hand. [Which strings to put on a banjo](/best-banjo-strings/) goes into the gauges properly. If you take the $600 banjo, the $350 goes a long way. A hard case is the first thing, because nothing here comes with one and a four-and-a-half-pound banjo is easy to knock over. Then a strap that takes the weight off the wrist, and a clip-on tuner. There is still change left over, and a proper setup on a new instrument does more for how it plays than any of the Artisan’s appointments. ## Verdict The Artisan Goodtime is a very good open back banjo and a slightly awkward purchase. Deering has not cut a corner anywhere on it — the pot is the same three-ply violin-grade maple they put in everything, the neck is properly made, it weighs four and a half pounds and it will still be worth money in a decade. None of the above is a complaint about the instrument. It is a complaint about the arithmetic, and only for some buyers. If you retune — if double C and sawmill are going to be part of your evening — the planetary pegs and the fitted spikes are exactly the right things to have and exactly the wrong things to add yourself later. Buy it and do not look back. If you are learning, or you play in G, or you have not decided between old-time and bluegrass yet, the [plain Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4c4MyWy) is the same banjo where it counts and the [Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4imDhNp) costs less than the Artisan while doing something the Artisan cannot. There is more on the wider choice in [our Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/), [the open backs worth owning](/best-open-back-banjo/) and [the bluegrass picks](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/). New to all of this? Start with [the beginner banjos](/best-banjo-for-beginners/), and [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) is worth a look if you plan to play standing. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Concertina vs. Accordion: What's Different, and Which One to Learn](https://promusicvault.com/concertina-vs-accordion/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Free Reed Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/free-reed-comparisons/ "Free Reed Comparisons")› Concertina vs. Accordion: What’s Different, and Which One to Learn A concertina and an accordion make their sound the same way: a bellows drives air past a thin steel tongue set in a slot, and the tongue vibrates. Both are free-reed instruments and both are worked by pulling and pushing. Almost everything else about them differs, and the difference that should decide which one you buy is not the size or the shape. It is what the left hand is holding. An accordion’s left hand is a chord machine. One button gives you a complete major chord, another gives the minor, and a beginner can put a proper accompaniment under a song on the first afternoon. A concertina has nothing of the kind — every button on both ends is one single note, so harmony is something you assemble by hand while the tune is going on. That one fact separates the two instruments far more decisively than the weight or the shape does. If you want one answer### The accordion — unless the music is folk tunes or the instrument has to travel It plays in every key, it accompanies a singer without any theory, and there is a century of published beginner material behind it. The Hohner Hohnica 1304 is the size to start on: 26 keys, a complete 48-bass left hand, and light enough to keep on your shoulders for an hour. Buy the concertina instead if you want Irish or English traditional tunes, or if two pounds versus twelve is the deciding number. Around $860 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xOxu7W) **Conjunto, norteño or vallenato:** Hohner Panther G/C/F — around $600 **Cheapest way to try a concertina:** Hohner D40, 20 buttons — around $315 **The concertina that does not run out of notes:** Trinity College AP-1230A, 30 buttons — around $450 ## Side by side ConcertinaAccordionShapeHexagonal, about 6½ inches across the flatsUpright rectangular boxWhere the buttons areOn both ends, pressed in line with the bellowsOn the front faces, either side of the bellowsRight handButtons, one note eachPiano keys, or rows of buttonsLeft handButtons, one note eachStradella bass — single notes *and* whole preset chordsWeightAbout 2 lb9 lb for a three-row button box, 12–17 lb for a student piano accordion, about 20 lb full sizeKeys it plays inAnglo: two home keys plus accidentals. English and Duet: all of themPiano accordion: all of them. Diatonic button: the three printed on the boxTo start~$315 to try one, ~$450 for a full 30-button~$600 button, ~$860 pianoWhere you hear itIrish and English traditional music, sea songs, morris dancing, South African folk; tango, on the bandoneonPolka, conjunto, norteño, vallenato, klezmer, French musette, cajun, folk, pop and classical ## The left hand is the whole argument The grid of buttons under an accordionist’s left hand is the Stradella system, and it is closer to a machine than to a keyboard. Two columns give you single bass notes; the columns beside them give you finished chords, one button each — major, minor, seventh, diminished. You do not build the chord and you do not need to know what is in it. Press the button marked C, get C major, and a song has an accompaniment. A concertina gives you none of that. On an Anglo, an English or a Duet, every button is a single note, on both ends, and a chord means finding three of them at once with the hand that is also working the bellows. It is entirely doable and traditional players do it constantly, but it is a skill rather than a button, and it is the reason the concertina is fundamentally a melody instrument while the accordion is a one-person band. So the useful question is not which is better. It is whether you want to play tunes or accompany songs. If you picture yourself singing over the top of it, the accordion does that job on day one and the concertina will make you earn it. If you picture yourself playing the melody in a session, the concertina is built for exactly that and the accordion’s left hand is weight you are carrying for nothing. ## Push and pull: the same button, two notes Some free-reed instruments are **bisonoric** — a button sounds one note when you press the bellows in and a different note when you draw them out, the way a harmonica changes note between blowing and drawing. Others are **unisonoric**, and give the same note either way. The split cuts across both instruments rather than separating them: there are bisonoric and unisonoric concertinas, and bisonoric and unisonoric accordions. ### The three concertina systems The **Anglo** is bisonoric. It grew out of the German concertina of 1834 and its two main rows are tuned to the C and G major scales, with a third row carrying the accidentals and some doubled notes. That third row extends its reach without making it fully chromatic — it is a folk instrument and it works best in its home keys. The push-pull layout is why it suits Irish and English dance music so well: the bellows change does the rhythmic work. The **English** concertina, patented by Charles Wheatstone in 1829, is unisonoric and fully chromatic. Consecutive notes of a scale alternate between the two hands, which is strange for about a week and then very fast. It plays in any key and takes classical, folk, jazz and song accompaniment equally. The **Duet** is also unisonoric, and lays the low notes out on the left and the high notes on the right, like a piano. It is the concertina for someone who wants melody and harmony from the same instrument. Small duets are only partly chromatic; the larger ones cover everything. Nothing transfers between the three. A tune learned on an Anglo is no help at all on an English, so the system is a decision you make once. For a beginner in the United States it is very often made for you: the Anglo is what is sold at beginner prices and what most tutor books are written for. ### The two accordion families A **piano accordion** is unisonoric. Every note is there, in every key, laid out the way a piano is, which is why beginner method books assume one and why it is the default across most of the United States and Europe. A **three-row diatonic button accordion** is bisonoric, exactly like the Anglo concertina, and only plays in the three keys printed on the instrument. That is not a defect — it is the instrument of conjunto, norteño, vallenato and Tex-Mex, and a piano accordion will not make those sounds. It is also lighter and louder for its size. [Our guide to beginner accordions](/best-accordions-for-beginners/) goes through which key set to buy, which is the one choice on that instrument you cannot undo. ## Two pounds against twenty A concertina is about six and a half inches across the flats and weighs roughly two pounds. It goes in a rucksack, it can be played standing in a pub without a strap, and nothing about owning one is logistical. An accordion is furniture by comparison. A three-row button box is around nine pounds, a 26-key student piano accordion about twelve, a 34-key one seventeen, and a full-size 41-key with 120 bass buttons runs to roughly twenty. All of that hangs off two shoulder straps while you play. Weight is the most underrated specification on an accordion because it decides how long a practice session lasts, and beginners need long ones. For a child, for anyone small, or for anyone whose playing is going to happen somewhere other than their own front room, this is not a footnote. It is frequently the whole decision. ## Which one is actually cheaper At the very bottom the concertina wins, and it wins clearly. Around $315 buys a 20-button Anglo that is a real instrument with real limits, while $315 spent on an accordion buys something with eight bass buttons and no minor chords, which is the shape of an accordion with the instrument left out. Then the two converge. A full 30-button Anglo is around $450, and the starter instruments the specialist concertina makers build sit near $500 — against roughly $600 for a three-row button accordion and $860 for a piano accordion with a complete left hand. Call that a wash, and note that the accordion is giving you far more notes for it. Above that the concertina becomes the expensive one, and the reason is the reeds. Cheap and mid-priced concertinas are *hybrids*: they use mass-produced accordion reeds, which are cheaper to make and less fussy about what they are mounted in. A *traditional* concertina uses concertina reeds, individually fitted into chambers cut in a wooden reed pan, and their tone depends on the chamber and the materials around them. They are slow and expensive to produce. Intermediate hybrid Anglos run from about $1,700 to $2,700, the traditionally reeded instruments cost more again, and a comparable step up on the accordion side simply does not climb that fast. The short version: a concertina is cheaper to try and dearer to be serious about. There is more on the accordion side of that ladder in [what accordions cost](/how-much-do-accordions-cost/). ## Which is harder to learn Neither is harder in general, and the honest answer is that they are hard in different places. The concertina puts fewer things in front of you. Twenty or thirty buttons, one note each, no registers, no chord machine, nothing to configure. Simple tunes come quickly. What takes time is that on an Anglo the note under your finger changes with the bellows direction, so you are learning a layout and a breathing pattern at once, and building harmony means finding several single notes while that is going on. The accordion front-loads coordination. The right hand is a keyboard you can see; the left is a grid of dozens of identical buttons you learn entirely by feel, because your hand is behind the instrument and you will never see it; and the bellows are a third thing happening continuously underneath both. But once the left hand knows where C is, the chord machine does the harmonic work for you, and you sound like an accompanist much sooner than you will on a concertina. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The practical difference is in the material. Accordion method books have been in print continuously since the 1950s and there is a large, standardized body of them. Concertina tutors are a smaller specialist catalogue, mostly written for the Anglo in C/G, and mostly excellent — but you will be picking from a shelf rather than a library, and finding someone local to teach you is a much longer search. ## What each one is for The Anglo concertina is the instrument of Irish traditional music, English country dance and morris, sea songs and — through a long and separate history — South African folk music. The English concertina has an original classical repertoire written for it and turns up in folk, song accompaniment and jazz. The **bandoneon**, the large square instrument at the front of every tango orchestra, is a German concertina system rather than an accordion: bisonoric, invented to stand in for a church organ, and absorbed by Argentina in the 1890s. The accordion’s range is wider because there are more kinds of it. Piano accordions cover polka, klezmer, French musette, cajun, folk, pop and a real classical repertoire. Diatonic button boxes carry conjunto, norteño, vallenato and Tex-Mex. The Chemnitzer concertina, confusingly, is the American Midwest’s polka instrument and belongs to the German concertina family rather than to either of the above. If a specific recording is what put you here, identify what is on it before you buy anything. The two instruments do not substitute for one another in any of these traditions. ## If you have chosen the concertina Both of these are Anglos in C/G, which is the layout every beginner tutor is written for. Both use accordion reeds, as everything at this price does. The cheapest honest way in ### Hohner D40 - Anglo, 20 buttons - 40 reeds - C/G - About 2 lb - Padded gig bag included - ~$315 Twenty buttons is two rows: the C scale and the G scale, and nothing else. You can play a great many folk tunes on that and you will feel the edges of it inside a year, which is the deal on offer — this is an instrument for finding out whether the concertina suits you, not the one you keep. The recurring complaint, and it comes up across years of owners, is buttons that stick when the instrument is new. It is a mechanical fault rather than a tuning one, and owners have cured it with a screwdriver and a drop of light oil on the button shafts. Play every button, in and out, the day it arrives rather than a fortnight later. **Pros**- Least money that buys a genuine Anglo layout - Two pounds, and it comes with a bag - Simple enough to service yourself **Cons**- Two keys, no accidentals - Sticking buttons are common when new - Manufacturer defects are covered for 90 days only Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zlXs4d) The full layout ### Trinity College AP-1230A - Anglo, 30 buttons - Three rows, C/G - 8-fold bellows - Laminated walnut-finish ends - Padded bag included - ~$450 Thirty buttons is the standard Anglo, and the third row is the difference that matters: the accidentals live there, so the tunes that were unplayable on a 20-button open up, and nothing you learn on it has to be relearned later. It sits about $135 above the Hohner and buys a genuinely larger instrument for it. The weak point at this price is the button action rather than the tone — it can be uneven out of the box, the same complaint the cheaper instrument attracts, though it comes up less often here. The reeds are hybrids and speak a little more shyly than a hand-made set, which you will notice only if you have played one. **Pros**- Full 30-button layout with the accidental row - Eight-fold bellows, so long phrases are possible - Padded bag and an air-release button included **Cons**- Button action can be uneven when new - Laminated ends rather than solid wood - Hybrid reeds — the ceiling is real Around $450[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3TSxmWn) Buy a tutor with it. Gary Coover’s [Easy Anglo 1-2-3](https://amzn.to/4zojhjB) is about $15 and holds 35 tunes in a tablature that shows which button to press alongside the standard notation. It starts on one row, moves to 20-button tunes and then to 30-button ones, so it fits either instrument above and keeps fitting after you upgrade. ## If you have chosen the accordion The one to start on ### Hohner Hohnica 1304 - Piano accordion - 26 keys - 48 bass - Two reed sets, 3 registers - 12 lb - ~$860 Forty-eight bass is where the left hand becomes complete: root, counter-bass, major and minor in all twelve keys. The 12-bass boxes below it have six major chords and no minor chords at all, which rules out a large part of ordinary music and makes it impossible to learn how the two relate. Twelve pounds is manageable for a teenager or a smaller adult through a real practice session, which the bigger instruments are not. It is built to a price and the reviews are mixed, always about the same thing — a key or a spring wrong on arrival. That is a quality-control lottery rather than a design fault, and it is fixable, but play every key and every bass button on the first day. **Pros**- Complete 48-bass left hand - Light enough for long practice and smaller players - Gig bag and straps included **Cons**- Mechanical faults on arrival are not rare - No low reed set, so one basic voice - 26 keys runs out at the top eventually Around $860[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xOxu7W) If the music is conjunto or norteño ### Hohner Panther G/C/F - 3-row diatonic - 31 treble buttons - 12 bass - Two reed sets - 9 lb - ~$600 Designed in Germany, built in China, and the reason a real accordion company’s instrument lands near $600 rather than $1,300. G/C/F is the standard for Texas conjunto and Colombian vallenato and it is what most teaching material assumes; F/B♭/E♭ is the other common set, and if you have a teacher or people to play with, buy the set they use. Straps and Hohner’s own method booklet are in the box. There are no register switches, so both reed sets sound together and that is your only voice. On a diatonic that matters much less than it would on a piano accordion — bright and wet is the sound you want — but it is the honest difference between this and the instruments above it. **Pros**- The best-rated accordion at anything near the price - Nine pounds, so you can practice standing - Method booklet and straps included **Cons**- Three keys only, chosen at purchase - No register switches - No gig bag in the box Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/465N0jO) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a concertina just a small accordion? No. They are both free-reed bellows instruments, but a concertina has buttons on its two ends, pressed in line with the bellows, and every one of them plays a single note. An accordion has its keys and buttons on the front faces, and its left hand includes preset chord buttons. Neither the fingering nor the technique transfers. ### Can you play chords on a concertina? Yes, but you build them note by note — there is no chord button on any concertina. Anglo players do it constantly and there is a whole harmonic style devoted to it. It is a technique to learn rather than a feature to use, which is the opposite of the accordion’s Stradella bass. ### Which is easier to learn? The concertina gets you playing simple tunes faster because there is less of it. The accordion gets you accompanying a song faster because the chords are already made. Past the first few months the accordion has far more published method material behind it, and teachers are much easier to find. ### How many buttons does a concertina have? Twenty on a two-row Anglo and thirty on the standard three-row, which is the one to aim for. English concertinas are usually 30 or 48 keys, and Hayden duets start around 34. Thirty is the number at which the accidentals appear and the instrument stops closing doors on you. ### Is a bandoneon a concertina or an accordion? A concertina — specifically a German concertina system, built by Heinrich Band in the 1840s as a portable substitute for a church organ. It is bisonoric like the Anglo, square rather than hexagonal, and much larger. Argentina adopted it for tango in the 1890s and it has been the sound of that music ever since. ### Which is louder? The accordion, comfortably, because it has more reeds sounding at once and often several sets that can be switched in together. A concertina is bright and cuts well in a session, but it is a single voice and it sits higher — the low end of an accordion is not available to it at all. ### Can I play Irish music on an accordion? Yes, and plenty of players do — the two-row B/C and C♯/D button accordions are standard in Irish traditional music. What does not work is the piano accordion in a session context, where the repertoire and the ornamentation both assume a bisonoric instrument. ## So which one Buy the accordion if you want to accompany yourself, play in any key, or follow a method book without hunting for one — the [Hohnica 1304](https://amzn.to/4xOxu7W) at 26 keys and 48 bass is the sensible size to learn on, and the [Panther](https://amzn.to/465N0jO) if your music is conjunto or norteño. Buy the concertina if you want to play tunes rather than songs, if the music is Irish or English traditional, or if you need an instrument that weighs two pounds. Try it on the [20-button Hohner](https://amzn.to/4zlXs4d) and buy the [30-button](https://amzn.to/3TSxmWn) if you already know you mean it. Either way, get the C/G — every tutor you will pick up is written for it. **Categories:** Free Reed Comparisons --- ### [How to Change a Harp String, Step by Step](https://promusicvault.com/changing-harp-strings/) **Published:** December 15, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How to Change a Harp String, Step by Step The knot is not what holds a harp string in. On anything thinner than about .036 — middle C and every string above it, on most harps — the knot pulls straight through the hole in the soundboard the moment the string comes up to pitch. What holds it is the *anchor*: a scrap of thick old string, a leather washer or a stiff nylon spline threaded through the loop before you pull the knot tight. Fit that, and the rest of the job is threading and winding. That is a lever and pedal harp job. Small lyre harps use ball-end steel strings that need no knot and no anchor at all, and they are a different piece of work. ## Table of Contents - [The whole job, in order](#the-whole-job-in-order) - [What the job needs](#what-the-job-needs) - [Getting the right string](#getting-the-right-string) - [Which pins does your harp have?](#which-pins-does-your-harp-have) - [Step one — tie the knot and fit the anchor](#step-one-tie-the-knot-and-fit-the-anchor) - [Step two — seat it in the soundboard](#step-two-seat-it-in-the-soundboard) - [Step three — wind it onto the pin](#step-three-wind-it-onto-the-pin) - [Step four — bring it up to pitch](#step-four-bring-it-up-to-pitch) - [Never take them all off at once](#never-take-them-all-off-at-once) - [Lyre harps are a different job](#lyre-harps-are-a-different-job) - [How long harp strings last](#how-long-harp-strings-last) - [What harp strings cost](#what-harp-strings-cost) - [Common questions](#common-questions) - [My knot pulled through the soundboard. What did I do wrong?](#my-knot-pulled-through-the-soundboard-what-did-i-do-wrong) - [Can I use fishing line or a guitar string?](#can-i-use-fishing-line-or-a-guitar-string) - [Do I need to loosen the strings on either side?](#do-i-need-to-loosen-the-strings-on-either-side) - [The same string keeps breaking. Why?](#the-same-string-keeps-breaking-why) - [How long before a new string holds its tuning?](#how-long-before-a-new-string-holds-its-tuning) - [Can I reuse the anchor from the old string?](#can-i-reuse-the-anchor-from-the-old-string) - [After the string is on](#after-the-string-is-on) ## The whole job, in order 1. Back the tuning pin out about four turns — **zither pins only**, not tapered pins. 2. Tie the harp knot in the new string, threading the anchor through the loop if the string is .036 or thinner. 3. Feed the string through the soundboard hole from the front and pull the knot up snug on the inside. 4. Push about ¼ inch of the free end through the hole in the tuning pin. 5. Wind in the same direction as the pins either side of it — three or four wraps, dropping straight down to the bridge pin. 6. Bring it up to pitch slowly, checking after each turn that the pitch is rising. 7. Leave the tail long for a day or two, then trim it to about 1½ inches above the pin. ## What the job needs Get this one right before anything else### Roosebeck Harp Tuning Key, Medium The size that covers the full-size lever and Celtic range — Roosebeck’s own harps from the little Baby Harp up to the 38-string round back, and most other makers’ pins besides. Mid-East also make a small version for lyres and specialty instruments, so check which end of the range your harp sits at before ordering. Around $17 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zmWO6i) **Anchors:** save the ones off the old string **Cutting:** a sharp box cutter, and fine wire cutters for wound strings **Tuning:** a clip-on chromatic tuner, around $22 Harp tuning pins are tapered squares and the square is not one size. Lyres take about 4 mm, most lever and Celtic harps somewhere between 4.5 and 5 mm, and some larger instruments more again. A key one size up rounds the corners off your pins permanently, and a key one size down will not go on at all, so measure across the flat top of a pin before buying anything. “Harp tuning key” on its own is not a specification. If your harp arrived with a key, that key is the right size and there is nothing to work out. Buy a second one for the case; the one you own is always at the other end of the house when a string goes. The anchors are worth a sentence on their own, because they are the part people throw away. When you pull the broken string out, a small leather tab or a stub of thick nylon usually comes with it. Keep it. It goes into the new knot, and a harp that came with a bag of them came with a consumable you will eventually run out of. A quarter-inch off the end of a dead bass string does the same job. ## Getting the right string Harp strings are made for a specific harp and a specific position on it. They are ordered by *string number*, counting down from the shortest string as number one, together with the harp’s model — not by note name, and not by gauge alone. Two harps tuned to the same pitch can want different strings in the same slot because the scale lengths differ, and a [lever harp and a pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) of the same height differ again. Your maker publishes a string chart for the instrument, and that chart is the whole answer. There are three constructions on a typical lever or pedal harp, and they behave differently the moment you take them out of the packet. String typeWhere it sitsKnotAnchorWatch out forMonofilament gut or nylonTreble and middleYou tie itYes, at .036 and thinnerThe knot creeping through the hole overnightNylon-woundLower middleAlready tiedNot neededForcing it through the hole and splitting the wrapWire-woundBassAlready tiedNot neededCutting through the winding instead of the plain core Wound strings arrive with the knot formed at the factory, which removes the fiddliest part of the job and replaces it with a requirement for restraint. Thread them through gently rather than pushing, and if you have to shorten one, cut only the plain core sticking out past the winding. A wound string with a nicked wrap sounds dead from the first note and there is no fixing it. ## Which pins does your harp have? Look at the right-hand side of the neck, opposite the side you put the key on. What you see there decides whether the pin needs preparing before the string goes anywhere near it. **Tapered harp pins** pass all the way through the neck and stick out on both sides. They are held by friction against the wood. Fit the string and wind; there is nothing to prepare. **Zither pins** — the same micro-threaded pins a piano or an autoharp uses — are smaller and only appear on the key side. They screw into the wood rather than wedging into it, and they are common on smaller and lighter harps because they need less timber removed from the neck. Before you fit a string, turn the pin counter-clockwise about four full turns. Skip that and you run out of thread as you tighten, and the pin starts pulling against the wood instead of holding in it. ### Step one — tie the knot and fit the anchor Tie a plain overhand knot near the end of the string, leaving a tail of two or three inches. Do not pull it tight yet. Pass the tail back through the loop of that knot a second time, so you have a loop with the tail running through it, then lay the anchor across that loop and pull the knot down onto it. On a thicker monofilament — roughly .040 and up — the doubled knot alone is enough and the anchor can stay in the drawer. The finished knot should be a hard little bundle wider than the hole it is about to sit against, with the anchor lying across the hole rather than pointing into it. Tug it hard between your fingers before it goes anywhere near the harp. It is far easier to find out now than at pitch. Nylon is slippery and the first knot you tie will probably slide. Practice on the broken string you just took off: same material, already useless. ### Step two — seat it in the soundboard Feed the free end through the string hole from the front of the soundboard and out through the access hole in the back of the body, then pull until the knot comes up against the inside of the board. Some harps want the knot pulled through from the back instead — the access holes are there so your hand can reach the knot either way. If the knot disappears into the hole, it is too small. Pull it back out and add the anchor, or tie it again with more turns. Do not try to compensate by winding extra turns on the pin. ### Step three — wind it onto the pin Push the free end through the hole in the tuning pin until about ¼ inch shows on the far side. Then wind, and two details decide whether this string behaves for the next two years. **Match the direction of the neighboring pins.** Every string on the harp wraps the same way. Look at the pin above and the pin below and copy them. **Aim for three or four wraps that drop straight down to the bridge pin.** Fewer than three and the string can creep under tension. More than four means you left too much slack, and the coils climb the pin and start crossing each other, which is the usual reason a string sits perfectly in tune one day and a semitone flat the next. If you are getting six or seven wraps, unwind, pull more string through, and start again. On a thick monofilament that will not grip, take the first wrap away from the neck, then bring the next wrap back over the top of it. The string pinches itself and stops slipping. ### Step four — bring it up to pitch Go slowly, and check the pitch is actually rising as you turn. If it is not, stop immediately: you are on the wrong pin, and the string you are tightening is a good one that is about to snap. This is the single most common way a routine string change turns into two string changes. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Take it up in stages rather than straight to pitch. New gut and nylon stretch enormously at first — the string will read a third flat within an hour, and it needs bringing back up several times a day for the first week. That is the string settling and the knot bedding in, not a fault. Wire-wound strings settle in a day or two. Clip the tuner to the shank of the tuning key rather than to the harp. The display then sits an inch from the pin you are turning, and no metal clip touches the soundboard. A [Snark ST-2](https://amzn.to/4hDeRz2) at around $22 reads vibration rather than room noise, which is what you want with thirty other strings ringing in sympathy. Leave the excess sticking up for those first couple of days. If the knot does let go, or you find you were a string number out, you have something left to work with. Once it holds pitch, trim to about 1½ inches — two fingers’ width — above the pin. ## Never take them all off at once A lever harp carries somewhere around 900 to 1,200 pounds of pull across its soundboard, and a concert pedal harp closer to a ton. That load is not something the instrument survives in spite of — the neck and the soundboard are curved and braced around it, and they hold their shape because it is there. Take every string off together and the whole frame relaxes, then has to be re-loaded from nothing. Harp makers are blunt about this: Harpsicle’s own instructions tell owners not to change all the strings on a lever harp at the same time. Work in ones and twos, or an octave at a time, and let the harp settle in between. A full restring is a job spread over days, not an afternoon. One string at a time is a different matter — individual strings carry roughly 15 pounds of tension in the treble and up to 60 in the bass, which against a four-figure total is nothing at all. Replacing one string on a fully strung harp is safe. Stripping the instrument is not. ## Lyre harps are a different job The small 7-, 16- and 19-string lyres have no soundboard access hole, no anchors and no string chart. The strings are usually steel with a ball or loop end that sits in a saddle, the pins are zither pins taking a smaller key — around 4 mm rather than the 4.5 to 5 mm a lever harp wants — and the strings are sold as complete numbered sets rather than singly. Changing one is closer to restringing a guitar: the loop end drops into the saddle, the other end goes through the pin, and there is nothing to tie. Because the sets are cheap and the strings are the part that fails first on an inexpensive lyre, most owners keep a spare set in the bag rather than ordering one string at a time. The spare set to keep in the bag ### 16-String Lyre Harp Replacement Set - 16 strings, numbered - Steel, loop end - For standard 16-string lyres - ~$8 A plain numbered steel set for the standard 16-string lyre — the shape the Donner DLH-003 and the AKLOT both belong to, tuned G3 to A5. Steel is what these instruments are voiced for. Nylon sets exist and sound gentler, but they give away most of the volume that makes a small lyre audible in the first place. Check the numbering on the packet against the string you are replacing rather than matching gauges by eye. The difference between adjacent strings on a lyre is small enough to get wrong, and a string one position out will sit at the wrong tension for the rest of its life. **Pros**- Cheap enough that there is no argument for not owning one - Numbered rather than sold loose - Loop ends seat straight into the saddle — no knot, no anchor **Cons**- Sixteen only — a 19- or 21-string lyre needs its own set - Bright and metallic, which is not to every taste Around $8[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g0d8T7) Count the strings on your own instrument before ordering — 7, 10, 16, 19 and 21 are all common, and a 16-string set will not stretch to a 19-string lyre. If you are still choosing an instrument, our guide to the [best lyre harps](/best-lyre-harps/) covers which ones ship with a spare set in the box. ## How long harp strings last There is no fixed lifespan, and makers say so plainly — a string can go in a fortnight or last a decade. What can be pinned down is when a string stops being worth keeping, which is a different question from when it breaks. Gut is the shortest-lived and the most sensitive to a dry room or a hot car. Nylon monofilament lasts longer but goes brittle with ultraviolet, so a harp that lives in a sunny window is on a faster clock than the same harp in a corner. Steel-wound bass strings corrode from the inside and go dull years before anything visible happens to them. PlayerFull setTop two octavesProfessional or daily performerEvery 6–12 monthsTwice a yearSerious student, plays most daysEvery 1–2 yearsYearlyCasual playerEvery 3–5 years, or on breakageAs needed The top two octaves come round faster than the rest because they are short. A tiny amount of wear is a large proportion of a six-inch string, and those are the ones that stop holding pitch first — most obvious on a pedal harp, where a worn treble string drifts as the pedals move. Four signs a string is finished, none of which involve it breaking: it will not settle on a tuner and hunts around the note; it sounds dull next to its neighbors; a wound string has started to unwrap; or the winding has shifted sideways where it crosses the bridge pin. ## What harp strings cost Individual strings are cheap and full sets are not, which is most of why a harp gets restrung a few strings at a time rather than in one afternoon. HarpOne stringFull setLyre harp, 7–21 stringsSold as a setAround $8–20Lever harp, nylonAround $3–20Around $135–285Lever harp, gutAround $12–25Around $350–520Pedal harp, gut with wire bassesAround $8–30Around $600–800 Two things push the total around. Wire-wound bass strings are the expensive end of any set — the wires alone on a concert pedal harp run to somewhere near $120 — so a set quoted “without wires” is a hundred dollars cheaper and is not a complete set. And gut costs two to three times what nylon does in the same slot, which is the trade a lever harp owner makes when specifying the instrument in the first place. If the arithmetic is a surprise, our piece on [why harps are so expensive](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/) puts strings in context against the rest of the running costs. Paying someone else to do a full restring is typically another $175 or so in labor on a lever harp, on top of the strings themselves. ## Common questions ### My knot pulled through the soundboard. What did I do wrong? Almost certainly no anchor, or an anchor that slipped out of the loop as you tightened. Retie with the anchor sitting across the loop rather than along it, and pull the knot down hard onto it by hand before the string goes near a pin. ### Can I use fishing line or a guitar string? Not on a harp you care about. Harp monofilament is specified to reach a particular pitch at a particular tension over a particular length, and fishing line of the same diameter stretches differently and never settles. A steel guitar string in a slot designed for nylon is worse: at the same pitch and length it pulls far harder, on a point of the soundboard that was not built for it. ### Do I need to loosen the strings on either side? No. One string off a fully strung harp changes nothing structurally. Loosening the neighbors only gives you more to retune afterward. ### The same string keeps breaking. Why? Where it lets go names the culprit. At the tuning pin usually means a sharp edge in the pin hole or too few wraps. At the bridge pin points at a burr or a worn groove in the pin itself. At the soundboard is either the knot or a rough eyelet. One string breaking is ordinary wear; the same string breaking twice in the same place is the harp asking you to look at that spot. ### How long before a new string holds its tuning? A week or two of daily retuning for gut or nylon, a couple of days for wire. Tuning it often makes it settle faster, not slower. A whole newly strung harp can want fifty tunings before it stabilises. ### Can I reuse the anchor from the old string? Yes, and it is the normal thing to do. Leather washers and nylon splines are not consumed by the job. Keep the ones you find and cut spares from dead bass strings. ## After the string is on Tune it, then tune it again tomorrow, and keep doing that until it stops moving. Our [step-by-step guide to tuning a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the order to work in and the transpose trick that makes a pedal harp readable on a chromatic tuner, and the [harp tuner comparison](/best-harp-tuner/) covers which tuners cope with the bottom octave. For everything else that keeps an instrument playing well, there is our collection of [harp tips](/harp-tips/). **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Best Ukulele Straps: No-Drill Hooks, Ties and Button Straps](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) **Published:** June 15, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukulele Straps: No-Drill Hooks, Ties and Button Straps Turn your ukulele over and look at the bottom edge, where the two sides of the body meet. If there is a small round button there, you can use almost any strap made. If there is nothing — and on most ukuleles under $200 there is nothing — your choice narrows to two: hook a strap into the soundhole, or fit a button first. That is the whole decision. Fabric, pattern and width barely matter next to it, and it is the reason a strap that works perfectly for one player arrives useless for another. Our pick for most players### Eyeshot Double J-Hook Ukulele Strap Two J-hooks clip over the rim of the soundhole and the strap goes over your shoulder like a guitar strap. Nothing to install, nothing to drill, no hardware in the box to lose — it works on a ukulele straight out of its case, in any size from soprano to baritone. Around $16 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wvrq6t) **If you’ll fit one button:** Eyeshot tie strap — around $14 **Most colors:** CLOUDMUSIC clip-on — around $17 **Buy it once:** D’Addario Eco-Comfort — around $35 ## At a glance StrapHow it attachesNeeds drilling?LengthPrice band[Eyeshot Double J-Hook](https://amzn.to/3wvrq6t)Two hooks in the soundholeNo33–52″~$16[CLOUDMUSIC Clip-On J-Hook](https://amzn.to/3SuVHku)Hook in the soundholeNoAdjustable~$8–20[D’Addario Eco-Comfort](https://amzn.to/4hz9vVv)One rubber hook in the soundholeNo22–37″~$35[Eyeshot Tie Strap](https://amzn.to/3Y1Q2jf)Lace around the headstock, pin at the tailOne hole29–51″~$14[MUSIC FIRST Vintage Lace](https://amzn.to/3XAzij2)Lace round the headstock, pin at the tailOne holeAdjustable~$17[Rinastore Cotton Linen](https://amzn.to/3Hy4fPa)Tie round the headstock, button at the tailOne holeAdjustable~$7[Levy’s M19LUKE-BLK](https://amzn.to/4qe8l3U)Two strap buttonsTwo holesTo 53″~$15 ## The three ways a strap gets onto a ukulele ### Hook straps: nothing to install, everything hanging off the soundhole A hook strap ends in one or two J-shaped hooks that bite over the rim of the soundhole. You lift them in, the strap goes over your shoulder, and you are playing thirty seconds after opening the packet. No hardware, no screwdriver, and nothing about the instrument changes. What you are accepting is that the entire weight of the ukulele now hangs from the edge of a hole in the soundboard. On a laminate concert uke weighing a pound and a half that is a non-event — the hook pulls downward against the rim, and the kerfing behind it is thicker than the top. It is worth more thought on a thin solid-wood top, on a heavy baritone, and on anything with a finish you care about, because a hard plastic hook rubbing against a glossy soundhole edge will eventually leave a mark. Which is why the hook material is the spec worth reading, and the pattern is not. Soft rubber or a padded hook spreads the load and cannot scratch. Bare hard plastic on a $9 strap can. ### Tie straps: one hole, and the uke sits where you want it A tie strap — sometimes sold as a “semi-guitar” strap — has a lace or cord at one end that loops around the headstock behind the nut, and a leather tab at the other that goes onto a button at the tail. You need one button, which means one hole drilled into the tail block, and after that the strap carries the instrument the way a guitar strap does. This is the best-value arrangement on a ukulele that arrived with no buttons at all, and the straps that use it usually ship the tail pin in the box. The trade is that the top anchor sits at the headstock rather than at the neck heel, which pulls the neck up and centers the body more toward the middle of your chest than a two-button strap does. Most players stop noticing within a week; some never get on with it. ### Two-button straps: two holes, and then anything fits Two buttons — one at the tail, one at the bottom of the neck heel — is what a luthier fits and what every guitar strap in the world expects. The load goes into two blocks of solid wood rather than onto a soundboard edge, the ukulele hangs at whatever height you set, and the neck stops tipping forward when you let go. A tenor or [baritone](/baritone-ukuleles/) that you play standing for an hour deserves this. It is also the only option that involves putting two holes in an instrument, which is why it is last on most people’s list rather than first. Buttons cost a few dollars; on a solid-wood ukulele, paying a shop twenty to fit them is money well spent. ## The five picks № 1 · Best for most players ### Eyeshot Double J-Hook Ukulele Strap - Two soundhole hooks - No drilling - 1.57″ wide - 33.3–52.1″ - Leather shoulder pad - ~$16 Both hooks clip over the soundhole rim and the strap runs over one shoulder, so the ukulele hangs at whatever height the buckle is set to instead of being pinned against your chest. That sounds minor until you have used a short hook strap that leaves the uke up under your chin. The doubled leather pad at the shoulder is the other thing you feel — 1.57 inches of jacquard is wide enough that a tenor stops cutting in. It fits soprano through baritone because nothing has to line up with anything: the hooks simply need a soundhole. Six patterns are available at the same price, and the strap is the only thing in the box, which is the point. **Pros**- Works on any ukulele, unmodified, in under a minute - Genuine shoulder strap rather than a chest loop - Padded leather shoulder section - Fits soprano to baritone **Cons**- All the weight sits on the soundhole edge - Hooks are visible across the soundhole - Jacquard patterns are loud by design Around $16[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wvrq6t) № 2 · The same idea, cheaper, in every color ### CLOUDMUSIC Clip-On J-Hook Ukulele Strap - Soundhole hook - No drilling - Around 14 patterns - Soprano to baritone - ~$8–20 CLOUDMUSIC has been selling Hawaiian-print uke straps longer than most of the competition and has the ratings to show for it — over a thousand on this listing alone. The clip-on version does the same job as the Eyeshot at a similar price, and the range of patterns is the reason to pick it: roughly fourteen designs, several of which sit well under ten dollars. Read the color you are ordering rather than assuming. The cheaper swatches on this listing are narrower and plainer than the flagship prints, which is how the price gets down to single figures, and the flexible J-hook is the same either way. **Pros**- Far more patterns than anything else at this price - Some colourways are half the price of the rest - Large body of buyer feedback behind it **Cons**- Price and width vary between colors on one listing - Same soundhole-edge load as any hook strap Around $8–20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SuVHku) № 3 · The hook strap that isn’t disposable ### D’Addario Eco-Comfort Ukulele Strap - Single soft-rubber hook - No drilling - Woven recycled nylon - 22–37″ - Leather end - ~$35 One hook, made of soft rubber rather than hard plastic, on a strap woven from recycled bottles with a proper leather end. It is the only no-drill strap here from a brand with a warranty department, and the rubber hook is the part that justifies it — nothing on this strap can scratch a soundhole edge, which is not true of the generic hooks. The honest problem is the price. At around $35 it costs more than twice the Eyeshot and does the same job on the same instrument, and the 22 to 37 inch adjustment is short enough that the ukulele sits high on the chest rather than at hip level. Buy it because you have a solid-wood ukulele whose soundhole you would rather not experiment on. Do not buy it expecting it to hold the instrument any better. One thing to watch when you order: the listing carries two different straps under a Style menu, Eco-comfort and Nylon. The rubber hook and the recycled weave are the Eco-comfort option, and it is the dearer of the two. The Nylon one is a plain woven strap. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Soft rubber hook cannot mark a finish - Real brand, real materials, real leather end - Woven from recycled plastic **Cons**- Over twice the price of straps that do the same thing - Short adjustment range holds the uke high - Single hook, so it is less stable than a double Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hz9vVv) № 4 · Best if you’ll fit one button ### Eyeshot Tie Strap - Headstock lace + tail pin - Tail pin included - 1.57″ wide - 28.7–51.2″ - Two picks included - ~$14 The lace ties around the headstock behind the nut and the other end drops onto a pin at the tail, and the pin is in the box along with a couple of picks. That is the cheapest complete route from a ukulele with no fittings at all to a strap that carries the instrument properly, and it is the best-rated strap on this page by a distance. Fitting the pin is the whole job, and it takes a pilot hole in the center of the tail block. If your ukulele already has an endpin — some do, for a pickup jack — you may not need to drill anything. Once it is on, the uke hangs lower and steadier than any hook strap manages, and nothing is resting on the soundboard. **Pros**- Tail pin and picks supplied, so nothing else to buy - Weight goes into the tail block, not the soundhole - Hangs lower and more stably than a hook strap - Cheapest of the picks here **Cons**- You have to drill one hole, or pay someone to - Headstock anchor centers the body more than two buttons would - The lace needs retying if you move it between ukuleles Around $14[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Y1Q2jf) If you want the same arrangement in something less Hawaiian, the [MUSIC FIRST vintage lace strap](https://amzn.to/3XAzij2) is cream cotton lace with a leather locking tab and its own pin, at around $17, and the [Rinastore cotton linen strap](https://amzn.to/3Hy4fPa) does it in plain country-style cloth for about $7 — though that listing does not say whether the tail button comes with it, so budget for a pair of pins if you go that way. № 5 · Best if your uke already has two buttons ### Levy’s Leathers M19LUKE-BLK - Two strap buttons - Genuine leather - 1/2″ wide - Adjustable to 53″ - Tri-glide adjuster - ~$15 Half an inch of black leather with leather pin ends at both ends and a brass tri-glide to set the length. Levy’s have been making straps in Nashville since 1973 and this is the plain one, sized for mandolins and ukuleles rather than cut down from a guitar strap — which matters, because a 2.5-inch guitar strap on a soprano looks and behaves absurd. Narrow leather is not the choice for a heavy instrument, and on a baritone played standing you will feel the edge. On anything soprano through tenor it disappears, which is the entire idea, and it will outlast every jacquard strap here. **Pros**- Real leather, made by a strap company, not a print shop - Correctly sized for ukuleles rather than a shrunken guitar strap - Will outlive the instrument **Cons**- Needs two buttons already fitted - Half an inch is narrow under a heavy uke - Black only Around $15[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qe8l3U) ## Fitting a strap button The first button goes at the tail, dead center on the seam where the two sides of the body meet. There is a solid tail block behind that seam on any decently built ukulele, and that block is what takes the load. Mark the center, make a pilot hole narrower than the screw’s core so the wood cannot split, and drive the screw by hand — a felt washer under the button stops the metal edge blistering the finish. The second button, if you want two, goes on the underside of the neck heel rather than on the side of the neck or the upper bout. Under the heel it is hidden, it is screwed into the thickest piece of wood in the instrument, and it holds the neck up instead of letting it dive. Angle the pilot hole so the screw runs up into the heel and cannot break through the other face. A set of ukulele-sized [strap buttons with cushions and screws](https://amzn.to/4ctSIzt) runs about $8. Guitar buttons are too big and their screws too long, so buy the small ones. And if the ukulele is solid wood, or you have never drilled into an instrument before, a repair shop will do both in ten minutes for around twenty dollars — cheaper than the alternative. ## Questions people actually ask ### Will a soundhole hook damage my ukulele? Not on a laminate ukulele used sensibly. The hook pulls straight down against the soundhole rim, and there is kerfing glued behind that rim which is stronger than the top itself. The two things that cause trouble are a hard plastic hook chafing a gloss finish over months, and hanging your forearm’s weight on the strap as well as the instrument’s. A padded or rubber hook removes the first problem entirely. ### Do I even need a strap? Sitting down with a soprano, no. Standing up with anything, yes — because without one your fretting hand is holding the ukulele up as well as fretting, and that is what stops beginners moving cleanly between chords. If your [strumming](/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) tightens up the moment you stand, this is why. ### Can I use a guitar strap on a ukulele? Only if the uke has two buttons, and it will look wrong. A guitar strap is 2 to 2.5 inches wide, which on a soprano is nearly as wide as the body is deep. Ukulele and mandolin straps run half an inch to about an inch and a half for that reason. It will work; it just will not fit. ### Which strap for a soprano? A hook strap or a tie strap, and keep it narrow. A soprano weighs so little that the strap is there to stop it sliding rather than to carry it, and a wide padded strap on a small body looks like a saddle. Sopranos are also the size most often bought as a first instrument, so they are the ones least likely to have buttons — see our guides to [soprano ukuleles](/best-soprano-ukuleles/) and [cheap ukuleles](/best-cheap-ukuleles/). ### Where does the strap tie on the headstock? Behind the nut, in the gap between the nut and the tuners, with the lace under the strings. Not around the tuning pegs, and not over the strings — either will pull the uke out of tune every time the strap moves. ### Will a strap fit a pineapple or a thin-body electric uke? Hook straps need a round soundhole of ordinary size, which pineapples have and most thin-body electro-acoustics do not. If your ukulele has an f-hole, a slot, or no hole at all, a hook strap is out and you are fitting buttons. Thin-body electrics almost always ship with a tail button already, so you are usually one button from a tie strap. ### Does a strap in the soundhole change the sound? Not audibly. A hook occupies a sliver of the soundhole’s edge and adds a few grams to the rim. What does change the sound is holding the instrument against your body, which a strap lets you stop doing. ## So which one? If your ukulele has no buttons and you do not want to change that, buy the [Eyeshot double J-hook](https://amzn.to/3wvrq6t) and stop thinking about it. If the soundhole edge worries you — solid top, gloss finish, an instrument you saved for — the [D’Addario Eco-Comfort](https://amzn.to/4hz9vVv) costs twice as much and cannot mark it. If you are willing to put one hole in the tail, the [Eyeshot tie strap](https://amzn.to/3Y1Q2jf) is the best strap on this page and comes with the pin. And if you already have two buttons, or you are having them fitted anyway, the [Levy’s M19LUKE-BLK](https://amzn.to/4qe8l3U) is a proper leather strap for the price of a printed one. Still buying the instrument itself? Start with the [best ukuleles for beginners](/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/), or [how to choose a ukulele](/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) if you have not settled on a size. Once it arrives, a [stand](/best-ukulele-stands/) and a set of [decent strings](/best-ukulele-strings/) do more for how often you pick it up than anything else you can spend $20 on. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Best Tenor Banjos: 17 Frets for Irish, 19 for Jazz](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-banjo/) **Published:** March 5, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Tenor Banjos: 17 Frets for Irish, 19 for Jazz A tenor banjo has four strings, no drone, and either 17 frets or 19. That fret count is the whole decision. Seventeen frets means a neck around 20 to 21 inches from nut to bridge, which is what Irish players use; nineteen means 22 to 23 inches, which is what the trad-jazz players of the 1920s used and what most tenor banjos sold today still are. Everything else — resonator or open back, brass or no brass, $300 or $850 — sits underneath that one choice. Our pick### Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor A 19¾-inch scale over 17 frets is the shortest neck here and the closest to what an Irish session player actually holds. It has a rolled brass tone hoop, which neither Deering does, and the 13-inch resonator unbolts, so the same banjo covers a loud room and a quiet one. A padded gig bag is in the box. Around $700 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4quWz5m) **American built:** Deering Goodtime 17-Fret Tenor — around $600 **For jazz:** Deering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor — around $600 **Cheapest way in:** Gold Tone AC-4 — around $315 **Loudest:** Deering Goodtime Two 19-Fret — around $850 ## The six at a glance BanjoFretsScaleBackTone ringWeightBuiltPrice band[Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor](https://amzn.to/4quWz5m)1719¾”Removable resonatorRolled brass5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$700[Deering Goodtime 17-Fret Tenor](https://amzn.to/3kwLtyI)1721″Open backNone4 lbCalifornia~$600[Deering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor](https://amzn.to/4wBWG0t)1923″Open backNone4.5 lbCalifornia~$600[Gold Tone CC-Tenor](https://amzn.to/4gqN2aS)1922⅝”Removable resonatorRolled brass5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$700[Deering Goodtime Two 19-Fret Tenor](https://amzn.to/3Ue7p3w)1923″Resonator, fixedNone5.5 lbCalifornia~$850[Gold Tone AC-4](https://amzn.to/4bWZg9S)1922¾”Open backNone3.5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$315 ## Two inches of neck is the difference between the two banjos Deering builds the same Goodtime tenor in both fret counts at the same price, which makes the comparison clean: the 17-fret has a 21-inch scale and is 32 inches end to end, and the 19-fret has a 23-inch scale. Two inches over seventeen frets is a lot of hand. Deering recommends the short one to Irish and Celtic players wanting, in their words, “a shorter scale length to make those tricky single-note runs”, and that is exactly the job — Irish tenor playing is fast single-line melody, mostly in first position, with the occasional reach that a long neck turns into a stretch. The 19-fret neck earns its length elsewhere. Trad jazz on a tenor banjo is chord work, four beats to the bar, moving up the neck in closed shapes, and two extra frets of range plus wider spacing between them makes that easier rather than harder. If you are buying the instrument to play behind a Dixieland band, take the long one. Gold Tone push the split further apart than Deering does. Their Cripple Creek Irish Tenor is 19¾ inches over 17 frets — shorter than the Deering short one — and their CC-Tenor is 22⅝ inches over 19. The Gold Tone pair is the more decisive choice; the Deering pair is the more forgiving one if you are not yet sure which music you are heading for. ## Tuning is a set of strings, not a kind of banjo A tenor banjo is tuned in fifths, and there are two standard ways to do it. **CGDA** is standard tenor tuning — the note names of a viola or a mandola, not a cello, which sits an octave lower. **GDAE** is Irish tuning, the note names of a fiddle but an octave below it; Gold Tone puts it plainly on their own flagship, describing the tuning as “an octave below the mandolin”. A third option, **Chicago tuning**, uses DGBE so that guitarists can bring their chord shapes across, and no maker on this page ships a banjo in it. None of that is built into the instrument. Deering says either of their tenors can go either way with the right string set, and the sets are the difference: Deering’s own CGDA strings run .010 .016 .024w .030w, while Gold Tone’s Irish set is .010 .020w .030w .040w. Heavier wound strings hold tension when you drop the pitch a fourth. Fit a CGDA set and tune it to GDAE and you get a slack, dull banjo that will not hold pitch, which is where most of the complaining about “Irish tuning not working” comes from. TuningNotesSame names asUsed forString setStandard tenorC G D AViola, mandolaTrad jazz, ragtime, dance bandLight, around .009–.030Irish tenorG D A EFiddle, an octave downIrish and Scottish session tunes[Heavy, .010–.040w](https://amzn.to/4qwMFjE)ChicagoD G B ETop four guitar stringsGuitarists crossing overLight, plus a plain third Two Irish sets are worth knowing. Gold Tone’s [Mastertone Irish tenor set](https://amzn.to/4qwMFjE) at around $8 is .010 .020w .030w .040w, which is what they fit at the factory to every Irish tenor they build, so it is the safe default. The [Dunlop Irish tenor set](https://amzn.to/3SnhxX1) at around $9 goes .012 to .036, a heavier first string and a lighter fourth, which suits a longer 19-fret neck being pulled down to GDAE better than the Gold Tone sets does. There is more on gauges in our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/). ## The six № 1 · The one to buy ### Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor - 17 frets, 19¾” scale - 11″ multi-ply maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone hoop - Removable 13″ maple resonator - Rosewood board, snowflake inlay, dual coordinator rods - 5 lb - Gig bag included - ~$700 This is the shortest-scale banjo on the page and the one that most resembles the instrument an Irish player would hand you. Nineteen and three quarter inches is the scale Gold Tone uses on their thousand-dollar Irish tenor as well, so the neck geometry you learn on this one carries straight up their range if you ever move. The brass hoop is the part worth the money. A tone ring is what makes a banjo ring rather than thud, and both Deerings here have none at all — a deliberate choice that gives them a dry, woody note that dies quickly. Irish tenor wants the opposite: a hard attack with enough sustain to carry a melody over fiddles and pipes. The resonator then decides how much of that gets thrown forward at the room, and four bolts take it off when you would rather it did not. Against it: this is built in Asia to Gold Tone’s specification and set up in Florida rather than built start to finish in the United States, and it will not hold its value the way a Deering does. Gold Tone warrants Cripple Creek banjos for seven years to the first owner and one year to the second, and they void the warranty entirely on anything bought outside their authorized dealer network, so buy it from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Shortest scale here, and the standard Irish one - Brass tone hoop where the Deerings have none - Resonator unbolts, so one banjo does both jobs - Gig bag in the box **Cons**- Will not hold value like the American-built pair - A pound heavier than the Deering 17-fret - Warranty void from an unauthorised dealer Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4quWz5m) № 2 · American built, and lighter ### Deering Goodtime 17-Fret Tenor - 17 frets, 21″ scale, 32″ end to end - 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Open back - Rock maple neck, Art Deco inlays - 4 lb - Built in California - ~$600 Four pounds and thirty-two inches makes this the smallest full-size tenor banjo anyone builds, and it is the one to take to a session you have to walk to. It is also American-made at a price where nothing else is, with an eight-year warranty on current production and the resale value that Deering names carry. The rim is the honest reason it costs what it does. A three-ply violin-grade maple shell with no tone ring on top is a design decision rather than a saving — it gives a dry, woody, fast-decaying note that suits old-time and clawhammer playing, and that suits a fiddle tune played quietly. Set it against the Cripple Creek and you can hear the missing brass immediately: less ring, less carry, less bite. That is the trade. If you play mostly at home or in small rooms, the Goodtime’s directness is pleasant and the weight is a genuine advantage. If you need to be heard across a pub with three fiddles going, it is the wrong instrument and no amount of picking harder will fix it. There is no case and no bag in the box either, so budget for one. **Pros**- Built in California at a price nothing else American matches - Four pounds, and 32 inches end to end - Eight-year warranty on current production - Holds its value **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited carry and sustain - Nothing to carry it in - Warranty is not transferable Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kwLtyI) № 3 · For trad jazz ### Deering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor - 19 frets, 23″ scale - 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Open back - Rock maple neck, Art Deco inlays - 4.5 lb - Built in California - ~$600 Identical to the 17-fret above in every respect except the neck, and the same price, which makes this the cleanest way to buy the long scale without paying extra for it. Twenty-three inches and nineteen frets is the classic tenor banjo of the 1920s, and it is the shape all the old chord books assume. What you gain over the short neck is range and room: closed four-note chords move up the fingerboard without cramping, and the extra two frets put the useful upper positions within reach. What you gain over the Goodtime Two below is half a pound and $250. The same missing tone ring applies, and it bites harder here, because trad jazz is the style that most wants a banjo to cut. This is a fine instrument to learn the repertoire on and a quiet one to gig with. If the band is loud, the Cripple Creek CC-Tenor’s brass hoop is the cheaper solution than a resonator. **Pros**- The long scale at the short scale’s price - Built in California, eight-year warranty - Lighter than any resonator banjo here - Room to move up the neck in closed chords **Cons**- No tone ring, in the style that most wants one - Open back throws sound backward, away from a band - No case or bag Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wBWG0t) № 4 · Jazz with the volume to match ### Gold Tone CC-Tenor - 19 frets, 22⅝” scale - 11″ multi-ply maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone hoop - Removable 13″ maple resonator - 1¼” nut, rosewood board, snowflake inlay - 5 lb - Gig bag included - ~$700 The Cripple Creek Irish Tenor’s other half: same rim, same brass hoop, same removable resonator, but nineteen frets over a 22⅝-inch scale and shipped in CGDA. If the pick is the top of this page and jazz is the music, this is the one to buy instead. It has the widest nut here at an inch and a quarter, three-sixteenths of an inch more than the Irish Tenor’s. On an instrument played mostly in four-note chords that is a real difference and a welcome one; on fast single-line melody it is not. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Against it, the same caveats as the Irish Tenor: built in Asia, set up in Florida, seven-year warranty to the first owner only, void if bought outside the authorized dealer network. It is also a pound heavier than the Deering openback, and with the resonator on it wants a strap. **Pros**- Brass tone hoop and a resonator, which is what jazz asks for - Widest nut here for chord work - Resonator unbolts for quiet practice - Gig bag in the box **Cons**- $100 more than the American-built openback - Five pounds with the back on - Warranty void from an unauthorised dealer Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gqN2aS) № 5 · The one to keep ### Deering Goodtime Two 19-Fret Tenor - 19 frets, 23″ scale, 35″ end to end - 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Three-ply poplar and maple resonator, fixed - 1⅗” nut, rock maple neck - 5.5 lb - Built in California - ~$850 The Goodtime with a resonator bolted on and $250 on the price. The resonator is a real one — three plies, straight sidewalls, and it does throw the sound forward at an audience rather than letting it escape behind you. If you already know you are going to play with other people and you want an American instrument that will still be worth something in twenty years, this is that instrument. The thing to be clear about is what the extra money does not buy. There is still no tone ring, so the note is the same dry, quick Goodtime note as the openback, just aimed differently. Compared like for like against the Gold Tone CC-Tenor at $150 less, you are paying for the California build and the eight-year warranty and giving up the brass. That is a fair trade if the build matters more to you than the sound does, and a poor one if it does not. It is also the heaviest and longest here at five and a half pounds and thirty-five inches, which matters more than it sounds like it should when you are standing up for a three-hour set. **Pros**- Real resonator, aimed at the audience - Built in California, eight-year warranty - Best resale of anything here **Cons**- $250 over the openback and still no tone ring - Heaviest and longest on the page - Resonator is fixed — no quiet option Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Ue7p3w) № 6 · Cheapest way to find out ### Gold Tone AC-4 - 19 frets, 22¾” scale - 11″ composite rim, Remo head - No tone ring - Open back - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, Zero Glide nut - 3.5 lb - Ships in GDAE with a .010–.040w set - Gig bag included - ~$315 Half the price of anything else on the page and the lightest thing here at three and a half pounds. The rim is a molded composite rather than laminated wood, which is what makes both of those numbers possible, and it sounds like what it is: snappy, immediate, a little plasticky, with none of the depth the maple-rimmed banjos have. For finding out whether you want a tenor banjo at all, that is a good enough sound and a very good price. Read the specification carefully before you assume it is an Irish banjo, though, because it is sold as one and is only half of one. Gold Tone ships it tuned GDAE with the heavy Irish string set, but the neck is a 22¾-inch, 19-fret standard tenor neck — three inches longer than their own Cripple Creek Irish Tenor. You get the Irish tuning without the short scale that is the actual reason Irish tenors exist, so every fast run and every stretch is the long-neck version of itself. Gold Tone builds the answer to that and give it almost the same name. The [**AC-4 IT**](https://amzn.to/3UUdNNB) is the same composite banjo at the same $315, in the same bag, on a 17-fret, 19¾-inch neck — shorter even than the Cripple Creek. Two letters after the model number are the whole difference, so if the music is Irish, check for them before you buy this one. That makes it an excellent first tenor banjo and a poor final one. It also carries the shortest warranty of the three Gold Tones here at five years, though unlike the Cripple Creek warranty this one is transferable. Fitting a CGDA set and playing it as a standard tenor is the honest way to use it, and it is very good at that. **Pros**- Around $315, and nothing else is close - Three and a half pounds — the lightest here - Zero Glide nut, which is why it plays in tune cheaply - Gig bag included, and the warranty transfers **Cons**- Irish tuning on a standard-length neck — the AC-4 IT is the short one - Composite rim sounds thin next to the maple ones - No tone ring Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bWZg9S) ## Nothing here has a tone ring except the Gold Tones It is the single spec that separates the two brands on this page, and it is easy to miss because both makers describe their rims in the same enthusiastic language. Deering’s Goodtime line has no tone ring at all: the note comes from a three-ply violin-grade maple shell and the head tension, and it is dry, immediate and short. Gold Tone’s Cripple Creek line puts a rolled brass flat bar on top of the same kind of maple shell, and brass makes a banjo ring. Neither is better in the abstract. The dry note is what old-time and clawhammer players go looking for, and on a fiddle tune played at home it is lovely. The ringing note is what carries across a session or a band, and if you are buying the banjo to be heard next to other instruments it is the thing to buy. Our [open back versus resonator comparison](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) covers the other half of the volume question. ## Warranties, and the condition attached to both Deering warrants current-production Goodtime banjos for eight years, to the original owner only — it does not transfer when you sell. Their upper Deering and Vega lines carry no time limit at all, again to the first owner. Gold Tone gives Cripple Creek models seven years to the first owner and one year to the second, and their AC line five years, transferable. Both companies attach the same condition: the warranty is void unless the instrument was bought from an authorized dealer in the United States or Canada. On an eight-hundred-dollar instrument that is worth checking before you buy rather than after something goes wrong. ## What to buy alongside it Two of the six arrive with nothing to carry them in. A [hard case cut for four-string banjos](https://amzn.to/4qs01xH) runs around $80 — pick the “Hard Case” option rather than the pricier ABS one, and note the interior is 39 inches long, so a 32-inch 17-fret tenor sits with room to spare while a 35-inch Goodtime Two is close to the limit. A [bridge mute](https://amzn.to/4wEOzQu) at around $25 is the accessory people wish they had bought first. A banjo with a brass hoop is loud in a way that a flat is not built for, and a brass pincher that clamps the bridge takes the volume down without the dead thud a rubber mute gives you. It fits four-, five- and six-string bridges. Beyond that, a clip-on tuner earns its money faster on a tenor banjo than on almost anything else, because fifths tuning is unforgiving and a banjo head moves with the weather. Our [banjo tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/) cover the ones with tenor and Irish sweetened settings built in. ## Questions people actually ask ### Is a 17-fret or a 19-fret tenor banjo better? Neither, but they are not interchangeable. The 17-fret has a scale around 20 to 21 inches and suits fast single-line Irish and Scottish melody; the 19-fret is 22 to 23 inches and suits the chord playing of trad jazz. That is a two-inch difference in how far your hand travels, so pick by the music rather than by the number. ### How is a tenor banjo tuned? CGDA for standard tenor, which is viola and mandola pitch, or GDAE for Irish, which is fiddle note names an octave lower. Both are tuned in fifths. Changing between them needs a different string set, not just turning the pegs. Our [banjo tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) has the whole process. ### How many strings does a tenor banjo have? Four, with no short drone string. That is what separates it from the five-string banjo of bluegrass and clawhammer. Our guide to [how many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) covers the four-, five- and six-string families. ### What is the difference between a tenor and a plectrum banjo? Both have four strings, but a plectrum has 22 frets over a 26-inch scale and is tuned CGBD — effectively a five-string banjo with the drone left off. A tenor is shorter, tuned in fifths, and none of the chord shapes carry across. Our [plectrum versus tenor comparison](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) goes through it, and our [plectrum banjo picks](/best-plectrum-banjos/) cover that side of the market. ### Is the tenor banjo hard to play? The right hand is easier than a five-string’s — it is a flat pick rather than three fingers and a set of rolls. The left hand is harder in one specific way: fifths tuning spaces the notes further apart than a guitar’s fourths, so chord shapes need more stretch and scales need more shifting. Anyone coming from mandolin or fiddle will find it immediately familiar, since the intervals are the same. ### Can I play Irish music on a 19-fret banjo? Yes, with an Irish string set and GDAE tuning, and plenty of people do. What you do not get is the short scale, which is the reason the 17-fret exists — the ornaments and triplets that carry Irish tunes are a good deal easier over two fewer inches. If Irish music is definitely the plan, buy the short neck; if you are not sure, the 19-fret does both jobs adequately and one of them well. Our [banjos for Irish music](/best-banjo-for-irish-music/) guide covers the wider question. ## Where to start If the music is Irish, the [Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor](https://amzn.to/4quWz5m) at around $700 is the shortest neck, the only brass, and a resonator you can take off. If you would rather have an American instrument and can live with a quieter one, the [Deering Goodtime 17-Fret](https://amzn.to/3kwLtyI) at around $600 is four pounds and built in California. If the music is jazz, take the long neck: the [Gold Tone CC-Tenor](https://amzn.to/4gqN2aS) for the brass and the wide nut, or the [Deering Goodtime 19-Fret](https://amzn.to/4wBWG0t) for the build. And if you are not yet sure the instrument is for you, the [Gold Tone AC-4](https://amzn.to/4bWZg9S) at around $315 answers that question for less than half the price of answering it properly — or, if the music is Irish, its short-necked twin the [AC-4 IT](https://amzn.to/3UUdNNB) at the same money. Our [guide to the types of banjo](/types-of-banjos/) is the place to go if you are still deciding between four strings and five. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Plectrum Banjos: The Five You Can Actually Buy](https://promusicvault.com/best-plectrum-banjos/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Plectrum Banjos: The Five You Can Actually Buy A plectrum banjo is a five-string banjo with the short drone string left off: same 26-inch scale, same 22 frets, same 11-inch head, four strings tuned CGBD and played with a flat pick. It was the dance-band and trad-jazz instrument of the 1920s, and the market for it today is small enough to count on one hand. Two makers build them in any quantity, the ladder runs from about $270 to about $1,600, and every rung is a different instrument rather than a better one. Our pick### Gold Tone CC-Plectrum The resonator unbolts, which is the whole argument. Bolted on you get a brass tone hoop behind the head and enough volume to sit in a band; taken off you get a six-pound openback for playing at home. Nothing else at this price does both, and it arrives with a padded gig bag, which the American-built banjos do not. Around $700 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wZw5eu) **American built:** Deering Goodtime Two Plectrum — around $850 **Lightest:** Deering Goodtime Plectrum — around $600 **Cheapest way in:** Rover RB-20P — around $270, from a banjo shop **The 1920s voice:** Gold Tone PS-250 — around $1,600 ## The five at a glance BanjoBackTone ringWeightBuiltPrice bandBest for[Gold Tone CC-Plectrum](https://amzn.to/4wZw5eu)Removable resonatorRolled brass6.3 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$700Covering both jobs with one banjo[Deering Goodtime Two Plectrum](https://amzn.to/4qftV82)Resonator, fixedNone5.5 lbCalifornia~$850Buying once and keeping it[Deering Goodtime Plectrum](https://amzn.to/3S5inb1)Open backNone4 lbCalifornia~$600Playing at home, and carrying itRover RB-20POpen backNoneLightAsia~$270Finding out whether you like it[Gold Tone PS-250](https://amzn.to/3j1vOqX)14″ resonator, flangeBell brass12 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$1,600Cutting through a live band ## Count the frets before you buy anything Most four-string banjos for sale are tenor banjos, and a tenor is not a plectrum. The fret count settles it from a photograph in about five seconds: **22 frets and a scale around 26 inches is a plectrum; 17 to 19 frets and a scale around 22 inches is a tenor**. The tenor is tuned in fifths like a viola or a mandolin, so none of your chord shapes carry over, and the Irish tenor is tuned differently again. Listings are not always careful about which one they are selling, and the word “plectrum” in a title sometimes just means the thing comes with a pick. The tuning line in the specification is the reliable tell — CGBD is a plectrum, CGDA or GDAE is a tenor. There is more on the split in our [plectrum versus tenor comparison](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/), and if the tenor turns out to be what you wanted, our [tenor banjo picks](/best-tenor-banjo/) cover that side. ## If you already own a five-string, you already own a plectrum banjo Tune a five-string to drop C — gCGBD — and the bottom four strings are C, G, B and D, which is exactly plectrum tuning. Ignore the fifth string, pick up a flat pick, and every chord shape and every piece of plectrum music works on the instrument you have. The scale length is the same, the head is the same, and the neck is the same. What you do not get is the clear run at the fifth string’s territory — the drone sits under your thumb where a strumming hand wants to be, and it rattles sympathetically whether you play it or not. Some players tape it down or capo it out of the way. It is a workaround rather than a solution, but it costs nothing, and it is a much better way to find out whether you want a plectrum banjo than buying one. Our [banjo tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers getting into drop C. ## The five № 1 · The one to buy ### Gold Tone CC-Plectrum - Removable 13″ maple resonator - Rolled brass flat-bar tone hoop - 11″ multi-ply maple rim, 22 frets - 26 3/16″ scale - 6.3 lb - Padded gig bag included - ~$700 The Cripple Creek plectrum is the only banjo here that answers both questions a plectrum player has. Trad jazz wants volume and a hard, bright attack, which is what the brass hoop and the resonator are for. Playing alone in a room wants neither, and four bolts later you have an openback. Buying one instrument instead of two is worth more than any refinement you could pay the difference for. The brass matters more than the resonator does. A tone hoop is what makes a banjo ring rather than thud, and both Deerings on this page have none at all — a deliberate choice that gives them a dry, woody, quick-decaying note. That is the right sound for old-time and the wrong one for a 1920s jazz band, and it is the clearest reason to take this over the Goodtime Two at $150 more. Against it: this is built in Asia to Gold Tone’s specification and set up in Florida, not built start to finish in California, and it will not hold its value the way a Deering does. The warranty is seven years to the first owner against Deering’s eight, and Gold Tone void it entirely on anything bought from outside their authorized dealer network, so buy it from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Resonator comes off, so one banjo does both jobs - Brass tone hoop where the Deerings have none - Gig bag in the box - Six pounds — comfortable standing up **Cons**- Will not hold value like the American-built pair - Warranty void from an unauthorised dealer Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wZw5eu) № 2 · American built ### Deering Goodtime Two Plectrum - 13 7/8″ three-ply resonator - No tone ring - 11″ violin-grade maple rim, 22 frets - 26 1/4″ scale - 5.5 lb - Eight-year warranty - ~$850 Made in Spring Valley, California, from a rock maple neck and a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, with nothing bolted to it that exists to look expensive. It arrives playing in tune with itself, which is not a given at any price, and it is the banjo on this page most likely to be worth something in twenty years. There is no tone ring, and there never will be — the head bears straight onto the wooden rim. In a duo or a living room that reads as clear and woody. Against a piano and a horn section it gets buried, and playing harder will not fix it. If the reason you want a plectrum banjo is the sound of a 1920s dance band, the brass on the two Gold Tones is doing something this cannot do, and you should read that as the deciding difference rather than a detail. No case is included at $850, which is worth budgeting for. Deering is also the reason the price is what it is: the same money buys a great deal more hardware from an importer, and rather less instrument. Our [Deering versus Gold Tone comparison](/deering-vs-gold-tone/) works through that trade in full. **Pros**- Built in California and set up before it ships - Best resale value here by a distance - Five and a half pounds - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited cut in a band - No case at this price - Resonator is fixed — it will not convert Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qftV82) № 3 · The lightest ### Deering Goodtime Plectrum - Open back - No tone ring - 11″ violin-grade maple rim, 22 frets - 26 1/4″ scale - 4 lb - Eight-year warranty - ~$600 The Goodtime Two with the resonator left off, for $250 less and a pound and a half lighter. Four pounds is genuinely unusual for a banjo and it changes how long you play in one sitting; it is also the only instrument here you would happily carry any distance. Quiet is the trade, and on a plectrum banjo quiet cuts against the point of the instrument — this was designed to be heard over a brass section without amplification. As a first plectrum banjo for someone who plays at home, or as a second one for the sofa, it is the sensible buy. As the banjo you take to a session, it is not. The listing’s specification table says five strings. It is the four-string plectrum; the title, the description and the photographs all agree, and Deering only make this model as a plectrum. **Pros**- Four pounds, American built - Cheapest way into a Deering - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- Quietest banjo here, by design - No tone ring, and Deering’s resonator kit costs more than the price gap to the Goodtime Two Plectrum - No case Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3S5inb1) № 4 · Cheapest way in, if you can find it ### Rover RB-20P - Open back - Composite rim - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, 22 frets - 26 3/8″ scale - Vega-style armrest, geared tuners - ~$270 The only plectrum banjo under $500 that exists, which is most of its case. Saga builds it around a composite rim rather than a wooden one — molded rather than laminated timber — and that is where the money has come out. It is also why the banjo is light and why it does not much care about damp. A composite rim will not develop the way a wooden one does, and the difference is audible next to either Deering. But the neck is real mahogany with a rosewood board and an adjustable truss rod, the armrest is the Vega pattern that makes long sessions bearable, and the tuners hold. For working out whether the plectrum banjo is your instrument before spending three times as much, it does the job honestly. Buy it from a banjo shop rather than from Amazon. The Amazon listing for this banjo is now titled as a five-string RB-110, its photographs are captioned as that instrument, and its specification table has been emptied — the only thing left on the page saying “plectrum” is one line of small print giving the tuning as CGBD. Rover’s four-strings and five-strings have been collapsed onto shared listings where the model name, the picture and the tuning no longer agree, so there is no way to know which instrument would arrive. Saga’s dealers sell the RB-20P by its own name. We also have a longer look at the five-string in our [Rover RB-20 review](/rover-rb-20-banjo-review/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- By far the cheapest plectrum banjo made - Real mahogany neck and adjustable truss rod - Vega-style armrest, unusual at the price **Cons**- Composite rim, and you can hear it - Open back, so quiet - Amazon’s listing no longer identifies which model it sells № 5 · The 1920s voice ### Gold Tone PS-250 Plectrum Special - 14″ mahogany resonator, one-piece flange - Bell brass tone ring - 11″ three-ply maple rim, 22 frets - 26 3/16″ scale - 12 lb - Hard case included - ~$1,600 This is the one built to do the job the plectrum banjo was invented for. A cast bell brass ring and a one-piece flange are what a 1920s banjo had and what makes that hard, brilliant, carrying tone; the rolled hoop on the Cripple Creek is a lighter, cheaper approximation of it. Hearts-and-flowers inlay, planetary tuners and a hard case come with it. Twelve pounds is the price of the brass, and it is three times the Goodtime Plectrum. Standing up with it for a whole evening is real work, and it is the first thing to try before committing — this is not a weight you get used to so much as one you decide to accept. At this money the second-hand market is a genuine competitor rather than a footnote. The 1920s produced these by the tens of thousands and then the guitar took the job, so original Vega, Paramount and Ludwig plectrum banjos come up regularly through the vintage dealers from around $1,200. They need more from you — a fifty-year-old head, old frets, possibly a neck reset — but a good one is a better instrument than anything new at the price. Buying new gets you a warranty and no surprises, which is a fair reason to choose it. **Pros**- Cast bell brass ring and one-piece flange — the real thing - Hard case included - Planetary tuners **Cons**- Twelve pounds - Vintage originals compete directly at this price - Warranty void from an unauthorised dealer Around $1,600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j1vOqX) ## What decides it ### Brass, not the resonator, makes the jazz sound The resonator is a wooden bowl on the back that stops sound escaping backward and throws it at the audience. The tone ring is a metal hoop under the head that decides whether the note rings or thuds. They are different parts doing different jobs, and only one of them is responsible for the sound people mean when they say they want a 1920s banjo. Both Deerings have a resonator or not, and neither has a ring. Both Gold Tones have brass. That is why a $600 Deering and a $700 Gold Tone are not two points on one ladder — they are two different instruments, and the cheaper one is not the worse one unless brightness is what you came for. Our [openback versus resonator guide](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes further into what the back of the banjo does. ### Weight decides whether you play it Four pounds to twelve is the spread on this page, and it is the same instrument with different amounts of metal in the pot. Sitting down, nobody notices. Standing with a strap for a two-hour gig, twelve pounds is the single thing most likely to make you leave the banjo at home. Heavier is not better — it is a consequence of the sound you chose. ### Chicago tuning does not need a different banjo Guitarists often tune a plectrum banjo to DGBE — the top four strings of a guitar, known as Chicago tuning — and play everything they already know with no relearning at all. It is the same instrument and the same set of strings: raise the fourth string from C to D and the first from D to E, and you are there. Pit players did this for decades so they could switch between banjo and guitar in one show. If that is the whole reason you are here, a [six-string banjo](/best-6-string-banjo/) is worth a look first, since it needs no retuning and gives you all six strings. The plectrum is the better-sounding banjo of the two and the six-string is the easier instrument, and that is the entire choice. ### The strings have to be long enough A plectrum banjo has a long neck, and a set cut for a tenor will not always reach the tuning post with enough winding left to hold. Plectrum sets are made longer for this reason. Gauges are light — .011 to .026 is typical — because the strings are under more tension across the longer scale than a tenor set is across a short one. ### A five-string banjo case fits None of the American-built banjos here ship with a case, and the useful thing to know is that you do not need a plectrum-specific one. Deering states that five-string, plectrum and six-string banjos all share the resonator case, and likewise the openback case — same scale, same rim, so the same box. Buy for the back of the banjo rather than the number of strings. ## Two things worth ordering with it ItemWhat it isPrice band[GHS 190 plectrum set (3 packs)](https://amzn.to/4i9WLok)Stainless steel, .011–.026, loop end, cut long for a plectrum neck. Works for CGBD and Chicago tuning alike~$19[The Plectrum Banjo Chord Bible](https://amzn.to/4fUgCqc)1,728 chord shapes in CGBD, written for plectrum rather than adapted from five-string or tenor~$14 Chord books are the awkward purchase for a plectrum player, because most banjo material is written for five-string in open G or for tenor in fifths, and neither transfers. A CGBD book is the one to have. Our [banjo chord guide](/banjo-chords-ultimate-guide/) and [string picks](/best-banjo-strings/) cover the five-string side. ## Above $1,600 Deering builds plectrum versions of most of their professional line — the Boston at around $2,700, the Eagle II at $3,300, the Sierra at $3,500, and upward from there to the Calico and the Vega signature models. They are made to order and sold through banjo specialists rather than through Amazon, so if that is the tier you are shopping in, go to a dealer directly. At that money you should also be playing the instrument before you buy it, which settles the question of where to shop on its own. Our guide to [American-made banjos](/best-american-made-banjo/) covers the range. ## FAQ ### Is a plectrum banjo good for a beginner? It is one of the easier banjos to start on, because strumming chords with a pick is a much shorter road than three-finger rolls or clawhammer. The catch is teaching material: almost everything written for banjo assumes five strings in open G, so you will be translating, or working from the smaller body of plectrum and Chicago-tuning material. A guitarist has a real head start here; someone starting from nothing may find the [five-string route](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) better supported. ### Do you play a plectrum banjo like a five-string? The left hand, yes — same scale, same frets, same shapes minus the drone string. The right hand, no. A five-string is usually picked with fingerpicks or struck clawhammer style; a plectrum is strummed and picked with a single flat pick, which produces a driving rhythm and makes single-note melody lines straightforward. ### What is the difference between a plectrum and a tenor banjo? Neck length and tuning. A plectrum has 22 frets and a 26-inch scale, tuned CGBD like the bottom four strings of a five-string in drop C. A tenor has 17 to 19 frets and a scale around 22 inches, tuned in fifths — CGDA in jazz, GDAE for Irish playing. The tenor is the more common instrument in Dixieland; the plectrum is the one that suits a guitarist and the one built for chord-melody playing. ### What music is the plectrum banjo for? Early jazz and 1920s dance music above all — the fifth string was dropped in the first place so the instrument could be strummed loudly and rhythmically in an orchestra. It also does folk and singer-accompaniment work well, which is where the Kingston Trio’s Bob Shane used one. It is not a bluegrass instrument; bluegrass is five-string territory and the rolls that define it need the drone. ### Can I put five strings on a plectrum banjo? No. There is no tuning peg in the side of the neck and no nut slot for the fifth string, so it would mean drilling the neck and fitting a peg — real lutherie, and more than the difference in price between the two instruments. Buy the one you want. Our [guide to banjo types](/types-of-banjos/) lays out what else is out there. ## So which one? For most people the [Gold Tone CC-Plectrum](https://amzn.to/4wZw5eu) — brass behind the head for the bright 1920s attack, a resonator that comes off when you want it quiet, and a bag included. If you would rather have an American-built banjo that holds its value and you can live without a tone ring, the [Goodtime Two Plectrum](https://amzn.to/4qftV82), or the [Goodtime Plectrum](https://amzn.to/3S5inb1) at four pounds if you are playing at home anyway. Not sure the instrument is for you? Tune a five-string to drop C first, and if you have not got one, the Rover RB-20P costs a third of everything else here, from a dealer who will tell you which model is in the box. And if you are playing this in a band with horns, the [PS-250](https://amzn.to/3j1vOqX) is the one with the real bell brass ring — lift one before you commit to carrying it. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Open Back Banjo: Six Picks and the Three Specs That Decide It](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/) **Published:** September 24, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Open Back Banjo: Six Picks and the Three Specs That Decide It An open back banjo is the old-time and clawhammer instrument: no wooden bowl on the back, so the sound goes into the room rather than at the audience, and four or five pounds of instrument instead of eight to thirteen. Once you have decided you want one, three specifications settle which — the diameter of the rim, whether the end of the fingerboard is scooped, and whether there is a metal tone ring under the head. Everything else on a spec sheet is finish. Our pick### Deering Goodtime The cheapest banjo built in America, four and a half pounds, and set up properly before it leaves the factory — which at any price does more for how a banjo plays than the specification does. Eleven-inch rim, plain fingerboard and no tone ring, so nothing about it commits you to a style you have not chosen yet. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XIN57a) **Under $350:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315, and 3.75 lb **Cheapest scoop and 12″ pot:** Gold Tone AC-12 — around $400 **Built for clawhammer:** Gold Tone CC-OT — around $700, scooped **Deepest old-time voice:** Deering Goodtime Americana — around $750 **Under $200:** AKLOT open back — around $150, plus a setup ## The six at a glance BanjoRimHeadScoopTone ringWeightPrice band[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3XIN57a)11″ mapleFrostedNoNone4.5 lb~$600[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4gdjJbs)11″ compositeFrostedNoNone3.75 lb~$315[Gold Tone AC-12](https://amzn.to/4qDeVkK)12″ compositeRenaissanceYesNone5 lb~$400[Gold Tone CC-OT](https://amzn.to/4x1Z4yp)11″ mapleFiberskynYesRolled brass5.5 lb~$700[Deering Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4qlKe3o)12″ mapleRenaissanceNoNone4.5 lb~$750[Gold Tone CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/4cqfXKR)12″ mapleFrostedYesRolled brass5.8 lb~$850 ## The three specs that decide it ### Rim diameter: eleven inches or twelve Eleven inches is the standard banjo pot and it is what almost everything here uses. Twelve inches is the old-time specification: a bigger drum tuned lower, which drops the fundamental of the pot and gives the deep, dry, plunky note that fiddle tunes sit under. It is the single biggest difference in voice you can buy on an open back, and it is much larger than the difference between two eleven-inch banjos a few hundred dollars apart. The twelve-inch pot is also a decision you do not undo. It is wider against the body, heads and bridges for it are a smaller market, and a twelve-inch banjo has no bluegrass future at all. If old-time is definitely the destination, it is the right instrument: the Gold Tone AC-12 is the cheapest way to one and the Goodtime Americana is the cheapest American-built one. If you are still finding out what you like, eleven inches keeps every door open. ### The scoop is a one-way door A scooped fingerboard has the frets above roughly the seventeenth removed and the wood underneath planed away, leaving a shallow ramp where the end of the board used to be. Clawhammer is played with the striking hand up over the head, and the scoop gives that hand somewhere to go — you can hit the strings well up the neck without catching a fret edge, and the tone there is softer and woodier than anything you get down by the bridge. What it costs you is the frets themselves. Melodic bluegrass playing lives in exactly that part of the neck, so a scooped banjo cannot follow you if your taste moves. That makes the scoop the most style-specific thing on this page, and it is worth being certain before buying one. If you are certain, it means the **AC-12** at around $400, the **CC-OT** at around $700 or the **CC-Carlin12** at around $850 — those are the three here that come with it. Deering treats the scoop as a build option on the Goodtime and the Americana rather than a fixed feature, which is why the same model turns up described both ways; the ready-made ones carry the plain fingerboard. Cutting one into a finished fingerboard afterward is luthier work rather than a modification. ### A tone ring changes the voice, not the quality A tone ring is a metal hoop sitting on top of the wooden rim with the head stretched over it. On a bluegrass banjo it is three pounds of cast bell brass and it is most of what you are paying for. On an open back it is a much smaller argument, and the two answers available here are a rolled brass flat bar or nothing at all. Bare wood — the head bearing straight onto the maple rim — gives a dry note that stops quickly. Old-time players want that, because a fast decay keeps a tune from turning to mud at speed. A rolled brass bar adds brightness, volume and sustain. Neither is better; they are two voices, and the price does not track them. Every Deering Goodtime has no ring at all, right up to the $950 Artisan, while the Gold Tone Cripple Creek models have one. If you want ring and cut from an open back, the Cripple Creek models are where it lives. ### The head is the cheap way to change your mind Banjo heads come in three finishes and they run brightest to warmest: a white frosted top, a translucent Renaissance, and a Fiberskyn, which has a layer fused to the mylar to thicken it and comes closest to the calfskin heads old-time banjos originally wore. The difference between them is easily audible and it is doing a good deal of the work when one banjo sounds “old-time” and another does not. A head costs $30 to $40 and changing one is an evening’s job with a bracket wrench. That is worth knowing before you spend an extra $150 chasing a warmer instrument, because a frosted-top banjo with a Fiberskyn fitted is most of the way to being the warmer instrument. It does not work in reverse for the rim size — no head will make an eleven-inch pot sound twelve. ### Weight, and the setup Open backs are where the light banjos are. The range on this page runs from 3.75 lb to 5.8 lb, against six pounds for the same banjo with a resonator bolted on and eight to thirteen for a bluegrass instrument. An hour standing up with a strap makes that arithmetic real, and it is why a lot of players who could afford heavier instruments do not own one. Then there is the setup, which is a banjo’s head tension, bridge placement, action and nut slots being adjusted by somebody who knows the instrument. It costs $50 to $100 at a shop, and below about $400 it does more for how a banjo plays than the next $200 of instrument would. The Deering and Gold Tone models here arrive already set up, in California and Florida respectively; the cheap imports do not, and the price of the work belongs in the budget from the start. Our [banjo under $200 guide](/best-banjo-under-200/) is built entirely around that arithmetic. ## The six picks № 1 · The one to buy ### Deering Goodtime - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - Frosted top head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale - 4.5 lb - Made in California, eight-year warranty - ~$600 The least money that buys an American-built banjo, and the instrument the rest of this page gets measured against. A three-ply violin-grade maple rim, a rock maple neck with a truss rod, a geared fifth-string tuner, and almost nothing bolted on that exists to look expensive. It arrives playing in tune with itself and needing nothing, which is the practical reason to spend the money rather than anything on the specification. The fingerboard is not scooped and there is no tone ring, so this is the open back that has not decided anything on your behalf. That cuts both ways — it will never carry over a bluegrass band, and no setup will change that — but it plays clawhammer, old-time, folk and song accompaniment perfectly well, and it holds its value better than anything else here by a wide margin. **Pros**- Cheapest American-built banjo there is - 4.5 lb, and set up before it ships - Eight-year warranty and the best resale on this page - Commits you to no particular style **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited volume in company - No scoop at this price - No case or gig bag included Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XIN57a) № 2 · The cheapest real one ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim - No tone ring - Mahogany neck, 22 frets, 26 3/16″ scale - 1 3/16″ Zero Glide nut - 3.75 lb - Gig bag included, set up in Florida - ~$315 Below the Goodtime the field belongs to import brands who commission banjos rather than design them, with one exception, and this is it. The AC-1 is built by a company that draws its own banjos, it is set up in Titusville before it ships, and at 3.75 lb it is the lightest full-size banjo you can buy. The Zero Glide nut is a fitted replacement that puts a fret’s worth of height under the strings at the nut, so the open strings ring like fretted ones and the first position plays in tune — the sort of thing that usually costs a shop visit. The rim is composite rather than wood, and that is the honest trade. It is stable, it does not move with the weather and it keeps the weight down, but it does not have the roundness of a maple pot and some players never warm to it. For a first open back, or for a second banjo that lives by the sofa, it is the most instrument for the money on this page. **Pros**- An actual banjo maker’s instrument at entry money - Lightest full-size banjo here at 3.75 lb - Zero Glide nut and a proper setup included - Gig bag in the box **Cons**- Composite rim is not to every taste - Too quiet to be heard in a group - Five-year warranty against Deering’s eight Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gdjJbs) № 3 · The cheapest twelve-inch, and the cheapest scoop ### Gold Tone AC-12 - Open back, 12″ composite rim - No tone ring - Scooped fingerboard, 18 frets - 12″ Remo Renaissance head - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, 26-3/16″ scale, 16 brackets - 1 7/16″ Zero Glide nut — the widest here - 5 lb - Gig bag included, set up in Florida - ~$400 Both of the expensive decisions on this page, at the price of neither. A twelve-inch pot for the deep plunky note, a frailing scoop to strike over, a Renaissance head fitted as standard, and the widest nut on the page at an inch and seven-sixteenths — which is three-sixteenths more than the Deerings and a sixteenth more than the CC-Carlin12 that costs $450 extra. Nothing else here has both of those specifications at all, apart from the CC-Carlin12 at more than twice the price. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) What the money does not buy is the rim. This is the same molded composite as the AC-1, scaled up, and it is drier and less resonant than three plies of maple at the same diameter — the twelve-inch drop in pitch is there, the bloom underneath it is not. There is no tone ring either, so it is quiet in company. Treat it as the honest way to find out whether the twelve-inch scooped voice is the one you want, with the maple versions above waiting if it turns out to be. **Pros**- Twelve-inch pot and a scoop for around $400 - Widest nut on this page, which clawhammer thumbwork wants - 5 lb for a twelve-inch banjo - Gig bag included and set up in Florida - Five-year warranty, and it transfers **Cons**- Composite rim rather than maple — drier, less bloom - No tone ring, so quiet alongside other instruments - Eighteen frets, and the scoop is permanent - Commits you to old-time twice over, at a price where people are still deciding Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qDeVkK) № 4 · Built for clawhammer ### Gold Tone CC-OT - Open back, 11″ multi-ply maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Scooped rosewood fingerboard, 18 frets - 11″ Remo Fiberskyn head - 26-3/16″ scale, one size only — Gold Tone builds no fractional CC-OT - 5.5 lb - Gig bag, strap, tuner and fifth-string spike included - ~$700 A Cripple Creek pot with the two things clawhammer actually asks for: a scooped fingerboard to strike over, and a Fiberskyn head that takes the glare off the brass ring and leaves a soft, thick, calfskin-ish note. Eighteen frets rather than twenty-two, because the rest have been taken out to make the ramp. It is a purpose-built old-time banjo, and the cheapest one here with a maple rim and a tone ring behind the scoop rather than a molded pot. The specialization is the whole point and also the whole risk. The missing frets are permanent, so this is a poor choice for anyone who might want to play melodically later, and the Fiberskyn will always sound soft next to a frosted head. It ships with a fifth-string spike already fitted at the seventh fret, a strap, a clip-on tuner and a bag, which is a genuinely complete package rather than the usual pile of accessories nobody wants. If clawhammer is the plan and it is not going to change, this beats the Goodtime. **Pros**- Scoop and Fiberskyn head without going to four figures - Rolled brass ring, so it has some cut when you want it - Fifth-string spike, strap, tuner and bag included - Set up in Florida before it ships **Cons**- Eighteen frets closes off melodic playing for good - 5.5 lb - An eleven-inch pot, so not the deepest old-time voice here Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x1Z4yp) № 5 · The deepest voice ### Deering Goodtime Americana - Open back, 12″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - 12″ Renaissance head - Rock maple neck, 26 1/4″ scale - 4.5 lb - Made in California, eight-year warranty - ~$750 The cheapest American-made twelve-inch banjo, and the one on this page that sounds most like the records old-time players are trying to sound like. The wider pot drops the pitch of the drum and fills in underneath the note; the Renaissance head, translucent and softer than a frosted top, takes the attack off the front of it. Together they produce a low woody plunk that no eleven-inch banjo will imitate no matter what you fit to it. It is the same 4.5 lb as the standard Goodtime despite the larger pot, which is remarkable, and it carries the same California build and eight-year warranty. The fingerboard on the one sold ready-made is not scooped, which is a build choice rather than an omission — Deering catalogue the Americana both ways, about $59 apart, and the off-the-shelf version is the plain-fingerboard one. If the scoop matters more to you than where the banjo was made, the AC-12 above has both for $350 less and the CC-Carlin12 below has both for about $100 more. **Pros**- A genuine twelve-inch old-time voice, American built - 4.5 lb — no heavier than the eleven-inch Goodtime - Renaissance head fitted as standard - Eight-year warranty and strong resale **Cons**- No scoop at this price - Quiet by design — not a band instrument - No case included, and twelve-inch cases are a smaller market Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qlKe3o) № 6 · The full clawhammer specification, in maple ### Gold Tone CC-Carlin12 - Open back, 12″ maple pot - Rolled brass tone ring - Scooped fingerboard - 1 3/8″ nut - 5.8 lb - Gig bag included, set up in Florida - ~$850 Bob Carlin’s specification in Gold Tone’s cheaper Cripple Creek trim, and the only twelve-inch banjo here with a tone ring under the head. The AC-12 has the same pot diameter, the same scoop and a wider nut for $450 less, so what the extra money actually buys is a maple rim instead of a molded one and a rolled brass bar instead of bare wood. That is a real difference in voice and a large amount of money for it; whether it is worth paying depends on whether you have heard the two. It is also the heaviest here at 5.8 lb, and the most committed: a twelve-inch scooped pot with a brass ring is useless for anything but old-time, and it will resell into a much smaller market than a Deering will. The nut is worth handling before you commit if you have small hands — 1 3/8″ is a noticeable step up from the 1 1/4″ on the Deerings. **Pros**- The only twelve-inch banjo here with a tone ring - Maple pot rather than composite, at the same diameter - Gig bag included and set up before shipping - Nothing comparable from Deering near this money **Cons**- Heaviest banjo here - 1 3/8″ nut is a lot of neck for small hands - A specialist, with the resale that implies Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cqfXKR) ## Also worth a look BanjoPrice bandWhy you might pick it[AKLOT Open Back](https://amzn.to/465kQ8w)~$150The floor of the market, and an honest one: maple pot, a genuine Remo head, 18 brackets, a truss rod, and a bag and tuner in the box. Add $50 to $100 for a setup and it plays properly. More of these in our [under $200 picks](/best-banjo-under-200/).[Oscar Schmidt OB3-O-U](https://amzn.to/3jcwKsz)~$350A plain wooden-rim open back with a Remo head and a nato neck, sold with either a rosewood or an ovankol fretboard at the same price — pick the wood you want rather than taking whichever comes up first. The awkward thing is the AC-1 above, which is $35 cheaper, has four more frets and is made by a banjo company — this is the one to take if you want a wooden pot at this price and nothing else will do.[Deering Artisan Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3R8Qvh2)~$950The Goodtime with planetary tuners, spikes fitted at frets 7, 9 and 10, a Midnight Maple fingerboard, a mahogany stain and vintage inlays. The rim, neck, scale and 4.5 lb weight are identical to the $600 model, so the $350 is all neck. Worth it if you retune constantly, since pegs and spikes are both awkward to add later. ## Questions that come up ### Can you play bluegrass on an open back banjo? On your own or recorded, yes, and the technique is identical. In a jam with a guitar, a fiddle and a mandolin you will not be heard, and playing harder does not fix it — the sound leaving the back of the pot goes into your shirt. Fingerpicks change the attack, not the projection. If jamming is the point, the [resonator side of the argument](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is the one to read. ### Are open back banjos cheaper? On the same banjo, yes, by about $250 — Deering builds the Goodtime both ways from identical parts, so the resonator’s price is easy to read off. Across the market the two overlap completely, because a $2,000 open back is a serious instrument and a $200 resonator banjo is not. Our guide to [what banjos cost](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) maps the tiers. ### Can you add a resonator later? On a Goodtime you can — Deering makes a retro-fit kit for the eleven-inch pots at around $280, which does not fit the twelve-inch Americana. The arithmetic argues against it, though: $600 plus $280 is more than the $850 the finished resonator model costs. Below the Goodtime bracket no manufacturer makes a kit at all. Buying an open back and planning to convert it is the most expensive route to a resonator banjo. ### Do open back banjos need different strings? No, though clawhammer players often drop a gauge for a looser feel under the striking hand, and nylon or Nylgut sets suit a twelve-inch pot particularly well. Gauges and sets are in our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/). ### Is an open back harder to learn on? No. The neck, the tuning and the fingering are the same, and the lighter weight helps in the first few months. The only difference is which style the instrument steers you toward. If this is a first banjo of any kind, start with our [beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/). ### Which open back holds its value best? The Deerings, comfortably, and it is not close. An American-built banjo with an eight-year warranty sells used for a large fraction of what it cost, which is good news when you sell and modest news when you buy. The specialist twelve-inch scooped instruments sell into the smallest market of all. ## So which one? If you are buying one open back and want it to be right, the **Deering Goodtime** at around $600 is the answer — American made, four and a half pounds, set up before it ships, and uncommitted to any style. If clawhammer is definitely where you are going, the **Gold Tone CC-OT** at around $700 has the scoop and the Fiberskyn head and beats it at the job. For the deep twelve-inch old-time voice, take the **Goodtime Americana**; for that voice with a scoop and a wide neck as well, the **CC-Carlin12**. The cheap way to both of those specifications at once is the **Gold Tone AC-12** at around $400, on a composite pot and with nothing under the head. And if $600 is not available, the **Gold Tone AC-1** at around $315 is the least you can spend and still be buying from a company that draws its own banjos. Still deciding between styles? Read [open back vs. resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) first. Want the clawhammer-specific shortlist? Try our [clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). And the [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) guide covers the tenor, plectrum and six-string branches this page leaves out. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Mandolins for the Money: Where Your Dollar Stops Buying Tone](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Mandolin prices run from $80 to $8,000, and the sound does not improve smoothly along the way. It improves in two jumps, with long flat stretches either side. Knowing where those jumps sit is the whole of buying well, because the flat stretches are where people spend money that buys them nothing. Best mandolin for the money### The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek A hand-carved solid spruce top in an F-style body, for what most brands charge for a plain A-style. The Loar prices its A-style and F-style Honey Creek mandolins identically, which means the scroll — the single most expensive thing to carve on a mandolin — costs nothing here. Around $400 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs) **Same instrument, A-style body:** The Loar LM-110-BRB — around $400 **Cheapest solid top:** Ibanez M522S — around $350 **Buy once, all-solid:** Kentucky KM-150 — around $595 ## The two jumps **Laminate to carved solid top, somewhere around $350.** This is the one that changes the sound. A laminate top is thin layers glued together; it is stiff, it damps its own vibration, and it will sound the same in twenty years as it does on the first day. A carved solid top is one piece of spruce, thinned by hand to different depths across its area so it flexes where it should. It is louder, it has more character, and it opens up as it is played. Everything below this line is a learning instrument. Everything above it is an instrument. **Solid back and sides, somewhere around $550.** Much smaller. The top does most of the work; the back and sides color what the top has already decided. Kentucky’s own line makes the comparison easy — the KM-150 differs from the model below it only in having solid rather than laminate maple behind the same carved spruce top, and specialist dealers who sell both describe the gap as audible but not night and day. Worth paying for if you are keeping the instrument. Not worth stretching for if it means skipping a setup. Above roughly $750 you are buying finish work, better fret dressing, nicer hardware and resale value. Eastman’s mandolins are the usual next step and they are lovely, but nobody sitting in a jam will hear the difference between one of those and a well-set-up Loar. ## The six at a glance MandolinStyleTopPrice bandBest for[The Loar LM-310F-BRB](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs)FHand-carved solid spruce~$400Best value on the page[The Loar LM-110-BRB](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M)AHand-carved solid spruce~$400The same thing without the scroll[Ibanez M522S](https://amzn.to/3wvrpiZ)FSolid spruce~$350Getting over the line for least money[Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM)ASpruce laminate~$200The best of the cheap instruments[Hola! Music HM-3TS](https://amzn.to/3YgoyXh)ALaminate~$95Smallest defensible spend[Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/3Hci9oQ)ASolid spruce, solid maple~$595Keeping it for good ## The scroll costs more than the wood An F-style mandolin — scroll at the top, two points on the lower bout — is what people picture when they picture bluegrass. None of that shape does anything for the sound. It is there because Gibson puts it there in 1922 and because Bill Monroe played one. Carving it takes hours of skilled work, and that work goes into the price without going into the tone. Ibanez charges about $150 more for the F-style version of its A-style. Kentucky charges about the same premium. So the usual advice holds: at a given budget an A-style puts more of your money into the parts that make sound, and that is why experienced players keep recommending them. The Loar is the exception that makes this page worth reading. It sells the A-style LM-110 and the F-style LM-310F with the same hand-carved solid spruce top, the same maple body, the same neck, at the same price. If you want the shape, this is the one place you do not pay for it. More on the difference in our [A-style vs F-style comparison](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). ## The six picks № 1 · Best value overall ### The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek - F-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - Maple back & sides - Thin V neck, 1-1/8″ nut - ~$400 The Loar exists to make 1920s-style carved instruments at prices that do not require a 1920s income, and the Honey Creek line is the bottom of that range. The top is hand-carved and graduated rather than pressed, which is the difference between a solid top that works and a solid top that is merely solid. It gives you the dry, barking chop that bluegrass rhythm is built on, and it gets better the more it is played. The finish is satin and plain, the tuners are ordinary, and the padauk fingerboard is not ebony. All of that is where the money was saved, and all of it is the right place to save it. **Pros**- Hand-carved solid top at a laminate-adjacent price - No premium charged for the F-style shape - Genuine bluegrass chop rather than a polite strum **Cons**- Plain hardware and a basic fingerboard - Wants a setup before it plays its best Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs) № 2 · The same instrument, A-style ### The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek - A-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - X-brace - Maple back & sides - Ebony adjustable bridge, bone nut - ~$400 The same hand-carved top, maple body and price as the LM-310F, in the plainer shape — with an X-brace under the top where the F-style has tone bars, which rounds the note off and softens the chop a little. An A-style is lighter, sits more comfortably against the ribs, and is easier to play sitting down — which matters more than most buyers expect, because a mandolin gets played on a sofa far more often than on a stage. The ebony adjustable bridge and bone nut are the details worth noticing here. Both are things cheaper instruments fake in plastic, and both affect how cleanly the notes come out. **Pros**- Real bone nut and ebony bridge at this price - Lighter and easier to hold than an F-style - Same carved top as the pricier Loars **Cons**- Padauk fingerboard rather than ebony - Plain satin finish will not turn heads Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M) № 3 · Cheapest way over the line ### Ibanez M522S - F-style - Solid spruce top - Rosewood fingerboard - ~$350 The least you can spend and still get a solid top, and it comes in the F-style body, which makes it the bargain of the shape. Ibanez builds to a price with machine precision rather than hand work, so the top is pressed to a uniform thickness instead of graduated. It is brighter and more even than the Loar, and less characterful. For $50 less than the LM-310F you get most of the way there. For $50 more the Loar is the better instrument. That is a narrow enough gap that the finish you prefer is a reasonable way to decide. **Pros**- Solid top for the price of a good laminate - Consistent build — fewer duds than the budget field - Bright and articulate in an ensemble **Cons**- Pressed rather than hand-carved top - Less depth of tone than the Loar it sits beside Around $350[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wvrpiZ) № 4 · Best under $250 ### Ibanez M510 - A-style - Spruce top, sapele back & sides - Purpleheart fingerboard - ~$200 Below the solid-top line, and the best-built thing down there. The fretwork is clean, the neck is genuinely comfortable, and the tuners hold — three things the sub-$150 field gets wrong often enough to matter. If you are not ready to commit $400, this is where to stop. What you do not get is a top that will ever sound like more than it does now. Buy it to find out whether the mandolin suits you, with the understanding that liking it means buying again. **Pros**- Build quality well ahead of its price - Comfortable neck and clean fret ends - Holds tune reliably **Cons**- Laminate top will not develop - Nothing in the box — no case, no tuner Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM) № 5 · Smallest defensible spend ### Hola! Music HM-3TS - A-style - Laminate - Adjustable truss rod - ~$95 The truss rod is the reason this one rather than the dozens of identical-looking mandolins beside it. Necks at this price warp, and a neck with no truss rod cannot be corrected — the instrument becomes firewood. A truss rod means a repair shop can bring it back. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Expect to spend on a setup or accept that it plays stiffly. At this price that is a fair trade, and it is a much better answer than spending $150 on something no better. **Pros**- Adjustable truss rod, which most rivals omit - Light and comfortable for smaller hands - Cheap enough to be a low-risk experiment **Cons**- Unit-to-unit quality varies - Needs a setup to play properly Around $95[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3YgoyXh) № 6 · Buy once ### Kentucky KM-150 - A-style - Solid German spruce top - Solid alpine maple back & sides - ~$595 All-solid construction, the same recipe as mandolins costing several times more, and the model that turns up again and again when players are asked what they would buy if they were starting over knowing what they know. It also holds its value: a used one sells for roughly two-thirds of new, which means the real cost of trying it is smaller than the sticker suggests. Against the Loars above it is $200 dearer for solid back and sides — the smaller of the two jumps. Worth it if this is the mandolin you intend to keep. Not worth it if the $200 would otherwise have gone on lessons. **Pros**- All-solid, and it improves with playing - Strong resale — easy to move on - Long production history, simple to get serviced **Cons**- The step up from a carved top is subtle - Three times the price of a competent laminate Around $595[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Hci9oQ) If you want an F-style and have more than $400 to spend, the obvious step up is the [Ibanez M700AVS](https://amzn.to/3jddrzb) at around $600, which adds solid flamed maple behind the solid top. ## The setup that beats a $200 upgrade A setup is the adjustment of the parts an instrument leaves the factory with in roughly the right place: string height at the bridge, the fit of the bridge feet against the top, the depth of the nut slots, the relief in the neck, the ends of the frets. It costs $60 to $125 at a repair shop and takes an afternoon. On anything under about $400 it does more for how the instrument plays and sounds than spending another $200 would. Factory setups on budget mandolins are done in minutes by someone paid by volume, and the usual result is action high enough to make the instrument tiring and nut slots cut shallow enough to pull the first-position chords sharp. Both are ten-minute fixes for someone with the right files, and both are why people conclude they have no talent and stop. Budget for it from the start. A $350 mandolin plus a setup beats a $550 mandolin without one, essentially every time. ## Where the money goes ### The top Spruce, and the only specification that reliably predicts how an instrument sounds. Look for the words *solid* and, better, *hand-carved*. A carved top is thinned to different depths across its area so it flexes most where it needs to; a pressed solid top is uniform, bent into an arch under heat. Both beat laminate. Carved beats pressed. ### The sound hole Two f-holes or one oval hole, and this is not a step on a ladder — it is a fork. F-holes are focused and percussive, which is what bluegrass rhythm playing needs. An oval hole is warmer, rounder and louder in the low end, which suits Irish and old-time melody playing and singing accompaniment. Kentucky, Eastman and The Loar all sell oval-hole models that cost more than their f-hole equivalents, and buying one by accident because the model number was higher is a genuinely common and expensive mistake. ### The bridge and nut An adjustable ebony bridge lets a shop set the action properly; a fixed or plastic one limits what a setup can achieve. A bone nut holds its slots where plastic wears. Neither is expensive to fit, and both tell you where the maker chose to spend. ### The back and sides Maple, almost always, and worth less of your attention than the marketing suggests. Solid is better than laminate here, but it is the second jump, not the first, and it costs more than the first one did. ### What does not matter Binding, inlay, gloss, gold tuners and flamed figuring in the maple. Figured wood is chosen for how it looks and is, if anything, slightly harder to work. It is the single easiest place to overspend, because it is the one thing you can see in a photograph. See our [guide to mandolin types](/types-of-mandolins/) for the shapes and voices, and [how much a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) for the full range. ## Buying used The honest answer to “best mandolin for the money” is often a used one. Mandolins have no moving parts and no electronics to fail, and a carved top that has been played for ten years sounds better than the same instrument new. A used instrument in good condition typically goes for around two-thirds of its new price, which puts an all-solid Kentucky or Eastman inside the budget of a new carved-top Loar. The risks are a warped neck, a lifting bridge, or a top that has sunk under string tension — none of which photograph well. Buy from a dealer who sets instruments up and takes returns, or bring someone who plays. If that sounds like more effort than you want, buying new is a reasonable price to pay for certainty. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the best mandolin for the money? The Loar LM-310F, at around $400. It is the cheapest hand-carved solid top from a maker that specializes in them, and The Loar does not charge extra for the F-style body, so it is the one place the bluegrass shape is free. If you prefer an A-style, the LM-110 is the same build for the same money, with an X-brace under the top where the F-style has tone bars. ### How much should I spend on a mandolin? Around $95 to find out whether you like it, around $400 if you already know, and around $595 if you are certain you will keep it. The stretch between $200 and $350 buys a nicer laminate rather than a solid top, so it is the least rewarding place to land. ### Is a more expensive mandolin easier to play? Only indirectly. Expensive instruments tend to arrive better set up, and setup is what determines whether an instrument is comfortable. A cheap mandolin that has been to a repair shop plays better than an expensive one straight out of a box. See [how hard the mandolin is to play](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/). ### Are A-style mandolins worse than F-style? No. The body shape is decoration. At the same price an A-style is usually the better instrument, because none of your money went into carving a scroll. The exception is a maker that prices both the same, which The Loar does. ### Do I need a solid top? Not to learn on. A laminate mandolin is fine for chord shapes and calluses. You need one once you can hear the difference, which for most players is somewhere in the first year — which is also why buying a $200 instrument and a $400 instrument in sequence costs more than buying the $400 one first. ### What else do I need to buy? A clip-on tuner, a case, a set of decent strings and a setup. The first three come to under $60 between them; the setup is the one that changes how the instrument feels. There are eight strings in four pairs and both strings in a pair have to match — our [tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) covers it, and [how many strings a mandolin has](/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/) explains why it is arranged that way. ## So which one? Buy the [Loar LM-310F](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs), or the [LM-110](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M) if you would rather have the plain body, and put another $60 to $125 aside for a setup. That combination gets you over the only line that matters for less than anything else on the market. If $400 is more than you want to risk, the [Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM) at around $200 is the best-made cheap mandolin going, and the [Hola! HM-3TS](https://amzn.to/3YgoyXh) at around $95 is the smallest sum you can spend without buying something unfixable. If you already know this is permanent, the [Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/3Hci9oQ) is the one you stop at. Starting from scratch, our [beginner mandolin guide](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) approaches the same question from the other end, and [best mandolin for bluegrass](/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) goes deeper on chop and tone. **Categories:** Mandolin Reviews --- ### [Best Mandolins for Beginners: 7 Picks, Honestly Compared](https://promusicvault.com/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Most “best beginner mandolin” lists hand you fourteen options and leave you to guess. Two things actually decide what you should buy: **how much you want to spend before you know whether you will stick with it**, and **whether you want an A-style or an F-style**. Get those right and any of these will serve you well. Our pick for most beginners### Donner DML-1 A-Style A mahogany A-style that arrives with a tuner, gig bag, strings and picks for around the price of two lessons. It will not be your last mandolin, but it stays in tune, plays comfortably out of the box, and removes every excuse not to practice. Around $100 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wwPLZM) **Cheapest that is still worth owning:** Hola! Music A-Style — around $95 **Buy-once, all-solid:** Kentucky KM-150 — around $595 **Bluegrass F-style:** The Loar LM-310F — around $400 ## The seven at a glance MandolinStyleTopPrice bandBest for[Donner DML-1](https://amzn.to/3wwPLZM)ALaminate mahogany~$100Most first-time buyers[Hola! Music HM-3TS](https://amzn.to/3DfHbSW)ALaminate~$95Smallest sensible spend[Vangoa A-Style Kit](https://amzn.to/3j4ggCG)ALaminate~$130Everything-in-the-box starters[Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM)ASpruce~$200A real step up in build[Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/3JggFN3)ASolid spruce~$595Buying once, properly[The Loar LM-310F](https://amzn.to/4bFqzFA)FHand-carved solid spruce~$400Bluegrass, and looking the part[Ibanez M510E](https://amzn.to/3Upqm3e)ASpruce, with pickup~$230Playing plugged in ## Before you pick: the only two decisions that matter ### A-style or F-style? An F-style mandolin — the one with the curl at the top and the two points — is the shape Bill Monroe made famous, and it is what people picture when they picture bluegrass. The scroll is solid wood outside the sound chamber, and it does nothing for the tone. What it costs you depends on who carved it. On factory instruments a CNC router cuts the scroll in the same pass as the rest of the body, so the premium is close to nothing — The Loar charges the same $400 for its Honey Creek in either shape. At that price, buy whichever one you want to look at. It is higher up, where a person carves and binds the scroll by hand, that the premium turns into hundreds of dollars and the A-style starts buying you meaningfully more instrument. We go deeper on this in our [A-style vs F-style comparison](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). ### Solid top or laminate? This is the one specification that genuinely predicts how an instrument sounds. A solid top is a single piece of wood that vibrates freely and gets richer as it ages. A laminate top is thin layers bonded together — stiffer, deader, and it will sound the same in ten years as it does today. Under about $150 you will not find a solid top, and that is fine: a laminate mandolin from a decent maker is a perfectly good instrument to learn chord shapes and build calluses on. The honest way to think about it is that you are buying a laminate to find out whether you like the mandolin, and a solid top once you know you do. The [Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/3JggFN3) is where that line sits for most players. If you already know you are serious, skipping straight there saves you buying twice. ## The seven picks № 1 · Best overall ### Donner DML-1 A-Style - A-style - Mahogany laminate - 8 strings - Bundle included - ~$100 Donner’s whole business is making the cheapest version of an instrument that is still genuinely playable, and the DML-1 is one of their better efforts. The action is low enough out of the box that you are not fighting the strings, the tuners hold well enough that you are not retuning mid-song, and the bundled clip-on tuner and gig bag are the two things a beginner otherwise forgets to buy. It is laminate, so it will not open up over time, and the factory strings are worth replacing early. But nothing about it will slow down your first year, and that is the whole job at this price. **Pros**- Playable straight out of the box - Tuner, bag, picks and spare strings included - Holds tune better than most at the price **Cons**- Laminate top will not improve with age - Factory strings are the first thing to change Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wwPLZM) № 2 · Smallest sensible spend ### Hola! Music HM-3TS - A-style - Laminate - Adjustable truss rod - ~$95 The cheapest mandolin we are willing to recommend, and the adjustable truss rod is why. Plenty of instruments at this price have a fixed neck, which means that if it warps — and at this price some do — there is nothing anyone can do about it. A truss rod means a repair shop can bring it back. Buy this if the budget is genuinely tight or the player is a child who may not stay interested. Do not buy it expecting the Donner’s fit and finish. **Pros**- Adjustable truss rod at a rock-bottom price - Light and comfortable for smaller players **Cons**- Quality varies noticeably between units - Almost always needs a setup to play its best Around $95[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DfHbSW) № 3 · Best complete starter kit ### Vangoa A-Style Kit - A-style - Laminate - Full accessory kit - ~$130 Close to the Donner in build, and ahead of it on what comes in the box. If you would otherwise be adding a strap, spare strings, a stand and a case to your basket, the kit price usually works out better than assembling the same pile separately. **Pros**- Genuinely complete — nothing else to buy on day one - Glossy finish looks more expensive than it is **Cons**- Accessories are functional rather than good - Same laminate ceiling as the Donner Around $130[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j4ggCG) № 4 · Best first real step up ### Ibanez M510 - A-style - Spruce top - Purpleheart board - ~$200 Doubling the budget from $100 to $200 buys more than doubling it again from $200 to $400. The M510 is where you first feel it: better fretwork, a neck that is genuinely comfortable to move around on, and a brighter, more defined tone that cuts through when you play with other people. Spruce over sapele with a purpleheart board and bridge, on a 13.78-inch scale — an entirely ordinary specification, executed properly. It ships with light factory strings, which flatters the action and undersells the top; a set of mediums is the first upgrade and it costs ten dollars. **Pros**- Noticeably better fretwork than the sub-$150 field - Bright, articulate tone that suits ensemble playing **Cons**- No accessories at all in the box - Laminated throughout, so it will not open up with age Around $200[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM) № 5 · Buy once, buy properly ### Kentucky KM-150 - A-style - Solid spruce top - Solid maple back & sides - ~$595 The instrument experienced players point beginners at when the beginner says “I know I am going to stick with this.” Hand-carved solid spruce over solid maple, which is the same recipe as mandolins costing several times more, and it is the cheapest place that recipe is done well. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It will also be the last mandolin a lot of players ever need. If you are choosing between this and buying a $100 instrument now plus a better one in two years, this is the cheaper path. **Pros**- All-solid construction that improves as it is played - Holds its value if you ever sell it - Long track record — easy to get serviced **Cons**- Five times the price of the entry picks - Overkill if you are only curious Around $595[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JggFN3) № 6 · Best F-style ### The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek - F-style - Hand-carved solid spruce - Maple back & sides - F-holes - ~$400 If you want the scroll, this is the cheapest place it comes attached to a real instrument. The top is hand-carved and graduated rather than pressed to a uniform thickness, which is the difference between a solid top that works and a solid top that is merely solid, and it gives the dry bark that bluegrass rhythm is built on. The unusual thing here is the price. The Loar sells the same carved top and the same woods in the plain A-style body for the same $400, so unlike almost everywhere else in the market, choosing the scroll costs you nothing at all. **Pros**- Genuine hand-carved, graduated solid top - The scroll at no premium over the A-style - The classic bluegrass look and bark **Cons**- Laminate back and sides - Padauk fingerboard, plain satin finish - Heavier and bulkier to hold than an A-style Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bFqzFA) № 7 · Best for playing plugged in ### Ibanez M510E Acoustic-Electric - A-style - Spruce top - Built-in pickup - ~$230 This is the M510 from a few picks up with a pickup fitted, which makes it the easy answer if you already know you will be plugging in. Everything that makes the M510 a real step up in build is still here, and adding a pickup to an acoustic mandolin afterward costs about as much as the difference between the two. A built-in pickup is the difference between being heard in a band and not. Unplugged it sounds like the M510, which is to say better than anything cheaper on this page. **Pros**- The M510’s build quality with a pickup added - Cheaper than buying an acoustic and retrofitting - Good acoustic tone even before you plug it in **Cons**- Basic preamp with minimal control - Twice the price of the entry picks Around $230[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Upqm3e) ## Also worth a look Good instruments that lost out to something above on price or spec. MandolinWhy you might pick it[ADM A-Style](https://amzn.to/3HGRAtH)Another complete kit; comparable to the Vangoa[Ibanez M522S](https://amzn.to/3XE2u8W)The F-style version of the M510, if you want the shape for less than the Loar[Kentucky KM-252](https://amzn.to/3DhwcbL)A step above the KM-150 with more appointments[Rogue RM-100A](https://amzn.to/3JfU5E8)A long-standing budget A-style; worth a look if the Donner is out of your way[Janerock A-Style](https://amzn.to/3wu03tB)A dearer bundled kit; only worth it if you like the finish ## The four things to buy alongside it If your mandolin did not arrive as a kit, this is the short list. Total spend is under $60 and it makes a bigger difference to your first month than an extra $100 on the instrument would. WhatWhy it matters[Clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/3IIvxSw)Eight strings in four pairs. Tuning by ear on day one is how people quit.[D’Addario EJ74 strings](https://amzn.to/3EXAoho)Factory strings are usually the weakest part of a cheap mandolin. This is the standard replacement.[A-style hard case](https://amzn.to/41PEvX0)Mandolins are small and easy to knock off a sofa. Check the shape before you buy — an F-style case will not hold an A-style mandolin, and most of the picks here are A-styles.[Hal Leonard Mandolin Method](https://amzn.to/3JeQBla)The standard first book, and cheaper than one lesson. One more thing that is not a purchase: **get the instrument set up**. A setup at a local shop costs $60 to $125 — adjusting the action, seating the bridge, dressing the nut slots — and transforms a cheap mandolin far more than another $200 of budget would. It is the single best-value thing you can do, and almost nobody does it. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much should a beginner spend on a mandolin? Around $100 if you are finding out whether you enjoy it, and around $595 if you already know you do. The awkward middle — $250 to $500 — buys a nicer laminate rather than a solid top, which is the upgrade that actually changes the sound. We break the whole range down in [how much a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/). ### Is the mandolin hard to learn? It is one of the friendlier string instruments to start on. The scale is short, so chord shapes are small, and the strings are tuned in fifths, which makes scale patterns repeat identically across the neck. The genuine difficulty is the doubled strings: both strings in a pair have to be fretted cleanly or the note buzzes. That takes a few weeks. More detail in [how hard the mandolin is to play](/how-hard-is-it-to-play-the-mandolin/). ### What is the difference between A-style and F-style? The body shape, and almost nothing else. Both have eight strings, the same tuning and the same scale length. The F-style’s scroll and points are decorative and expensive to carve, so at the same price an A-style puts more of your money into the parts that make sound. See our [full A vs F comparison](/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/), or the wider [guide to mandolin types](/types-of-mandolins/). ### Do I need a solid top as a beginner? No. A laminate top is fine for learning chords, building calluses and finding out whether the instrument suits you. A solid top sounds better and improves with age, which matters once you are playing regularly and can hear the difference. ### How do I tune a mandolin? G–D–A–E from the thickest pair to the thinnest, the same as a violin, with both strings in each pair tuned to the same note. A clip-on tuner makes this quick; here is our [step-by-step tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/). ### Can I teach myself? Yes, and most players do. A method book plus consistent short practice beats occasional long sessions. If you play guitar already, be aware that almost nothing transfers directly except your sense of rhythm — the tuning is different and the chord shapes are entirely new. ## So which one? If you are curious and want to find out cheaply, buy the [Donner DML-1](https://amzn.to/3wwPLZM), spend $60 to $125 having it set up, and start playing. If you already know this is going to stick, skip the middle entirely and buy the [Kentucky KM-150](https://amzn.to/3JggFN3) — it is the cheaper route once you account for the instrument you would otherwise replace it with. And if what you actually want is the scroll and the bluegrass bark, the [Loar LM-310F](https://amzn.to/4bFqzFA) is where an F-style becomes worth owning — at the same price as its A-style twin. **Categories:** Mandolin Reviews --- ### [Best Low D Whistle: What to Buy, and Whether Your Hands Will Reach](https://promusicvault.com/best-low-d-whistle/) **Published:** October 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Whistle Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/whistle-reviews/ "Whistle Reviews")› Best Low D Whistle: What to Buy, and Whether Your Hands Will Reach A low D whistle uses the same six holes and the same fingering chart as the tin whistle you can buy for twenty dollars. Almost nothing else about it is the same. It is nearly two feet long, it sounds an octave lower, it takes noticeably more air, and the holes are far enough apart that a lot of people cannot cover them with their fingertips at all. So the buying decision splits in two: which one, and can you play one. The second question is the expensive one to get wrong. The short answer### mk Kelpie Low D Machined from a single billet of aluminum in Glasgow by a workshop that has made nothing but low whistles for over twenty-five years. It is their entry model, which on this instrument means the cheapest properly made one rather than a compromise — the bore, the airway and the hole positions are the same job as their professional whistles, done without the hand-finishing time. Around $250 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xXC4k8) **If money is not the constraint:** Carbony carbon fiber low D, tunable, around $600 **Never played a whistle at all:** spend $20 on a high D first **The tutor that covers this instrument:** *The Low Whistle Book*, around $40 ## It is not a big tin whistle Cover all six holes on a standard D whistle and the note is D5, the second D above middle C. Cover all six on a low D and it is D4, an octave underneath. That octave is the whole point — it is the register the Irish flute lives in, and it is the sound most people are chasing when they go looking for one. Standard D whistleLow D whistle**Lowest note**D5D4, an octave lower**Length**About 12 inchesAbout 22 inches**Bore**Around 12 mmAround 25 mm**Fingering**Identical — one chart works for both**How you cover the holes**FingertipsFlat pads and middle joints, for most hands**Air**Very littleConsiderably more, and the second octave needs real pressure**Who makes them**Factories, in the hundreds of thousandsSmall workshops, one at a time**What a good one costs**$14–70$250 and up The price gap is not a margin story. Nobody mass-produces a low D. The instrument as we know it dates to late 1971, when the English flute maker Bernard Overton built a metal replacement for Finbar Furey’s bamboo whistle after it was destroyed on tour; the first attempt was copper pipe with a wooden plug, and the aluminum version that followed is the ancestor of every low whistle sold today. Fifty years on it is still made by a handful of small workshops, and the price reflects the machining rather than the material. ## Will your hands reach? This is the question to settle before you spend anything, and it is the one the instrument’s reputation is built on. Fingering a low D is not a matter of technique you can acquire in a fortnight — either the holes fall under your fingers or they do not. Carbony publishes the hole dimensions for their low Ds, which makes a real measurement possible. On their standard-spaced instrument the top hand’s three holes sit about 39 mm and 38 mm apart, center to center — a span of a little over three inches across three fingers. Their close-spaced model, built specifically to shorten that reach, brings the same two gaps down to about 31 mm and 30 mm. Mark three points on a sheet of paper 39 mm apart, lay your left index, middle and ring fingers across them, and try to cover all three at once with a relaxed hand. Many hands cannot do it with the fingertips at all, and few can do it and still move. The answer is the **piper’s grip** borrowed from the uilleann pipes: the fingers lie flat across the tube and the holes are sealed with the pads and middle joints rather than the tips. It feels wrong for about a week and then stops being a problem for most players — but for genuinely small hands it does not become possible, and there is no version of the instrument in D that fixes it. If the reach defeats you, the honest answer is a low whistle in a higher key. Low F and low G are shorter instruments with proportionally closer holes, they keep most of the dark tone, and they are what a lot of small-handed players end up on permanently. ## One piece, or tunable A one-piece whistle is a single tube with the mouthpiece machined into it. A tunable one separates into a head and a body, and sliding them changes the pitch by a few cents either way. There is a real argument on both sides and it is worth understanding before you choose. The case for one piece is that there is no joint to leak, nothing to loosen, and nothing to lose. It is also lighter, which matters more on an instrument this size than it sounds. The case against is temperature. Every whistle plays sharp as it warms up, because warm air carries sound faster, and a metal low D holds a lot more material than a tin whistle does. Tony Dixon, who has been building whistles in England for decades, will only make metal low Ds as tunables for exactly this reason: the greater mass takes longer to come up to playing pitch, which they say is a problem on a one-piece instrument. Play alone or in a session where everyone drifts together and you will never notice. Play along with a recording, a piano or a fixed-pitch instrument in the first ten minutes and you will. ## The two worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### mk Kelpie Low D Whistle - Key of low D, A=440 - 565 mm long, 25 mm bore - 210 g - One-piece 6000-series anodised aluminum - Non-tunable - Wool-felt sleeve included - ~$250 mk have been making low whistles in Scotland since the 1990s and the Kelpie is the model they built to get people into the instrument. It is CNC-machined from one piece of aerospace-grade aluminum and hand-finished in their Glasgow workshop, which is why every one plays the same — there is no rolled seam, no glued fipple and no molded plastic anywhere in it. What you are actually buying at this price is the airway. mk taper it so that the back pressure balances against the amount of air the tube wants, and the practical effect is that the bottom octave speaks without being coaxed and the top one arrives without shrieking. That is the part cheap low whistles get wrong, and it is not something a player can fix afterward. It is not tunable, and mk are open about that being a design choice rather than a saving — the one-piece body is what makes it robust enough to live in a bag. At 210 g it is light for its size, which helps a hand that is already working hard to reach. It comes in polished aluminum or black anodised, the same instrument either way, with the black costing a little more. **Pros**- A properly made low whistle at the bottom of what one costs - One-piece body with nothing to leak, loosen or lose - Light enough that the stretch is the only thing your hands are fighting - Hole positions cut to ease the finger stretch as far as the key allows [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- Fixed pitch, so it plays sharp until it has warmed through - Aluminum is brighter than a polymer low D — less of the breathy sound some people are after - Still $250 for an instrument you may find you cannot reach Around $250[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xXC4k8) № 2 · If the budget is not the constraint ### Carbony Tuneable Low Whistle in D - Key of low D - Hand-laid carbon fiber body - Tunable head - Machined anodised aluminum mouthpiece, ebonite tip - Conical bore - Lifetime structural warranty - ~$600 Carbony builds in Oregon, and they are the only maker doing this instrument in carbon fiber. Each body is laid up by hand around a precision-ground mandrel, which is how they get identical dimensions from one to the next, and the layup mimics the fiber direction of wood — so the tone sits closer to a wooden flute than an aluminum tube does, without a wooden instrument’s habit of cracking when the weather changes. The bore is conical rather than straight, which is the harder thing to make and the reason the intonation holds across all three registers instead of just the two you normally get. The head is tunable, which removes the warm-up problem entirely, and the whole instrument carries a lifetime structural warranty. Two and a half times the price of the Kelpie is a lot of money for a second whistle in the same key, and this is not the one to learn on. It earns its place if you already play, you know the reach is not a problem for you, and you want an instrument that will sit in a case for twenty years and still be in tune. **Pros**- Tunable, so it plays with fixed-pitch instruments from cold - Carbon fiber does not care about heat, damp or a rough journey - Conical bore holds intonation into the third register - Lifetime structural warranty from the maker **Cons**- Around $600, against $250 for an instrument that plays the same tunes - The tuning joint is one more thing to seat properly and keep clean - Carbon fiber is a taste — some players want aluminum’s edge Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wLrU5g) ## If you have never played a whistle, start on a small one Everything you learn on a standard D whistle transfers to the low D unchanged — the same six holes, the same fingering, the same key, the same tunes. What does not transfer is the reach and the breath, and those are the two things that decide whether you keep the low D. Twenty dollars and a fortnight tells you whether you like whistle fingering at all, before $250 tells you whether your hands fit. Clarke Sweetone DTony Dixon tunable high D**Body**Tapered rolled tinplateTwo-piece polymer**Tunable**NoYes**Tone**Soft, breathy, quietRounder and stronger, closer to the low D’s family**Best for**Finding out whether you like itPlaying with other people**Price**~$21~$40 The Clarke is the cheapest whistle worth owning and the gentlest to blow, which makes it the better test instrument. The Dixon is made by the same firm that builds low whistles, it comes apart to tune, and it is the one to buy if there is any chance you will play with somebody else inside the first year. Clarke Sweetone D — around $21[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4y2pKzl) Tony Dixon tunable high D — around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wQlVfB) ## The book that actually covers this instrument The tutor ### *The Low Whistle Book* — Hannigan & Ledsam - 114 pages, paperback - Soar Valley Music - Tutor plus tunes, with recorded examples - ~$40 Whistle tutors are almost all written for the standard D, and they skip the two things a low whistle player needs: how to move enough air without pushing the note sharp, and how ornaments have to change when the fingers are lying flat. Hannigan and Ledsam wrote the one that is about the low whistle itself — a tutor section that starts from nothing, Irish ornamentation explained properly rather than listed, a chapter of history, and a set of tunes chosen for the register. It works from a standing start if you have never played, and it is still useful if you already play the small whistle, which is unusual for a method book. Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wKa5TY) ## Looking after it The one maintenance problem a low whistle has is condensation. You are pushing a lot of warm breath through a cold metal tube, and the water that forms in the windway will eventually choke the note into a hiss. Warming the instrument in your hands or under your arm before you start is most of the cure; the rest is blowing the windway clear or wiping it out between sets. A whistle that clogs in the first minute of every session is cold, not faulty. Beyond that, a machined aluminum tube asks for nothing. Keep it out of the boot of a car in summer, do not leave it standing where it can fall, and use the sleeve it came with. ## Common questions ### What is a low D whistle? A six-holed whistle pitched an octave below the standard D tin whistle, so its lowest note is D4 rather than D5. It is about twice as long, roughly twice the bore, and fingered identically. ### Is a low D whistle harder to play? Not musically — the fingering is the same and the tunes are the same. Physically, yes: the reach demands a flat-fingered grip and the instrument takes noticeably more breath, so phrases you could hold on a small whistle will need breaking up until your lungs catch up. ### Can a complete beginner start on a low D? Yes, if your hands cover the holes. Nothing about the instrument requires prior whistle experience. But a $20 high D answers the “do I enjoy this” question for a twelfth of the money, and the fingering you learn on it is the fingering you will use. ### Do I have to use piper’s grip? Most players do. If you can seal 39 mm hole spacing with your fingertips and still move your fingers freely, there is no reason to change — but that is a wide span to hold, and the flat grip is what the majority end up using. ### Tunable or non-tunable? Non-tunable is simpler, lighter and cheaper, and it is fine for playing alone or in a session. Tunable earns its money the moment you have to match a piano, a recording, or a fixed-pitch instrument before the whistle has warmed through. ### Is a low D whistle the same as an Irish flute? They sound in the same register and share a fingering system, but the flute has no mouthpiece to make the note for you — you form the airstream with your lips across an open hole. That is a fortnight of work before the first reliable note. The [full comparison is here](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/). ### Why are low whistles so expensive? Because no factory makes one. Every low D on sale comes from a small workshop machining or laying up tubes in small batches, and the hole positions on an instrument this size have to be cut precisely or the octaves will not agree. There is no economy of scale to pass on. ## Related reading - [Irish flute vs. tin whistle](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/) — the same register, a very different mouthpiece - [Penny whistle vs. recorder](https://promusicvault.com/penny-whistle-vs-recorder/) — six holes against eight, and why the fingering does not transfer - [Best bagpipes for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-bagpipes-for-beginners/) — where piper’s grip comes from - [Woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) — the whole family, and where whistles sit in it **Categories:** Whistle Reviews --- ### [Best Lap Harps: The Song-Sheet Kind and the Real Harp Kind](https://promusicvault.com/best-lap-harps/) **Published:** May 24, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Lap Harps: The Song-Sheet Kind and the Real Harp Kind Two unrelated instruments are sold as lap harps, and which one arrives depends entirely on which listing you clicked. One is a flat trapezoid box of fifteen strings that you play by sliding a numbered paper sheet underneath them — no notation, no lessons, a tune in about four minutes. The other is a small harp with a pillar and a curved neck that happens to sit on your knee. They cost about the same at the bottom of the range and they have almost nothing else in common. Most people typing *lap harp* want the first one. If you want the second, our [guide to beginner harps](/best-harps-for-beginners/) is the page you need. Our pick### TK O’Brien’s Original Lap Harp Fifteen steel strings across two octaves in G, in a hardwood frame with a proper pinblock — which is the part that decides whether an instrument like this holds its tuning or drifts flat between sittings. Three different string gauges, so the bottom octave has some body to it. Eleven songs, a pick, a wrench and a spare string in the box. Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xIAbYC) **Cheaper:** First Note FN600 Melody Harp — around $60 **For a child under six:** Hape Happy Harp — around $45 **If you want an actual harp:** AKLOT 15-string — around $150 ## Which of the two you are looking at The test takes one look at the photograph, and it is the same test that separates every harp from every zither: **which way do the strings leave the soundboard?** On a harp the strings rise away from the soundboard at right angles, and the frame closes into a triangle — soundbox, neck, pillar. On a song-sheet lap harp the strings lie flat across the face of the box, parallel to it, running from tuning pins along one slanted edge to a rail along the other. There is no pillar because there is nothing to brace against. That makes it a zither, and it puts it in the same family as the autoharp rather than anywhere near the harp. The name stuck because the sound is close enough — steel strings over a hollow wooden box, plucked bare-fingered, do ring somewhat like a small harp. Nothing about the technique carries over, though. Our [lyre and harp comparison](/lyre-vs-harp/) works through the same distinction on the other instrument that borrows the word. ## The four at a glance InstrumentFamilyStringsRangeStrings areReadsPrice bandSuits[TK O’Brien’s Original Lap Harp](https://amzn.to/4xIAbYC)Zither15Two octaves, G–GSteel, three gaugesSong sheets~$70Adults, and anyone who wants it to last[First Note FN600 Melody Harp](https://amzn.to/45CRnmo)Zither15Two octaves, G–GSteelSong sheets~$60The cheapest sensible way in[Hape Happy Harp](https://amzn.to/3Jjd1C0)Zither15Two octavesNylonIts own song sheets~$45Three to six[AKLOT 15-String Harp](https://amzn.to/4gi4LTb)Harp15Two octaves, C4–C6Nylon, color-codedMusic, eventually~$150Anyone who wants to learn the harp ## How a song-sheet lap harp works A printed card slides into a slot under the strings. On the card, each note of the tune is printed at the exact point where its string crosses, joined into a path. You pluck the string sitting above each dot, in the order the path runs. That is the whole method. A child can play a recognisable *Amazing Grace* on first contact, and so can an adult who has never held an instrument. Because the notes are positions rather than pitches, you are not learning to read music and you are not learning where the notes are. Move the card, and you have no idea what you just played. That is the trade, and it is worth naming plainly before you buy: this is an instrument for playing tunes, not for becoming a musician. ### Fifteen strings, two octaves, and why that matters The Music Maker, the Melody Harp and the TK O’Brien’s are all built to the same plan — fifteen strings covering two diatonic octaves, G up to G, one note per string with no sharps or flats available. Fifteen strings, seven notes to the octave: the arithmetic is the same one that governs [every harp’s string count](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). That shared layout is the single most useful thing to know about these instruments, because it means **song sheets are largely interchangeable between brands**. The publishers who sell sheet music for them list the Music Maker, the Melody Harp and the TK O’Brien’s together, and give a physical test for anything else: if your instrument’s cards measure four inches across the top, twelve across the bottom and eight vertically, the sheets will line up. Buy an instrument outside that family and you are limited to whatever music its own maker prints. One wrinkle sits inside the family. The Melody Harp ships with its F strings tuned to F natural, while the sheets are written for G major and want F sharp. Two strings, one wrench, thirty seconds — but nobody tells you, and until you do it every tune with an F in it sounds subtly wrong. ### Steel or nylon The adult instruments use steel wire. It is bright, it sustains, and it is what produces the bell-like ring people buy these for. It also stays where you put it: steel settles after a few days and then holds for months. Nylon is softer under a small fingertip and much quieter, which is the entire argument for it on a children’s instrument. The cost is that nylon stretches. A new set will drift for a couple of weeks and want retuning every few days, and it never quite develops the ring. For a three-year-old that is the right compromise; for anyone older it is not. If tuning is the part that worries you, [the same clip-on method used on harps](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) works here. ## The picks in full № 1 · Best overall ### TK O’Brien’s Original Lap Harp - 15 steel strings - Two octaves, G to G - Three different string gauges - Hardwood frame and pinblock, birch ply top - Handbuilt in the United States - 11 songs, pick, tuning wrench, spare string - ~$70 The pinblock is why this one is worth the extra ten dollars. On a cheap song-sheet instrument the tuning pins are driven into whatever the body is made of, and they creep — you tune it, play it twice, and find it flat again. A dedicated hardwood pinblock is the difference between an instrument you pick up and one you fight with first. The three string gauges matter more than they sound like they should. Fifteen strings of identical wire across two octaves means the bottom five are floppy and dull; grading the wire gives the low end enough tension to speak. Next to a single-gauge instrument the difference is obvious on the first chord. Two octaves in G, diatonic, is a real limit — no accidentals, so anything that modulates is off the menu. Within that it plays hymns, carols, folk tunes and nursery songs, which is what the eighteen music packs sold for it consist of. **Pros**- Hardwood pinblock, so it actually stays in tune - Graded string gauges give the low octave some body - Largest catalogue of matching music of any of these - A matching padded case exists **Cons**- The dearest of the three song-sheet instruments - Diatonic in G — no sharps or flats - Two octaves is a hard ceiling once you outgrow it Around $70[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xIAbYC) № 2 · The cheaper one ### First Note FN600 Melody Harp - 15 steel strings - Two octaves, G to G - Lacquered hardwood body - 6 double-sided song sheets — 12 songs - Tuning key, pick, spare string - ~$60 The Melody Harp, made under the Grover name, does the same job as the O’Brien’s for ten dollars less, in a lacquered hardwood body that looks handsome enough to leave out on a table. Same fifteen strings, same two octaves, same song sheets. Where it gives ground is what it does not claim. The O’Brien’s is specified with a dedicated hardwood pinblock and graded string gauges; the FN600 is specified as a lacquered hardwood body and fifteen strings, and the extra ten dollars is what those two features cost. Whether that matters depends on how much you mind reaching for the wrench. It also arrives with its F strings at F natural rather than F sharp, so budget half a minute with the wrench before the song sheets make sense. If you are buying to find out whether anyone in the house will actually use it, this is the sensible amount to spend. **Pros**- Cheapest full-size steel-strung one worth having - Inside the Music Maker family, so the song books fit - Lacquered hardwood, not a painted toy [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- No dedicated pinblock or graded gauges - Needs its F strings raised to F sharp out of the box - Twelve songs in the box, and no matching case Around $60[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45CRnmo) № 3 · For a child under six ### Hape Happy Harp - 15 nylon strings - Two octaves - 15¾ × 7¾ × 1⅓ inches, 1.8 lb - Water-based paint, non-toxic finish - Five song sheets plus a blank one - Two picks and a tuning wrench - Age 3+ - ~$45 Nylon strings, a rounded wedge body and under two pounds in weight: this is built for a child who will drop it. It is genuinely tunable rather than a fixed-pitch toy, and the blank sheet is a better idea than it sounds — a five-year-old drawing their own dots on the grid is doing something closer to composition than plucking. The catch is that it sits outside the Music Maker family. The third-party song books are printed for the fifteen-inch trapezoids and are explicitly not cut for this one, so you are working with the five sheets it comes with and whatever you draw on the blank. For a small child that is usually plenty; for anyone who will still want it in a year, it is a ceiling. Nylon also means retuning. Expect to reach for the wrench every few days for the first fortnight while the strings settle, and it never rings the way the steel ones do. **Pros**- Nylon strings do not hurt small fingers - Light, blunt-edged and built to survive a toddler - Properly tunable, not a fixed-pitch toy - Blank sheet invites a child to write their own **Cons**- Third-party song sheets are not cut for it - Nylon stretches, so it needs frequent retuning - Quieter and duller than the steel-strung ones Around $45[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Jjd1C0) № 4 · If you meant an actual harp ### AKLOT 15-String Harp - 15 nylon strings - Two octaves, C4–C6 - Red C strings, blue F strings - Mahogany, satin finish - About 21 inches long, 15 tall, under 3 lb - Gig bag, strap and tuning wrench - ~$150 Same fifteen strings, same two octaves, entirely different instrument. This one has a soundbox, a neck and a pillar, the strings rise off the board at right angles, and you play it with both hands the way you would play a concert harp — which means everything you learn on it transfers upward. The colored strings are the reason it beats prettier harps at this price. Every C is red and every F is blue, the same code used on every harp built, so you find your place on fifteen identical nylon strings without counting. There are no levers, so it lives in C major and changing key means retuning. One thing to watch when ordering: the color selector on this listing runs across AKLOT’s whole range, and the cheaper options on it are lyres — a different instrument with no pillar. The mahogany harp is the one described here. **Pros**- A real harp, so the technique transfers - Color-coded strings you can navigate - Under three pounds, with bag and strap included - Two full octaves at a price where rivals give one **Cons**- Twice the price of the song-sheet instruments - No levers, so no key changes - Nothing plays itself — this one needs learning - No spare strings in the box Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gi4LTb) ## What to buy with it Two things, and only two. More music, because twelve songs runs out fast, and something to keep the dust off the strings. ItemWhat it isPrice band[World of Harmony, *Child’s Play*](https://amzn.to/4bZZEo0)28 children’s songs, sized for the Music Maker, Melody Harp and TK O’Brien’s layout~$11[TK O’Brien’s padded case](https://amzn.to/4hK6QIE)Nylon, handle and shoulder strap, zip pocket. Cut for the O’Brien’s standard harp only~$35 The case is worth a word of caution: these instruments are all trapezoids and no two makers use the same trapezoid, so a case cut for one will not close over another. Match the case to the instrument rather than to the category. A song book, by contrast, will fit anything in the Music Maker family — which is most of the reason to stay inside it. What you do not need is a tuner. Every one of these comes with a wrench, and a clip-on chromatic tuner clamped to the frame does the rest; the ones we recommend on our [harp tuner page](/best-harp-tuner/) work identically on a zither. ## What a song-sheet lap harp will not do It will not play in another key. Fifteen strings, seven notes, no levers and no way to raise a string mid-tune: whatever it was tuned to is what it plays. Anything with an accidental in it is out. It will not teach you the harp. The fingering is one finger, one string, one dot at a time, with nothing of the four-finger patterns and hand shapes that harp playing actually consists of. Someone who spends a year on one arrives at a real harp knowing exactly as much as they started with — which is the honest case for spending the extra eighty dollars up front if learning is the goal. Our [first-year guide](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) lays out what that path looks like. And it will not accompany anything. Two diatonic octaves with no bass to speak of is a melody instrument, so it plays the tune and someone else plays everything underneath it. What it will do is get a tune out of somebody who has never played anything, in one sitting, for the price of a nice dinner. That is not a small thing, and it is why these turn up in classrooms, care homes and hospital wards far more often than in music shops. ## Common questions ### Is a lap harp a real harp? The song-sheet kind is not. Its strings lie flat across the soundboard instead of rising away from it, and it has no pillar, which puts it in the zither family alongside the autoharp. The small lever harps also described as lap harps are real harps in every sense — they are simply built short enough to rest on a knee. ### How much does a lap harp cost? A song-sheet lap harp runs about $45 to $70. A genuine harp small enough to play on your lap starts around $150 and rises through $180 for a carved twelve-string to roughly $600 for a twenty-two-string with levers. The gap between the two figures is the gap between the two instruments. ### Do I need to read music? No, and on the song-sheet instruments you never will. The card under the strings shows you which string to pluck and in what order, which is the whole appeal and also the whole limitation. ### Will song sheets from one brand fit another? Within the Music Maker family — Music Maker, Melody Harp, TK O’Brien’s and the older Small World and Yerbonitsa instruments — yes, because they share a string layout. Outside it, no. The quick check is the card size: four inches across the top, twelve across the bottom, eight vertically. ### How often does it need tuning? A steel-strung one settles over the first week or two and then holds for months, wanting a check when the heating goes on or off. A nylon-strung one wants attention every few days at first and every couple of weeks thereafter. Fifteen strings takes about three minutes either way. ### Can a young child use one? From about three, with the nylon-strung one. Steel strings on a small fingertip are unpleasant before six or so, and the steel instruments are heavier and have sharper corners. Our page on [harps for children](/harps-for-kids/) works through the same question for real harps. ### How heavy is one? Under two pounds for a song-sheet instrument, which is why it goes in a bag without a thought. A lever harp you can play on your lap runs from four to eleven pounds, and our page on [what harps weigh](/how-much-does-a-harp-weigh/) covers the full ladder. ## So which one If you want tunes this weekend and nobody in the house has played anything, buy the [TK O’Brien’s](https://amzn.to/4xIAbYC) and a song book, and the ten dollars over the Melody Harp buys you a pinblock that will still be holding pitch in five years. If it is a present for a small child, the [Hape](https://amzn.to/3Jjd1C0) is the right instrument and its limits will not matter for years. If any part of you wants to *play the harp*, spend the $150 on the [AKLOT](https://amzn.to/4gi4LTb) instead. Everything on the song-sheet instruments is a dead end, pleasant as they are, and the year spent on one is a year not spent learning. Where to go next: [beginner harps](/best-harps-for-beginners/) for the full range of real harps, [lyre harps](/best-lyre-harps/) for the third instrument that borrows the name, and [autoharps](/best-autoharps-for-beginners/) if the zither idea appeals but you want chords under the melody. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Best Harps for Beginners: 6 Picks You Can Actually Buy](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/) **Published:** March 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Harps for Beginners: 6 Picks You Can Actually Buy Two questions settle most of this. First: do you want an actual harp, or a $35 taste of one? Both are legitimate purchases, but they are different instruments wearing the same name, and most lists mix them together until nobody can tell what they are buying. Second: how many strings can you afford? Strings are range, and range is what decides which music you can play. Our pick for most beginners### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings with Chelby Levers A real Celtic harp at the cheapest price that does not come with an asterisk: 22 strings, three octaves, sharping levers so you are not stuck in one key, and a bundle that includes the tuning tool, spare strings and a play book. Enough harp for years of lessons. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2) **Most range for serious study:** Roosebeck Minstrel 29-string — around $770 **Cheapest honest taste:** AKLOT 15-string — around $150 **For gifts and campfires:** AKLOT 7-string lyre — around $35 ## The six at a glance HarpStringsLeversPrice bandBest for[Roosebeck Heather + levers](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2)22Yes~$600Most people starting lessons[Roosebeck Minstrel](https://amzn.to/3R7wckc)29Yes~$770The most repertoire per dollar[AKLOT 15-String](https://amzn.to/3H8Xv99)15No~$150Finding out if you care, cheaply[Roosebeck Baby Harp, Walnut](https://amzn.to/3JdlmHx)12No~$180A small harp that is genuinely wood, not toy[AKLOT 7-String Lyre](https://amzn.to/3XJ4m02)7No~$35Gifts, atmosphere, first plucks[Roosebeck Lily Harp](https://amzn.to/3HctNjP)8No~$80Young children ## Before you pick: three things that decide it ### A harp or a lyre? Half of what Amazon sells as a “beginner harp” is a lyre: a flat soundbox with strings stretched across it, strummed or plucked like an open-tuned guitar. Lyres are cheap, portable and immediately satisfying, and they are not harps — different posture, different technique, and nothing you learn on one transfers to harp lessons. The [difference between the two](/lyre-vs-harp/) matters more than any spec on this page. If what you want is the instrument harpists play, budget for a real one. If you want something beautiful that makes gentle sounds on a shelf or around a campfire, a [good lyre](/best-lyre-harps/) is the better buy, at a fraction of the price. ### How many strings? Strings are the spec that actually limits you. Fifteen or fewer is melody plus a bit of accompaniment — fine for tasting, too few for technique, because proper harp playing uses both hands across a wider range than those instruments have. From around 19 strings both hands have room to work and most beginner tutor books become playable. At 22 you can take lessons without apology, and at 26 to 29 nearly the whole beginner and intermediate repertoire fits. More in our [guide to harp string counts](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ### Levers — and why you want them A lever harp string plays one note. Flip its lever and it plays that note a semitone higher — which is how a lever harp changes key without retuning every string. Without levers you effectively live in one key, and a surprising amount of sheet music is suddenly off the menu. Levers are also the expensive part of a cheap harp, which is why so many budget models skip them. If you intend to take lessons, treat levers as close to essential; the full picture is in our [lever vs pedal harp explainer](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). Pedal harps — the orchestral kind — start around $15,500 and are not a beginner decision at all. Two things worth saying plainly. Roosebeck harps are made in Pakistan for an American importer, and quality control is more variable than the photos suggest — expect a settling-in period while new strings stretch, and occasionally a lever that needs adjusting. They are still the most accessible real harps on Amazon by a wide margin. And there is a ceiling on this page. Everything here is an entry instrument, and past about $1,000 you are into harps built to a different standard — heavier soundboards, levers that hold their regulation, and a set-up done by hand. Renting is also normal in the harp world in a way it never is with guitars, at roughly $50–80 a month — which is [why harps cost what they cost](/why-are-harps-so-expensive/). ## The six picks № 1 · Best for most beginners ### Roosebeck Heather Harp, 22 Strings, with Chelby Levers - 22 strings - 3 octaves - Sharping levers - About 36″ tall - ~$600 This is the least money that buys a harp with nothing missing. Twenty-two strings is enough range for both hands to do real work, the levers mean key changes are a flick rather than a retuning session, and the bundle version ships with the tuning tool, a spare string set and a beginner play book. It stands about waist height and plays seated, like the Celtic harps it is copying. The catch is the one that applies to every Roosebeck: it arrives needing attention. New strings go out of tune constantly for the first couple of weeks, and levers sometimes need a small adjustment to sharp cleanly. Treat that as part of the price and it is a genuine bargain; expect concert-hall fit and finish and you will be disappointed. Roosebeck lists the Heather in several configurations, and the lever-less ones save far less than you would expect. Read the string and lever count on whichever listing you land on before you order: a lever harp with no levers is a harp that plays in one key. **Pros**- Cheapest fully-usable lesson harp on Amazon - Levers included — most rivals at this price have none - Bundle covers the accessories you would otherwise forget **Cons**- Pakistani-import quality control is a lottery ticket - Long tuning settling-in period Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2) № 2 · Most repertoire per dollar ### Roosebeck Minstrel Harp, 29 Strings, Full Chelby Levers - 29 strings - 4 octaves - Levers on every string - ~$770 Seven more strings than the Heather sounds incremental. It is not: those strings sit at the bottom of the range, where accompaniment lives, and they are the difference between playing simplified arrangements and playing the actual piece. If you already know you are serious — you have booked lessons, you have repertoire in mind — the Minstrel is the better buy, and it is the last harp many hobbyists ever need. Levers on every string mean any common key is available. Same importer, same caveats as the Heather, and at this size a wobbly lever or a slow-settling string is proportionally more annoying. We looked at it in more depth in our [full Minstrel harp review](/minstrel-harp-review/). **Pros**- Four octaves covers nearly all beginner and intermediate music - Full levers — no key is off the table - Substantially cheaper than any western-made equivalent **Cons**- Same quality-control roulette, more expensive ticket - Big enough to need a corner of the room, not a shelf Around $770[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3R7wckc) № 3 · Cheapest honest taste ### AKLOT 15-String Harp - 15 strings - 2 octaves - Mahogany - Gig bag included - ~$150 The right way to spend $150 here is knowing exactly what you are getting: two octaves, no levers, a lap-sized instrument that teaches you whether plucked strings make you happy. On those terms the AKLOT is the best of the budget crowd — solidly built, strings at sane tension, and a gig bag and strap in the box. Over a thousand buyers have rated it, most of them treating it as exactly this kind of trial run. What it is not is a small version of the harps above. Both-hands technique does not fit in two octaves, so if lessons are the plan, this is a detour rather than a first step. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Best build quality of the sub-$200 field - Light enough to play anywhere, bag included - Painless resale if you outgrow it **Cons**- Two octaves caps what you can learn - No levers, no spare strings in the box Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3H8Xv99) № 4 · The pretty one that is still an instrument ### Roosebeck Baby Harp, 12 Strings, Walnut - 12 strings - Carved walnut - Extra string set included - ~$180 Half the reason people want a small harp is how it looks, and there is no shame in that. The engraved walnut Baby Harp is the one to buy on those grounds: it is a genuinely lovely object that also plays real notes in tune, which is more than can be said for most decorative harps. Twelve strings is enough for melodies and simple two-hand patterns, and it ships with a spare string set and tuning tool. What it is not is a study instrument. Twelve strings and no levers puts a ceiling on it that you will meet inside a year of lessons. Buy it because you want this particular object in your house, and treat the playing as a bonus. **Pros**- Genuinely beautiful carved walnut - Real tuning stability for its size - Spares in the box **Cons**- Twelve strings runs out of road quickly - Costs more than the larger AKLOT Around $180[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3JdlmHx) № 5 · Best lyre — a different instrument, honestly labeled ### AKLOT 7-String Lyre Harp - 7 steel strings - One octave - Mahogany, bone saddle - Wrench, spare strings and gig bag included - ~$35 If the earlier lyre-or-harp question landed you here, this is the cheapest thing on the page worth owning. Seven strings, a complete accessory bundle, and a sound that flatters a complete beginner from the first evening. Donner’s 7-string equivalent is the better-known one and costs around $50 for the same specification, which is the whole argument against it. Tuned to a scale and plucked with the thumbs, it sounds instantly magical. Go in knowing it is a mood rather than a method: one octave will not carry a tune with any range to it, and there is no path from here to playing the harp. If you want a lyre that plays real melodies, step up to a [16-string](https://amzn.to/3DeEZev) at around $100 — the reasoning is in our [lyre harp guide](/best-lyre-harps/). **Pros**- Instant, forgiving, genuinely pleasant sound - Everything included, nothing else to buy - Costs a third of the cheapest real harp here **Cons**- Not a harp, and will not become one - One octave runs out of notes fast - Steel strings feel sharp for the first week of fingertips Around $35[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XJ4m02) № 6 · Best for young children ### Roosebeck Lily Harp, 8 Strings - 8 strings - One octave - Knotwork carving - ~$80 For a child who is drawn to the harp, eight real strings on a small carved frame beats any toy-store version: it tunes properly, the strings are spaced for small fingers, and one octave is exactly enough for the songs children actually want to play. It is also light enough for a five-year-old to carry, which matters more than any musical spec. A child who takes to it will outgrow it within a year or two — at which point you are shopping in the AKLOT-to-Heather range with much better information. Our [harps for kids guide](/harps-for-kids/) covers the in-between sizes. **Pros**- A real, tunable instrument at pocket-money price - Small hands reach everything **Cons**- One octave is a short leash - Outgrown quickly by a child who takes to it Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HctNjP) You will also come across flat “lap harps” with numbered song sheets that slide underneath the strings. Those are zithers rather than harps — you follow the paper instead of reading music, which makes them charming for small children and a dead end for anyone who wants to play the harp properly. Our [lap harp guide](/best-lap-harps/) covers them. ## What to buy with it WhatWhy it matters[Peterson StroboClip HDC tuner](https://amzn.to/4fPltJg)A new harp needs tuning every single day for weeks. The HDC is the model with Peterson’s harp presets on it — the plain HD, one letter apart, has none. Cheaper tuners that still do the job are in [our tuner guide](/best-harp-tuner/).[First 50 Songs You Should Play on Harp](https://amzn.to/3XqQy9u)The standard first songbook, arranged for small harps. More options in [our beginner book guide](/best-beginning-harp-music-books/).[Spare string set (15/16-string models)](https://amzn.to/3JYpXh6)Budget harps snap strings while settling in. For the AKLOT and its kin, an $8 spare set turns a dead evening into a five-minute fix — [here is how](/changing-harp-strings/). The Roosebecks above ship with their own tuning tools and spares, and both AKLOTs include gig bags — so beyond a tuner and a book, day one is covered. ## Frequently asked questions ### How many strings should a beginner harp have? For lessons, 22 or more; the levered Heather is the cheapest harp here that clears that bar. From about 19 strings both hands have room to work properly. Below that you are buying a taster or a gift, not a study instrument — the full reasoning is in our [string count guide](/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ### Are the $50–150 harps on Amazon any good? As what they are, yes: pleasant, playable instruments for melodies, gifts and finding out whether you care. As harps, no — too few strings, no levers, and technique built on them has to be relearned. The trap is not buying one; it is buying one believing you have bought a harp. ### Should I rent instead of buying? If there is a harp shop or teacher within reach, renting a proper lever harp for roughly $50–80 a month is the best-value first year in harp playing: a better instrument than anything on this page, and an easy exit if it does not take. The picks above exist for everyone without that option — which, harp shops being rare, is most people. ### What is the difference between a lever harp and a pedal harp? Lever harps change a string’s pitch with a flick of a finger lever; pedal harps do it with foot pedals that shift every octave of a note at once, which is what orchestral music demands. Pedal harps start around $15,500 and weigh as much as a person, so beginners start on levers — details in [our comparison](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/). ### How long does it take to learn? Recognisable songs come embarrassingly fast — weeks, not months, which is why the harp is kinder to beginners than its reputation suggests. Sounding genuinely good takes one to three years of steady practice, the same as any instrument. We cover the realistic timeline in [how long it takes](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/), and [how to start learning](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) if you are going without a teacher. ### How do I keep it in tune? Daily, briefly, with a clip-on tuner, working from the lowest string up — and without despair, because new nylon strings stretch for two to three weeks before they settle. That period is normal on every harp at every price. Step-by-step in [our tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-harp/). ## So which one? If you mean it — lessons, practice, actual harp music — buy the [levered Heather](https://amzn.to/4qbBIE2), or stretch to the [Minstrel](https://amzn.to/3R7wckc) if the budget allows, and accept the week of tuning as the initiation it is. If you are curious but honest about not knowing yet, the [AKLOT](https://amzn.to/3H8Xv99) answers the question for $150. And if the truth is you want something lovely that makes harp-ish sounds on demand, the [AKLOT 7-string lyre](https://amzn.to/3XJ4m02) does exactly that for $35 and never pretends otherwise. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Best Harp Tuners: 5 Picks for Lever and Pedal Harps](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/) **Published:** March 8, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Harp Tuners: 5 Picks for Lever and Pedal Harps Clip the tuner to the shank of your tuning key, not to the harp. The display then sits an inch from the pin you are turning, you stop craning at a music stand, and no metal clip ever touches the soundboard. That one habit does more for tuning a harp than any upgrade you can buy, and it works with a $22 tuner. What separates tuners after that is narrower than the marketing suggests. Almost every chromatic tuner sold today claims A0 to C8, which covers a concert pedal harp’s bottom C at 32.7 Hz on paper. The difference is what happens in the real bottom octave, where fundamentals are weak and thirty other strings are ringing along in sympathy. Our pick for most harpists### Snark ST-2 All-Instrument Clip-On Tuner Clips to a tuning pin or to the key itself, reads vibration rather than room noise, and charges over USB so there is no coin cell to die mid-session. Harpsicle and other lever-harp makers point their own customers at the Snark, which is a stronger endorsement than any spec sheet. Around $22 [Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-2-Multi-Instrument-Chromatic-Tuner/dp/B01H62TQ68?crid=2WV1HUSGJNUJ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.J7zPW4lUrlk430DzjoXqJgUasdqSNn9O2xfDLWNg1ZwTTUfcrwfoI5LrmNmiMtsPND38RJ-n5nzEjq-3HVHttZ9XsgdK51sZWm85GTBl_bhEhtVdNJUDtD59mTLYHHsIR8anUW7h0hsY2S6Z5_rvi_wAA4Qp0N51DdYYn3r2MEz_X-5PLrNJY0fhuaZPoaUrbdU3sCKRVbwpdwyGM4nxU4VB86_3tYmBW9NFKq5ERdtFbckk7UVc138lsJqLJN3qqU46bMAAvhA_v9wx2nl97HH-BR0-XSnrA3NKwvYQ_2Y.7PIRJY7EGWbDMngqUAGiqiII1Qz7lOJf1i5RrZJg31U&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bsn-2&qid=1745374330&sprefix=snark%2Bsn-2%2Caps%2C125&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=4469dac210aea28fd9f56e1865ed1439&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best handheld:** Korg CA-50 — around $25 **Best for pedal harps:** Korg OT-120 — around $80 **Most precise:** Peterson StroboClip HDC — around $80 ## The five at a glance TunerTypePickupPrice bandBest for[Snark ST-2](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-2-Multi-Instrument-Chromatic-Tuner/dp/B01H62TQ68?crid=2WV1HUSGJNUJ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.J7zPW4lUrlk430DzjoXqJgUasdqSNn9O2xfDLWNg1ZwTTUfcrwfoI5LrmNmiMtsPND38RJ-n5nzEjq-3HVHttZ9XsgdK51sZWm85GTBl_bhEhtVdNJUDtD59mTLYHHsIR8anUW7h0hsY2S6Z5_rvi_wAA4Qp0N51DdYYn3r2MEz_X-5PLrNJY0fhuaZPoaUrbdU3sCKRVbwpdwyGM4nxU4VB86_3tYmBW9NFKq5ERdtFbckk7UVc138lsJqLJN3qqU46bMAAvhA_v9wx2nl97HH-BR0-XSnrA3NKwvYQ_2Y.7PIRJY7EGWbDMngqUAGiqiII1Qz7lOJf1i5RrZJg31U&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bsn-2&qid=1745374330&sprefix=snark%2Bsn-2%2Caps%2C125&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=4469dac210aea28fd9f56e1865ed1439&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)Clip-onVibration + mic~$22Almost everyone[Korg CA-50](https://amzn.to/4xx3NrA)HandheldMic + 1/4″ input~$25Harp teachers and shops[Korg OT-120](https://www.amazon.com/Korg-OT120-OT-120-Orchestral-Tuner/dp/B000GFCYPS?crid=1JETHTE8T76G6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.d0dcdoHuYqukog-ZIbR9YqjbxFApyGt2Y18qrGUvgsvCfM_in8atbx-yE3jfaBcXZ5u4pRQb0ogT6qApBlH2q0v53DvAK4cgT59RShupC-ePuvB2D3MWzzJnnOvUFbz03DxQKAUx74iYGVRm0C0H22HHfLMjxwLsHMVfogJBocQMAxsdbhDpvYzXdixD4pe5_DfLAYL18Ca3aDjByqRdo03JRrhb-G_RSeh9w_Qca1MuAvS6FQpS9vJbgeUzDWyu9sC2H3P-BSt9-kpT5w2IoUC-gx6WPtfo4qGQbGdgK0M.6kDyThSaAbqIZtoJHUeOtfdihKtPIdAuR609VdFaF3Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=korg%2Bot-120%2Borchestral%2Btuner&qid=1745374223&sprefix=korg%2Bot-%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=c85fbe08a0928b2c9460530142a530d3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)HandheldMic + 1/4″ input~$80Pedal harps, low strings[Peterson StroboClip HDC](https://amzn.to/4fPltJg)Clip-on strobeVibration~$80Professionals, temperament work[Korg TM-70T](https://amzn.to/4qgGVdS)Handheld comboMic + 1/4″ input~$40Students who also need a metronome ## Why a harp is harder on a tuner than a guitar ### The bottom octave is where tuners give up A concert pedal harp’s lowest string is C1, around 33 Hz. A 34-string lever harp bottoms out near C2, around 65 Hz. Both sit below the range a guitar-only tuner bothers to detect, which is why a guitar tuner is not a shortcut here — it will simply show nothing, or lock onto an overtone and tell you a confident lie. Chromatic tuners quote A0 to C8 and mostly mean it, but a quoted range is not the same as a stable reading. Low fundamentals are quiet and slow, so cheap tuners hunt around for a second or two before settling. Paying more buys a faster, steadier reading down there rather than a wider number on the box. ### There is nowhere obvious to clip it A harp has no headstock. Clip onto a tuning pin near the string you are working on, or onto the shank of the tuning key, and keep metal jaws off bare wood — a clip that grips the soundboard leaves marks and reads worse anyway. For the top octave, where vibration gets faint, harpists clip at the access hole in the back of the body or onto the midrib inside it. ### The whole instrument answers when you pluck one string Thirty-odd undamped strings ring in sympathy with whatever you play, and a tuner asked to find one pitch in that wash will flicker, jump an octave, or drop out entirely. Mute the strings below with your palm, and pluck high strings lightly with a fingernail for a clear bell tone rather than digging in. This is a technique problem far more often than a tuner problem, and no amount of money fixes it — though a vibration-sensing clip-on ignores the airborne part of the mess, which is most of it. ## The five picks № 1 · Best for most harpists ### Snark ST-2 All-Instrument Clip-On Tuner - Clip-on - Vibration sensor + built-in mic - Color display, swivels 360° - USB rechargeable - Calibration 415–466 Hz - ~$22 The Snark is the default answer for lever harps, and it earns it on ergonomics rather than accuracy. Clipped to a tuning pin — or better, to the shank of the key — the screen faces you while both hands are busy, and the vibration sensor ignores the room. Lever-harp makers recommend it to their own customers, and harpists who rent instruments out tend to buy several because losing one costs nothing. It is not a precision instrument, and the bright color screen should not be mistaken for one — what it shows you is a readout on which “in tune” covers a couple of cents either side, and on the lowest strings it still takes a moment to settle. For a nylon-strung lever harp that drifts with the weather anyway, that is the right amount of precision. It now charges over USB rather than eating CR2032 cells, which on an instrument you tune before every session is worth more than it sounds. **Pros**- Clips to the tuning key, which is the trick that makes tuning quick - Vibration pickup shrugs off room noise - Cheap enough to own a spare **Cons**- Tuning resolution is fine for lever harps, not for temperament work - Slow to settle on the bottom octave Around $22[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-2-Multi-Instrument-Chromatic-Tuner/dp/B01H62TQ68?crid=2WV1HUSGJNUJ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.J7zPW4lUrlk430DzjoXqJgUasdqSNn9O2xfDLWNg1ZwTTUfcrwfoI5LrmNmiMtsPND38RJ-n5nzEjq-3HVHttZ9XsgdK51sZWm85GTBl_bhEhtVdNJUDtD59mTLYHHsIR8anUW7h0hsY2S6Z5_rvi_wAA4Qp0N51DdYYn3r2MEz_X-5PLrNJY0fhuaZPoaUrbdU3sCKRVbwpdwyGM4nxU4VB86_3tYmBW9NFKq5ERdtFbckk7UVc138lsJqLJN3qqU46bMAAvhA_v9wx2nl97HH-BR0-XSnrA3NKwvYQ_2Y.7PIRJY7EGWbDMngqUAGiqiII1Qz7lOJf1i5RrZJg31U&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bsn-2&qid=1745374330&sprefix=snark%2Bsn-2%2Caps%2C125&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=4469dac210aea28fd9f56e1865ed1439&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) № 2 · The one harp shops sell ### Korg CA-50 Chromatic Tuner - Handheld - A0 (27.5 Hz) – C8 - ±1 cent - Calibration 410–480 Hz - 1/4″ input jack - ~$25 Walk into a harp specialist and this is what is on the counter. It is the current version of the CA line, it reads the full range of any lever or pedal harp, and the big needle display plus a green in-tune light is legible from a seated playing position. The 1/4″ input jack matters more than it looks: plug in a pickup and the tuner stops caring about sympathetic ringing altogether, which is the real fix for a large harp. Being handheld is the trade. You need somewhere to put it, and on a big harp you will be reaching. It also has no memory of what you are doing — every string is read from scratch. Buy it if you like a needle and a clear readout; buy the Snark if you would rather not think about where to prop anything. **Pros**- Genuinely covers a pedal harp’s full range - Wide calibration range for playing with others - Input jack for a pickup, which solves the resonance problem properly **Cons**- Needs a stand, a lap or a spare hand - Microphone mode struggles in a noisy room Around $25[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xx3NrA) № 3 · Best for pedal harps and large lever harps ### Korg OT-120 Orchestral Tuner - Handheld - A0–C8 - Calibration 349–499 Hz - Eight temperaments - Mic + 1/4″ input - ~$80 The OT-120 is a desk tuner for orchestral players, and on a big harp that is exactly right. The analogue-style needle moves smoothly rather than stepping, so a slack low string shows you which way it is drifting instead of blinking between two notes — the single most useful thing a tuner can do down there. Eight built-in temperaments and a very wide calibration range cover early-music work and playing alongside fixed-pitch instruments. Three times the price of the Korg above, and for a 26-string lever harp in a living room you will not hear the difference. This is a purchase that makes sense at 40-plus strings, in an ensemble, or when you are tuning other people’s instruments as well as your own. **Pros**- Smooth needle response on low strings, where it counts - Temperaments and a very wide calibration range - Built to sit on a stand and be read across a room **Cons**- Overkill and over-priced for a small lever harp - Bulky next to a clip-on Around $80[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Korg-OT120-OT-120-Orchestral-Tuner/dp/B000GFCYPS?crid=1JETHTE8T76G6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.d0dcdoHuYqukog-ZIbR9YqjbxFApyGt2Y18qrGUvgsvCfM_in8atbx-yE3jfaBcXZ5u4pRQb0ogT6qApBlH2q0v53DvAK4cgT59RShupC-ePuvB2D3MWzzJnnOvUFbz03DxQKAUx74iYGVRm0C0H22HHfLMjxwLsHMVfogJBocQMAxsdbhDpvYzXdixD4pe5_DfLAYL18Ca3aDjByqRdo03JRrhb-G_RSeh9w_Qca1MuAvS6FQpS9vJbgeUzDWyu9sC2H3P-BSt9-kpT5w2IoUC-gx6WPtfo4qGQbGdgK0M.6kDyThSaAbqIZtoJHUeOtfdihKtPIdAuR609VdFaF3Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=korg%2Bot-120%2Borchestral%2Btuner&qid=1745374223&sprefix=korg%2Bot-%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=c85fbe08a0928b2c9460530142a530d3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) № 4 · Most precise ### Peterson StroboClip HDC - Clip-on strobe - ±0.1 cent - 65 sweetened tunings, four of them for harp - Rechargeable lithium-ion - ~$80 Strobe tuning shows you the whole waveform drifting rather than a needle guessing, and at ±0.1 cent this is an order of magnitude finer than anything else here. The harp-specific draw is Peterson’s HP1 to HP4 presets, which nudge individual notes so the instrument’s own overtones agree with each other rather than with a calculator. The one letter matters: the cheaper StroboClip HD is just as accurate, but its 50 presets contain no harp family at all. If the sweeteners are why you want a Peterson, the HDC is the one that has them. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Now the unflattering part: a wooden harp strung in nylon or gut will not hold ±0.1 cent past the next change in room humidity. This tuner is worth its price if you record, play professionally, or care about temperament — and it is money wasted if you are tuning a lever harp before practice, where the Snark gets you to the same audible result in the same three minutes. **Pros**- Precision nothing else here approaches - Harp-specific sweetened tunings - Rock-steady on low strings **Cons**- Its precision outlives your tuning by about an hour - Strobe display takes some getting used to Around $80[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fPltJg) № 5 · If you need a metronome too ### Korg TM-70T Tuner and Metronome - Handheld combo - Tuner and metronome, together or separately - Sound-out reference pitch - Transpose mode - ~$40 Two devices in one case, and for anyone taking lessons that is the practical buy — the metronome gets far more use than the tuner does. It will run both at once, so you can drill a passage against a click without unplugging anything, and the sound-out mode plays a reference pitch for ear training. The transpose function is the reason it appears on a harp page rather than a general one: it is what makes tuning a pedal harp readable, and the section below explains why. As a pure tuner it is no better than the CA-50 and costs more, so buy it for the metronome or not at all. **Pros**- Metronome and tuner run simultaneously - Transpose mode simplifies pedal-harp tuning - Reference tones for ear training **Cons**- No better as a tuner than the cheaper Korg - Another handheld to find a home for Around $40[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qgGVdS) ## Also worth a look TunerPrice bandWhy you might[Snark ST-8HPT](https://amzn.to/4wPbPwd)~$27Snark’s high-precision model. Its trick is an anechoic shield that blocks room noise, which is aimed at a loud stage rather than a ringing harp — the ST-2’s vibration sensor already solves that. Worth the extra five dollars only if you want the finer readout.[KLIQ UberTuner](https://www.amazon.com/KLIQ-UberTuner-Clip-Instruments-Chromatic/dp/B00O4L3F9E?crid=3N9FARTQKMJQ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.PorbowKEt7eg7OcjeN65JB0WpgYjPSbpDfDy3bV7fRFM4-YtmEGvtj5a2zpvYxTaejwT25NFPvtiuN-OiYHiLyONuSbiUOeZbAe_9h65jetzDbZAG_cbnOCHtV97JslZiwDY3dlaYyZd-hsk9ESHdJVFAFydj23x7dDERyCoPtIDFTTIBRdIJSmG7Ds9GmhuoP24r8QaW-XzUnpFw9QsttfoKGH4GL12c7rDFfL9slMpChJsivnyTD7th1miBv5LaLwI88Wgq0ewSVd5nPHw-oCmW2pPzmdyIXOFKQkf0H0.irVuzJp_r_GFUdy-iffJN55WZpx8SY3QbH4A_GkhOcQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=kliq%2Buber%2Btuner&qid=1745374551&sprefix=kliq%2Bub%2Caps%2C138&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=1855501eeba0141497f2c98ccdfb4715&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)~$20A well-made clip-on aimed at guitarists. Nothing wrong with it on a harp; nothing it does that the Snark does not.[D’Addario NS Micro](https://amzn.to/4xF7kEF)~$22Tiny enough to leave clipped on permanently and forget about. The screen is small, which on a harp means leaning in.[Peterson StroboClip HD](https://www.amazon.com/Peterson-StroboClip-Ukulele-Woodwind-Orchestral/dp/B06ZZX99G8?crid=BMZTN9EWYPOO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.dBog0aTmzQNcz-dWawO08AUdXD-irkiLR4koqm8pNSohPPkeAd-diwN3dWp4dWC7OLK5yxoLH8C_YjyhaPlKGeo02b8fCG6iLo8bP_lN69WtMZZUaIjnoqLGZ2EGOjisYdGqkWGv3mTmZVjtZgJltZEBsszkf5aXN7wR2s068XdUA_LrD9kzqrovGFmD-VMpT4be0jqeIx8vb6wcQLes9rHVssCgC9TKTUsDhRmRKw7YIayfpXTyE3eaXZbTo-la37S6BQJfoMonjyQZ2IOl9_atfmzEGFsrGnulcxSq3wk.Vjzc3XvAFh7FaR3Qxp8RmP3p87eqhGw-F1t6XMH1CnQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=peterson+stroboclip+hd&qid=1745374606&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sprefix=peterson+strobocl%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=2288021741afb33fa18efe0d8d9edf1d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)~$60The older StroboClip, $20 cheaper and just as accurate. Its 50 presets do not include the harp sweeteners, so buy it for the precision alone. ## The tuning key is what people get wrong Harp tuning pins are tapered squares, and the square is not one size. Lyres take about 4 mm, most lever and Celtic harps take somewhere between 4.5 and 5 mm, and some larger harps take more again. A key one size up rounds the corners of your pins; a key one size down will not go on. Measure a pin or ask your maker before buying anything, because “harp tuning key” on its own is not a specification. If your harp came with a key, it is the right size and it is probably fine. Buy a second one to keep in the case, or a T-handle if the L-shaped one that came in the box makes your wrist ache on a long restring. KeySocketHandlePrice band[Roosebeck harp tuning key, medium](https://www.amazon.com/Mid-East-HPTN-Harp-Tuning-Tool-Medium/dp/B0009V8430?crid=3NAAYZYZXNL7P&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.92nkypGEuIpMPbOGtjmt4Ld0gc-iVVBTx1Roh130CidDsWv3c5BqiO32amkn27x5keqQsM7CAxC3MlfqWx7iA9cljeUFL84OjyCGA1XB2BJme0rhN5ya2WwJmGKe9XGs_EV7chQcg2JP-kgRC5HZv3vgNfd3VWhYUYOMQbUHPCHBfwJj4WICVuD17EoedLi66INTKJviPI64InL8trXbMi17vqaXUvo6FdRI7lrSOSu59sN5uog2ZnFcJn9Z4nZQ52eL5QU27MBlQbAtcL_jEDl5Mx8A50E_46v92MAgdDo.HSNcuHSfJChdnMV-yJSgaV-yz-UzSSQ33ds_QpWf6_k&dib_tag=se&keywords=Mid-East+Roosebeck+Harp+Tuning+Key&qid=1745374690&sprefix=mid-east+roosebeck+harp+tuning+key%2Caps%2C169&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a46e95aa3472abb88f2afda90c775cea&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)0.26″ across the diagonal — roughly 4.7 mm squareL-shape~$17[Universal harp tuning key](https://amzn.to/3UsyuQv)4.5 mm squareWooden T-handle~$14[DEURA T tuning wrench](https://amzn.to/4wPmYNt)5 mm squareWooden T-handle~$23 The T-handles are the ones to clip a Snark to. They also give more controlled leverage than an L-key, which matters when you are [fitting a new string](/changing-harp-strings/) and bringing it up to pitch for the first time. ## Pedal harps: let the tuner do the transposing A [pedal harp](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) is tuned with every pedal disengaged, which puts the strings in C-flat major. Read literally, that means tuning to B, C-sharp, D-sharp, E, F-sharp, G-sharp and A-sharp, and reading those off a chromatic display string after string is how mistakes happen. Set the tuner’s transpose to −1 instead. The display then shows plain naturals — C, D, E, F, G, A, B — while the harp sits in C-flat, and you can work down the strings without translating anything. Peterson’s clip-ons, the OT-120 and the TM-70T all do this. Start at middle C, the red string, and if a string does not change pitch as you turn, stop: you are on the wrong pin, and the string you are actually tightening is the one about to break. Lever harps are simpler. Harpsicle and Rees ship theirs in C, with the C strings marked red; many larger lever harps are strung in E-flat so the levers reach more keys. Your maker’s manual settles it, and our [step-by-step harp tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) covers the rest. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I use a guitar tuner on a harp? Only if it is chromatic. A tuner in guitar mode looks for six specific notes and will drag every string you play toward one of them. Even in chromatic mode, guitar-oriented tuners often will not read below the low E at 82 Hz, which leaves the bottom octave of any full-size harp invisible. ### Why does my tuner keep jumping between notes? Sympathetic resonance, almost always. The strings you are not playing are ringing along and the tuner cannot decide which pitch you meant. Mute the strings below the one you are tuning with your palm, pluck more lightly, and move the clip closer to the pin you are working on. ### Where exactly should the clip go? On a tuning pin near the string you are adjusting, or on the shank of the tuning key. Not on bare wood — the jaws mark a soundboard and read no better for it. For the top strings, the access hole in the back of the body or the midrib inside gives a stronger signal. ### How often does a harp need tuning? Before you play, every time. Harps have more string tension pulling on more wood than almost anything else you can carry, and they respond to every change in temperature and humidity. A settled harp takes about three minutes once you are practiced at it. ### My new harp will not hold its tuning at all. Is something wrong? No. New strings stretch and a new soundboard settles under load, so the first few weeks are relentless. Tune the whole instrument, then go through it again immediately — the strings you did first will have dropped while you worked. That second pass is the difference between a harp that sounds in tune and one that nearly does. ### Do I need a pickup or a contact mic? Not for tuning at home. A clip-on already reads vibration through the frame, which is the same idea. A wired pickup into a tuner’s 1/4″ jack earns its place when you are tuning backstage or in a room full of other instruments — the same setup covered in our guide to [amplifying a harp](/how-to-amplify-a-harp/). ### What is a sweetened tuning? A preset that shifts individual notes a fraction away from equal temperament so an instrument’s overtones line up more pleasantly with each other. Peterson’s harp presets do this. It is a refinement you will notice on a good instrument in a quiet room, and not before. ## So which one? For a lever harp, buy the [Snark ST-2](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-2-Multi-Instrument-Chromatic-Tuner/dp/B01H62TQ68?crid=2WV1HUSGJNUJ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.J7zPW4lUrlk430DzjoXqJgUasdqSNn9O2xfDLWNg1ZwTTUfcrwfoI5LrmNmiMtsPND38RJ-n5nzEjq-3HVHttZ9XsgdK51sZWm85GTBl_bhEhtVdNJUDtD59mTLYHHsIR8anUW7h0hsY2S6Z5_rvi_wAA4Qp0N51DdYYn3r2MEz_X-5PLrNJY0fhuaZPoaUrbdU3sCKRVbwpdwyGM4nxU4VB86_3tYmBW9NFKq5ERdtFbckk7UVc138lsJqLJN3qqU46bMAAvhA_v9wx2nl97HH-BR0-XSnrA3NKwvYQ_2Y.7PIRJY7EGWbDMngqUAGiqiII1Qz7lOJf1i5RrZJg31U&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bsn-2&qid=1745374330&sprefix=snark%2Bsn-2%2Caps%2C125&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=4469dac210aea28fd9f56e1865ed1439&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), clip it to your tuning key, and spend nothing else. If you prefer a needle and a readout you can see across a room, or you want an input jack for a pickup, the [Korg CA-50](https://amzn.to/4xx3NrA) costs a couple of dollars more. Pedal harpists and anyone past forty strings should go straight to the [Korg OT-120](https://www.amazon.com/Korg-OT120-OT-120-Orchestral-Tuner/dp/B000GFCYPS?crid=1JETHTE8T76G6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.d0dcdoHuYqukog-ZIbR9YqjbxFApyGt2Y18qrGUvgsvCfM_in8atbx-yE3jfaBcXZ5u4pRQb0ogT6qApBlH2q0v53DvAK4cgT59RShupC-ePuvB2D3MWzzJnnOvUFbz03DxQKAUx74iYGVRm0C0H22HHfLMjxwLsHMVfogJBocQMAxsdbhDpvYzXdixD4pe5_DfLAYL18Ca3aDjByqRdo03JRrhb-G_RSeh9w_Qca1MuAvS6FQpS9vJbgeUzDWyu9sC2H3P-BSt9-kpT5w2IoUC-gx6WPtfo4qGQbGdgK0M.6kDyThSaAbqIZtoJHUeOtfdihKtPIdAuR609VdFaF3Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=korg%2Bot-120%2Borchestral%2Btuner&qid=1745374223&sprefix=korg%2Bot-%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=c85fbe08a0928b2c9460530142a530d3&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) for the way it behaves on low strings. The [Peterson StroboClip HDC](https://amzn.to/4fPltJg) is the right answer only if you record or perform for a living — otherwise it is precision your strings will not keep. And whatever you buy, check your pin size before you order a tuning key. Still choosing an instrument? Start with our guide to the [best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/). **Categories:** Harp, Harp Comparisons, Harp Reviews --- ### [Best Fiddles for Beginners: 4 Picks That Are Actually Playable](https://promusicvault.com/best-fiddles-for-beginners/) **Published:** February 2, 2023 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Fiddle Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/fiddle-reviews/ "Fiddle Reviews")› Best Fiddles for Beginners: 4 Picks That Are Actually Playable The hardest thing about buying a first fiddle is that the cheap ones are not just worse — a lot of them are close to unplayable, and the beginner blames themselves for the noise. So two things decide this: how much you spend, and whether the instrument gets set up properly before you try to learn on it. Get those right and the fiddle stops fighting you. Our pick for most beginners### Eastar EVA-3 4/4 Violin Outfit The best of the affordable outfits: solid spruce top, a case, bow and rosin in the box, and enough consistency across thousands of buyers that you are unlikely to get a dud. Budget another $60 to have a shop set it up and you have a genuinely good first fiddle for well under $250. Around $140 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DuT4ok) **Buy once, arrives ready to play:** Bunnel Pupil by Kennedy Violins — around $410 **Cheapest still worth owning:** Mendini MV300 — around $100 **For silent practice:** Cecilio electric violin — around $150 ## The four at a glance FiddleTypePrice bandSet up before shipping?Best for[Eastar EVA-3](https://amzn.to/3DuT4ok)Acoustic outfit~$140NoMost first-time buyers[Bunnel Pupil](https://amzn.to/45SE8Op)Acoustic outfit~$410YesBuying once and skipping the workshop trip[Mendini MV300](https://amzn.to/4ximekc)Acoustic outfit~$100NoThe smallest sensible spend[Cecilio Electric](https://amzn.to/4zcAXi1)Silent electric~$150NoPracticing without annoying anyone ## Before you pick: three things that decide it ### A fiddle is a violin Same instrument, same four strings, same tuning. Nobody manufactures a separate thing called a fiddle — search for one and you are shopping for violins, which is why every product below says “violin” on the box. The word describes the music you play on it, not the object you buy. What does differ is the setup. Fiddlers often have the bridge filed a little flatter, which brings the strings closer to a level plane and makes it easier to bow two at once — the double stops and droning open strings that give old-time and Irish playing its drive. Classical players want the opposite: a higher arch, so each string sounds cleanly on its own. Fiddlers also tend to prefer steel strings for their bright, immediate attack. None of that changes which instrument you buy. It is a small job at a violin shop once you know you want it, and no beginner should pay extra for it up front. If you are still deciding between instruments entirely, we compare the [banjo and the fiddle](/banjo-vs-fiddle/) and the [mandolin and the violin](/mandolin-vs-violin/) elsewhere. ### Get the size right — this one is not optional Violins come in fractional sizes, and 4/4 — “full size” — is not the default for everyone the way it is with a guitar. Most adults and teenagers take 4/4. Children do not, and putting a child on an instrument too big for them builds bad technique and can genuinely hurt their neck and shoulder. The measurement that matters is the arm. Hold the left arm straight out to the side and measure from the base of the neck to the middle of the palm. Roughly 23 inches and up is 4/4, around 22 inches is 3/4, around 20 inches is 1/2, and shorter than that runs down through 1/4 and 1/8. Buy the size that fits now, not the size to grow into — an instrument a child cannot reach the end of is worse than no instrument. This narrows the choice if you are buying for a child. The Eastar and the Mendini below both come in 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 as well as full size, so use the size selector rather than accepting the default — which is always 4/4. The Bunnel is sold as a full-size instrument only, so for a smaller player the answer is one of the budget outfits in the right size, or a rental from a violin shop that will swap it as the child grows. ### How much to spend, honestly This is where the fiddle differs from most beginner instruments, and it is worth being blunt. A cheap guitar is a compromised version of a good guitar. A cheap violin can be unplayable: the bridge arrives unfitted or lying loose in the case, the pegs slip so it will not hold a tune for ten minutes, the strings are dead, and the bow is a stick that will not grip. Beginners conclude they have no talent and stop. Violin teachers will generally tell you not to spend under about $200, and to buy from a string shop rather than online. They are right, and if there is a violin shop within reach of you, that is the better path — you get an instrument someone has actually adjusted, and a person to take it back to. Renting is better still for a child who will change size within the year. Everything below is for people without that option, which is most people. The single most valuable thing you can do with any of these is spend $50 to $80 having a shop set it up when it arrives: fit the bridge, dress the pegs, fit decent strings. On a $140 violin that is the difference between an instrument and an ornament, and it does far more good than spending the same money moving up a model. ## The four picks № 1 · Best for most beginners ### Eastar EVA-3 4/4 Violin Outfit - Solid spruce top - Maple back and sides - Case, bow and rosin included - ~$140 Of the affordable outfits this is the one that turns up right most often, which at this price is the whole game. The top is solid spruce rather than laminate, the fittings are wood rather than plastic, and the four fine tuners on the tailpiece mean you can tune it accurately without wrestling the pegs — the single friendliest feature a beginner violin can have. It is still a factory instrument shipped in a box, so the bridge will need setting properly and the strings are the first thing to replace. Do that and it punches well above $140. Skip it and you will wonder why it sounds thin. **Pros**- Solid spruce top at a laminate price - Fine tuners on all four strings - Consistent across thousands of buyers **Cons**- Needs a setup to sound like itself - Factory strings and bow are the weak links Around $140[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DuT4ok) № 2 · Buy once, properly ### Bunnel Pupil Violin Outfit, by Kennedy Violins - Solid spruce and maple - Assembled and set up in the USA - Full outfit with case and bow - 4/4 only - ~$410 Kennedy Violins is an actual violin shop that happens to sell through Amazon, and the Bunnel Pupil is their student outfit. That matters more than any specification on this page, because it is the one instrument here that arrives already adjusted — bridge fitted, pegs working, strings that were chosen rather than whatever came off the roll. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It is roughly three times the price of the Eastar. What you are buying is the setup and the consistency, which is precisely what teachers mean when they tell you to avoid cheap online violins. If you already know you are going to stick with this, or you are buying for someone who will be discouraged by a bad instrument, it is the honest recommendation. One limitation worth knowing before you fall for it: it is sold in full size only. For a child who needs a 3/4 or smaller, look at the Eastar or the Mendini instead. **Pros**- Arrives playable — no workshop trip needed - Sold and backed by a real string shop - The best-reviewed instrument on this page **Cons**- Three to four times the price of the budget outfits - Full size only — no fractional sizes for children Around $410[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45SE8Op) № 3 · The smallest sensible spend ### Mendini by Cecilio MV300 - Solid spruce top, maple back - Hard case, bow, rosin and shoulder rest - Spare set of strings and a bridge - ~$100 One of the most-bought beginner violins there is, and the right choice when the budget is genuinely fixed or the player is a child who may not stay interested. Cecilio has been making these for years, so the quality is at least predictable, and the outfit includes a spare bow and strings — both things beginners break. Be clear-eyed about what it is. At this price the setup is nominal and the bow is poor, so treat the $50-to-$80 shop visit as part of the purchase rather than an upgrade. A Mendini that has been set up beats an unadjusted violin costing twice as much. **Pros**- Lowest risk way to find out if you enjoy it - Spare strings and a spare bridge in the box - Predictable — a known quantity **Cons**- Bow is the first thing you will want to replace - Effectively requires a setup to be worth playing Around $100[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ximekc) № 4 · For practicing quietly ### Cecilio Silent Electric Violin - Solid wood body - Headphone output - Outfit with case and bow - ~$150 An electric violin makes almost no sound of its own, which is the entire point: you can practice at midnight in a flat through headphones, and a beginner fiddler makes exactly the sort of noise that tests a household. It also plugs straight into an amp if you end up playing with a band. It is a second instrument rather than a first one. Because the pickup does the work, you learn less about drawing tone out of a violin, and tone is most of what separates a fiddler who sounds good from one who merely plays the right notes. Buy it alongside an acoustic, not instead of one. **Pros**- Practice silently through headphones - Amp-ready if you play with others - Cheap for what it does **Cons**- Teaches you less about tone than an acoustic - Not a sensible only instrument for a beginner Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zcAXi1) ## What to buy alongside it All four outfits above arrive with a case, a bow and a cake of rosin, so nothing here is strictly required on day one. These are the four things that make the first months easier, and they come to well under $60 together. WhatWhy it matters[Adjustable shoulder rest](https://amzn.to/4cs9hMb)The one that comes in the box rarely fits. A rest set to your neck is what lets you hold the violin without clamping it, and bad posture in month one is hard to unlearn.[D’Addario rosin](https://amzn.to/4wS1Gie)Included rosin is usually hard and dusty. Rosin is what makes the bow grip the string at all — with none on it you get almost no sound, which convinces plenty of beginners the instrument is broken.[Snark SN5X clip-on tuner](https://amzn.to/4bHnt3K)No frets means nothing is in tune unless you put it there. Tuning by ear on day one is how people give up.[Essential Elements for Strings, Violin Book 1](https://amzn.to/4bGmFfs)The standard first method book, used in school string programs, and cheaper than a single lesson. The thing that is not a purchase, again, is the setup. If you buy one accessory and one service, make them a tuner and an hour of a violin technician’s time. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a fiddle the same as a violin? Yes — identical instrument, tuned G–D–A–E. The difference is the music, and sometimes the setup: a flatter bridge and steel strings suit fiddle playing, a higher arched bridge suits classical. You buy the same thing either way. ### Can I teach myself the fiddle? Partly, and less easily than most instruments. There are no frets, so every note depends on exactly where your finger lands and nothing tells you when you are slightly flat except your own ear. Bow control is a separate physical skill that takes months to stop sounding scratchy. Plenty of traditional fiddlers learned by ear from other players, but a handful of early lessons to fix your bow hold and posture will save you a year of undoing habits. ### How long before I sound good? Simple tunes come within a few months. Sounding pleasant rather than merely correct takes a year or two, because tone depends on bow speed, weight and contact point all at once. The fiddle is one of those instruments where progress feels slowest at the very start and then accelerates, which is the opposite of what most people expect. ### Do I need an electric fiddle? Only to be heard over a band, or to practice silently. Learn on an acoustic if you can, and add an electric when there is a reason. Playing an instrument quietly is a genuine advantage in a shared house, and it is the main thing an electric buys a beginner. ### Why does my new fiddle sound so scratchy? Usually one of three things, and none of them is you. The bow has no rosin on it, in which case it will barely make a sound at all until you apply some. The bridge is in the wrong place or leaning. Or you are bowing too close to the fingerboard, too fast, with too little weight. The first two are fixed in minutes; the third is what the first month of practice is for. ## So which one? Buy the [Eastar EVA-3](https://amzn.to/3DuT4ok), have it set up, and start playing — that combination beats anything else you can do with $200. If you would rather it simply arrived working, and you know you are serious, the [Bunnel Pupil](https://amzn.to/45SE8Op) is worth its premium precisely because someone has already done that work. And if money is the binding constraint, the [Mendini](https://amzn.to/4ximekc) plus a setup will get you further than a nicer violin left as it came. **Categories:** Fiddle Reviews --- ### [The 12 Best Clawhammer Banjo Players, and What to Hear First](https://promusicvault.com/best-clawhammer-banjo-players/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› The 12 Best Clawhammer Banjo Players, and What to Hear First If you have half an hour and want to understand what clawhammer banjo actually is, spend it on Tommy Jarrell. The Round Peak sound most modern players are chasing is his and Fred Cockerham’s, and almost everyone else worth hearing either fed into it or came out of it. ## Table of Contents - [The twelve at a glance](#the-twelve-at-a-glance) - [What counts as clawhammer](#what-counts-as-clawhammer) - [The source players](#the-source-players) - [1. Tommy Jarrell (1901–1985)](#1-tommy-jarrell-19011985) - [2. Fred Cockerham (1905–1980)](#2-fred-cockerham-19051980) - [3. Wade Ward (1892–1971)](#3-wade-ward-18921971) - [4. Kyle Creed (1912–1982)](#4-kyle-creed-19121982) - [5. Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952)](#5-uncle-dave-macon-18701952) - [The players who carried it forward](#the-players-who-carried-it-forward) - [6. Ralph Stanley (1927–2016)](#6-ralph-stanley-19272016) - [7. Pete Seeger (1919–2014)](#7-pete-seeger-19192014) - [8. Mike Seeger (1933–2009)](#8-mike-seeger-19332009) - [Living players](#living-players) - [9. Dan Gellert](#9-dan-gellert) - [10. Adam Hurt](#10-adam-hurt) - [11. Rhiannon Giddens](#11-rhiannon-giddens) - [12. Abigail Washburn](#12-abigail-washburn) - [Also worth your time](#also-worth-your-time) - [If you want to play like this](#if-you-want-to-play-like-this) - [Questions that come up](#questions-that-come-up) - [Who is the most influential clawhammer banjo player?](#who-is-the-most-influential-clawhammer-banjo-player) - [Did Dock Boggs play clawhammer?](#did-dock-boggs-play-clawhammer) - [What is the difference between clawhammer and Scruggs style?](#what-is-the-difference-between-clawhammer-and-scruggs-style) - [What banjo do clawhammer players use?](#what-banjo-do-clawhammer-players-use) - [Is clawhammer easier than bluegrass banjo?](#is-clawhammer-easier-than-bluegrass-banjo) - [Are there fretless clawhammer players today?](#are-there-fretless-clawhammer-players-today) ## The twelve at a glance PlayerYearsWhere they sitStart withTommy Jarrell1901–1985Round Peak, NCThe County sessions with Fred CockerhamFred Cockerham1905–1980Round Peak, fretless“Roustabout”Wade Ward1892–1971Grayson County, VA“Chilly Winds”Kyle Creed1912–1982Round Peak, luthierThe Camp Creek BoysUncle Dave Macon1870–1952Vaudeville and the early Opry“Way Down the Old Plank Road”Ralph Stanley1927–2016Bluegrass, old-time roots*Old-Time Pickin’* (2008)Pete Seeger1919–2014The folk revival*How to Play the 5-String Banjo*Mike Seeger1933–2009Collector and player*Southern Banjo Sounds*Dan GellertLivingOld-time, unaccompanied*Waiting on the Break of Day*Adam HurtLivingMelodic clawhammer*Earth Tones* (2010)Rhiannon GiddensLivingPiedmont string bandCarolina Chocolate DropsAbigail WashburnLivingClawhammer and song*City of Refuge* ## What counts as clawhammer Clawhammer is a downstroke. The back of the nail on the index or middle finger strikes down through a string, the hand keeps falling, and the thumb catches the fifth string on the way back up. Nothing plucks upward. That single motion is the whole definition, and it rules out several famous banjo players who never used it. Dock Boggs is the one people put on clawhammer lists most often. He played up-picking, two and three fingers, and he arrived at it deliberately — his older siblings frailed, and he went looking for something else after hearing Black musicians in the Virginia coalfields. Charlie Poole and Earl Scruggs are three-finger too. Their music is worth your time; it is a different technique with a different history, and mixing the two is how you end up buying the wrong instructional book. Frailing and clawhammer are the same thing to most players. Some reserve “frailing” for the version where the nail brushes several strings at once instead of striking one, but nobody will correct you. ## The source players ### 1. Tommy Jarrell (1901–1985) Jarrell lived his whole life in Surry County, North Carolina, worked for the highway department, and did not record commercially until he was nearly seventy. Then a stream of young musicians found their way to his house in Toast and he taught anyone who turned up. What they took away became the Round Peak style: economical, hard on the downbeat, the fifth string used as rhythm rather than decoration. He was better known as a fiddler and is worth hearing on both — the [banjo and the fiddle](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-fiddle/) are one instrument in this music, and the banjo playing is where its rhythm is most exposed. In 1982 he was one of the first fifteen artists awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. His fiddle is in the Smithsonian. The Les Blank film *Sprout Wings and Fly* (1983) runs thirty minutes and is the best introduction to him as a person. ### 2. Fred Cockerham (1905–1980) Cockerham played fretless, which is the thing to listen for. With no frets he could slide into the notes that sit between them, so his banjo tracks a fiddle instead of arguing with it — and Round Peak fiddling is full of pitches no fretted instrument can reach. It gives his playing a vocal, sliding quality that a fretted banjo simply cannot produce. He learned from Charlie Lowe and spent decades as Jarrell’s banjo player. His “Roustabout” is the piece people send each other; the B part alone has kept clawhammer players busy for fifty years. County Records issued *Clawhammer Banjo* (County 701) in 1965 and it is still the anthology the tradition is measured against. ### 3. Wade Ward (1892–1971) Ward is the other pole of the tradition — Independence, Virginia, an hour north of Round Peak and a noticeably smoother style. His first band, the Buck Mountain Band, recorded for Okeh in Richmond in 1929. Then the Lomaxes found him at the Galax fiddlers’ convention and kept coming back between 1937 and 1959, which is why roughly two hundred recordings of him sit in the Library of Congress American Folklife Center today. His “Chilly Winds” is the one that traveled. What players take from Ward is restraint: he leaves notes out, and the tune is stronger for it. If Jarrell’s playing sounds relentless to you, Ward is the same tradition with the pressure released. ### 4. Kyle Creed (1912–1982) Creed is on this list twice over — as a player with the Camp Creek Boys, and as the man who built the banjos. His instruments, with their low action and short scale, are what a lot of people mean when they say they want a Round Peak sound, and originals change hands for serious money. His own playing is the cleanest on this list: even, unhurried, every note the same weight as the one before it. Where Cockerham slides and Jarrell drives, Creed is metronomic, and it is a much harder thing to do than it sounds. ### 5. Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952) “The Dixie Dewdrop” was the first star of the Grand Ole Opry and recorded over 180 songs between 1924 and 1938, which for most listeners of the twenties and thirties made him the first frailing banjo they ever heard on a record. He was not a clawhammer specialist and it would be dishonest to file him as one — researchers have counted nineteen distinct right-hand techniques across his recordings, and he moved between them freely, often mid-song. He earns his place because he is the bridge between nineteenth-century stroke style and everything after, and because he was a showman first: the playing is loud, funny and meant to carry a room. ## The players who carried it forward ### 6. Ralph Stanley (1927–2016) Stanley is on this list for the playing he did before and after the bluegrass. His mother bought him his first banjo and taught him clawhammer; “Shout Little Lulie” was the first tune she showed him, and he was still playing it seventy years later. He returned to the style properly on *Old-Time Pickin’: A Clawhammer Banjo Collection* in 2008. It is a useful record for a learner because you can hear a three-finger master deliberately not using three fingers. The touch is heavier than a Round Peak player’s and the timing is squarer, and comparing it against Jarrell teaches you more about clawhammer rhythm than most lessons will. ### 7. Pete Seeger (1919–2014) Seeger was not the best clawhammer player of his generation and would have said so himself. He is on this list because of a book. He self-published *How to Play the 5-String Banjo* in 1948 — a hundred mimeographed copies run off in a Manhattan print shop — and the commercial edition that followed in 1962 sold a hundred thousand. The basic strum he taught in it is the first thing an enormous number of players ever learned. His own playing is worth hearing for the long neck and the singing rather than for right-hand technique. The influence is real and it is almost entirely one of transmission: without that book the revival that reached Jarrell’s front porch in the sixties probably does not happen. ### 8. Mike Seeger (1933–2009) Pete’s younger half-brother did the opposite job: he went and found the players. As a member of the New Lost City Ramblers and as a collector, Mike Seeger recorded and championed most of the musicians in the first half of this list, and much of what survives of them survives because he showed up with a tape machine. *Southern Banjo Sounds*, his Smithsonian Folkways record, is twenty-six tunes in twenty-six distinct banjo styles, played on twenty-three banjos in fifteen tunings. As a listening exercise it is unmatched — you can hear exactly where clawhammer sits among the up-picking and two-finger traditions it is usually confused with. ## Living players ### 9. Dan Gellert Ask a room of old-time musicians who the best living clawhammer player is and Gellert’s name comes up before anyone else’s. He has been the answer to that question for about thirty years, largely without a career built on it. What people mean when they say his playing is unusual is that it is essentially chordless — he works single lines rather than shapes, which leaves the music stark and gives him room to push phrases around rhythmically without the tune coming apart. *Waiting on the Break of Day* is the place to start. If you have been playing a year and want to hear what the ceiling looks like, this is it. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### 10. Adam Hurt Hurt has placed in or won most of the major old-time banjo competitions — Clifftop, Mount Airy, Galax — and plays a melodic style that puts far more of the tune under the fingers than a Round Peak player would. It is the most technically dense clawhammer on this list and it is still recognisably the same downstroke. *Earth Tones* (2010) is a full record played entirely on gourd banjo, the instrument’s fretless ancestor. Gut strings, skin head, no metal anywhere: it sounds nothing like the banjo you think you know, and it is the clearest demonstration available that the style predates the instrument most people play it on. ### 11. Rhiannon Giddens Giddens came to clawhammer through contra and square dancing, then learned Piedmont string-band repertoire directly from the fiddler Joe Thompson, one of the last Black musicians playing in that tradition. The Carolina Chocolate Drops, the band she co-founded, put that music in front of an audience that had never been told the banjo came from Africa. She was the first woman and the first African-American to win the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. She is also a trained opera singer, which is audible, and the banjo is one of several things she does at a very high level rather than her only instrument. ### 12. Abigail Washburn Washburn picked up a banjo shortly before moving to China and ended up doing more than anyone alive to introduce clawhammer to people who had never heard of it. She sings in Mandarin over frailing, which sounds like a novelty until you hear it work. Her right hand is straightforward by the standards of this list — she is a songwriter who plays clawhammer rather than a technician — and that is exactly why she is useful to a beginner. Nothing she does is out of reach in a year, and the duo records with Béla Fleck are the clearest demonstration of what the style is for: it is a rhythm instrument that happens to carry a melody. ## Also worth your time - **Walt Koken and Brad Leftwich** — both learned directly from the Round Peak players and both teach; Leftwich’s transcriptions are how a lot of people access Jarrell. - **Ken Perlman** — the melodic clawhammer school, and the author of the standard method book. - **Cathy Fink and Bob Carlin** — the pair most responsible for clawhammer being teachable at all in the eighties and nineties. - **Riley Baugus and Kirk Sutphin** — the closest thing to hearing Round Peak in the present tense. - **Allison de Groot** — precise, modern, best heard in the duo records with the fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves. - **Chris Coole** — Canadian, unhurried, and one of the best accompanists on the instrument. - **Nora Brown and Victor Furtado** — the generation under thirty. Brown learned from Kentucky players including Lee Sexton; Furtado writes new tunes that sound a hundred years old. - **Steve Martin** — plays both clawhammer and three-finger and switches between them inside a song. He also funds the prize that Rhiannon Giddens won. - **Doc Watson** — a guitarist first, but his clawhammer was real and learned at home. ## If you want to play like this Clawhammer is unusually kind at the start and unusually deep afterward. The bum-ditty is one motion and most people have it inside a fortnight — [the banjo is not a hard instrument to begin](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). The difference between that and Tommy Jarrell is thirty years of right-hand timing, and no purchase shortens it. Start here### Ken Perlman — *Clawhammer Style Banjo* Two hundred pages and forty-odd tunes, all of it about the downstroke and nothing about anything else. It opens at the bum-ditty and ends up in the melodic territory Adam Hurt works in, which means it does not run out from under you after a month. It has been the standard method since 1989 and nothing has replaced it. Around $30 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bNgyWU) **The cheap way in:** Pete Seeger’s manual — around $15 **The instrument:** Gold Tone CC-OT — around $700, scooped The historical one, and it still works ### Pete Seeger — *How to Play the 5-String Banjo* - Third edition, still in print - Covers the basic strum, frailing, and some up-picking - Tablature and lyrics throughout - Around $15 The book that taught the folk revival, mimeographed in 1948 and never out of print since. It is not a clawhammer specialist’s book — Seeger covers several right hands and the basic strum is only the start of it — but the frailing chapter is clear, the price is trivial, and there is a particular pleasure in learning the motion from the manual that put it in front of everybody in the first place. **Pros**- Costs less than a set of strings and a coffee - Teaches the motion in plain language - Covers enough of the other styles to tell them apart **Cons**- Not a dedicated clawhammer method - Thin on repertoire compared with Perlman - Written for 1948 ears, and reads like it Around $15[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gyPGwh) If you need the banjo too ### Gold Tone CC-OT Cripple Creek Old-Time - Open back, 11″ maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - 11″ Remo LC Fiberskyn head - Maple neck, rosewood board, 18 frets with a scoop - 26-3/16″ scale, 5.5 lb - ~$700 The scoop is the reason this is the clawhammer banjo rather than just an open back. The last frets are carved away so the striking finger can work out over the end of the fingerboard, where the string is slackest and the tone is softest — the place most Round Peak players hit. You cannot add a scoop later without cutting up a neck, so it is worth deciding about before you buy rather than after. The Fiberskyn head is the other reason. It is a synthetic imitation of the calfskin the players in the first half of this page were using, and it takes a good deal of the glare off a modern banjo. Gold Tone builds the CC-OT in one size only, full scale — there is no fractional version of it. **Pros**- Scooped fingerboard, which almost nothing else at the price has - Fiberskyn head is much closer to an old-time voice - Set up by hand before it ships - Transferable warranty **Cons**- 5.5 lb, a pound heavier than a plain Goodtime - The tone ring makes it brighter and louder than some old-time players want - The scoop closes the door on ever playing up the neck Around $700[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Tone-CC-OT-Cripple-Openback/dp/B002RARBHG?crid=37LUI8CRMTRPI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.i57eCYVUF3oo7DSOPU231oX5oaHfA-hRHnX8oQMyFcHGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.oR931IZCV6nVWb5T2uuG2ifmqtcCddalx1gbyyWzO58&dib_tag=se&keywords=gold+tone+cc+ot&qid=1745539180&sprefix=gold+tone+cc+ot%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=b8c27175c0e07d238b56a0ca4cd42d65&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) The CC-OT is the specialist answer, not the only one. If you have not settled on old-time yet, an unscooped open back keeps every door open and costs less — the alternatives are laid out in our guide to the [best open back banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/), and there is a clawhammer-specific shortlist in [best banjo for clawhammer](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). If you are not yet sure an open back is what you want at all, start with [open back versus resonator](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). ## Questions that come up ### Who is the most influential clawhammer banjo player? Tommy Jarrell, by a distance. He taught the young musicians who arrived at his house in the sixties and seventies, and the Round Peak style they carried away is the reference point almost every modern clawhammer player is working from, whether or not they know it. ### Did Dock Boggs play clawhammer? No. Boggs played an up-picking style with two and three fingers, and he chose it deliberately — his siblings frailed and he went after a different sound, drawing on the Black musicians he heard in the Virginia coalfields. His records are extraordinary and they are not clawhammer. ### What is the difference between clawhammer and Scruggs style? Direction. Clawhammer strikes down with the back of a fingernail and lets the thumb catch the fifth string on the way back; Scruggs style picks upward with thumb, index and middle in rolling patterns, usually with fingerpicks. Clawhammer is a rhythm that carries a tune, Scruggs is a stream of notes. ### What banjo do clawhammer players use? An [open back](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/) — no resonator, so it is lighter and quieter and the sound goes into the room rather than at the audience. Many old-time players also want a scoop, meaning the last few frets are carved away so the fingernail can strike over the end of the fingerboard where the tone is softest. ### Is clawhammer easier than bluegrass banjo? Easier to start, not easier to master. There are no picks to get used to and no rolls to memorize, so a first tune comes quickly. The hard part arrives later and it is entirely rhythmic — the reason two players can play identical notes and only one of them sounds like the music. ### Are there fretless clawhammer players today? Yes, though it is a minority taste. Fretless lets you slide into the pitches between the frets, which is what makes Fred Cockerham sound the way he does and what makes a banjo sit properly under old-time fiddling. It is much harder to play in tune, so almost nobody starts there — see [the types of banjo](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-banjos/) for where it sits among the rest, and [the best banjo for old-time music](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-old-time-music/) if that is the direction you are heading. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [Best Clarinet Reeds for Beginners: Start on a 2, Not a 3](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Clarinet Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/clarinet-reviews/ "Clarinet Reviews")› Best Clarinet Reeds for Beginners: Start on a 2, Not a 3 A beginner’s reed problem is almost never the brand. It is the number on the box. A reed one step too hard turns the clarinet into hard work — thin tone, no low register, a squeak on every crossing — and a student who is fighting a stiff reed will conclude the instrument is beyond them when the fix costs about twenty-five dollars. Almost every beginner should be on a 2 or a 2½. Get that right and the difference between the good student reeds is small, honest and worth about three dollars a box. Best beginner clarinet reed### Vandoren JUNO, strength 2½ Vandoren built the JUNO for people who have just picked the clarinet up, and they cut it in the same factory, from the same cane, by the same methods as the reeds professionals play. It is sold from 1½ up to 3½, so there is somewhere to go in either direction, and it costs slightly less than the orange box most students are handed. About $24 for ten [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wNyLv3) **If your teacher said Rico:** Rico Organic 2½, the most forgiving reed here, about $25 **Once your tone arrives:** D’Addario Royal 2½, filed for a quicker start to the note, about $28 **If cane keeps dying on you:** a Légère Classic, one synthetic reed that lasts months, about $19 ## Pick the strength first The number is a measure of how stiff the cane is, and it decides how much air and lip pressure the reed demands before it will vibrate. A beginner has neither the embouchure nor the breath support to drive a hard reed, so a hard reed simply does not speak. Start at 2 if you are eleven, small, or have never played a wind instrument. Start at 2½ if you are an adult, or a school student a term or two in. Move up when the reed starts to feel loose and buzzy and your tone goes thin and bright at the top — not on a schedule, and not because a stronger reed sounds more advanced. It does not. It sounds worse until you can drive it. StrengthWho it is forWhat it feels like**1½**Small children, or a student who cannot get a note out at allVery easy to sound, but wild — squeaks unpredictably and the tone has no core**2**Most first-year studentsSpeaks with modest air, tolerant of a wandering embouchure**2½**Adult beginners, and students after a term or soEnough resistance to build tone on, still comfortable**3**Players a year or more in, with a settled embouchureFirm. Rewards good air, punishes bad air**3½ and up**Advanced and professional playersNothing a beginner should be buying Two things complicate the number. It does not travel between brands — a Vandoren 2½ asks noticeably more of you than a D’Addario 2½, so a student moving up to Vandoren at the same figure often finds the instrument has suddenly got harder. And the right number depends on the mouthpiece it is blown against. Vandoren states the relationship plainly in their own technical notes: with the same tip opening, a longer facing wants a stronger reed and a shorter facing a softer one; with the same facing, an open mouthpiece wants a softer reed and a closed one a stronger reed. Beginners are usually on the closed stock mouthpiece their clarinet came with, which is part of why 2 and 2½ work. If a 2½ feels like blowing through a wall, the same Rico one step softer is the cheapest possible experiment. Rico Organic 2.0, about $25 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xjlKuk) ## The reeds worth a beginner’s money № 1 · The best first box ### Vandoren JUNO Bb Clarinet Reeds, Strength 2½ - Strengths 1½, 2, 2½, 3, 3½ - Box of 10, each reed in its own sealed flow-pack - Made in Vandoren’s own factory in France - Model code JCR0125 for the 2½ box of ten - About $24 Vandoren says they created the JUNO “specially designed to give those musicians starting to play the clarinet or saxophone the opportunity to have a beautiful sound from the moment they make their first sounds”, and that it is made from the same cane, using the same techniques, as every other reed they sell. That is an unusually specific claim for a budget line, and it is the reason to start here rather than on a reed designed to be cheap. In practice it starts the note easily and has more center to the sound than the other student reeds at the same strength. The 1½ is genuinely useful for a small child; most people want the 2 or the 2½. **Pros**- Designed for beginners by the maker whose professional reeds are the standard - Same cane and process as Vandoren’s top line - Slightly cheaper than the reed most students are given - Goes down to 1½ for young players **Cons**- Less common in school programs, so a director may not know it - Stops at 3½ — you will change reed model eventually About $24 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wNyLv3) № 2 · The one every band program uses ### Rico Organic Bb Clarinet Reeds, Strength 2½ - Unfiled cut, traditional blank and profile - Strengths 1½ to 4 - Boxes of 3, 10 and 25 - Cane grown, designed and cut in the USA - About $25 for ten The orange box. D’Addario is direct about who it is for: Rico is “built to make those first notes feel easy and rewarding” and helps a beginner sound clear “even if they’re still developing proper embouchure and breath support”. That forgiveness is the whole design, and it is why an unfiled cut is used — leaving the bark intact behind the vamp makes the reed feel firmer under the lip and more tolerant of biting. The trade is consistency. A box of ten will contain two or three that play noticeably better than the rest and usually one that never comes right. At this price that is the deal, and it is the same deal every budget cane reed offers. If your teacher or band director specified Rico, buy Rico — being on the same reed as the rest of the section is worth more to a student than any tonal argument. **Pros**- The most forgiving reed here of an unformed embouchure - The reed school programs actually specify - Sold in threes as well as tens, so a strength is cheap to test - Strengths from 1½ upward **Cons**- Box-to-box and reed-to-reed variation is real - Plain in tone next to the JUNO at the same strength About $25 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HctVQf) № 3 · The step up, once tone has arrived ### D’Addario Royal Organic Bb Clarinet Reeds, Strength 2½ - Filed cut, same blank and profile as the Rico - Strengths 1 to 4 - Boxes of 3, 10 and 25 - Each reed individually sealed - About $28 for ten Royal is the filed member of the Rico family: same cane, same profile, with a narrow strip of bark taken off behind the vamp. D’Addario puts that down to “additional tonal clarity” and an easier response, and they are candid that it is aimed at beginning *and* advancing players rather than absolute first-timers. The moment it earns the extra three dollars is when a student’s sound has settled but their articulation is still late — the note starts sooner and the top of the register stops feeling like a fight. The numbering matches the Rico, so a 2½ stays a 2½ when you switch. Strength 1 exists here, which almost nothing else offers. **Pros**- Quicker response than the Rico at the same number - Same strength scale, so switching changes one thing only - Widest strength ladder of any reed here, from 1 to 4 **Cons**- Less forgiving of biting than the unfiled Rico - Still a student reed — it will not carry an advanced player About $28 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45OPmUb) № 4 · One reed instead of ten ### Légère Classic Bb Clarinet Reed, Strength 2.50 - Molded synthetic — no cane, no soaking, no warping - Strengths 2, 2½, 3, 3½ - One reed, playable straight out of the case - Légère’s entry-level cut, below their Signature and European lines - About $19 A synthetic reed is a single molded blade that plays the same on the first day and the hundredth. It does not need wetting, it does not warp overnight, and it does not care whether the room is dry or humid — which is the argument for one if a beginner is playing outdoors, switching between instruments, or simply keeps killing cane reeds by leaving them on the mouthpiece. It costs about what a box of ten costs, and it is one reed, so the math only works if it survives a few months — which it generally does. The honest caveat is that strength numbers do not carry over from cane: expect to try one either side of your usual, and that is an expensive way to find out. If you are settled on a 2½ in cane, start there. **Pros**- Consistent from day one — no duds in the box, because there is no box - Unaffected by humidity, heat and cold - Lasts months rather than weeks - Nothing to soak, so a distracted eleven-year-old cannot ruin it [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Cons**- The price of ten cane reeds for one reed - Strength numbers do not transfer from cane, so the first one may be wrong - Some teachers will want a student on cane while the embouchure forms About $19[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UdBe4s) ## Side by side ReedCutStrengthsPer boxBest for**Vandoren JUNO**Student cut1½ – 3½About $24 / 10The first box, if nobody has told you what to buy**Rico Organic**Unfiled1½ – 4About $25 / 10School programs, and the least formed embouchures**D’Addario Royal**Filed1 – 4About $28 / 10Tone has arrived, articulation is still late**Légère Classic**Synthetic2 – 3½About $19 / 1Outdoors, humid rooms, or reeds that keep dying**Vandoren Traditional**Filed1 – 5About $31 / 10Year two, once a 3 is comfortable ## The reed to move to, and when Vandoren describes their Traditional as “the most widely played reeds in the professional world”, and that is the honest reason a beginner should not start on one. It is a fine reed cut for players who already have air behind them. Bought at strength 3 by someone in their first term, it is the single most common way to make the clarinet feel impossible. The point to switch is when a student reed at 2½ or 3 feels loose, the sound has gone bright and edgy at the top, and the low register has started to spread. Then a Vandoren 2½ is the sensible first step — not a 3, because the Vandoren scale runs stiffer than the D’Addario one and going up a number and up a brand at once changes two things. Year two ### Vandoren Traditional Bb Clarinet Reeds, Strength 2½ (CR1025) - Filed cut, the reed Vandoren built their name on - Strengths 1 to 5, in half steps to 3½ - Box of 10, each reed flow-packed - Known for even response across all registers - About $31 Vandoren’s own description is worth reading literally: excellent response in all registers, a pianissimo attack available even in the top notes, and enough flexibility for large intervals slurred or tongued. All of that is true, and all of it is only available to a player who can supply the air. Come to it when a student reed has stopped giving you anything, and come to it at 2½. **Pros**- A genuine step up in tone and evenness, not a marketing step - Strength ladder goes all the way to 5, so you never change model again - The reference reed for the instrument **Cons**- The dearest cane reed here, per box - Punishing under a beginner’s embouchure — genuinely the wrong first reed - Numbers run stiffer than the student brands, so the same figure is a step up on its own About $31 for ten[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gu8sUq) ## Marching season is a different problem Cane responds to weather. A reed set up indoors goes soft in a humid stadium and hard in a cold one, and a beginner on the field has neither the ear nor the spare hands to fix it. The coated reed exists for exactly this: a Plasticover is a traditional Rico blank sealed in plastic, so it barely moves with moisture or temperature, and it survives a long day outside where cane will not. D’Addario is clear about the trade — the coating gives a “brilliant, projecting” sound, which is useful on a field and wrong in a practice room. It is a reed to own alongside your normal ones rather than instead of them, and it comes in the same strength ladder, so a student on a Rico 2½ wants a Plasticover 2½. If marching is the reason you are here, our [guide to marching band clarinets](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) covers the instrument end of it. Rico Plasticover 2.5, about $24 for five[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wOfSrR) ## Making a box of ten last Most beginners get three or four weeks out of a box that should last a term, and the reason is always the same three habits. **Rotate.** Play a different reed each day, four or five in circulation. A reed played every day dies in a couple of weeks; the same reed played twice a week lasts months, because the cane gets time to dry out and recover between sessions. **Take it off the mouthpiece.** A reed left clamped under the ligature dries warped, and a warped reed will not seal against the mouthpiece table — which produces exactly the symptoms that get blamed on the reed being too hard. Wipe it, and store it flat. **Wet it properly, briefly.** Thirty seconds in the mouth, or in a little water. Not five minutes, and not a soak — waterlogged cane goes dead and stays dead. The flat-storage part is the one that needs a purchase, and it is a small one. A guard holds four reeds against a flat surface so they dry straight, and it costs less than a third of a box. Worth the nine dollars ### D’Addario Reed Guard IV - Holds four reeds flat - Sealed case, so reeds dry evenly rather than cracking - Sold in two sizes — take the Bb clarinet / alto sax one - Fits in a clarinet case - About $9 Nothing clever about it, and it is the highest-return nine dollars a beginner clarinettist can spend. Four reeds held flat and dried evenly is the difference between a box lasting a month and a box lasting a term, and it removes the commonest cause of a reed that has mysteriously stopped working. **Pros**- Stops reeds warping, which is what kills most of them - Makes rotation practical instead of theoretical - Costs a third of a box of reeds **Cons**- Four reeds only — a serious player wants more slots - Two versions, and the tenor/baritone one will not hold clarinet reeds properly About $9[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wGLob5) ## Counterfeit Vandoren reeds are a real thing Vandoren runs an authentication scheme because their reeds are faked often enough to warrant one. Every genuine reed and every genuine box carries an identification code, and either can be checked at [vandoren.fr/fightagainstfake](https://vandoren.fr/fightagainstfake). The JUNO is a particular target, presumably because it is the volume product. This matters more to a beginner than to anyone else, because a beginner playing a counterfeit reed has no way to tell whether the problem is the reed or themselves. If a box of Vandorens plays badly, check the code before you conclude you have picked the wrong strength. ## Common questions ### How long should one reed last? Two to four weeks of regular use if you rotate, considerably less if you play the same one every day. A reed is a consumable. When the response has gone soggy and the top register has turned unreliable, the reed has died — it is not a sign you need a harder one. ### Do I need to break a new reed in? It helps and it is not complicated. Play a new reed for five or ten minutes on its first few outings rather than an hour, and keep to the lower register. Cane that is worked hard while it is still saturated for the first time tends to go soft early. ### My reed squeaks. Is it too soft or too hard? Usually neither. Most beginner squeaks come from a leak — a finger not quite covering a hole, or too much mouthpiece in the mouth. If it squeaks only in the upper register and the low notes are airy, the reed is probably too hard. If it squeaks everywhere and the tone is thin and buzzy, it is probably too soft. Check the reed is sitting square with its tip level with the mouthpiece tip before changing anything. ### Is a filed reed better for a beginner? Not on day one. A filed reed has a strip of bark removed behind the vamp, which lets it speak a fraction sooner and take slightly less air — helpful once you have an embouchure, less so while you are still biting. The unfiled cut leaves more cane behind the vamp and feels firmer under the lip, which is more use early on. It is covered properly in [filed vs. unfiled reeds](https://promusicvault.com/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/). ### Are the very cheap unbranded boxes worth it? They cost about a third of a Rico box and the cane is not graded to any standard, so the proportion of unplayable reeds is much higher. For a beginner that is a bad trade, because you cannot yet tell a bad reed from a bad day. Spend the extra fifteen dollars on cane somebody has sorted. ### Should I buy a bigger box to save money? Not until you know your strength. Rico and Royal are both sold in threes as well as tens, and three reeds is the right way to test whether a 2 or a 2½ suits you. Buy the box of ten once you are sure, and the box of twenty-five once you are sure and playing daily. ### Does the reed have to match the brand of my clarinet? No. Reeds are sized to the mouthpiece, not the instrument, and any Bb clarinet reed fits any Bb clarinet mouthpiece. What does need to match is the instrument’s pitch — a Bb clarinet reed will not do for an Eb or a bass clarinet. ## Also worth reading - [Filed vs. unfiled reeds](https://promusicvault.com/filed-vs-unfiled-reeds/) - [Is the clarinet hard to play?](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) - [Best clarinet for marching band](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) - [How much do clarinets cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) - [Clarinet brands to avoid](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-brands-to-avoid/) - [Oboe vs. clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/) - [Woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) **Categories:** Clarinet Reviews --- ### [Beginner Harp Books: Six Picks, and Which Ones Your Harp Can Play](https://promusicvault.com/best-beginning-harp-music-books/) **Published:** September 9, 2019 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Beginner Harp Books: Six Picks, and Which Ones Your Harp Can Play Two questions decide which harp book to buy, and neither of them is which one has the nicest tunes. The first is whether you want a **method** — a course that teaches you to sit, place your fingers and read the staff — or a **songbook**, which is arrangements and nothing else. The second is whether your harp can actually play the book. Most first harps have no sharping levers, or levers on only some strings, and a book written in three sharps is unplayable on one. Our pick### Sylvia Woods — Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp Twelve lessons and 44 pieces, all in the key of C with no sharping levers required, so it plays on a harp that has none. Spiral-bound, so it lies flat on a stand. It has been the standard first harp book for thirty-odd years and nothing has displaced it. Around $16 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j9Lt7y) **If you cannot read music at all:** Harpsicle Harp Method Book 1 — around $18 **Cheapest real start:** First Harp Book — around $10 **Once you can play:** First 50 Songs You Should Play on Harp — around $21 **Heading for classical:** Grossi Method for Harp — around $28 ## The eight at a glance BookWhat it isBest forPagesPrice band[Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp](https://amzn.to/3j9Lt7y) Sylvia WoodsMethod: 12 lessons, 44 piecesA lever harp, whatever your music reading80~$16[Harpsicle Harp Method: Book 1](https://amzn.to/4c1spk9) Darlene WaltonMethod + online video, 18 songsA small harp, and no music reading at all28~$18[First Harp Book](https://amzn.to/3R7XXJv) Bety ParetGraded exercises and short piecesDrills to run alongside a method40~$10[Basic Harp for Beginners](https://amzn.to/3HdNJT8) Laurie RileyMethod, then Celtic solosPedal or lever harp, starting from zero80~$20[First 50 Songs You Should Play on Harp](https://amzn.to/3wBIkRc) Hal LeonardSongbook: 50 arrangementsTunes, once the technique is there184~$21[Harp Exercises for Agility and Speed](https://amzn.to/4qtN2vp) Deborah FriouTechnique exercises, no tunesMonth three onwards93~$18[Grossi — Method for Harp](https://amzn.to/4zAE2ZC) RicordiClassical method, 65 studiesPedal harp, ideally with a teacher172~$28[Suzuki Harp School, Vol. 1](https://amzn.to/4qARUPu) Alfred / SuzukiSuzuki repertoire, harp partA child already with a Suzuki teacher32~$14 ## Check the key before you check the tunes A lever harp is built in the flat keys and sharpens individual strings a semitone when you flip the lever above them. A harp with no levers plays one key and its relative minor, and nothing else. So the useful thing to know about a beginner book is not how pretty the arrangements are but what keys they sit in. Two of the books here settle that outright. The Woods book is **44 pieces all in the key of C, with no sharping levers required**, and the Harpsicle method is written entirely in **C major and A minor, so no sharping levers or pedals are needed**. Both are playable on a bare lap harp with no levers fitted at all, which is what a lot of first harps are. Riley’s book goes further and teaches you to use levers — there is a section called The Levers and a study named after them — so it wants a harp that has some. The *First 50* collection is arranged for pedal and lever harps together, which means levers throughout. If you are not sure what your harp has, or you are still choosing one, our guide to [lever harps versus pedal harps](/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) covers the difference, and [beginner harps](/best-harps-for-beginners/) covers what to buy. ## A method and a songbook are not the same purchase The commonest way to waste twenty dollars on this instrument is to buy a beautiful collection of arrangements as your first book. Harp notation is written on two staves like piano music, with fingering numbers and *placing brackets* — square brackets over groups of notes telling you to set all those fingers on the strings at once, before you play any of them. Nobody works that out from a songbook. A method teaches placing, hand position and how to sit, and then hands you tunes. The sensible shape is one method now and one songbook in three or four months. If you buy two books today, make the second one drills rather than tunes: the Paret exercises at around $10 or the Friou exercises at around $18 do more for the first year than any amount of repertoire. ## The six books worth buying № 1 · The one to buy ### Sylvia Woods — Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp - Method, 12 lessons, 44 pieces - All in the key of C — no sharping levers needed - Fingering and placing brackets marked throughout - 80 pages, spiral-bound - 30th Anniversary edition, 2008 - Companion CD and DVD sold separately - ~$16 Woods wrote the first book aimed only at the folk harp and it is still the one teachers hand new students. Each of the twelve lessons introduces a technique, drills it briefly, then gives you folk and classical pieces that use it — Greensleeves, The Ash Grove, Scarborough Fair, Southwind, Ode to Joy, Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Everything is fingered and bracketed, which is the part beginners cannot supply for themselves. Two practical things set it apart from the rest of this page. It is spiral-bound, so it stays open on a stand at arm’s length instead of folding itself shut halfway through a piece. And because all 44 pieces are in C, you can work the whole book on a harp with no levers on it and never hit a bar you cannot play. **Pros**- Playable start to finish on a harp with no levers - Spiral-bound and lies flat - Fingering and placing brackets on every piece - Real tunes from lesson one, not just exercises **Cons**- Twelve lessons over 80 pages is a brisk pace - Very little repetitive drilling — you will want a second book for that - Never asks you to use a lever, so it teaches you nothing about them - Recordings cost extra Around $16[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j9Lt7y) № 2 · If you cannot read music ### Darlene Walton — Harpsicle Harp Method: Book 1 - Method plus online video, 18 songs - C major and A minor only — no levers or pedals needed - No musical knowledge assumed - Every note labeled with its letter name - Guitar chord symbols above the staff - Covers tuning, stringing and looking after the harp - 28 pages, saddle-stitched - ~$18 Written for the Harpsicle but stated by the publisher to work on any size harp, and it is the gentlest start on this page by some distance. It assumes you know nothing: it names the parts of the harp, shows you how to tune it and change a string, then builds from two fingers to two hands over eighteen songs. Every note carries its letter name printed on the head, so you play music before you can read it and learn to read it while you play. The online video that comes with it matters more than it sounds. Hand position is the one thing a book genuinely cannot teach, and being able to watch the same lesson played is worth more to a self-teacher than another twenty pages of text. What you should know before ordering is that there are only twenty-eight of those pages, which makes this the thinnest book here for the money — buy it because you need the slow ramp, not because it is a lot of paper. **Pros**- Assumes no musical knowledge whatsoever - Online video alongside the book - Notes labeled, so you play from day one - Teaches tuning, stringing and care as well as playing - Works on a harp with no levers **Cons**- 28 pages, and you will finish it - The thinnest book on this page for the money - Saddle-stitched, so it will not lie flat - Eighteen songs, all short Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4c1spk9) № 3 · Cheapest real start ### Bety Paret — First Harp Book - Graded exercises and short pieces - One-finger exercises, two-finger patterns, intervals, three-finger chords - Folk melodies from several traditions - 40 pages - In print since 1987 and still a standard first exercise book - ~$10 Forty pages, ten dollars, and it has been on teachers’ shelves for decades. Paret’s book is a ladder rather than a course: one finger, then two, then intervals, then three-finger chords, with a well-known melody dropped in as soon as each new shape can carry one. The steps are small enough that you can feel yourself getting better inside a week, which is the thing that keeps a beginner at the instrument. It starts at the strings, though. There is nothing here on how to sit with a harp, how to hold it against your shoulder, or how to tune it, so it works best as the drilling half of a pair rather than as your only book. Bought alongside the Woods method it costs about ten dollars and fixes that book’s one real weakness. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Cheapest book on this page by a wide margin - Genuinely small steps between exercises - Real melodies rather than dry patterns - Fills the gap in every method book: repetition **Cons**- No instruction on posture, hand position or tuning - Not a course — it will not get you started on its own - Only 40 pages Around $10[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3R7XXJv) № 4 · If your harp has levers or pedals ### Laurie Riley — Basic Harp for Beginners - Method, then folk solos — nineteen tunes in all - Written to work on a harp with or without pedals - Covers sitting, tuning, hand use and reading notation - Teaches harp tablature as well as the staff - Has its own section on using the levers - 80 pages, saddle-stitched - ~$20 Riley’s book is the most complete from-nothing course here. It opens with how to sit with the harp, how to tune it, how to use your hands and a diagram showing how the staff maps onto the strings, then works through preparatory studies with a named tune after each one — The Beginner’s Waltz, The Spider’s Hornpipe, Brian Boru’s March, Nonesuch, Return From Fingall. Ten tunes are taught that way; nineteen are in the book altogether, the rest waiting at the back once you have worked through the studies. The reason it sits below Woods rather than above is the levers. Riley teaches them, which is right for a harp that has them and a dead end on one that does not — and a first harp very often does not. It is also saddle-stitched at nearly nine inches by twelve, which is the format least likely to stay open on a stand. If your harp is fully levered, or you have a pedal harp, this is the better course of the two. **Pros**- Starts further back than anything else here - Teaches lever use, which most beginner books skip - Works on pedal harps as well as lever harps - Nineteen Celtic tunes in all **Cons**- Parts of it are unusable on a harp without levers - Saddle-stitched and will not lie flat - Densely laid out compared with the Woods book - Twice the price of the Paret exercises Around $20[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HdNJT8) № 5 · The songbook to buy second ### First 50 Songs You Should Play on Harp - Songbook: 50 arrangements, no instruction - Arranged for pedal and lever harps - Classical, pop, Broadway and traditional - Canon in D, Für Elise, Greensleeves, Danny Boy, Amazing Grace, Hallelujah, Let It Go, My Heart Will Go On - 184 pages - ~$21 This is the book people mean when they say they want to play the harp: fifty pieces they already know the sound of, arranged simply enough to be reachable. It is the best value on the page measured in tunes per dollar, and the range of it is unusually wide — the same book holds Pachelbel and *Let It Go*, which matters more than it should when the point is to keep practicing. It teaches nothing. There is no technique, no hand position, no explanation of placing, and “easy” here means an easy arrangement rather than an easy first experience — you still have to read two staves. Buy it three months in, alongside a method, and it is the reward for the drills. Buy it as your first book and it will sit closed. **Pros**- Fifty pieces most people already know - Widest range of styles here - 184 pages — a year of material - Works on pedal or lever harp **Cons**- No instruction of any kind - Assumes you can already read two staves - Needs a levered harp throughout - Wrong first purchase for an absolute beginner Around $21[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wBIkRc) № 6 · When the tunes get faster than your hands ### Deborah Friou — Harp Exercises for Agility and Speed - Technique exercises only — no repertoire - Written for non-pedal and pedal harps alike - Patterns drawn from what the harp actually asks the hand to do - 93 pages - In print since 1989 - ~$18 The plateau on this instrument arrives at around month three, when you can read the notes and place the fingers but the piece falls apart as soon as it speeds up. Friou’s book is the standard answer. It is nothing but patterns — the shapes that recur constantly in harp music, drilled for finger independence, strength and evenness — and it works for lever and pedal players equally. It is not a beginner’s first book and it does not pretend to be. There are no tunes in it at all, and ninety-three pages of exercises is a bleak thing to open on day one. Its place is on the stand next to whichever method you are working through, ten minutes before you start. **Pros**- The book that gets people past the speed plateau - Works on any harp, levered or not - Highest-rated book on this page - 93 pages that stay useful for years **Cons**- No tunes whatsoever - Pointless in your first month or two - Assumes you can already read fluently Around $18[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qtN2vp) ## Two more, for two particular people If the destination is classical playing on a pedal harp, the folk-harp methods above will get you moving but they will not build the technique a teacher expects. [Grossi’s *Method for Harp*](https://amzn.to/4zAE2ZC), around $28, is the conservatory answer: 172 pages of sixty-five progressive studies published by Ricordi, working from beginner to intermediate in the classical idiom. It assumes lessons rather than self-teaching, and it is the hardest book on this page to open alone. And if a child is starting with a Suzuki teacher, the harp part they will be asked for is [Suzuki Harp School, Vol. 1](https://amzn.to/4qARUPu) at around $14. It is thirty-two pages of repertoire in a fixed order, designed around listening to the recordings and copying a teacher — genuinely useful with the teacher and close to useless without one. For children learning any other way, the Harpsicle method above is the better book, and our guide to [harps for kids](/harps-for-kids/) covers the instrument side. ## Common questions ### Do I need to read music before I start? No. The Harpsicle method assumes no musical knowledge at all and prints every note’s letter name on the staff, and Riley’s book includes a diagram showing how the staff lines map onto the strings before it asks you to read anything. Woods teaches reading as it goes. The one book here that genuinely requires it first is the *First 50* collection. ### My harp has no levers. Which book? Woods or the Harpsicle method. Woods’ 44 pieces are all in C and the Harpsicle book is written in C major and A minor, so both play start to finish with nothing to flip. Skip the *First 50* for now, and treat Riley’s lever section as reading rather than practice. ### Can I learn from a book without a teacher? Up to a point. Reading, placing, fingering and repertoire all come out of a book perfectly well. Hand position does not — it is the one thing you cannot see yourself doing wrong, and a harpist fixes it in ten minutes. If lessons are not possible, the Harpsicle method’s video is the nearest substitute, and a single lesson three months in is worth more than three lessons on day one. Our piece on [how long it takes to learn the harp](/how-long-to-learn-the-harp/) sets realistic expectations. ### Print or ebook? Print, unless you already own a large tablet. Harp music has to sit open at arm’s length while both your hands are on the strings, and you are turning pages with neither of them. A full-page tablet on a stand works; a phone does not, and a laptop puts a screen exactly where the harp needs to be. ### What else do I need on day one? A tuner, a tuning key and somewhere to sit. A harp goes out of tune faster than almost anything else with strings, and a beginner who cannot tune it will decide the instrument sounds bad. See [harp tuners](/best-harp-tuner/), [how to tune a harp](/how-to-tune-a-harp/) and [stools and benches](/harp-stool-and-bench/). ## So which one? One book, and it is **Sylvia Woods’ *Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp*** at around $16 — spiral-bound, fully fingered, and playable on any harp including one with no levers. Two books, and the second is the **Paret exercises** at around $10, which supply the drilling Woods leaves out. If you cannot read music and the idea of the staff is what has been stopping you, start with the **Harpsicle Harp Method** at around $18 instead and come back to Woods afterward. If your harp is fully levered and you would rather learn to use them from the start, take **Riley** at around $20. And whichever you pick, leave the ***First 50 Songs*** collection until spring — it is the reward, not the course. Still choosing the instrument itself? Start with [the best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/), or [lap harps](/best-lap-harps/) if space and money are tight. And [learning to play the harp](/learn-to-play-the-harp/) covers what the first few months actually look like. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo Under $200: Buy Cheap, Then Pay for the Setup](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-under-200/) **Published:** April 5, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo Under $200: Buy Cheap, Then Pay for the Setup Two hundred dollars buys a real, full-size, five-string banjo with a Remo head and a truss rod, and usually a geared fifth-string tuner as well. What it does not buy is an instrument made by anyone who makes banjos for a living, or one that has been adjusted by a human being. The first of those you cannot do anything about. The second is the whole game, and it is why the sticker price on this page is not the price. The banjo that looks cheapest is not the one that costs least by the time it plays. Best banjo under $200### Jameson 5-String Around $175, and the only banjo here that arrives with every part you would otherwise have to buy separately: a geared fifth peg, a maple and ebony bridge, an armrest, a resonator that unbolts and a padded bag. Cheaper banjos exist. None of them is still cheaper once you have brought it up to this. Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XZ7RiB) **Clawhammer and old-time:** AKLOT Open Back — around $150 **Lowest possible outlay:** Pyle PBJ60 — around $160 **Worth the stretch:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 ## At a glance BanjoBackFifth pegArmrestBagPrice bandBest for[Jameson 5-String](https://amzn.to/3XZ7RiB)Removable resonatorGearedYes15mm padded~$175The full checklist, best reviewed[AKLOT Open Back](https://amzn.to/4wupjMU)Open backGearedNoYes, plus a kit~$150Clawhammer and old-time[Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/3wz07Iw)ResonatorFrictionNoNone~$160The lowest possible outlay[Pyle PBJ140](https://amzn.to/4hUYnlQ)ResonatorGearedYes5mm, plus a kit~$200Everything in one box[Kmise 5-String](https://amzn.to/4wWOkkN)Removable resonatorNot statedNoYes, plus a kit~$145A sapele body and a full kit[Costzon 5-String](https://amzn.to/4zjvk1D)ResonatorGearedNoYes~$125The floor of the market ## What $200 actually buys ### The setup is worth more than the spec sheet A banjo has more adjustable parts than a guitar and a cheap one arrives with none of them set. Head tension wherever the factory left it, bridge sitting where it fell in the box, action too high, fifth-string nut unfinished. A shop fixes all of it for $50 to $100 — more at a specialist who only does banjos — and the change is bigger than anything another hundred dollars of instrument would have bought. Every banjo here needs that visit, so the setup is a constant and drops out of the comparison. What is left is which one arrives needing the fewest *parts* on top of it, and that is where the cheapest banjo stops being the cheapest. The Pyle at around $160 wants a geared fifth peg, which it does not have and which costs about twenty dollars, and a better bridge than the plain one it ships with, ten to thirty more. Call it $200 for a banjo with no armrest and nothing to carry it in. The Jameson is around $175 with the peg, the bridge and a padded bag already on it. Add the setup to either and the better instrument is also the cheaper one. ### Nobody who makes banjos makes one this cheap Gold Tone, Deering and Recording King all build entry-level instruments, and the cheapest of them is the Gold Tone AC-1 at $314.99 — Gold Tone’s own list price, and what Amazon charges. Below that the field belongs to import brands whose banjos are commissioned rather than designed. The spec sheets show it. Set the Jameson’s description beside the Vangoa’s and the same phrases come back in the same order: a plied maple and mahogany shell, a mahogany neck, a Remo head, 24 chrome-plated brackets, a chrome armrest, a removable mahogany resonator, an adjustable truss rod and a geared fifth tuner. These are the same banjo with different names on the headstock, which is why the tiebreak below is the length of the record rather than the specification. ### Open back or resonator, decided by the music Bluegrass and three-finger picking want a resonator, which throws the sound forward and makes the banjo loud enough for a jam. Clawhammer, old-time and playing indoors want an open back — quieter, a pound lighter, more comfortable against the body. Several banjos here have a resonator that unbolts, which covers both while you decide, but check that yours does rather than assuming. There is a fuller answer in [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/), and the styles themselves in [bluegrass banjos](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) and [clawhammer banjos](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). ## The picks № 1 · Best under $200 ### Jameson 5-String - Removable mahogany resonator - Five-ply maple and mahogany shell, mahogany neck - Remo Weatherking head, 24 brackets, chrome armrest - 5/8″ maple and ebony bridge, hinged adjustable tailpiece - Adjustable truss rod, geared fifth tuner - 15mm padded gig bag included - ~$175 Count what the others make you buy afterward and this is the cheapest banjo on the page. The geared fifth peg, the maple and ebony bridge, the armrest and the bag are all fitted, and each one is an item you would otherwise be adding to a cheaper banjo at a worse price. The resonator unbolts as well, so a change of mind about clawhammer costs nothing. It also has by far the longest record here — several times the reviews of anything else in the bracket, gathered over more than a decade of being the banjo people buy when they ask this question. On an instrument nobody inspects before it ships, a long history of ordinary outcomes is the only evidence available that the average one is fine. Two honest caveats. It arrives unadjusted like everything else here, so the setup money still has to be spent. And the maker’s own descriptions disagree about the fingerboard — one says purpleheart, another laurel — so treat the wood as unknown rather than as a selling point. **Pros**- Nothing to buy afterward except the setup - By far the longest review history in the bracket - Armrest, capped bridge and a real geared fifth peg - Resonator comes off in a few minutes **Cons**- Highest sticker price of the three picks - Still arrives unadjusted - Two can arrive playing quite differently Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3XZ7RiB) № 2 · Clawhammer and old-time ### AKLOT 5-String Open Back - Properly open backed, not a resonator conversion - Maple body and neck - Remo head - Two-way truss rod - Tuner, strap, picks, spare strings and bag included - ~$150 If clawhammer is already the plan, start here rather than buying a resonator banjo and taking the back off. An open back is lighter, sits better against the body, and has the drier, shorter voice old-time playing wants. This one is open backed by design, with a maple pot — not a resonator banjo with the resonator missing, which is what you get by unbolting one of the others. The tuners are the weak point and the first thing owners replace, and the bundled clip-on tuner is worth roughly what it costs — see [our tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/) for something better. What it gets right is the part that cannot be upgraded cheaply: the pot. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- A real open back at the smallest sensible spend - Maple pot — the part you cannot upgrade cheaply - Light and comfortable to hold **Cons**- Tuners are the first upgrade - Too quiet to hold its own in a bluegrass jam Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wupjMU) № 3 · The lowest possible outlay ### Pyle PBJ60 - Resonator, high-gloss finish - Remo head, 22 frets, rosewood fretboard - 26 1/4″ scale, plain maple bridge - Adjustable truss rod, tool included - Friction fifth peg, white jade buttons - Nothing else in the box - ~$160 Still the smallest sum that buys a full-size resonator banjo with the two parts that cannot be retrofitted cheaply: a genuine Remo head and a truss rod. If $160 is the number and it cannot move, this is the one to buy, and it will play properly once it has been set up. What has changed is the case for putting it first. Pyle’s feature list promises a geared fifth tuner and the instrument has a friction peg, so the part has to be bought; the supplied bridge is a plain one that owners replace; there is no armrest and nothing to carry it in. Every one of those is cheap on its own and together they close the gap to the Jameson and then some. Our [full Pyle review](/pyle-banjo-review/) goes through the whole instrument. **Pros**- The lowest outlay on day one - Remo head and a truss rod, the two parts worth having - Rosewood fretboard rather than engineered wood - Nothing wrong with it is built in — it is all adjustment **Cons**- Friction fifth peg, despite the feature list — budget a $20 part - Plain bridge most owners end up replacing - No armrest, no bag, and the resonator is not meant to come off - Costs more than the Jameson once it is equipped Around $160[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wz07Iw) ## Also worth a look BanjoPrice bandWhy you mightWhy you might not[Kmise 5-String Resonator](https://amzn.to/4wWOkkN)~$145Sapele back and a full accessory kit, and the back cover comes offFewer reviews than the picks, and the head is not a specified Remo[Pyle PBJ140](https://amzn.to/4hUYnlQ)~$200Pyle’s other banjo, and this one really does have the geared fifth peg: 24 brackets, an armrest, a sapele resonator and a bundle of accessoriesThe fingerboard is engineered wood rather than rosewood, the bag is a thin one, and the “tuner” in the bundle is a phone app rather than a device[Costzon 5-String](https://amzn.to/4zjvk1D)~$125The cheapest full-size banjo worth listing, geared fifth tuner includedFifty dollars under the Jameson, but no armrest and the shortest record here[Mulucky MB1101 Open Back](https://amzn.to/4zi6mQ2)~$170Maple open back with a Remo head and 24 bracketsCosts more than the AKLOT and does nothing the AKLOT does not ## When to spend more instead The [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4bNktTx) is around $315 and is a different kind of object: built by a company that draws its own banjos, set up in Titusville, Florida before it ships, 3.75 lb, with a Zero Glide nut and a gig bag. Arriving playable is the thing nothing above offers, and it is the largest single difference between a cheap banjo and a good one. Experienced players used to name it as the sub-$200 answer; it has since moved out of that bracket, which is most of why this page looks the way it does. If $315 is out of reach, buy the Jameson, spend $50 to $100 having it set up, and put the rest away. If it is not, the AC-1 is the point where money stops going on hardware and starts going on the instrument working. Our [picks under $300](/best-banjo-under-300/) and the [beginner guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) cover the ground just above this page. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a banjo under $200 good enough to learn on? Yes, once it has been set up. The instruments themselves are competent — Remo heads, truss rods and geared fifth tuners were not available at this price fifteen years ago. What defeats beginners is the action, the head tension and the bridge placement, all of which are adjustable and none of which the factory sets. Budget for the shop visit and the banjo stops being the obstacle. More in [how hard the banjo is to learn](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). ### Should I buy used at this price instead? It is the one way to get a better-built instrument for the money, and experienced players will tell you so. The catch is that you have to be able to tell a warped neck from a badly set-up one, and at $200 the used market is largely banjos somebody gave up on. If you can take a player with you, buy used. If you cannot, buy new and spend the setup money. ### How much does a banjo weigh at this price? Roughly 6 to 8 lb with the resonator on and about a pound less without it — heavier than a Gold Tone AC-1’s 3.75 lb, lighter than a full bluegrass banjo, which runs past eleven. Nothing here is uncomfortable seated, but you notice the resonator standing up. Numbers across the range are in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ### What should I replace first? The strings, then the bridge. Factory strings are the cheapest part of a budget banjo and a decent set runs about ten dollars — see [our string guide](/best-banjo-strings/). A better bridge is another twenty and changes the tone more than the strings do. Both come before a new head, and all three together cost less than the difference between the cheapest and dearest banjo here. ### Are these all the same banjo? Several are close. The Jameson and the Vangoa publish near-identical specifications, The rest are built to the same recipe with different woods and bracket counts. They are not interchangeable — an open back is a genuinely different instrument from a resonator banjo — but within each group the differences are smaller than the prices suggest. Decide on the back, then on price. [Types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) sets out what actually separates one from another. ## So which one? Buy the [Jameson](https://amzn.to/3XZ7RiB) at around $175 and spend what is left having it set up. Every banjo on this page needs that visit, and the Jameson is the one that needs nothing else afterward — which is what makes it the cheapest way to end up with a banjo that behaves like one, rather than the cheapest thing to put in a basket. If the budget genuinely will not stretch past $160, the [Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/3wz07Iw) is a real banjo and buying it is not a mistake — just add the fifth peg when you can. And if clawhammer is already settled, the [AKLOT open back](https://amzn.to/4wupjMU) is the right shape for it. Ready to spend more? [Under $300](/best-banjo-under-300/) is where the instruments start arriving playable. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo Around $1,000: Six Picks and What That Budget Really Buys](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-under-1000/) **Published:** July 31, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo Around $1,000: Six Picks and What That Budget Really Buys A thousand dollars splits the banjo market in two, and the split is not about quality. One side is Deering, building in California with an eight-year warranty and startlingly little hardware bolted to the instrument. The other is Gold Tone, importing banjos that arrive with a tone ring, a flange, planetary tuners and a bag for the same money. Both make good banjos. They are good at different things, and which one you want depends almost entirely on whether you are heading for bluegrass or old-time. Our pick at this budget### Deering Goodtime Two An American-made resonator banjo for well under the full grand, set up properly before it ships, and light enough at six pounds to play standing for an evening. It leaves you enough of the budget for a hard case and a decent set of strings, which is a better use of $150 than any upgrade you could buy inside the instrument itself. Around $850 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xdd8FD) **Best for old-time:** Deering Goodtime Americana — around $750 **Still choosing a style:** Gold Tone CC-100R+ — around $850 **Spending the whole grand:** Deering Goodtime Special — around $1,000 ## The six at a glance BanjoBackTone ringWeightPrice bandBest for[Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4xdd8FD)ResonatorNone6 lb~$850The all-rounder, American built[Deering Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/3UrppYc)Open back, 12″None4.5 lb~$750Old-time and clawhammer[Gold Tone CC-100R+](https://amzn.to/4qvorq9)Removable resonatorRolled brass6.5 lb~$850Not having committed to a style[Deering Goodtime Special](https://amzn.to/4qcf7qH)ResonatorSteel8.75 lb~$1,000American made with a real ring[Gold Tone CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/4i3JhKM)Open back, 12″Rolled brass5.8 lb~$850Serious clawhammer[Gold Tone BG-150F](https://amzn.to/45Ua8l8)Resonator, flangeRolled brass8.5 lb~$1,000Bluegrass hardware for the money ## What a thousand dollars changes ### The tone ring is what you are actually shopping for A banjo’s tone ring is a hoop that sits on top of the wooden rim, under the head. The head presses against it, and the ring decides how much of your playing comes back as ring and sustain rather than thud. It is one of the costliest parts of a banjo to make, and the clearest thing separating one price tier from the next. There are three answers at this budget. **No ring at all** — the head bears directly on the wooden rim, which is what every Deering Goodtime does, right up to the $1,300 Blackgrass. It gives a dry, woody, quick-decaying note that old-time players actively want. **A rolled or flat-bar brass hoop**, which is Gold Tone’s answer across the Cripple Creek and Bluegrass lines: brighter and louder than bare wood, a fraction of the weight and cost of the real thing. And **a cast bell-brass ring**, three pounds of poured metal, which is the sound of recorded bluegrass and which starts at about $1,300. The exception in the middle is the Deering Goodtime Special, which puts a patented steel ring on the standard Goodtime pot. It is not a cast bell-brass Mastertone ring and it does not come with a one-piece flange, but it is an American-made banjo with a genuine tone ring at a price where that combination otherwise does not exist. ### Weight decides whether you play it The banjos on this page run from four and a half pounds to nearly nine, and that is the same instrument with different amounts of metal in the pot. A Goodtime Americana at 4.5 lb and a Goodtime Special at 8.75 lb are built by the same people in the same factory; the ring and the resonator are the difference. Nine pounds on a strap for a two-hour session is genuinely tiring, and the full bluegrass instruments above this budget go past eleven. If you are buying for someone small, someone with a bad shoulder, or someone who plays standing, weight should outrank tone in the decision — a heavy banjo that stays in its case sounds like nothing at all. We put numbers to the whole range in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ### Eleven inches or twelve Almost every banjo is built on an 11-inch pot. Old-time players often prefer a 12-inch one, which drops the pitch of the pot itself and gives a rounder, deeper, less metallic voice. That is the deep, plunky sound old-time playing lives on, and it is why both 12-inch banjos here — the Goodtime Americana and the CC-Carlin12 — are built that way. The other clawhammer-specific feature is a **scooped fingerboard**: the last few frets are planed away so you can strike the string over the end of the neck, where the tone is softest, without your nail catching fretwire. If you have already decided on clawhammer, a scoop is worth more than almost anything else you could spend the money on. Our [clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) go further into it, and [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) covers the broader choice. ### American built, or better equipped Deering builds in California, sets each banjo up before it leaves, backs it for eight years, and holds its value on the used market better than anything else in this bracket. What you do not get is hardware: sixteen hooks, no flange, no tone ring below the Special, and no case in the box. Gold Tone spends the same money differently. A CC-100R+ brings twenty-four hooks, a brass tone hoop, planetary tuners, an engraved armrest and a resonator you can unbolt. It is the better-specified instrument on paper and the less valuable one in five years. Neither of those is the wrong answer — but if resale and service matter to you, that is a point for Deering, and if you want the most instrument on day one, that is a point for Gold Tone. Both brands hold their prices, so this is not a trade you can shop your way out of — the price is the price, and hunting for a discount on either one is time you will not get back. The Deering argument is about American building, resale and service rather than price, and at this budget the two brands land close enough together that it comes down to which of those you actually want. There is more context in [American-made banjos](/best-american-made-banjo/) and [why banjos are so expensive](/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/). ## The six picks № 1 · The all-rounder ### Deering Goodtime Two - Resonator - No tone ring - 3-ply violin-grade maple rim, 11″ - 6 lb - Made in California - ~$850 The Goodtime Two is a Goodtime openback with a three-ply resonator on the back, and that is the whole trick — a rock maple neck, a violin-grade maple rim and a geared fifth-string tuner, made in San Diego, with nothing on it that exists to look expensive. It arrives playing in tune with itself, which is not a given at any price and is the main practical argument for buying American here. Without a tone ring it will not cut through a loud bluegrass jam the way a cast-ring banjo does, and it never will — that is a permanent ceiling, not a setup problem. What it does instead is sound clear, dry and even, hold that sound for decades, and weigh six pounds while doing it. For most people arriving at this budget it is more banjo than they will outgrow. **Pros**- American built and properly set up before shipping - Six pounds — comfortable standing - Strongest resale value on this page - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited bluegrass projection - Sixteen hooks and no case in the box Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xdd8FD) № 2 · Best for old-time ### Deering Goodtime Americana - Open back, 12″ rim - No tone ring - 12″ Renaissance head - 4.5 lb - Made in California - ~$750 The lightest banjo here by a pound and a quarter, and the one built specifically for the sound old-time players are after. The 12-inch rim and the Renaissance head — a translucent synthetic skin, warmer and softer than the usual white frosted top — take the edge off the attack and leave a low, woody note that suits fiddle tunes far better than anything with a resonator on it. Four and a half pounds is genuinely unusual, and it changes how long you play. The trade is volume: this will not be heard next to a banjo with a resonator, and it is not meant to be. Note also that the version sold here has a standard fingerboard rather than the scooped one — if the scoop is what you came for, the Gold Tone below has it. **Pros**- 4.5 lb — the lightest banjo on this page - 12″ rim and Renaissance head give a genuinely old-time voice - American built, eight-year warranty **Cons**- Quiet beside any resonator banjo - Standard fingerboard, not scooped Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UrppYc) № 3 · Best of both styles ### Gold Tone CC-100R+ - Removable resonator - Rolled brass tone hoop - 24 hooks, planetary tuners - 6.5 lb - ~$850 The one to buy if you have not settled the argument with yourself yet. The resonator unbolts, so the same banjo covers bluegrass evenings and old-time afternoons, and unlike most convertibles it is light enough — six and a half pounds — that taking the back off produces something you would actually want to play clawhammer on. The “plus” over the base CC-100R is a factory-fitted pickup — Gold Tone names the model for it — along with the gloss sunburst finish. If you have no intention of ever plugging in, the plain CC-100R is the same banjo for about fifty dollars less. Against the Deerings it is the better-equipped instrument and the weaker long-term hold — it is built in Asia to Gold Tone’s spec and set up in Florida, which is a real distinction from a banjo made start to finish in California. At around $850 it sits exactly level with a Goodtime Two that was built in California and will be worth more in ten years — so this is a straight choice between hardware now and value later. Neither comes with a case. One thing to know before you commit: Gold Tone void the warranty on anything not bought from an authorized dealer, so buy from one and keep the receipt. **Pros**- Resonator comes off, so it plays both styles - Planetary tuners and 24 hooks - Brass tone hoop where the Deerings have none **Cons**- Will not hold value like a Deering - Seven-year warranty against Deering’s eight - Gloss sunburst is not to everyone’s taste [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qvorq9) № 4 · If you are spending the whole grand ### Deering Goodtime Special - Resonator - Patented steel tone ring - 3-ply violin-grade maple rim, 11″ - 8.75 lb - Made in California - ~$1,000 The only American-made banjo anywhere near this budget with a tone ring in it. Deering’s steel ring is their own design rather than a copy of the cast bell-brass Mastertone hoop, and it does what a ring is supposed to do: adds ring, sustain and volume to a pot that otherwise has none. Beside a Goodtime Two the difference is immediate and it is not subtle. It costs you two and three quarter pounds, which is the honest downside — this is a Goodtime that has stopped being a light banjo. And it is still not a Mastertone pot: no cast ring, no one-piece flange, sixteen hooks rather than twenty-four. What it is, is the point on this page where an American-built banjo stops being an instrument you compromise on tone to own. **Pros**- A real tone ring, American built, at this budget - Noticeably louder and more sustaining than a Goodtime Two - Same eight-year warranty and setup **Cons**- 8.75 lb — heavy for a Goodtime - No one-piece flange; still not a full bluegrass pot Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qcf7qH) № 5 · Serious clawhammer ### Gold Tone CC-Carlin12 - Open back, 12″ pot - Scooped rosewood fingerboard - 1⅜” nut, 24 brackets - 5.8 lb - Gig bag included - ~$850 Designed with Bob Carlin, and every specification on it points the same way. The 12-inch pot and Renaissance head give the deep plunky voice; the scooped fingerboard lets you strike over the end of the neck where that voice is warmest; and the wide 1⅜-inch nut gives your fretting hand the room that clawhammer’s thumb work needs. Very few banjos at any price get all three right at once. It is a specialist, and that cuts both ways — there is no resonator to add and the wide neck feels foreign if you have been playing a standard banjo. If clawhammer is definitely the plan this is the most focused instrument on the page. If you are still deciding, it is the wrong one, and the CC-100R+ above is the right one. At around $850 it costs the same as the Goodtime Two and the CC-100R+, which makes it a pure question of intent: this is the only one of the three built specifically for clawhammer, and the only one that is no use at all if you change your mind and want bluegrass. **Pros**- Scoop, 12″ pot and wide nut on one instrument - 5.8 lb with 24 brackets and planetary tuners - Gig bag in the box **Cons**- No use at all for bluegrass - The 12″ scooped pot commits you to old-time - Wide nut takes adjusting to Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i3JhKM) № 6 · The most bluegrass hardware ### Gold Tone BG-150F - Resonator with flange - Rolled brass tone ring - 24 brackets, planetary tuners - ZeroGlide nut - 8.5 lb - ~$1,000 The closest thing here to a conventional bluegrass banjo: a flange around the pot, a brass ring, twenty-four brackets, planetary tuners and hearts-and-flowers inlay, at eight and a half pounds rather than the eleven-plus that a cast-ring instrument weighs. The ZeroGlide nut is a genuinely useful inclusion — it puts a zero fret ahead of the nut so the open strings sound like fretted ones and the tuning holds better in first position. The brass here is a rolled bar rather than the near-three-pound cast ring in Gold Tone’s own OB-150, and that gap is audible: this is a bright, workable bluegrass banjo, not a cannon. Taken as the lightest way to get the full bluegrass layout, though, it is the only thing at this budget doing it. It runs about $1,000 wherever you buy it, and includes a gig bag. Gold Tone sets out their warranty terms by model family and list none for the Bluegrass series, so treat the cover here as unstated rather than assuming it matches their Mastertone line. **Pros**- Flange, brass ring and 24 brackets on one instrument - 8.5 lb — light for a bluegrass banjo - ZeroGlide nut helps tuning in first position **Cons**- Rolled bar ring, not a cast Mastertone hoop - Heavy — 8.5 lb on a strap is a real consideration - Still the second-heaviest banjo here Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45Ua8l8) ## Also worth a look BanjoPrice bandWhy you might pick it[Deering Goodtime Openback](https://amzn.to/3TUdW3d)~$600The same American neck and rim as the Goodtime Two without the resonator, and the value benchmark this whole page is measured against. Covered in our [Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/).[Deering Artisan Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/3Rcgft5)~$1,000The Americana with factory planetary tuners, a Midnight Maple fingerboard and a dark stain. Same 12″ rim, same Renaissance head, same 4.5 lb — the planetary pegs are the part worth the money, and they are a $99 upgrade on their own.[Deering Goodtime Blackgrass](https://amzn.to/3HaK7kP)~$1,300Black-on-black with matte hardware and midnight maple. Striking, and still has no tone ring — the Goodtime Special costs less and sounds bigger.[Gold Tone OB-150](https://amzn.to/4wWvNFx)~$1,300Where the cast bell-brass tone ring and one-piece flange actually start. If bluegrass volume is the whole point, this is the pick worth stretching for.[Ibanez B300](https://amzn.to/4z7j7wN)~$600A well-made resonator banjo below the budget. See our [B300 review](/ibanez-b300-banjo/). The **Recording King RK-R35 Madison** sits just above this page as the other route to a cast bell-brass Mastertone ring, a one-piece flange and twenty-four brackets. Its situation changed recently: The Music Link, which had run the brand since 2007, closed in 2025, St. Louis Music took over distribution that August, the model gained a -BR suffix, and Recording King now list it at $2,099 with a relaunched line still to come later in 2026. It sells for around $1,400 — over this budget, and a hundred dollars more than the Gold Tone OB-150 before you add the case it ships without. If a cast ring is what you are saving for, the OB-150 at $1,299.99 is the cheaper way to it: sand-cast bell brass, a one-piece die-cast flange, a hardshell case in the box, and set up in Florida before it ships. Our [Recording King RK-R35-BR review](/recording-king-rk-35-review/) puts the two side by side. ## What to spend the rest on None of the Deerings ships with a case, and a banjo at this price wants a hardshell rather than a gig bag — the pot is the part that gets damaged and it is the part a soft bag protects least. Budget around $100 to $150 for one, which is the single best use of leftover money here. After that, a chromatic clip-on tuner and a spare set of strings. Factory strings on a good banjo are fine rather than good, and a fresh set is the cheapest change you will ever hear — our picks are in [banjo tuners](/best-banjo-tuner/) and [banjo strings](/best-banjo-strings/). If you are heading for bluegrass, fingerpicks too: metal on the fingers, plastic on the thumb. Clawhammer players need none of that. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is a $1,000 banjo worth it over a $300 one? Yes, and the difference is not tone first — it is that the instrument stops fighting you. At $300 the tuners drift, the head tension is whatever the factory left, the bridge may be in the wrong place and the action is usually high enough to tire your hand. At $850 those things are simply correct, and you spend your practice time playing rather than adjusting. The tone is better too, but it is the second thing you notice. Our [guide to what banjos cost](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) maps the tiers. ### Can I play bluegrass on a banjo with no tone ring? Yes — plenty of people do, and a Goodtime Two handles bluegrass technique perfectly well. What you give up is volume and sustain in a group. Beside a guitar, a fiddle and a mandolin all playing at once, a ringless pot gets buried in a way that no amount of playing harder will fix. If jamming is the point, that argues for the Goodtime Special or the BG-150F. If you are playing at home or with one other person, it does not matter. There is more in our [bluegrass banjo picks](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/). ### Is a heavier banjo a better banjo? Heavier usually means more metal in the pot, which does mean more volume and sustain. It does not mean better. A 4.5 lb Goodtime Americana is exactly the right instrument for old-time and an 11 lb bluegrass banjo would be the wrong one, regardless of which cost more. Weight is a consequence of the sound you chose, not a measure of quality. ### Should I buy used at this price instead? It is a reasonable route into a better instrument, with two cautions. Banjos hide problems a photograph will not show — a warped neck, a rim gone out of round, corroded hardware inside the pot — and the American-made instruments that hold value best are the ones least often discounted. A Deering Goodtime sells used for a large fraction of what it costs new, which is good news when you sell and modest news when you buy. ### What is the difference between the Goodtime and the Goodtime Two? The resonator, and effectively nothing else. Same rock maple neck, same three-ply violin-grade maple rim, same tuners, same factory. The Two adds the wooden bowl on the back that throws sound forward and adds about a pound. If you know you want an open back, the $600 Goodtime is the same instrument for $250 less. ## So which one? For most people the [Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4xdd8FD) is the right call — American built, six pounds, set up before it ships, and it leaves you the price of a hard case. If it is old-time you are after, take the lighter, deeper [Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/3UrppYc), or the [CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/4i3JhKM) if you want the scoop and the wide neck as well. Still undecided between the two styles? The [Gold Tone CC-100R+](https://amzn.to/4qvorq9) lets the resonator bolts settle it later. And if the whole thousand is committed and bluegrass is the destination, the [Goodtime Special](https://amzn.to/4qcf7qH) is the one that puts a real tone ring in an American banjo — with the [BG-150F](https://amzn.to/45Ua8l8) the lighter alternative if the flange and the twenty-four brackets matter more to you than where it was built. New to all of this? Start with [our beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) before spending this much. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo Strings for Bluegrass, Clawhammer and Tenor Banjos](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) **Published:** April 17, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo Strings for Bluegrass, Clawhammer and Tenor Banjos Three things decide a set of banjo strings, and the brand on the packet is not one of them: the gauge, what the wound fourth string is made of, and whether your tailpiece takes a loop or a ball. Get those right and a five-dollar set does everything a twelve-dollar set does. Get the gauge wrong and you will blame the banjo. The set that suits most banjos### D’Addario EJ55 Medium phosphor bronze, loop end, .010 to .023. The bronze-wound fourth string adds warmth without costing the top three any brightness, which is why this set works on a resonator banjo and an open back alike. It is also the cheapest way to find out whether you prefer bronze to nickel. Around $6.50 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kLcezL) **Brighter, for bluegrass:** D’Addario EJ61 nickel medium — around $5 **Lighter, for clawhammer:** Ernie Ball Earthwood — around $9 **Longest life:** D’Addario XT coated — around $9 ## The sets at a glance SetStringsMaterialGaugeEndPrice bandBest for[D’Addario EJ55](https://amzn.to/3kLcezL)5Phosphor bronzeMedium 10–23Loop~$6.50The default[D’Addario EJ61](https://amzn.to/3TPMvYu)5Nickel-plated steelMedium 10–23Loop~$5Bluegrass cut[Ernie Ball Earthwood](https://amzn.to/4x3I1fy)580/20 bronzeLight 9–20Loop~$9Clawhammer and old-time[GHS PF140](https://amzn.to/3TWY7Jb)5Stainless steelLight 9½–20Loop~$7Hands that eat strings[D’Addario XT](https://amzn.to/3j3CIMn)5Coated nickelMedium 10–23Loop~$9Changing them least often[GHS PF160](https://amzn.to/3JfhPbw)5Phosphor bronzeMedium 11–26Loop~$11A heavier bronze set[Aquila 5B](https://amzn.to/4xMUsfK)5NylgutMedium tension—~$14Old banjos and nylon setups[D’Addario EJ63](https://amzn.to/4xHkTDl)4Nickel-plated steel9–30Loop~$10–12Tenor banjo, CGDA[D’Addario EJ63i](https://amzn.to/4qkuNsd)4Nickel-plated steel12–36Loop~$10–13Irish tenor, GDAE[GHS 190](https://amzn.to/4qnshRZ)4Stainless steelLight 11–26Loop~$9–10Plectrum banjo, CGBD ## Gauge decides more than brand does Almost every banjo leaves the factory on light gauge, and most players who think they need something different need a setup instead. Light strings are easier to fret, easier to bend, and brighter. Medium strings are louder, with a fatter note and more sustain, and they want a firmer right hand to drive them. That is the whole trade. Bluegrass leans medium because volume in a jam is the point. [Clawhammer](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) and old-time lean light, because the technique is a brush rather than a dig and the extra tension buys nothing. Neither is a rule, and plenty of good players do the opposite. SetGauge1st2nd3rd4th (wound)5thGHS PF140Light.0095.011.012.020.0095D’Addario EJ61Medium.010.012.016.023.010D’Addario EJ55Medium.010.013.016.023.010GHS PF160Medium.011.013.016.026.010 Two things fall out of that table. The gap between a light set and a medium one is one or two thousandths of an inch per string — small enough that the word on the packet oversells it, and large enough that the neck notices. And the fifth string is cut to the same gauge as the first, which is why a broken first string is worth keeping in the case as a spare fifth. Moving between gauges changes the pull on the neck, so check the relief at the truss rod and re-seat the bridge afterward. Going up a gauge on a banjo that was set up light can raise the action enough to want a proper setup, and on a cheap banjo with a thin neck that is a real risk rather than a theoretical one. On a banjo with no truss rod at all, light is the ceiling rather than the starting point. Deering’s five-string Goodtimes are the ones most people will meet: the relief is machined into a one-piece maple neck and set against the light strings Deering fits, and nothing on the instrument will correct it if you go up. Stay where the factory left it. ## Material changes the tone, and the wound string is where it happens On a five-string set, four of the five strings are plain steel and much the same whoever made them. The only string whose material really varies is the wound fourth — so “phosphor bronze strings” means one bronze-wound string and four plain ones. **Nickel-plated steel** is the default and the bluegrass sound: clear, bright, cutting. **Phosphor bronze** warms the fourth string and adds body, which suits old-time playing; the objection to it is that it can leave the fourth sounding like it came off a different instrument. **Stainless steel** is the brightest and much the most corrosion-resistant, which matters if your hands kill strings in a fortnight. **Coated strings** last several times longer, cost several times more, and give up a little depth for it. **Nylon and Nylgut** are a different instrument entirely — soft, warm, closer to a gut-strung minstrel banjo than to anything in a bluegrass band. They belong on an [open back](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/) played fingerstyle, and on any banjo old enough to have been built before steel was normal. ## Loop end or ball end is your tailpiece’s decision A loop end string finishes in a small wire eye that drops over a hook. A ball end finishes in a brass barrel that seats in a hole. Both do nothing but fasten the string to the instrument, and there is no tonal difference between them — what decides it is how your tailpiece is drilled or hooked. Nearly every five-string banjo takes loop end, and nearly every five-string set is sold that way. Ball end sets are made in far fewer gauges and materials, so if your tailpiece needs them your choice is narrower from the start. Look at your tailpiece before ordering anything. If yours takes ball ends and the set you want is loop only, changing the tailpiece is cheaper and more permanent than hunting for the string. ## The five-string sets worth buying № 1 · The default ### D’Addario EJ55 - 5-string - Phosphor bronze wound 4th - Medium, .010–.023 - Loop end - Made in the USA - ~$6.50 A plain .010, .013, .016, a phosphor bronze .023 and a plain .010 for the fifth. The bronze fourth is the reason to pick this over the nickel EJ61 — it fills out the bottom of the banjo without dulling the top three strings, which is what most people mean when they say a banjo sounds thin. On an open back it is the obvious choice, and on a resonator banjo it still works. Check the set you are ordering says *Medium Phosphor Bronze* — D’Addario sells these same gauges in nickel as the EJ61 below, and the two packets are easy to confuse. If you want the bronze idea in a heavier gauge, GHS’s [PF160](https://amzn.to/3JfhPbw) runs up to a .026 fourth, though at around $11 it costs nearly twice this set for the same job. **Pros**- Warmth on the fourth string without losing brightness above it - Cheapest route into a bronze-wound set - Loop end, so it fits nearly any tailpiece **Cons**- The bronze fourth can sound uneven next to four plain strings - Phosphor bronze goes dull faster than nickel Around $6.50[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kLcezL) № 2 · Bluegrass cut ### D’Addario EJ61 - 5-string - Nickel-plated steel - Medium, .010–.023 - Loop end - Made in the USA - ~$5 The same gauges as the EJ55 with a nickel-wound fourth instead of bronze, and the cheapest set on this page. Nickel is what a [bluegrass banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) is generally voiced around: brighter, harder-edged, and better at being heard across a room full of guitars. If you play a resonator banjo with a tone ring and want it to cut, this is the set. The difference between this and the EJ55 is one string, and no amount of reading settles it — buy both once, put a fortnight on each, and you will know which way your banjo leans. At five dollars a set that is a cheap answer to a question people argue about for years. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Brightest of the uncoated steel sets here - Cheapest set on the page - The standard reference gauge for a medium set **Cons**- Less bottom end than a bronze-wound set - Nothing on the fourth string to soften an already bright banjo Around $5[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3TPMvYu) № 3 · Clawhammer and old-time ### Ernie Ball Earthwood 5-String - 5-string - 80/20 bronze wound 4th - Light, .009–.020 - Loop end - ~$9 A true light set at 9–20, with an 80/20 bronze fourth rather than the phosphor bronze most makers use. It is one of the few light five-string sets that is easy to buy without ending up with a medium by mistake. Eighty-twenty bronze is brighter and more brittle-sounding than phosphor bronze and it dulls faster, which is the honest cost. What you get for it is the low tension clawhammer wants — a .009 first string is markedly easier to brush than a .010, and on an open back the softer attack suits the style. Ernie Ball also sell a heavier “Frailing” set at 10–24, which is the reverse of what the names suggest, so read the gauge rather than the word on the front. **Pros**- A true 9–20 light set, not a medium sold as one - Low tension suits clawhammer and old-time - Brighter than phosphor bronze when fresh **Cons**- 80/20 bronze goes dull faster than phosphor bronze - Nearly twice the price of the D’Addario mediums Around $9[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x3I1fy) № 4 · If your hands kill strings ### GHS PF140 J.D. Crowe Signature - 5-string - Stainless steel - Light, .0095–.020 - Loop end, 42″ winding - ~$7 Stainless is the answer to hands that turn a set of strings green in a fortnight. It resists corrosion far better than nickel or bronze and it is the brightest material of the three, so a light stainless set gives you low tension without the dullness that usually comes with it. The .0095 first string sits between the usual light and extra-light sets. GHS wind their banjo sets to 42 inches, which is long enough to reach on a long-neck banjo — worth knowing if you play one, because not every brand does and a string wound too short leaves winding at the nut where there should be plain steel. **Pros**- Much the most corrosion-resistant set here - Bright despite the light gauge - 42″ winding fits long-neck banjos **Cons**- Stainless is harder on frets than nickel - A light gauge will not drive a resonator banjo as hard as a medium Around $7[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3TWY7Jb) № 5 · Changing them least often ### D’Addario XT (XTJ1023) - 5-string - Coated nickel-plated steel - Medium, .010–.023 - Loop end - ~$9 A treated version of the EJ61 gauges. The coating goes over the whole string, including the windings on the fourth where sweat and skin normally collect, and it buys a working life several times longer than an uncoated set. For anyone who plays daily and resents restringing, that arithmetic works out well before the second packet. It costs roughly twice the EJ61 and it does sound slightly less lively when brand new — a coated string never has quite the zing of a fresh plain one. The trade is that it stays where it lands for months instead of dropping off after a fortnight. If you gig, buy the plain sets and change them often; if you practice at home and hate the job, buy these. **Pros**- Lasts several times longer than an uncoated set - Same gauges as the standard medium reference - The coating covers the windings, where sweat collects **Cons**- Never quite as bright as a fresh uncoated string - Around twice the price of the EJ61 Around $9[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3j3CIMn) ## If your banjo has four strings A five-string set is no use on a [tenor](https://promusicvault.com/best-tenor-banjo/) or a [plectrum](https://promusicvault.com/best-plectrum-banjos/) banjo — the gauges are cut for different pitches and there is one string too many. Which four-string set you need depends on how the instrument is tuned, and that is not always what whoever sold it to you called it. **Tenor banjos** in standard CGDA tuning take a tenor set; [D’Addario’s EJ63](https://amzn.to/4xHkTDl) at 9–30 is the reference. **Irish tenor** is the same instrument dropped to GDAE, a fifth lower, and standard tenor gauges go slack and rattly down there — you want a set cut for it, like the [EJ63i](https://amzn.to/4qkuNsd) at 12–36, which is close to mandolin gauges. **Plectrum banjos** tune CGBD on a long neck and take their own set; [GHS’s 190](https://amzn.to/4qnshRZ) is a light stainless one at 11–26. All three run around ten dollars rather than the five or six a five-string set costs. That is the price of a small market rather than a better string — D’Addario and GHS have most of it between them, so there is little to gain from shopping the brands against each other. A [six-string banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-6-string-banjo/) is the odd one out: it tunes like a guitar and takes guitar-style strings, but lighter than a guitar wants. Deering ships the Goodtime Six on a .010–.046 set, where an acoustic guitar “light” set starts at .012. Check the tailpiece before ordering, too: Gold Tone’s banjitars take loop-end strings and Deering’s take ball-end, and the two do not interchange. ## Old banjos and steel A banjo built in the 1920s or earlier was very likely designed around gut, and steel pulls harder — more of the load lands on the tailpiece and the peghead, friction pegs struggle to hold it, and steel wears frets that cannot be replaced without losing the originals. If you have inherited something old, that is a question for a repairer before it is a question of which packet to buy. Where nylon is the right answer, [Aquila’s 5B Nylgut set](https://amzn.to/4xMUsfK) is the one to reach for. Nylgut is a synthetic built to imitate gut without gut’s habit of going off, and it spreads its tension more evenly than steel does. At around $14 it is the dearest set here, and it is also the only one that will keep a fragile instrument in one piece. ## Questions worth answering ### How often should I change them? Practicing a few times a week, every six to eight weeks. Playing daily, every week or two. Gigging players often change before a show purely so a string does not break during one. The real signal is tone rather than the calendar: when the banjo stops ringing and starts thudding, and it will not hold pitch through a tune, they are finished. ### Does the fifth string come in the set? Yes. A five-string set has five strings, and the fifth is a short one cut to the same gauge as the first. That is also why a spare first string works as an emergency fifth. ### Can I put medium strings on a beginner banjo? Usually, but check the action afterward. Mediums pull harder, which can lift the strings away from the fretboard on an instrument set up for lights. If you have just bought a [first banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/), leave the gauge alone until you have played it for a few months. ### Do I need extra-long strings for a long-neck banjo? Check the winding length before ordering. GHS wind their banjo sets to 42 inches specifically so they reach on a long neck; not every brand does, and a string wound too short leaves winding at the nut where there should be plain steel. ### Will new strings fix my intonation? Sometimes. A dead string goes sharp as it wears and will not play in tune up the neck, so new strings genuinely can fix it. If it persists after a change, the bridge is in the wrong place — check it against the twelfth fret harmonic with a [tuner](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) and move it until they agree. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo For The Money: The Two Prices Where It Changes](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-the-money/) **Published:** July 13, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo For The Money: The Two Prices Where It Changes Banjo prices do not climb smoothly. Between about $125 and $250 you are buying the same instrument over and over with a different badge on the headstock, and then twice — once around $315, once around $600 — the banjo underneath actually changes. Knowing where those two steps are is the whole of buying well here, because the money spent between them buys very little. Best banjo for the money### Gold Tone AC-1 The first step up that you can hear. It is drawn by a firm that designs its own banjos, adjusted in their Florida shop before it leaves, and it weighs three and three-quarter pounds — against the eight to ten pounds of a budget banjo with a resonator on it, which is why people who own one actually pick it up. Nothing under $300 is close, and most of what sits just above it is worse. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HK18Eh) **If $315 is not available:** Jameson 5-String — around $175 **Buying once:** Deering Goodtime — around $600 **For bluegrass:** Deering Goodtime Two — around $850 ## The six at a glance BanjoPotWeightPrice bandBest for[Jameson 5-String](https://amzn.to/4zvsLtf)5-ply maple and mahogany, removable resonatorNot published~$175Finding out whether you will stick with it[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/3HK18Eh)11" composite, open back3.75 lb~$315The best banjo per dollar on this page[Gold Tone AC-12](https://amzn.to/4x7aFMG)12" composite, open back5 lb~$400Clawhammer and old-time[Gold Tone AC-5](https://amzn.to/4xghwUj)11" composite, 13" resonator5.5 lb~$500Bluegrass without $850[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3DkGdF7)11" three-ply violin-grade maple, open back4.5 lb~$600Not buying another banjo[Deering Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/4gLIME0)Same rim, 13⅞" poplar and maple resonator6 lb~$850Bluegrass, properly ## Where the money actually goes ### Under $250 you are buying the box, not the banjo Set the specifications of the budget banjos beside each other and they stop looking like different products. Mahogany neck, purpleheart or stained hardwood fretboard, a plied shell, a Remo head, twenty-four brackets, a geared fifth tuner, an adjustable truss rod. The Jameson and the Vangoa runs to the same recipe. What separates the $125 banjo from the $185 one is almost entirely what else is in the carton — a bag, a clip-on tuner, a strap, three picks, a spare set of strings. That is not an argument against buying one. It is an argument for buying the cheapest one whose specification you like and putting the difference toward a setup, which costs $50 to $100 and does more for how the thing plays than any of the accessories. A banjo arrives with the bridge loose in the case, and where you stand it decides whether the instrument plays in tune at the twelfth fret. Nobody at this price does that for you. ### At $315 the instrument changes The AC-1 is where a designed banjo starts. Gold Tone specifies every part of it — an eleven-inch composite rim, a Remo LC frosted head, a maple bridge with an ebony cap, a Zero Glide nut, a two-way truss rod — and they adjust the instrument in their own Titusville workshop before it ships. That last part is worth roughly what the setup would have cost you, which means the real gap between a $175 banjo and this one is closer to $80 than $140. Then there is the weight. Three and three-quarter pounds, against the eight to ten pounds a budget banjo with a resonator runs to. That difference is the reason an AC-1 gets played in an armchair and a heavy starter banjo ends up on a stand, and it does not show up in any specification list a shopper normally reads. The warranty is five years and it transfers with the instrument. ### Between $320 and $400, mostly nothing This is the dead stretch. The Oscar Schmidt OB3 asks the same money as the AC-1 for a nato neck and an eighteen-fret fingerboard that stops at the rim, so the top of the neck is simply missing. The Washburn B9 wants around $379 for a resonator banjo with an engineered-wood fretboard. Both are real instruments and both will play, but neither gives you anything the AC-1 lacks, and one of them takes something away. The exception is the AC-12, and only if you play clawhammer. Its eighteen frets are not a cost saving — a twelve-inch pot pushes the neck joint further out, and the wider, darker, drier sound that comes with the bigger head is exactly what old-time players are after. Frets nineteen upward are not where that music lives. ### At $600 the pot becomes wood The Deering Goodtime replaces the composite rim with three plies of violin-grade maple, the neck with rock maple, and the factory with one in San Diego. It weighs four and a half pounds, carries twenty-two frets on a 26¼-inch scale, and is guaranteed for eight years. There is no tone ring, which is deliberate — a Goodtime is a rim, a head and a neck, with startlingly little hardware bolted to it, and that is a large part of why it is light and why it stays in adjustment. After this the ladder goes quiet again for a long way. The next thing that genuinely changes a banjo is a cast bell-brass tone ring, and that does not arrive until around $1,300 — everything between is hardware arranged around its absence. Our guides to [banjos under $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/) and [intermediate banjos](/best-intermediate-banjo/) cover that stretch in full. ### Open back or resonator decides more than price does A resonator is a wooden bowl on the back that throws the sound forward. It makes the banjo louder and harder-edged, which is what bluegrass wants and what a clawhammer player is usually trying to get away from. It also adds two or three pounds. If you already know which music you are heading for, that answers half this page on its own; if you do not, buy something with a removable resonator and decide later. [Open back against resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes through it properly. ## The six picks № 1 · Best banjo for the money ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11" composite rim - 22 frets, 26³⁄₁₆" scale - 3.75 lb - Gig bag included - ~$315 Everything on it is chosen rather than sourced: the Remo LC frosted head, the sixteen brackets, the maple bridge with its ebony cap, the Zero Glide nut that stops a beginner’s tuning drifting every time they capo. The mahogany neck takes a two-way truss rod, so it can be corrected rather than lived with. The composite rim is the part people query, and it is the reason the banjo costs $315 rather than $600. It is also why it weighs less than four pounds and why it does not mind a cold car. It sounds like a banjo — a little drier and more even than a wooden rim, which suits clawhammer better than it suits Scruggs picking, though it does both. A five-year transferable warranty on a banjo at this price is unusual enough to be worth saying twice. Buy it from an authorized dealer, because that is the condition Gold Tone attach to it. **Pros**- Adjusted by the maker before it ships - 3.75 lb, so it actually gets picked up - Zero Glide nut and a two-way truss rod - Five years, transferable **Cons**- Composite rim rather than wood - No resonator, and none fitted as standard - Sixteen brackets where dearer banjos have twenty-four Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3HK18Eh) № 2 · If you are only buying one banjo ### Deering Goodtime Openback - Open back, 11" three-ply violin-grade maple rim - 22 frets, 26¼" scale - 4.5 lb - Made in San Diego, California - ~$600 A rock maple neck, a three-ply maple rim, sealed geared tuners and a Lexan nut, and almost nothing else. The Goodtime’s design is subtractive — no tone ring, no flange, no binding to come loose — and the result is a banjo that holds its adjustment, weighs four and a half pounds and has very little on it that can go wrong. It is the point at which most players stop upgrading. For clawhammer and old-time it is not a stepping stone at all; people gig on these for decades. For bluegrass it will do everything except sound like a bluegrass record, which is a job for a tone ring and about twice this money. Eight years of warranty, and it arrives set up rather than boxed. At around $600 there is nothing else American-built in the category. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Wooden rim and an American build at the price - Eight-year warranty - Light, and stays in adjustment - Very little on it to fail **Cons**- No tone ring, so bluegrass volume is limited - Plain: no inlay to speak of, no binding - Nearly twice the AC-1 Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3DkGdF7) № 3 · The smallest sensible spend ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - Removable mahogany resonator - 5-ply maple and mahogany shell - 24 brackets, Remo Weatherking head - Purpleheart fretboard, geared 5th tuner - ~$175 The resonator unbolts, which is the one feature at this price worth paying for: the same instrument covers bluegrass with it on and old-time with it off, so you are not committing to a style you have not chosen yet. It has the things that matter down here — an adjustable truss rod, a geared fifth peg rather than a friction one, a real Remo head — and more players have reported back on it than on anything else at its price. Budget $50 to $100 on top for a setup and treat that as part of the purchase, not an upgrade. A $175 banjo that has been set up plays better than a $300 one that has not. **Pros**- Plays as a resonator banjo or an open back - Truss rod and geared fifth tuner at $175 - 24 brackets where 16 is common down here **Cons**- Heavy with the resonator on - Needs a setup before it is really playable - Factory strings and bridge want replacing Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zvsLtf) № 4 · Best bluegrass banjo under $600 ### Gold Tone AC-5 - 11" composite rim, 13" composite resonator - 22 frets, maple neck - 5.5 lb - Terminator tailpiece, Zero Glide nut - ~$500 The AC-1’s argument with a resonator on the back and a maple neck instead of mahogany, which brightens it in the direction bluegrass wants. Five and a half pounds is remarkable for a resonator banjo — a budget one runs to eight or ten — and it is the difference between playing a whole evening standing up and not. What it does not have is a tone ring, so it will not cut through a jam the way a $1,300 banjo does. Judged against what else $500 buys, that is the honest trade: you are paying for a light, properly adjusted instrument rather than for volume. **Pros**- 5.5 lb with a resonator fitted - Maple neck and a Terminator tailpiece - Set up by the maker; five-year transferable warranty **Cons**- No tone ring, so limited bluegrass volume - Composite resonator rather than wood - $350 clear of the AC-1 for one component Around $500[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xghwUj) № 5 · Best bluegrass banjo for the money ### Deering Goodtime Two - 11" three-ply maple rim - 13⅞" poplar and maple resonator - 22 frets, 6 lb - Made in San Diego, California - ~$850 The Goodtime with a wooden resonator, which is the version most bluegrass players should be looking at. Six pounds is light enough to wear for a set — resonator banjos at this money routinely run to eight or nine — and the sixteen flat J-hooks and proprietary tailpiece are Deering’s own rather than generic parts. It leaves enough of a $1,000 budget for a hard case and decent strings, which is a better use of $150 than anything you could change inside the instrument. And it is the cheapest American-built resonator banjo worth owning by a comfortable margin. **Pros**- Wooden rim and wooden resonator, American built - 6 lb, so it is playable standing - Eight-year warranty **Cons**- Still no tone ring at $850 - Plain-looking beside imports at the same money - Case is extra Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gLIME0) № 6 · Best for clawhammer ### Gold Tone AC-12 - Open back, 12" composite rim - 12" Remo Renaissance head - 18 frets, 1⁷⁄₁₆" nut - 5 lb, gig bag included - ~$400 A twelve-inch pot instead of eleven, with a Renaissance head rather than a frosted one — a combination that gives the dry, woody, slightly plummy sound old-time players go looking for and bluegrass players avoid. The wider nut suits the thumb-and-finger positions clawhammer uses. Eighteen frets, because the bigger pot moves the neck joint. If your playing lives above the twelfth fret this is the wrong banjo; if it lives in open G with the fifth string ringing, the missing frets will never come up. It is the cheapest way to get a genuine twelve-inch old-time banjo rather than a bluegrass banjo with the back taken off. **Pros**- A real 12" old-time pot at $400 - Renaissance head and a wide nut - 5 lb, and set up before it ships **Cons**- 18 frets - Wrong instrument for bluegrass - Composite rim at a price where wood exists Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x7aFMG) ## Also worth a look BanjoBackPrice bandWhy it is not a pick[Vangoa 5-String](https://amzn.to/3DiQ9yO)Resonator~$185The fullest accessory kit down here, for about ten dollars over a bare banjo[Costzon 5-String](https://amzn.to/3JjruOf)Resonator~$125The floor. Sapele back and sides, geared fifth tuner, and nothing spare[Oscar Schmidt OB3](https://amzn.to/3wvYOKq)Open back~$320AC-1 money for a nato neck and 18 frets[Washburn Americana B9](https://amzn.to/3Jk7WJS)Resonator~$379Aluminum rim and an engineered-wood board; the AC-5 is the better $500 ## Questions worth answering before you buy ### Is a $175 banjo actually worth buying? Yes, if you accept that the price is $175 plus a setup. What you get for $175 is a competent set of parts assembled without much care: the neck is straight enough, the truss rod works, the head is a real Remo, and the bridge is standing wherever it fell. A shop will move the bridge, dress the nut slots and set the action for $50 to $100, and the same banjo will then play in tune all the way up. Skip that and a lot of people conclude within a month that their hands are the problem. ### Why does the AC-1 cost twice the Jameson when the parts list looks similar? Because the parts list is not the instrument. Gold Tone draw the neck profile, choose the rim, and adjust each banjo before it goes out; the setup alone accounts for most of the difference in cash. The rest shows up in weight — 3.75 lb against eight to ten pounds for a budget banjo with a resonator — and in the warranty, which is five years and transfers to the next owner. Neither of those appears on a specification comparison. ### Do I need a tone ring? Only for bluegrass, and only if you are playing with other people. A cast bell-brass ring is what gives a bluegrass banjo its bark and its sustain, and nothing under about $1,300 has one worth the name. Below that, banjos advertised with a “tone ring” generally mean a rolled or pressed hoop, which changes the sound far less than the head and the bridge do. For clawhammer, old-time and playing at home, you do not need one at all. ### Composite rim or wooden rim? A composite rim is lighter, cheaper and completely indifferent to humidity; a wooden one is warmer and a little more complex. At $315 the composite is why the banjo exists at all, and it is not a compromise you will hear against anything else at the price. At $600 the wooden rim is what you are buying. Between the two, most players would rather have the AC-1 and $285. ### What should I spend on top of the banjo? A setup at $50 to $100 if the banjo did not arrive adjusted, and a decent [set of strings](/best-banjo-strings/) at around $8 to $15. After that, a clip-on tuner and a strap. Do not buy a new bridge or a new head until the banjo has told you it needs one — a head lasts years, and it is a $30 to $40 job when it goes. Our [guide to what banjos cost](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) lays out the running total. ## Which one If you can find $315, the AC-1 is the answer and the rest of this page is context. It is the cheapest banjo here that a banjo maker designed, adjusted and stood behind, and the weight alone will get it played more than anything below it. If you cannot, the Jameson plus a setup lands at about $250 and tells you within a month whether you want a real one. If the money is there and bluegrass is the plan, skip the middle entirely and go to the Goodtime Two at around $850 — every step between it and the AC-5 is a partial version of the same instrument. And if you are heading for clawhammer with $600 to spend, the Goodtime openback is where the buying stops. More options at either end in our [beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/), [banjos under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/) and [clawhammer guide](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/). **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo for Old Time Music: Six Picks, and What the Tunings Ask For](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-old-time-music/) **Published:** July 19, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo for Old Time Music: Six Picks, and What the Tunings Ask For Old-time music is fiddle music, and the banjo’s job in it is to sit under a fiddle in the fiddle’s key. That single fact decides the instrument. Bluegrass players learn one tuning and reach for a capo; old-time players change tuning between tunes, so an old-time banjo is judged on how well it holds a pitch it was not built in, how easily the fifth string follows the other four, and whether the striking hand has somewhere to land. Open back is the starting point. After that it is the rim, the scoop and the fifth string. Our pick### Gold Tone CC-OT Cripple Creek Old-Time The only banjo here that Gold Tone built for this music and nothing else: a scooped fingerboard to strike over, a Fiberskyn head that takes the glare off, planetary pegs that hold a tuning you changed ten minutes ago, and a fifth-string spike already fitted at the seventh fret. A maple pot and a rolled brass ring underneath, so it still has some cut when a fiddle gets loud. Around $700 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wKPEGs) **Cheapest full spec:** Gold Tone AC-12 — around $400, 12″ pot and a scoop **American twelve-inch:** Deering Goodtime Americana — around $750 **If you retune constantly:** Deering Artisan Goodtime — around $950, spikes fitted **Fretless:** Gold Tone AC-1FL — around $315 ## The six at a glance BanjoRimHeadScoopTone ringTunersWeightPrice band[Gold Tone CC-OT](https://amzn.to/4wKPEGs)11″ mapleFiberskynYesRolled brassPlanetary5.5 lb~$700[Gold Tone AC-12](https://amzn.to/4wStWRd)12″ compositeRenaissanceYesNoneGeared5 lb~$400[Deering Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4gQFbVh)12″ mapleRenaissanceNoNoneGeared4.5 lb~$750[Deering Artisan Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4xdylPw)11″ mapleFrostedNoNonePlanetary4.5 lb~$950[Gold Tone CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/4qA8OO7)12″ mapleRenaissanceYesRolled brassPlanetary5.8 lb~$850[Gold Tone AC-1FL](https://amzn.to/4inqUAI)11″ compositeFrostedFretlessNoneGeared3.75 lb~$315 ## What old-time actually asks of a banjo ### The tunings are the job There is no single old-time banjo tuning. Standard G — gDGBD — covers tunes in G. Double C, gCGCD, covers tunes in C, and capoed up two frets it becomes double D for the enormous number of fiddle tunes in D. Sawmill, also called mountain minor, is gDGCD, and a large part of the Round Peak repertoire lives there. Open D is f#DF#AD. A jam works through tunes in D, A, G and C, and the banjo is expected to follow. That is the difference from a bluegrass banjo, and it is why specifications that look like trim on a bluegrass instrument matter here. Pegs get turned several times an evening. Strings get slackened a whole tone and tightened back. The instrument has to arrive at the right pitch quickly and stay there while eight bars go past, and none of that is about tone. ### Which is why the fifth string is the problem The fifth string starts at the fifth fret and drones. Put a capo across the neck at the second fret for a tune in A and the other four strings move up; the drone does not, and it is now wrong against everything else. There are two answers. Spikes are small hooks set into the fingerboard, usually at the seventh, ninth and tenth frets, and you tuck the string under one to stop it at a fixed pitch — seventh for A, ninth for B, tenth for C. Or a sliding fifth-string capo clamps to the side of the neck and travels. Spikes are the traditional answer, they are almost free as parts, and they never need adjusting. What they cost is a hole drilled in your fingerboard for each one, which is shop work rather than a kitchen-table job — budget around $25 to have a set fitted. Two banjos here save you that: the CC-OT arrives with a seventh-fret spike in place, and the Artisan Goodtime with all three. Planetary pegs help for the same reason a spike does — they hold, and they turn predictably — which is why the tuner column is in the table above at all. ### Eleven inches or twelve Eleven inches is the standard banjo pot and what most instruments of any kind use. Twelve is the older specification, common in the period this music was first recorded, and it drops the fundamental and thickens everything underneath. Deering is unusually direct about the trade in their own copy for the Americana: an eleven-inch banjo with a frosted head is *far brighter* and cuts more, while a twelve-inch pot with a Renaissance head gives a laid-back sound better suited to backing a singer or another instrument than to leading. Which is the right answer depends on what you play with. Behind a fiddle, the twelve-inch voice sits underneath without competing, and that is most old-time playing. On your own, or in a room with a guitar and no fiddle, eleven inches gives you something with more definition to listen to. Eleven also resells to anybody; twelve resells to old-time players. ### The scoop, and why the same model turns up described both ways A scoop is a shallow ramp where the last few frets would be. Clawhammer is struck with the hand up over the head, and the scoop gives that hand a place to land without catching a fret edge; the note up there is softer and woodier than anything down by the bridge. It is the most style-specific thing you can buy, and it is permanent — the frets it removes are exactly the ones a melodic line above the twelfth fret needs, and cutting one into a finished fingerboard afterward is luthier work. The confusing part is that a scoop is not always a fixed property of a model. Deering lists it as a build option on the Goodtime, the Americana and the Artisan Americana — the same model, about $59 apart, catalogued both ways — so you will find one description saying a Goodtime Americana is scooped and another saying it is not, and both are right about different builds. The ready-made ones carry the standard fingerboard, which is why the Americana shows up in the table above as a twelve-inch banjo without a scoop. Of the six here, the AC-12, the CC-OT and the CC-Carlin12 come scooped. ### A tone ring is volume, and volume is a choice A tone ring is a metal hoop sitting on the rim with the head stretched over it. It adds cut and sustain and takes away some of the dry thump that a bare wooden rim gives. Neither is better; they are different instruments for different rooms. A banjo with no ring is quiet — genuinely quiet, in a way no setup fixes — which is fine at home and behind one fiddle and a problem in a loud jam. The CC-OT and the CC-Carlin12 have rolled brass. The White Ladye further down uses the Whyte Laydie pattern, which is the ring most associated with this music. The Goodtime, the Americana, the AC-12 and the AC-1FL have none at all, and the head does all the work — which is also why the choice of head is worth as much attention as the ring. A Fiberskyn or Renaissance head warms and thickens; a frosted top head is brighter and louder. ### Fretless, if you mean it The banjos this music was first played on had no frets, and a fretless neck gives a sliding, vocal quality that a fretted one cannot. It also means intonation is entirely your problem, and a lined fingerboard — position lines inlaid where frets would be — only tells you where to aim. Deering is refreshingly blunt about their own fretless: they say they would not recommend it to a player who has just taken up the banjo, which is the right advice and unusual to see from a maker. Gold Tone’s AC-1FL is the cheap way to find out whether you are that player. ## The six picks № 1 · Built for this music ### Gold Tone CC-OT Cripple Creek Old-Time - Open back, 11″ multi-ply maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Scooped rosewood fingerboard, 18 frets - 11″ Remo Fiberskyn head - Planetary tuners, geared fifth-string peg - Fifth-string spike fitted at the seventh fret - 26 3/16″ scale, 1 3/16″ nut, 5.5 lb - Gig bag, strap, clip tuner and a clawhammer video included - ~$700 Everything on the specification is pointed at one style. The scoop is there for the striking hand. The Fiberskyn head takes the edge off the brass ring and leaves a soft, thick note close to what a skin head does. The pegs are planetary, so a tuning you changed between tunes is still where you left it. And the seventh-fret spike is already in the fingerboard, which is the one thing on this list you would otherwise be paying a shop to do. The specialization is the whole point and the whole risk. Eighteen frets means the top of the neck is gone for good, so if there is any chance your playing turns melodic or drifts toward bluegrass this is the wrong instrument. It is also the heavier end of the openbacks here at five and a half pounds. Buy it because you have decided, not to find out. **Pros**- Scoop, Fiberskyn head and a brass ring without going to four figures - Planetary pegs and a spike already fitted - The brass ring gives it cut when a jam gets loud - Set up in Florida before it ships **Cons**- Eighteen frets, permanently - Heaviest of the eleven-inch banjos here - Only one spike, so ninth and tenth are still a shop job - Commits you to old-time completely Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wKPEGs) № 2 · Both expensive decisions, at the price of neither ### Gold Tone AC-12 - Open back, 12″ composite rim - No tone ring - Frailing scoop, 18 frets - 12″ Remo Renaissance head - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, 26 3/16″ scale - 1 7/16″ Zero Glide nut — the widest here - 5 lb, gig bag included - ~$400 A twelve-inch pot and a frailing scoop are the two things that cost money everywhere else on this page, and this has both for around $400. The Renaissance head is fitted as standard rather than as an upgrade. The nut is an inch and seven-sixteenths, which is three-sixteenths wider than the Deerings and gives the thumb somewhere to work — a genuine advantage for clawhammer that nothing else here at any price matches. What you give up is the pot itself. A molded composite rim is drier and flatter than maple: the drop in pitch that twelve inches buys is there, the bloom underneath it is not, and with no tone ring either this is a quiet instrument in company. Treat it as the honest way to find out whether the twelve-inch scooped voice is the one you want, with the maple versions above and below it waiting if it turns out to be. **Pros**- Twelve-inch pot and a scoop for around $400 - Widest nut on this page by a clear margin - Renaissance head as standard - 5 lb for a twelve-inch banjo, and a bag in the box **Cons**- Composite rim — drier, with less bloom than maple - No tone ring, so quiet alongside other instruments - Eighteen frets and the scoop are permanent - Geared pegs rather than planetary Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wStWRd) № 3 · The American twelve-inch ### Deering Goodtime Americana - Open back, 12″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring - 12″ Renaissance medium-crown head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale, 1 1/4″ nut - 4.5 lb, 37 1/2″ overall - Built in Spring Valley, California - Eight-year warranty on registration - ~$750 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A twelve-inch maple pot with a Renaissance head, built in California, at four and a half pounds — no heavier than the eleven-inch Goodtime, which for a pot this size is the remarkable part. This is the deepest, most laid-back voice on the page and the one that sits under a fiddle most naturally. It is also the one that will still be worth money in ten years; Deering resale is in a different class from everything else here. As sold ready-made it has twenty-two frets and no scoop, which is the odd thing about it — the twelve-inch old-time voice without the fingerboard feature most associated with the style. That is a build choice rather than an omission, since Deering catalogue the model both ways, but the one you can buy off the shelf is the plain-fingerboard version. If the scoop matters more to you than where the banjo was made, the AC-12 above has both for $350 less and the CC-Carlin12 below has both in maple for about $100 more. **Pros**- A genuine twelve-inch old-time voice, American built - 4.5 lb — nothing here with a wooden pot is lighter - Renaissance head fitted as standard - Eight-year warranty and the strongest resale on the page **Cons**- Standard fingerboard, not scooped - Quiet by design — not a band instrument - No spikes fitted, and no case or bag in the box - Twelve-inch cases are a smaller and dearer market Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gQFbVh) № 4 · If you retune every evening ### Deering Artisan Goodtime - Open back, 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, 11″ frosted high-crown head - Rock maple neck, 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale, 1 1/4″ nut - Planetary tuners, geared fifth-string peg - Spikes fitted at frets 7, 9 and 10 - 4.5 lb, built in Spring Valley, California - Eight-year warranty on registration - ~$950 Underneath, this is the $600 Goodtime — same rim, same neck wood, same head, same scale, same weight, same factory. What the Artisan badge adds is a dark stain, better inlays, planetary pegs and spikes at the seventh, ninth and tenth frets. Two of those four are cosmetic and two of them are the exact things this page has been arguing matter, fitted properly and covered by the warranty. Whether that is worth $350 depends entirely on how you play. If double C and sawmill are part of your week, having pegs that hold and a fifth string that stops where you want it is worth real money, and both are awkward and irreversible to retrofit — reaming peg holes and drilling a fingerboard are not jobs to get wrong on a maple neck. If you play in G and stay there, this is $350 that belongs in a hard case and lessons. Our [Artisan Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-artisan-review/) works through the arithmetic in detail. **Pros**- Spikes at 7, 9 and 10 fitted from new - Planetary pegs, set up and under warranty - 4.5 lb, American built, excellent resale - The only banjo here ready for alternate tunings out of the box **Cons**- Same pot, scale and weight as the $600 model - No scoop and no tone ring - Eleven-inch frosted head is the bright end of old-time - Poor value if you play in one tuning Around $950[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xdylPw) № 5 · The full specification, in maple ### Gold Tone CC-Carlin12 - Open back, 12″ multi-ply maple rim - 12″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring - Scooped rosewood fingerboard, 18 frets - 12″ Remo Renaissance head - Planetary tuners, 24 brackets - 1 3/8″ Zero Glide nut - 5.8 lb, gig bag included - ~$850 Bob Carlin’s specification in Gold Tone’s cheaper Cripple Creek trim, and the only twelve-inch banjo here with a ring under the head. Everything the style asks for is present at once: the big pot, the scoop, a Renaissance head, planetary pegs and a nut of an inch and three-eighths. If you were going to end up here anyway, it saves you buying twice. The awkward comparison is directly above it. The AC-12 has the same pot diameter, the same scoop, the same head and a nut a sixteenth wider for $450 less, so what the extra money buys is a maple rim instead of a molded one, a brass ring instead of bare wood, and planetary pegs. That is a real difference in voice and a lot of money for it, and whether it is worth paying depends on whether you have heard the two. It is also the heaviest banjo on this page and the most committed — a twelve-inch scooped pot with a brass ring does nothing but old-time, and it resells into the smallest market of anything here. **Pros**- Twelve-inch maple pot, scoop and brass ring together - Planetary pegs and a wide nut - Renaissance head as standard, bag included - Nothing else here needs less added to it **Cons**- 5.8 lb — the heaviest on this page - $450 more than an AC-12 with much the same layout - Eighteen frets and a permanent scoop - Resells into a very narrow market Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qA8OO7) № 6 · Fretless, at beginner-banjo money ### Gold Tone AC-1FL - Open back, 11″ composite rim - No tone ring, 11″ Remo frosted head - Lined fretless fingerboard - Mahogany neck, 26 3/16″ scale, 1 3/16″ nut - 3.75 lb — the lightest here - Gig bag included, set up in Florida - ~$315 The AC-1 with the frets left out and lines inlaid where they would have been. That combination is the sensible way into fretless: the lines put your fingers roughly right while your ear learns the rest, and at three and three-quarter pounds on a molded pot there is nothing precious about it. The sound is the woody, sliding thump that fretless is for, and it is the cheapest instrument in the world that makes it honestly. It is not a first banjo. Without frets, every note is your responsibility, and a beginner cannot yet tell a badly stopped string from a badly tuned one — which is exactly the confusion that makes people give up. If you already play, this is a cheap second instrument that will teach you things a fretted neck cannot. If you do not, buy something with frets and come back. **Pros**- Fretless for the price of a fretted beginner banjo - Lined board, so you are not starting blind - 3.75 lb, the lightest banjo here - Bag included and set up before it ships **Cons**- A poor choice as a first instrument - Composite rim and no tone ring — quiet and dry - Intonation is entirely down to you - Narrow nut compared with the twelve-inch banjos here Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4inqUAI) ## Also worth a look BanjoPrice bandWhy you might pick it[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3Hflnbr)~$600The cheapest American-built banjo there is, four and a half pounds, and nothing on it commits you to a style. Twenty-two frets, no scoop, no ring, geared pegs — the openback for someone who is not yet certain old-time is the destination. There is more on it in our [Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/).[Gold Tone WL-250 White Ladye](https://amzn.to/4qJQK4c)~$1,250The top of this specification: a Whyte Laydie tone ring, a bound ebony fingerboard ending in a frailing scoop, a Fairbanks-style peghead, master planetary pegs, a Renaissance head and a hardshell case in the price. Eighteen frets and 6.7 lb. If you know this music is the rest of your life, this is where the ladder ends. ## What else to budget for Two things are worth buying at the same time as the banjo, and one of them is not an accessory at all. WhatPrice bandWhy[Brad Leftwich, *Round Peak Style Clawhammer Banjo*](https://amzn.to/4wSfKHD)~$25Over seventy tunes in the Round Peak style, organized by the tuning each one uses rather than by difficulty — which is the right way round for this music and rare in print. Leftwich learned directly from the Round Peak players, and much of the commentary is aimed at the fretless banjo. Not a beginner’s first book, and it says so.[Sliding fifth-string capo](https://amzn.to/3Sx5feN)~$59The alternative to spikes if you would rather not have holes drilled in a new fingerboard. It clamps to the side of the neck and slides, so it covers every position rather than three. Worth knowing that opinion on these is genuinely split — a fifth of the reviews are one or two stars, mostly about fit on particular necks — so it is the fix for someone who will not drill, not the better fix outright. Beyond that: a set of medium-gauge strings, because down-tuning to double C or open D on a light set goes slack and buzzes, and our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) covers which. And a setup if the banjo did not come with one — everything on this page except the two cheapest arrives adjusted, which is a large part of what the money buys. ## Questions that come up ### Does old-time have to be played on an open back? No, and plenty of people play it on a resonator banjo. But the resonator throws sound forward and adds several pounds, and old-time is music played in a circle rather than at an audience, so the open back suits it in both respects. If you already own a resonator banjo, most of them come apart — [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes through what removing it does and does not achieve. ### Which tuning should I learn first? Double C, gCGCD. Most beginner clawhammer material is written in it, capoing up two frets turns it into double D for the D tunes that dominate a session, and it makes the shapes for the common tunes fall under the hand more obviously than standard G does. Standard gDGBD is worth knowing next, and sawmill after that. [How to tune a banjo](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) covers getting there accurately. ### Do I need a scoop? Only if you are sure. It makes clawhammer more comfortable and it makes anything played above the twelfth fret impossible, and that trade cannot be undone later. If you are certain old-time is where you are staying, buy the scoop and never think about it again. If there is any doubt, buy an unscooped banjo — you lose nothing but a little comfort, and you keep the top of the neck. ### Can I play old-time on a bluegrass banjo? Yes, and it will sound like a bluegrass banjo playing old-time: brighter, longer-sustaining and louder than the music generally wants. The usual first step is a different head and a lighter touch rather than a different instrument. If you are choosing between the two styles rather than adding one, [the bluegrass picks](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) are a very different list. ## So which one? If old-time is decided and you want one banjo to be right, the [Gold Tone CC-OT](https://amzn.to/4wKPEGs) at around $700 has more of the specification in place, out of the box, than anything near it. If the budget is half that, the [AC-12](https://amzn.to/4wStWRd) gets you the twelve-inch pot and the scoop for around $400 and gives up only the wood. For the deep American twelve-inch voice, the [Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4gQFbVh); for that voice with a ring and a scoop as well, the [CC-Carlin12](https://amzn.to/4qA8OO7). And if you spend your evenings moving between double C, sawmill and open D, the [Artisan Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4xdylPw) is the one that arrives ready for it. The players who made this music are worth an evening too — our list of [clawhammer players](/best-clawhammer-banjo-players/) starts with the Round Peak generation these tunings came from. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo for Irish Music: Five Tenors, and Which Arrive in GDAE](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-irish-music/) **Published:** July 19, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo for Irish Music: Five Tenors, and Which Arrive in GDAE The banjo in Irish music is a four-string tenor, played with a plectrum, tuned G D A E — the note names of a fiddle, an octave lower. Two things separate one from another: how long the neck is, and whether the instrument arrives in that tuning or arrives in the other one and needs a set of strings first. Everything else — resonator or open back, brass or bare maple, $315 or $1,450 — sits under those two. Our pick### Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor Seventeen frets over a 19¾-inch neck, and it comes out of the box tuned G D A E on the heavy strings that tuning needs, so it is an Irish banjo the day it arrives rather than after a trip to the shop. Rolled brass tone hoop, a 13-inch resonator that unbolts in four turns, gig bag in the case. Around $700 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qDzBJo) **American built:** Deering Goodtime 17-Fret Tenor — around $600 **Cheapest that is still an Irish tenor:** Gold Tone AC-4 IT — around $315 **Long neck, more range:** Deering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor — around $600 **For a loud session:** Gold Tone IT-250F — around $1,450 ## The five at a glance BanjoFretsScaleArrives tunedBackTone ringWeightBuiltPrice band[Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor](https://amzn.to/4qDzBJo)1719¾”**G D A E**Removable resonatorRolled brass5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$700[Deering Goodtime 17-Fret Tenor](https://amzn.to/4cK60bl)1721″C G D AOpen backNone4 lbCalifornia~$600[Gold Tone AC-4 IT](https://amzn.to/3Uhcl7U)1719¾”**G D A E**Open backNone3.5 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$315[Deering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor](https://amzn.to/4xn4Uuw)1923″C G D AOpen backNone4.5 lbCalifornia~$600[Gold Tone IT-250F](https://amzn.to/4itbydY)1719¾”**G D A E**Resonator, flangeBell brass archtop11 lbAsia, set up in Florida~$1,450 ## Four strings, and no fifth A five-string banjo is a different instrument doing a different job. Its short fifth string is a drone that sounds on almost every stroke, which is what gives bluegrass and old-time their rolling texture — and which is precisely wrong under an Irish reel, where the tune is a single line of melody moving faster than a drone can sit still under. The tenor has four strings, no drone, and a plectrum instead of fingerpicks, and it plays the melody the way a fiddle or a flute would. The tuning is what makes it Irish. G D A E is the fiddle’s four strings an octave down, so a fiddler’s fingering transfers whole, and so does a mandolin player’s — Gold Tone describes their own Irish tenors as tuned “an octave below the mandolin”, and note that the setup is “in wide use by many traditional Irish musicians because it provides the plunky tone that works so well with the bodhran, pipes and fiddles found in Celtic music ensembles”. If you already play either instrument, you already know where the notes are. The other tenor tuning, C G D A, belongs to the 1920s dance bands. It is a fine tuning and it is the wrong one here. Our guide to [plectrum vs. tenor banjos](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/) covers the four-string family, and [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) covers the rest. ## Seventeen frets or nineteen Fret count is shorthand for neck length. A 17-fret tenor runs about 20 to 21 inches from nut to bridge; a 19-fret runs 22 to 23. That is two inches of stretch in first position, on an instrument where Irish playing lives almost entirely in first position and moves quickly. Deering builds the same Goodtime tenor in both fret counts at the same $599, which makes the comparison unusually clean, and they are explicit about who each one is for. Of the short neck they say it is “particularly beneficial to Irish/Celtic players looking for a shorter scale length to make those tricky single-note runs or extensive fingerboard stretches”. Of the long one they say the 19-fret scale is “so commonly found in traditional jazz and Irish music”. Both, in other words — and that is honest. Plenty of well-known Irish players use a 19-fret neck; the extra length gives a longer, fuller-sounding string and two more frets of range, at the cost of a wider hand. One wrinkle worth knowing before you compare numbers: 17 frets does not pin the scale down. Deering’s 17-fret neck is 21 inches, on the $599 Goodtime and on the $3,499 Sierra alike. Gold Tone’s Irish tenors are 19¾ inches, on every model from the $315 AC-4 IT to the $1,450 IT-250F. That inch and a quarter is real — the Gold Tone is the smaller hand’s instrument, the Deering the more conventional one — so read the scale, not the fret count. There is more on the jazz half of this decision in our guide to [tenor banjos](/best-tenor-banjo/). ## The tuning is a set of strings Nothing about a tenor banjo is built for one tuning or the other. Dropping C G D A to G D A E means dropping every string a fourth, and a set chosen to hold pitch at the higher tuning goes slack and dull at the lower one. That is the whole of what people mean when they say Irish tuning “doesn’t work” on a banjo: it is the strings, not the banjo. TuningSame names asUsed forGaugesSecond string**G D A E** — IrishFiddle, an octave downReels, jigs, hornpipes.010–.040w, or .012–.038w**Wound**C G D A — standard tenorViola, mandolaTrad jazz, ragtime, dance band.010–.030wPlain That last column is the check to make before you fit anything. An Irish set has a wound second string; a standard tenor set’s second is plain steel. Deering’s own two sets show it exactly — their standard tenor strings run .010, .016, .024w, .030w with the third and fourth wound, and their Irish set runs .012, .018w, .028w, .038w with the second wound as well. If you have opened a packet and the second string is bare, it is not an Irish set, whatever the front of it says. Which set depends on the neck. Gold Tone fits .010, .020w, .030w, .040w at the factory to every Irish tenor they build, which is a heavy bottom end suited to their short 19¾-inch scale; the same set at around $8 is the like-for-like replacement. For a longer Deering neck being pulled down to G D A E, a set built around .012 to .036 has a heavier first string and a lighter fourth, which balances better over 21 or 23 inches. Our [banjo strings guide](/best-banjo-strings/) goes further into gauges. SetGaugesSuitsPriceGold Tone Mastertone Irish Tenor.010, .020w, .030w, .040w19¾” Gold Tone necks~$8[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gwL6xx)Dunlop DJN1236 Irish Tenor.012–.03621″ and 23″ necks retuned to G D A E~$9[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xuIkA7) ## The five № 1 · The one to buy ### Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor - 17 frets, 19¾” scale - Arrives tuned G D A E - 11″ multi-ply maple rim - Rolled brass flat-bar tone hoop - Removable 13″ maple resonator - Rosewood board, snowflake inlay, ZeroGlide nut - 5 lb, gig bag included - ~$700 This is the one that is already the instrument you wanted when the box is opened. It comes in G D A E on the heavy set that tuning needs, which sounds like a small thing and is the difference between playing on the first evening and ordering strings and waiting. The brass hoop is where the money goes. A tone ring is the ring of metal the head sits against, and it is what makes a banjo sustain rather than thud — both Deerings below have none at all, which is a deliberate Goodtime decision that gives them a dry, quick, woody note. Irish tenor wants the other thing: a hard attack that carries a melody line over fiddles, pipes and a bodhrán. The 13-inch resonator then decides how much of it goes forward at the room, and four bolts take it off when you would rather it did not, so one banjo covers a session and a kitchen. Against it: it is built in Asia to Gold Tone’s specification and set up in Florida rather than made start to finish in the United States, and it will not hold its price the way a Deering does. Gold Tone warrants Cripple Creek instruments for seven years to the first owner and one year to the second, and void it entirely on anything bought outside their authorized dealer network, so buy it from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Playable in Irish tuning the day it arrives - Brass tone hoop where the Deerings have none - Shortest neck here, alongside the two other Gold Tones - Resonator unbolts, so it does both jobs - Gig bag in the box **Cons**- A pound heavier than the Deering 17-fret - Will not hold value like the American-built pair - Warranty void from an unauthorised dealer Around $700 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qDzBJo) № 2 · American built, and lighter ### Deering Goodtime 17-Fret Tenor - 17 frets, 21″ scale, 32″ end to end - Arrives tuned C G D A - 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, open back - Rock maple neck, Art Deco hardwood inlays - 16 flat J-hooks, Lexan nut - 4 lb - ~$600 [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Four pounds and thirty-two inches end to end makes this the smallest full-size tenor banjo anybody builds, and it is made in Spring Valley, California by the people who designed it. At $599 it undercuts the Gold Tone by a hundred dollars while being the better-built instrument, which is the reason to take it. The reason not to is the tone ring, or rather the absence of one. Deering leaves it off every Goodtime on purpose, and the result is a banjo with a fast, dry, close note that dies quickly — lovely on its own, harder to hear across a pub. Add the string set: it arrives in C G D A, so budget another $8 and an evening for the swap and the stretch before it settles. Deering’s Goodtime warranty runs eight years on instruments built from January 2025 onward, but it is not transferable, it needs registering, and it excludes the nut, the bridge, the strings and normal fret wear. There is no case or bag in the box. **Pros**- Built start to finish in California - Lightest of the two Deerings, and the shortest neck they make - Same $599 as their long-neck tenor - Holds its value **Cons**- No tone ring, so it is the quietest banjo here - Needs an Irish string set before it is an Irish banjo - Nothing to carry it in - Warranty is not transferable Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cK60bl) № 3 · Cheapest that is still an Irish tenor ### Gold Tone AC-4 IT - 17 frets, 19¾” scale - Arrives tuned G D A E - 11″ composite rim, Remo head - No tone ring, open back - Mahogany neck, rosewood board, ZeroGlide nut - 3.5 lb, gig bag included - ~$315 Three and a half pounds, a composite rim instead of a wooden one, and the same 19¾-inch 17-fret neck geometry as the two Gold Tones above it. For less than half the price of anything else here it is a genuine Irish tenor rather than an approximation of one — short neck, Irish tuning, correct strings, bag included — which makes it the sane way to find out whether the instrument suits you before spending seven hundred dollars on the answer. What $315 does not buy is the pot. A composite rim is stiffer and deader than three-ply maple, there is no tone ring, and the sum of those is a banjo that is bright and a bit thin and does not bloom. It is also the lightest thing on this page by half a pound, which matters if you are carrying it to a session on foot. **Get the model name right.** Gold Tone builds two banjos called AC-4, both $315, both tuned G D A E, and only one is short-scale. The **AC-4 IT** is 17 frets over 19¾ inches; the plain **AC-4** is 19 frets over 22¾. Same price, same rim, same bag — three inches of neck apart. If the short scale is the reason you are buying, the letters after the number are the thing to check. Gold Tone warrants AC-series banjos for five years and that cover is transferable, which is unusual at this money. **Pros**- A real 17-fret Irish tenor for a third of the price - Arrives in G D A E on the right strings - Lightest here at 3.5 lb - Five-year transferable warranty - Gig bag in the box **Cons**- Composite rim and no tone ring: bright, thin, little bloom - Easy to buy the long-scale AC-4 by mistake - Covered tuners rather than sealed Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Uhcl7U) № 4 · If you want the long neck ### Deering Goodtime 19-Fret Tenor - 19 frets, 23″ scale, 35″ end to end - Arrives tuned C G D A - 11″ three-ply violin-grade maple rim - No tone ring, open back - Rock maple neck, 1⅝” nut - 4.5 lb - ~$600 The same banjo as № 2 with two more frets and two more inches, at the same $599, and a defensible choice rather than a compromise. A longer string at the same pitch is under more tension and speaks with more body, and the two extra frets put the top of the second octave inside first position instead of just outside it. The wider fret spacing is easier on large hands and harder on small ones. It also keeps the door open. A 19-fret tenor is the trad-jazz instrument, so if the Irish tunes turn into a broader interest in four-string banjo, this one goes both ways with a change of strings and the short-scale one does not. Everything said about the 17-fret applies: no tone ring, so it is quiet; nothing to carry it in; and it arrives in C G D A, so a heavier set is the first purchase after it. At 4.5 lb and 35 inches it is still light, but it is no longer the banjo that fits in an overhead locker without thought. **Pros**- Built in California, same price as the short one - Fuller-sounding string and two more frets of range - Also the standard trad-jazz layout, so it does both - Wider spacing suits large hands **Cons**- Two inches more stretch in first position - No tone ring - Needs an Irish set before it plays Irish - No case or bag Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xn4Uuw) № 5 · For a loud session ### Gold Tone IT-250F - 17 frets, 19¾” scale - Arrives tuned G D A E - 11″ three-ply maple rim - 40-hole bell brass arch-top tone ring - 14″ mahogany resonator, one-piece cast flange - Ebony board, hearts-and-flowers inlay, planetary tuners - 11 lb, hard case included - ~$1,450 Gold Tone designed this one with the luthier Andy Perkins and describe it, without much hedging, as “the banjo for the Irish tenor banjoist that wants to be heard” — the fourteen-inch resonator, they say, “pushes your music forward and out, assuring that you’ll be heard even in the largest session”. That is the entire proposition and it is an honest one: this is a volume instrument. The parts back it up. A cast bell-brass arch-top ring with forty holes in it is the loudest tone ring configuration anybody makes, and a one-piece cast flange locks the resonator to the pot rigidly rather than letting it float. Ebony board, planetary tuners that hold, a Remo Renaissance head, and a hard case rather than a bag. It is a Mastertone-line instrument, which Gold Tone warrants for the original owner’s lifetime and five years to a second owner. The cost is weight. Eleven pounds is more than twice the Cripple Creek and three times the AC-4 IT, and eleven pounds on a strap for three hours is a real objection rather than a specification. Buy this if you are regularly the quietest thing in a loud room; if you are learning, or playing at home, it is a great deal of banjo pointed at a problem you do not have. **Pros**- By far the loudest here, and built to be - Bell brass arch-top ring and a cast flange - Ebony board and planetary tuners - Hard case included - Lifetime warranty to the first owner **Cons**- 11 lb — heavy on a strap for a long night - Twice the price of the Cripple Creek for the same scale - Resonator is fixed, so it only does the loud job - Wasted on a beginner Around $1,450 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4itbydY) ## The two things to buy with it A spare set of Irish strings, because the first set you fit will be the second set you have owned and the wound second is the one that goes. And a tutor written for this instrument rather than for the five-string: [*Absolute Beginners — Irish Tenor Banjo*](https://amzn.to/3USZOHP) is by Eamonn Coyne, who plays the thing for a living, runs to 48 pages, comes with downloadable audio to play along to, and costs around $16. Ordinary banjo methods will teach you rolls in G, which is the wrong technique in the wrong tuning. A clip-on tuner is worth the ten dollars as well, and our [banjo tuner guide](/best-banjo-tuner/) covers which ones handle a four-string in fifths. If you are still weighing the instrument against its neighbors, [mandolin vs. bouzouki](/mandolin-vs-bouzouki/) covers the other two ways into the same repertoire. ## Which one If you want to play Irish tunes and be done deciding, take the [Gold Tone Cripple Creek Irish Tenor](https://amzn.to/4qDzBJo) at around $700. Short neck, brass ring, correct tuning out of the box, and a resonator you can take off. If it matters to you that the instrument was made in America, the [Deering Goodtime 17-Fret](https://amzn.to/4cK60bl) is a hundred dollars less and a pound lighter, and you accept a quieter banjo and an $8 string swap to get it. If you have big hands or an eye on trad jazz too, take [the 19-fret](https://amzn.to/4xn4Uuw) instead, same money. And if the whole question is whether this instrument is for you at all, the [AC-4 IT](https://amzn.to/3Uhcl7U) answers it properly for $315 — just make sure the IT is on the label. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo for Beginners: 6 Picks, and the Two Choices That Matter](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) **Published:** October 19, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo for Beginners: 6 Picks, and the Two Choices That Matter Two decisions do almost all the work here, and neither of them is about price. How many strings, and open back or resonator. Answer those and the shortlist gets very short — which is the point, because a banjo bought for the wrong style is an expensive thing to discover in month two. Our pick for most beginners### Jameson 5-String Banjo The resonator comes off. That one detail makes it the sensible first banjo when you are not yet certain whether you are heading for bluegrass or clawhammer — bolt it on for volume and bite, take it off for the lighter, warmer old-time sound, and decide once you have played for a while. Around $175 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/402ddLN) **Cheapest worth owning:** AKLOT open back — around $150 **Best for clawhammer:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 **Buy once, American made:** Deering Goodtime — around $600 ## The six at a glance BanjoBackPrice bandBest for[Jameson 5-String](https://amzn.to/402ddLN)Removable resonator~$175Not having decided your style yet[AKLOT Open Back](https://amzn.to/3kIrxZV)Open back~$150The smallest sensible spend[Vangoa 5-String](https://amzn.to/4052TTE)Resonator~$185Everything-in-the-box starters[Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4fT01mM)Open back~$315Clawhammer and old-time[Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3wtykte)Open back~$600Buying once, properly ## Before you pick: three things that decide it ### Five strings, almost certainly When someone says banjo they mean a five-string, and the fifth string is what makes it sound like a banjo at all. It is a short drone string with its own peg partway up the neck, and it rings out over everything you play. Take it away and you have a different instrument. The four-string versions are real instruments with real repertoires, just not the ones most beginners are imagining. A tenor banjo is what Irish players use, tuned in fifths and picked with a plectrum. A plectrum banjo is a trad-jazz instrument. A six-string banjo is tuned like a guitar, which makes it an easy switch for guitarists and a poor way to learn actual banjo technique. If you arrived here after hearing bluegrass or old-time, you want five strings. Our [guide to banjo types](/types-of-banjos/) and [how many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) cover the rest, and we have separate picks for [tenor](/best-tenor-banjo/) and [six-string](/best-6-string-banjo/) banjos. ### Open back or resonator — pick by the music, not the price A **resonator** banjo has a wooden bowl bolted to the back that throws the sound forward. It is loud, bright and cutting — the sound of bluegrass, and what you need to be heard beside a guitar and a fiddle. It also makes the instrument noticeably heavier, and a heavy banjo on a strap for an hour is a real consideration. An **open back** leaves that off. Lighter, softer, warmer, and the sound points at you rather than the room, which suits clawhammer and old-time playing where you are usually in a circle rather than in front of a microphone. It is also the easier instrument to live with, because it is quieter to practice on. We go deeper in [open back vs resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/), and if you already know your style, our picks for [clawhammer](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) and [bluegrass](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) are more specific than this page. If you genuinely do not know yet, buy a resonator banjo whose resonator unbolts, which gets you most of the way to an open back whenever you want it. The reverse is not true, and it is the whole reason the Jameson leads this page. ### What your money actually buys A banjo is simple compared with a guitar — a rim, a stretched head, a neck — so cheap ones fail in specific, predictable ways rather than being mysteriously bad. Under about $150 you get a heavy pot, soft tuners that will not hold pitch, a head tensioned by someone in a hurry, and a bridge dropped in the case rather than positioned. Between roughly $200 and $400 the hardware starts working properly. From about $500 you are into instruments worth keeping, which is where the American-made Deering Goodtime sits. There is more detail in [how much a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/). One thing is specific to the banjo and catches nearly every beginner: **the bridge is not attached**. It is a loose piece of wood held down purely by string pressure, and where it sits determines whether the instrument plays in tune with itself. Banjos routinely arrive with it in the wrong place, or lying in the case, and someone who does not know this concludes the banjo is broken or that they cannot play. Setting it correctly costs nothing and takes minutes — the harmonic at the twelfth fret should match the fretted note there. Our [tuning guide](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) walks through it, and [banjo brands to avoid](/banjo-brands-to-avoid/) is worth reading before buying anything not on this page. ## The six picks № 1 · Best for most beginners ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - 5 strings - Resonator, removable - 24 brackets - ~$175 Most beginners do not yet know whether they are going to end up playing bluegrass or old-time, and this is the cheapest banjo here that lets you postpone the decision. The resonator unbolts, so the same instrument covers both — loud and forward with it on, lighter and sweeter with it off. It is also the most-reviewed banjo on this page by a wide margin, which matters at this price because consistency is the thing budget instruments usually lack. Expect to set the bridge yourself and to want better strings eventually. Neither will hold you back in year one. **Pros**- Plays as a resonator or an open back - By far the largest review record here - 24 brackets at a price where 16 is common **Cons**- Heavy with the resonator fitted - Factory strings and bridge want attention Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/402ddLN) № 2 · The smallest sensible spend ### AKLOT 5-String Open Back - 5 strings - Open back - Maple body, Remo head - ~$150 A genuine open back rather than a resonator banjo with the back removed, and a Remo head — the same brand fitted to instruments costing several times as much — which is the single component most responsible for how a cheap banjo sounds. At this price the tuners are the weak point and the neck may want adjusting. But it is light, it is quiet enough to practice on without irritating the household, and it is the least money we would spend on something you can actually learn clawhammer on. **Pros**- Remo head at a budget price - Light and comfortable to hold - Properly open backed, not a conversion **Cons**- Tuners are the first thing to replace - Too quiet to hold its own in a bluegrass jam Around $150[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3kIrxZV) № 3 · Best complete starter kit ### Vangoa 5-String with Resonator - 5 strings - Resonator - Remo head - Full accessory kit - ~$185 Buy this if you would rather not assemble a shopping list. It arrives with the strap, picks, tuner, spare strings and gig bag that you would otherwise be ordering separately in week two, and the Remo head means the instrument underneath is not an afterthought. The bundled accessories are functional rather than good — the tuner in particular will get replaced — but the total is still cheaper than buying the banjo and the pile separately, and the gap to a bare banjo is now small enough that the kit is close to free. Our [Vangoa banjo review](/vangoa-banjo-review/) goes through it in detail. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Genuinely nothing else to buy on day one - Remo head - Strong review record **Cons**- Accessories are basic - Ten dollars dearer than rivals with the same spec sheet Around $185[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4052TTE) № 4 · Best for clawhammer ### Gold Tone AC-1 - 5 strings - Open back - Composite rim - Gig bag included - ~$315 Gold Tone builds proper instruments, and the AC-1 is the one they aim at people starting old-time and clawhammer. The composite rim keeps it very light — this is a banjo you can hold for an evening — and it has the dry, woody voice that clawhammer wants rather than the metallic ring of a bluegrass setup. It is twice the price of the AKLOT, and what you get is an established maker’s hardware rather than whatever the factory had in the bin. If clawhammer is definitely the plan, this is where we would start rather than saving $150 and fighting the instrument. It is also the one Gold Tone whose warranty transfers in full — five years to you and five years to whoever you sell it to, where most of their range gives a second owner a year or nothing. Gold Tone sets it up in Florida before it ships, which is why it plays properly out of the bag. **Pros**- Made by an established banjo builder - Very light — easy to play for hours - Tone genuinely suited to old-time **Cons**- Composite rim divides opinion on looks - Not the banjo for bluegrass volume - Twice the price of the budget picks above Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4fT01mM) № 5 · Buy once, properly ### Deering Goodtime Openback - 5 strings - Open back - Made in the USA - ~$600 The instrument experienced players point beginners at when the beginner says they are certain. Built in California by the largest banjo maker in America, with a rock maple neck and rim, and set up properly before it ships — which is why it sounds like a banjo the moment you open the case rather than after an afternoon of adjustment. It is also the one on this page most likely to be the last banjo you buy. If you are weighing this against a budget instrument now plus a better one in two years, this is the cheaper path. Our [Deering Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/) covers it properly, and [American-made banjos](/best-american-made-banjo/) puts it in context. **Pros**- American built and properly set up - Holds its value if you ever sell - Easy to get serviced and upgraded **Cons**- Four times the price of the entry picks - Open back only — add a resonator later for bluegrass Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3wtykte) ## Also worth a look BanjoWhy you might pick it[Costzon 5-String](https://amzn.to/3RkbFct)The cheapest here. Buy it only if the alternative is not buying a banjo at all.[Kmise Resonator](https://amzn.to/3wqTnN1)Close to the Jameson on spec for thirty dollars less; worth comparing when one is discounted.[Pyle PBJ60](https://amzn.to/3HElAGB)The cheapest full-size resonator with a Remo head and a truss rod, but the fifth peg is a friction one. See our [Pyle review](/pyle-banjo-review/).[Pyle PBJ140](https://amzn.to/4zHo9jZ)Pyle’s ~$200 bundle, with a real geared fifth peg and an armrest. Two things to know: the fingerboard is engineered wood rather than rosewood, and the “tuner” in the kit is a phone app, not a device — you will still want the clip-on below.[Washburn B10](https://amzn.to/3XzJEj3)A step up in materials if you find it below list. Covered in our [Washburn B10 review](/washburn-b10-banjo-review/). ## What to buy alongside it WhatWhy it matters[Clip-on chromatic tuner](https://amzn.to/3RHrsGT)Five strings, and the fifth is easy to knock out of tune. A chromatic clip-on handles any tuning you move to later — more options in [our banjo tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/).[Spare 5-string set](https://amzn.to/4i2P9nv)Factory strings are the weakest part of a budget banjo and the cheapest thing to upgrade. See [our string guide](/best-banjo-strings/). Fingerpicks too, if you are heading for bluegrass — metal on the fingers, plastic on the thumb. They feel wrong for a week and then become invisible. Clawhammer players need none of that; that style is played with a bare fingernail. There are more starting-out notes in our [banjo tips for beginners](/banjo-tips-for-beginners/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the banjo hard to learn? Easier to start than most string instruments and harder to get good at than people expect. The open G tuning means strumming the open strings already sounds like a chord, so you get something musical in the first hour. What takes time is the right hand: both clawhammer and three-finger picking are unfamiliar motions that have to become automatic before you can think about anything else. More in [how hard the banjo is to learn](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). ### Clawhammer or bluegrass first? Whichever produced the sound that made you want a banjo — they are different right-hand techniques, not difficulty levels. Clawhammer strikes down with the back of the fingernail and is the older, rhythmic old-time style. Three-finger bluegrass picking uses picks and rolls, and is what most people picture. Learning one does not teach you the other, so choose the music you actually like. ### How long until I can play a tune? A simple one within a few weeks of steady practice, and something you would play for other people inside a year. The banjo is unusually generous early because so much of the repertoire sits in one tuning. See [how long it takes to learn the banjo](/how-long-to-learn-the-banjo/). ### Why does my banjo sound out of tune with itself? Almost always the bridge. It is loose by design, and if it sits even slightly out of position the open strings can be perfectly in tune while everything you fret is sharp or flat. Check that the harmonic at the twelfth fret matches the fretted note there, and slide the bridge until it does. The other usual suspect is a head that has gone slack. ### How heavy is a banjo? Heavier than it looks, and resonator models are the heavy ones — often 10 to 12 pounds against 5 or 6 for an open back. If you are buying for a child, or for someone who will play standing, that matters more than any argument about tone. We put numbers to it in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ## So which one? If you are not sure which style you are heading for, buy the [Jameson](https://amzn.to/402ddLN) and let the removable resonator settle it for you. If it is definitely old-time and clawhammer, the [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4fT01mM) is the point where a banjo stops arguing with you. If it is definitely bluegrass and the budget is tight, leave the Jameson’s resonator bolted on. And if you already know this is going to stick, the [Deering Goodtime](https://amzn.to/3wtykte) is the cheaper route once you count the instrument you would otherwise replace it with. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Autoharps for Beginners: 15 Bars or 21, and What Else to Check](https://promusicvault.com/best-autoharps-for-beginners/) **Published:** June 26, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Harp Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/harp-reviews/ "Harp Reviews")› Best Autoharps for Beginners: 15 Bars or 21, and What Else to Check One company makes almost every autoharp you can actually buy, so the question is not which brand but which model — and the model decides which keys you can play in. A 15-bar autoharp covers seven keys. A 21-bar covers eleven, for about thirty dollars more. That is the whole decision. The verdict### Buy the Oscar Schmidt OS21C. Twenty-one chord bars, 36 strings, maple top and back over a rock maple pin block. It is the standard against which the rest of the line is priced, and the six bars it has over the 15-bar model are the ones your songs keep asking for. Around $450 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U9OJC4) **Same harp with a pickup built in:** [the OS21CE, around $440](https://amzn.to/4wDAbba) **Spruce top, darker and louder:** [the OS73C reissue, around $470](https://amzn.to/4igpPdW) **If you only ever play in C, G and D:** [the 15-bar OS15B, around $420](https://amzn.to/3Hd8CxT) ## Fifteen bars plays seven keys. Twenty-one plays eleven. Every autoharp here has the same 36 strings. What changes is how many chord bars sit across them, and a bar you do not have is a chord you cannot play at all — there is no fingering around it the way there is on a guitar. The standard 15-bar layout gives you six majors (E♭, B♭, F, C, G, D), three minors (Gm, Dm, Am) and six sevenths (F7, C7, G7, D7, A7, E7). The 21-bar adds exactly six bars: **A and A♭ major, Cm and Em, and B7 and B♭7**. Those six do more than the count suggests, because a key needs its I, IV and V7 chords together. On 15 bars you get C, G, D, F and B♭ major, plus A minor and D minor — seven keys. E♭ is missing its A♭ and B♭7, so it does not quite work, and the key of A has no A major to start from. Add the six extra bars and A and E♭ both open up, E minor gets its B7 and G minor gets its Cm. Seven becomes eleven. The key of A is the one that decides this for most people. Fiddle tunes, a great deal of gospel, and any singer who has moved a song up to sit better in their range all end up there, and the 15-bar simply cannot follow. Thirty dollars is not a real saving against that. There is a second difference. On a 21-bar autoharp the chord bars can be lifted out and rearranged in any order you like, so you can put the chords of the key you play most under your strongest fingers. On a 15-bar the bars only move within the row they already sit in. You can swap the D and the Dm; you cannot bring the E7 up to join them. ModelBarsKeysTop / backPickupFine tunersPrice band**OS21C** the default2111Maple / maple, gloss——~$450**OS21CE**2111Maple / maple, glossPassive—~$440**OS73C** 1930s reissue2111Spruce / mahogany, satin——~$470**OS73CE** 1930s reissue2111Spruce / mahogany, satinPassive—~$490**OS15B** the Berkshire157Maple / maple, gloss——~$420**OS120CNE** the Adirondack2111Solid spruce / bird’s eye maplePassiveFT600~$660**OS11021FNE**2111Flame maple, glossPassiveFT600~$840 ## The four worth a beginner’s money The one to buy### Oscar Schmidt OS21C - 21 chord bars in three rows of seven, 36 strings - Plays in eleven keys - Maple top and back, gloss finish - Laminated rock maple pin block - Tuning wrench, tuning tips and picks in the box This is the instrument the autoharp world is built around. Method books are written for its layout, and replacement felts, chord bars and buttons are all made for it. None of that makes it a better instrument than the spruce-topped reissue below, but it does mean nothing you want to do later will be difficult. The maple body is bright and quite even from the bass strings up, which suits a singer — it sits under a voice rather than competing with it. The rock maple pin block is the part that matters most and it is the same on every model here: it is what stops 36 strings at tension from dragging themselves flat inside a week. **Pros**- Eleven keys, including A and E♭ - Chord bars rearrange into any order you like - The layout every autoharp book assumes - Parts and felts are easy to come by **Cons**- Arrives badly out of tune and needs daily attention for a fortnight - Bright rather than warm — the spruce models have more body - No case of any kind included Around $450 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U9OJC4) If you will ever plug in### Oscar Schmidt OS21CE - The OS21C with a passive pickup fitted - 21 bars, 36 strings, eleven keys - Maple top and back, gloss tobacco sunburst - Standard quarter-inch output jack Identical to the OS21C in every specification except the pickup, and it costs about the same. If there is any chance of a jam, a service, a folk club or a recording in your future, take the pickup — an autoharp is quiet, and it is the instrument that disappears first when a guitar sits down next to it. The pickup is passive, which means no battery and no volume control on the instrument. You set the level at the far end, and a passive pickup wants either an amp with a decent input or a DI box; run it into a mixer’s line input and it will sound thin. Budget for a lead as well. **Pros**- Same instrument as the OS21C, amplifiable - No battery to die mid-song - Costs about what the acoustic version does **Cons**- No volume control on the instrument - Wants an amp or a DI, not a line input - Owner ratings run lower than the plain OS21C’s Around $440 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wDAbba) The better-sounding one### Oscar Schmidt OS73C, the 1930s reissue - Spruce top, mahogany back, black satin finish - 21 chord bars, 36 strings, eleven keys - Raised bridge, built to the pre-war pattern - Takes type A strings, not the modern ball-ends Spruce over mahogany is the combination every acoustic guitar maker reaches for, and it does the same thing here: more depth under the melody, a longer decay, and noticeably more volume than the maple models when you play it unaccompanied. The satin finish is part of that — there is less lacquer damping the top. The catch is the string anchor. Because this is a copy of the old design, the strings loop over pegs on the pin block rather than seating as ball-ends, which makes it a type A instrument. Modern Oscar Schmidts are type B. When a string breaks — and one will — the set you order has to say A, and a great many autoharp string sets on sale are for B. It is a twenty-second check that saves an expensive wrong parcel. **Pros**- Spruce and mahogany: warmer and louder than maple - All 21 bars and eleven keys - To my eye the best-looking autoharp made today **Cons**- Type A strings — easy to order the wrong set - About twenty dollars more than the OS21C - Satin black shows fingerprints and dust Around $470 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4igpPdW) Only if the keys suit you### Oscar Schmidt OS15B, the Berkshire - 15 chord bars in two rows, 36 strings - Plays in seven keys - Maple top and back, gloss tobacco sunburst - Rock maple pin block The 15-bar is a real instrument and there is a genuine case for it: fewer bars means a lighter, shallower chord bar assembly, a shorter reach across the buttons and less to look at while you are learning where things are. Music teachers have bought these by the dozen for classrooms for decades, and for a child, or for an adult who only wants to strum along in C, G and D, it does the job. What it is not is a way to save money. It costs about thirty dollars less than the OS21C and gives up four keys, the ability to rearrange the bars, and any song that goes to A. If the thirty dollars is the reason you are considering it, buy the 21-bar instead; if the simpler layout is the reason, this is the right instrument. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- Lighter, simpler bar assembly — easier for small hands - Fewer buttons to learn your way around - Same strings, pin block and body as the OS21C **Cons**- Seven keys, and no key of A at all - Bars only move within their own row - Barely cheaper than the 21-bar Around $420 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Hd8CxT) ## Also worth a look ModelWhy you mightPrice band**Oscar Schmidt OS73CE**The spruce-topped reissue with the pickup already fitted. The best-sounding autoharp on this page that a beginner would sensibly buy.~$490[Check price](https://amzn.to/4qwdvse)**Oscar Schmidt OS120CNE** the AdirondackSolid spruce top, bird’s eye maple back, a pickup, and the FT600 fine tuning system — geared tuners that make setting 36 strings a job rather than an ordeal.~$660[Check price](https://amzn.to/3ShZUIn)**Oscar Schmidt OS11021FNE**The top of the line: flame maple, gloss, pickup, FT600. Buy it because you want it, not because it will teach you faster.~$840[Check price](https://amzn.to/3XFujhe)**ChromaHarp 21-chord**The only other autoharp brand with a foothold. Maple top and back, 21 bars, built in China. It costs a little more than the OS21C with far fewer owners behind it, so it is a choice, not an upgrade.~$465[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xTIukr) ## Fine tuners are the upgrade worth understanding An autoharp has 36 strings and no geared machine heads. Every one of them is set with a wrench on a square pin, and a pin turns a long way for a very small change in pitch — you are trying to land a semitone’s worth of travel inside a few degrees of wrist movement. Overshoot and you go back the other way, and the string settles somewhere else again an hour later. The FT600 system on the OS120CNE and OS11021FNE adds a geared fine tuner to each string, so the wrench gets you close and a thumbscrew does the last cent. It is the difference between forty minutes and ten. Whether that is worth two hundred dollars over an OS21C depends entirely on how often you expect to tune, which for the first month is every single day. Fine tuners can also be retrofitted later, which is the reason not to stretch for them now. Start on the OS21C, find out whether you are still playing in six months, and add them then if the tuning is what is putting you off. A [good chromatic clip-on tuner](https://promusicvault.com/best-harp-tuner/) does more for the first month than geared tuners would. ## What owning one is actually like It will arrive out of tune, and not slightly. Thirty-six strings shipped across the country in a cardboard carton in whatever temperature the lorry was arrive somewhere near their notes rather than on them, and the first tuning takes the better part of an hour. For the first two weeks the strings and the pin block are still finding each other and you should expect to touch it up every day. After that it settles into something more like a guitar — a few strings drifting every few days. Strings do break, usually in the top octave, usually while tuning. A full set of 36 runs to about $125, which is a real cost of ownership on a $450 instrument. Single strings are sold individually for a couple of dollars each, which is what you will actually buy, and the number stamped on the string is what to order by. Get the model right first: type B ball-ends for the OS21C, OS21CE and OS15B, type A for the OS73 reissues. The felts under the chord bars are the other consumable. They are what mute the strings you are not playing, and when they wear thin the chords start sounding muddy at the edges rather than clean. Replacing them is a job you can do at the kitchen table with a strip of felt and some patience, and the maker publishes instructions for it. One thing you do not need to buy is a tuning wrench. One comes in the box, and it is the right one: modern Oscar Schmidt pins are square, while most of the cheap general-purpose tuning hammers sold alongside them have a round or star-shaped opening and will round off your pins if they engage at all. The warranty is five years, and it is worth knowing two things about it. It is non-transferable, so a second-hand instrument carries nothing, and it only applies to instruments bought from an authorized Oscar Schmidt dealer. The electronics on the pickup models are covered for one year rather than five. ## Buy these with it Get one of these### Oscar Schmidt AC445 padded gig bag - Padded nylon, shaped to fit 15- and 21-bar autoharps - Takes instruments up to 23″ long, 12″ across the wide end - Zipped outside pocket - Removable backpack straps, plus a shoulder strap An autoharp ships in a cardboard box and nothing else, and it is an awkward shape with 36 exposed strings and a bank of buttons that catch on everything. This is the minimum, and the backpack straps matter more than they sound like they should — the instrument is wide enough that carrying it by a handle means walking sideways through doors. Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gqeFAY) Or this, if it travels### Oscar Schmidt deluxe hardshell autoharp case - Vinyl-covered hardshell with plush lining - Self-closing interior pocket for the wrench and picks - Brass-finish latches, reinforced corners Worth the extra over the gig bag if the instrument goes anywhere in a car boot, or if it lives somewhere the temperature swings. A hard case does not just stop knocks; it slows down the humidity changes that put a tuned autoharp out again overnight. Around $130 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/45K5KFt) Start here for the playing### You Can Teach Yourself Autoharp, Meg Peterson - Self-instruction method, step by step - Covers playing positions, chord changes, back-up strums, arpeggios, melody and rhythm picking - Songs arranged for the 15-chord instrument, so they work on either Peterson wrote most of the autoharp method literature there is, and this is the one that assumes nothing. Each strum pattern builds on the one before it rather than presenting a menu, which is the right shape for an instrument whose difficulty is entirely in the right hand — the left hand only ever presses one button. Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hMy80Y) ## It is not a harp The autoharp is a chorded zither. Its strings run flat across a soundbox with no pillar and no neck, which puts it in the [same family as the lap harp and the hammered dulcimer](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) rather than with the [harps proper](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/). The name was a trademark before it was a description. That matters practically rather than pedantically. Autoharp strings, felts, wrenches and method books are their own category and do not interchange with harp parts, and a tutor who teaches harp will not necessarily teach this. Search for the instrument by its own name and the right things come back. ## Who makes them Oscar Schmidt was founded in 1871 and incorporated in 1911, with five factories in Europe and one on Ferry Street in Jersey City turning out guitars, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles and zithers. The autoharp is the line that survived. Instruments are built overseas now and, by the company’s own description, inspected and adjusted in the United States before they ship — which is worth reading precisely, because it is a setup claim rather than a manufacturing one. What it means in practice is that these are consistent instruments rather than exceptional ones. Two OS21Cs will be much the same. Neither will be a hand-built harp, and at this price nothing is. **Categories:** Harp Reviews --- ### [Best American Made Banjos: What's Actually Built in the USA](https://promusicvault.com/best-american-made-banjo/) **Published:** March 27, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best American Made Banjos: What’s Actually Built in the USA Three of the brands most often called American banjo makers are American companies that have their banjos built in Asia. Gold Tone says so on their own website. Recording King makes no claim about where their instruments are made at all. That leaves one maker whose banjos are widely sold and genuinely built in the United States, and the real question is which of its models to buy. Deering builds their banjos in Spring Valley, California, ten miles east of San Diego. Deering, Vega, Tenbrooks and Goodtime banjos are all built in the same Spring Valley factory. Five Goodtimes cover everything from a first banjo to an instrument you could take to a jam, at between about $630 and $1,000. Best American made banjo### Deering Goodtime Two The resonator Goodtime, built in California, and the one most people who want an American banjo should buy. Six pounds, a three-ply violin grade maple rim, and a neck that plays properly out of the box. It has no tone ring, which caps how loud and bright it will ever get — but nothing at this price is better made, and Deering back it for eight years. Around $850 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WINHsr) **Cheapest way in:** Goodtime openback — around $630 **Clawhammer and old-time:** Goodtime Americana — around $750 **The only one with a tone ring:** Goodtime Special — around $1,000 ## At a glance BanjoPotTone ringWeightPrice bandBest for[Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4zBXAN8)11″ open backNone4.5 lb~$630A first American banjo[Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4zCXgxq)12″ open backNone4.5 lb~$750Clawhammer and old-time[Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/3WINHsr)11″ resonatorNone6 lb~$850Bluegrass, and playing in a group[Artisan Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4irZxWa)11″ open backNone—~$950A better-dressed open back[Goodtime Special](https://amzn.to/4irZv0u)11″ resonatorPatented steel8.75 lb~$1,000Being heard in a jam ## What American building costs you, in parts This is the trade, and it is worth understanding before you spend the money rather than after. Take the cheapest banjo here against its exact imported counterpart. The Deering Goodtime open back is about $630. Gold Tone’s CC-100, also an eleven-inch open back, lists at $629.99 — and it has an eleven-inch rolled brass tone ring, 24 brackets holding the head down, a ZeroGlide nut and a gig bag. The Deering has no tone ring, 16 flat J-hooks, a Lexan polycarbonate nut and nothing in the box but the banjo. Same money, and on a specification sheet the American one loses every line. What the money buys instead is the neck, the rim and the assembly. The rim is three-ply violin grade maple, the neck is rock maple cut and fitted in California, and the two are set to each other by someone whose job is banjos rather than volume. That is why a Goodtime plays well straight out of the carton when a $200 import needs [$60 to $125 of setup work](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) before it is comfortable. It is also why Goodtimes hold their money secondhand. Whether that is the right trade depends entirely on what you are going to do with it. Playing at home, on your own or with one other person, the missing tone ring is not audible as a problem — a ringless pot is warmer and softer, which is what old-time players deliberately choose. In a jam with a guitar, a fiddle and a mandolin all going at once, it gets buried, and playing harder will not fix it. That is the one situation where the imported banjo with the brass ring is the better instrument. ### The warranty is the other half of it Deering cover new Goodtime banjos for eight years, on instruments made on or after 1 January 2025; anything built before that carries the original six-year term. You have to register the banjo for the cover to exist at all — Deering treats the returned warranty card as a condition of the warranty, not a formality — and it does not transfer if you sell it. It excludes what you would expect and a bit more: normal wear, fret wear, finish, strings, a worn nut or bridge, and any case or gig bag. You also pay the freight to the factory and back. Deering’s own upper lines — the Deering, Vega and Tenbrooks banjos above the Goodtimes — carry no time limit at all, to the original owner only. ## The picks № 1 · Best overall ### Deering Goodtime Two - 11″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, resonator - Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets - Two-piece Goodtime series flange, 16 flat J-hooks - Sealed geared tuners and a geared fifth-string tuner - 6 lb, no tone ring - ~$850 The banjo most people mean when they ask for an American one. The resonator — the wooden back — throws the sound forward at the audience instead of letting it escape behind you, which is what makes this the bluegrass shape rather than the old-time one. At six pounds it is light for a resonator banjo; the imported equivalents with cast rings run to nine or ten. The nut is Lexan polycarbonate rather than bone, and 16 hooks is few by the standards of the price. Neither is a fault so much as where Deering chose to spend and not spend, and the fifth-string tuner being geared rather than a friction peg matters more day to day than either. If you already know bluegrass is where this is going, read the [bluegrass guide](/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) before buying, because the tone ring question decides it. **Pros**- Built in California, and plays properly without a setup - Light for a resonator banjo at 6 lb - Geared fifth-string tuner, not a friction peg - Eight-year cover on current builds - Holds its value secondhand **Cons**- No tone ring, so it will not cut through a jam - Plastic nut and only 16 hooks at this price - Two-piece flange rather than a one-piece cast one - Nothing in the box but the banjo Around $850[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WINHsr) № 2 · Cheapest American banjo worth owning ### Deering Goodtime (open back) - 11″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, open back - Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets - 11″ frosted high crown head, 16 flat J-hooks - Hand-rubbed polyurethane and carnauba wax finish - 4.5 lb - ~$630 The same neck and rim as the Goodtime Two with the resonator left off, which takes a pound and a half out of it and drops the price by two hundred dollars. Four and a half pounds is genuinely light — you can hold it on your knee for an hour without noticing — and the open back gives the softer, drier voice that clawhammer and old-time playing wants. This listing bundles a padded gig bag, a clip-on chromatic tuner, a mute and picks with the banjo, which is most of what a first-time buyer would otherwise be ordering separately. If bluegrass is the goal, buy the Goodtime Two instead rather than planning to bolt a resonator on later. Our [full Goodtime review](/deering-goodtime-5-string-banjo-review/) goes through the instrument in detail, and [open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) covers the choice itself. **Pros**- The lowest price on an American-built banjo here - 4.5 lb, and comfortable to hold for a long session - Arrives with a bag, tuner, mute and picks - Right voice for clawhammer and old-time **Cons**- Open back is quiet in company - 11″ rim is small for serious clawhammer — see the Americana - Same plastic nut and 16 hooks as the rest of the line Around $630[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zBXAN8) № 3 · Best for clawhammer ### Deering Goodtime Americana - 12″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, open back - 12″ Renaissance medium crown head - Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets - Natural maple stain, satin finish - 4.5 lb - ~$750 The rim is twelve inches across instead of eleven, and the head is Renaissance rather than frosted white. Both changes push in the same direction: a deeper, woodier, plummier note with less of the sharp attack a bluegrass banjo is built to produce. That is the sound old-time players spend money to get, and a bigger rim is the honest way to get it rather than a tweak you can retrofit. It stays at four and a half pounds despite the larger pot, and it costs about $120 more than the eleven-inch Goodtime. If you already know you are playing clawhammer and frailing rather than three-finger rolls, this is the one to start on, not the cheaper Goodtime. See [our clawhammer picks](/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) for how it sits against the rest of the field. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Pros**- 12″ rim and Renaissance head, which is the old-time voice - Still only 4.5 lb - Built in California like the rest of the line - The right first banjo if clawhammer is the plan **Cons**- Wrong instrument for bluegrass — quiet, and no resonator - $120 over the standard Goodtime for one specification change - Renaissance heads look translucent, which not everyone likes Around $750[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zCXgxq) № 4 · The one with a tone ring ### Deering Goodtime Special - Patented Goodtime Special steel tone ring - 11″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, 13⅞″ resonator - Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets - Hand-rubbed polyurethane with carnauba wax - 8.75 lb - ~$1,000 The first Goodtime with anything under the head at all, and the reason to stretch past the Goodtime Two. Deering’s steel ring is a simpler thing than the sand-cast bell brass in their professional banjos, but it is the difference between a banjo that gets absorbed by a room and one that pushes back — more volume, a harder attack, and notes that separate instead of blurring. It weighs 8.75 pounds, nearly three more than the Goodtime Two, and that is the ring and the heavier pot doing their job. Deering’s own list price for it is $1,229, and it is the last rung before a different class of instrument entirely: Gold Tone’s OB-150, where a sand-cast bell brass ring and a one-piece die-cast flange start, is around $1,300, and Deering’s own cast-ring banjos begin well above that. Our [picks around $1,000](/best-banjo-under-1000/) and the [intermediate guide](/best-intermediate-banjo/) both cover that comparison. **Pros**- The only Goodtime with a tone ring - Loud and clear enough to hold its own in a group - Same California build and eight-year cover - A real step up rather than a cosmetic one **Cons**- 8.75 lb, which is heavy on a strap for a long set - Steel ring, not the cast brass of the professional banjos - The dearest banjo here, and the heaviest by nearly three pounds Around $1,000[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4irZv0u) ## American companies, imported banjos Two brands come up constantly in answer to this question, and neither builds its banjos in the United States. ### Gold Tone Gold Tone is a real Florida company. Wayne and Robyn Rogers founded it in Titusville in 1993, every model is their own design, and they publish where the instruments are built on a page called Our Instrument Origins: *“The final blueprints for each product are sent to one of our partner factories in China and Korea. The majority of instruments produced by Gold Tone are manufactured in a Korean owned-and-managed factory in China that we’ve worked with since 1993.”* What happens in Florida is design, prototyping and a twelve-point setup on every instrument before it goes out. That is worth something — it is why a Gold Tone tends to arrive playable where a cheaper import does not — but the word on their own specification sheets is “setup”, not “made”. If your reason for wanting an American banjo is that you want an American-built instrument, a Cripple Creek is not one. If your reason is that you want to buy from an American company, it is. [Deering against Gold Tone](/deering-vs-gold-tone/) compares the instruments themselves. One exception is worth knowing. Gold Tone bought Ome Banjos in September 2023 and moved the entire Ome workshop from Boulder, Colorado to a separate building in Titusville, a few blocks from their own. Ome banjos are still built by hand in the United States, and they are the one American-made line the group makes. ### Recording King Recording King was Montgomery Ward’s house brand in the 1930s, which is where the American heritage comes from and where it stops. The name was revived in 2007 as an import line, and the brand today describes itself as woven into the fabric of American traditional music — a claim about the music, not about a factory. They publish no country of origin for any instrument. St. Louis Music has been the exclusive global distributor since August 2025. The banjos are good for what they are and the RK-R35-BR has a Mastertone-style cast bell brass ring and a one-piece flange, which no Goodtime has at any price. It is simply not an American-made banjo, and its list price moved sharply when the distributor changed, so the old reputation as the budget bluegrass answer is worth re-examining rather than assuming. We go through it in the [RK-35 review](/recording-king-rk-35-review/). Two smaller cases work the same way. Jameson is an import brand with no American manufacturing at all, and Washburn trade on a Chicago name from 1883 while publishing no country of origin for any banjo in their line. ## The other American builders Deering is the American maker with a full range running from a first banjo upward. It is not the only one building in the United States, and the others are worth knowing by name if you are shopping seriously or looking secondhand. - **Deering** — Spring Valley, California. Goodtime, Deering, Vega and Tenbrooks are all built there, from about $600 to the tens of thousands. - **Ome** — Titusville, Florida since 2023, and Boulder, Colorado before that. Chuck Ogsbury built his first hundred banjos in 1960 and founded Ome in 1970; high-end open backs and resonator banjos. - **Huber** — Nashville, Tennessee. Prewar-Gibson-style bluegrass banjos, warranted to the original owner with no time limit. - **Stelling** — Virginia. Geoff Stelling has been building since the 1970s, and a Stelling is one of the standard answers to what a professional bluegrass banjo is. - **Pisgah** — Asheville, North Carolina. Open-back banjos, in their own words hand-made in the Appalachian mountains with native hardwoods and 100% solar power. These are small shops building to order, and their banjos start where Deering’s Goodtimes finish. None of them competes with a $630 Goodtime, and none of them is trying to. ## An American-made part worth fitting Upgrade ### Pisgah Mulheron banjo bridge - Continuous-leg design, hand made - Made by Pisgah Banjo Co, Asheville, North Carolina - Fits standard five-string banjos - ~$45 delivered The bridge is the one part of a banjo that costs almost nothing to change and audibly changes the instrument, because every string’s vibration reaches the head through it. A continuous-leg bridge — where the feet are cut from the same unbroken piece as the top rather than sitting on separate legs — gives a more stable platform, and Pisgah’s argument is that it transfers the note more evenly and will not sag over years of string tension the way a conventional bridge can. It is a hand-made part from a small Appalachian shop, and it is priced accordingly rather than as a bargain. But if the appeal of an American banjo is that a person made it, this is the cheapest way to have that be true of something on your instrument, and it will fit the Goodtime you buy above. Around $45 delivered[Check current price](https://amzn.to/45Qh0Ab) ## Which one to buy If you want a bluegrass banjo and can spend $850, the [Goodtime Two](https://amzn.to/3WINHsr) is the answer, with the understanding that the tone ring is the thing you are giving up and the build is the thing you are getting. If clawhammer or old-time is the plan, the [Goodtime Americana](https://amzn.to/4zCXgxq) and its twelve-inch rim is the right instrument and the cheaper eleven-inch [Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4zBXAN8) is the right compromise. The [Artisan Goodtime](https://amzn.to/4irZxWa) is the same eleven-inch banjo with a stained neck and better appointments at around $950 — a cosmetic step above either of them rather than a musical one, and it is [reviewed in full here](/deering-goodtime-artisan-review/). And if you are going to be playing with other people, the [Goodtime Special](https://amzn.to/4irZv0u) is the only American banjo here that will be heard, which is worth the step up from the Goodtime Two if a jam is genuinely where this is going and nothing at all if it is not. Still deciding what kind of banjo you want? Start with [the types of banjo](/types-of-banjos/), or [our beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) if this is the first one. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Accordions for Beginners: Piano, Button, and What They Really Cost](https://promusicvault.com/best-accordions-for-beginners/) **Published:** December 11, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Accordion Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/accordion-reviews/ "Accordion Reviews")› Best Accordions for Beginners: Piano, Button, and What They Really Cost The accordion is one of the few instruments where buying the wrong kind means you cannot play the music you bought it for. A piano accordion and a three-row button accordion are both accordions, both have bellows, and both cost about the same — but they play different repertoires, and no amount of practice converts one into the other. Get that choice right and the rest is mostly budget. Best instrument for the money### Hohner Panther G/C/F The strongest accordion you can buy online at any price near this one: 31 treble buttons, 12 bass, and a reputation earned across hundreds of buyers. It is a diatonic button accordion, so it plays in G, C and F — which covers conjunto, norteño, vallenato and a great deal of folk. If that is your music, nothing else here competes. Around $600 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Y5BnWI) **For polka, folk, classical and pop:** Hohner Hohnica 1304 piano accordion — around $860 **Same instrument, norteño keys:** Hohner Panther F/B♭/E♭ — around $700 **More piano accordion:** Hohner Hohnica 1305, 34 keys and 72 bass — around $940 ## At a glance InstrumentTypeTreble / bassWeightPrice bandBest for[Hohner Panther G/C/F](https://amzn.to/3Y5BnWI)3-row diatonic31 buttons / 12 bass9 lb~$600Conjunto, vallenato, Tex-Mex[Hohner Hohnica 1304](https://amzn.to/4xCYBCP)Piano accordion26 keys / 48 bass12 lb~$860Everything else, and smaller players[Hohner Panther F/B♭/E♭](https://amzn.to/4gemklJ)3-row diatonic31 buttons / 12 bass9 lb~$700Norteño, playing with a band in those keys[Hohner Hohnica 1305](https://amzn.to/3U2ABdM)Piano accordion34 keys / 72 bass17 lb~$940Full-size adults who know they will stick with it[Hohner D40](https://amzn.to/3YFjSws)Anglo concertina20 buttons2 lb~$315Sea shanties and Irish tunes — a different instrument ## The choice that decides everything else ### Piano keys or buttons A piano accordion has a small piano keyboard under the right hand. Every note is available, so you can play in any key, and if you have touched a piano before you already know where the notes are. That flexibility is why it is the default in most of the United States and Europe, and why almost all published beginner method books assume you have one. A three-row diatonic button accordion has buttons instead, and each one gives a different note depending on whether you push or pull the bellows. It is lighter, louder for its size, and quicker to play fast runs on. The trade is that it only plays in three keys — the ones printed on the box. It is the instrument of conjunto, norteño, vallenato and Tex-Mex, and if that is the music you have in your head, a piano accordion will not make those sounds. Both are reasonable first instruments. The question is only which music you are buying it for. ### On a button accordion, the key set is not a color choice The same button accordion is sold in several tunings, and buying the wrong one is the most expensive mistake available on this page, because you cannot retune your way out of it. G/C/F is the standard for Texas conjunto and for Colombian vallenato, and it is what most teaching material and most YouTube lessons assume. F/B♭/E♭ is what a great deal of norteño is played in. E/A/D turns up too, though less often. If you have a teacher, or a band, or a relative who plays, buy the key set they use — playing along is most of how this instrument is learned, and the wrong tuning locks you out of that entirely. With no one to match, G/C/F is the safe default. One naming quirk worth knowing: there is no such tuning as “FBE”. Where you see it written that way, the instrument is F/B♭/E♭ — the same thing written carelessly. ### Forty-eight bass buttons is the real floor The left hand of a piano accordion uses the Stradella system: columns of single bass notes and columns of preset chords. How many buttons you have decides which chords exist at all, and this is where cheap accordions quietly stop being instruments. A 12-bass left hand gives you six bass notes and six major chords. There are no minor chords on it — not hard ones, none. An 8-bass gives you four of each. You cannot play a sad song on either, and you cannot learn the relationship between a major and a minor chord on an instrument that only has one of them. A 48-bass is laid out twelve rows by four columns: root, counter-bass, major, minor, in all twelve keys. That is a complete left hand, and everything above 48 adds sevenths and diminished chords rather than fixing something missing. So the 22-key, 8-bass boxes that fill the first page of search results are not cheap accordions. They are the shape of an accordion with most of the instrument left out, and the money is gone either way. ## The picks № 1 · Best instrument for the money ### Hohner Panther G/C/F - 3-row diatonic - 31 treble buttons - 12 bass - Two reed sets - 9 lb - ~$600 Hohner designed the Panther in Germany and builds it in China, which is the whole reason a real accordion company’s instrument lands near $600 instead of $1,300. What you get for the compromise is the layout, the bellows and the reed voicing of the instruments people actually gig with, at the price of a decent guitar. It is far and away the best-reviewed thing on this page, across a body of buyers deep enough that a bad batch would show. Around $600 is simply what this instrument costs, so there is no discount to go hunting for. Straps, a cleaning cloth and Hohner’s own diatonic method book come in the box; a gig bag does not, and you will want one. The Panther has no register switches, so the two reed sets sound together and that is your only voice. On a diatonic that matters much less than it would on a piano accordion — the sound is supposed to be bright and wet — but it is the honest difference between this and the Compadre a step above it, which costs roughly twice as much and is not a beginner’s purchase. **Pros**- Best-rated accordion here by a wide margin - A real accordion company’s instrument at guitar money - Light enough to practice standing up - Method book and straps included **Cons**- Plays in G, C and F only - No register switches - No gig bag in the box Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3Y5BnWI) № 2 · The piano accordion to start on ### Hohner Hohnica 1304 - Piano accordion - 26 keys, range B–C - 48 bass - Two reed sets, 3 registers - 12 lb - ~$860 This is the standard student piano accordion, and the reason to start here rather than higher is weight. At around 12 pounds it is manageable for a teenager or a smaller adult through an hour of practice, which the bigger boxes are not. The 48-bass left hand is complete — every major and minor chord in every key — so nothing you learn on it has to be unlearned later. A gig bag with backpack straps and the shoulder straps are both included. Be clear-eyed about the build. Hohner’s entry line is made to a price, the reviews are genuinely mixed, and the complaint that recurs is mechanical: a key or a spring that is wrong out of the box. That is a quality-control lottery rather than a design fault, and it is fixable, but it means two things matter. Buy where you can return it, and play every single key and every bass button the day it arrives rather than a fortnight later. The price is simply what a new 48-bass student accordion costs. There is no premium built into it, and nothing at this specification is meaningfully cheaper. **Pros**- Light enough for smaller players and long practice - Complete 48-bass left hand - Gig bag and straps included - The going rate for a 48-bass, with no discount to hunt for **Cons**- Mixed reviews, mostly mechanical faults on arrival - No low reed set — one basic voice - 26 keys runs out at the top before long Around $860[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xCYBCP) № 3 · The Panther in norteño keys ### Hohner Panther F/B♭/E♭ - 3-row diatonic - 31 treble buttons - 12 bass - 9 lb - ~$700 The same instrument as the top pick, tuned a step and a half down. If the players around you are in F/B♭/E♭ — and a lot of norteño is — this is the one to buy, and the choice is theirs rather than yours. Everything true of the G/C/F model is true here: same body, same reeds, same weight, same method book in the box. It runs about $90 more than the G/C/F, which is worth knowing but not worth changing your mind over. Being in the wrong key costs far more than $90 the first time you cannot sit in with anyone. **Pros**- Identical build to the top pick - The right tuning for a lot of norteño - Strongly rated in its own right **Cons**- Costs more than the G/C/F for the same instrument - Less teaching material is written for it - No gig bag in the box [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Around $700[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gemklJ) № 4 · If you want the bigger piano accordion ### Hohner Hohnica 1305 - Piano accordion - 34 keys, range G–E - 72 bass - Low reed set, 5 registers - 17 lb - ~$940 The 1305 is the 1304 grown up: eight more keys, twenty-four more bass buttons, and — the part that actually changes how it sounds — a set of low reeds the 1304 does not have. Those are what the five register switches are switching between, so pressing one alters the voice rather than nudging it. A full, dark, two-octaves-apart sound is available to you here and simply is not on the smaller box. The cost is 17 pounds hanging off your shoulders. That is five pounds more than the 1304 and it is the single thing to weigh before buying, because a heavy accordion shortens practice sessions and beginners need long ones. For a full-size adult who already knows they are going to stick with this, it is the better instrument and the extra outlay is small against what it adds. For anyone smaller, or anyone still finding out whether they enjoy it, it is the wrong end to start at. **Pros**- Low reeds give it a genuinely fuller voice - 72 bass and five working registers - Priced where a 72-bass with low reeds should be **Cons**- 17 lb is a lot for a beginner - Same entry-level build quality as the 1304 - Too much instrument for a child Around $940[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3U2ABdM) ## What a first accordion actually costs A new accordion worth learning on starts around $600 and a piano accordion around $860. That is higher than most beginner instruments and higher than the figures floating around online, and there is a reason: an accordion contains several hundred hand-tuned steel reeds, a leather-and-card valve on each one, and bellows that have to stay airtight through years of being pulled about. None of that gets cheap at volume. Below roughly $300 the reeds go first and the bellows go with them. The failure is specific and easy to test for: on a bad box you can pull the bellows open without pressing anything, because air is escaping through the seams instead of over the reeds. An instrument that leaks needs constant bellows work to hold a note, which is exactly the technique a beginner has not built yet, so it feels like the player’s fault when it is not. If $600 is out of reach, the answer is a used instrument rather than a cheaper new one. Mid-century Italian and German piano accordions were made in enormous numbers, they were built better than anything new at this price, and a great many are sitting in attics. A tuned and serviced second-hand box beats every new instrument under $400 comfortably. The catch is that servicing one costs real money, so buy from someone who has already done it — an accordion dealer with used stock, rather than a listing photographed on a sofa. ## If you actually meant a concertina Plenty of people arrive at accordions wanting the small hexagonal box heard on sea shanties and Irish tunes. That is a concertina, and it is a separate instrument with its own fingering rather than a miniature accordion — we go through the [differences between a concertina and an accordion](/concertina-vs-accordion/) elsewhere. The one detail worth carrying into the shop is that concertinas come in two incompatible systems. Anglo concertinas give a different note on the push and the pull, like a harmonica, and that is what Irish and English traditional players use. English concertinas give the same note both ways and suit written music and song accompaniment. They are not interchangeable and nothing you learn on one transfers to the other. Hohner’s D40 is the cheapest sensible way into the Anglo system: 20 buttons, 40 reeds, two pounds, a padded bag, and around $315. Twenty buttons is genuinely limiting and you will feel the edges of it within a year, so treat it as finding out whether the instrument suits you rather than as the one you keep. Its recurring fault is buttons that stick when the instrument is new — a mechanical thing owners cure with a screwdriver and a drop of light oil, but play every button in and out on the first day. If the instrument does suit you, a 30-button one is the next stop and costs around $450. The cheap way into Anglo concertina### Hohner D40 Twenty buttons, forty reeds, two pounds, padded gig bag included. Limited on purpose and priced accordingly — the right instrument for deciding whether you want a real one. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3YFjSws) ## What to buy alongside it Straps are included with everything above, so none of this is required on day one. These four are what make the first months easier, and together they cost less than a single lesson plus a tank of gas. WhatWhy it matters[Palmer-Hughes Accordion Course, Book 1](https://amzn.to/4z6Ne7A)The method book American accordion teachers have used since the 1950s, and the reason so many players share a vocabulary. It teaches the Stradella left hand properly from the first page. Under $10 and worth more than that suggests — for piano accordion only.[How To Play Diatonic Button Accordion, Vol. 1](https://amzn.to/4fWhV7Z)The button-accordion equivalent, with a CD. The Panther comes with Hohner’s own booklet, which is thin; this is the one that gets you playing tunes rather than exercises.[Padded shoulder harness straps](https://amzn.to/4zgPIAs)The straps in the box are adequate rather than comfortable, and the whole weight of the instrument goes through them. Wider padded ones are the cheapest comfort upgrade available and the difference shows up around the forty-minute mark.[Padded accordion gig bag, 48–72 bass](https://amzn.to/4qiUF7U)Sized for a piano accordion, so this is the one for the Hohnica models if you did not get a bag with yours. An accordion left out of a case picks up dust in the reed blocks, and dust is what makes reeds go off pitch. ## Frequently asked questions ### Should a beginner start on a piano or a button accordion? Whichever plays your music. A piano accordion goes into any key and has far more beginner material written for it, which makes it the easier road if you have no particular style in mind. A diatonic button accordion is the instrument for conjunto, norteño, vallenato and Tex-Mex, and if that is what you want to play there is no substitute. Neither is harder than the other in any general sense. ### What key of button accordion should I buy? G/C/F unless someone specific tells you otherwise. It is the standard for Texas conjunto and Colombian vallenato and it is what most lessons and songbooks assume. F/B♭/E♭ is the other common one, particularly in norteño. If you have a teacher or people to play with, match them — the tuning is fixed and you cannot change it later. ### How much should I spend on a first accordion? Around $600 for a button accordion and around $860 for a piano accordion buys a new instrument that will not fight you. Under about $300 the bellows stop being airtight and the reeds stop holding pitch, which is a worse start than no instrument at all. If that is above your budget, a serviced used accordion from a dealer beats anything new at the same money. ### Is a 12-bass accordion enough to learn on? No. A 12-bass left hand has six major chords and no minor chords whatsoever, so a large part of ordinary music is simply unavailable and you cannot learn how major and minor relate. Forty-eight bass is the point at which the left hand is complete, and it is the number to hold out for. ### How heavy is a beginner accordion? A three-row button accordion is about 9 pounds. A 26-key piano accordion is about 12, and a 34-key runs to 17. Weight is the most underrated specification on the page, because it decides how long you practice before you want to stop. Buy the lightest instrument that has the notes you need, not the biggest one you can lift. ### Is the accordion hard to learn? The awkward part is coordination rather than either hand alone. The right hand is a keyboard or a set of buttons, the left is a grid of chords you learn by feel because you cannot see it, and the bellows are a third thing happening continuously underneath both. Simple tunes with a bass-and-chord accompaniment come within a few months. What takes longer is the bellows — every dynamic on the instrument comes from them, and that is the difference between playing the notes and sounding like a musician. ## So which one? If your music is conjunto, norteño or vallenato, buy the [Hohner Panther](https://amzn.to/3Y5BnWI) in the key set the people around you play, and start with the G/C/F if there is nobody to match. It is the best instrument on this page by a wide margin. For anything else, the [Hohnica 1304](https://amzn.to/4xCYBCP) is the sensible size to learn on and the [1305](https://amzn.to/3U2ABdM) is the better instrument if you can carry it. Check every key and every bass button the day either one arrives. **Categories:** Accordion, Accordion Reviews --- ### [Banjo vs. Ukulele: Which One to Learn, and Which One Fills the House](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-ukulele/) **Published:** March 20, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Banjo vs. Ukulele: Which One to Learn, and Which One Fills the House A soprano ukulele is 21 inches long end to end, carries four nylon strings pulling about 33 pounds, and a good one from a real maker costs around $70. A five-string banjo is 37½ inches long, carries five steel strings pulling about 80, and the cheapest one worth owning is around $175 before it has been set up. One note is identical on both: G above middle C, which is the ukulele’s fourth string and the banjo’s fifth. Which is easier is the question this choice usually gets reduced to, and it is the least useful thing about them: they are easy in different hands, and the answer flips depending on what you want to be playing by Christmas. The difference that actually decides it is volume. A ukulele is a small wooden box; a banjo is a drum with a neck on it, and you cannot make it quiet. If you want one answer### The ukulele — unless the banjo sound is the reason you are here It costs a quarter as much, it needs nothing doing to it, it will not wake anybody, and four chords learned in an afternoon will get you through most of a songbook. The Kala KA-15S is the entry-level instrument to beat: all mahogany, Aquila strings fitted at the factory, and a bone-substitute nut and saddle at a price where most instruments get plastic. If it is the banjo noise you want, no ukulele will ever make it, and you should go straight to the banjo and accept the extra money and the extra months. Around $70 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xD568Q) **Adult buying one ukulele:** Kala KA-15C concert — around $115 with everything **Cheapest real banjo:** Jameson 5-string — around $175 **The banjo worth keeping:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 **Play guitar already?** The ukulele is four days away ## Side by side UkuleleBanjo**Strings**4, nylon5, steel**Standard tuning**G–C–E–AG–D–G–B–D**The odd string**4th, tuned high — G above middle C5th, the same G, and the highest string on the instrument**Open strum gives you**C6 — C major is one finger awayG major, with no left hand at all**Scale length**13⅝” soprano, 14⅞” concert, 17″ tenor26–26¼”**Nut width**About 1⅜”1-3/16″ to 1¼”**Frets**12 on a soprano, 18 on a concert22**Overall length**21″ soprano, 24¼” concert37½”**Total string tension**About 33 lbAbout 80 lb**What makes the sound**A wooden top, 9½” long and 2⅜” deepAn 11″ drumhead under tension**Played with**The back of a fingernailThree fingerpicks, or the nail and the thumb**Bridge**Glued to the topFloating — held on by string pressure alone**Cheapest one worth owning**~$70~$175**Buy-once instrument**~$130 to $250~$600**Setup on arrival**$40 to $75, and often unnecessary$50 to $100, and effectively required under $300**Time to your first song**An afternoonWeeks for clawhammer, months for bluegrass ## One of them has a mute you can buy Deering’s accessory line includes a solid brass mute that slides onto the bridge of a 4-, 5- or 6-string banjo. Their own description of what it is for is unusually direct: the sound becomes much quieter, and *“this will help keep peace in the home when the baby is sleeping.”* There is a second, more elaborate one in the same catalogue at two and a half times the price. Kala, whose catalogue runs to some 500 products including strings, straps, cases, tuners, capos and polish, do not make a ukulele mute, because there is no market for one. The reason is structural rather than a matter of degree. A ukulele’s soundboard is a piece of laminated mahogany about nine and a half inches long and two and a bit deep, driven by four nylon strings. A banjo’s is an eleven-inch Mylar head stretched over a rim by sixteen or more brackets, driven by steel — the same arrangement as a drum, and about as efficient at moving air. The banjo does not have a volume control and it does not have a quiet setting. A beginner practicing the same eight bars for forty minutes is audible through a wall. Read that the other way round and it is the banjo’s best argument. In a room with two guitars in it, a ukulele disappears and a banjo cuts straight through, which is exactly why the instrument sounds the way it does in a string band. If you are buying an instrument to play with other people around a fire or in a circle, the quiet one is the wrong choice. If you live in a flat with thin walls, or somebody in the house goes to bed at eight, the loud one is going to cost you a mute and some diplomacy. ## Eighty pounds of steel against thirty-three of nylon Gold Tone ships the AC-1 with gauges of .011, .013, .016, .024 wound and .011 across a 26-3/16-inch scale. At standard G–D–G–B–D that set pulls just over 80 pounds. A concert ukulele’s four nylon strings pull about 33. Two and a half times the load, on strings a quarter the diameter and made of steel rather than plastic. Your fingertips feel all of it. A banjo asks for calluses and takes two or three weeks of short daily sessions to build them; a ukulele makes fingers sore for a few days and then stops. That single fact is why ukuleles get handed to seven-year-olds in school music rooms and banjos do not, and it is worth taking seriously if the person learning is a child, or has arthritis, or is going to give up the first time something hurts. It also decides how much the instrument moves after you buy it. Eighty pounds pulls a neck forward, which is why every banjo worth owning has a truss rod in it, and it presses down on a bridge that is not glued to anything — a banjo bridge is held in place by string pressure alone, and knocking it out of position puts the whole instrument out of tune with itself. A ukulele’s bridge is glued to the top and stays where the factory put it. There is nothing to adjust on a ukulele except the tuning. ## Both give you a chord for free, and the banjo’s is freer A five-string banjo is tuned to an open chord. Strum it with no fingers on the neck at all and you get G major, because the five strings are G, D, G, B and D — nothing but the notes of the chord. Lay one finger flat across the second fret and you have A; across the fifth, C. A ukulele’s open strings give you C6, which is pleasant but not a chord you will be reaching for, and C major costs you one finger on the third fret of the bottom string. So the banjo wins the very first minute. What that hides is that the left hand was never the hard part of a banjo. The two instruments also share an oddity worth knowing about, because it confuses people who arrive from a guitar. Both have a string that runs backward. On a ukulele the fourth string — the one nearest your chin, where you expect the lowest note — is tuned high, to G above middle C. On a banjo the fifth string is tuned to exactly the same G, and on a banjo it is the highest-pitched string on the instrument, with its own tuning peg sticking out of the side of the neck at the fifth fret. Neither instrument runs low to high across the strings, and neither is going to behave like a small guitar. ## The work is in different hands On a ukulele, everything is the fretting hand and there is not much of it. C, F, G7 and A minor between them carry an enormous number of songs, all four are two fingers or fewer, and the right hand is a downstroke with the back of a fingernail. There is no technique standing between you and a recognisable song on day one. That is not a beginner’s illusion that wears off later — the ukulele really is a small instrument with a small technique, and the ceiling is lower because of it. On a banjo the fretting hand is genuinely easy, and the right hand is the entire instrument. Bluegrass means Scruggs rolls: fixed eight-note patterns played with a thumbpick and two metal fingerpicks, the thumb constantly dropping onto that fifth string, at a speed where you cannot think about it. Old-time means clawhammer, which is a downward strike with the back of the middle fingernail followed by the thumb catching the fifth string — a motion that has nothing in common with any strum you have ever done and takes a fortnight of doing it badly before it starts to click. Clawhammer gets you playing simple tunes in a few weeks. Bluegrass rolls are months. Neither is beyond an adult with twenty minutes a day. But "easier than a guitar" is true of the banjo only as a statement about the fretting hand. Our page on [how hard the banjo actually is](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) goes through the timeline properly. ## If you are buying it to sing over, that settles it A ukulele is an accompaniment instrument in the way a shaker is a percussion instrument — it exists to sit under something else. It is quiet enough not to compete with a voice, its chords are simple enough to play while thinking about words, and the strum is steady and mindless once learned. If the picture in your head is you and an instrument and a song, this is the one. A banjo makes that harder in two ways at once. It is loud enough to sing over rather than under, and a Scruggs roll is a continuous stream of notes that has to keep running while you sing something with a completely different rhythm on top. People do it, and it is a real skill that takes longer than the roll did. Clawhammer is much friendlier here — the bum-ditty is closer to a strum and sits under a voice reasonably well, which is why old-time singers manage it and bluegrass banjo players mostly leave the singing to somebody else. ## Size, weight and whether it fits the person playing it The ukulele is built in a published ladder of four sizes and the specifications are precise about it. Kala’s soprano is 21 inches long overall with a 13⅝-inch scale and 12 frets; the concert is 24¼ inches with a 14⅞-inch scale and 18 frets; the tenor is 26 inches with a 17-inch scale. Adults with normal hands are generally happier on a concert, because the soprano’s frets are cramped exactly where a beginner spends all their time. Our [concert versus tenor comparison](/concert-vs-tenor-ukulele/) takes that further up the ladder. The banjo has no such ladder. Gold Tone lists the AC-1 in one size, and it is an adult one: 26-3/16-inch scale, 22 frets, and 3¾ pounds, which is light for a full-size banjo because the rim is composite rather than wood. Deering’s Goodtime, the standard American-built first banjo, is 37½ inches overall and 4½ pounds. Put a resonator on the back for bluegrass volume and a banjo goes to 11 pounds, which is heavy enough that the strap becomes the thing you notice. Short-scale banjos do exist — see our [travel banjo guide](/best-travel-banjos/) — but they are built for adults with small cases, not for children. One honest gap: nobody publishes a ukulele’s weight. Kala gives nine measurements for the KA-15S, down to the width at the waist, and not one of them is a weight. It is a small instrument made of thin laminate and it plainly weighs a fraction of any banjo, but if you want the number, no maker will give it to you. ## What each one costs once it is in the house The ukulele’s price is nearly the whole cost. Seventy dollars buys a mahogany instrument from a maker with a reputation to protect, with Aquila strings already fitted, and there is nothing it needs on arrival. A set of strings is about $7 when you eventually want one. A professional setup runs $40 to $75 and on a laminate ukulele under $150 it is rarely worth paying for. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The banjo’s price is the beginning of the cost. Budget $50 to $100 for a setup, which on anything under about $300 is not optional — bridge placement, head tension, action and nut slots are what separate a banjo that plays from one that fights you, and it does more for the instrument than another hundred dollars of banjo would. Bluegrass adds fingerpicks at about $10. The head slackens over the first year and wants re-tensioning. Our [full banjo cost breakdown](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) takes the ladder from the bottom to the top. Worth knowing on the banjo side: Gold Tone warrants their AC-model banjos for five years and the cover transfers with the instrument if you sell it, which is unusual at this price and only applies if you buy from an authorized dealer. ## What to buy, either way If you choose the ukulele ### Kala KA-15S Satin Mahogany Soprano - 13⅝” soprano scale, 12 frets, 1⅜” at the nut - Mahogany top, back, sides and neck - Graph Tech NuBone nut and saddle - Aquila Super Nylgut strings from the factory - 21″ long overall — fits a rucksack - ~$70 This is the instrument most people mean when they say a beginner ukulele, and it earns the position on two components rather than on the wood. The nut and saddle are Graph Tech’s bone substitute where almost everything at this money uses molded plastic, and plastic nut slots are the usual reason a cheap ukulele will not play in tune above the fifth fret. The Aquila strings are the second: on most instruments in this bracket the factory strings are the first thing to throw away, and here they are the strings you would have bought anyway. Soprano is the small, traditional size and the frets are tight at the top of the neck. If the person playing it is an adult with average hands and this is the only ukulele they will ever own, spend the extra and get the concert instead. **Pros**- Bone-substitute nut and saddle at $70 - Good strings fitted from new - The lightest, most portable thing on this page - Needs nothing doing to it **Cons**- Cramped frets for adult hands - Nothing in the box but the ukulele - Laminate, so it will not open up with age Around $70[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xD568Q) If you are an adult buying one ukulele ### Kala KA-15C Concert, with the accessories - 14⅞” concert scale, 18 frets, 1.39″ at the nut - Same mahogany build and NuBone hardware as the soprano - 24¼” long overall - Gig bag, clip-on tuner, strap, spare strings and cloth included - ~$115 The concert is the same instrument with an extra inch and a quarter of scale, and that inch lands exactly where it matters — the first five frets, where a beginner spends every minute of the first year. Nothing about what you learn changes; your fingers simply stop crowding each other. The tone gains a little body with the larger box, though on a laminate instrument that is a smaller difference than the fretboard. Bought as a bundle it arrives with the tuner and bag you would otherwise buy separately, which is what closes the gap to the bare soprano to about forty dollars rather than fifty. If you already own a clip-on tuner, the bare concert is the cheaper route. **Pros**- The right size for adult hands - Tuner, bag and strap in the box - 18 frets against the soprano’s 12 - Same nut, saddle and strings as the KA-15S **Cons**- Half again the price of the soprano - Bundled accessories are entry level - Bigger than the classic ukulele silhouette Around $115[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qG125c) The cheapest banjo worth owning ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - 24 brackets, where 16 is normal at this price - Removable resonator — open back or closed - Geared fifth-string tuner - Padded gig bag included - ~$175, plus $50 to $100 for a setup This is the floor of the market rather than a bargain, and it is worth being clear about which. It has the two things that separate a usable cheap banjo from a wall decoration: a geared fifth-string tuner instead of a friction peg that slips, and a bracket count that lets the head be tensioned evenly. The resonator unbolts, so the same instrument can be the loud bluegrass version or the quieter open-back one, which is a genuinely useful thing to have while you work out which music you actually want to play. It will not arrive playing well. The bridge is loose in the box, the head is at whatever tension the factory left, and the strings are the cheapest part of it. Budget the setup as part of the price, not as an upgrade — a $175 banjo that has been set up plays better than a $300 one that has not. **Pros**- Geared fifth tuner at this money - Resonator comes off - 24 brackets for even head tension - Bag included **Cons**- Heavy with the resonator fitted - Needs a setup before it is properly playable - Factory bridge and strings both want replacing Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SAQRSM) The banjo to buy if you already know you want one ### Gold Tone AC-1 - 26-3/16″ scale, 22 frets, 1-3/16″ Zero Glide nut - 11″ composite rim, 11″ Remo frosted head - 3¾ lb — light for a full-size banjo - Two-way truss rod, geared fifth tuner - Adjusted in Florida before it ships; gig bag included - Five-year transferable warranty - ~$315 The gap between this and the $175 tier is not the parts list, it is that somebody adjusts the instrument before it leaves. That is the same money you would have spent on a setup, spent by people who do it every day, and it is why the AC-1 is the point at which a beginner banjo stops needing a project doing to it. The composite rim is the reason for the weight, and it is a real advantage rather than a cost saving — at 3¾ pounds this is the banjo somebody actually picks up in the evening, where an 11-pound resonator instrument stays in its case. It is an open-back banjo, so it suits clawhammer and old-time naturally and will play bluegrass at slightly less volume than a resonator would. If bluegrass is definitely the plan, read our [open back versus resonator comparison](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) before deciding. **Pros**- Set up by the maker before shipping - Very light for a full-size banjo - Truss rod and geared fifth tuner - Warranty transfers if you sell it **Cons**- Composite rim will not satisfy a tone chaser - Open back only — no resonator option - Nearly five times the ukulele Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i0PFCI) ### The one thing both of them need A clip-on chromatic tuner works on either instrument and on anything else with strings, because it reads the vibration of the wood rather than the sound in the room — which matters more on a banjo, where the instrument is loud enough to confuse a microphone-based tuner, and on a nylon-strung ukulele, where a brand new set will drift out of tune every twenty minutes for the first week until the strings have stretched. Around $19 buys one that will outlast both instruments. The Kala concert bundle above already includes one. Around $19[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3V01was) ## FAQs ### Which is easier to learn, banjo or ukulele? The ukulele, by a wide margin, if you measure from nothing to a song you can play for somebody. Four chords, two fingers each, one afternoon. The banjo’s left hand is arguably easier still — strum the open strings and you have a G major — but its right hand takes weeks for clawhammer and months for bluegrass rolls, and there is no shortcut past that. ### Which is louder? The banjo, and not by a small margin. It is a drum with a neck: an eleven-inch tensioned head driven by steel strings, against a ukulele’s small wooden box driven by nylon. The clearest evidence is what the makers sell. Deering builds a brass mute for the banjo and say plainly that it is for keeping the peace when there is a baby asleep in the house. Kala's catalogue of ukulele accessories contains nothing of the kind. ### Can I play ukulele chords on a banjo? Not the same shapes. A ukulele is tuned G–C–E–A across four strings and a five-string banjo is G–D–G–B–D across five, so the intervals between strings are different and every shape has to be relearned. What does transfer is the reading and the sense of where a chord change belongs in a song, which is most of what a beginner is actually learning. ### Is there something that is both? Yes, and it is a ukulele rather than a banjo. A banjolele has four nylon strings in ukulele tuning stretched over a small banjo head, so it plays exactly like the ukulele and sounds a good deal more like the banjo. It has no fifth string, so no banjo technique works on it at all. Our [banjo versus banjolele comparison](/banjo-vs-banjolele/) goes through what it can and cannot do. ### Which is better for a child? The ukulele, for three separate reasons. It is made in small sizes with published measurements, a soprano being 21 inches long overall. Its nylon strings pull about a third of what a banjo’s steel does, so a child’s fingertips are sore for days rather than weeks. And a banjo is one adult size at four to eleven pounds, which is a lot of instrument on a small lap. ### Which is better for singing along? The ukulele, which is built for the job — quiet enough to sit under a voice and simple enough to play while you concentrate on words. A bluegrass roll is a continuous stream of notes that has to keep going underneath a different rhythm, which is a skill in itself. Clawhammer banjo is much easier to sing over than bluegrass, if the banjo is what you want. ### How many strings does each one have? A ukulele has four. A banjo usually has five, and the fifth is the short one with its own peg partway up the neck. Four-string tenor and plectrum banjos and six-string banjos also exist and are different instruments with different repertoires — our guide to the [types of banjo](/types-of-banjos/) sorts out which is which. ### Should I start on the ukulele and move to the banjo later? Only if you want to play the ukulele too. Almost nothing transfers — different tuning, different chord shapes, a fifth string that does not exist on a ukulele, and a right-hand technique that is the whole difficulty of the banjo and gets no easier for having strummed something first. A year of ukulele is a year of ukulele, which is a good thing to have, and not a run-up. ### What do they cost? A ukulele worth owning starts around $70 and the instrument you would keep for years is $130 to $250, with nothing else to buy. A banjo starts around $175 and needs $50 to $100 of setup on top; the point where it stops needing work is about $315, and an American-built one is about $600. Call it four times the money before the first lesson. ## So which one If you have no strong feeling either way, buy the ukulele. It is a quarter of the cost, it needs nothing doing to it, it will be making music the day it arrives, and if it turns out not to be for you the loss is seventy dollars rather than three hundred. Buy the banjo if the sound is the point. Nobody arrives at the banjo by process of elimination — they arrive because they heard one and wanted to make that noise, and no amount of ukulele will ever produce it. That is a good enough reason, and it is worth the setup money, the calluses and the months on the right hand. Just make sure of the room you will be practicing in first, because that is the one thing you cannot change afterward. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Banjo vs. Guitar: Which One to Learn, and What Each Asks of You](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-guitar/) **Published:** May 24, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Banjo vs. Guitar: Which One to Learn, and What Each Asks of You Tune a five-string banjo the standard way and strum it without touching a fret, and you have played a G major chord. Tune a guitar the standard way and do the same, and you have played a muddle. That single difference sets the shape of the whole first year on either instrument. The banjo hands you the reward early and charges for it later, in the picking hand. The guitar charges up front, in the fretting hand, and then gets steadily easier. Neither is the harder instrument overall. They are hard at opposite ends. The short answer### Banjo if you want to sound like something in week two. Guitar if you want to accompany yourself singing. The banjo is genuinely easier to start: an open tuning that is already a chord, four strings across a narrow neck, and strings roughly half the gauge of a guitar’s. It gets hard around month three, when the right hand has to become automatic. The guitar is the opposite — three-finger chords from day one, then barre chords, and after that it opens up into more or less any music you want to play, with a repertoire and a teaching tradition the banjo cannot match. **Strings:** 5 (one a short drone) vs. 6 **Heaviest string:** .021 vs. .052 **Nut width:** 13⁄16″–1¼″ vs. 111⁄16″ **Sensible entry:** ~$175 vs. ~$190 ## The numbers, from the makers’ own spec sheets Figures below are Deering’s Goodtime and Gold Tone’s AC-1 against Yamaha’s FG800J dreadnought, with the rest of the FG line noted where it differs. 5-string banjoSteel-string acoustic guitar**Strings**Five, but only four cross the nut — the fifth starts at the fifth fretSix, all full length**Standard tuning**gDGBD — a G major chord, with the fifth string the highest noteEADGBE — not a chord**Factory string gauges**.010 .011 .013 .021w .010 (Deering Goodtime).012 .016 .025 .032 .042 .052 (Yamaha FG800J)**Nut width**1¼″ Deering, 13⁄16″ Gold Tone111⁄16″ across the FG line; 21⁄16″ on a nylon-string classical**Scale length**26¼″ Deering, 263⁄16″ Gold Tone25″ on the FG800J, 259⁄16″ on the rest of the FG dreadnoughts**Overall length**37½″40½″**Weight**3.75 lb to 11.5 lb, depending on the banjoOne weight; there is no fork to choose**Soundboard**A tensioned drum head you can and should adjustA braced wooden top, sealed at the factory**Bridge**Floating — held on by string tension, and you set its positionGlued down at the factory**Capo**A standard capo misses the fifth string entirelyClip it on, play**Right hand**Fingerpicks and rolls, or the clawhammer strokeStrum, flatpick or fingerstyle**Sensible entry price**~$175~$120 steel-string, ~$190 nylon ## Your first chord is free on one of them Open G tuning on a banjo is g, D, G, B, D. Those are the notes G, B and D, which is a G major triad and nothing else. Strum the open strings and you have played a chord that belongs in a real tune, on an instrument you unboxed twenty minutes ago. Two frets and one finger gets you most of the way to the next two chords in the key. Standard guitar tuning is E, A, D, G, B, E. Those notes stacked together are not a triad, and open strings on a guitar are a sound you use deliberately rather than a chord you can build a song on. The first thing a guitar asks is that you press three fingers down in the right places at the same time, hold them there, and get six strings to sound cleanly. That takes most people a few weeks of sore fingertips. Guitars are played in open tunings too — open G, open D, DADGAD — and slide players live in them. That is a choice made later for a sound, not the tuning a guitar arrives in. ## What your fingertips feel is the string gauge The banjo is gentler on the fingertips, and the makers publish the numbers that make it so. Deering ships the Goodtime with .010, .011, .013, a wound .021 and a .010. Yamaha ships the FG800J with .012, .016, .025, .032, .042 and .052. The *third* string on that guitar is heavier than the heaviest string on that banjo, and the guitar’s bottom string is more than twice it again. There are also six of them to press instead of four. Add the neck. The Goodtime’s nut is 1¼ inches wide and the Gold Tone AC-1’s is 13⁄16, against 111⁄16 on every Yamaha FG dreadnought. Nearly half an inch narrower, and carrying four strings instead of six, because the banjo’s fifth string does not reach the nut at all. Small hands, and hands that have never fretted anything, notice that immediately. If sore fingertips are the thing putting you off the guitar specifically, the answer is not the banjo — it is nylon strings. A classical guitar is a different instrument in the hand: soft strings at low tension, and a 21⁄16-inch nut that gives each finger far more room. The trade is a wider neck to reach around and a repertoire that leans classical and Latin rather than folk and rock. ## The banjo is not the smaller, lighter instrument It looks it, and the neck genuinely is narrower, but the scale length runs the other way. A standard five-string banjo measures 26¼ inches from nut to bridge. A Yamaha FG800J is 25 inches and the rest of the FG dreadnoughts are 259⁄16. The frets on a banjo are further apart than the frets on a dreadnought, not closer together. What is shorter is the instrument overall — 37½ inches against 40½ — because the banjo’s body is an eleven-inch circle rather than a sixteen-inch dreadnought. Weight is where the surprise is, and it is a fork you choose at the point of purchase. Gold Tone publishes 3.75 lb for the composite-rim AC-1, 6 lb for the wood-rim CC-100, and **11.5 lb** for the OB-150, a bluegrass banjo with a resonator and a bell-brass tone ring. Deering’s Goodtime is 4.5 lb. That is a threefold spread inside one instrument, and it is decided entirely by whether you are heading for bluegrass. An hour standing up with a strap feels completely different at each end of it. We put numbers to the whole range in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ## Where each one actually gets hard ### The banjo: the right hand, and almost nothing else Bluegrass banjo is built on rolls — fixed eight-note patterns of thumb, index and middle finger that repeat under the melody. They have to become automatic before any tune will sit on top of them, and until they do you are playing a pattern rather than a song. Clawhammer asks for something stranger: a downward strike with the back of a fingernail, thumb catching the fifth string on the way, a motion you have almost certainly never made before. Either way the fifth string belongs to the thumb and to nothing else, and a banjo note dies fast, which leaves your timing nowhere to hide. Our [full breakdown of how hard the banjo is](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) goes through this properly. ### The guitar: the fretting hand, front-loaded Three-finger chord shapes come first, then the F barre chord, which is where a large share of beginner guitarists stop. Push through it and the instrument gets easier more or less permanently: the same shapes slide up the neck, the strumming hand is doing something most people can already approximate, and the material is endless. The banjo does the reverse — a free start, then a wall. There is also simply more guitar teaching in the world. Lessons are easier to find, in person and online, and so is accurate notation for whatever song you have in your head. That gap is real and it is worth counting when you are deciding. ## What each one asks of you once you own it A guitar arrives finished. The bridge is glued to the top, the top is sealed, and short of changing strings and the odd truss rod tweak there is nothing you are expected to touch. A banjo is a kit that has been assembled for you, and it stays adjustable. The bridge is not fixed at all: in Deering’s own words it “is not glued in place like a guitar bridge but is a floating bridge like on a violin”, held on by string tension alone. You set where it sits, and its position is what makes the instrument play in tune with itself — Deering puts the starting point at 263⁄16 inches from the nut on a 26¼-inch scale, then check it against the harmonic at the twelfth fret. Knock the bridge and you have to do it again. The head is a tensioned drum skin, and its tension is part of how the banjo sounds; a slack head is why a lot of cheap banjos sound dull. And a capo is not the solved problem it is on a guitar, because a standard capo clamps the four long strings and leaves the fifth where it was. You either add a sliding fifth-string capo or have small spikes fitted at the seventh, ninth and tenth frets, which is a job for a shop. None of this is difficult. It is fifteen minutes of learning and a chunk of it is covered in our [banjo tips for beginners](/banjo-tips-for-beginners/). But it is a category of ownership the guitar does not have, and it catches people who expected the banjo to be the simple one. ## Cost, honestly The guitar is cheaper to get into, and the gap is bigger than it looks because a guitar needs nothing else. A serviceable steel-string dreadnought starts around $120 and a solid-top one from a maker with a real service network is about $260. A full-size nylon-string classical is about $190. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Banjos start around $175 for something worth owning, and the useful step up — a banjo that stops fighting you — is about $315. American-made begins at $599. On top of that, bluegrass effectively requires fingerpicks, and any banjo under about $300 is worth a setup at a shop, which is $50 to $100. Call it $60 to $110 of extras that the guitar does not ask for. Our [full cost breakdown](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/) takes the banjo ladder all the way up. ## If you want to sing while you play, buy the guitar The guitar is the better accompaniment instrument, and it is not close. It holds a chord and sustains underneath a voice; a banjo note decays in about a second, so a banjo accompanying a singer has to keep moving, which means the picking hand is busy exactly when your attention is elsewhere. Bluegrass gives the banjo a lead voice and a rhythmic one, and in a band that is a wonderful job to have — but if the picture in your head is you, a chair and a song, that picture has a guitar in it. The reverse case is just as clear. If what you want is the sound — the drive of a three-finger roll, or the loping pulse of clawhammer — nothing else makes it. A guitar cannot approximate a banjo, and people who buy a guitar hoping it will end up buying a banjo anyway. ## There is a third answer, if you already play guitar A six-string banjo is a banjo pot with a guitar neck on it, tuned E, A, D, G, B, E. Everything you know transfers on the first day, and what comes out is recognisably a banjo. The dimensions say how complete the transfer is. Deering’s Goodtime Six has a 111⁄16-inch nut — identical to the Yamaha dreadnought above — and ships tuned EADGBE with gauges of .010 through a wound .046. It is a guitarist’s instrument in every respect except the sound. What it will not do is teach you the banjo. There is no drone string, no rolls and no clawhammer, so a six-string is a destination rather than a route to the five-string. Prices start around $175 and run to $899 for the Deering. Our [six-string banjo guide](/best-6-string-banjo/) covers the field. ## What to buy, either way If you go banjo ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - Five strings, resonator that unbolts - 5-ply maple and mahogany shell, mahogany neck - Remo head, adjustable truss rod - 24 brackets, geared fifth tuner - ~$175 The removable resonator is the reason to start here. Bolted on it is loud and forward for bluegrass; taken off you have an open back, which is what old-time and clawhammer want. You do not have to decide which of those you are before you have played anything, and that decision is the expensive one to get wrong. Budget for a setup on top. At this price the head tension and the bridge position are approximate, and an hour at a shop is the difference between an instrument that plays in tune and one that does not. Our [beginner banjo comparison](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) puts it against the alternatives. Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SZ5jEo) The banjo worth stretching to ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, 11″ composite rim - 263⁄16″ scale, 22 frets - 13⁄16″ Zero Glide nut, two-way truss rod - 3.75 lb — very light for a full-size banjo - Gig bag included; five-year transferable warranty - ~$315 This is roughly where a banjo stops arguing with you. The composite rim keeps it under four pounds, the Zero Glide nut fixes the tuning problem cheap banjos have at the first fret, and it arrives playable rather than approximately playable. The $315 is Gold Tone’s own list price, so there is no discount to hunt for. Open back only, which points it at clawhammer and old-time. If you already know it is bluegrass, keep the resonator on the Jameson instead. The difference is laid out in [open back vs. resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/). Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zMDvE0) If you go guitar ### Yamaha FG800J - Dreadnought, solid spruce top, scalloped bracing - 25″ scale — shorter than the rest of the FG line - 111⁄16″ nut, rosewood fingerboard - Ships with .012–.052 strings - ~$260 The FG has been the default first serious acoustic since 1966, and this is the entry model in the line. It has a solid top, which is the spec that matters — a solid top opens up as it is played, a laminate one does not. The 25-inch scale is the quiet advantage over its own siblings: slightly less string tension than the 259⁄16-inch FG820 and above, which a beginner’s hands notice. If the budget is genuinely tight, a dreadnought around $120 will teach you chords perfectly well. You will want to replace it; you will not have wasted the money finding out. Around $260[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qHGfhK) If sore fingers are the worry ### Yamaha C40II - Full-size nylon-string classical - 21⁄16″ nut — far more room per finger - Flat fingerboard radius, 259⁄16″ scale - Spruce top, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - ~$190 Nylon strings at classical tension are the gentlest thing you can put under a beginner’s fingertips, and this is the standard answer at the price. It is also the right guitar for a child or anyone whose hands are small enough that steel strings turn practice into an endurance test. The trade is a two-inch-wide neck to reach around and a quieter, rounder sound that suits classical, bossa and fingerstyle better than strummed folk. It will not sound like a dreadnought and is not trying to. Around $190[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4wXhwrk) ### The two things to buy alongside ItemWhich instrumentWhy**KLIQ UberTuner** ~$19BothA clip-on chromatic tuner reads vibration through the wood, so it works on a banjo head and a guitar top equally and in a noisy room. Practicing on something out of tune is the fastest way to give up on either instrument.[Check price](https://amzn.to/4chGr1f)**Dunlop fingerpicks and thumbpick** ~$10BanjoBluegrass needs them — the volume and attack the style is built on are not available bare-fingered. This one is a four-pack, which is the right way to buy them — fit is a matter of trying a few and bending them to your fingers. Clawhammer players do not use them at all.[Check price](https://amzn.to/3UZzk7y) ## Frequently asked questions ### Is it easier to learn banjo or guitar? Banjo for the first few months, guitar after that. The banjo’s open tuning is already a chord, its strings are about half the gauge, and its neck is nearly half an inch narrower. The banjo’s difficulty arrives later, in the picking hand. Total effort to a decent standard is roughly the same on both. ### Does playing guitar help you learn banjo? Partly. Fretting-hand strength, chord logic and reading tab all carry over, and fingerstyle guitarists have a head start. What does not carry over is the right hand — rolls and the clawhammer stroke are new motions — nor the fifth string, which is a drone tuned higher than the string next to it and belongs to the thumb. Expect the first weeks to be easy and then to feel like a beginner again. ### Can you play guitar chords on a banjo? Not the same shapes. A five-string banjo is tuned to an open G chord rather than in fourths, so guitar shapes produce something else entirely. A six-string banjo is the exception — it is tuned EADGBE and every guitar shape works unchanged. ### Which is louder? The banjo, comfortably, and a resonator banjo more so again — the resonator is a bowl behind the pot that throws the sound forward instead of letting it escape backward. It is why a banjo cuts through a bluegrass band without amplification. In a flat with thin walls it is also the argument for an open back. ### Is a banjo just a guitar with a drum? The head is the obvious difference and not the important one. The important one is the fifth string: a short drone running from a peg at the fifth fret, tuned higher than the string beside it, sounding the same note over and over while the melody moves underneath. No guitar has anything like it, and it is what makes banjo music sound the way it does. ### Which is better for a child? Weigh it. A nylon-string classical guitar in a three-quarter size is the easiest thing to hold and the softest under small fingertips. A banjo’s narrow neck suits small hands well, but check the weight before buying — an openback at under four pounds is fine, and an eleven-pound bluegrass banjo on a strap is not. ### How long until I can play a tune? Around ten weeks at half an hour a day on the banjo, sooner in clawhammer than bluegrass, and a month or two on guitar to a few chords and a recognisable song. The banjo gets there faster and the guitar keeps arriving. Our [banjo timeline](/how-long-to-learn-the-banjo/) breaks the rest down. ## So which one? Pick by the sound in your head, not by the difficulty. Both are about equally hard to play well and they simply charge at different times, so choosing the “easier” one buys you a couple of good months and then leaves you holding an instrument you did not want. If you want to accompany singing, play at a party, or work through the songs you already love, buy the guitar. If the sound you are after is a banjo — and you will know, because nothing else scratches it — buy the banjo, budget for a setup, and accept that month three is where the work is. And if you already play guitar and want the sound without the apprenticeship, the six-string banjo is a real answer rather than a compromise. **Categories:** String Comparisons --- ### [Banjo vs. Banjolele: One of Them Is a Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-banjolele/) **Published:** March 22, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Banjo Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/banjo-comparisons/ "Banjo Comparisons")› Banjo vs. Banjolele: One of Them Is a Ukulele A banjolele has four nylon strings tuned G, C, E, A on a neck about fifteen inches long. That is a ukulele. The drum head on the front changes what it sounds like and nothing about how it is played, so every ukulele chord chart, songbook and lesson works on it unaltered, from the first afternoon. A five-string banjo has five steel strings tuned g, D, G, B, D on a neck of twenty-six and a quarter inches, and the first of those five runs from a peg set into the side of the neck at the fifth fret. You never fret it. Your thumb strikes it as a drone, and that one string is the reason a banjo sounds like a banjo. So the question is not which one is easier. It is whether you want the banjo’s sound or the banjo’s instrument. If you want one answer### The banjolele — unless bluegrass or clawhammer is the point It costs a fraction of what a banjo worth owning costs, it needs no setup, it will not hurt your fingertips, and if you have ever held a ukulele you can play a song on one this evening. The Kmise concert arrives strung with decent strings and with the action already set, which at this money is the exception. But if what you want is rolls and drones and the sound of a bluegrass record, none of that is on a banjolele at any price, and you should buy a banjo instead. Around $90 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hCEGzd) **The banjo you actually meant:** Jameson 5-string — around $175 **Clawhammer and old-time:** Gold Tone AC-1 — around $315 **A banjolele to keep:** Kala mahogany concert — around $225 **Play ukulele already?** Every chord you know transfers unchanged ## Side by side BanjoleleFive-string banjo**Strings**4, nylon5, steel**Standard tuning**G–C–E–A, same as a ukuleleg–D–G–B–D, open G**The fifth string**—Starts at the fifth fret, tuned an octave above the third string, played as a drone**Scale length**13⅝” soprano, 15–15½” concert26¼”**Head diameter**8″ on most11″**Weight**About 3 lb4½ lb open back, about 11 lb for a bluegrass banjo with a cast tone ring**Played with**Fingers, or a felt pickFingerpicks, or the back of a fingernail**Chord shapes**Every ukulele chart, unchangedIts own**Sore fingertips**NoThe first two or three weeks**What it plays**Music hall, 1920s and 30s jazz, anything a ukulele playsBluegrass, old-time, folk**Setup before it plays properly**Usually none$50 to $100 on anything under about $300 ## The banjolele is a ukulele with a drum on the front Four strings, nylon, tuned G, C, E, A, on a neck the length of a concert ukulele’s. Nothing in that list is different from the instrument sitting in the window of every music shop. A banjolele in your hands and a ukulele in your hands are the same object as far as your left hand is concerned, and that is not a rough approximation — the chord shapes are identical, the fingering charts are identical, and a person who plays one plays the other immediately. What the drum head changes is volume and attack. The instrument was built for that reason and nothing else: the earliest banjoleles were made in 1917, by John A. Bolander and by Alvin D. Keech working separately, because vaudeville performers needed something with a ukulele’s playability that could be heard at the back of a theater. It worked, and the thing had its decade — George Formby, Wendell Hall, Roy Smeck, most of British music hall and a good deal of 1920s dance-band jazz. Practically, that means a banjolele is a good deal louder than a wooden ukulele and much quieter than a banjo. If you already play the [ukulele](/ukulele-vs-guitar/) and want more cut without learning anything new, it is the whole answer to your question. ## The fifth string is the banjo Look at the neck of a five-string banjo from the side and there is a tuning peg sticking out of it halfway up, at the fifth fret. The string running from it is shorter than the other four, and it is tuned high — an octave above the third string, not below the fourth. It is the highest-pitched string on the instrument and it sits nearest your thumb. You do not play notes on it. It rings the same pitch every time your thumb catches it, threaded through the melody by the right hand. Scruggs-style rolls are built around it. Clawhammer’s bum-*ditty* ends on it — the *ditty* is the thumb dropping onto the fifth string. Take it away and neither technique exists. A banjolele has four strings, all of them full length, all of them fretted. So it will not teach you the banjo, and time on a banjo will not prepare you for a banjolele. Same family and the same bright, percussive voice; no shared technique and no shared repertoire. ## They do not sound the same, and the head size is why Both are unmistakably banjo-family — that dry, percussive front edge on every note is what a stretched head does. But an eight-inch head and an eleven-inch head are not the same instrument. The smaller one sits higher, holds less bass and stops sooner. Put a banjolele next to a bluegrass banjo and it sounds like a smaller, drier, higher version of the same idea, which is exactly what it is. Nylon does the rest. Steel strings ring and sustain and bite; nylon softens the attack and shortens the note. It is why a banjolele is friendly at close range and why it will disappear behind a guitar in a room full of people. Eight inches is not a law, though, and it is the number to look at if the sound is what you came for. Deering builds their banjo ukuleles on full-size banjo pots — eleven inches on the concert, twelve on the tenor — and a ukulele neck on an eleven-inch pot gets closer to a banjo’s actual voice than anything else will. ## Weight, size and playing at ten at night A banjolele weighs about three pounds and is roughly two feet long, which is hand-luggage territory. An open-back five-string banjo is about four and a half pounds. A bluegrass banjo with a cast bell bronze tone ring and a one-piece flange is around eleven, and [nearly all of that difference is metal](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/) rather than wood. Volume follows the same order and it is the practical question if you share walls. A resonator banjo is a loud instrument by design — that is what the resonator is for. An [open back](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) is noticeably softer. A banjolele is softer again, and nylon strings mean it has no ring to carry through a floor. ## If neither is quite it, the answer is a tenor banjo Four steel strings, no fifth string, a scale between twenty and twenty-three inches, and a full-size head. It has the banjo’s ring and volume without the drone string and without the right-hand technique that goes with it, and it is the banjo of Irish sessions and of 1920s jazz. Tuned in fifths — C–G–D–A, or G–D–A–E if it is going to a session — it reads like a fiddle or a mandolin. Tuned D–G–B–E, which players call Chicago tuning, the top four strings of a guitar and the whole of a baritone ukulele land on it unchanged. If you want a banjo you can strum, that is the instrument, not the banjolele — [how it differs from a plectrum banjo](/plectrum-vs-tenor-banjo/), and [which tenor banjos are worth buying](/best-tenor-banjo/). ## What to buy, on either side of the fork The banjolele, cheaply ### Kmise Concert Banjolele - Concert scale, four nylon strings, G–C–E–A - Polyester head, closed geared tuners - Resonator unbolts, so it plays open-backed too - Aquila strings fitted, action set at the factory - Gig bag, strap, clip tuner, picks and a bracket wrench in the box - ~$90 At the bottom of this market a banjolele tends to arrive with the head slack and the action high, and the couple of hours it takes to put right are how a new instrument ends up in a cupboard. This one comes with the action set near 3mm at the twelfth fret and Aquila strings already on it, which is the whole difference between an instrument and a souvenir. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The resonator coming off matters more than it sounds. Bolted on, the sound is punchier and throws forward; taken off, it softens and sits back, which is the friendlier setting for playing in a room with other people in it. It also has a piezo pickup fitted, so it will go through an amp without a microphone. **Pros**- Playable out of the box, which is rare at the price - Aquila strings rather than the usual fishing line - Two instruments’ worth of sound from the removable resonator - Everything you need to start is included **Cons**- Hardware you would replace before you sold it on - The bundled clip tuner is the first thing you will outgrow - No case, only a bag Around $90[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4hCEGzd) The banjolele, properly ### Kala Mahogany Concert Banjo Ukulele - 15″ concert scale, 18 frets - 8″ Remo Weatherking head on a five-ply mahogany shell - Open back - Aquila Super Nylgut strings - 24¼” overall, gig bag included - ~$225 A Remo head is the specification that separates this from the budget end. It is the same head a real banjo wears, it holds its tension through a change of season, and it is the single component most responsible for a banjolele sounding tight rather than thuddy. The five-ply mahogany shell under it does the rest. Open back, so it is the quieter of the two here and the more forgiving one to practice on. At two feet and change it is the instrument to buy if you expect to still be playing it in five years, and it is priced below Kala’s own list. **Pros**- Remo head and Aquila strings, both from new - Full 15″ concert scale — no crowded frets - Built by a company that makes ukuleles for a living - Quiet enough for a flat **Cons**- Twice the price of the Kmise for a smaller jump than that suggests - No resonator, so no way to get the harder sound - Bag only, and nothing else in the box Around $225[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bTCUGh) The banjo, if that is what you meant ### Jameson 5-String Banjo - Five steel strings, 26¼” scale, g–D–G–B–D - Remo Weatherking head, five-ply maple and mahogany shell - Resonator unbolts - Geared fifth-string tuner - Purpleheart fingerboard, 24 brackets - ~$175, plus $50 to $100 for a setup The removable resonator is the reason this is the first banjo to buy when you cannot yet say whether you are heading for bluegrass or clawhammer. Bolt it on for volume and bite; take it off for the lighter, drier old-time sound. That decision usually costs you a second instrument, and here it costs a screwdriver. Budget it at $250 rather than $175. Nothing at this price has been touched by a human being before it ships, and an hour with someone who knows banjos — bridge placed, head tensioned, action dropped — does more for how it plays than any spec on the page. Our [first banjo guide](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) goes further into the choice. **Pros**- Resonator on or off, so no style decision on day one - Geared fifth peg, which the cheapest banjos skip - Remo head rather than an unbranded one - Full 26¼” scale — a real banjo, not a short one **Cons**- Needs a setup before it plays as well as it should - Heavier than a banjolele by several pounds - Steel strings on an untrained hand hurt for a fortnight Around $175[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gecQ9T) If clawhammer is already the plan, skip the step and take the [Gold Tone AC-1](https://amzn.to/4wsbtun) at around $315 instead. It is an open back with a composite rim, three and three-quarter pounds, and it leaves the factory set up, which is roughly the money the Jameson’s setup costs anyway. More of them in [open back banjos](/best-open-back-banjo/). ## What you will want alongside it A clip-on tuner does both instruments and costs about twenty dollars — the [Snark ST-2](https://amzn.to/3Ed9kdw) reads a nylon string and a steel one equally well, which not every cheap tuner does. Clip it to the peghead and leave it there. Strings are not interchangeable between the two and the sets are not expensive. A banjolele wants [Aquila Nylgut banjo ukulele strings](https://amzn.to/3L2qIFz) in high G, which is what most of them ship with anyway. A five-string takes a set like [D’Addario’s nickel 10–23](https://amzn.to/3KY2oo8) — the standard medium gauge, and worth changing before you decide a new banjo sounds dull. There is more on [choosing gauges](/best-banjo-strings/) if you want it. For the banjo, a method book is worth more than any accessory, because the right hand is the part you cannot work out by looking at a chord chart. The [Hal Leonard Banjo Method Book 1](https://amzn.to/44ovUug) is the standard one and teaches Scruggs style from the fifth string outwards. A banjolele needs no such thing — any [ukulele](/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) book works, which is rather the point of it. ## FAQs ### What is the difference between a banjo and a banjolele? Both stretch a drum head over a circular pot, and that is where the similarity stops. A banjolele has four nylon strings tuned G, C, E, A on a ukulele-length neck of about fifteen inches. A five-string banjo has five steel strings tuned g, D, G, B, D on a neck of twenty-six and a quarter inches, and its fifth string starts at the fifth fret and is played as a drone by the thumb. ### Is a banjolele just a ukulele? As far as playing it goes, yes. Same four strings, same tuning, same scale length, same chord shapes, same nylon under the fingers. The drum head changes the sound and nothing about the technique, so any ukulele songbook, chord chart or lesson works on a banjolele without adjustment. ### Does a banjolele sound like a banjo? It has the same dry, percussive attack, because that is what a stretched head does to a plucked string. It is higher and drier than a banjo and it stops sooner, because most banjoleles use an eight-inch head against a banjo’s eleven, and because nylon does not ring the way steel does. Deering builds theirs on full eleven- and twelve-inch banjo pots, which get closer than anything else. ### Can you use banjo chords on a banjolele? No. A five-string banjo is tuned to an open G chord and a banjolele is tuned G, C, E, A, so the same shape gives a different chord on each. Ukulele charts are the ones that transfer, and they transfer exactly. ### Can you play bluegrass on a banjolele? Not in any recognisable form. Scruggs-style rolls and clawhammer are both built on the fifth string, which a banjolele does not have, and nylon strings will not produce the ring those styles depend on. A banjolele plays what a ukulele plays, with more bite — music hall, 1920s and 30s jazz, songs. ### Which is easier to learn, a banjo or a banjolele? The banjolele, comfortably. Four nylon strings on a short neck, three-finger chord shapes, no sore fingertips, and a first song within an afternoon. A five-string banjo asks you to learn a right-hand technique before you can play anything at all, and steel strings on a twenty-six-inch scale take a few weeks to stop hurting. That is a reason to expect the banjo to be slower, not a reason to buy the banjolele instead — they play different music. ### How do a banjo and a banjolele compare in size and weight? A banjolele is about two feet long and around three pounds. An open-back five-string banjo is about three feet and four and a half pounds. A bluegrass banjo with a cast bell bronze tone ring and a one-piece flange runs to about eleven pounds, and the extra weight is metal in the pot rather than a bigger instrument. ### What music is each instrument best suited to? The five-string banjo is the bluegrass and old-time instrument, and the only banjo that plays either. The banjolele belongs to British music hall and 1920s and 30s dance-band jazz — George Formby is most of its recorded repertoire — and it handles anything else a ukulele accompanies. For Irish tunes or trad jazz, neither is the instrument; a tenor banjo is. ### What do a banjo and a banjolele cost? A banjolele worth owning starts around $90 and a good one is about $225. A five-string banjo starts around $175, and you should add $50 to $100 for a setup, because nothing at that price has been adjusted by a person before it ships. From about $315 you are into banjos that arrive playable, and about $600 buys an American-made one you would not replace. **Categories:** Banjo Comparisons --- ### [10 Banjo Tips for Beginners Worth Doing First](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-tips-for-beginners/) **Published:** May 2, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› 10 Banjo Tips for Beginners Worth Doing First Practice every day, set yourself goals, listen to a lot of music — that advice would serve a beginner on any instrument, and it is not wrong. It just does not tell you anything about a banjo. The things that decide how a beginner banjo player sounds after three months are much more specific than that, and most of them are decided in the first week: whether the bridge is in the right place, which of the two right hands you are learning, and whether the picks are on the correct way round. The short version### Set the bridge, choose one picking style and stay with it, and drill the roll with your left hand off the neck. Those three account for most of the difference between a beginner who improves and one who spends a year sounding scrappy. After that, the one thing worth buying on day one rather than in month three is a set of picks — learning the right hand bare-fingered and adding them later means relearning it rather than adding to it. Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xb0jeU) **For timing:** Korg MA-2 metronome — around $20 **For a routine:** *Banjo Aerobics* — around $23 **For tuning:** a clip-on that reads vibration — [the options](/best-banjo-tuner/) ## 1. Set the bridge before your first practice session A banjo bridge is not glued down. It is a small maple-and-ebony wedge held in place by nothing but string tension, and it can be slid anywhere on the head. New banjos frequently arrive with it loose in the box, or standing in roughly the right area because somebody at the factory put it there by eye. This matters more than it sounds. The bridge is what sets the speaking length of every string, so if it is half an inch out, the banjo tunes perfectly open and then goes progressively sour as you move up the neck. That is easy to read as a bad ear or sloppy fretting. It is neither, and no amount of practice fixes it. The rough setting is easy: the bridge should sit the same distance from the twelfth fret as the twelfth fret is from the nut. On a standard-scale five-string that comes out at about 26 3/16 inches from the nut — slightly more than the 26 1/4 inch scale length would suggest, because a fretted string stretches a little sharp when you press it down. The exact setting takes a minute. Touch the first string lightly directly over the twelfth fret and pick it — that chiming harmonic is your reference. Now fret the same string at the twelfth and pick it normally. The two notes should match. If the fretted note is sharp, the string is too short and the bridge needs to move away from the nut; if it is flat, move the bridge toward the nut. Do the same on the fourth string, nudging that end of the bridge until both agree, then check the first string again. Small moves — a millimeter changes it. Mark the feet with a strip of masking tape once it is right, so that the day a string breaks and the bridge falls over you know where it goes back. ## 2. Choose one picking hand and give it six months There are two ways to play a five-string, and they have almost nothing in common. Bluegrass three-finger picking — Scruggs style — plucks upward with a thumbpick and two fingerpicks in continuous eight-note patterns called rolls. Clawhammer strikes downward with the back of a fingernail while the thumb catches the fifth string, in a single repeating motion. Different muscles, different direction of travel, different equipment, different repertoire. What they share is that both take a couple of months before the hand stops thinking about it, and switching between them in that window means neither one gets there. Plenty of players end up doing both. Almost none of them learned both at once. If you have no strong preference, the split is roughly this. Clawhammer produces a recognisable tune sooner — the rhythm carries the melody, so a few weeks of the basic stroke gets you something that sounds like old-time music. Bluegrass takes longer to produce anything and goes considerably further; the first year is largely the rolls. [The timelines are here](/how-long-to-learn-the-banjo/) if you want numbers, and [the difficulty of each is here](/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). ## 3. Put the picks on the way they are meant to go Fingerpicks go on the index and middle fingers with the *blade facing the palm*: the metal band wraps over the fingernail, and the picking surface projects out past the pad of the finger, on the underside. Worn the other way round — as though they were false fingernails, which is what they look like — the blade catches the string on every stroke, and the fortnight of snagging that follows is easy to mistake for a lack of aptitude. The thumbpick goes on with its blade pointing inward, toward the other fingers, sitting somewhere between the first joint and the tip of the thumb. Picks come flat and are supposed to be bent. Press the blade against a table and rock it until it curves to follow the shape of your fingertip, so the metal sits close to the pad rather than standing off it. Many players also twist the pick slightly so that it meets the string square rather than at an angle, which is worth a surprising amount of tone and volume. Both adjustments are yours to make and will need redoing a few times before they settle. Wear them from the first session. The attack, the contact point and the angle of approach are all different from a bare finger, so learning the rolls without picks and adding them in month three is not adding a tool — it is relearning the right hand. Picks### Dunlop Shell Fingerpicks and Thumbpick, Medium - Three fingerpicks and one thumbpick - Medium gauge, shell finish - Bluegrass three-finger picking You need two fingerpicks and a thumbpick, so this set carries a spare of the one you are most likely to lose. Medium is the right starting gauge: soft enough to bend to your fingers by hand, stiff enough to hold the shape once you have set it. There is nothing here you will outgrow quickly — players move to different brands for feel rather than for performance, and that is a decision worth putting off until you know what you want to change. **Good**- Cheap enough that bending one wrong costs nothing - Spare fingerpick in the set - Medium gauge suits a beginner’s grip **Less good**- Needs shaping before it feels like anything - Sized for an average finger; small hands may need to squeeze the bands Around $10 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xb0jeU) ## 4. Drill the roll with your left hand off the neck Open G tuning means the five open strings already make a G chord. So you can practice the entire right hand without fretting anything — take the left hand off the neck altogether and let the open strings ring. Do that. The rolls are the thing that has to become automatic, and trying to build them while also asking the left hand to find chord shapes means neither hand gets full attention. Play the roll on open strings until it runs without you watching it, then close your eyes and keep going — if it survives that, it is in the hand rather than in the eye. Only then start putting chords underneath. Four roll patterns cover most of bluegrass banjo. Each is eight notes long and each note is played by one of three fingers: thumb, index, middle. RollPattern (string played, in order)What it does **Forward**2 1 5 2 1 5 2 1 index middle thumb, twice, then index middleThe one to learn first. Rising, driving, and the backbone of the style **Backward**1 2 5 1 2 5 1 2 middle index thumb, twice, then middle indexThe forward roll with the first two swapped. Falling and plaintive rather than driving **Forward-reverse**3 2 1 5 1 2 3 1Thumb lives on the third string and jumps to the fifth once. Four strings in play **Alternating thumb**3 2 5 1 4 2 5 1All five strings, thumb on every other note. The most identifiably bluegrass of the four Start with the forward roll and stay there until it is boring. Three to five minutes on a single pattern is a sensible dose; the aim is evenness, not speed, and a roll where one note is louder than the others will sound exactly that way inside a tune later. The clawhammer equivalent is the same principle. Practice the bum-ditty stroke — nail down on a string, thumb catching the fifth — on open strings until the hand does it without supervision, then start fretting. ## 5. Anchor the picking hand, and move fingers rather than arm Bluegrass players plant the ring finger and little finger on the head, just behind the bridge, and leave them there. That anchor is what gives the thumb, index and middle a fixed frame to work against, and it is why a good right hand looks almost motionless. The failure mode is picking from the elbow or the wrist — moving the whole hand at each note instead of closing individual fingers. It works at slow tempos and then hits a ceiling, because an arm cannot repeat a movement eight times a second and fingers can. Unlearning it later is genuinely difficult, which is why it is worth checking early. You cannot see your own right hand properly while playing; film thirty seconds of it on a phone and watch that instead. Two smaller things in the same family. Keep the fingers that are not playing from curling into the palm — a clenched hand tires within minutes. And keep the fretting fingers arched rather than flat, with the fingertips coming down just behind the fret: a flat finger rests against the neighboring string, and that is what most beginner buzz turns out to be rather than anything wrong with the banjo. ## 6. Start at 50 beats per minute and earn every increase A banjo note dies fast. There is no sustain to hide behind, so every unevenness in your timing is audible in a way it would not be on a guitar, and a roll that is very slightly rushed sounds wrong even to someone who cannot say why. The method is unglamorous and it works. Set the metronome around 50, play the pattern until it is clean and even at that tempo, then move it up a few clicks — not to the next round number. If the pattern falls apart, you have gone up too far too soon; drop back to where it was clean and stay there another day. Practicing at the fastest tempo you can just about manage trains the just-about, and it is the fastest way to build in an unevenness you will spend a year removing. A phone app does this. A separate box does it better, for the plain reason that it is not also the thing your messages arrive on, and because you can leave it sitting next to the banjo permanently set to where you left off. Metronome### Korg MA-2 Digital Metronome - 30 to 252 bpm, tap tempo, 0–9 beats - Around 400 hours on two AAA cells - Headphone out, timer mode Small, loud enough to hear over an open-backed banjo, and it runs for the better part of a year on a pair of AAAs. The features that matter here are the ones nobody advertises: it holds its setting when you switch it off, so tomorrow’s session starts where today’s finished, and the timer mode will count out fifteen minutes for you, which turns out to be a more reliable way to get a session done than deciding when to stop. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) **Good**- Audible against a banjo without headphones - Remembers tempo between sessions - Battery life measured in months **Less good**- The buzzer is a hard sound to listen to for an hour - Nothing here a good phone app cannot also do Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xeBGOk) ## 7. Learn three shapes rather than thirty chords Open G tuning does something for the left hand that standard guitar tuning does not: every major chord on the neck is one of three shapes, and each of those shapes works at any fret without changing. They are usually called the barre, the F shape and the D shape. Barre all four strings at one fret and you have a major chord whose name is the note on the third string. The F shape names itself from the notes on the fourth and first strings; the D shape from the note on the second. Move any of them up two frets and the chord goes up a tone — the G shapes at the bottom of the neck become A shapes at the second fret, and so on all the way up. Three shapes and the ability to name the note under one finger will give you every major chord there is. That is a much smaller thing to memorize than a chart of individual chords, and it is the difference between a player who knows the first three frets and one who can go anywhere on the neck. Learn the open G, C and D positions first because you will need them this week, then learn the three shapes because they are what those positions are examples of. [The shapes and positions are set out here](/banjo-chords-ultimate-guide/). The skill that takes the time, incidentally, is not the shapes. It is changing between them without the music stopping, which is a separate exercise: pick two chords, and swap between them in time with the metronome for two minutes without playing anything else. ## 8. Wear the strap even when you are sitting down A guitar sits on your leg because it has a flat back and a waist. A banjo has neither. The pot is a cylinder, so it rolls; the neck is heavy relative to the body, so it dives; and the result is that your left hand ends up holding the instrument in position instead of fretting with it. That is not a comfort problem, it is a technique problem, which is why the strap goes on before you sit down and not only before you stand up. Set the length so the banjo sits where you want it whether you are standing or sitting, and the left hand is freed to do nothing but fret. Everything about the fretting hand gets easier at that point, including the thumb position behind the neck, which stops being a clamp. One thing to know before buying: a banjo strap is not a guitar strap. It attaches by threading loops or leather tabs through the brackets around the rim, because most banjos have no strap buttons to hook onto. A guitar strap will not fit without adding hardware. Strap### MUSIC FIRST Cotton and Leather Banjo Strap - 2 inches wide, adjustable 33.6 to 62.2 inches - Cotton body, leather ends - Two leather strap lockers included Wide enough to spread the weight, long enough for a tall player standing up, and it threads through the brackets the way a banjo strap should. Two inches is the useful measurement here — a narrow strap concentrates the load on a small patch of shoulder and you notice it within half an hour. It is made in a range of woven country patterns, which vary a good deal from one to the next. **Good**- Attaches to the brackets, no hardware needed - Long enough to stand up with - Leather ends rather than plastic **Less good**- Cotton has no give, so a heavy resonator banjo still feels heavy - Cotton weave picks up dirt off a shoulder Around $20 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ghluGd) If you have a resonator banjo and you play standing, the upgrade worth the money is a padded neoprene one — [Neotech’s Super Banjo Strap](https://amzn.to/3UnkKqf) at about twice the price stretches slightly under load, which takes the dead weight off the shoulder on a long evening. Neotech builds the same strap for guitar and for bass at lower prices, so check that the one you are ordering is the banjo version — it is the one that ends in loops sized to thread the brackets rather than in a slotted tab for a strap button. ## 9. Tune before every session, and check it at the fifth fret A banjo drifts more than a guitar does. The head is a membrane under tension that responds to humidity, the fifth string is short and often on a friction peg, and the whole assembly is lighter and more reactive than a solid soundbox. Assume it needs tuning every time you pick it up, and tune it before you play a note rather than three minutes in. Standard five-string tuning is open G: gDGBD, low to high, with that first lower-case g being the short fifth string, which is the highest-pitched of the five despite being nearest your face. The quick check that everything agrees is the fifth string against the first string at the fifth fret — both are G, and they should be the same note. Practicing on an instrument that is slightly out is worse than it sounds, because you are teaching your ear that this is what a G chord is. [The full method, including what to do when every string reads perfect and the chord still sounds sour, is here](/how-to-tune-a-banjo/), and [we compare clip-on tuners here](/best-banjo-tuner/) — the thing to look for is one that reads string vibration rather than room sound, because a banjo puts every other string into sympathetic motion the moment you pick one. ## 10. Give the fifteen minutes a shape Fifteen minutes a day, most days, is the floor that teachers keep landing on, and half an hour is the target. Frequency beats duration by a wide margin in the first year, because what you are building is muscle memory and it decays between sessions. The harder part is deciding what to do once you have sat down, and a session with no plan turns into playing the two things you can already play. A shape as simple as this fixes it: a few minutes of rolls on open strings to warm the hand up, a few minutes on one specific problem — a chord change, a bar that keeps collapsing — at a tempo where it is clean, then whatever you actually want to play. The last part is not a reward for the first two; it is the reason for them. And leave the banjo out on a stand rather than in its case. A pair of clasps is a small obstacle, but it is exactly the size of obstacle that a fifteen-minute session loses to. Routine### Banjo Aerobics — Michael Bremer - 50 weeks of daily exercises - Banjo tab, with online audio for each exercise - Bluegrass three-finger technique A workout book rather than a tune book: one short exercise per day for a year, arranged so the difficulty climbs slowly and each week has a theme — rolls, slides, hammer-ons, up-the-neck positions. Its value to a beginner is not that the exercises are unusual. It is that the decision about what to practice has already been made, which removes the thing that most often turns a fifteen-minute session into no session. The audio tracks matter too, because an exercise you have only read is an exercise you might be playing wrong. **Good**- Removes the what-shall-I-practice decision entirely - Progresses slowly enough for a genuine beginner - Audio for every exercise **Less good**- Three-finger only — nothing here for clawhammer - Assumes you can already read tab - Exercises, not tunes; it needs something else alongside it Around $23 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qurNJR) ## Play with other people sooner than you think you are ready Four chords and a steady hand are enough to sit in at a beginners’ slow jam, and the thing you learn there is not available at home: how to keep going when you drop a note, how to hear where the chord change is coming, how to play quietly behind somebody else’s melody. Most banjo practice is spent alone with a metronome, and the metronome does not speed up when the fiddle player gets excited. Recordings are the intermediate step. Play along with them — not to keep up, but at whatever speed you can hold, using software that slows a track down without dropping its pitch. Listening properly is also worth more than it sounds: knowing how the tune goes, well enough to hum it, before you try to find it on the neck, means you are looking for something specific rather than discovering it a note at a time. ## Common questions ### How long should a beginner practice each day? Fifteen minutes is the working floor and thirty is the target, on most days rather than all of them. Daily fifteen is worth substantially more than a two-hour session on the weekend, because muscle memory fades between sessions and you spend the first part of every long gap getting back to where you were. ### Do I have to use fingerpicks? For bluegrass, effectively yes — the volume and attack the style depends on are not available from a bare fingertip. For clawhammer, no; the stroke uses the back of the nail, and some players add a single fingerpick worn backward only if their nail keeps splitting. If you are learning three-finger style, put them on in week one. ### My banjo goes out of tune up the neck. Is it a cheap instrument? Usually not. That is the classic symptom of a bridge in the wrong place, and it takes a minute to fix with the harmonic check in the first tip. If the bridge is correctly set and it still happens, the next suspects are the nut slots being cut too high and the head having gone slack. ### Should I learn to read tab? Yes, and it takes about ten minutes. Banjo tab is five lines representing five strings with fret numbers written on them, plus letters underneath for which right-hand finger plays each note. Nearly all banjo teaching material is written in it, so refusing to learn it narrows what you can use down to video. ### Is a cheap banjo good enough to learn on? Good enough, yes, provided the bridge is set and the action is not so high that fretting hurts. What a cheap banjo costs you is not tone but effort, and an instrument that fights back is one you play less. [Our beginner picks are here](/best-banjo-for-beginners/), and [the ones worth stepping around are here](/banjo-brands-to-avoid/). ### Do I need long fingernails for clawhammer? You need one, on whichever finger you strike with — usually the index or middle. It does not need to be long, just present and strong enough not to tear, and the striking surface is the back of the nail rather than its tip. Players with soft nails use a metal or plastic pick worn backward instead. ## If you do only three of these Set the bridge, because everything you practice on a badly intonated banjo is practiced wrong. Pick one right hand and leave the other one alone until next year. And drill the roll or the frailing stroke on open strings, with nothing happening at the other end of the neck, until it runs by itself. The rest is smaller, and most of it is about removing friction — a strap so your left hand is free, a metronome so you are not guessing, a banjo on a stand so that picking it up costs nothing. None of that makes you better on its own. It just means that when you do sit down, the fifteen minutes goes on playing. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [Banjo Brands to Avoid, and the Ones That Are Only Cheap](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-brands-to-avoid/) **Published:** April 2, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Banjo Brands to Avoid, and the Ones That Are Only Cheap Below about $300 the name on the headstock is not information. A handful of factories build banjos for a long list of labels, and two of the best-selling ones publish the same specification word for word. What separates a banjo you keep from one you resent is a short list of parts, and every item on it can be checked before you spend anything. The banjo nobody has to warn you about### Gold Tone AC-1 The cheapest banjo made by a company that draws its own, at $314.99, and the cheapest one that is adjusted by a person before it is boxed. That last part is the whole difference between an instrument and a kit. Around $315 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x0LWJX) **If the budget is really tight:** Pyle PBJ60 — around $160, plus a setup **Buy once:** Deering Goodtime — around $600 **Walk away from:** a neck with no truss rod, and any banjo whose neck has already moved ## The badge means nothing under $300 Ashthorpe and Jameson each publish, on their own websites, a five-ply maple and mahogany shell, a mahogany neck, a Remo head, a 5/8-inch maple and ebony bridge, 24 chrome-plated brackets, a hinged tailpiece, a chrome armrest, a removable mahogany resonator, an adjustable truss rod and a geared fifth tuner. Not a similar list. The same list, in the same order. This is old in the banjo trade. Collectors cataloguing imported instruments have logged well over a hundred brand names — Abilene through Yakoma — coming out of a small number of Korean and Japanese plants, sold on by wholesalers who chose a name and had it screened onto a headstock. The trade word for it is a stencil brand. Ranking those names against one another ranks importers, not instruments. The brand starts carrying information at roughly $300, which is where companies that design their own banjos begin. Gold Tone’s AC-1 is $314.99, Deering’s Goodtime is $599, and both are built by firms that draw their own instruments rather than order them from a catalogue. Below that you are choosing between labels on comparable goods, so buy on the parts and the price, and there is a fuller shortlist in our [picks under $200](/best-banjo-under-200/). ## The faults that actually ruin a banjo Cheap and bad are not the same thing, and the difference is whether the fault can be fixed. A banjo that plays badly because nobody adjusted it is an afternoon and $50 to $100 at a shop. A banjo that plays badly because of how it was built stays that way. ### No truss rod The truss rod is a steel bar inside the neck with an adjustable nut at one end. A banjo neck is a long, thin piece of wood under constant pull, and it moves — with humidity, with age, with a heavier set of strings. With a truss rod that movement is corrected in a few minutes. Without one, a neck that has bowed is scrap, because the only remaining options are a fret leveling or a new neck, both of which cost more than the instrument. Nearly every banjo currently sold new has one, including the cheapest here — Pyle ships the adjustment tool in the box. It is the used market where this decides purchases, and the section below covers which instruments to be careful of there. There is one exception worth knowing, because it looks like the fault and is not. Deering builds the five-string Goodtime with no truss rod on purpose: the neck is a single piece of hard rock maple with the frets set straight into it and no separate fingerboard glued on top, so there is no join between two woods pulling against each other, and the relief is machined in at the factory. Deering fits a rod the moment the tension goes up — the Goodtime Six, which takes steel guitar gauges, has a two-way one. The condition attached is that you stay on light strings, because nothing on the instrument will answer a heavier set. A one-piece hardwood neck built that way by a maker who says so is a design decision; a two-wood neck with no rod on a budget banjo is an omission. ### A friction fifth peg The fifth string is the short drone that starts partway up the neck, and it has its own peg sticking out of the side. On cheap instruments that peg is a friction fit — a tapered shaft held by nothing but pressure. It slips, and because the fifth string rings out over everything you play, a slipping fifth peg makes the banjo sound broken rather than slightly flat. A geared fifth tuner solves it and is now common well under $200. Where one is missing it is a twenty-dollar part and a few minutes on a bench, so this is the one item on the list you can put right after the fact — which is why the truss rod above matters more. Check it anyway, because a maker who leaves it off has usually cut elsewhere too, and because the claim is not always reliable. Pyle is the worked example, and it makes the case for judging parts over badges better than any comparison between brands could: the same sentence, “Features Additional 5th Geared Tuner Side-Peg”, appears on both of their banjos. On the [PBJ140](https://amzn.to/3SwI30c) at around $200 it is true, and the gear housing is visible on the side of the neck. On the $160 PBJ60 it is a friction peg. One brand, one sentence, two answers — so look at the instrument rather than the copy. ### An anonymous head The head is the drum skin the bridge sits on, and it does more for the sound than any wood on the instrument. Remo makes the heads fitted to banjos costing thousands, and they also make the heads on several banjos under $200 — so a listing that names the head is telling you something, and one that just says “high quality drum head” is telling you it is generic. A head is replaceable for about $30, which makes this the least serious fault here, but it is a reliable signal about the rest of the build. ### A tone ring that is not one A real bluegrass tone ring is a cast bell-brass hoop weighing about three pounds, and it is most of why a bluegrass banjo comes in at ten to twelve pounds. Anything selling for $200 and weighing six is not carrying one, whatever the description calls the hoop the head sits on. That is not a defect — a light, bright, quiet banjo is a perfectly good thing to learn on — but it decides what the instrument can do. Expecting one to carry a jam alongside a guitar and a fiddle ends in disappointment, and the weights across the range are in [how much a banjo weighs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-weigh/). ## The costliest mistake is the number of strings Nothing on the checklist above matters if the instrument has four strings and you wanted five. When people say banjo they almost always mean the five-string, and the fifth string is what produces the sound they have in their head. A tenor banjo has four strings tuned in fifths and belongs to Irish music and trad jazz; a plectrum banjo has four and belongs to jazz; a six-string is tuned like a guitar and is an easy switch for guitarists and a poor way to learn banjo technique. All of them are real instruments and none of them is what most beginners are imagining. Our guide to [types of banjos](/types-of-banjos/) and [how many strings a banjo has](/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) set out the differences, and there are separate picks for [tenor](/best-tenor-banjo/), [plectrum](/best-plectrum-banjos/) and [six-string](/best-6-string-banjo/) banjos. Two naming habits make this easy to get wrong. Rover sells the RB-20 as a five-string, the RB-20P as a plectrum and the RB-20T as a tenor, all described as a Student Openback and all at the same $495 — one designation, one photograph at a glance, three different instruments. And in the budget bracket the same banjo is routinely offered as a five-string and a six-string at one price under one name, so the string count is a choice made at checkout rather than a different product. Read the description down to the number before ordering. Scale length catches people the same way. A 26-inch banjo is not a smaller version of a 38-inch one; the frets near the body sit close enough together that adult fingers cover two at once. Those are built for children and for travel, and they are the wrong purchase for an adult at any price — the [travel banjo picks](/best-travel-banjos/) go through which short-scale instruments are worth having and why. ## The used market is where the bad banjos are A secondhand banjo is the one way to get a better-built instrument for the money, and it is also the only place you will still meet the faults above. American catalogue banjos of the 1950s and 1960s — Kay, Harmony, Silvertone and the names sold alongside them — were built without truss rods, on bakelite or plastic rims, with pot-metal fittings. Some play pleasantly. The ones whose necks have moved in seventy years cannot be brought back, and parts for them are long gone. Sight down the neck from the headstock before anything else. If it has bowed and there is no adjustable nut at either end of the truss rod, the price does not matter. After that, check that the fifth peg holds, that the tuners turn without slop, and that the neck meets the pot with no movement at the joint. A banjo that passes those three is worth a setup; one that fails the first is worth nothing. ## The brands that do mean something BrandMadeRangeWhat it is forDeeringSpring Valley, California$599 and upThe cheapest American-built banjos; buy-once instrumentsGold ToneAssembled and set up in Titusville, Florida$315 and upThe entry point to instruments that arrive playableRecording KingChina, for a US brand$599 and up at listBluegrass specification for the money — but see belowGold StarChina, for Saga$1,980–$1,995Professional bluegrass banjos, not beginner onesImport labelsShared factories$120–$250Competent parts, no setup; judge on the spec, not the name[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Recording King is the brand experienced players name most often, and its situation changed recently. The Music Link, which revived the name in 2007, closed in 2025, and St. Louis Music has been the exclusive global distributor since that August. The brand’s own site describes itself as a temporary home with a full launch due later in 2026, several models now carry a -BR suffix, and the current list prices there are $599 for the Dirty 30s open back, $899 for the Dirty 30s resonator and $2,099 for the Madison RK-R35-BR. Recommendations written a few years ago were describing a different price, so check the current one rather than trusting an older figure. The Madison itself still sells for around $1,400, well under that list — our [RK-R35-BR review](/recording-king-rk-35-review/) goes through it. Gold Star runs the other way. It is Saga’s professional bluegrass line, $1,980 to $1,995, and the name carries enough weight that it lands on beginner shortlists it does not belong on. Nothing is wrong with the instrument; it simply is not a first banjo. If you are choosing between the two American names, [Deering versus Gold Tone](/deering-vs-gold-tone/) covers it properly. ## Three banjos with none of it № 1 · The safe answer ### Gold Tone AC-1 - Open back, composite rim - 26-3/16″ scale, 11″ Remo LC frosted head - Mahogany neck, Zero Glide nut - 3.75 lb, gig bag included - Five-year transferable warranty - $314.99 Gold Tone’s own list price, and there is no discount to hunt for. What the money buys that nothing cheaper does is the last hour of the build: every AC-1 goes through a twelve-point setup in Titusville, Florida before it ships, so the action, the head tension and the bridge are already right. Everything below this price arrives with none of that done, which is why the cheaper banjos on this site all come with a setup budget attached. It is also the lightest full-scale banjo here at 3.75 lb, which matters more than it sounds when you are holding one for an hour. The Zero Glide nut is a slotted replacement nut that keeps the strings from binding, and it is the sort of thing that normally arrives as an upgrade rather than as standard. Take it for clawhammer and old-time; it is an open back, so it will not carry a bluegrass jam. The warranty runs five years and transfers with the instrument, provided it was bought from an authorized dealer. **Pros**- Arrives set up, which nothing cheaper does - 3.75 lb — the easiest banjo here to hold - Zero Glide nut fitted as standard - Five-year transferable warranty - Left-handed built at the same price **Cons**- Open back only, so no bluegrass volume - Composite rim rather than wood - More than twice the price of a competent import Around $315[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4x0LWJX) № 2 · Buy once ### Deering Goodtime - Open back, three-ply violin-grade maple rim - Made in Spring Valley, California - Under 5 lb - $599 at Deering’s list price The cheapest American-made banjo there is, built in the same shop and on the same tooling as Deering’s professional instruments. That is the whole argument for it: at $599 it is not competing on specification with a $200 import — it is competing on being an instrument that will still be worth playing in twenty years, and worth selling if you stop. The unflattering half is that on paper it looks thin for the money. No resonator, no tone ring, a plain rim, and a $175 import will list more features. Every one of those features is a part; what the Goodtime has instead is a neck that stays where you put it and a rim that was made properly. If you are certain you will still be playing in a year, this is where the money stops being spent twice. If you are not certain yet, it is too much banjo to find out on. **Pros**- American built, in Deering’s own shop - Holds its value in a way no import does - Under 5 lb - Upgrades to a resonator later **Cons**- Looks sparse next to an import at a third of the price - Open back, so bluegrass volume needs the resonator model - Too much to spend before you know you will stick with it Around $600[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4bP64q0) № 3 · If the budget is fixed ### Pyle PBJ60 - Resonator, mahogany neck, back and sides - Rosewood fretboard, maple bridge - Adjustable truss rod, tool in the box - Friction fifth peg, not the geared one Pyle claims - ~$160 Judged on the checklist above rather than on the badge, this passes on the item that cannot be retrofitted — a truss rod, so the neck can be corrected — and fails on the one that can. Pyle’s feature list promises a geared fifth tuner and the banjo has a friction peg, which is a twenty-dollar part rather than a reason to walk away. The price is low enough to cover both it and the setup, which is the argument for this banjo and the only one. Our [full Pyle review](/pyle-banjo-review/) lays it out. It is the plainest thing here — no armrest, a thinner voice than the mahogany-shelled banjos at $175, and a gloss finish laid on heavier than a banjo wants. None of that is what defeats beginners. High action defeats beginners, and that is a setup rather than a purchase. Buy this and spend the difference at a shop and you end up with something that plays better than a $200 banjo left in its box. **Pros**- A truss rod at the lowest price here, which is the part that matters - Leaves the setup budget intact - Full scale, so nothing to outgrow **Cons**- Arrives unadjusted, like everything at this price - No armrest, and the resonator is not meant to come off - Thin next to the mahogany banjos at $175 Around $160[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zo8q9e) ## Spend the difference here instead A setup is $50 to $100 and does more than another hundred dollars of instrument. After that the list is short. A set of strings — the [D’Addario EJ55](https://amzn.to/3mwRuN1), medium phosphor bronze, 10-23 — costs about seven dollars and is the cheapest real improvement to a budget banjo, because factory strings are where the last few cents get saved. Check the packet says Medium Phosphor Bronze; the nickel sets look almost identical and sound brighter and harder. A [clip-on tuner made for the banjo](https://amzn.to/3Fp3qqP) is around $23 and clamps to the bracket hoop rather than the headstock, which keeps it out of the way of the fifth peg. The bundled tuners in accessory kits work and are slow; [our tuner picks](/best-banjo-tuner/) cover what to get if you would rather buy once. And a [hardshell case](https://amzn.to/3ydkhZD) runs about $145 — more than the cheapest banjo on this page, which says something about both. Get the shape right: that one is cut for a resonator banjo and will not hold an open back properly. ## Frequently asked questions ### Which banjo brands should I actually avoid? Under $300, none of them specifically and all of them equally — they are labels applied to comparable factory output, so judge the parts. The instrument to avoid outright is the one without a truss rod, because a neck that has moved cannot be brought back; a friction fifth peg is a twenty-dollar part and not a reason on its own. Old catalogue banjos whose necks have gone are the other thing to leave alone. Above $300, the names worth paying for are Deering, Gold Tone and Recording King. ### Is a banjo under $200 a waste of money? No, provided you have it set up. The parts at that price are competent — Remo heads and truss rods were not available this cheap fifteen years ago. What is missing is the adjustment, and that is $50 to $100 rather than another instrument. A $160 banjo that has been set up plays better than a $250 banjo that has not. There is more in [how much a banjo costs](/how-much-does-a-banjo-cost/). ### How can I tell a bad banjo from a badly set-up one? Almost everything a beginner notices is setup. High action, a buzzing string, notes going sharp as you fret them and a banjo that will not stay in tune are all adjustments. What is not fixable is a bowed neck with no truss rod, a neck that moves at the joint, and cracked or delaminating rim plies. Check those three and assume the rest is adjustment. ### Are Chinese-made banjos bad? Where it is built matters much less than whether anyone finished it. Recording King’s banjos are made in China to a US brand’s specification and are the standard bluegrass recommendation; Gold Tone import components and assemble and set up in Florida. The difference between those and a $160 import is design and final adjustment, not the country. ### Should I buy used instead? If you can take a player with you, yes — it is the only way to get a better-built instrument for the money. If you cannot, the used market at this price is mostly banjos somebody gave up on, and telling a warped neck from a high action is exactly the judgement a beginner does not have yet. Buy new and spend the setup money. ### Does a beginner need a resonator? Only for bluegrass. A resonator throws the sound forward and is what you need to be heard in a jam; an open back is lighter, quieter and suits clawhammer and old-time. If you do not know yet, buy a banjo whose resonator unbolts. [Open back versus resonator](/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) goes through it. ## So what should I buy? If $315 is available, the Gold Tone AC-1 removes the question entirely: it is the cheapest banjo that arrives adjusted, from a company that builds nothing else. If the budget is closer to $200, buy the Pyle PBJ60 and put what is left toward a setup — the checklist matters, the badge does not. And if you already know this is going to stick, the Deering Goodtime at around $600 is the point where you stop buying banjos. What none of them requires is a view about which importer is best. Check for the truss rod, look at the fifth peg rather than taking the feature list’s word for it, count the strings, and the field narrows on its own. [Our beginner picks](/best-banjo-for-beginners/) take it from there. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [A-Style vs F-Style Mandolin: What the Scroll Actually Costs](https://promusicvault.com/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Mandolin Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/mandolin-comparisons/ "Mandolin Comparisons")› A-Style vs F-Style Mandolin: What the Scroll Actually Costs The scroll and the two points on an F-style mandolin are solid wood. No air passes through them, they sit outside the sound chamber, and an instrument built without them would sound very much as it does now. What they change is the price — and how much they change it depends almost entirely on whether a machine cut them or a person did. The other thing worth knowing before you spend anything: the choice between the two shapes is not the choice that alters the sound. The soundhole does that, and it is a separate decision that can go either way on either body. If you want one answer### At around $400 the scroll is free — take whichever you prefer the look of The Loar builds its Honey Creek mandolins two ways: the A-style LM-110 and the F-style LM-310F, same hand-carved solid spruce top, same maple body, same neck, same money. That parity does not exist anywhere else in the beginner range. Below it, an A-style is the better instrument at any given budget, because none of the money went into a shape. Above it, the scroll starts to cost a great deal. Around $400 either way [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs) **Same money, more instrument:** A-style, at every price below $400 **What changes the sound:** the soundhole, not the shape **Where the scroll gets expensive:** hand-carved lines — Kentucky’s A to F step is roughly double **Bluegrass:** F-style by tradition, not by tone ## A-style and F-style, side by side A-styleF-style**Body**Symmetrical teardropTeardrop with a carved scroll at the upper bout and two points**Soundhole**Two f-holes or one oval — both are madeTwo f-holes or one oval — both are made**Sound chamber**The whole bodyThe same body. The scroll and points are solid blocks**Price at matched spec**The baselineNear-identical on factory instruments; roughly double where the scroll is carved and bound by hand**Strap**Needs two attachment points, or a tie behind the nutOne end loops straight over the scroll**Held sitting down**Rests flat on the thighThe lower point acts as a fulcrum against the thigh and lifts the neck**Case**A-shaped onlyF-shaped only — the two are not interchangeable**Weight**Much the same — 2 to 2¾ lb either way, and the model decides it rather than the shape**Resale**Slower, and closer to what you paid at the budget endEasier to sell in bluegrass circles ## The scroll is solid wood Gibson introduced the Florentine scroll on the F-4 in 1902, and the shape has meant “serious mandolin” ever since. It is carved from the same block as the rim, and the cavity inside the instrument stops short of it. The points are the same: solid, decorative, and outside the part of the instrument that moves air. There is one honest qualification. Weber, which builds both shapes in Montana and is unusually willing to talk about why, fits a maple head block to its F-styles and a mahogany one to its A-styles. The extra mass at the neck joint gives the F a little more midrange bark and sustain. That is a real difference, it is small, and it comes from the block rather than from the scroll — a maker who used the same block in both bodies would not get it. ## What the scroll costs depends on who cut it On a factory instrument the body is cut by machine, and a scroll is one more path in the program. The Loar’s Honey Creek pair is the clearest demonstration on the market: the [LM-110](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M) and the [LM-310F](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs) share a hand-carved solid spruce top, maple back and sides, the same neck and the same hardware, and both sit at around $400. The pair also shows where a real difference does live. The Loar’s own specifications give the F-style longitudinal tone bars and the A-style an X-brace, so the two do not sound quite the same — the tone bars leave the middle of the top freer to move and give a harder, shorter chop, and the X ties it together for a rounder, longer note. That is a genuine tonal choice, and it is under the top rather than around it. A maker who used the same bracing in both bodies would get the same sound out of both. Move up to where a person carves and binds the scroll and the arithmetic changes completely. Kentucky’s Standard A-model, the [KM-150](https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-KM-150-Standard-model-Mandolin/dp/B001OQC75K?crid=9HMF675ETO9M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LyA4m-j8AC8q68wDFDo1EsN2KhKfjN2JUoUeyfef7teJ-TAJqsgzxzyWkZoFpjYnpSZ5Y-ZuFBslgLbGlnp5pWmGAzmE2t53RsNllMPp_aoC0eORpYmgo1BXv7ObWtiok7MFEDF0zcUgfSCLtOe12kg9hPUvTJz5udgeadCooVM28-GNRWFLx_E010DEwhkNcPeU8XNBbroX60wbDAudFG-sKtasxzBuycO9iK2yDSihrFUUXdZH3RQ-uiO1lexJZd2n2qSfnB7obwCFdiGdjBb6g_Q-gaT9nAOb5mga57M.NRuNLvEsaPr_l_w8dRy7uCJbR8avMSWMCkIYzL5MQDc&dib_tag=se&keywords=kentucky%2Bkm%2B150%2Bmandolin&qid=1745535548&sprefix=kentucky%2Bkm%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-2&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a71d5f2a25a8a3cf6b8a04f1ed7a69a6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), is around $595 for a hand-graduated solid German spruce top over solid Alpine maple. The Standard F-model, the KM-650, is the same construction with flamed maple and a hand-carved, hand-bound scroll, and it is around $1,200. The flamed wood accounts for part of that. The scroll accounts for most of it, and binding a curve that tight is some of the slowest work in the whole build. So the F-style premium is not a fixed percentage. It is close to nothing at the bottom of the market and enormous in the middle of it, and the crossover is roughly where instruments stop being machine-finished. Our guide to [what a mandolin costs](/how-much-does-a-mandolin-cost/) maps the rest of that range, and [types of mandolins](/types-of-mandolins/) covers the shapes beyond these two. ## The soundhole is the decision that changes the sound Two f-holes or one oval hole. F-holes are louder and punchier, with a tight treble attack that cuts through a band — this is where the bluegrass chop lives. An oval hole is sweeter and rounder, with more overtones and more sustain, which suits melody playing, Irish and old-time repertoire, and accompanying a singer. This has nothing to do with the body shape, and the two get confused constantly because most cheap mandolins happen to be A-styles with f-holes. Gibson’s F-4, built from 1902 to 1934, was an F-style with an oval hole; the F-5 that Lloyd Loar designed in 1922 put f-holes into the same scrolled body. Kentucky sells both today on the plain body — the KM-150 with f-holes, the KM-270 Artist with an oval one at around $695. And it is not only the hole. Weber tone-bar braces its f-hole mandolins and X-braces its oval-hole ones, so the structure under the top differs as much as the opening in it. That is why an oval-hole instrument does not simply sound like an f-hole one with the treble turned down. At beginner prices this decision mostly makes itself: nearly everything under $600 has f-holes, and oval-hole models start further up the range. It matters when you buy your second mandolin, and it is worth knowing before you assume a higher model number is simply a better version of the one below it. ## What the points are actually for Calling the F-style shape pure decoration is not quite right either. It does nothing acoustically, but it does several things in your hands. - The lower point sits against the thigh when you play sitting down and acts as a fulcrum, lifting the neck to a better angle without a strap. - The upper point gives the left hand a landmark to find when it moves up past the body join. - The scroll takes a strap end directly. An A-style needs a button fitted at the heel, or a strap tied around the headstock behind the nut, which is the arrangement most players end up with and which nobody much likes. None of that is worth doubling your budget for. It is worth knowing that the shape has reasons behind it beyond looking like Bill Monroe’s. ## Two costs that arrive with the shape A mandolin case is cut to the outline of the body. An A-style case will not close over an F-style at all, and an F-style case leaves an A-style rolling around inside it. Buying a case second-hand, or accepting one thrown in with a bundle, is where this catches people out — check the shape on the case as carefully as on the instrument. Straps divide the same way. An F-style strap is a single length with a lace at one end for the scroll; an A-style strap needs two attachment points, and if the instrument only has one button at the tail you will be tying the other end to the headstock. ## Bluegrass, and whether it has to be an F Bill Monroe played a 1923 Gibson F-5, and the shape has been the uniform of the music ever since. The sound that made it famous came from f-holes, a hand-carved graduated top and the right hand — none of which requires a scroll. An A-style with f-holes and a carved top will chop just as hard, and at the beginner end it will do it with more of your money in the top and less in the outline. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The counter-argument is social rather than acoustic, and it is not nothing: if you intend to stand on a bluegrass stage, an F-style is what people expect to see, and it is easier to sell on. Our [bluegrass mandolin guide](/best-mandolin-for-bluegrass/) goes further into chop and tone. ## Six worth buying MandolinStyleTopPrice bandBest for[The Loar LM-310F-BRB](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs)FHand-carved solid spruce~$400The scroll, at no extra cost[The Loar LM-110-BRB](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M)AHand-carved solid spruce~$400The same instrument, plain body[Ibanez M522S](https://www.amazon.com/Ibanez-M522SBS-F-Style-Mandolin-Sunburst/dp/B000T4OB6G?crid=16ROZVOE47UM4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9Lw0swHtLvBHDBo-mP3mj9kyjNZMcNVDyZe5pANyzRLHGEQddBiYlrHU7wGGgIvahu8sWHKsPwPv7OyzlbyidpaVe73erUkKdDEAvOOSkOeb4P-9MyYnM2JlxhqjX7fdboBhX6Dus0ysj_N3xeJyeZTGXkMhZN59BK_bDTy2T23VcFLDywAzF4u3WE0QogVRdNl4_hEXRPugkpeoWmpK6ahyYNcLaXAUYueKlpwvBu_TKpQoZzNHr2nrD2vQPIRrbk2ueSKL3mmtPfacCGpql5L1AGXWr7fapwRjdUFhwJU.oX3SpHKTvsH8LirhnN501-dH5G2e96BLI0-0tDFUCig&dib_tag=se&keywords=ibanez+m522s+mandolin&qid=1745535742&sprefix=ibanez+m522%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-2&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=7799c8d5dc4afda0795f673cd0ce7bbc&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)FSolid spruce~$350Cheapest F-style with a solid top[Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM)ASpruce laminate~$200A well-built cheap one[Kentucky KM-150](https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-KM-150-Standard-model-Mandolin/dp/B001OQC75K?crid=9HMF675ETO9M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LyA4m-j8AC8q68wDFDo1EsN2KhKfjN2JUoUeyfef7teJ-TAJqsgzxzyWkZoFpjYnpSZ5Y-ZuFBslgLbGlnp5pWmGAzmE2t53RsNllMPp_aoC0eORpYmgo1BXv7ObWtiok7MFEDF0zcUgfSCLtOe12kg9hPUvTJz5udgeadCooVM28-GNRWFLx_E010DEwhkNcPeU8XNBbroX60wbDAudFG-sKtasxzBuycO9iK2yDSihrFUUXdZH3RQ-uiO1lexJZd2n2qSfnB7obwCFdiGdjBb6g_Q-gaT9nAOb5mga57M.NRuNLvEsaPr_l_w8dRy7uCJbR8avMSWMCkIYzL5MQDc&dib_tag=se&keywords=kentucky%2Bkm%2B150%2Bmandolin&qid=1745535548&sprefix=kentucky%2Bkm%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-2&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a71d5f2a25a8a3cf6b8a04f1ed7a69a6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)ASolid spruce, solid maple~$595Buying once[Donner DML-1](https://www.amazon.com/Donner-Mandolin-Instrument-Sunburst-DML-1/dp/B077RS9DPT?crid=2RJXIMAONQ59S&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-JxfJTaeaAHwGP1iuuTg0DjaYKUEqNmiw4qbXTjBQsP3nJMykgb9KM3ppprUvTJOB7G7HXCX00Ozig8gJ7yq0JgRP4XyswcbmXxM8PbkzGxHWdjhImypjwE6vfkCALSggYKzWFmLsUcR93g3VQ0hxaFK7AMlEGlghMmROShxTQwNRH5s80JxkGWsQ_LOxbppLkMbPw1Ji01SAGA0V3-vui86F42-K23r4pX5wAwgw3p82gb1EKIXV24Yn08RAjNERzQ35jBEUSNxlCSRVh7k2jfuf_-8YFjya3lfPgXrldU.dJGXSxLoU1efYeQC3GIrLqM0Gn1nsM8EgbT0oVUjeaE&dib_tag=se&keywords=donner%2Ba%2Bmandolin&qid=1745535656&sprefix=donner%2Ba%2Bmandolin%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=83eb01ab1a2c416d95744051558bdfee&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)ALaminate mahogany~$100Finding out whether you like it ## The picks in detail № 1 · Best F-style ### The Loar LM-310F-BRB Honey Creek - F-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - Maple back & sides - f-holes - ~$400 The Loar exists to build 1920s-style carved instruments at prices that do not require a 1920s income, and the Honey Creek line is the entry point. The top is carved and graduated rather than pressed to a uniform thickness, which is the difference between a solid top that works and one that is merely solid. It gives the dry, barking chop that bluegrass rhythm is built on, and it opens up as it is played. The reason it sits at the top of this particular page is the price tag beside its A-style twin. Everywhere else, wanting the scroll means giving something up elsewhere in the instrument. Here it does not. **Pros**- Hand-carved solid top at a laminate-adjacent price - No premium at all for the F-style body - Real bluegrass chop rather than a polite strum **Cons**- Plain satin finish and ordinary hardware - Padauk fingerboard rather than ebony - Wants a setup before it plays its best Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs) № 2 · The same instrument, A-style ### The Loar LM-110-BRB Honey Creek - A-style - Hand-carved solid spruce top - X-brace - Maple back & sides - Ebony bridge, bone nut - ~$400 The same hand-carved top, the same maple body and the same money in the plain shape, and the direct comparison that makes the rest of this page checkable. The Loar does brace the two differently — an X under this one, tone bars under the F — which rounds the note off and lets it ring a little longer here. It sits more comfortably against the ribs and it is easier to play sitting on a sofa — which is where most mandolins get played, whatever anyone buys them imagining. The ebony adjustable bridge and bone nut are worth noticing at this money. Both are parts that cheaper instruments fake in plastic, and both affect how cleanly notes come out. **Pros**- Bone nut and ebony bridge at $400 - No scroll or points digging in when you play sitting down - Same carved top as the pricier Loars **Cons**- Needs a strap button fitted, or a headstock tie - Plain finish that will not turn heads Around $400[Check current price](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M) № 3 · Cheapest F-style worth owning ### Ibanez M522S - F-style - Solid spruce top - Rosewood fingerboard - f-holes - ~$350 The least you can spend and still get an F-style with a solid top. Ibanez builds to a price with machine precision rather than hand work, so the top is pressed to an even thickness instead of graduated by feel. The result is brighter and more consistent than the Loar, and less characterful. Fifty dollars below the LM-310F, and the Loar is the better instrument for that fifty. The gap is small enough that liking the gloss finish is a defensible reason to choose this one instead. **Pros**- Solid top for the price of a good laminate - Consistent build — fewer duds than the budget field - Bright and articulate in an ensemble **Cons**- Pressed rather than hand-carved top - Less depth than the Loar sitting just above it Around $350[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Ibanez-M522SBS-F-Style-Mandolin-Sunburst/dp/B000T4OB6G?crid=16ROZVOE47UM4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9Lw0swHtLvBHDBo-mP3mj9kyjNZMcNVDyZe5pANyzRLHGEQddBiYlrHU7wGGgIvahu8sWHKsPwPv7OyzlbyidpaVe73erUkKdDEAvOOSkOeb4P-9MyYnM2JlxhqjX7fdboBhX6Dus0ysj_N3xeJyeZTGXkMhZN59BK_bDTy2T23VcFLDywAzF4u3WE0QogVRdNl4_hEXRPugkpeoWmpK6ahyYNcLaXAUYueKlpwvBu_TKpQoZzNHr2nrD2vQPIRrbk2ueSKL3mmtPfacCGpql5L1AGXWr7fapwRjdUFhwJU.oX3SpHKTvsH8LirhnN501-dH5G2e96BLI0-0tDFUCig&dib_tag=se&keywords=ibanez+m522s+mandolin&qid=1745535742&sprefix=ibanez+m522%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-2&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=7799c8d5dc4afda0795f673cd0ce7bbc&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) № 4 · If you are buying once ### Kentucky KM-150 - A-style - Hand-graduated solid German spruce top - Solid Alpine maple back & sides - f-holes - ~$595 Solid wood all the way round, hand-graduated, and the instrument most players who stay with the mandolin end up at. It is also the clearest illustration of this page’s argument: Kentucky’s F-model equivalent costs roughly twice as much, and the difference in what reaches your ears is nowhere near twice. Budget for a setup on top. Some shops include one along with a gig bag at the same headline price, so it is worth looking at what is in the box rather than only at the number. **Pros**- All-solid construction at well under $600 - Hand-graduated top rather than pressed - Holds its value and its tone for decades **Cons**- Two hundred dollars more than the carved-top Loars - Plain appointments for the money Around $595[Check current price](https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-KM-150-Standard-model-Mandolin/dp/B001OQC75K?crid=9HMF675ETO9M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LyA4m-j8AC8q68wDFDo1EsN2KhKfjN2JUoUeyfef7teJ-TAJqsgzxzyWkZoFpjYnpSZ5Y-ZuFBslgLbGlnp5pWmGAzmE2t53RsNllMPp_aoC0eORpYmgo1BXv7ObWtiok7MFEDF0zcUgfSCLtOe12kg9hPUvTJz5udgeadCooVM28-GNRWFLx_E010DEwhkNcPeU8XNBbroX60wbDAudFG-sKtasxzBuycO9iK2yDSihrFUUXdZH3RQ-uiO1lexJZd2n2qSfnB7obwCFdiGdjBb6g_Q-gaT9nAOb5mga57M.NRuNLvEsaPr_l_w8dRy7uCJbR8avMSWMCkIYzL5MQDc&dib_tag=se&keywords=kentucky%2Bkm%2B150%2Bmandolin&qid=1745535548&sprefix=kentucky%2Bkm%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-2&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a71d5f2a25a8a3cf6b8a04f1ed7a69a6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) Below $350 the question answers itself, because a solid top is out of reach and the scroll would eat the whole budget. The [Ibanez M510](https://amzn.to/3HutyBM) at around $200 is the best-made cheap mandolin going, and the [Donner DML-1](https://www.amazon.com/Donner-Mandolin-Instrument-Sunburst-DML-1/dp/B077RS9DPT?crid=2RJXIMAONQ59S&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-JxfJTaeaAHwGP1iuuTg0DjaYKUEqNmiw4qbXTjBQsP3nJMykgb9KM3ppprUvTJOB7G7HXCX00Ozig8gJ7yq0JgRP4XyswcbmXxM8PbkzGxHWdjhImypjwE6vfkCALSggYKzWFmLsUcR93g3VQ0hxaFK7AMlEGlghMmROShxTQwNRH5s80JxkGWsQ_LOxbppLkMbPw1Ji01SAGA0V3-vui86F42-K23r4pX5wAwgw3p82gb1EKIXV24Yn08RAjNERzQ35jBEUSNxlCSRVh7k2jfuf_-8YFjya3lfPgXrldU.dJGXSxLoU1efYeQC3GIrLqM0Gn1nsM8EgbT0oVUjeaE&dib_tag=se&keywords=donner%2Ba%2Bmandolin&qid=1745535656&sprefix=donner%2Ba%2Bmandolin%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=83eb01ab1a2c416d95744051558bdfee&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) at around $100 arrives with a tuner and a bag and is enough to find out whether the instrument suits you. Both are A-styles, and at that money that is the right answer rather than a compromise. Our [beginner mandolin guide](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/) covers the cheap end properly. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the difference between an A-style and an F-style mandolin? The body outline. An A-style is a symmetrical teardrop; an F-style adds a carved scroll at the upper bout and two points. Both are solid wood outside the sound chamber, so the difference is visual and ergonomic rather than acoustic. ### Do A-style and F-style mandolins sound different? Not because of the shape. The soundhole, the top and how the top has been graduated decide the sound. Some makers pair the F-style body with a heavier head block, which adds a little midrange and sustain, but that is a construction choice rather than a consequence of the outline. ### Why are F-style mandolins more expensive? Because carving and binding the scroll takes skilled hours. Where a machine does the cutting, those hours do not exist and the premium nearly vanishes — The Loar charges the same for its A and F Honey Creek models. Where a person does it, the premium is large: Kentucky’s Standard F-model is around double its Standard A-model. ### Which is better for a beginner? An A-style, unless you have found one of the pairs priced the same. It costs less or the same, it is more comfortable to hold sitting down, and every dollar of the price went into parts that make sound. The exception is if the look is what will get you to pick the instrument up, which is a better reason than it sounds. ### Do I need an F-style for bluegrass? No. You need f-holes and a carved top. The scroll is tradition, and a strong one — it is what a bluegrass audience expects to see, and F-styles change hands more easily second-hand. ### Can an A-style mandolin have an oval hole? Yes, and so can an F-style. Kentucky’s KM-270 is an oval-hole A-style; Gibson’s F-4 was an oval-hole F-style for thirty years. Body shape and soundhole are separate choices, and mixing them up is the most expensive mistake available on a mandolin spec sheet. ### Will one case fit both? No. Cases are cut to the body outline, so an A-style case will not close over an F-style and an F-style case leaves an A-style loose. Check the shape before buying, particularly on bundles and second-hand cases. ## So which one? If you want the scroll, buy the [Loar LM-310F](https://amzn.to/4qfxXxs) and take the one moment in the market where it costs nothing. If you do not, buy the [LM-110](https://amzn.to/3WMxG4M), which is the same build in the plain body, and put the saved decision toward a setup instead. Above that, the scroll stops being free and the honest advice reverses: at $600, at $1,200, at $3,000, an A-style is more instrument for the money every time, and the [Kentucky KM-150](https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-KM-150-Standard-model-Mandolin/dp/B001OQC75K?crid=9HMF675ETO9M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LyA4m-j8AC8q68wDFDo1EsN2KhKfjN2JUoUeyfef7teJ-TAJqsgzxzyWkZoFpjYnpSZ5Y-ZuFBslgLbGlnp5pWmGAzmE2t53RsNllMPp_aoC0eORpYmgo1BXv7ObWtiok7MFEDF0zcUgfSCLtOe12kg9hPUvTJz5udgeadCooVM28-GNRWFLx_E010DEwhkNcPeU8XNBbroX60wbDAudFG-sKtasxzBuycO9iK2yDSihrFUUXdZH3RQ-uiO1lexJZd2n2qSfnB7obwCFdiGdjBb6g_Q-gaT9nAOb5mga57M.NRuNLvEsaPr_l_w8dRy7uCJbR8avMSWMCkIYzL5MQDc&dib_tag=se&keywords=kentucky%2Bkm%2B150%2Bmandolin&qid=1745535548&sprefix=kentucky%2Bkm%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-2&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a71d5f2a25a8a3cf6b8a04f1ed7a69a6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) is where most players stop. See [best mandolin for the money](/best-mandolin-for-the-money/) for the rest of that argument, and [how to tune a mandolin](/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) once one arrives. **Categories:** Mandolin, Mandolin Comparisons --- ### [ADM 5-String Banjo Review: Best Budget Banjo for Beginners](https://promusicvault.com/adm-5-string-banjo-review/) **Published:** March 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› ADM 5-String Banjo Review: Best Budget Banjo for Beginners **Looking for an affordable, beginner-friendly banjo that doesn’t compromise on quality?** The **[ADM 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Bracket-Beginner-Accessories-Teenager-Large-Black/dp/B0CC5882CF?crid=LUL9DTL7GHAK&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3XJUx78nDsayNLUShZANtTC1PlYBu0oOnLR9ui9rw4qCEBmIaPJa8DabDCL0N3EjDj0i0PEBkb6o0DDP2a3DZTS_BrOPQu3Ie3grD3OuYjTBYDOu7cnmOKPVtw9jebswnlw15Yocayh3p_3MCQ84TwcgYqPgbC92w21Uf4aa5sKw190Imq53iRKtNjdCBbwlU3Q56Lv88wM-QNKWO_AR0PruPxd9vT2gAxPFSau9Hrv-STH-30Fyre2Mln4Rxgfqxx7O-lxad5UJjI65wwHZPRPXoi_WxRFfWF38jC38RIA.2HAKAG-8y2MS296FqCiB9JkeiRoDjKttmgvXXRuuXzs&dib_tag=se&keywords=adm%2Bbanjo%2B5%2Bstring&qid=1745803312&sprefix=adm%2B5%2Bs%2Caps%2C173&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=9ea5705f1a73bb04140a60c3dacdd5f1&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)** is a top pick for aspiring bluegrass, folk, or country players. With its solid build, rich tone, and complete starter kit, it offers exceptional value for under $200. ## Table of Contents - [Why the ADM 5-String Banjo Stands Out](#why-the-adm-5string-banjo-stands-out) - [What’s Included in the Starter Kit](#whats-included-in-the-starter-kit) - [Customer Feedback](#customer-feedback) - [Top Alternatives to Consider](#top-alternatives-to-consider) - [1. Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo](#1-deering-goodtime-5string-banjo) - [2. Ibanez B200 5-String Banjo](#2-ibanez-b200-5string-banjo) - [3. Oscar Schmidt OB5 5-String Banjo](#3-oscar-schmidt-ob5-5string-banjo) - [Final Verdict](#final-verdict) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Why the ADM 5-String Banjo Stands Out The ADM 5-String Banjo is designed with beginners in mind, offering features typically found in higher-end models: - **Full-size 38″ body** with a **mahogany resonator** for warm, rich tones. - **24-bracket Remo drum head** ensures crisp sound and durability. - **Geared 5th tuner** provides precise tuning stability. - **Maple neck** with 22 frets and a **rosewood fingerboard** for smooth playability. - **Chrome-plated armrest** adds comfort during extended sessions. Each banjo undergoes quality checks before shipping, ensuring a reliable instrument right out of the box. No products found. ## What’s Included in the Starter Kit The ADM banjo comes with a comprehensive set of accessories, making it ideal for beginners: - **Gig bag** for easy transport. - **Digital tuner** to keep your banjo in perfect pitch. - **Shoulder strap** for comfortable playing. - **Extra set of strings** for replacements. - **Three finger picks** to get you started. - **Cleaning cloth** to maintain your instrument. This all-in-one package ensures you have everything needed to begin your banjo journey. ## Customer Feedback Users praise the ADM 5-String Banjo for its value and beginner-friendly features: > “The [banjo itself is a great beginner’s](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) banjo. Other than unboxing it, you are 100% ready to start pickin’ the second it arrives!” > “Super awesome banjo, it sounds great.” > “It was reasonably priced for a beginning instrument and it came with a bunch of extras.” While some users mention minor issues like small finger picks or missing bridge pieces, the overall consensus is that it’s a solid starter instrument. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Top Alternatives to Consider If you’re exploring other beginner banjo options, here are some popular choices: ### 1. [Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo](https://amzn.to/3UkFNcZ) A high-quality open-back banjo known for its excellent craftsmanship and playability. Ideal for those willing to invest a bit more for superior sound. No products found. ### 2. [Ibanez B200 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Ibanez-B200-5-String-Natural-Closed/dp/B00ESK5NEG?crid=OAPBA6WBSEMP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.CAvKb_0WUYZYMySAkTWkzQ11VVynlbTw1jBAfaEOI7QVjI3-jBQL3un-Bf_71tLjN8_nxNxN79AZODXoUDLlmxLZ10nmh4865_WPM1wGBLad7wFlJ8mYvjSf0z4l1iBAAM2xqhRbOrUGe-sn_7SKecjbRQJ2QwQYwk8rBrlk6x8mO-cwkEKbybCHYmRu8HEfmqIJJMlKBl8gLhUGuhyNYvNDAc8-kO4rERuEtliF2jkqCILpD6KNXnQid3FV2AxGfdma9cofrKNSEPd9v6PRZiBPPQwAtsERadeb-qwMFsc.hPCQIQRjPFAf5Dn3Z3G7bLd2U7zmCyVwXFm9eLv91XI&dib_tag=se&keywords=ibanez+b200&qid=1745803729&sprefix=ibanez+b200%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=75139b34677545392b80fa2af8547c47&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) Features a beautiful inlay design and delivers a bright, articulate tone. Great for intermediate players looking to upgrade. No products found. ### 3. [Oscar Schmidt OB5 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Oscar-Schmidt-5-String-Banjo-Padded/dp/B00FRLPRNW?crid=3OKPAWCELAOEL&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.mkSU85K7BWiNjW2vAKrgPpnaIBCCvbcMVqVYHVQ-gqs5FMDGzCCSh0de2PlrKd28muuLJm4pt5Im9xCd-N9b9jp6fkgR-KAFpgQDTzZrchFq26ld7yBWKB2-YMmkBkuOps9-lCABaUlwqApCah1oZNHQnFCRwXIhVyDF9oIi7Gr4wE3hcDgOLVqGtZRpQcEqUQKz8vw5Wr1VgBbizwBSkBQwLAnEJ57u0pDzCd38U9cFYWcTv93fyyh2LpCcBbu526DIyD8nv-7AfWOaveIvkrhLpRKstBD6p3pIfRma26k.dsn5FkvpqWu2b4L5_PdJx64ne9YAMKDo37TY2XAYtgg&dib_tag=se&keywords=oscar+schmidt+ob5&qid=1745803783&sprefix=oscar+schmidt+ob5%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-3&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=b6ef01fe9beb077e0b391a890e1c3d84&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) A resonator banjo offering a full-bodied sound, perfect for bluegrass enthusiasts seeking an affordable yet quality instrument. No products found. ## Final Verdict The **ADM 5-String Banjo** stands out as an excellent choice for beginners. Its combination of quality construction, rich sound, and comprehensive starter kit makes it a top contender in the budget banjo market. ## FAQs ### **What makes the ADM 5-String Banjo suitable for beginners?** Its full-size design, quality materials, and included accessories provide a comprehensive package for new players.​[](https://www.guitarandmusicinstitute.com/5-and-6-string-banjos-reviewed-updated-for-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Does the ADM banjo come with everything needed to start playing?** Yes, it includes a gig bag, tuner, strap, extra strings, picks, and a cleaning cloth.​[](https://www.guitarandmusicinstitute.com/5-and-6-string-banjos-reviewed-updated-for-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **How does the sound quality of the ADM banjo compare to higher-end models?** While it’s designed for beginners, many users find its sound quality impressive for its price range.​[](https://www.amazon.com/Banjoes-Beginner-Package-Accessories-Teenager/dp/B01N1S8KIT?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Are there any common issues reported by users?** Some mention minor concerns like small finger picks or missing bridge pieces, but overall satisfaction is high.​[](https://www.amazon.com/Banjoes-Beginner-Package-Accessories-Teenager/dp/B01N1S8KIT?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **What are some alternatives to the ADM 5-String Banjo?** Consider the Deering Goodtime, Ibanez B200, or Oscar Schmidt OB5 for different features and price points.​ **Categories:** Banjo, Banjo Reviews --- ### [Best Banjo For Clawhammer: Ultimate Buyer's Guide](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) **Published:** March 28, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Best Banjo For Clawhammer: Ultimate Buyer’s Guide Clawhammer banjo playing is a captivating style rooted in American folk traditions. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned player, selecting the right banjo is crucial for mastering this technique. In this guide, we’ll explore top-rated banjos suitable for clawhammer playing, ensuring you find the perfect instrument to match your skill level and musical aspirations. ## Table of Contents - [Top 5 Banjos for Clawhammer Playing](#top-5-banjos-for-clawhammer-playing) - [1. Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo](#1-deering-goodtime-5string-banjo) - [2. Gold Tone CC-OT Cripple Creek Banjo](#2-gold-tone-ccot-cripple-creek-banjo) - [3. Recording King RK-OT25-BR Madison Open Back Banjo](#3-recording-king-rkot25br-madison-open-back-banjo) - [4. Kmise 5-String Banjo](#4-kmise-5string-banjo) - [5. Gold Tone WL-250 White Ladye Banjo](#5-gold-tone-wl250-white-ladye-banjo) - [Essential Accessories for Clawhammer Banjo Players](#essential-accessories-for-clawhammer-banjo-players) - [Conclusion](#conclusion) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Top 5 Banjos for Clawhammer Playing ### 1. [Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo](https://amzn.to/4wxH1PB) **Best for Beginners** - **Type:** Open-back - **Weight:** Approximately 4 lbs - **Features:** Rock maple neck, sealed geared tuners, 22 frets The Deering Goodtime is renowned for its playability and quality craftsmanship, making it an excellent choice for [beginners venturing into clawhammer banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) playing. No products found. ### 2. [Gold Tone CC-OT Cripple Creek Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Tone-CC-OT-Cripple-Openback/dp/B002RARBHG?crid=22OHG0B98LS3K&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.i57eCYVUF3oo7DSOPU231oX5oaHfA-hRHnX8oQMyFcHGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.oR931IZCV6nVWb5T2uuG2ifmqtcCddalx1gbyyWzO58&dib_tag=se&keywords=gold+tone+cc-ot+cripple+creek&qid=1745814980&sprefix=gold+tone+cc-ot+cripple+creek%2Caps%2C112&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=14bf7c736d268d4231969dd888acdeae&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best for Intermediate Players** - **Type:** Open-back - **Weight:** Approximately 5.5 lbs - **Features:** Maple neck, scoop for clawhammer playing, planetary tuners The Gold Tone CC-OT offers a warm tone and comfortable playability, ideal for intermediate players looking to enhance their clawhammer technique. No products found. ### 3. [Recording King RK-OT25-BR Madison Open Back Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Recording-King-RK-OT25-BR-Madison-Fretboard/dp/B00713TWNA?crid=83075CGAYJQ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-1-JPwWFtZSxid7rK20NmN_g6xa8tfJ-vVJb8_4-Xz1LD0BwIvXcz31BUkpO87KrakYw64hRus_FlBRr6F81g7PVNVKkRKiV2_R07V4SPIo.wmZswogxOGZmCvmK71fDIs65hR1NEAiQF9MOMYODFfY&dib_tag=se&keywords=Recording+King+RK-O25-BR+Madison+Open+Back+Banjo&qid=1745815040&sprefix=recording+king+rk-o25-br+madison+open+back+banjo%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=a0053efe99da21df673a54d907010032&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best for Traditional Sound** - **Type:** Open-back - **Weight:** Approximately 6 lbs - **Features:** Maple neck and rim, no-knot tailpiece, scooped fretboard For players seeking a traditional old-time sound, the Recording King RK-O25-BR delivers with its classic design and rich tonal quality. No products found. ### 4. [Kmise 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Kmise-5-String-Banjos-Resonator-CR2032/dp/B081NBC5P9?crid=21ICTVJF35PB1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9EO6O11ZuEIUXl0njNE23D_0Jl9tbc8xxBPfVn4MqYQ4JkBbioyyKTRX9wLZh45Z8p2Els_5ijr5jJYkrvlmiV9UO1H3QRCAHar872zqvLtQOvQvNpKDosWVuQlKiQtbkltxtTEbO5Kj4sWW5smAwnA1fx0U4Mt3zsQUQpSxFJhqtoY-Q7fH8HUokWffey1vjQlbDs4rmdC_6rEQodCF_uJJ4c4BNRQBvRJ_hJSH2BxEMJZRPS7ChO71clAzXrovtRgZH9TBy2umRCXTOlFb51SCawwVbMX9xAKVTBz1lDU._0FfAspNCjDGdbE0ydnvhBAgMIwj5vv3U31haE_GgD4&dib_tag=se&keywords=kmise%2B5%2Bstring%2Bbanjo&qid=1745815141&sprefix=kmise%2B5%2B%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=218840f2e484a511b9ebeb33a1e3a10c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best Budget Option** - **Type:** Open-back - **Weight:** Approximately 4.5 lbs - **Features:** Adjustable truss rod, geared 5th tuner, includes accessories The Kmise 5-String Banjo is an affordable option for beginners, offering decent quality and a complete set of accessories to get started. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) No products found. ### 5. [Gold Tone WL-250 White Ladye Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Tone-WL-250-Openback-Vintage/dp/B002RARBWG?crid=38YHPIS46JV9X&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Sd0Tus2MJe8Np3sLL9ZMkm0qLSgOjpol7D-XPbAhLNrGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.AttPxsw-m7zX17e8dA1VHKm8SJEPb4YEQKNjYxv17Yg&dib_tag=se&keywords=gold+tone+wl-250&qid=1745815209&sprefix=gold+tone+wl%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=69e0508bece6618d594d74096da252ca&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best for Advanced Players** - **Type:** Open-back - **Weight:** Approximately 6.5 lbs - **Features:** White Ladye tone ring, ebony fingerboard, vintage design Advanced players will appreciate the Gold Tone WL-250’s superior tone and craftsmanship, making it a top choice for professional clawhammer banjoists. No products found. ## Essential Accessories for Clawhammer Banjo Players - [Snark SN5X Clip-On Tuner](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-SN5X-Guitar-Violin-Current/dp/B01H74YV56?crid=1LQR7DY9KA99W&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.i9GV_-Dcfe_usA-DDDYe-I8SWexV56j7mETHh2-oqU1Wc79XzBcxPlabfmjS1SrQamGtY3tRYt3aDxWEeK8nQlEG-muQBC2qka5VjS2a33hQGj-2r0RceJJNu6WA76mRM9dI6eat09-mmlvoL_SjnFD6VAD-jzHXfAHaDGWGneRrAu1ttBvw3x9FLXZ--J85HnyU4Ehjz_qmG_yiLYauiugJnB53Co9InxXX4oRcNiNk-fwFbPi4cLMpozUQCMiUB2L7pxXJ6iAaX63HxVZPvvV9SBpo9Cj0BzHn9kj8mOk.MUL4DGHZn8pZCdNw1qiw1xCFeBLuMC1mSZrBB9Wb7nU&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bsn5x&qid=1745815265&sprefix=snark%2Bsn5x%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=67e75c63ca83c19997d1ca68bd5d50f2&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) – Ensures your banjo is always in tune. - [D’Addario EJ61 5-String Banjo Strings](https://www.amazon.com/DAddario-EJ61-Nickel-5-String-Strings/dp/B00N9CT4K8?crid=36ZR8EWDT6HUO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.l4NJcK7v1jfs1tpq1HQ6GnW0kZFo9O1-51QikdCQy6AgAK8plYacYxIGG0PkxqR6xouZ3usPn5Mu0VeXGCxxLFNCi3Cx7y60oSVz2EhPYo0-BAZhGBu045B__J6_1h57diydbi9Z3PUUNrZ5o2Ps5aVGUJYQY4hhyjCGXDCH3P3SB0y8TJ2ZqQ2SuIJ6u9NXLga-WidAoMGYfuLVSlk08jhfqou4NqdINJbRw7GfQ2R6BzmjT1eWtET8q9pMhc-3dIMdacCad0YCQD7BfoEcAZHlc697W5cbPF3VIr38xVs.GUAPwaQfvSDbiHOhyyMS4RH8ARrMcfpP_KGEkYfmFjk&dib_tag=se&keywords=daddario%2Bej61&qid=1745815298&sprefix=daddario%2Bej61%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=c90ffea1379dd61c674cbb1ef90bef8d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) – High-quality strings for optimal sound. - [Neotech Super Banjo Strap](https://www.amazon.com/Neotech-5701002-Guitar-Strap/dp/B0002E1NQ4?crid=24Z3UKR0HWIP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.D0y8GQpnqCDAFuSJa5AhybeOE2xUdTwI_xEemhr9ut-u7T5zH-wak76piIOo3lreCekDQ364Hyzlem0o2CBk1iAacnabbY4Xh-o0kYhisSyqVKlfWkz9Z5HTep0ojtCxJRJ47sMoRxkPlTfptFicwjW5eCHXs8_0GD0-mQ3oOQ6yTni2ndhKlgmC8fVWFpMZ4KU43KtWn6VWIf0xZCszAOicJk2Qom-EBltUqMerlJDXkTf8zfPEjOTLQs-UFjv-czsk4eEVhFWAokrCb4AkyrHKwUE636gIQTUmQ8j4_Y4.RFdvB4VLmESY3RaR67ELVrdiseExv9OrJ3JoMqy4sMY&dib_tag=se&keywords=neotech%2Bbanjo%2Bstrap&qid=1745815326&sprefix=neotech%2Bbanjo%2B%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=4b4e3e274c4761136f0c45b6c11024d7&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) – Provides comfort during extended playing sessions. - [Gator Lightweight Banjo Case](https://www.amazon.com/Gator-Lightweight-Polyfoam-Banjos-GL-BANJO-XL/dp/B00097DC0E?crid=CTQVTBEVUXOX&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ig5cqXKBmmz9I5_flGbub328tHG8tV79nLQTu03FDhQfNvSykSPeXzTwsWwnSaNm9IvQAV4ETgrfEONE2mb1NI1qtGHi7Iw8YWKPWP05-LavCelRwcA_CdwwmDStHUMP8J1-41MkBA5B9Qk8SVP8APaWmByDDEszRV_qG2yH2iXgrACJ-XX_0-eYfH4OgBJ5iw84acDVQRC492tyWQDO-TiZxunnPOa0pBmne5nRr4rntGRADHNamrqP4ZDoScmuGDH6jrjqvt1zA9JGGC6vChvlFv1pjFEwOhubyFYz8og.wTf3IQMi4qH1s3Xz8LEg671EZ53G6rHVOGlXZ_ABlDU&dib_tag=se&keywords=gator+lightweight+banjo+case&qid=1745815402&sprefix=gator+lightweight+banjo+case%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.9fe8cbfa-bf43-43d1-a707-3f4e65a4b666&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=2dda5033ab602ec1d7ad0ff7ce6703ac&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) – Protects your banjo during transport. ## Conclusion Choosing the right banjo is a pivotal step in your clawhammer journey. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to upgrade, the options listed above cater to various skill levels and budgets. Remember to consider factors like build quality, weight, and tonal characteristics when making your selection. Happy playing! ## FAQs ### **What is clawhammer banjo playing?** Clawhammer is a traditional banjo playing style characterized by a downward striking motion with the back of the fingernail and thumb, producing a rhythmic, percussive sound.​[](https://acousticworld.net/the-5-best-clawhammer-banjos-full-guide-2022/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Why choose an open-back banjo for clawhammer?** Open-back banjos are lighter and produce a mellower tone, making them ideal for the old-time and folk music typically played in the clawhammer style.​[](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Is the Deering Goodtime suitable for beginners?** Yes, the Deering Goodtime is highly recommended for beginners due to its quality craftsmanship, ease of play, and affordability.​[](https://countryinstruments.com/best-clawhammer-banjo/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **What accessories are essential for clawhammer banjo beginners?** Essential accessories include a clip-on tuner, extra strings, fingerpicks, a strap, and a gig bag for protection and portability.​ ### **Can I learn clawhammer banjo online?** Absolutely! There are numerous online resources, including video tutorials and courses, that can guide you through the basics to advanced techniques in clawhammer banjo playing.​[](https://jofflowson.com/clawhammer/beginners/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) **Categories:** Banjo, Banjo Comparisons, Banjo Reviews --- ### [Banjo Chords: The Ultimate Guide](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-chords-ultimate-guide/) **Published:** February 8, 2023 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Banjo](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/banjo/ "Banjo")› Banjo Chords: The Ultimate Guide Banjo chords are, simply put, the building blocks of playing the banjo. It’s like a recipe for a delicious musical dish! These chords consist of a combination of notes played together to create a harmonic sound. Whether you’re strumming a lively tune or picking a gentle ballad, knowing your banjo chords is essential for making sweet music on the five-stringed instrument. In this article, we’re going to dive into the world of banjo chords and explore everything you need to know about them, from the basics to the advanced. Whether you’re a [beginner who’s just starting out](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) or an experienced player looking to expand your knowledge, this article is for you! We’ll start by breaking down the fundamentals of banjo chords and then move on to cover some of the most important chords every beginner should know. We’ll also touch on some intermediate and advanced chords for those who want to take their playing to the next level. And don’t worry, we won’t be getting too technical here. We’re just going to focus on the basics so you can get plucking and strumming in no time! Think of it as a crash course in banjo chords – you’ll be a chord master in no time. So grab your banjo, grab a cup of coffee (or your beverage of choice), and let’s get started on our journey to becoming a banjo chord master! ## Table of Contents - [Understanding the Fundamentals of Banjo Chords](#understanding-the-fundamentals-of-banjo-chords) - [Types of Banjo Chords](#types-of-banjo-chords) - [How Chords are Formed on the Banjo](#how-chords-are-formed-on-the-banjo) - [5 Basic Banjo Chords Every Beginner Should Know](#5-basic-banjo-chords-every-beginner-should-know) - [C Major Chord](#c-major-chord) - [G Major Chord](#g-major-chord) - [D Major Chord](#d-major-chord) - [A Major Chord](#a-major-chord) - [E Major Chord](#e-major-chord) - [5 Intermediate Banjo Chords](#5-intermediate-banjo-chords) - [F Major Chord](#f-major-chord) - [B Major Chord](#b-major-chord) - [D Minor Chord](#d-minor-chord) - [G Minor Chord](#g-minor-chord) - [A Minor Chord](#a-minor-chord) - [4 Advanced Banjo Chords](#4-advanced-banjo-chords) - [D7 Chord](#d7-chord) - [G7 Chord](#g7-chord) - [C7 Chord](#c7-chord) - [F7 Chord](#f7-chord) - [5 Tips For Improving Your Banjo Chord Playing](#5-tips-for-improving-your-banjo-chord-playing) - [Practice Regularly](#practice-regularly) - [Use a Metronome](#use-a-metronome) - [Play with Others](#play-with-others) - [Try Different Strumming Patterns](#try-different-strumming-patterns) - [Experiment with Different Tunings](#experiment-with-different-tunings) - [Wrapping Up](#wrapping-up) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Understanding the Fundamentals of Banjo Chords Alright, buckle up folks, it’s time to dive into the nitty-gritty of banjo chords. A chord is simply a harmonious combination of two or more musical notes. Think of it as a group of friends singing together – they each have their own unique voice, but when they come together, they create beautiful harmonies. Just like in life, there are different types of chords and each serves its own purpose in the musical world. But don’t worry, we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s just focus on the basics. Chords on the banjo are formed by pressing down on [different strings](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) with your fingers to create a specific sound. The goal is to create a harmonious blend of notes that will sound great when strummed together. So, if you want to play some sweet banjo tunes, it’s essential to have a solid understanding of chords. But don’t worry, with a little bit of practice, you’ll be creating beautiful banjo music in no time! ### Types of Banjo Chords Here’s a look at some of the main [types of banjo](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-banjos/) chords. - **Major Chords**: The happy-go-lucky chords of the banjo world. They’re the building blocks for most songs. - **Minor Chords**: The moody, introspective chords. They add depth to your playing and can make a tune sound bluesy. - **7th Chords**: The jazz-cats of the chord world. They add a bit of sophistication to your playing and can make even the simplest song sound groovy. - And let’s not forget the ever-popular **Sus chords**, the wild card of banjo chords that can add a touch of surprise to your playing. So, in short, there’s a chord for every mood and style of playing! Whether you want to strum a cheerful tune or add some depth to your ballads, you’ll find a chord that fits the bill. Also, one little recommendation before we go too much deeper – if you’re just starting to play and learn the banjo, don’t skimp on getting a couple of instructional books. You’ll get off the ground much faster than just trying to figure things out on your own. A little structure goes a long way when learning an instrument. *\[PRO TIP: Speed up your learning with [this banjo method book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0793568773?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=banjo%20book) from one of the most trusted educational brands.\]* ### How Chords are Formed on the Banjo Now on to how chords are formed on the banjo. This may sound like a science lesson, but trust me, it’s more fun than calculus. Just bear with me. First, you need to understand the concept of frets. Frets are the metal strips along the neck of the banjo that divide it into different sections. When you press down on a [string](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-strings/) behind a certain fret, it changes the pitch of the note you’re playing. Now, to form a chord, you typically press down on a minimum of two strings behind different frets at the same time. This is what creates the chord’s sound. Different combinations of notes result in different chords. For example, if you press down on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string and the 1st fret of the 1st string, you’re playing a D Major chord. Simple, right? As you start to learn more and more chords, you’ll soon discover that there are many, many different ways to play them. You can even create your own unique variations! But, to get started, we’ll stick to the basics. Now, before we get to strumming, remember that when you start wailing away on that [banjo it’s going to get knocked out of tune](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-banjo/) from time to time. If you’re going through your “beginner checklist” of accessories to pick up with your banjo, we really, really, recommend getting a [tuner that works well with a banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/). It’ll pay for itself in the frustration that it prevents over and over again. *\[PRO TIP: Avoid tuning frustration – use a tuner like [this one](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018K9K0AW?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=banjo%20tuner) that is geared specifically towards banjos, rather than a “multi-instrument” option.\]* ## 5 Basic Banjo Chords Every Beginner Should Know Let’s go a bit further and start getting into some actual chords that [beginners can start with](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/). Keep in mind that it may take some time to build up finger strength and dexterity, so don’t get discouraged if you’re struggling at first. Just keep practicing and soon you’ll be strumming away like a pro! All of the below images came from [Scales-Chords.com](https://www.scales-chords.com/) – an awesome learning resource that has full lists of banjo-specific chords! ### C Major Chord A C Major chord is a 3-note chord that consists of the root note (C), the major third (E) and the perfect fifth (G). This chord is considered one of the most basic chords in Western music and it has a bright, happy and upbeat sound. ![](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAANwAAAC5CAMAAAB0vaFaAAAAY1BMVEX///9LS0sAAADIyMjR0dFgYGAwMDDz8/MODg6np6dmZmaJiYnl5eXZ2dnFxcVYWFgcHBw8PDyxsbF2dnYoKChGRka9vb2fn5+pqakUFBTr6+vh4eEuLi5SUlL39/dubm58fHxESHuMAAAD5UlEQVR4nO2b6XabMBhExWKDt9Rr3CRN3fd/yiJI6iZItoSGD5Dn/gnxRGLuwawnKCVMPmt/NpcuEUy+K+dPSu1UfiqP5+vHMcgV20WRH1R2KLY/i7dl8fl5FHKLZf3jkH0s1L+8pOc82ZULpZblMVPVcqJm5XJycqtV/eOkF17TtPqCqv3ptdpy27fNL7VPiue5Xlb792K/HbaqP80Gyy/NwkzLrfSep7+W83rxWC+vFnppYjT73J8npfe54qTlnustV8t9bLlqeZJbrjlanpqFY/Mdrfe5Wk7vc0/NwWWK+9xjsE7Tcvnlk82PgargWe9UMc+HbtETtdymOhvs1qo5yektV5/npk/1tUzf9cLi8HGSq+Sao+X0qbbc79l5vSsrxeZQWck157npU8utzpdikVzlotly1dHyVLwdXy7/yTXnuRh5Xt7/m2HINEFjNy/j3GbZFdGxEmRZ94YhYyXIsu4NQ8ZKkH1HaKwErX4eDUPGSmDo59wwZKwExn6ODUPGikC5HsZKYOnn1DBkrAiPKZfcJ2TsVyhHOSe71t+ZKoSMdU2DEJBLNfYGE5ZLr1ga9Cjnen1orODlZrPrU87xyt5cwcvNYternNs9maWCl5vZrl85p7tpWwUvN6Ndz3Iuz0GsFbzcTHZ9yzk8wbJX8HIz2PUu99nRHt+sYBw7Jrmg6whTGrOcxa1tR7lQKOeeUu7+zCB4tPRIKXd3ZhBoudFcW95fSZfUyW2qcqO4n3NZSbfUwW26coM/Q3FbSdf0rtuU5dSQzy1dVzJUCsL1wX4PUI5yN+RGmIK4uZKgI17IzCDsFULPVSEzg7BWCL7KCJkZhK1C+PVhyMwgLBUAV/YhM4MwV2g16HBPFjIzCGMFQwP/u+mQmUGYKhgbeD8HCZkZBOUikrM08H1qHDIzCMpRDjkziEeTi/poSTnbWMzMIB7u2jLuu4K47+fivhOP+xlK3E+//rXoOHbczy2HTEF4Pd3HQjnK3ZAbYQqCcuIpCMqJpyAoJ56CoJx4CsKrwrd3d7xSr/WC8Knw/c0kn9RvvSA8KrTeKPNIPdcLwr1C+30599R3vSAoVxO1XNT7XNxHy7jPc3IpCMqJpyAoJ56CoJx4CoJy4imIZDgoR7kbciNMQVBOPAVBOfEUBOXEUxCUE09BUE48BUE58RQE5cRTEJQTT0FQTjwFQTnxFATlxFMQlBNPQVBOPAWRDAflKHdDboQpCMqJpyAoJ56CoJx4CoJy4ikIrwox/49zzP+dHvN7BVG/EUK5qcpFvc/FfbSM+zwnl4KgnHgKgnLiKQjKiacgKCeegkiGg3KUI2Qw/gI1sjUHzAC6TwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==) ### G Major Chord A G Major chord is a chord consisting of the notes G, B, and D. It’s a simple, yet powerful chord that forms the foundation of many popular songs and genres, such as pop, rock, and classical music. This chord is considered “major” because of the specific arrangement of its notes, which creates a bright and happy sound. In other words, when you play a G Major chord, you’re playing a chord that’s both uplifting and optimistic in nature. ![](data:image/png;base64,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) ### D Major Chord The D Major chord is another one of the most essential chords in music. This chord is made up of the notes D, F#, and A, and when played together, creates a bright and joyful sound. The D Major chord is often used as a tonic chord, which means it sets the key and creates a sense of resolution for the listener. ![](data:image/png;base64,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) ### A Major Chord The A major chord is a classic and essential chord in Western music. It is comprised of the notes A, C#, and E. This chord produces a bright and joyful sound like some of the other major chords described above, and is used frequently in popular and classical music. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-A-a-n-l-v-2-2-2-2-2.png) ### E Major Chord The E major chord is a staple of many musical genres and is easily recognizable by its happy sound. Consisting of the notes E, G#, and B, this is another chord that is often used as a tonic (home) chord in various musical pieces. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-E-e-n-l-v-x-2-1-0-2.png) *\[PRO TIP: Don’t skimp on your banjo strings. Get a set like [this one](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RWCUF40?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=banjo%20strings) from a trusted brand and you’ll hear the difference immediately.\]* ## 5 Intermediate Banjo Chords Ready to step your banjo chords up a level? The next set will be great practice for [intermediate players](https://promusicvault.com/best-intermediate-banjo/), once you’ve gotten down the beginner banjo chords above. ### F Major Chord The F Major chord is a delightful and bright sounding chord that is made up of three notes: F, A, and C. These three notes are played together to create a harmonious blend of sound that is often used in a variety of musical styles including classical, [folk](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-folk-music/), and pop. It is a stable and strong chord that is perfect for use in many different musical contexts. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-F-f-n-l-v-x-3-2-1-3.png) ### B Major Chord The B Major chord is yet another highly popular chord in music. This chord is comprised of the notes B, D#, and F#. It creates a bright and lively sound, making it ideal for upbeat songs or fast-paced music. The B Major chord has a major third interval between the root note (B) and the middle note (D#), and a perfect fifth interval between the root note and the top note (F#). ![](data:image/png;base64,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) ### D Minor Chord The D minor chord is a chord that consists of the notes D, F, and A. This chord is known for its melancholic and sorrowful sound, making it a popular choice in many classical and contemporary pieces of music. It is often used to express a sense of sadness, longing, or introspection. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-Dm-d-n-l-v-x-0-2-3-3.png) ### G Minor Chord The G minor chord is a staple in modern music, particularly in the genres of rock and metal. It is a three-note chord consisting of the notes G, B flat, and D flat. This chord has a dark and brooding quality that gives it a powerful emotional impact when used in the right context. It is often used to convey feelings of sadness, loss, or tension. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-Gm-g-n-l-v-0-0-3-x-0.png) ### A Minor Chord the A minor chord is a popular chord used in many musical genres, particularly in classical and blues music. It is made up of the notes A, C, and E and is considered a minor chord because the root note (A) is the third note of a minor scale. This chord is often used to create a melancholy or emotional atmosphere in a song. The A minor chord is considered to be a versatile chord that can be used in a variety of musical styles. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-Am-a-n-l-v-2-x-2-1-2.png) *\[PRO TIP: Look for a banjo case or gig bag that reinforces the headstock, bridge, and end pin areas. [This banjo gig bag](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002CZTRA?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=banjo%20case) checks those boxes.\]* ## 4 Advanced Banjo Chords And finally, it’s time to really step it up with some advanced chords. Once you have these down, you’ll have made some serious advancements in your banjo playing ability. It’ll be a long way from those beginner chords! [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### D7 Chord The D7 chord is a four-note chord consisting of the root note D, the major third F#, the perfect fifth A, and the minor seventh C. In a D7 chord, the D note is the root and the basis for the chord, while the F#, A, and C notes provide color and tension. This chord is commonly used in blues, jazz, and country music and adds a strong dominant sound to any progression. The D7 chord can also be thought of as the “V” chord in the key of G, adding a powerful drive towards resolution to a song in that key. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-D7-d-n-l-v-7-7-5-7-x.png) ### G7 Chord The G7 chord is a dominant 7th chord, which is a chord consisting of a root note, a major third, a perfect fifth, and a minor seventh. It is commonly used in blues, jazz, and rock music to create a strong, tension-filled sound. This chord is often used as a pivot chord, resolving to a C major chord for example. It has a very distinct, bluesy flavor. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-G7-g-n-l-v-0-3-0-0-0.png) ### C7 Chord The C7 chord, also known as the dominant 7th chord, is a staple in various musical styles such as jazz, blues, and rock. This chord is made up of the root note, C, a major third, E, a perfect fifth, G, and a flat seventh, Bb. The flat seventh gives the chord its signature bluesy and jazzy sound, adding a bit of tension and a drive for resolution. It’s a powerful chord that can be used for a variety of purposes such as adding flavor to progressions, creating a sense of movement, or building tension before resolving to another chord. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-C7-c-n-l-v-5-x-3-5-5.png) ### F7 Chord This chord is a major seventh chord and is commonly used in blues, jazz, and rock music. It’s composed of the notes F, A, C, and E flat. When played, it has a strong, dominant feel to it, making it a staple in many musical genres. ![](https://www.scales-chords.com/chord-charts/banjo-F7-f-n-l-v-x-3-2-1-1.png) ## 5 Tips For Improving Your Banjo Chord Playing So you’re starting to get the hang of these chords now – but you definitely want to keep getting better and stepping your banjo playing game up. Here are 5 tips to keep you on the right track. ### Practice Regularly The key to getting better at anything is practice, and the same goes for playing banjo chords. Set aside time each day to work on your chords and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you improve. ### Use a Metronome A metronome is a simple tool that helps you keep time while you practice. It’s especially helpful when you’re just starting out and are still getting the hang of playing in time. There are some pretty handy tuner/metronome combos out there, so we highly recommend picking one of those up if you’re just [learning the banjo](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). *\[PRO TIP: You can find tons of cool functionality in metronome/tuner combos without paying much more than some of the more basic alternatives. [This metronome/tuner combo](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YNVCXUW?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=banjo%20tuner%20metronome) is near the top of the list for added features that you can play around with.\]* ### Play with Others There’s nothing quite like playing music with other people. It’s a great way to learn new chords, improve your timing, and have fun! ### Try Different Strumming Patterns Experimenting with different strumming patterns can help you add some variety to your playing and keep things fresh. Don’t be afraid to get creative! ### Experiment with Different Tunings Changing the tuning of your banjo can open up a whole new world of possibilities. Try out a few different tunings and see how it affects the sound of your chords. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to improving your banjo chord playing in no time! ## Wrapping Up Learning banjo chords is a crucial step in becoming a skilled banjo player. By mastering basic, intermediate, and advanced chords, you’ll be able to play a [wide variety of tunes](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) and songs on the banjo. Consistent practice and persistence are key to improving your banjo chord playing. [Whether you’re a beginner](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) or an experienced player, there’s always room for growth and improvement. So keep at it! The more you practice, the better you’ll get. And who knows? You may even surprise yourself with how quickly you progress. Remember, playing the banjo is supposed to be fun! So, have a blast and enjoy the journey as you work on becoming a skilled [banjo player](https://promusicvault.com/best-clawhammer-banjo-players/). Good luck! ## FAQs ### What is a banjo chord? A banjo chord is a combination of notes played together to produce a harmonious sound. Banjo chords are typically played on a 5-string banjo and can be played in different keys and variations to create a variety of musical styles. ### How many chords are there on a banjo? There is no specific number of chords on a banjo, as the instrument is capable of playing a vast array of chords. Some basic banjo chords include C, G, D, A, E, F, and B. ### What are some common banjo chord progressions? Some common banjo chord progressions include the I-IV-V progression, the I-V-vi-IV progression, and the ii-V-I progression. These progressions are used in a variety of musical styles and can be used as a foundation for creating original banjo music. ### Can I play banjo chords with only two fingers? Yes, it is possible to play banjo chords with only two fingers. This is a common technique for playing [bluegrass banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) and allows for faster chord changes. ### What is a movable banjo chord? A movable banjo chord is a chord that can be played in different positions on the neck of the banjo, allowing for the creation of different chord shapes and variations. ### How do I transition between banjo chords smoothly? To transition between banjo chords smoothly, it is important to practice strumming and finger placement. Additionally, practicing chord progressions can help with transitioning between chords. ### What is the best way to learn banjo chords? The best way to learn banjo chords is through consistent practice and learning from instructional materials such as books, videos, and online lessons. Additionally, taking lessons from a skilled [banjo player can be extremely beneficial in the learning](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) process. ### How do I know which banjo chords to use in a song? The choice of banjo chords used in a song is typically based on the key of the song and the desired musical style. The chords used can vary greatly, but the most common banjo chords are often used as a starting point. ### Can I play banjo chords with a capo? Yes, it is possible to play banjo chords with a capo. Using a capo allows for the creation of different chord shapes and variations, and can be a useful tool for playing in different keys. **Categories:** Banjo --- ### [Banjo vs Violin: The Best Instrument to Learn](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-violin/) **Published:** April 3, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [String Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/string-comparisons/ "String Comparisons")› Banjo vs Violin: The Best Instrument to Learn If you’re torn between picking up the banjo vs violin, you’re not alone. Both instruments boast rich histories and unique sounds, but they cater to different musical tastes and learning curves. This guide will delve into the distinctions between the banjo and violin, helping you make an informed decision. ## Table of Contents - [Understanding the Banjo vs Violin](#understanding-the-banjo-vs-violin) - [What is a Banjo?](#what-is-a-banjo) - [What is a Violin?](#what-is-a-violin) - [Banjo vs Violin: Key Differences](#banjo-vs-violin-key-differences) - [Sound and Tone](#sound-and-tone) - [Learning Curve](#learning-curve) - [Physical Demands](#physical-demands) - [Banjo vs Violin: Which Should You Choose?](#banjo-vs-violin-which-should-you-choose) - - [Choose the Banjo if:](#choose-the-banjo-if) - [Choose the Violin if:](#choose-the-violin-if) - [Essential Accessories for Beginners](#essential-accessories-for-beginners) - - [For Banjo Players:](#for-banjo-players) - [For Violin Players:](#for-violin-players) - [Final Thoughts](#final-thoughts) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Understanding the Banjo vs Violin ### What is a Banjo? The [banjo is a stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/) known for its bright, percussive sound. Typically featuring four, five, or six strings, it has a drum-like body with a taut membrane acting as a resonator. Banjos are staples in genres like bluegrass, folk, and country music. **Recommended Beginner Banjo:** [Deering Goodtime 5-String Banjo](https://amzn.to/4jw5yhY) No products found. ### What is a Violin? The violin, a four-stringed instrument played with a bow, is renowned for its expressive range and versatility. It’s central to classical music but also features prominently in jazz, folk, and even rock genres. **Recommended Beginner Violin:** [Cecilio CVN-300 Solidwood Violin](https://amzn.to/3RWhMo8) No products found. ## Banjo vs Violin: Key Differences ### Sound and Tone - **Banjo:** Produces a sharp, twangy sound that’s instantly recognizable in bluegrass and folk music. - **Violin:** Offers a smooth, melodic tone capable of conveying deep emotions, making it a favorite in classical compositions. ### Learning Curve - **Banjo:** Easier for beginners due to its fretted neck and open G tuning, which simplifies chord formations. - **Violin:** More challenging, as it lacks frets and requires precise finger placement and a trained ear. ### Physical Demands - **Banjo:** Heavier and bulkier, which may be a consideration for younger players. - **Violin:** Lightweight and compact, but can strain the neck and shoulders over time. ## Banjo vs Violin: Which Should You Choose? #### Choose the Banjo if: - You’re interested in bluegrass, folk, or country music. - You prefer an instrument that’s relatively easier to pick up. - You enjoy rhythmic, percussive sounds. #### Choose the Violin if: - You’re drawn to classical, jazz, or orchestral music. - You’re willing to invest time in mastering a challenging instrument. - You appreciate melodic and expressive tones. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Essential Accessories for Beginners #### For Banjo Players: - [D’Addario EJ60 Nickel 5-String Banjo Strings](https://amzn.to/4jf15QP) - [Snark SN5X Clip-On Tuner](https://amzn.to/3RT5MDV) - [Ernie Ball Banjo Finger Picks](https://amzn.to/42j2Y9j) #### For Violin Players: - [Fiddlerman Carbon Fiber Violin Bow](https://amzn.to/4jApZKv) - [Pirastro Goldflex Rosin](https://amzn.to/3EeqZoV) - [Everest EZ Series Shoulder Rest](https://amzn.to/4jCK7f8) ## Final Thoughts Both the banjo and violin offer unique musical experiences. Your choice should align with your musical interests, commitment level, and physical comfort. Whichever you choose, dedication and consistent practice will be key to your musical journey. ## FAQs ### **Is the banjo easier to learn than the violin?** Yes, the [banjo is generally easier for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) due to its fretted neck and simpler chord shapes. The violin requires more precision and has a steeper learning curve. ### **Which is better for beginners: banjo or violin?** For absolute beginners, the banjo is often more approachable. However, the violin offers more versatility in musical styles if you’re willing to invest the time to learn it. ### **Can you play the same music on a banjo and a violin?** While some folk and traditional melodies can cross over, the banjo and violin are used in very different musical contexts. Each has its own strengths and standard repertoire. ### **What genres are the banjo and violin used in?** Banjos are common in bluegrass, folk, country, and Americana. Violins are central to classical music, but also appear in jazz, folk, rock, and even pop. ### **How much does a good beginner banjo or violin cost?** A quality beginner banjo typically starts around $200–$400. A solid beginner violin outfit (including bow and case) usually starts around $100–$300. ### **Is the violin more versatile than the banjo?** Yes, the violin is considered more versatile due to its wide use in orchestral, solo, and contemporary music genres. The banjo has a more niche but distinctive role in specific styles. ### **Which instrument is louder: banjo or violin?** The banjo produces a sharper, more percussive sound that can seem louder in acoustic settings. However, both instruments can project well when played properly. ### **Can you self-teach the banjo or violin?** The banjo is more self-teachable thanks to online tutorials and simpler technique. The violin is harder to learn without formal instruction due to its fretless fingerboard and bow control. **Categories:** Banjo, String Comparisons, Violin --- ### [How To Tune A Mandolin (Easy Step-By-Step Guide)](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-tune-a-mandolin/) **Published:** May 3, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/mandolin/ "Mandolin")› How To Tune A Mandolin (Easy Step-By-Step Guide) Learning how to tune a mandolin doesn’t have to be frustrating. Whether you’re a complete beginner or just need a refresher, this guide will walk you through four easy methods to get your mandolin sounding just right—every time you pick it up to play. We’ll cover multiple tuning techniques, explain why tuning is crucial, and even suggest the best tools and tuners to make the process smoother. ## Table of Contents - [4 Proven Methods to Tune a Mandolin](#4-proven-methods-to-tune-a-mandolin) - [\#1: Using an Electronic Mandolin Tuner](#1-using-an-electronic-mandolin-tuner) - [\#2: Tuning a Mandolin by Ear](#2-tuning-a-mandolin-by-ear) - [\#3: Tuning to Itself](#3-tuning-to-itself) - [\#4: Using a Guitar Tuner](#4-using-a-guitar-tuner) - [Why Mandolin Tuning Matters](#why-mandolin-tuning-matters) - [How Often Should You Tune a Mandolin?](#how-often-should-you-tune-a-mandolin) - [Do Different Mandolin Styles Require Different Tuning?](#do-different-mandolin-styles-require-different-tuning) - [Our Favorite Beginner Mandolins (Perfect for Staying in Tune)](#our-favorite-beginner-mandolins-perfect-for-staying-in-tune) - [Conclusion](#conclusion) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## 4 Proven Methods to Tune a Mandolin Before adjusting anything, always make sure you’re turning the correct tuning peg for the string you’re plucking. Start tuning from slightly below the desired pitch and tune up to avoid overstretching the string, which can lead to snapping or fast detuning. ### \#1: Using an Electronic Mandolin Tuner The easiest and most accurate method is to use a clip-on or plug-in electronic tuner. Simply pluck a string and wait for the tuner to register the pitch. When the tuner turns green (or hits center), you’re in tune. If you’re tuning paired strings, isolate them one at a time by using rest strokes. **Top Recommended Electronic Tuners:** [Snark ST-8 Super Tight Tuner](https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-8-Super-Tight-Current/dp/B01H62FQ3U?crid=2OBH61ST7SWDM&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yqSGsfBsDQWXJP7Klk2esJJIxYgrg7m_o1j4_MEGzes7FseLiPEzCsepoJrDFfCHYMY2JZalxMZ42VeQI0gzhuaKWACNAYFvfM0_O_PenVQJvCQxU350oJa-7uJV5LR0meBzgzF_NzLNHTsPjP8wfyNjVZ0hQyjYd8lwLz2OFBzu8th_FsUMg8VgEeKM27LjEZDs2OaWbpAjSEfDU3tcgQUXHuUuAL5eQf4ez3g49I8vJ0fIWZdPG3jzoUzzmpxLz97uEmUAWB8Zw3csoZQnjICmW2pPzmdyIXOFKQkf0H0.G7qGZJUtAC361lMtqsK24vKIRtBb1kshZeHjyf9bpYE&dib_tag=se&keywords=snark%2Bst-8%2Bsuper%2Btight&qid=1746224107&sprefix=snark%2Bst-8%2Bsuper%2Btigh%2Caps%2C162&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=ed634fc32dd952aac502cb8db1a323f9&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) – Fast and accurate with a bright display. No products found. [D’Addario NS Micro Tuner](https://www.amazon.com/DAddario-Micro-Clip-Tuner-Calibration/dp/B005FKF1PY?crid=1BDYL56GMV55B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Tbu3tOVbcs3lY2wMrCzojOlzQBnHVVSiSqHEqqG_Jy0h2E9EPFA0lu-e7F8wXkaVrwl4g9-I-FStTOQ_yCaYJ23-y4bQ6t_XgfxMDsUOqWK-49FJEX5yTfTgSbjvNM4KMkM1tY5RjqViMqqDQY0XIKj6FJ2O1AWtusKR7qrYai799l0HAMR6QEI93fC220EW6iksgw8u2fF-ER5oGjL9l_UsIp3Onz_-ScTljjtQZfZvMPVWJxrzdF0PCj2IAngIHsDCZnOZbGlFue9fcwxa6UWlI3wM3n91hzSRU6p0rx4.6b0VHs1PcvGclCBElpUtkl7zJK89yorPRMkmlGFNW94&dib_tag=se&keywords=daddario%2Bns%2Bmicro&qid=1746224264&sprefix=daddario%2Bns%2Bmicro%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=2cc4fc9a50226e3e038721c081dced13&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) – Compact and perfect for mandolins. No products found. ### \#2: Tuning a Mandolin by Ear If you have a good sense of pitch or a reliable reference note (like a piano, tuning fork, or another instrument), you can tune each string manually. Start with the G string, compare it to the reference, and tune it until they match. Then use that tuned string to tune the others using the 7th fret method. **Pro Tip:** Always tune up to the note, not down to it. ### \#3: Tuning to Itself You can also tune your mandolin relative to one string in tune. Here’s how: - Tune the E string (string 1) using a tuner or reference note. - Fret the 7th fret of the A string (string 2) and match it to the open E string. - Repeat this logic with D (string 3) and A, then G (string 4) and D. ### \#4: Using a Guitar Tuner Most chromatic guitar tuners can recognize the G-D-A-E notes used in mandolin tuning. However, higher-pitched E and A strings may sometimes confuse basic guitar tuners. In that case, tune the lower strings first and finish by ear. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Why Mandolin Tuning Matters Tuning your mandolin ensures that your music sounds clean and professional. Even minor detuning can ruin the tonal quality, especially during chord changes and fast melodic runs. Consistent tuning builds your ear and makes your practice more effective. ## How Often Should You Tune a Mandolin? Environmental changes (like humidity and temperature) and string tension can detune your mandolin quickly. You should check tuning every time you play—and possibly even mid-session if you’re practicing for a long time. ## Do Different Mandolin Styles Require Different Tuning? No. Whether you have an A-style or F-style mandolin, standard tuning remains the same: **G-D-A-E** (from lowest to highest string). Scale length may vary, but tuning conventions are consistent across mandolin types. ## Our Favorite Beginner Mandolins (Perfect for Staying in Tune) **[Donner A-Style Mandolin](https://www.amazon.com/Donner-Mandolin-Instrument-Sunburst-DML-1/dp/B077RS9DPT?crid=32GU9QU1U2O72&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3G3GM2p2WdJhBoC9eQjYK43MWEo3xOOEZ1-eMpsWaCrfLbpC2aK2zONRc837DbezoqDAgNrbf7QH8TItLK8NCUlHUVhQrwZCi8hgCZ8wvQt0taBBZMievyg6t9ozcVvcqNupzEcYYJ413dDwQHEvn-YSS4IIrTokfVpj68znF00hanog-6Q69LlzZAjgQoI5E-Im8KYh3cr1r1xgAqWVNok8H9IcRZmXy6KOP35jZI44G1PEnjyMKJ7yNFhoNSlkK-rMpsjjtFznaL431IMsDHCr_sHt5I8dXIJ1p6O0fXc.1EctzWeEtd64-6EmAsJ4c5j3VDCefMpqx9zXVaDw3gE&dib_tag=se&keywords=donner%2Ba-style%2Bmandolin&qid=1746224432&sprefix=donner%2Ba-style%2Bmandolin%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-5&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=8e41ffa407b58c6aa99ebcdf5af5f8d1&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)** – Best for beginners. Comes with a tuner, picks, and a case. No products found. **[Vangoa A-Style Acoustic Electric Mandolin](https://www.amazon.com/Mandolin-Acoustic-Mandolins-Instrument-Vangoa/dp/B07RM1GQZZ?crid=2N6XMGYRFS7L8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.dG6_-9uO86-hSR-Qzv_t7zuLbye142W_qYFmgoMgGvO5svUDaqLHFxufocfaOJbDQ4z0FhFcPmZKNn3iD4BvryUoJ8NN2NdfZVeQCMVI7uaN_3JsblqvbNYuyzAsXPqIMo6rfnOkOeqQvi01yB5_FqAnAYlhx2mvxTJesXVF1-v2jTtKgdKKHXwCsTy1-4XlFGS-5IYhStJIpnU-_CpNu4OypHKQJl6gZI0b-_7e5ROD9gjrAju35FWQp3JOHy3wiI2tL4bTIZoADpjPLBHPddmvXX0_xQvEJPpXiSHtBtM.U28TKuPfqKYDD9BHjfexTJnpvLoJZerRfb8lgq06wLA&dib_tag=se&keywords=beginner%2Bmandolin&qid=1746224551&sprefix=beginner%2Bmandolin%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=31ce8f5785fb4f33db91fc58b97c8f40&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)** – Includes gig bag, tuner, and strap. Great value kit. No products found. **[ADM A-Style Acoustic Mandolin](https://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Mandolin-Instrument-Mandolins-Beginner/dp/B09LYK17SP?content-id=amzn1.sym.87b1f643-33a9-49d2-948f-44f2ccfe0508%3Aamzn1.sym.87b1f643-33a9-49d2-948f-44f2ccfe0508&crid=2N6XMGYRFS7L8&cv_ct_cx=beginner%2Bmandolin&keywords=beginner%2Bmandolin&pd_rd_i=B09LYK17SP&pd_rd_r=60a3f138-842a-4ab5-880b-23fec1427946&pd_rd_w=9U9YP&pd_rd_wg=8po3G&pf_rd_p=87b1f643-33a9-49d2-948f-44f2ccfe0508&pf_rd_r=RSG16XRPHSAFV4P5PMB4&qid=1746224551&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sprefix=beginner%2Bmandolin%2Caps%2C147&sr=1-4-6024b2a3-78e4-4fed-8fed-e1613be3bcce-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=40b74d8e0e4e4fd56e7890779498ab34&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)** – Another budget-friendly option with a sleek blueburst color, shiny finish, and the accessories you need to get started. No products found. ## Conclusion Tuning your mandolin is the first step toward sounding great. With these four tuning methods and the right gear, you can confidently keep your mandolin in perfect pitch. Over time, tuning will become second nature, and your playing will shine as a result. ## FAQs ### **What is the standard tuning for a mandolin?** The standard tuning for a mandolin is G-D-A-E, from lowest to highest string, with each pair of strings tuned in unison.​[](https://www.get-tuned.com/mandolin-tuning-piano.php?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **How often should I tune my mandolin?** It’s recommended to check your mandolin’s tuning before each playing session, as factors like temperature and humidity can affect string tension.​[](https://www.reddit.com/r/mandolin/comments/ked7i3/how_to_tune_e_strings_without_breaking/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Can I use a guitar tuner for my mandolin?** Yes, many chromatic tuners designed for guitars can also be used for mandolins, especially if they detect a wide range of pitches.​[](https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=664689&utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Why do my mandolin strings go out of tune quickly?** New strings need time to stretch and settle. Additionally, environmental changes and playing style can cause strings to detune.​[](https://www.reddit.com/r/mandolin/comments/ked7i3/how_to_tune_e_strings_without_breaking/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **Are there mobile apps available for mandolin tuning?** Absolutely! Apps like GuitarTuna and Mandolin Tuner are popular choices among mandolin players for quick and accurate tuning.​[](https://yousician.com/mandolin-tuner?utm_source=chatgpt.com) **Categories:** Mandolin --- ### [Best Ukulele Wall Mounts: Top Picks for Beautiful Display](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-wall-mount/) **Published:** December 16, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Ukulele Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/ "Ukulele Reviews")› Best Ukulele Wall Mounts: Top Picks for Beautiful Display Looking to showcase your ukulele while keeping it safe and accessible? A quality wall mount not only displays your instrument beautifully but also protects it from damage. In this guide, we’ll explore the best ukulele wall mounts available, ensuring you find the perfect fit for your needs. ## Table of Contents - [Top 5 Ukulele Wall Mounts](#top-5-ukulele-wall-mounts) - [1. String Swing CC01UK Ukulele Wall Mount](#1-string-swing-cc01uk-ukulele-wall-mount) - [2. Hercules GSP38WB Plus Ukulele Hanger](#2-hercules-gsp38wb-plus-ukulele-hanger) - [3. Ohuhu Ukulele Wall Mount Hanger (2-Pack)](#3-ohuhu-ukulele-wall-mount-hanger-2pack) - [4. Donner Ukulele Wall Mount Hanger, 3 Pack](#4-donner-ukulele-wall-mount-hanger-3-pack) - [5. Muziclight LED Ukulele Wall Mount](#5-muziclight-led-ukulele-wall-mount) - [Why Use a Ukulele Wall Mount?](#why-use-a-ukulele-wall-mount) - [Installation Tips](#installation-tips) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Top 5 Ukulele Wall Mounts ### 1. [String Swing CC01UK Ukulele Wall Mount](https://www.amazon.com/String-Swing-Ukulele-Mount-Mandolin/dp/B00G8JRANW?crid=34029CZFXYALX&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yjvvlgyAU0l_BZcsx0eElrqTTMocnxOvQw82xvCyWfQeSLpLz2JTbEzk77wZhlHFUdd7TyRBlxqGegdUBw-7nJCp-fs4Yn3kds_sC20cIc-Yf8wS73KiOAg-zhXLG7I14z2rkCwMb_oaY6RaxYztjD3dlkVY4h9R4tyJQxOk_zmm7JxYHy4V-DjdkPZN4CWr-ggAxcIDGNpDCjBad9tHkLMp4RbX1iphZowiGuOMZIN0j0HemPyLYWhqBxuChyJ6qS8eehdP35eF6X73sqqb9Vib-J0suqBhpQDIrxH05n8.V9q9pdYIdo_NVuFkaHUSP2yovYuiM0GHid7ochxjP9A&dib_tag=se&keywords=String%2BSwing%2BCC01UK%2BUkulele%2BWall%2BMount&qid=1745805816&sprefix=string%2Bswing%2Bcc01uk%2Bukulele%2Bwall%2Bmount%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=9a626feb05334ff97f39d3815b4860d6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best Overall** The String Swing CC01UK is a favorite among musicians for its durability and ease of installation. Made in the USA, it features a deep cradle design to securely hold your ukulele without damaging the finish. No products found. ### 2. [Hercules GSP38WB Plus Ukulele Hanger](https://www.amazon.com/Hercules-GSP38WB-PLUS-Auto-Swivel-Yoke-Hanger/dp/B07BBNS4ZL?crid=3EQ2Z3200Q2JP&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.w8ubENVPiDIjwtLo32GWsOSxsLWNvNQyAnPy526cJQdR6Jmj8cSuvy1GAdTQoX_un4OciHBMIEfVk-DoFVps0ztfZqyrIKLIORdiAJ4K_qXoWvGfnUyYRPzwlXPqHw8k3B3flK8cASOlzd81yonM1sWrAsRgIaRznt6iwSuDBc3qboXyWZ58eKbSAPgOCzc42LxGaL8cTQRAcH_FhILiHqWyzOHBUbu10LLnIrqUVxAe41qIfPUTUfOUZ_s97wZGm0tdvJQulplVFo7C4mm2-u_IZfRaFdO0mkzdf19FGJM.lmE2dvW99EM-Xu4vcYIMKXCrp9VUqpVIiZuHDa_z2N8&dib_tag=se&keywords=Hercules%2BGSP38WB%2BPlus%2BUkulele%2BHanger&qid=1745805929&sprefix=hercules%2Bgsp38wb%2Bplus%2Bukulele%2Bhanger%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-7&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=4a44cf5b17625e930056f418d13eda94&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best for Security** This hanger boasts an auto-grip system that locks your ukulele in place, providing extra security. Its adjustable yoke accommodates various headstock shapes, making it versatile for different ukulele sizes. No products found. ### 3. [Ohuhu Ukulele Wall Mount Hanger (2-Pack)](https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Ohuhu-Electric-Acoustic-Ukulele/dp/B019ONS4TC?crid=3KRU6GV8UUFOB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.KCe8D28txCi5rpUGOS4FC4gjQdinf35xI6G7_EOqEraIa8riCPu0pxZMu2Qpbv-OKchhd5sm7tadK-sZo_eFZFSfXVS8yKCgzeK5wEHNw619CFmofH84rQiwfNxhWgkKDdDtxzqfxzeSOB954bF4x8BYO7-RPLsbVSrL9YVJeJPtn4p1D-gsTgqTN2WCGsXiQ7eX7GGSCZzkQL1INOEtnJtZB0Ksub7CBIbY9PL2PJS3piGHgPH5LYtwuBhWDidlHt6vjr7YzmK0UIaEuKF7qvDBDGN8-WnG3BixyTdTyks.GlIBcpuCudHV54Jy_mb1pdGc1neEjvKaZLXvc1jIRNA&dib_tag=se&keywords=Ohuhu+Ukulele+Wall+Mount+Hanger+%282-Pack%29&qid=1745806057&sprefix=ohuhu+ukulele+wall+mount+hanger+2-pack+%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-3-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=6295d27ab5b54e5883ff73232d52df62&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best Value Pack** Perfect for those with multiple ukuleles, this 2-pack offers sturdy wooden mounts with padded arms to prevent scratches. They’re easy to install and come with all necessary hardware. No products found. ### 4. [Donner Ukulele Wall Mount Hanger, 3 Pack](https://www.amazon.com/Donner-6-Packs-Different-Instruments-Mandolin/dp/B07WHPTSSS?crid=1AMRW98SLJGXT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.zR8KHW9F8UQ99fAd3DxeGMwLRuG6dAswcJbaV0yDd5gUjxfkYAzLhsz7Iw7kcYJ-5LMO_U3GE-vZ4S-WwJAW-u1k-KirjT8JRW6moi8xtIupr-tVhXq28Aa0Dka0ES0LAX2d7fSOKX2d1ytVA-tsvoDB9Z0aosaY87meWX0heg15zg3xgJzIuNMziEE8EI9L0ctbI5ZZpHvVjmT70XNjB-hxPkoYchPaYkk5SnPhTOqOhQUJr98O0Z9dTxrCvPu7FStR67xc3nDC0crXiRpa6MMbSjvLiYvy49awUtFzpD4.bjxprqzJt6nbwxoQc7THRAOWiwjXf1zNHHSxPgzDgts&dib_tag=se&keywords=Donner%2BUkulele%2BWall%2BMount%2BHanger&qid=1745806257&sprefix=donner%2Bukulele%2Bwall%2Bmount%2Bhanger%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-6&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=818e2293bc3761594e4b1cff69c48f50&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best for Aesthetics** Donner’s wall mount features a sleek design with a solid wood base, adding a touch of elegance to your display. The soft silicone padding ensures your ukulele remains scratch-free. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) No products found. ### 5. [Muziclight LED Ukulele Wall Mount](https://www.amazon.com/Muziclight-Multicolor-Ukulele-Wall-Mount/dp/B078Z2C2W3?crid=1SOYXJHUJOHWD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.aadXBdEW_qWxhNwUyFnrEv0g70VJQCaH-9QLZYvpLUzAjCurIdqcaNVUF1Ac26dYdwAxatgOhswvA2F_FznXgxXnjI8qCpJkW2CP-SLRnuEOoteefdSLfvCg6hLP2aSVzJo8lA-6P4OkEux74z3aVABG0a_tI2rLmvltjCrpzeAQY1spnPF3uBpVkJG1CV4tqPZDNa2sOd-W-Tw4klC4Q6myu76TKGA1e7sAZ2mvxTdAhIla9UR3G-Yeij-ew-3znVKmGipAO-NrwDn8krrlysMbSjvLiYvy49awUtFzpD4.Zve5E_4OFdlMxTY3vEL1ANUpxCpDoswcxK_4JWCreJA&dib_tag=se&keywords=Muziclight%2BLED%2BUkulele%2BWall%2BMount&qid=1745806443&sprefix=muziclight%2Bled%2Bukulele%2Bwall%2Bmount%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-1&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=ad65520a8c80eb50cdb75491e92cf888&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) **Best for Visual Appeal** Enhance your display with this LED-lit wall mount. It not only holds your ukulele securely but also illuminates it, making it a standout piece in any room. No products found. ## Why Use a Ukulele Wall Mount? - **Space-Saving:** Frees up floor space and keeps your instrument off surfaces. - **Protection:** Reduces the risk of accidental knocks or falls. - **Accessibility:** Keeps your ukulele within easy reach, encouraging more frequent play. - **Display:** Showcases your instrument as a piece of art. ## Installation Tips For optimal safety: - Mount into a wall stud for maximum support. - Use appropriate anchors if mounting on drywall. - Ensure the mount is level before securing. - Follow the manufacturer’s instructions carefully. By choosing the right wall mount, you not only protect your ukulele but also add a decorative element to your space. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned player, these top picks offer both functionality and style. ## FAQs ### **What is the best ukulele wall mount for beginners?** The String Swing CC01UK is ideal for beginners due to its easy installation and secure design.​ ### **Are wall mounts safe for all ukulele sizes?** Yes, most wall mounts accommodate various sizes, but always check the product specifications to ensure compatibility.​ ### **Can wall mounts damage my ukulele?** Quality wall mounts with padded arms prevent scratches and provide safe support for your instrument.​[](https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GFWUKEHNGRMH--gator-frameworks-gfw-uke-hngrmhg-wall-mount-ukulele-mandolin-hanger-mahogany/reviews?utm_source=chatgpt.com) ### **How do I install a ukulele wall mount?** Installation typically involves securing the mount to a wall stud using screws and anchors. Always follow the manufacturer’s guidelines.​ ### **Do wall mounts come with installation hardware?** Most wall mounts include the necessary screws and anchors for installation, but it’s advisable to verify before purchase.​ **Categories:** Ukulele, Ukulele Comparisons, Ukulele Reviews --- ### [How Much Does A Grand Harp Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/grand-harp-cost/) **Published:** January 4, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Harp](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/harp/ "Harp")› How Much Does A Grand Harp Cost? Looking for a high-quality harp can be quite tedious, regardless of whether you are an experienced or novice player. Further complicating things is the fact that these instruments typically come with a hefty price tag. Grand harps can average around $30,000 to $40,000, although prices can range more broadly from $20,000 to $100,000 or more depending on factors such as brand, material, and overall quality. In this article, we’ll take you through several essential factors that affect the overall price of a grand harp. You’ll be in a better position to choose a grand harp that is not only within your budget, but also provides you with outstanding quality and sound. ## Table of Contents - [Grand Harp Design & Craftsmanship](#grand-harp-design-amp-craftsmanship) - [Grand Harp Sizes](#grand-harp-sizes) - [Grand Harp Strings](#grand-harp-strings) - [How Many Strings Does a Grand Harp Have?](#how-many-strings-does-a-grand-harp-have) - [Types Of Harps](#types-of-harps) - [Best Grand Concert Harp Brands](#best-grand-concert-harp-brands) - [Conclusion](#conclusion) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Grand Harp Design & Craftsmanship When investing in a grand harp, you need to ensure that you get a model that can withstand lots of play, as well as handle being transported between different locations. You need to keep away from cheap and inferior quality models which, despite being gentle on the wallet, get damaged quite quickly. Trust us, it won’t be worth it in the end. Plus, these harps produce a sound that isn’t nearly as pleasing to the ear. When you combine that with the potential for paying lots of money in repair costs, it’s not a good combo. The type of wood used in the construction of the harp is a vital factor, and affects a harp’s price. Whether the harp has been designed with solid wood or laminate wood around its soundboard and body is something to consider. A harp player may prefer solid wood over laminate wood for several reasons. Solid wood provides a warmer and more resonant tone compared to laminate, and can age and mature over time to develop its own unique character. Plus, solid wood is more durable and can withstand the stress of regular playing better than laminate. On the other hand, laminate wood is more affordable and can be a good option for beginners or those on a tight budget. Laminate is also less sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity, making it easier to maintain. So you need to first assess your needs before deciding which wood will best serve you. Also, when searching for the perfect harp, make sure to also check that the wood doesn’t have any subtle cracks, there aren’t twists on the column or neck, and the soundboard isn’t peeling from the box. If you notice any of these signs, avoid that harp – it’s probably a looming disaster. ## Grand Harp Sizes Harps come in a broad range of sizes, largely because they incorporate a different number of strings in their design. For example, a lever harp usually has 34 strings, whereas a concert harp has up to 47 strings. That being said, harps can have an equal number of strings and still vary in size, depending on the design chosen by the maker. Every harp maker has a preferred design that they feel provides the best possible combination of aesthetics and sound. The best harp size for your needs comes down to your personal preference. Just keep in mind that, typically, the bigger the harp’s size, the more costly it will be. ## Grand Harp Strings Harps typically have three different types of strings: carbon-fiber, gut, or nylon. Carbon-fiber strings are the most durable, compared to nylon and gut strings, and generate the brightest sound. They’re also the most costly. Gut strings are often found on pedal harps, and create a warm sound when played. They are often affected by changes in humidity and temperature, making them more susceptible to breaking. Nylon strings, on the other hand, are usually incorporated in lever harps, and produce a bright sound. They are less expensive compared to gut strings, despite the fact that they are often more durable. *\[PRO TIP: Find some harp strings that use color coding to make replacement easier. [This set](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005UGOCYE?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=harp%20strings) fits the bill.\]* ## How Many Strings Does a Grand Harp Have? The number of strings on a harp varies widely. It depends on both the model and the make. If you’re more of an expert, you should opt for a harp with more strings, as this allows you to play a broad range of music. However, it’ll be more expensive compared to harps with less strings. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) If you’re a novice harp player, you should probably go for a harp that has less than 26 strings. These types of harps are cheaper and easier to transport compared to more [professional harps with 47 strings](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/). ## Types Of Harps Harps come in two different main types: pedal harps and lever harps. Pedal harps incorporate seven pedals – one for every note. They can increase every string by two semitones, and are fully chromatic. Lever harps, on the other hand, feature levers on their strings, which can increase the string by a semitone, and are diatonic. The lever harp is more affordable compared to the pedal harp, and is probably more ideal if you are just [learning to play the harp](https://promusicvault.com/learn-to-play-the-harp/). It also comes in a perfect size, and works well with both classical music as well as some folk music. ***PMV Top Pick – [This harp](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZKZ3QNN?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) is our top pick for beginners, not only for its quality but also for the beginner-friendly accessories that it comes with.*** No products found. However, if you are willing to break the bank, you can also choose to go for the pedal harp, which is usually preferred by most more experienced harp players. ## Best Grand Concert Harp Brands - [**Lyon & Healy**](https://www.lyonhealy.com/harps-collections/premium-harps/) - [**Salvi**](https://www.salviharps.com/collections-harps/premium-harp/) - [**Camac**](https://www.camac-harps.com/en/) - [**Dusty Strings**](https://manufacturing.dustystrings.com/harps) ## Conclusion Grand concert harps come with a hefty price tag, but when you actually understand these beautiful instruments, you can start to see why! As with any new instrument purchase, make sure to do your due diligence, and vet the brand or person that you’re buying from. ## FAQs ### How much does a grand harp cost on average? The average cost of a grand harp is typically around $30,000 to $40,000, although prices can range from $20,000 to $100,000 or more depending on factors such as brand, material, and overall quality. ### Are there any affordable grand harps on the market? Yes, there are some affordable grand harps available, although they may not have the same level of quality or sound as more expensive options. Budget-friendly options can be found for around $20,000 or less. ### What are the most expensive grand harps on the market? The most expensive grand harps on the market can cost upwards of $100,000 or more, depending on factors such as brand, material, and overall quality. ### What factors influence the cost of a grand harp? Factors that influence the cost of a grand harp include brand, material, size, and overall quality. Other factors, such as customizations and special features, can also impact the price. ### What are the best grand harp brands to consider? Some of the best grand harp brands to consider include Salvi, Lyon & Healy, Camac, and Dusty Strings. These brands are known for producing high-quality harps with excellent sound and craftsmanship. ### Can I find a used grand harp for sale? Yes, you can find used grand harps for sale through online classifieds, musical instrument dealers, and secondhand markets. It is important to thoroughly inspect a used harp before purchasing to ensure it is in good condition. ### How do I determine the right size grand harp for me? The right size grand harp for you will depend on your personal preference and playing style, as well as your physical size and playing comfort. It is recommended to try out several different sizes before making a purchase. ### Are there any additional costs associated with owning a grand harp? Yes, there are additional costs associated with owning a grand harp, such as tuning, maintenance, and repairs. It is important to factor these costs into your budget when considering purchasing a harp. ### Can I purchase a grand harp online? Yes, you can purchase a grand harp online from a variety of retailers and musical instrument dealers. However, it is recommended to try out the harp in person before making a purchase, if possible. ### How do I care for my grand harp? To care for your grand harp, it is important to regularly tune and maintain the instrument. This includes cleaning the strings and body, and having any necessary repairs performed by a professional. Proper storage and handling can also help prolong the life of your harp. **Categories:** Harp --- ### [Piano vs. Harpsichord (What Are The Differences?)](https://promusicvault.com/piano-vs-harpsichord/) **Published:** January 6, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/ "Comparisons")› [Keyboard Comparisons](https://promusicvault.com/category/comparison/keyboard-comparisons/ "Keyboard Comparisons")› Piano vs. Harpsichord (What Are The Differences?) There is a definite difference between the piano and harpsichord. **In fact, the differences between the two instruments are many and varied. Both may belong to the keyboard instrument group, bear a resemblance to one another, and have strings and a keyboard, but most of the similarities end there.** The 10 distinct ways the piano and harpsichord differ are as follows. ## Table of Contents - [Piano and Harpsichord History](#piano-and-harpsichord-history) - [Piano and Harpsichord Size Differences](#piano-and-harpsichord-size-differences) - [Piano and Harpsichord Sound Differences](#piano-and-harpsichord-sound-differences) - [Piano and Harpsichord Octave Ranges](#piano-and-harpsichord-octave-ranges) - [Piano and Harpsichord Keyboard Differences](#piano-and-harpsichord-keyboard-differences) - [Pedals](#pedals) - [Piano and Harpsichord Strings](#piano-and-harpsichord-strings) - [Striking vs. Plucking](#striking-vs-plucking) - [Piano and Harpsichord Keys](#piano-and-harpsichord-keys) - [Piano and Harpsichord Availability and Cost](#piano-and-harpsichord-availability-and-cost) - [Piano vs. Harpsichord: Which One is Easier to Play?](#piano-vs-harpsichord-which-one-is-easier-to-play) - [Wrapping Up the Comparisons](#wrapping-up-the-comparisons) - [Piano vs. Harpsichord: Which One is More Popular?](#piano-vs-harpsichord-which-one-is-more-popular) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Piano and Harpsichord History The harpsichord was invented centuries before the piano. In its heyday from around the 1400s to the early 1800s, the harpsichord was very popular in Western Europe. Now, contemporary harpsichords are used to play certain pieces of historically informed performances, new compositions, and some types of popular music. The harpsichord started to die out around the beginning of the 18th century, corresponding with when the piano was invented. The piano was invented in Italy in the 1700s and became popular soon after that. Since the harpsichord has existed in its original form since around 1400, it is around 300 years older than its successor, the piano. ## Piano and Harpsichord Size Differences In comparing the size of the piano and harpsichord, the harpsichord weighs less than the piano because of the lighter inner core and case of a harpsichord. The [harpsichord is wing-shaped and looks similar to a harp](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-harpsichord/) placed on a frame. It is also narrower than a piano. Pianos can be one of 3 types: grand, digital, or upright piano. The weight of the average upright piano is approximately 520 pounds, and it is between 30″ and 50″ tall. In contrast, a typical harpsichord weighs approximately 275 pounds and is 8 feet long and 3 feet wide. ***PMV Top Pick – If you want to go the digital piano route, [this model from Yamaha](https://amzn.to/3m19BdA) earns our top pick thanks to its attention to detail in recreating the tone and sound of an acoustic piano.*** ## Piano and Harpsichord Sound Differences The sound produced on a piano and harpsichord is very different. The harpsichord is quieter than the piano and more harmonious. The harpsichord has a lilting, beautiful sound that is the hallmark of the Renaissance Era when the harpsichord was popular. When it comes to controlling sound on the piano and the harpsichord, it’s easier done on the piano. The sound on the harpsichord is more rigid and formal, whereas the piano can play a variety of sounds simply by how hard or soft the player strikes the keys. Playing crescendo or decrescendo is not possible on a harpsichord. ## Piano and Harpsichord Octave Ranges A normal harpsichord typically has a range of 4 to 6 octaves, whereas a piano has an octave range of around 7 octaves. On a harpsichord, playing with two sets of strings can produce a sound an octave higher, known as the 4-foot register. The set of strings that produce sounds at a normal pitch on a harpsichord is called an 8-foot register. ## Piano and Harpsichord Keyboard Differences The keyboards on the piano and harpsichord differ as well: the harpsichord has two keyboards, while the piano has only one. The piano has 88 keys or sometimes more, and a double keyboard harpsichord has between 96 and 144 keys. The harpsichord has a soundboard under the strings, which vibrates and amplifies the notes being played. The piano has a similar sound amplification system, but it is a hammer that strikes the string and produces sound when it vibrates. ## Pedals Pedals exist on the piano, but not on the harpsichord. A piano’s pedal is called a sustain pedal, and it’s typically found on the right side of the piano. When you press down on it with your foot, it lifts up all the dampers on the strings inside the piano, allowing the notes to ring out and sustain for longer. This gives you the ability to create a beautiful, rich sound that’s full of depth and warmth. It’s especially useful when playing chords or when you want to make a note last longer than the natural decay of the string. ## Piano and Harpsichord Strings There are 2 sets of strings on the harpsichord. [Sound is produced by plucking the strings](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/). Some harpsichords have been made with more than 2 sets of strings, but most have 2 sets of 8 foot strings that vary in sound depending upon what type of material is used to make the plectrum. It is more time-consuming and tedious to tune the strings on a harpsichord than it is to tune a piano. The harpsichord strings are weaker and thinner and must be tuned before each performance. Tuning a piano does not have to be done as often, because the strings are harder and stronger. No products found. ## Striking vs. Plucking The mechanics of how the piano and harpsichord produce sound is different. The harpsichord sound is achieved by plucking. In other words, a mechanism known as a plectrum plucks the strings through the use of a tangent, a small metal piece attached to the inner part of the string. On a piano, a lever with a hammer strikes the string and vibrates, causing a unique sound. The difference between striking and plucking is that controlling sound on the piano is much easier than on the harpsichord. ## Piano and Harpsichord Keys Harpsichord keys are made of wood, while white piano keys are made of ivory or wood and a plastic-coated ivory substance. The black keys on the piano are made of ebony or other types of darker wood. There are 88 keys on the piano, 52 of which are white and 36 of which are black. How one strikes the keys on a piano can influence the sound greatly. By striking the keys forcefully, the sound becomes loud and bold. By striking the keys softly, the sound is lighter and more delicate. The force with which you strike keys on the harpsichord does not affect the sound. It is generally the same tone and sound. That being said, there are techniques such as using rolled chords or trills to produce more variants in sound using the keys on the harpsichord. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Piano and Harpsichord Availability and Cost In today’s world, purchasing a piano or harpsichord can be challenging. A harpsichord can often be built for anywhere around $5,000 to $20,000. Pianos are more available and more accessible to find than harpsichords, although the harpsichord is making a comeback after nearly being obliterated in the 19th Century. Most pianos range from a low of $4,500 to as much as $190,000 for a high-end, well-built piano. ## Piano vs. Harpsichord: Which One is Easier to Play? Knowing that the harpsichord has 2 keyboards and 2 sets of strings might lead some to believe it is harder to play. This is in many ways false, because when playing the harpsichord the sound cannot be changed by how hard or soft one strikes the keys – one less thing to master. Performers and composers have mastered certain techniques that change the tone and sound on the harpsichord, but the complexity of the piano compared to the limited techniques used in playing the harpsichord generally makes the piano a harder instrument to play. *PRO TIP: Looking to learn the piano with guided courses online? [Playground Sessions](https://www.playgroundsessions.com/learning?ari=ol) is one of the most reputable online learning resources for piano.* Two of the techniques used in playing the harpsichord are articulation and agogic. These techniques vary the tone and sound of the harpsichord somewhat, but it is not as pronounced as the variations in touch, pressure, or use of the pedal that are used to produce sound on the piano. Therefore, mastering the nuances of the piano is more difficult than its counterpart, the harpsichord. The harpsichord remains a rigid, formal instrument, while the piano is considered more expressive, therefore making the simpler, more formal harpsichord the easier instrument to play. No products found. No products found. ## Wrapping Up the Comparisons The piano and harpsichord are not the same, even though the forerunner to the piano is the harpsichord. The variety and number of sounds one can make on a piano and harpsichord is one major difference. Today, the piano has evolved into a major and popular instrument that is used worldwide. The harpsichord is considered the preferred instrument on which to play certain musical pieces and fantasias, like those written by Bach, for example. Because one is developed from the other, they have certain similarities. Nonetheless, the use of plucking and striking remains the major difference in how sound is produced on the piano and harpsichord. Although piano and harpsichord mechanisms are similar in some aspects, the hammer on the piano is effective in striking the string and making a louder sound. On the other hand, the mechanism in the harpsichord gently plucks the strings, making the sound lighter, softer, and more delicate. ## Piano vs. Harpsichord: Which One is More Popular? The piano is considered the more popular instrument, although the harpsichord is still in use today in similar ways as it was during the peak of its heyday in the Renaissance Era. The harpsichord was considered a must for the upper class and aristocracy. The piano, however, had little or no ornate design or decoration, like the harpsichord did, and therfore appealed more to the middle class. The piano became popular by reaching the mainstream and being used in schools, concert halls, churches, and private homes. The harpsichord was in large part phased out in the 19th century, and was revived in the 20th century, but trails the piano in popularity today. **Also Read:** - **[Harp vs. Piano: Full Comparison](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-piano/)** - **[Clavichord vs. Harpsichord (What’s the Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/)** - **[Harp vs. Harpsichord – (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/harp-vs-harpsichord/)** ## FAQs ### What is the main difference between a piano and a harpsichord? The main difference is in the way the strings are struck. A piano has hammers that strike the strings when a key is pressed, while a harpsichord has plucked strings that are activated by pressing keys. ### Which instrument has a louder sound, piano or harpsichord? Generally, pianos are louder than harpsichords. This is because the hammers in a [piano strike the strings](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/) with greater force than the plectra in a harpsichord. ### Which instrument is better for classical music, piano or harpsichord? Both instruments have their place in classical music, but the piano is more commonly used in modern classical music. Harpsichords are often associated with Baroque music and earlier periods. ### Can you play the same music on a piano and a harpsichord? Yes, many pieces of music can be played on both instruments. However, the different tonal qualities of the two instruments mean that some pieces may sound better on one than the other. ### Which instrument is more expensive, a piano or a harpsichord? Pianos are generally more expensive than harpsichords. This is because pianos have more complex mechanisms and require more materials to build. ### Can a harpsichord be used in a modern band or ensemble? Yes, harpsichords are often used in modern ensembles, especially those that focus on early music. They can add a unique sound and texture to a performance. ### Which instrument is easier to learn, piano or harpsichord? This is subjective and depends on the individual. Some people may find the piano easier to learn because of its more familiar layout and the ability to control dynamics with the force of the keys. Others may prefer the simplicity of the harpsichord’s mechanics. ### Can you play jazz music on a harpsichord? Yes, jazz musicians have experimented with using harpsichords in their music. However, the instrument’s limited dynamic range and lack of sustain make it less suited to jazz than the piano. ### Do pianos and harpsichords require different maintenance? Yes, pianos and harpsichords require different types of maintenance. Pianos require regular tuning and regulation of the action, while harpsichords require maintenance of the plectra and other parts unique to the instrument. ### Which instrument should I choose if I’m just starting to learn keyboard? If you’re just starting to learn keyboard, a piano is generally the best choice. It’s a versatile instrument that can be used in many different genres, and it will provide a solid foundation for learning other [keyboard instruments](https://promusicvault.com/keyboard-instruments/) in the future. **Categories:** Keyboard Comparisons --- ### [Ashthorpe Banjo Review: The Pros and Cons & Complete Guide](https://promusicvault.com/ashthorpe-banjo-review/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Banjo Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/ "Banjo Reviews")› Ashthorpe Banjo Review: The Pros and Cons & Complete Guide It is said that a banjo does not play a sad tune, or a mellow tune – so add some joy to your life with an Ashthorpe banjo. With this banjo, as well as some ability to properly execute some basic banjo playing techniques, you will be certain to find a great connection between the instrument and your individual playing style. So whether you’re playing music for your friends or family, or enjoying the banjo on your own, you’ll get a bright and clear sound that everyone will like. The Ashthorpe banjo also comes with a cushioned tour bag, additional strings, a cleaning cloth, and picks, so you’ll be prepared to pluck any of your favorite melodies in no time. ### [Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516ITPoquxL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41qjyjt0uPL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51u9V0izYCL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/516ITPoquxL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1)[![Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41qjyjt0uPL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1)[![Ashthorpe 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51u9V0izYCL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) Our Score - Traditional style: This 5-string banjo is perfect for any style of play with its guitar-style headstock and neck combined with a tambourine shaped body. Whether you’re playing mellow country tunes, folk, bluegrass, clawhammer-style, even rock, you’ll get a great response and sound from this right-handed banjo. - Remo head - High-quality craftsmanship: Ashthorpe’s banjo features a mahogany neck and laurel fretboard with finely manicured, smooth seated frets. The body is crafted from mahogany with a high-gloss finish. The closed-back resonator can be easily removed, allowing this banjo to be played open back. - Geared 5th tuner and adjustable truss rod: This 5-string banjo also includes a geared 5th string tuner, typically found on more expensive banjos. - Banjo bundle kit includes: This banjo is safely stored inside a 15mm premium fabric padded “gig bag” guitar case with pocket, carry handle, and shoulder strap. Extra strings, a polishing cloth, and three celluloid picks are also included. [Check Price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CLZLRV?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) ## Table of Contents - [Main Takeaways for the Ashthorpe Banjo](#main-takeaways-for-the-ashthorpe-banjo) - [Ashthorpe Banjo: Pros & Cons](#ashthorpe-banjo-pros-amp-cons) - [Pros:](#pros) - [Cons:](#cons) - [Ashthorpe Banjo Sound](#ashthorpe-banjo-sound) - [Ashthorpe Banjo Price Range/Value](#ashthorpe-banjo-price-rangevalue) - [Ashthorpe Banjo Style](#ashthorpe-banjo-style) - [Quality of the Ashthorpe Banjo](#quality-of-the-ashthorpe-banjo) - [About The Ashthorpe Banjo Brand](#about-the-ashthorpe-banjo-brand) - [Bottom Line](#bottom-line) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Main Takeaways for the Ashthorpe Banjo - Very affordable and great value. - Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro, this banjo can meet your expectations. - Great [starter banjo for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) who want to start playing and [not spend a lot of money](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-the-money/). ## Ashthorpe Banjo: Pros & Cons ### Pros: - The body is made of mahogany and finished in a high-gloss finish. - You may adjust the neck with the flexible truss rod to straighten it. - Beginners can use geared tuners to make tuning easier and avoid the banjo from going out of tune. - Affordable for most people. ### Cons: - Picks and straps could be better, but they’re easy to swap out. - It’s a little difficult to replace the resonator once removed. - The tone is quieter and less punchy. - Not a “brand name.” *PRO TIP: If you want to get serious about protecting your banjo, move up to a hardshell case. [This banjo case](https://amzn.to/3YTuVAe) gets you there at a reasonable price.* ## Ashthorpe Banjo Sound Some banjos have an open-back. These are often lighter in weight and have a softer sound. On other banjos, a wooden bowl called a “resonator” is affixed to the rear of the drum. The Ashthorpe banjo is an example of this style, although the resonator can also be removed so that the banjo can be played with an open back. Because the resonator generally rests on your body as you play, sitting down is more comfortable while playing this banjo, and aids in transmitting the sounds. Most [bluegrass players choose “closed back” or “resonator” style banjos](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/) like this, as they’re a little louder. Unfortunately, they can also be relatively heavy, and standing up to play them can be more tiring. While many people believe that if you want to play bluegrass, you have to use a closed-back banjo, perhaps the most important thing for a beginner is to feel comfortable. **[Open-back banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/)** options will be lighter to handle and easier to play for some people. *PRO TIP: To find that ideal sound, get a quality [tuner that is designed to work well with banjos](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/). [This tuner](https://amzn.to/3kmUCu3) comes from a respected brand and is made specifically for banjos, rather than just being a “multi-instrument” tuner.* ## Ashthorpe Banjo Price Range/Value A complete beginner kit, like the one shown above, will typically cost between $150 and $300 and is a good choice for those just getting started. Beginner kits like these are an ideal buy if you’re unsure if you’ll persist with the instrument. To take things up a notch, paying between $300 and $425 will usually get you a pretty good mid-range banjo. ## Ashthorpe Banjo Style With a guitar-style headstock and neck mixed with a tambourine-shaped body, Ashthorpe’s 5-string banjo is suited for any performance. This right-handed banjo will respond and sound wonderful whether you’re playing calm country classics, folk, **[bluegrass](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-bluegrass/)**, **[clawhammer-style](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/)**, or even rock. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The closed-back resonator is simple to take off, meaning you can play the [banjo open](https://promusicvault.com/open-back-banjo-vs-resonator-banjo/) back. Some of its other design features include: - 5-ply maple and mahogany shell - 5-ply maple rim - 15:1 ratio geared tuners and top-notch tuning pegs - Adjustable hinged tailpiece - Chrome-plated armrest. The Ashthorpe banjo also has a geared 5th tuner and adjustable truss rod, features that you may mind more commonly on more expensive banjos. The geared 5th tuner is a step up compared to the common friction tuner, and offers more precise tuning and less slippage. ## Quality of the Ashthorpe Banjo This banjo kit features a Remo head, which the renowned Remo drum manufacturer produces. The crisp white, polished head delivers brilliant sound and clarity. A magnificent 5/8″ maple/ebony bridge rests on the Remo’s head for enhanced string vibration transfer, and is held with 24 chrome-plated brackets. The Ashthorpe banjo has a mahogany neck and laurel fingerboard with finely manicured, smoothly seated frets and a mahogany body with an eye-catching high-gloss surface. *PRO TIP: Get your banjo strings from a trusted brand and you’ll notice the difference in sound quality. [This set of banjo strings](https://amzn.to/41g7suC) comes from one of the most trusted brands across all stringed instruments.* ## About The Ashthorpe Banjo Brand What do music-loving amateurs and professionals have in common? They communicate through music, which is a worldwide language. Ashthorpe builds their banjos with this in mind. They create instruments to bring the music community together and link musicians with their friends and fans. Ashthorpe banjos are a good fit for everyone from children to students to performers, allowing all musicians to express themselves artistically. Everything that you need to get started with playing the banjo comes with an Ashthorpe banjo. *PRO TIP: When you’re first [learning the banjo](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/), pick up a good instructional book that covers a variety of types of songs, so that you can find the style that you enjoy the most. [This banjo book](https://amzn.to/3YTuWnP) gives you a 50/50 split of clawhammer and three-finger style songs.* The Ashthorpe brand also provides a large selection of high-quality guitars, including traditional acoustic, electric, and acoustic-electric models. Left-handed guitars are also available. Regardless if music is a hobby, a passion, something you do for fun or for a career, Ashthorpe instruments help to get you set up with high-quality sound. Ashthorpe instruments are made from high-quality materials and polished with meticulous attention to detail. These well-crafted instruments bring excellent sound and tonal quality, with great playability and longevity for anyone from school kids new to music classes to classical musicians in small piece bands. A musical instrument is a priceless investment, and Ashthorpe is a solid way to start off that investment. ## Bottom Line This conventional 5-string banjo from Ashthorpe is ideal for musicians of all ability levels, regardless of prior experience. The lovely high-gloss mahogany banjo, made of 5-ply maple with a mahogany shell and an adjustable hinged truss rod, is a great way to have a good time with friends or family. This is the ideal instrument for someone who has always wanted to [learn to play the banjo](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/). It’s an opportunity to uncover your God-given talent that you may not have even known about! If you know you want to get started with the banjo, but still want to check out some other options, check out our other [beginner banjo reviews](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/). Also, ask around and allow the stories of your fellow musicians to guide you along the road. For the most part, you can count on musicians to give you an honest take on how they’ve felt about their instruments and the brands that they choose. Enjoy your banjo! ## FAQs ### What type of sound does the Ashthorpe Banjo produce? The Ashthorpe Banjo produces a bright, crisp sound that is perfect for bluegrass, country, and folk music. ### Is the Ashthorpe Banjo easy to play for beginners? Yes, the Ashthorpe Banjo is designed to be easy to play for beginners and experienced players alike. It features a comfortable neck and low action for easy fretting. ### Can the Ashthorpe Banjo be used for live performances? Yes, the Ashthorpe Banjo is designed to be used for live performances. Its high-quality components ensure a consistent sound even in a live setting. ### How does the Ashthorpe Banjo compare to other banjos in its price range? The Ashthorpe Banjo offers excellent value for its price. It has a solid build quality, good sound, and a comfortable playing experience. ### Is the Ashthorpe Banjo lightweight and easy to carry? Yes, the Ashthorpe Banjo is lightweight and easy to carry. It is perfect for musicians who travel frequently and need a portable instrument. ### Does the Ashthorpe Banjo come with any accessories? Yes, the Ashthorpe Banjo comes with a padded gig bag, a set of spare strings, and several other accessories to get started playing. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [How Much Does a Sousaphone Weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-weigh/) **Published:** December 27, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/ "Instruments")› [Sousaphone](https://promusicvault.com/category/instruments/sousaphone/ "Sousaphone")› How Much Does a Sousaphone Weigh? The sousaphone is among the largest of the **[brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/)**, potentially weighing as much as 50 pounds (although the majority of sousaphones weigh just half of that, or less). If it were to be unrolled, an average sousaphone can be around 18 feet long! Sousaphones are typically made from brass or a brass-like metal. They can be finished in a variety of colors including silver, yellow, and gold. Some sousaphones may also have a lacquer or silver coating applied. This is common for many [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/). In more recent years, sousaphones have been obtainable in durable fiberglass plastics rather than brass. These days, the sousaphone’s fiberglass versions are mostly used for marching, while [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) are used for most other situations. But how much does a sousaphone weigh? Here is an overview of sousaphones and their average weight. **Depending on the brand, the average weight of brass sousaphones is about 30-45 pounds, whereas fiberglass sousaphones weigh less by far (about 15 pounds).** **While the latest sousaphones weigh around 30 pounds or potentially less, older instruments might weigh up to 50 pounds.** ## Table of Contents - [How Big Is a Sousaphone (Size)](#how-big-is-a-sousaphone-size) - [How Much Does a Jupiter Sousaphone Weigh?](#how-much-does-a-jupiter-sousaphone-weigh) - [How Much Does a Yamaha Sousaphone Weigh?](#how-much-does-a-yamaha-sousaphone-weigh) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## How Big Is a Sousaphone (Size) The most recent sousaphones are typically made in the key of BB♭; the majority of the past sousaphones were pitched with the key of E♭. Sousaphones in that particular key are limited these days. The shape of the sousaphone is such that its bell is on top of the head of the tubist and projecting frontward. Its valves face the musician, somewhat higher than the waist, and all of the instrument’s weight usually rest on the musician’s left shoulder. Its bell is usually removable from the body of the instrument in order to make transportation and storage easier. *\[PRO TIP: Protect your sousaphone and lengthen its life with [this bestselling gig bag.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002VCU5U?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=sousaphone%20gig%20bag)\]* Apart from the general shape and appearance of the instrument, the sousaphone has lots in common with the tuba. Even though sousaphones might have a more limited variety than their counterpart concert tuba (the majority of sousaphones have three valves instead of four in order to lessen the weight), they are typically capable of playing similar music, and generally have sections written in bass clef. Early sousaphones had 22 inch diameter bells, with 24 inch bells prominent in the 1920s. However, from the mid-1930s on, **sousaphone bells have been more uniform with 26 inch diameters.** **As far as length, sousaphones are about 42 inches long**. ## How Much Does a Jupiter Sousaphone Weigh? The Jupiter Fiberglass Sousaphone is among the more strong marching instruments that are presently on the market. It comes with a durable white fiberglass body and features a 26 inch bell for wonderful projection. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) It also has an easily detachable valve as well as slide body for easy and trouble free maintenance. The detachable valve in particular is ideal for allowing complete access to the parts that would normally be inaccessible to a repairing technician. The playing **weight of a Jupiter sousaphone is 22.4 lbs**, with a bore size and bell size of .688 inches and 26 inches, respectively (for the Jupiter JSP1000 sousaphone specifically). Jupiter sousaphones bring quality and value that are ideal for both performance and budget. Fully featured and durably built, these instruments will provide many years of dependable service. The Jupiter sousaphone’s weight makes it perfect for marching bands and jazz outfits. ## How Much Does a Yamaha Sousaphone Weigh? The Yamaha sousaphone is probably the most excellent sousaphone around these days. The manufacturer has done wide research when developing this improved low brass device. The Yamaha full brass sousaphone is good for those who would like the sound quality of a brass instrument and don’t mind the weight of the sousaphone so much. **Popular Yamaha sousaphones weigh around 28 pounds.** Yamahas are great sousaphones which are capable of high sound quality at all volumes. Beyond Jupiter and Yamaha, there are some [other sousaphones on the market that have also earned high marks](https://www.amazon.com/ospublishing/story/4b1400f5-ecfb-46cd-892a-de38663da86f/ref=sxin_24?cv_ct_pg=search&cv_ct_wn=osp-single-source-pecos-desktop&linkCode=oas&cv_ct_id=amzn1.osa.4b1400f5-ecfb-46cd-892a-de38663da86f.ATVPDKIKX0DER.en_US&asc_contentid=amzn1.osa.4b1400f5-ecfb-46cd-892a-de38663da86f.ATVPDKIKX0DER.en_US&cv_ct_we=article-page&content-id=amzn1.sym.2501e731-e00e-46aa-97f8-28a8de3ef511:amzn1.sym.2501e731-e00e-46aa-97f8-28a8de3ef511&qid=1675557077&ascsubtag=amzn1.osa.4b1400f5-ecfb-46cd-892a-de38663da86f.ATVPDKIKX0DER.en_US&pf_rd_p=2501e731-e00e-46aa-97f8-28a8de3ef511&pf_rd_r=E0X87HYTXQ5FFY594YHW&pd_rd_wg=gq5yz&pd_rd_w=kfvgC&tag=gadgetreview-tca-20&asc_contenttype=article&pd_rd_r=4402ece5-9415-4dc7-9e7d-8a50ab6f1943&cv_ct_cx=sousaphone). These are 3 picks that earned top marks from Gadget Review. Table could not be displayed. ## FAQs ### What is a sousaphone? A sousaphone is a type of brass instrument, similar to a tuba, but with a distinctive, wrapped shape that makes it easier to carry while marching in a band. ### What is the weight of a standard sousaphone? The weight of a standard sousaphone can range from 20 to 35 pounds. ### What materials are sousaphones made from? Sousaphones are typically made from brass or a brass-like metal. ### What factors affect the weight of a sousaphone? The weight of a sousaphone is primarily determined by the size of the instrument and the materials used in its construction. ### Is a sousaphone heavy compared to other brass instruments? Compared to other brass instruments, a sousaphone can be considered relatively heavy. ### Is it difficult to carry a sousaphone while marching in a band? Carrying a sousaphone while marching in a band can be challenging, due to its size and weight. However, the unique shape of the sousaphone makes it easier to carry than other large brass instruments. ### How can a player support the weight of a sousaphone while playing? Players can support the weight of a sousaphone using a shoulder strap or harness. ### What is the difference between a sousaphone and a tuba? The main difference between a sousaphone and a tuba is the shape and size of the instrument. A sousaphone is larger and has a distinctive, wrapped shape, while a tuba is typically larger and has a more cylindrical shape. ### Are sousaphones still used in modern music? Yes, sousaphones are still used in modern music, particularly in marching bands and military bands. Related: **[How Much Does A Sousaphone Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-cost/)** **Categories:** Sousaphone --- ### [7 Best Bagpipes For Beginners (2023) - Buyer Guide & Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/best-bagpipes-for-beginners/) **Published:** December 11, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› [Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/ "Reviews")› [Bagpipes Reviews](https://promusicvault.com/category/reviews/bagpipes-reviews/ "Bagpipes Reviews")› 7 Best Bagpipes For Beginners (2023) – Buyer Guide & Reviews If you’re looking to embark on the adventure of learning to play the bagpipes yourself, you likely have been wondering which are the best bagpipes for beginners. This article will help you sort that out, as we review some of the best on the market today, which will help move you along on your learning journey and enable you to play the bagpipes with beautiful mastery. ## Table of Contents - [Top 7 Beginner Bagpipes](#top-7-beginner-bagpipes) - [\#1 AJW Bagpipes Set – Best Overall](#1nbspajw-bagpipes-setnbsp-best-overall) - [\#2 AAR Scottish Bagpipes – For The Money](#2nbspaar-scottish-bagpipesnbsp-for-the-money) - [\#3 Champion Legacy Junior Playable Bagpipes – For Kids](#3nbspchampion-legacy-junior-playable-bagpipesnbsp-for-kids) - [\#4 Clan Tartan Bagpipes Starter Kit](#4nbspclan-tartan-bagpipes-starter-kit) - [\#5 TNYC Great Highland Bagpipes](#5nbsptnyc-great-highland-bagpipes) - [\#6 AAR Full Size Rosewood Bagpipes](#6nbspaar-full-size-rosewood-bagpipes) - [\#7 AJW Great Highland Bagpipes](#7nbspajw-great-highland-bagpipes) - [Choosing Bagpipes For Beginners – Buying Guide](#choosing-bagpipes-for-beginners-buying-guide) - [Bagpipes Sound](#bagpipes-sound) - [Bagpipes Size and Weight](#bagpipes-size-and-weight) - [Bagpipes Brands](#bagpipes-brands) - [Best Beginner Bagpipe Brands:](#best-beginner-bagpipe-brands) - [Budget](#budget) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Top 7 Beginner Bagpipes ### \#1 [AJW Bagpipes Set](https://amzn.to/3JmTvVh) – Best Overall No products found. For anyone looking for bagpipes that they can play well as a beginner, the AJW Bagpipes Set tops our list. These bagpipes are very user friendly. You’ll appreciate the fact that they come with a cord, so you don’t have to spend extra money to buy the cord separately. As soon as you see these magnificent bagpipes, you’ll realize how much quality has actually been put into making them. When you play them, you’ll experience first hand how that quality helps these bagpipes put forth a gorgeous, clear sound that is distinct and impressive. In our opinion, you’d be hard-pressed not to be delighted with these bagpipes, and probably won’t need to look elsewhere for other options. These bagpipes are highly durable also, and all the pieces fit well together, so they should last you a nice long time. These bagpipes are also highly responsive, in that they don’t require you to be constantly exerting all your breath just to get sound from them. Just a bit of breath will result in gorgeous bagpipe notes that are full and harmonious. ### \#2 [AAR Scottish Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3XVVvaY) – For The Money No products found. We’re going to go out on a limb here – when you get the AAR Scottish Bagpipes and try them out for the very first time, you will not be able to put them down. These bagpipes are ideal for beginners, as they are easily playable. This is because they respond to the slightest amount of breath with rapidity and prowess. These are excellently made bagpipes as well, and are able to withstand a lot of usage. The wood is top quality. The bores of the drones are finished off nicely, which adds to the majestic look of these finely crafted bagpipes. Much effort was made in the manufacture of these bagpipes to produce a product that you’ll be pleased with for a long time. The supplied reeds are of high caliber, and contribute to the playing enjoyment of these bagpipes. When you get these amazing bagpipes, you are truly getting real value. ### \#3 [Champion Legacy Junior Playable Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/404nIhV) – For Kids No products found. If you’re looking for bagpipes that will be able to hold their notes, even for children, then you’ll want to take a close look at picking up the Champion Legacy Junior Playable Bagpipes. These bagpipes will provide easy playability for kids without making them gasp or lose their breath. They allow for plenty of notes without having to gasp or struggle. Your kids can get a serious sense of pride and accomplishment when they play these bagpipes, as the process of filling the bagpipes with air is not as cumbersome as with other **[types of bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-bagpipes/)**. For children, this means way more enjoyment, and way less frustration. The notes come from the bladder of the bagpipes in a unified manner that produces magnificent bagpipe music that is pleasant to listen to. These bagpipes are great to use either for your childrens’ own personal enjoyment, or for when he or she has the confidence to play for a crowd to try to develop their playing skills even further. ### \#4 [Clan Tartan Bagpipes Starter Kit](https://amzn.to/3HbJsQb) No products found. When you want to know where you can get good bagpipes for a new beginner bagpipe player such as yourself, look no further than the Clan Tartan Bagpipes. This starter kit provides some truly nifty bagpipes that are a great option for beginner bagpipe players. You’ll be able to get acquainted with your bagpipes as soon as you open the package, since there are no additional elements that you need to buy in order to make the bagpipes function well. All the necessary parts of these bagpipes are present in the package when you receive it. Note that it will take some time for you to notice if the bagpipes are fully in tune. This calibration process is normal when it comes to bagpipes. You’ll enjoy playing Clan Tartan bagpipes, and, like some other picks on our list, you’ll be happy that they will not get you out of breath like other bagpipes that are much harder to fill with air. These bagpipes fill with air easily and offer a satisfying playing experience every time. These bagpipes are truly worthy of your investment. ### \#5 [TNYC Great Highland Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3DeS07B) No products found. The TNYC Great Highland Bagpipes are nicely designed bagpipes that are truly worth the money. The directions for how to use the bagpipes give some helpful information that will enhance the playing experience. The parts are well made and demonstrate wonderful quality. These bagpipes are relatively straightforward in getting them to work with high class precision. The bagpipes are easy to assemble, and you shouldn’t have any hassles getting up and running. The valves all work well, so you’ll have the peace of mind that these bagpipes will be ready to play a beautiful tune whenever you’re in the mood. Overall, these are great bagpipes that are highly responsive to new users. They’ll provide lots of fun and satisfaction as you learn to play bagpipe music. ### \#6 [AAR Full Size Rosewood Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/407FP6p) No products found. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) If you have been disappointed by some other bagpipes that you’ve tried out, and found that the quality wasn’t up to par, then you need to get the AAR Full Size Rosewood Bagpipes. These are world class bagpipes that are constructed with meticulous care, and they are always delivered to new players in great shape, ready to play your favorite bagpipe music. The instruction booklet is well designed, and provides clear information on how the bagpipes are to be properly set up. These bagpipes provide real value for the amount that you pay for them. The chanter on these bagpipes is also super powerful, and can hold notes all the way through to completion. ### \#7 [AJW Great Highland Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3HzrGYr) No products found. For those that have been disappointed by some other bagpipes having a weak chanter, you need to give the AJW Great Highland Bagpipes a serious look. These bagpipes come with a leading-edge chanter that will perform wonderfully well for you at all times. The reeds prove to be top quality and contribute to the great sounding music that these bagpipes produce. If you have an itch to play for crowds to show off your new bagpipe playing skills, these bagpipes are definitely up to the task. This instrument also just looks fantastic, on top of sounding outstanding. These bagpipes have been designed to accommodate beginner players very well. ## Choosing Bagpipes For Beginners – Buying Guide ### Bagpipes Sound Choosing a set of bagpipes with the right sound is an important consideration for any player. One factor to consider is the blowstick length, as it directly affects the volume and tone of the instrument. A shorter blowstick will result in a higher, more focused sound, while a longer blowstick will produce a lower, more resonant tone. Other factors to consider include the material of the drones and chanter, as well as the overall design and craftsmanship of the instrument. You should try out several different sets of bagpipes and listen to each one carefully to determine which has the sound you are looking for. Also think about your individual playing style and the type of music you will be performing on the bagpipes when making your final selection. ### Bagpipes Size and Weight When choosing a beginner set of bagpipes, give some thought to the size and weight of the instrument. For beginners, a smaller size may be more comfortable to handle, as well as easier to play. The weight of the instrument can also affect how easily it can be carried and played for extended periods of time. A lightweight set of bagpipes may be easier to handle for those with limited upper body strength, whereas a heavier set may provide more stability. Think about these factors and find a set that is comfortable to handle and play. You’ll be glad you did when it comes to your overall experience and progress. ### Bagpipes Brands Getting a brand that you can trust for quality bagpipes is essential. #### **Best Beginner Bagpipe Brands:** - [AJW Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3jBJY2m) – AJW is a highly regarded brand for beginner bagpipers, offering well-made instruments with great sound quality. - [AAR Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3RHu56Y) – AAR is a trusted brand for beginner bagpipers, known for producing instruments that are both easy to play and affordable. - [Gibson Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3Yco7xb) – Known for their affordable and high-quality bagpipes, Gibson is a popular brand for beginners. - [McCallum Bagpipes](https://amzn.to/3HH5zyo) – McCallum is another well-respected brand for beginners, with a variety of options to choose from. - [R.G. Hardie & Co.](https://amzn.to/3DLVoqP) – R.G. Hardie offers beginner sets that are well-crafted and easy to play. ### Budget Decide how much you want to spend on your set of bagpipes. Do you want to leave out some features and accessories and go easier on your wallet, or opt for the more expensive option, with everything provided for you and the highest quality available? Think this out ahead of time – don’t try to figure it out once you start looking at some options! Last but not least, when you decide which bagpipes to go with, remember to pick up some books to speed up the learning process! It’s an easy thing to forget, but once you get the absolute basics down it’s always a good idea to start working through some music in a well structured way. *\[PRO TIP: Go to “College” and speed up your learning with [this excellent bagpipe tutor book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GE2YTO?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1&keywords=bagpipes%20book) from The College of Piping.\]* ## FAQs ### What should I look for in a beginner bagpipe set? When choosing a beginner bagpipe set, look for good quality reeds, easy-to-play chanter, and good intonation. A good quality carrying case is also a must-have. ### What is the best material for a beginner bagpipe set? The best material for a beginner bagpipe set is African blackwood, as it is durable and produces a good sound. Synthetic materials are also a good option as they are more affordable and easier to maintain. ### Are bagpipes hard to play for beginners? Bagpipes can be challenging for beginners, but with proper lessons and practice, they can be mastered. ### What is the average lifespan of a beginner bagpipe set? The average lifespan of a beginner bagpipe set is around 10-15 years with proper care and maintenance. ### Can I purchase individual components of a beginner bagpipe set? Yes, you can purchase individual components of a beginner bagpipe set, but it is recommended to purchase a complete set for a better playing experience. ### How often should I re-tune my beginner bagpipes? You should re-tune your beginner bagpipes every time you play them. This will ensure that they sound their best and that you are playing in tune. ### What is the best way to clean my beginner bagpipes? The best way to clean your beginner bagpipes is to use a soft cloth and gentle soap and water. Avoid using harsh chemicals that could damage the pipes. ### Where can I purchase a beginner bagpipe set? You can purchase a beginner bagpipe set at a music store specializing in bagpipes or online. Make sure to choose a reputable supplier to ensure that you receive a high-quality set. ### What are the benefits of playing beginner bagpipes? Playing beginner bagpipes has many benefits, including improving musical skills, physical dexterity, and cultural appreciation. Additionally, playing bagpipes can provide a sense of community and social connection. **Categories:** Bagpipes Reviews --- ### [7 Best Kala Ukuleles for Beginners & Pro Ukulists [Reviewed]](https://promusicvault.com/best-kala-ukuleles/) **Published:** April 13, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** ## BEST [![KALA LTP-MH 4-String Ukulele with Gigbag & Tuner](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/KALA-LTP-MH-4-String-Ukulele-with-Gigbag-Tuner.jpg "KALA LTP-MH 4-String Ukulele with Gigbag & Tuner")](https://amzn.to/3R9IhoQ)[**KALA LTP-MH 4-String Ukulele with Gigbag & Tuner**](https://amzn.to/3R9IhoQ) - Made of mahogany wood - Inspired by Mandy Harvey - Comes with a Gigbag - Boasts Nylon strings ## PREMIUM [![Kala KA-TE Mahogany Tenor Acoustic-Electric Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-KA-TE-Mahogany-Tenor-Acoustic-Electric-Ukulele.jpg "Kala KA-TE Mahogany Tenor Acoustic-Electric Ukulele")](https://amzn.to/3wOZQS9)[**Kala KA-TE Mahogany Tenor Acoustic-Electric Ukulele**](https://amzn.to/3wOZQS9) - Mahogany neck and body - Aquila Nylon strings - Features a digital tuner - Instructional DVD ## BUDGET [![Kala MK-S Makala Soprano Ukulele Bundle with Gig Bag](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-MK-S-Makala-Soprano-Ukulele-Bundle-with-Gig-Bag.jpg "Kala MK-S Makala Soprano Ukulele Bundle with Gig Bag")](https://amzn.to/3Hbelo0)[**Kala MK-S Makala Soprano Ukulele Bundle with Gig Bag**](https://amzn.to/3Hbelo0) - Made of mahogany - Aquila Nylgut Strings - Features a clip-on tuner - includes a strap If you’ve been digging up ukes lately so you could float on cloud nine, we can’t take it for granted that you didn’t come across the renowned uke brand known as ‘Kala’. It’s no wonder Kala is prominent for its top-of-the-line and entry-level ukuleles—perhaps, that’s why beginners fall head over heels in love with Makala Ukulele. Kala—a.k.a. Kala Brand Music Co.—came into existence in July 2005. It was founded by Michael Upton. Although he was born in Mountain View, he moved to Hawaii in 1989. Before launching ‘Kala’, Mike also worked as a painter and he also painted the door of her wife’s house before getting married. Kala, whose meaning—as per Mike—is ‘forgiveness and peace’, has won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of people, especially music lovers since the day it was established. Kala has got an immense number of ukulele collections. Whether you’re a pro ukulelist or you’re just getting started with strumming, you’ll be able to get your hands on different models, namely shark, classic, dolphin, among other series, such as surf, mahogany, and koa series. Also, if you’re into checking out the bestselling ukes from Kala, you can’t miss out on the “Learn to Play” signature and starter kits. In 2010, when ukesters’ interest in ukuleles blossomed, Kala had the opportunity to set a footing in the business and outgrow its space. Like other uke brands, Kala is also having a variety of ukuleles that vary based on size: Tenor, Soprano, Concert, and Baritone. But don’t worry—we’ll shed light on each of them in this thorough guide and help you make an intelligent decision in the end. ## **7 Best Kala Ukuleles in 2023** Every day, numerous music brands are established and thousands of products are launched, making it the market even stiffer as far as the competition is concerned. The same goes for the ukulele industry. Since the market is crowded with different types of ukes, it’s no piece of cake to decide which ukulele is the best pick for you, and Kala ukes are no exception—since they’ve caught the attention of the pro ukesters. So, without further ado, let’s get into the list of best Kala ukuleles for both beginners and pro ukesters. ### [1. KALA LTP-MH 4-String Ukulele with Gigbag & Tuner](https://amzn.to/3HwOmbS) [![KALA LTP-MH 4-String Ukulele with Gigbag & Tuner](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/KALA-LTP-MH-4-String-Ukulele-with-Gigbag-Tuner.jpg "KALA LTP-MH 4-String Ukulele with Gigbag & Tuner")](https://amzn.to/3HwOmbS)Tenor ukes have always been admired by the ukulelists because they are easy to hold and offer a warm sound that touches the heart. In addition to that, you might’ve already heard about the mahogany wood, and guess what—this uke is made of satin mahogany. So, if you’ve been questioning about the longevity of the next uke you’re willing to purchase, you can rest assured because that’s what you’ll get with this 4-string uke, courtesy of Kala. We know you have seen hundreds of ukuleles online, however, there’s something special about this one—something that makes it stand out from the rest of the ukes. Yes, it is the floral design that has been inlaid on the body of the uke. So, it’s definitely a one-of-its-kind piece of art. Maybe, that’s the reason why Kala has become one of the most sought-after brands in the world. Whoever bought this model seems satisfied with their purchase, that’s why it has a rating of 4.8 out of 5 which clearly indicates that ukemeisters have been loving it. Speaking of the material, its back and top are made of mahogany, and the length of the scale is 17. What’s surprising here is that it’ll [stay in tune](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) even after years. It’s super comfortable to hold and play. Inspired by [Mandy’s story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Harvey), there’s nothing to dislike about this next-level tenor ukulele from Kala. From craftsmanship to sound to ease of use, they’ve topped in every perspective and offered people peace of mind. While some ukes feature a low G, this one is having a high G. Still not pleased? It’s about time we reveal the plusses and minuses of this cool ukulele for the much-needed insights. ### Pros - Made using long-lasting mahogany wood - Inspired by Mandy Harvey; features floral/bird designed personally created by Mandy’s sister - Features a Gigbag; offers safety - Boasts a clip-on tuner that works with most stringed instruments - Come with the most sought-after nylon strings - A quick-start guide to help beginners easily get started - Fretboard is made of walnut to offer the satisfaction ukulists crave for - Playability is up to the mark; hands down ### Cons - No picks ### 2. [Kala KA-TE Mahogany Tenor Acoustic-Electric Ukulele](https://amzn.to/3kLzspv) [![Kala KA-TE Mahogany Tenor Acoustic-Electric Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-KA-TE-Mahogany-Tenor-Acoustic-Electric-Ukulele.jpg "Kala KA-TE Mahogany Tenor Acoustic-Electric Ukulele")](https://amzn.to/3kLzspv)There’s a [reason why people prefer a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) to a guitar—yes, it is the size. Ukuleles are super easy to hold and strum as compared to those large guitars, no offense. Speaking of the size, if your wish is to find a perfect fit uke in terms of size, don’t for a baritone as that is very large, however, if you want to feel as if you’re playing the guitar, you could go for a baritone. No matter if your personal preference is a hard case or gigbag, you’re in luck—you get the freedom to choose any of these two. This 4-stringed uke boasts cream binding and walnut fingerboard. Although there’s no scalloping whatsoever in this uke, you can count on its warm and bright sound. Legend says that the neck and body of a [ukulele must be made using top-notch wood](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wood-types/). Guess what!—this one is made of mahogany. Did you always want a ukulele that you can utilize like an acoustic and electric ukulele? Well, Kala has your day made in the first place. This Kala ukulele is capable of being played without and without electrical amplification (hence acoustic and electric). But that’s not all there is to this Kala KA-TE ukulele—there’s more that requires your attention. Continue reading to know more. Are you a beginner and don’t know how to play the ukulele? If affirmative, don’t worry because there’s a DVD that comes packed with it that will help you set up your ukulele, play chords, and much more. As you kickstart your day with your Kala Uke, it’s vital to make sure that your [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) is in tune or it’ll sound like a piece of junk and you don’t want that, do you? Luckily, there’s a [clip-on tuner](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) that comes free with this bundle and it’ll be a lifesaver while tuning your Kala Ukulele. If you’re struggling with playing your ukulele, holding it, or reading the chords or patterns of a song, you could refer to the instructions given on the DVD that came with it. Let’s look into the advantages and disadvantages now: ### Pros - Boasts a Mahogany neck and body - Features 18 silver nickel frets - Fingerboard is made of rosewood - Equipped with Aquila Nylon strings - Comes with a digital tuner—a win-win for beginners - Has a DVD that includes instructions - Features a gigbag for extended safety of uke ### Cons - Doesn’t come with picks ### 3. [Kala LTP-T Learn to Play Ukulele Tenor Starter Kit](https://amzn.to/3kOlXFa) [![Kala LTP-T Learn to Play Ukulele Tenor Starter Kit](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-LTP-T-Learn-to-Play-Ukulele-Tenor-Starter-Kit.jpg "Kala LTP-T Learn to Play Ukulele Tenor Starter Kit")](https://amzn.to/3kOlXFa)When you become a pro uke player, you don’t need all the accessories that you depend on as a beginner. However, we can assume that you’re just getting started. That’s why this tenor starter kit is all you need right now. This Kala ukulele kit will make you float on cloud nine and you’ll forget all the worries you’ve been surrounded by. Its nylon strings will offer you a buttery smooth experience while running down your fingers across the fretboard. Perhaps, this is the [reason why people love to learn](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) to play using Kala’s stringed instruments. Being a [tenor uke](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor/), you will neither feel like it is way too big or small as it will fit perfectly and snugly into your hands. In fact, I believe that this will bring bang for your bucks to the table as it is reasonably priced and, therefore, is an ideal pick for beginners. As you know that Kala believes in keeping it simple, there is no cutaway in this model—although you can find one with that as well, if that’s what you need. To help you learn all the chords right away from scratch, Kala has also provided a quick-start guide that consists of important instructions. Not just that, there’s a free application. That means you no longer need a clip-on tuner because that can be achieved using the app. If you get stuck picking the right chords for the songs you’re trying to learn, online lessons will be a lifesaver for you. Let’s reveal the pros and cons of Kala LTP-T to give you an in-depth understanding of the above-mentioned ukulele: ### Pros - Made using solid mahogany; designed to last longer - Boasts a Polynesian shark teeth laser-etched rosette - Free online lessons to help you learn like a charm - Features one-of-a-kind Aquila strings (from Italy) - Packed with a quick-start guide (for beginners) - Doesn’t require a tuner; tuning app is all you need - The package also includes a custom logo tote bag - Features a walnut fretboard; next-level experience - Very reasonable; value for money - Produces great sound and ultimate craftsmanship ### Cons - Don’t include picks **Still can’t decide?** ![](//ukuleleadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/tcb_lp_templates/templates/css/images/edition-arrows.png "edition-arrows")### 4. [Kala MK-S Makala Soprano Ukulele Bundle with Gig Bag](https://amzn.to/3kyRkDG) [![Kala MK-S Makala Soprano Ukulele Bundle with Gig Bag](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-MK-S-Makala-Soprano-Ukulele-Bundle-with-Gig-Bag.jpg "Kala MK-S Makala Soprano Ukulele Bundle with Gig Bag")](https://amzn.to/3kyRkDG)Although Kala says that you don’t need loads of accessories to master the art of uke playing, a beginner wouldn’t agree with this. Anyway, if you’re after a [uke package that includes all the things](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) for a newbie, this kit would be a dream come true, for sure. Yes, you read that right—this is a complete bundle that encompasses almost everything you, as a beginner, may ever wish to get your hands on, including the gigbag, tuner, instructional DVD, polishing cloth, strap, and most significantly, extra Aquila strings. I mean, what else do you need? To offer the customers peace of mind, Kala is also providing 2 months of free lessons that will help the ukulists step up their game of playing and [ukulele like a pro](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/). That means, in this hard time, no ukemeisters have to go anywhere to learn playing uke as you can enjoy 2 months of classroom-style lessons without going anywhere. The full length of this ukulele is 21”, therefore, it could be a great choice if you’re on the lookout for a smaller uke. Perhaps, that’s why kids, beginners, and classic music lovers fall head over heels in love with this ukulele. Since this bundle includes accessories you would, otherwise, have to pay for separately, it’s also a bang for your buck. Let’s reveal what this uke has to brag about: ### Pros - Top, sides, and back made of top-notch mahogany - Boasts state-of-the-art Aquila Super Nylgut strings - Features a walnut fretboard and satin finish - Comes with a satin finish; good for beginners - Bundle includes a free instructional DVD - Packed with extra Aquila strings (to set aside) - Has a clip-on tuner; helps keep your uke tuned - Includes a strap for a comfortable playing experience - Boasts a gigbag, although it’s not padded ### Cons - Plastic collars may rattle ### 5. [Kala KA-KCG Koa Gloss Concert Ukulele](https://amzn.to/3WzetDf) [![Kala KA-KCG Koa Gloss Concert Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-KA-KCG-Koa-Gloss-Concert-Ukulele.jpg "Kala KA-KCG Koa Gloss Concert Ukulele")](https://amzn.to/3WzetDf)This uke is one of the best and top-of-the-line [concert ukuleles](https://promusicvault.com/best-concert-ukuleles/) out there. It’s not your typical mahogany uke, it’s been crafted using Hawaiian koa which is famous for bright, clear, and resonant tones. What’s more, koa is known for the visual beauty. So, if you’re someone who doesn’t want to compromise on looks and want great-sounding uke in the same package as well, this one is definitely a hands-down uke! [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Having said that, if you’re in love with Hawaiian culture and caress everything that Hawaiian people do or have embraced their lifestyle, you can’t miss out on this one, can you? But that’s NOT all this Kala uke boasts—there’s more to it than just meets the eye. The headstock of this one-of-a-kind ukulele is slotted with a mother of pearl inlay that is etched using the laser. When it comes to trim, you’ll get to behold the maple with black and white accents in this uke. The overall weight of this uke is 1.8 pounds—as good as it could get. Although you may feel like this one is a bit overpriced, you could rest assured that you won. Is this Kala uke using solid or laminate wood? Well, it’s using laminate koa—although some ukulists have said that the top is solid whereas the back and sides are laminate in their reviews. Even the verified seller says that it is laminated. So, you can count on that. Strings, undoubtedly, are the game-changer, that’s why one needs to be aware of what kind of [strings a uke](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is equipped with. While you’ll come across Aquila [strings in most ukes,](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) this one is using other ones—fluorocarbon strings. But don’t worry—they don’t suck, plus, you have to freedom replace them with the Aquila strings when you think is the right time to do so. Fretting on this uke works like a charm, even beginners don’t have any problem doing that. Now, let’s get into the pros and cons: ### Pros - Boasts next-level Hawaiian koa for longevity - Produces bright sound that wins hearts - Gets better as it ages; strings stretch and settle over time - Features Hawaiian koa; incorporates maple - Equipped with rosewood fingerboard - White fret markers to help locate the notes - Rosewood bridge for a next-level experience - Packed with GraphTech NuBone nut and saddle ### Cons - A little expensive ### 6. [Kala KA-15S Mahogany Soprano Ukulele](https://amzn.to/3XE4tdr) [![Kala KA-15S Mahogany Soprano Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-KA-15S-Mahogany-Soprano-Ukulele.jpg "Kala KA-15S Mahogany Soprano Ukulele")](https://amzn.to/3XE4tdr)Don’t want to spend too many bucks on your first purchase of Kala ukulele? Perhaps, this uke that is equipped with mahogany requires your attention. Yes, you got what I mean—this uke is highly reasonable when it comes to the pricing. No matter whether you’re planning to spend your money on this uke for classroom use, acoustic performance, or your wish is to practice on it to master the art of strumming, uke has been crafted with novice players in mind. What’s good about this uke is that it is available in all sizes: Soprano, Tenor, and Concert. That means you have the full freedom to choose any size you love. Since this one is made using mahogany, you will experience unmatched full-bodied, warm, and bright tones that will blow your mind. While it won’t break the bank, it’s not like you’ll need to miss out on vital features and quality. Put differently, it’s also equipped with a walnut fingerboard, 12 brass frets, not to mention the most sought-after Aquila strings that feel softer on hands. I can’t emphasize enough about Kala’s high-quality [stringed and other instruments,](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) especially ukuleles. What’s more, Kala’s ukes produce both top-of-the-line ukes and reasonably priced ones so that the requirements of both pro uke players and beginners can be met in the first place. Looking for a uke that comes with a gig bag? Meet [Kala KA-15 ukulele](https://amzn.to/3kIdkvY) that comes with a case, strap, and tuner. It’s time to meet the advantages and disadvantages of this [ukulele to figure out whether or not this uke](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is worth your attention: ### Pros - Made of traditional mahogany with a satin finish - Perfect choice for all beginners; inexpensive uke - Can be used for classrooms, performance, practicing, etc. - Boasts Aquila strings crafted in Italy - Stands out; uses Polynesian-style shark-teeth rosette - Great for people looking for short scale length - One of the best entry-level ukuleles - Boasts walnut fretboard (from NuBone) ### Cons - Couldn’t find any ### 7. [Kala KA-TG Gloss Mahogany Tenor Ukulele Bundle](https://amzn.to/3kHYp58) [![Kala KA-TG Gloss Mahogany Tenor Ukulele Bundle](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kala-KA-TG-Gloss-Mahogany-Tenor-Ukulele-Bundle.jpg "Kala KA-TG Gloss Mahogany Tenor Ukulele Bundle")](https://amzn.to/3kHYp58)While professional uke players don’t need a tuner to ensure that the [ukulele is perfectly tuned](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/). However, those who’re just getting started with strumming need to understand how it all works. Therefore, if you’re one of those who need a tuner, DVD, or a [strap to properly hold the ukulele,](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-straps/) this kit is definitely for you. The bundle includes all the things you may wish for, including a clip-on tuner, instructional DVD, gig bag, and strap. The sound quality is up to the mark and it always [stays in tune](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) no matter how long you strum those soft strings (from Aquila). It’s no wonder that they’ve achieved ultimate craftsmanship, what is also great about this is that it features cream binding and gloss finish. You’ll fall in love with the body and neck of this uke made with mahogany that comes with a high-gloss finish. Not just that, there is also a cleaning cloth that allows you to keep your Kala uke in mint condition—as fresh as new, always. It’s value for money and giftable, too. Apart from the looks, it produces that mellow sound that makes it stand out. So, it is up to you whether you need a bright sound or a mellow one. If you have never tried a uke with mellow sound, we believe that you’d love it. Also, if you have no experience with any of these, we suggest you go with the one that boasts a mellow sound because it would get brighter with time. Now, let’s talk about the benefits and demerits: ### Pros - Crafted with mahogany (body and neck) - Boasts a walnut fingerboard for perfect playability - Comes with creamy binding and high - Bundle includes all accessories; strap, DVD, gigbag - Kit also has extra Aquila strings for later use - Features GraphTech NuBone’s saddle and nut - One of Kala’s highly-rated ukuleles ### Cons - Nothing to mention ## Best Kala Ukuleles — FAQs with Answers! It’s about time you get all the questions answered you have been on your mind lately. Just browse the questions with answers laid out below. ### Q.1: Are Kala Ukuleles Good? Yes, there’s no doubt that ukuleles crafted by Kala are great. But don’t just take our word for it—you could watch [famous bands from all around the world use ukes](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-players/) from this brand. Some of those brands include 21 pilots, Zac Brown, Vance Joy, EatMyUke, Dodie, Ukulele Teacher, etc. I mean, do you know what it means when brands like 21 Pilots use ukes of Kala—yes, it definitely means and a lot, especially when you’re a die-hard fan. Apart from that, Kala also produces top-notch [stringed and other musical instruments](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/). In addition to having top-of-the-line ukuleles, Kala is also satisfying the needs of beginner ukulelists, thanks to the reasonably priced ukuleles. ### **Q.2:** What is the Best Kala Ukulele? The one ukulele from Kala, in my opinion, is “[Kala LTP-MH](https://amzn.to/3HwOZCg)”, which has topped this list. Not only has it gained customers’ appreciation but also it has been reasonably priced. Yes, it gets a rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars. If you’re having second thoughts and spend a little more bucks in exchange for the accessories the beginners need, then the uke we’re having as runner up is “[Kala KA-TE](https://amzn.to/3HcnJYv)” which boasts mahogany wood construction. The best thing about this one is that it is an electric-acoustic ukulele. That means, use it as an acoustic uke when you wish to make the most out of portability and turn it into an electric uke when you intend to amplify the sound. ### Q.3: How to Tune Kala Ukulele? Did your brand-new Kala uke arrive untuned? Don’t panic!—it can be easily tuned using a step-by-step approach. The easiest way to get your Kala [ukulele tuned is by using the official app](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-apps/) that can be downloaded from Play Store. All you have to do is strum and the app will keep you informed whether or not the produced sound is up to the mark. However, before using the app, the following things need to be done: - Ensure that strings are stretched - Tuning is required every time you play your uke - Tug the strings of your uke lightly by putting your hands on the bridge while pulling them away from the uke’s face. This needs to be done for each string: G, C, E, and A - While tuning, also check out if the letter (chord) turns GREEN because green means in tune, whereas, WHITE means untuned Although we suggest you use the app for a straightforward way to [tune your Kala ukulele,](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) you can also go for a clip-on tuner made up for grabs by Kala. If you still have any questions, Sam and Emily are there to help you set up your own uke ([see how](https://kalabrand.com/pages/ukulele-tuning)). ### Q.4: Where are Kala Ukuleles Made? People have been asking where Kala’s Ukes are made, some even ask whether they’re manufactured in China or Hawaii. Although most ukuleles, like the ones from the Kala® Elite series, are made at their shop located at Petaluma, California, some ukes are made in China. While you can see where uke was made before investing in, the pricing model will clearly make a difference. However, that doesn’t mean that the ukes made in China will not be good. I’d suggest you not think too much about the place where it was; rather, pay close attention to the tonewood, strings, and construction factors, longevity, etc. Only love [tenor ukes](https://promusicvault.com/concert-vs-tenor/)? You’ll love our take on “[Best Tenor Ukes](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/)”. ### Conclusion! It’s no news that Kala is one of the best [ukulele brands](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) that has turned out to be a game-changer. Kala produces entry-friendly [ukuleles so that beginners can easily learn](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/) ukes without having to spend too many bucks, hence the reasonability. Whether you decide to go for the #1 uke on this list or second to it, I can guarantee that you’ll enjoy it to the fullest. If this is your first time, I recommend you go for a Kala ukulele that is made using mahogany. Think about the tonewood so you could feel the taste in the sound that you’re on the lookout for. We’ve already explained the [things you need to consider](https://ukuleleadvice.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) while looking for a ukulele, be sure to keep them in mind while making an intelligent decision. You should also avoid the mistakes that most [beginners make while picking their first uke](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/). So, that’s it for today. I believe that any one of Kala’s ukes reviewed above caught your attention. If there’s any that did, I recommend you get your hands on that and bring home your all-new musical companion. **Get a Kala Uke and Strum Like a Pro!** Don’t miss out on the best Kala Ukuleles; rather, stay one step ahead and steal the deal. Also, keep in mind all the things we’ve mentioned above so you don’t end up buying a piece of junk. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Ukulele Won’t Stay in Tune? Fix it Now (1 Minute Only)](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) **Published:** July 5, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Today, you’re feeling alive. You pick up your ukulele that you just got your hands on and start playing. As soon as you start strumming it, you notice that something is wrong. Then you strum it again, but the problem doesn’t go away. If that’s something you’ve struggled with lately, I can understand what it feels like to be in such a situation. Can you picture yourself playing in front of your friends for the first time? If your uke isn’t in tune, it’d sound so bad that your friends will start laughing at you. What’s bad is that everybody in the group will think that it’s you, not your ukulele, and not even you would know that your *ukulele is out of tune*. What’s even worse is that the beginner ukulists don’t realize that their uke is out of tune and this mostly happens when people start out uke for the first time as they aren’t fully aware of the tuning thing. If you think your **ukulele goes out of tune** every time you play it, you’re not alone. This is very common and every player faces it when they grab their first uke. So, can you get rid of bad tuning once for all? Well, it gets better with time, but you can’t dispense with it easily in the beginning. Therefore, you will need to tune your ukulele every time before playing it unless, of course, the strings have fully stretched out. ## Table of Contents - [Here’s Why Your Ukulele Won’t Stay in Tune](#heres-why-your-ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune) - [\#1: Strings](#1-strings) - [\#2: Temperature](#2-temperature) - [\#3: Poor-quality Uke](#3-poorquality-uke) - [\#4: Heavy strumming](#4-heavy-strumming) - [How to Fix a Ukulele that Won't Stay in Tune](#how-to-fix-a-ukulele-that-wont-stay-in-tune) - [Step #1: Tune your Uke](#step-1-tune-your-uke) - [Step #2: Stretch each String](#step-2-stretch-each-string) - [Step #2: Tune again](#step-2-tune-again) - [FAQs:](#faqs) - - [Q.1: I’ve tried everything but my Uke won’t stay in tune, why?](#q1-ive-tried-everything-but-my-uke-wont-stay-in-tune-why) - [Q.1: Any other suggestions?](#q1-any-other-suggestions) - [Conclusion!](#conclusion) ## **Here’s Why Your Ukulele Won’t Stay in Tune** Let’s figure out reasons why your **ukulele won’t stay in tune**. ### \#1: Strings The reason why your ukulele won’t stay in tune no matter how hard you try to keep it in tune is the strings. I know putting new [strings on your ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is a sure-fire way to get the best of overall resonance and tones, but that will also require a lot of time to tune your uke before playing it. The reason why old [strings work best on uke](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is that they’ve had their time—i.e., they are done stretching. It’s not only about *new* and *old* strings. Sometimes poor-quality strings also turn the tuning upside down. **Poor [strings can be a reason why your ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) is going out of tune**. If you seek my opinion, I’d suggest you go with the D’Addario strings (pick [these](https://amzn.to/3R70UK7)) because they are used by top ukulists, namely [Jake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Shimabukuro), [Ingrid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Michaelson), and [Walk off the Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_off_the_Earth). If you’ve never heard D’Addario or are skeptical about aforesaid ones, you may want to consider Aquila strings for [soprano](https://amzn.to/40f25vx), [concert](https://amzn.to/3kvXzIn), or [tenor](https://amzn.to/3kB760N). Lastly, don’t buy tenor strings if you’re having a soprano—that’s the last thing you want to do. These [strings are made with different uke](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) sizes in mind and therefore may produce different tones. If you want to make the most out of your uke tuning, always go with the ones made just for your uke. Not sure about uke sizes? I’ve already explained different [ukuleles sizes](https://ukuleleadvice.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) for your satisfaction. ### \#2: Temperature Does change in the humidity or temperature have anything to do with your ukulele going out of tune? Yes, these things do affect the way your uke sounds. But, how? Well, most ukuleles—except some that are made of plastic—are made of natural materials such as wood. Since *bad weather* or *temperature* has a direct effect on the wood, it can also affect the tuning of your uke, and we can’t deny that tonewood is a game-changer in that area. If you own a uke made of solid wood (see [what it is](https://ukuleleadvice.com/ukulele-wood-types/)), odds are you need to protect it from bad weather conditions. The rule of thumb says that you should invest in a Humidifier and if you can’t think of one, I’d recommend [this one](https://amzn.to/3WwlmW4) from Oasis. Wherever you put your uke when it’s not in use, you need to make sure that weather doesn’t fluctuate there or it’ll lead to bad consequences. In the worst-case scenario, your uke could break or simply crack—and that’s the last thing you want. ### \#3: Poor-quality Uke If you’ve been paying attention to what I recommend to beginners, you’d have noticed that I tell the newbies to *dip deep* to come up with a good-quality ukulele. However, people who aren’t aware of the ins and outs of the ukulele buying guide end up purchasing poor-quality ukuleles, that’s because they’re not having access to such informative articles—no exaggeration. Remember, although some [reasonably priced ukes](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-cheap-ukuleles/) are good for beginners, **cheap isn’t always good**. Therefore, one needs to be fully aware of tonewood, strings, bridge, fretboard, tuners, and other parts of the ukulele to make a well-versed decision. I’m not saying that you must force yourself to buy a top-of-the-line (most expensive) ukulele when you’re starting out, but you should keep in mind you should shop for around $50, and while you do that, make sure you’re following all the things we’ve covered in the [ukulele buying guide](https://ukuleleadvice.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/). [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### \#4: Heavy strumming Are you a heavy strummer? Think about this… if you’ve been going too hard on your uke, chances are you’ve been hitting your uke way too hard and that’s not good for strings or the fingerboard of the uke. That’s why your uke goes out of tune *oftentimes*. If this is your first time, you have to give some time to your strumming techniques. I’d suggest you go gentle on the strings so you could develop a pattern and find out what works best for you. The reason why most players hear **a drop in the pitch** is that strings need some time to stretch. But the problem is severe that even the gentle players have to face the tuning issue—it’s something no one has ever escaped from. So, the only option you’re left with is to tuning your uke’s strings repeatedly before playing. As for the strings selection, I don’t know what other ukulists are suggesting, I’d say go with either **Aquila Nylgut strings** (mostly found in wood-based ukuleles) or **Nylon** or **Fluorocarbon strings** (found in ukuleles made of plastic). ## How to Fix a Ukulele that Won’t Stay in Tune Now that we’ve figured out the reasons why a ukulele goes out of tune, what can you do to fix the problem? Well, as simple as it may sound, you can dispense with the tuning issue in just **3 steps**. ### Step #1: Tune your Uke Get your ukulele gigbag, unpack it and tune your ukulele before you start strumming it. As soon as you play it, you’d experience a drop in the pitch in some way. ### Step #2: Stretch each String Now that you’ve noticed that your uke is not tuned, what you need to do is *pull each string*. Make sure you do this firmly and gently, from side to side so stretching can be achieved thoroughly. Every string (no matter the brand) has a limit it can be stretched to and, therefore, mustn’t be provided stretching more than it can take or you’re going to pop it. Repeat this process 2-3 times on each edge of the string (from top of bottom or vice versa) to ensure the stretch is applied to all sides of the string. ### Step #2: Tune again Having followed step 2, what you’re meant to do now is go back to the #1 step—i.e., tune your ukulele again. You may have to repeat several rounds to achieve precise tuning. Also, you can use a [tuner (either clip-on](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-tuner/) digital or in an app) to make sure everything is going well. That’s because sometimes novices may not make a difference between a well-tuned and not-in-tune uke—they have no idea of the tones. Are you still having questions? No worries—jump to the FAQ section below and have your queries answered in next to no time. ## FAQs: #### Q.1: I’ve tried everything but my Uke won’t stay in tune, why? If even after trying everything I’ve explained above you’re unable to fix the issue, it’s probably other factors due to which your uke is going out of tune. It could be because the bridge is not placed in the right position, or maybe it’s the tuning pegs, but tuning pegs turn out to be a culprit in the least cases. #### Q.1: Any other suggestions? There are times when newbies may not following the steps the right way. There are essential add-ons that can help beginners get the most of learning, and digital a tuner is one of them. So, I’d suggest that you invest in a good-quality clip-on tuner that can help you tune your uke, bass, guitar, or violin effectively and quickly. Can’t think of one? This [best-seller](https://amzn.to/3ZVOMQp) would offer peace of mind. ## Conclusion! I know where you are coming from—and I can understand the frustration a uke causes when it’s not tuned properly. It’s so overwhelming that people have to tune their uke again and again in hopes of eventually having it tuned. Warming up the uke is something everyone has to struggle with in the beginning, and it gets easier with time. So, you just have to bear with the process, but you should follow all the steps mentioned above as this will help ease the process. Furthermore, what I’d advise is that keep your ukulele in a room or any place where the temperature doesn’t fluctuate or stays at room temperature. You need to be patient with your uke as its tuning gets better. Does bad quality material have anything to do with the tuning? Yes, and I’ve already explained that poor-quality uke sucks and could make things worse. That’s why, the rule of thumb is that always invest in a top-notch ukulele—a uke that’s made of a-one tonewood and incorporates first-class strings. Also, if you are a lefty and haven’t checked out my take on [left-handed ukuleles](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-left-handed-ukuleles/) yet, you’re missing out on a lot. So, that’s all there is to fixing a ukulele that won’t stay in tune. See you with some new uke tweaking. Keep strumming *gently*. **Need the Best Ukuleles made for Beginners?** If this is your first time buying a ukulele, you should check out our [beginners guide on the best ukuleles](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/). Also, keep in mind all the things we’ve mentioned above so you don’t end up buying a piece of junk. **Categories:** Ukulele --- ### [Violin vs. Flute (What's The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/violin-vs-flute/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** It cannot be denied that it is truly a thrilling experience for someone to achieve the accomplishment of learning to play a musical instrument, such as a violin or a flute. Those who engage in playing an instrument tend to experience a fortified growth in terms of their personality and they tend to develop more focus. **The violin tends to have a scratchy sound for beginners at first. The flute tends to produce product notes that are clear even for beginner users. The violin requires the usage of a bow.** **There is no use of a bow when playing the flute. Also, the flute is noted as being a wind instrument, while the violin is regarded as being a [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/).** But when you are just starting out in the world of music, it may seem challenging to know if the violin or flute is best to start learning first. Therefore, this article will provide some helpful insights about the violin vs flute, regarding which instrument will be beneficial to start learning first. Basically, it is easier to play the flute when you are just starting out in comparison to learning to play the violin. This is due to the fact that the flute is regarded as being classified as a [type of C instrument](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/). The flute is designed to be able to play all music aligned within the treble clef. It is interesting to note that it can also be used to engage in mimicking how a violin sounds. This can be achieved without the transposing of any music, but some low notes of the violin may need to be transposed when using the flute to play music that is written for a violin. When you play a violin, there is often the need to transpose the music to make it more accommodating for the violin. The violin requires the coordination of a bow in one hand and fingers to press the strings on the arm of the violin. Thus, more coordination is needed to play the violin. Furthermore, the violin is much more scratchy for those learning to play the violin. It takes quite a while to make a violin sound smooth and beautiful. On the other hand, as soon as you start playing the flute, the notes sound amazingly nice and soothing. ## Table of Contents - [Difficulty to Learn: Which One Is Easier to Learn?](#difficulty-to-learn-which-one-is-easier-to-learn) - [Pros & Cons to Learning Either Instrument](#pros-amp-cons-to-learning-either-instrument) - [Conclusion / Which Instrument We Recommend Learning First](#conclusion-which-instrument-we-recommend-learning-first) ## Difficulty to Learn: Which One Is Easier to Learn? The flute is regarded as a C instrument. As a result, there is no need to transpose a lot of the music due to the fact that most notes can be played in the treble clef. But the fact is that violin music will usually incorporate some notes that are considered to be lower than this range. While it is a possibility to engage in the playing of those notes on the flute, it is not a possibility to engage in playing them in an octave that is extremely low. Thus, it is necessary to play notes of violin music by times in an octave that is higher when playing violin music on a flute. Thus, those who play the flute may need to transpose the music that is intended for a violin, which requires some creative ability. The flute is a lovely instrument for sure that almost sounds heavenly. That is why it is a great choice when learning to play music. The notes on the flute tend to be easier to play for beginner musicians in comparison to the notes on a violin. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Thus, the notes on a violin tend to be more difficult to play for beginners. But it is possible to learn the violin well when one is dedicated to doing much practice and follows through with the application of a lot of tenacity to keep on going when the lessons may seem arduous. Eventually, there will be good success for the flute or the violin, depending on what [type of instrument](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/) the person has chosen. The violin also tends to be scratchy in sound for those who are new to playing the violin, especially for children. There is the requirement of the use of a bow when playing the violin and the violin must be positioned correctly while resting on the upper body near the neck as the player places his or her chin on the end of the violin. This can be uncomfortable at first, but with time, people can get used to the positioning. ## Pros & Cons to Learning Either Instrument A disadvantage of playing the flute is the fact that there can be notes that are not within the range of the flute. This means that it may be necessary for you to be ultra creative in terms of being able to decipher how to formulate the notes in a way that will sound good as part of the repertoire that you are conducting. However, an advantage is that the notes of a flute overall are easier to play than a violin at the beginning, as the notes sound sweeter and do not sound scratchy like the notes of a violin. The advantage is that it does not take much breadth for the playing of a good quality flute, though some amount of breaths is required. The notes of a flute follow through to the end with relative ease. It will feel like a great achievement to learn to play a violin, as this is a difficult instrument to play. Thus, an advantage is the great sense of achievement. An advantage to playing the violin is that it can play a range of lower notes than on the flute. A disadvantage is that there is the need to have great coordination, as there is the use of a bow in order to produce music from this instrument. Also, the notes may seem scratchy at first for those who are learning to play this [type of instrument](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/). But then the music can become lovely and refined as one advances in his or her skill level. ## Conclusion / Which Instrument We Recommend Learning First When it comes to the issue of deciding to learn to play the violin or the flute first, we tend to recommend that you engage in learning to play the flute first. This is due to the fact that the notes will sound clearer at first and the fingering is quite easy to adjust to in regard to the notes of the flute. The notes of the flute can be played in the treble clef, which offers an easy playing style Also, those who are first accustomed to playing the piano will usually have an easy time accommodating the playing of flute more quickly than playing the violin. The violin is also a lovely instrument, but it is a more challenging instrument to play. With tenacity, one can make the violin sound enjoyable and sophisticated. **Also Read:** - **[Fife vs. Flute (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/fife-vs-flute/)** - **[Piccolo vs. Flute (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/piccolo-vs-flute/)** - **[Flute vs. Recorder (What’s the Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/flute-vs-recorder/)** - **[Clarinet vs. Flute: What’s the Difference?](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-vs-flute/)** - **[Irish Flute vs. Tin Whistle (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/)** **Categories:** Comparisons --- ### [5 Best Baritone Ukuleles for Beginners in 2023 [Expert’s Choice]](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/) **Published:** August 27, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Some ukulists can be seen discoursing that baritone ukuleles are made *only* for people with bigger hands, but is that true or is it one of the myths that people easily fall for? Well, that’s what *you’ll discover* in this article. But why does the ukulele size matter? Knowing which ukulele size is right for you is important. If you are not aware of the right size, you could end up buying the wrong uke, and every ukulele resonates differently based on its size and tonewood. While the sound is what makes a huge difference when it comes to the size of a ukulele, it’s not everything (read on to see why). I’ve already gone over [soprano](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/), [tenor](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/), and [concert](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-concert-ukuleles/) ukuleles, it’s about time I shed light on some of the best baritone ukuleles on the market so you don’t have to do the digging. ![Best Baritone Ukuleles](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Best-Baritone-Ukuleles.png "Best Baritone Ukuleles")## Table of Contents - [Why Should You Buy a Baritone Ukulele?](#why-should-you-buy-a-baritone-ukulele) - [1. Cool Size](#1-cool-size) - [2. Sound](#2-sound) - [3. Easy to Play](#3-easy-to-play) - [Don’t Worry About the Low G or High G](#dont-worry-about-the-low-g-or-high-g) - [Best Baritone Ukulele for the Money](#best-baritone-ukulele-for-the-money) - [1. Kala KA-B Mahogany Baritone Ukulele](#1-kala-kab-mahogany-baritone-ukulele) - [2. Makala Baritone Mahogany Ukulele by Kala (MK-B)](#2-makala-baritone-mahogany-ukulele-by-kala-mkb) - [3. Caramel 30-inch Zebrawood Baritone Ukulele (Hybrid)](#3-caramel-30inch-zebrawood-baritone-ukulele-hybrid) - [4. Kala KA-BEM Baritone Ukulele (Exotic Mahogany)](#4-kala-kabem-baritone-ukulele-exotic-mahogany) - [5. Kmise 30-inch Baritone G-C-E-A Ukulele](#5-kmise-30inch-baritone-gcea-ukulele) - [FAQs on Baritone Ukuleles](#faqs-on-baritone-ukuleles) ## **Why Should You Buy a Baritone Ukulele?** I don’t know why people treat baritone as a “Black Sheep” when, in fact, it’s as beautiful as other members of the uke family. It’s the only instrument that, when compared, possesses more resembling properties of a guitar. Here are the 4 reasons why a baritone ukulele is designed for you: ### 1. Cool Size First thing first, you cannot fail to admit the size of the baritone ukulele is something that gives you the feeling of both: the guitar and ukulele. Although people may tell you that it’s only for people with bigger hands or those who are taller, that’s not the case; baritone ukuleles can be enjoyed by any person—even those who have mid-sized hands. Like other instruments, you can play it with straps, play sitting or standing; there’re no boundaries—you can play however you feel like playing it. And, if you really do have bigger hands, it’d serve a great purpose for you. ### 2. Sound It brings those perfect melodies to life, without letting you miss out on the highs and lows. Similarly, a baritone is packed with 4 strings, but what sets it apart is the tuning; unlike the rest three ukes that are tuned to D-C-E-A, a *baritone is tuned to D-G-B-E*. What makes a baritone uke adorable is that it’s capable of producing sweet and bright sounds to melt your heart irrespective of where you play it; in your room, on the balcony or terrace, or even outside. If you’ve always admired those *warm*, *rich*, and *darker* tones, baritone ukuleles will bring these tonal patterns to life. If by any chance you happen to be a jazz or blues player, you’ll fall in love with the overall projection of a baritone ukulele. It allows you to experiment with tonal range and create a deeper sound. ### 3. Easy to Play If you’ve been a guitarist before, you won’t have to struggle with a baritone. Since it’s bigger in size, the fret is wide, and there’s enough space between the [strings that don’t](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) become a hindrance for people with large fingers to strum or do the fingerpicking. That means you no placing your fingers on the wrong strings accidentally. It comes as a surprise is that a baritone ukulele can also be played like a guitar because a baritone is tuned to *D-G-B-E*, whereas, a guitar has a standard tuning of *E-A-D-G-B-E*. If you also own a guitar, you can also play it like your baritone. Just assume that your guitar has only four strings (you can ignore the first two strings on the top—the 5th and 6th one). #### Don’t Worry About the Low G or High G What’s also good about the baritone ukulele is that you don’t have to worry about the low or high G thing as baritone ukuleles are ready to produce both deeper, fuller, and brighter sounds so you can start brimming with positive energy right away. ## **Best Baritone Ukulele for the Money** A ukulele (not just a baritone) should allow you to enjoy the tones so that you could feel like you’re living it up in Hawaii or one of your favorite places. As you spend your precious time with the instrument, it should offer you improved focus and mental clarity, not to mention it’s a great way to unwind with your friends after a busy day at work. So, are you ready to appreciate those lower pitches? It’s about time you meet one-of-a-kind, budget, and spacious *baritone ukuleles* that are ready to deliver excellent tones. Don’t worry, I won’t bombard you with so many options but will only show you the top 5 baritones. ### 1. [Kala KA-B Mahogany Baritone Ukulele](https://amzn.to/3DaUKmM) [![Kala KA-B Mahogany Baritone Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Kala-KA-B-Mahogany-Baritone-Ukulele.jpg "Kala KA-B Mahogany Baritone Ukulele")](https://amzn.to/3DaUKmM)Tonewood is something that counts as a prominent feature in all ukuleles out there, and even experts would agree on this. Brand’s commitment can only be considered genuine if it’s promising to use a high-quality tonewood in the instrument. Presenting Kala’s good-looking mahogany baritone that boasts a semi-gloss finish, which makes ukulists wow at the first sight. Crafted with beautiful rosewood and mahogany, this baritone has been designed to exceed all your musical prospects in the first place. While this piece of beauty resembles the [MK-B](https://amzn.to/3jP5Bfz) model, many significant aspects make it fall apart from the latter and quality rosewood construction (that goes into bridge and fingerboard) is one of those things. It’s packed with a total of 18 frets, meaning you will have the control to experiment with more notes without having to depend on the higher strings. And, that’s one of the things that pro ukulists recommend when it comes to writing preludes. If you’re wondering what brand [strings this uke](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) utilizes (since it’s nowhere to be found in the description), let me keep you at ease. It features those soft and good-sounding Aquila nylon strings. Unlike many ukes, this one will require little to no tuning—a lifesaver in that area. However, if you’re a novice player i.e., you haven’t used any [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) in your life, you may have to tune it every time before casting those magical strumming patterns on it. So, will you need to tune it again and again? Well, not really! It comes with pre-stretched strings that will help you skip the period where the stretching comes into play. If you have never heard of Aquila strings before, I suggest you read my detailed take on the [uke strings](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-strings/) and be at ease. If you have always been disdainful of baritone ukuleles being larger-bodied instruments, I recommend you give this one a try and you won’t regret the purchase. I also loved the low-action characteristic of this ukulele. ### 2. [Makala Baritone Mahogany Ukulele by Kala (MK-B)](https://amzn.to/3wvLBBe) [![Makala Baritone Mahogany Ukulele by Kala (MK-B)](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Makala-Baritone-Mahogany-Ukulele-by-Kala-MK-B.jpg "Makala Baritone Mahogany Ukulele by Kala (MK-B)")](https://amzn.to/3wvLBBe)Are you in search of a ukulele that is crafted with top-notch tonewood and ready to deliver outstanding tones irrespective of bad weather conditions? Meet MK-B, another uke from Makala (*a series of Kala*). Its full-bodied, warm, balanced tones will have your heart the first you strum those beautiful Nylgut strings. It’s one of those ukes that don’t die down as they age. In fact, it’ll get better and better as ages—yes, that’s the beauty of Aquila strings and mahogany tonewood. On top of being packed with all must-have features like a-one strings, Walnut fretboard, delightful sounds, there’s more to it than what’s on the surface. It brings that uninterrupted playability to life and most significant, it doesn’t break the bank; this baritone ukulele is *up for grabs for under $100 only*. If you’ve been thinking of starting a YouTube channel lately, it’s never too late. This piece of beauty would be a great inspiration to discover different strumming patterns while sitting in a group with fellow musicians. If you have trouble playing a ukulele standing, no worries—these [ukulele straps](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-straps/) would offer you calmness because they don’t require any drilling. Kala is renowned for its ultimate craftsmanship, excellent tone, and industry-leading accessories in its legendary ukuleles, and the baritone ukes are no exception. To take it even further, you can easily access the truss rod through the soundhole if you do want to do a little bit of tweaking for the alignment of the body—or to make sure it’s adjusted properly. Moreover, you can get it as low as $99—no more breaking the bank to get a beautiful and [good-sounding ukulele](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukuleles-for-beginners/). No matter if you buy this baritone uke for your wife or daughter who’s 18 years old, you’re good to go. However, if you’re considering it for your kiddo, you need to think twice as it’s bigger in size, but these [ukes for kids](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukuleles-for-kids/) will give you serenity for sure. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) This baritone ukulele is compatible with all [uke straps](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-straps/) and you can even put it inside in any [case](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-cases-for-travel/) and take it with you when going out with your buddies, or maybe you’d like to try out these fancy and long-lasting [uke stands](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-stands/). ### 3. [Caramel 30-inch Zebrawood Baritone Ukulele (Hybrid)](https://amzn.to/3iZQXBV) [![Caramel 30-inch Zebrawood Baritone Ukulele (Hybrid)](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Caramel-30-inch-Zebrawood-Baritone-Ukulele-Hybrid.jpg "Caramel 30-inch Zebrawood Baritone Ukulele (Hybrid)")](https://amzn.to/3iZQXBV)There’s something unique about this baritone ukulele from Caramel. It has a unique vibe, and the fact that it’s made out of exotic zebrawood makes it a real treasure for the uke lovers out there. The package is full of mysteries. It comprises all the add-ons you can think of, such as a wrench for adjusting the truss rod, a gigbag to keep your uke out of harm’s way i.e., protected from all types of insects that feed on wood like termites. The high gloss finish is what people notice first and fall in love with. Bring a hybrid ukulele, you can either play it as an acoustic or [electric ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/best-electric-ukulele/). That means connecting an external amplifier (amp) will no longer be a problem for you. If you often find yourself cranking up the volume of your preferred music, this could be the perfect-fit uke because it boasts a built-in tuner along with an amp, which will allow boosting whatever melody you play on your uke. Although—as you know—a baritone is tuned to D-G-B-E, there’s a pack of spare strings (with a standing tuning of G-C-E-A, just in case you need it). To help you get started with the strumming patterns, there are 3 nice picks that you can use to avoid finger calluses, and when you think the uke is getting a little dirt, the cleaning cloth is there to save your day. Now, some might argue that this baritone is a little expensive. Well, they’re probably right about that, however, when it comes to having extra comfort that accessories included in the pack arrange for, it’s worth your time and money, hands down! You don’t even need to invest in an EQ cable, it’s there in the bundle. And as you browse through, you’ll discover that there’s a wall hanger that you can use to hand your ukulele from. What also surprises me is that Caramel didn’t fail to provide a uke strap in the setup so your hands don’t have to worry about holding the ukulele in a perfect position and so you could focus on the strumming. If you find this piece of beauty a little costly, consider [this uke](https://amzn.to/3xbyIwL) that is available for under $100 and also from the same brand. I know, no one can [play a uke like a pro](https://ukuleleadvice.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) in a single day, but — at the end of the day — these things do make a huge difference. And you find that things aren’t working out for you, the instruction manual will be a lifesaver for you. This uke is capable of doing wonders for musical journey! ### 4. [Kala KA-BEM Baritone Ukulele (Exotic Mahogany)](https://amzn.to/3WyK1sZ) [![Kala KA-BEM Baritone Ukulele (Exotic Mahogany)](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Kala-KA-BEM-Baritone-Ukulele-Exotic-Mahogany.jpg "Kala KA-BEM Baritone Ukulele (Exotic Mahogany)")](https://amzn.to/3WyK1sZ)There is a reason why I’ve included so many ukes from Kala. Not only are Kala’s ukes made out of exceptional tonewoods, but also they vibrate pretty well and put even the [professional players](https://ukuleleadvice.com/ukulele-players/) at ease. Maybe now you understand why Kala ranks #1 on the list of [best ukulele brands](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-brands/). It’s a flawless instrument for blues players, offering warm, deeper, and rich tones. Packed with exotic mahogany, it’s able to do wonders and surprise you in distinct ways. The tonewood also gives it a traditional look, setting set new heights for nature lovers. How does it manage to offer such excellent tones? Well, the [tonewood](https://ukuleleadvice.com/ukulele-wood-types/) that goes into this uke is dense, hard, and stiff and, therefore, capable of emphasizing the low and mid-range frequencies. High frequencies? Wait till you get your hands on this beauty. It’ll take only a couple of seconds to realize that this is the instrument you’ve always longed for as soon as you go for your first strum. Those little stunning grain patterns are what had me astonished when I first beheld it, and that satin finish does the job—adds a complimentary remark. Although there’s no gigbag, you’re lucky to have that nut and saddle from GraphTech NuBone. If you’re on the lookout for a ukulele that produces crisp, clear, and characteristic tones, this ukulele will make your dream come true, offering enhanced harmonics and well-balanced tones. Just by the look at this uke, you can tell that Kala’s got the eye for detail and maybe that’s how they’ve been able to embellish this baritone. In fact, if you already have several ukes i.e., you’re a pro player, you’ll end up saying “There’s nothing quite like it”. It’s super easy to set up, hold the tune, and creates no buss whatsoever. No matter if you’re a fan of finger styling (fingerpicking) or if you’re after those thrumming techniques, this would give you goosebumps. Often put a capo on the 5th fret? Well, you won’t have any difficulty doing that at all. It’s really a “Big Boy” that has got dominance over the aforesaid (reviewed) ukuleles. I know, it’s a bit pricey for a player who’s just getting started, but considering the out-of-this-world sound that it projects, you can’t fail to grab. While it will exceed all the tonal outlooks you have about this uke, you’re still not getting a gigbag, and that’s a blast, not to mention the low action which is the preference of most people. Do you have chubby fingers? It doesn’t if your fingers are chubby or bigger, this uke works like a charm with any type of hand, especially the bigger ones. If you’ve played guitar before, you won’t have any problem getting along at all. ### 5. [Kmise 30-inch Baritone G-C-E-A Ukulele](https://amzn.to/3Ht9TCo) [![Kmise 30-inch Baritone G-C-E-A Ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Kmise-30-inch-Baritone-G-C-E-A-Ukulele.jpg "Kmise 30-inch Baritone G-C-E-A Ukulele")](https://amzn.to/3Ht9TCo)Most people prefer baritone [ukes to other members in the ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/) class because it’s tuned D-G-B-E. However, not all baritones are tuned that way, some even follow the standard tuning of G-C-E-A, provided that you’ve got your hands on the *right strings*. If you ever wondered if a baritone could have the features of a typical ukulele and wanted to have such an instrument, look no further; this baritone ukulele from Kmise has been crafted with people like you in mind. It’s a 30-inch ukulele that projects fuller, lower, and resonant sounds. Made out of an a-class mahogany, you’ll be floating on cloud seven when playing this work of art. Scratching is something that always becomes a bane of one’s existence when trying out different strumming techniques. However, with Kmise’s neatly fret wire, you’ll never experience any such thing. Plus, the fingerboard—which has been crafted using premium quality rosewood—has been smoothened so can play your uke comfortably. No more compromising on the safety of your hands. What I loved about this baritone ukulele is its ability to perform without buzzing, and the low action will blow will away. There’s also an *Allen wrench* included in the pack, giving you the freedom to adjust the action based on your preference. For the vibration to transit properly, Kmise has made use of top-notch real bone nut and saddle for the best playing experience. That’s a benefit for all ukulists looking for comfort. String? It’s from Aquila that never gets old and produces warm, bright, and penetrating tones. If you’ve always wanted the crafting of *abalone inlay*, well-made mahogany construction, and an adjustable truss rod in a ukulele, this beauty is meant for your eyes only. ## FAQs on Baritone Ukuleles While every [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) lover may be a fan of concert or tenor ukulele, those who’ve played guitar before, know the prominence of a baritone ukulele. If you’re someone who has high regard for lower tone (warmer, darker, and richer sound), you can consider one of the aforesaid baritone ukuleles to suit your needs. Another selling point why people love a baritone over other instruments is that it can be tuned to both D-G-B-E and G-C-E-A. That means you have more freedom on the tuning. That way, you can also install one of these durable and smooth [ukulele strings](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-strings/) and become the best ukestar of your generation. So, are you ready to taste those resonant sounds like never before? It’s about time you picked one of the above-reviewed baritone ukuleles and steal the deal. You will never get enough of it while playing your favorite pop, jazz, or blues preludes on it. Having a hard time understanding different [ukulele intonations or while strumming](https://promusicvault.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) your uke? This guide on [how to strum a ukulele like a pro](https://ukuleleadvice.com/strum-ukulele-like-pro/) will give you serenity. **Need the Best Baritone Ukulele?** If you’re looking for a [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) that can produce warmer, resonant, and deeper tones, you need a baritone ukulele for sure. We’ve picked some of the finest baritone ukes available on the market for you above. Nothing comes to mind? Go with the editor’s choice. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [7 Best Guitaleles for Beginners in 2023 [For the Money]](https://promusicvault.com/guitaleles-for-beginners/) **Published:** July 19, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Though there are many plusses of owning a guitalele, what I like most about a Guitalele is that it can be played like a guitar. *A Guita what!?* The **guitalele**—yes, that’s exactly what I said. But you may also call it ukitar, guilele, or kīkū. Don’t have any idea what a Guitalele is? No worries, this thorough guide has got your back! The term ***Guitalele*** is a guitar-ukulele hybrid that is made up of two words; it’s a combination of the prefix of ***Guita***r and postfix of Uku***lele***. My initial attempt towards playing a stringed instrument wasn’t because of a [guitar or ukulele,](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) but guitalele was the reason why I wanted to do so, at-lease it is what caught my attention those days. I always loved strumming a guitar, but being a little kid, handling the weight of a guitar didn’t seem reasonable to me, and yet I loved the sounds coming out of it. The problem was that I couldn’t take it anywhere as guitars are huge. While there are plusses of having a ukulele such as it is super portable and lightweight, you can’t ignore its fret system—the fact that it only has 4 strings. So, a **guitalele** became my go-to stringed instrument. ## Table of Contents - [Best Guitaleles for Beginners](#best-guitaleles-for-beginners) - [Why Use a Guitalele? Benefits of Owning a Guitalele](#why-use-a-guitalele-benefits-of-owning-a-guitalele) - [7 Best Guitaleles for the Money](#7-best-guitaleles-for-the-money) - [1. Yamaha GL1 Guitalele for Beginners (Natural)](#1-yamaha-gl1-guitalele-for-beginners-natural) - [2. Ranch 6-string Guitalele for Kids & Adults](#2-ranch-6string-guitalele-for-kids-amp-adults) - [3. Caramel Left-Handed 6-String Guitalele (2-in-1)](#3-caramel-lefthanded-6string-guitalele-2in1) - [4. Kmise 31-inch Mini Travel Guitalele for Newbies](#4-kmise-31inch-mini-travel-guitalele-for-newbies) - [5. Caramel – 30" 6 String Acacia KOA Guitalele](#5-caramel-30-6-string-acacia-koa-guitalele) - [6. Yamaha GL1 Mini 6-String Nylon Guitalele (Black)](#6-yamaha-gl1-mini-6string-nylon-guitalele-black) - [7. Ortega RGL5 EB-CE Guitalele for Beginners](#7-ortega-rgl5-ebce-guitalele-for-beginners) - [FAQs: Guitalele Buying Guide for Beginners](#faqs-guitalele-buying-guide-for-beginners) - - [Q.1: What’s a Guitalele?](#q1-whats-a-guitalele) - [Q.2: How to play a Guitalele like a guitar?](#q2nbsphow-to-play-a-guitalele-like-a-guitar) - [Q.3: How many strings does a Guitalele have?](#q3nbsphow-many-strings-does-a-guitalele-have) - [Q.4: What should I consider when getting one?](#q4nbspwhat-should-i-consider-when-getting-one) - [Time for a Triumph!](#time-for-a-triumph) ## **Best Guitaleles for Beginners** Why should you consider investing in a guitalele? How does it stand out from a guitar or ukulele? A guitalele may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely for those people who are comfortable with a [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) that is larger than a ukulele but shorter than an acoustic guitar. A guitalele combines the features of both—a [guitar and ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/). That means you will get to feel the vibes of each instrument. It brings superior comfort and portability to the table because, like a ukulele, a guitalele is also a take-anywhere string instrument. ![Best Guitaleles for Beginners](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Best-Guitaleles-for-Beginners.png "Best Guitaleles for Beginners")**Quick Fact:** Did you know that Yamaha first introduced the guitalele? Yes, that’s true, and the very first guitalele came into existence in 1997. What’s more, it’s not just the convenience a guilele is famous for, you can experience similar sounds of a guitar (as if you were to put the capo on the 5th fret) using a guitalele. But to achieve that, a guitalele must have 6 strings, right? Well, you guessed it right—a guilele does have six strings on the fretboard. Now, whether you prefer a guilele with nylon strings or those made of plastic, you need to check this out while shopping for the one. If you don’t have any idea of which one to choose, I’d suggest you go with nylon strings. So, in what way a guitalele is tuned? Well, unlike ukuleles that are tuned to GCEA, a guitalele is tuned to **ADGCEA**. This depicts that the tuning of the top four strings is similar to that of a guitar. Put differently, a guilele is tuned in the same way as guitar as if you were to put a capo on the 5th fret of the guitar, provided that it’s a *classic* guitar. ## Why Use a Guitalele? Benefits of Owning a Guitalele ****TL;DR:**** In a nutshell, you might want to consider investing in a guitalele because it’s easier to transport, small, easy to hold, can be played either as a [guitar or ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) (see FAQs), provides easy pickup, offers more flexibility, and so on. Not just that, since guitaleles have narrow frets, which is beneficial for people having small hands, although, there are downsides of narrow frets, as well. What I loved most about owning a Guitalele is that you can do the switching easily. In other words, you have more control on your playing style or tuning if you own a guitalele because it can both be played like a ukulele or guitar. To *play a guitalele like a ukulele*, there’s nothing you need to do; a uke is tuned to GCEa and a guitalele is tuned to ADGCEa, so if you would like to get those notes like you would in a uke, make sure you don’t touch the first A and D strings while playing on your guilele. You can also get excellent sounds out of your guilele like a class guitar as if it were to be capoed on the 5th string. If you’ve been playing the guitar before, this would make the process of learning a uke a whole lot easier. Easy, right? Let me know what you think! ## 7 Best Guitaleles for the Money So, what are the **best guitaleles** for the money? I know money isn’t only there, you also need to make sure the guitalele you spend your bucks for must also be suitable for beginners. Said that, I’ve decided to put together a roundup of the **top guitaleles** that beginners find friendly and are reasonably priced, not the cheap ones. Since Yamaha is that company which released the first guitalele, let’s begin with one of its guileles, shall we? ### 1. [Yamaha GL1 Guitalele for Beginners (Natural)](https://amzn.to/3XR50Iy) [![Yamaha GL1 Guitalele for Beginners (Natural)](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Yamaha-GL1-Guitalele-for-Beginners-Natural.jpg "Yamaha GL1 Guitalele for Beginners (Natural)")](https://amzn.to/3XR50Iy)Remember those cutaways in those fancy ukuleles? Well, this one has something in common if you always loved those cutaways. It takes the elegance even further by adding that slanted cut on the one end of the fretboard. But there’s something else that makes it stand out from its counterparts. Yes, it’s the tonewood; its body and back are made of **Meranti** which is considered phenomenal when it comes to having those unmatched tonal qualities in a guilele. The GL1 boasts nylon strings to offer you clear, resonant tones, exhibits a fairly shorter size than C4011. As far as its size is considered, it is sized like a [baritone ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/baritone-ukuleles/). If you have no idea how big a baritone uke is, please refer to this [uke guide](https://ukuleleadvice.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/). Do you want to be ostentatious in the public or wish to show your friends that you’ve got those strumming skills? This guitalele would offer you peace of mind in that area. Its strings will feel as soft as dental floss. However, if you [don’t feel like using these nylon strings,](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-strings/) replace them with your favorite ones won’t be an issue. Although there’s a gigbag—which is a Kroger bag—you’d find that pretty useful when looking for ways to keep your guilele from dust. What’s more, the overall weight of this [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) is quite light and, therefore, you won’t have any problem porting it. If you want a guilele that produces clear sound with an elegant and distinctive look, look no further—this is a perfect-fit guitalele for you. Does sound like a guitar? Yes, it boasts great tonal qualities and would sound very similar to what a class guitar does as if capo-ed on the 5th fret. So, if you have been playing the guitar with a capo on the fifth fret, you’d hardly notice any difference in the tones. ### 2. [Ranch 6-string Guitalele for Kids & Adults](https://amzn.to/3R2RQGl) [![Ranch 6-string Guitalele for Kids & Adults](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ranch-6-string-Guitalele-for-Kids-Adults.jpg "Ranch 6-string Guitalele for Kids & Adults")](https://amzn.to/3R2RQGl)Since I promised you to shed some light on the **best guitalele for the money**, I couldn’t help but behold the beauty of this one because it’s reasonably priced for the newbies out there. Yes, it’s only available for **under** ***$100***. Ranch [string instruments](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) are renowned for sturdiness, durability, and exceptional tonal quality. Its ukes are lightweight, produce warm and resonant tones; they offer consistent sound quality. Most of its ukes are made from sapele and this 6-string guitalele is no exception. Combined with first-rate sapele wood for a polished body, this will exceed all of your expectations in the first place. Packed with nylon strings, this guilele will allow you to create pitch-perfect Hawaiian harmonies. If you’re a huge fan of aesthetics, you’ll love those nickel silver frets that are seated on the fretboard the way they should be. What also makes this guitalele budget-friendly for beginners is that it uses Ziko Strings that are known to be reasonably priced. When you’re done tuning your guitalele, it will dance to your tunes, thanks to the user-friendliness it brings to life. Since it’s having a total of 6 strings, you’ll get to have more range which, in turn, will offer you higher/lower tones and you’ll be able to get hold of your guilele in just a couple of days. Being a 28-inch ukulele, it will make you feel like you’re playing a guitar. The add-ons contained in the bundle offer many benefits. ### 3. [Caramel Left-Handed 6-String Guitalele (2-in-1)](https://amzn.to/3H8NfO6) [![Caramel Left-Handed 6-String Guitalele (2-in1)](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Caramel-Left-Handed-6-String-Guitalele-2-in1.jpg "Caramel Left-Handed 6-String Guitalele (2-in1)")](https://amzn.to/3H8NfO6)Every time I come across a left-handed [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/), be it a uke, guitar, or guitalele, I get overwhelmed with emotions. A left-handed guilele reminds me of the left people who most of the time have to struggle with the day-to-day things—such as using accessories like scissors, tape measure, etc. Do those numeric keys on your computer keyboard ring the bell? They are of no use for the lefties—people who deserve the same happiness and rights as right-handed people. Anyway, you’ll soon see why this one is a jewel to all lefties out there. This left-handed guitalele from Caramel is made out of mahogany. What sets this apart is that truss rod that will help stabilize the curvature of the neck against the tension of the strings. Although most guitaleles’ necks are made of sturdy and long-lasting wood, there are times when the neck may bend, and a truss rod is there to even out that tension. This [article](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Truss_rod) will explain what a truss rod is and how it works. Being a 2-i-1 guitalele, it can either be played as an acoustic or electric machine. And when you’re done using it, you have the complete freedom to either put it in the gigbag or hang it from the wall hanger. Yes, you’ll get all these accessories in the package—all for free (no added cost). This left-handed uke is only meant for lefties, it’ll melt in your heart for it exhibits a pure construction. It features a buffalo bone saddle and can be plugged into an amp to boost the sound like never before. I’ve already talked about that a guitalele isn’t [tuned like a ukulele,](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) but what about this one because it’s meant for left-handed people? Well, it’s tuned to E-A-D-G-B-E. Tuning is something that becomes a pain in the neck for most beginners. That’s where the tuning pegs come offering peace of mind. However, if these pegs aren’t of high quality, things could get worse. Luckily, this one is having 18:1 copper tuning pegs that offer guaranteed accuracy and stability. With this ukitar, you’d get everything you as a beginner needs, namely picks (3 of them), a strap, a cleaning cloth, a gigbag, an EQ cable, and a wall hanger (if the gigbag doesn’t fancy you). ### 4. [Kmise 31-inch Mini Travel Guitalele for Newbies](https://amzn.to/3H3KwWp) [![Kmise 31-inch Mini Travel Guitalele for Newbies](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Kmise-31-inch-Mini-Travel-Guitalele-for-Newbies.jpg "Kmise 31-inch Mini Travel Guitalele for Newbies")](https://amzn.to/3H3KwWp)Tuned to A-D-G-C-E-A, this ukitar is packed with titanium string that will bring that superior stability and intonation to life. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Like aforesaid left-handed guilele, this one also boasts adjustable action—don’t worry, an original Allen wrench is included in the bundle. You can now adjust the action just the way you like—clockwise or anticlockwise. Also, you can take advantage of extra savings as there’s a promotion available on this pick. Kmise is famous for its excellent ukuleles that offer well-finished fretboard, high-quality tuning pegs, metal strap locks, and good-quality strings, and this 31-inch guitalele is no exception. Plus, there’s a gigbag included in the bundle and I don’t think it’s a typical bag, to me, it looked like a padded one. That means there’s more safety from dust, scratched, and heat. What left me in the most satisfying experience was the *adjustable fretboard*. Put differently, you now have the freedom to adjust the action based on your habit of playing. Should you tighten the strings, turn the rod clockwise or go anticlockwise to loosen them. Do you get overwhelmed whenever someone brings up the idea of drilling a hole into the guitalele? Well, you’ll get to dispense with that thought because this guitalele is equipped with two *metal locks* that will offer convenience when using [guitalele straps](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-ukulele-straps/) (No.1 is my favorite). But achieving stability while holding the guitalele means a lot to the player, right? Well, if you prefer to keep your guilele in a place or don’t want it to swing in the air (especially when you play standing), you will find this pack very much convenient because it comes with a strap. And those colorful picks will help you get rid of finger calluses. So next time you plan to gift one of your loved ones on their birthday, I’d suggest you consider this. But before you do that, make sure they’re passionate about music. If they love listening to music, they’re likely going to love it. ### 5. [Caramel – 30″ 6 String Acacia KOA Guitalele](https://amzn.to/3HaswcM) [![Caramel - 30-inch 6 String Acacia KOA Guitalele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Caramel-30-inch-6-String-Acacia-KOA-Guitalele.jpg "Caramel - 30-inch 6 String Acacia KOA Guitalele")](https://amzn.to/3HaswcM)What’s that wood that is too good to be used to serve food? What does serving food has to do with this guitalele? Acacia is known for its *antibacterial* properties, and guess what—this ukitar is made out of the same wood. So, if you’re looking for a guitalele that is highly resistant to fungus and designed to last longer, look no further—this guilele is made for you. The moment you lay your eyes at those beautiful grain patterns, your heart will belong to it. I’ve talked about the 18:1 tuning many times and also brought up how it’s beneficial in getting that precision. Dust is a nuisance and I can truly understand what it feels like. However, a cleaning cloth included in the add-ons will have your back. Plus, the gigbag will offer much-needed protection from heat, scratches, and will the guitalele safe from all bad weather conditions. Do you admire those nylon strings? Well, this one has the exact thing for you. Travelling has never been easier—thanks to its portable, lightweight, and sturdy design. I’d say that this one is a steal. So, if you’re on a tight budget, you should give this reasonably priced guitalele a try. And that 30-day money-back guarantee will offer you a sigh of relief. Drilling a hole in your guitalele is not an easy job; it requires professionalism, precision, and stability, and if done improperly, it could break your guilele into pieces. So do you have to drill a hole in this guitalele to use the strap? Well, that’s not necessary, courtesy of the metal lock. To make the strumming breeze for beginners, Kmise has also provided a truss rod that can help you get rid of that balance out the tension of strings. Offering value for money, it’s become the foremost pick of many beginner players on the market. ### 6. [Yamaha GL1 Mini 6-String Nylon Guitalele (Black)](https://amzn.to/3DBI74r) [![6. Yamaha GL1 Mini 6-String Nylon Guitalele (Black)](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/6.-Yamaha-GL1-Mini-6-String-Nylon-Guitalele-Black.jpg "6. Yamaha GL1 Mini 6-String Nylon Guitalele (Black)")](https://amzn.to/3DBI74r)Let me be honest with you. No other guitalele on this list could hold my attention for more than 3 seconds as this one did. As impressive and eye-catching as the case of this guitalele is, the guitalele, itself, is no less than a great-sounding guitar. I may not know about your taste i.e., whether you like to put the capo on the 4th or 5th fret, but I’m sure about the pricing of this one—you won’t find a cheaper guitar than this (only under $30). What’s surprising is that it’s a top-rated guilele and most users are satisfied with their purchase. But how? Well, let’s get to know why people are falling in love with this one. If you travel a lot and don’t want to miss out on those melodies or preludes that you love to create, this would be a hand-down guitalele as it can be toted around like a charm because there’s a gig bag in the package. I know there’s no sign of the bag in the description but you’ll get one, however, don’t just take my word for it—see what others are saying about the gigbag. Some even claim that the guitalele packs a set of pre-stretched strings—which is a good thing and helps you get rid of the whole ‘[uke won’t stay in tune](https://ukuleleadvice.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/)’ issue. While the color and aesthetics look fascinating, what also looks appealing to me is that it’s made for all types of people: kids and grown-ups. So, if your kiddo is dying to have a guilele for their practice or if they wish to take it to their *guitar* class, they can have it—there’s no need to invest in the bulky guitars. If you bought this for your 14-year-old daughter or son and they are having some trouble strumming it, I’d suggest you tell them to stay the course because it gets easier with time. Practicing is key here. Now you must be thinking that this guitalele doesn’t come with loads of accessories. Well, that’s true! However, think about this…this one comes from the [top brand (Yamaha)—a brand](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-brands/) that coined the term “*Guitalele*” or you can say that they introduced the first guilele in the market or else no one knew about these instruments before. Despite the accessories such as a digital tuner, you can use the tuner app on your smartphone and analyze your potential i.e. see where you’re going with it. Still can’t decide? See the features below and then make an intelligent decision. ### 7. [Ortega RGL5 EB-CE Guitalele for Beginners](https://amzn.to/3kG5VNU) [![Ortega RGL5 EB-CE – Guitalele](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Ortega-RGL5-EB-CE-–-Guitalele.jpg "Ortega RGL5 EB-CE – Guitalele")](https://amzn.to/3kG5VNU)It’s no surprise that cutaways in guitaleles bring the wow factor to the table. Don’t worry, it’s not a Florentine cutaway I’m talking about, it’s the *Venetian* cutaway—the one that doesn’t look like a bat nor does it make you fearful. If you have no idea what a Florentine cutaway looks like, it’s made of two pieces joined at the tip, making the tines look sharp. The Venetian, on the other hand, is round at the edges. And that tortoise-style ABS binding distinctively complements its elegance. Packed with exceptional mahogany in the neck, one-of-its-kind ebony in the body and back, and top-notch sapele in the headstock, this electric-acoustic guitalele offers you different vibes of nature rolled into one. And it’s not just the aesthetics, ebony is famous for delivering exceptional, smooth, and durable experience to the guitalele players. In fact, due to its unique qualities, it’s made in one of the top-class guitars. Since it’s equipped with high-quality ebony, if you live somewhere around a forest or jungle area, you won’t have to worry about termites because they will refuse to eat it. This guitalele offers a scale length of 435mm, with a body depth of 68mm, and a nut width of 47mm. There are 18 frets on this ukitar. The gold-plated diecast tuning pegs will offer you precise tuning so you don’t have to struggle while making your prelude. Being a ukitar, it’s tuned to A-D-G-C-E-A. If you move around a lot, this guilele will be a great companion. No matter if you’re buying this for your kid or you’d like to spend time with it yourself, you can rest assured—it’s designed for people of all ages. To offer you the much-needed serenity, Ortega has also integrated a *built-in tuner* so you don’t have to rely on some third-party app or clip-on tuners. What’s surprising is that it’s amplifiable i.e., being an electric guitalele, you can also connect it to an amplifier to amplify the sound however you like. If you’re someone who’s looking forward to buying a guitalele under $200, this guilele would be a perfect choice for you. ## FAQs: Guitalele Buying Guide for Beginners #### Q.1: What’s a Guitalele? Although I’ve already described it above, if due to some reasons you missed that, here you are: a guitalele is a hybrid [stringed instrument](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) that can either be played like a ukulele or a guitar. #### Q.2: How to play a Guitalele like a guitar? A guitalele does sound like a guitar as if it were capo-ed on the 5th fret. So, if you play your guitar with a capo on the 5th fret, you’ll find this instrument (i.e. guitalele) in a very similar category. #### Q.3: How many strings does a Guitalele have? There are 6 strings on a guitalele and it’s tuned to A-D-G-C-E-A. That’s also the reason why a guitalele can be played like a ukulele. In other words, since a [ukulele is tuned](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-wont-stay-in-tune/) to G-C-E-A, you only have to touch those 4 strings, ignoring the rest two: A and D. So, that’s the win-win situation. #### Q.4: What should I consider when getting one? Although many aspects go into making a well-versed decision for a perfect-fit guitalele, you must keep the following in mind while looking for a guilele: - Tonewood (Tone/Sound) - Strings (I’d suggest nylon for beginners) - Build Quality (Fretboard, headstock, body, etc.) - Playability (pay attention to the action the guilele requires) - Aesthetics (Florentine or Venetian) - Durability (look for tonewood that lasts longer) - Pricing (but cheap isn’t always best) - Others ## Time for a Triumph! There you have it—an easy and jargon-free guide on “Guitaleles for Beginners”. Opting for a perfect-fit guitalele isn’t as challenging as people believe, though you have to keep all basic things in mind while looking for the one. If you’re asking which one I’d choose (if I had to pick one), I’d go with [Yamaha GL1](https://amzn.to/3XR50Iy) because it comes from a big brand, offers the bang for bucks, looks aesthetics, and sounds excellent. Although it’s your personal preference, if these guitalele didn’t have you goggle-eyed, you may consider one of these [tenor](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-tenor-ukuleles/), [concert](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-concert-ukuleles/), or probably [soprano](https://ukuleleadvice.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) ukes. Hopefully, this thorough guide on the **best guitaleles** helped you—and you got everything you were looking for. If you still have any questions, feel free to reach out and we’d be happy to help. **The Best Guitalele made for Beginners?** If this is your first time buying a **guitalele** and you can’t think of one, you should keep all the things mentioned above so you get the best ukitar and don’t end up buying a piece of junk. if you still can’t decide, the editor’s choice will give you peace of mind. **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [Clarinet Brands to Avoid In 2023 (Stay Away!)](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-brands-to-avoid/) **Published:** December 12, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** The clarinet is a woodwind instrument that is mostly constructed out of African hardwood. It is cylindrical in shape, with a hollowed-out tube that has a bell-like flare at the bottom and one of the most sophisticated and delicate musical instruments to play. A clarinet is so sensitive that even the slightest ridge or scar on the wood can produce a dramatically off-key sound. This is not good for a clarinet. In fact, it is an incredibly sophisticated process to make a clarinet, so the companies that make it have to be extra careful to shave the wood in an exact manner. Unfortunately, some brands fail to do justice to the integrity of a clarinet and will be listed below. ## Table of Contents - [What Makes a Bad Clarinet?](#what-makes-a-bad-clarinet) - [Mouthpiece](#mouthpiece) - [Keys](#keys) - [Materials](#materials) - [Brands to Avoid](#brands-to-avoid) - [1. Online Retailers (Amazon/Ebay) ](#1nbspnbsp-online-retailers-amazonebaynbsp) - [2. Costco](#2nbspnbsp-costco) - [3. Walmart](#3nbspnbsp-walmart) - [4. Sears ](#4-searsnbspnbsp) - [Conclusion: Where to Buy Clarinets From?](#conclusion-where-to-buy-clarinets-from) ## **What Makes a Bad Clarinet?** The clarinet is made up of some very intricate parts. These parts include the mouthpiece, the barrel, upper tube, keys, lower tube, and the bell. Each of these parts has to be constructed according to exact measurements for the clarinet to sound good. However, if even one of the components deviates, the whole instrument will sound wrong. ### Mouthpiece For example, the mouthpiece always needs enough room for a certain amount of air to pass. Not more, not less. This means, if the mouthpiece is too hollowed out or too tightly suffocated, the sound it will make may sound too bassy or too squeaky. Thus, the mouthpiece has to be constructed of the exact measurement in proportion to the other parts. ### Keys Perhaps the most essential parts of the clarinet are the keys. These are little holes at the top of the tube that allow you to change tones and keys with your fingers, similar to flutes. These holes have to be carved out with careful attention. Each hole on the upper tube and the lower tube must be equidistant to the holes in the respective regions. Otherwise, the key will not match the rest of the orchestra. ### Materials Another factor that adds to the making of a bad clarinet is the use of raw material. Good sounding clarinets are always made up of high-quality materials. The body is made up of African blackwood/hardwood. The specific species of the tree doesn’t matter. The mouthpiece is usually made up of rubber, and the metalwork is done by using German Silver. This silver is an alloy consisting of nickel, zinc, and copper. Any other materials used will distort that sound and quality of the instrument. ## **Brands to Avoid** When looking to buy a clarinet, you should always avoid brands that do not use the materials mentioned above. For example, if a brand does not use African blackwood or German Silver, that should be reason enough for you to avoid it. So, let’s look at some brands that you should avoid purchasing your clarinets from. **If you’re a beginner find a good quality budget clarinet and play away and continue to learn.** ### **1. Online Retailers (Amazon/Ebay)** Brands that are usually sold over eBay or Amazon are definitely worth an in-depth look. There are a lot of cheap clarinets with a less than average quality body. They use nickel instead of German Silver for their keys and other metal components. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) A lot of online brands private label their products from China or somewhere else and just slap a logo on it. Make sure to read reviews and make sure the clarinet makes sense for you and your situation. ### **2. Costco** As a retailer, Costco also sells instruments that are low cost and, effectively, low quality. They sell their clarinets through the Jean Paul USA brand. This brand makes clarinets that are mostly under $200 and are made up of materials that are less than adequate. The keys are not even a pure nickel. They are nickel-plated. **But are great starter clarinets.** The body of this clarinet is Ebonite and not African hardwood. This is perhaps their biggest mistake because the clarinet does not sound too much like a real clarinet. Thus, retail sellers like Costco are also places that you should avoid when looking for a clarinet. ### **3. Walmart** Similar to Costco, Walmart is also a wholesale retailer. Thus, this company also sells clarinets and other instruments from brands that make them in bulk. These brands often ship their products from mainland China, which is notorious for making bad quality instruments. So, you should avoid buying your clarinet from brands that Walmart may promote. Most of the clarinets Walmart sells either use plastic or some other synthetic material that may or may not resemble wood. So, the sound that this instrument produces is not as rich and heavy as it is supposed to be, but somewhat airy and shallow as if blowing out of any old tube. Thus, such clarinets are not a good investment. ### **4. Sears** You should also avoid sears in a similar vein if you want to get yourself a high-quality clarinet. Sears may have some different brands that they carry compared to Walmart and Costco, but most of them are shipped from China. Thus, it is highly likely that they may not be of the best quality in terms of sound and raw material. So, just generally avoid cheaper wholesale retailers who sell musical instruments. ## **Conclusion: Where to Buy Clarinets From?** If you want to get yourself a good clarinet, you may have to spend some money on getting it from a local music store or from a well-reputed brand. Some of the good brand names are YAMAHA, Buffet, Leblanc, and Selmer. These brands never produce in bulk and are mostly custom designed. So, they are very high quality. The general guide for what clarinet brands to avoid is anything that looks, feels or sounds cheap. This would include the **[price](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/)**, the body, and the literal sound that the instrument makes. Anything that is sold at below $300 is considered cheap, and the assumption is that such a brand may not have used the right materials to make the clarinet. But that does not mean that they are not great for you and your situation. You can snag a $100 dollar beginner clarinet but probably not the best sound and quality. Additionally, suppose the sound is not heavy enough, or the body is not heavy in terms of **[weight](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-clarinet-weigh/)**. In that case, you can conclude that the instrument may be of low quality. And thus, you may want to avoid such a product. **Categories:** Clarinet Reviews --- ### [Donner Banjo Review](https://promusicvault.com/donner-banjo-review/) **Published:** April 27, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** If you want a banjo that can help you hone your playing skills, entertain you for hours, or combine both, then the Donner Banjo is what you are looking for. This banjo is perfect for both beginners and experts alike. With its high-quality construction and affordable price, the Donner Banjo is a great addition to any musician’s arsenal. ### [Donner 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Donner 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/413H3h7YjTL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Donner 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41W0tPdONXL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Donner 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lVAN9M72L._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Donner 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/413H3h7YjTL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1)[![Donner 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41W0tPdONXL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1)[![Donner 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lVAN9M72L._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) Our Score - Remo Drumhead – the drumhead of Donner banjo is from the professional drumhead supplier – Remo, contributing to a warm, full and clear tone. You can tap the head lightly to create different melodies while playing. - Quality Material – Mahogany neck, sides and back have beautiful wood grain, hard and not liable to warp or corrode, making the banjo durable. - 24 Bracket – Donner Banjo’s 24 high-quality Brackets stabilize the drumhead, resulting in a crisp sound. - High Gloss Finish – Donner banjo uses a fine bright paint for a shiny texture and a smooth touch, giving you a comfortable playing experience. - Complete Beginner Kit – Donner banjo comes with all accessories you need to get started: gig bag, tunner, strings, strap and picks. [Check Price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y1R5NWR?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) ## Table of Contents - [Main Takeaways](#main-takeaways) - [Pros and Cons](#pros-and-cons) - [Pros](#pros) - [Cons](#cons) - [Sound](#sound) - [Price Range/Value](#price-rangevalue) - [Style](#style) - [Quality](#quality) - [About the Brand](#about-the-brand) - [Bottom Line](#bottom-line) ## **Main Takeaways** - **Donner Banjo is great for beginners and experts in playing the banjo.** - **It is affordable, but the quality and construction are superb, a bang for your buck.** - **Many musicians have recommended the Donner Banjo to other music enthusiasts.** ## **Pros and Cons** One of the highlights of this Donner Banjo Review is the pros and cons of the product. We always want to ensure that our customers know what’s in store for them when they purchase one for themselves. These pros and cons ultimately help people decide if Donner Banjo is the right one for their wants and needs. ### **Pros** One of the pros is that Donner Banjo is perfect for beginners and experts. This is a great [banjo for those just starting to learn](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) how to play. The Donner Banjo is also perfect for those playing the banjo for years. This banjo is perfect for anyone in between those two extremes as well. Another pro is that Donner Banjo is very affordable. This banjo is a great value for the price. It is a quality banjo that will last for many years to come. A third pro is that Donner Banjo is very high quality. The construction and materials used to make this banjo are of the highest quality. This banjo will last for many years to come with proper care. Lastly, Donner Banjo is recommended by many musicians. Many people have reviewed this banjo, and it has been given high marks by most. ### **Cons** There are not many cons to this Donner Banjo Review, but there are a few worth mentioning. One con is that Donner Banjo is not the best [banjo for those just starting to learn](https://promusicvault.com/how-hard-is-it-to-learn-the-banjo/) how to play. If you are a [banjo beginner,](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/) you may want to consider another banjo. The price might also set others off, even though we think the price is affordable enough for a high-quality banjo made from high-quality materials. ## **Sound** The Donner Banjo sounds great. This banjo has a rich, full sound that is perfect for any playing style. The Donner Banjo will fill any room with its beautiful sound. The Donner Banjo is known for its great sound, with its rich tones compliment any playing style there is today. Some people say it is louder than a ukelele, which is a good thing since music is about hearing great sounds coming out from the instruments. Let us elaborate on this one. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Its 24 brackets play a major role in the crisp sounds that the Donner Banjo produces. Thanks to its Reno drumhead, the tones coming out from the banjo are nothing but crisp and rich, making each playing experience bliss regardless of the player’s expertise level. In addition, many people love how the “plunking” sound gives everyone that Southern music feels, which is what a banjo is all about. ## **Price Range/Value** The Donner [banjo is not too expensive,](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/) but it is not dirt cheap, either. Priced at $129.99, the Donner Banjo is a great banjo for those who want to get their hands on a quality instrument without breaking the bank. The Donner Banjo is also a great banjo for those looking for an upgrade from their beginner banjo. The price range is just right for those who want to move to a higher-quality banjo without spending a fortune. We think that the Donner Banjo is a **[great value for the price](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-the-money/)**. ## **Style** The Donner Banjo has a classic look that will never go out of style. The Donner Banjo does not compromise in terms of style. It looks like an [expensive banjo](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-banjos-so-expensive/) even though it is very affordable. The Donner Banjo has a beautiful mahogany neck and resonator with a classic look. The hardware is also top-notch, with gold-plated tuners that add a touch of class to the banjo. The Donner Banjo also comes with a hardshell case perfect for storing and transporting the banjo. The case is also stylish, with a black leather exterior that will turn heads. With proper care and handling, your Donner banjo will last long. ## **Quality** The Donner banjo does not scrimp on its quality, as it is made from high-quality materials that will last for many years. The mahogany neck and resonator give the Donner Banjo a rich, full sound that is perfect for any playing style. The Donner Banjo is also available in a hardshell case, ideal for keeping and transporting the banjo. Even though some might think it looks cheap because of the price, the makers of the Donner banjo have assured its users that it is made from high-quality materials. ## **About the Brand** Donner has been in the industry for quite a long time, and they have been making quality instruments for many years. Donner is a trusted brand that is known for its quality products. The Donner Banjo is just one of the many quality instruments Donner offers. Donner also makes various other musical instruments, such as guitars, ukuleles, and more. Recently, they had a rebranding, changing their logos and product packaging. Donner is a brand that you can trust, and its products are sure to give you many years of enjoyment. The Donner company is based in the United States. They have a wide network of dealers and distributors all over the world. ## **Bottom Line** The Donner banjo is perfect for banjo players of all ages and expertise levels. Both **[beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/)** and experts can find a lot to love about the Donner Banjo. The Donner Banjo is a great value for the price, as it is made from high-quality materials and even comes with a hardshell travel case. The Donner Banjo also has a classic look that will never go out of style. Suppose you are looking for a quality banjo that is affordable and stylish. In that case, the Donner Banjo is the perfect banjo for you. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [How Much Do Clarinets Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-do-clarinets-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** When you are thinking about learning to play a musical instrument, the clarinet is probably one of the first instruments that come to mind. It is a popular choice for many beginners because it is relatively easy to learn how to play and it doesn’t take up a lot of space. But before you jump in and buy your first clarinet, it’s important to know how much they cost. **Clarinets range from $500 – $5,000 depending on skill level, brand, and overall quality.** In this blog post, we will take a look at the different price points for clarinets and what you can expect to pay for each one. We will also discuss some of the factors that can affect the cost of a clarinet. So if you are curious about how much clarinets cost, read on! ## Table of Contents - [Average Price Of a Clarinet](#average-price-of-a-clarinet) - [How much does a Yamaha clarinet cost?](#how-much-does-a-yamaha-clarinet-cost) - [Renting a Clarinet](#renting-a-clarinet) - [Buying a Used Clarinet](#buying-a-used-clarinet) - [Why are clarinets so expensive?](#why-are-clarinets-so-expensive) ## Average Price Of a Clarinet When you are wondering about getting a clarinet, it is certainly realistic and natural for you to consider how much do clarinets cost. **Clarinets that are designed for those who are noted as being beginner players of clarinet music tend to possess a price point that starts at $500 – $1,000.** **Clarinets that are classified as being designed for players with intermediate-level skills when it comes to playing clarinet music are considered to commence at a price point of $1,000 -$3,000.** **Clarinets that are crafted for professionals can start at a price range of $2,000 – $5,000+.** ## How much does a Yamaha clarinet cost? Yamaha clarinets costs around $1,000 – $2,000+. This is because Yamaha is recognized for producing top-quality models of professional clarinets. Yamaha clarinets are considered as producing a tone that is consistent during all phases of playing various pieces of clarinet music, which does indeed contribute to the price factor of clarinets that are made by Yamaha being somewhat expensive. Moreover, many of the bodies of the clarinets that are made by Yamaha tend to be constructed of grenadilla wood, which contributes to spiking the price point of these clarinets. ## Renting a Clarinet If you have been considering renting a clarinet, because you would like to see if you like [playing the clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) before you invest a lot of money in purchasing your clarinet, then the good news is that the rental fees on a monthly basis for a clarinet tend to be pretty reasonable. **Renting a clarinet will cost around $20 – $50 per month.** So, it is evident that renting a clarinet is pretty affordable. The price range will depend on whether the type of [clarinet is for beginner](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) players or if the clarinet happens to be a more advanced model. Also, it is realized that there are some other elements that can contribute to making an impact in terms of the cost of the rental fee for the clarinet on a monthly basis. The type of material impacts the price, as most clarinets that are designed for students are crafted of resin for the body and are noted as possessing keys that are made of nickel. But then bodies of clarinets that are regarded as being more advanced instruments tend to be crafted of grenadilla wood, which is a prestigious wood black wood that hails from Africa. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The keys of the more advanced clarinets tend to be fabricated with the usage of an alloy of combined silver and nickel and then they are noted as being plated with the usage of either silver or nickel. ## Buying a Used Clarinet The cost of a used clarinet will vary. This is based on the condition of the clarinet. The type of clarinet, such as whether the clarinet is made of resin or plastic for beginner players and wood for more advanced models of the instrument, will indeed also impact the price of used clarinets. In addition, the **[brand of the clarinet](https://promusicvault.com/clarinet-brands-to-avoid/)** will be an important factor that will contribute to the price of a used clarinet. **Therefore, when considering the price of used clarinets, it is realized that [beginner clarinets](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) can start at around 0 – 0.** Then more advanced clarinets can start at four hundred and thirty dollars and go for as high of a price as six hundred and twenty-five dollars. When you do not have money for the full price of a new clarinet, you can have the option to buy a used one. Likely if you do your research with careful diligence, you will be able to find a good quality clarinet that functions relatively well to produce the kind of quality clarinet music that you enjoy. ## Why are clarinets so expensive? You may wonder why clarinets are so costly. The reality is that student clarinets will still cost quite a bit, but they are indeed cheaper than the more advanced models of clarinets. This is due to the fact that student clarinets are usually made of resin. But the more advanced and pro-level clarinets tend to be crafted of fine quality wood. The particular type of wood that is frequently used in regard to the contribution of these types of models of clarinets tends to be grenadilla wood. This wood is an exotic and expensive type of black wood that comes from the continent of Africa. It is noted that when exotic material is used in the construction of instruments, like this type of wood is used in the creation of clarinets, these more advanced clarinets will be more expensive than student-level clarinets. Then it is noted that the condition of the clarinet will certainly impact the price. If you are buying a new instrument, then the price will certainly be far more costly than a used clarinet. However, it is to be realized that used clarinets also do cost a fair bit of money. They can even go for as much as six hundred and twenty-five dollars if you are seeking a top-quality one that is pretty much at the pro level. Then new ones can go for over two thousand dollars and upwards. The keys are also crafted of nickel and silver. Thus, these expensive metals also drive up the price point for clarinets, whether they are a beginner or more advanced models and whether they are used or new. Moreover, the clarity of the tone and the durability of the instruments further contribute to the price of the instrument. Then, undeniably, the brand that manufactures the instrument also does impact the price, as some brands are notorious for providing quality instruments that are notably superior to many other ones on the market. **Categories:** Clarinet --- ### [Why Are Bagpipes Played At Funerals?](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bagpipes-played-at-funerals/) **Published:** October 15, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Have you been wondering why are bagpipes played at funerals? It cannot be denied that music is a big part of a funeral service. For many hundreds of years, the bagpipes have been used for the sake of commemorating the loss of family members during the time of a funeral service. **Bagpipes are noted as being a highly preferred instrument to play at funerals due to the fact that they sound mournful and can seem to touch the most intricate part of the emotions in a powerful manner.** It is as if the bagpipes are able to express the deep mourning of the soul–a type of mourning that cannot be expressed merely with human words. ## Table of Contents - [What Is The Song Played On Bagpipes At Funerals?](#what-is-the-song-played-on-bagpipes-at-funerals) - [Why Are Bagpipes Played On Remembrance Day?](#why-are-bagpipes-played-on-remembrance-day) - [Can Anyone Have Bagpipes Played At Their Funeral?](#can-anyone-have-bagpipes-played-at-their-funeral) ## What Is The Song Played On Bagpipes At Funerals? When consideration is given to the song that is played on bagpipes at funerals, there is a high prevalence of choosing to play the song by the title of ***Going Home**.* This song is used for funerals that tend to be religious in essence. This is based on the Christian principle that many believe that they are going away to return to God their Maker in His wonderful Kingdom of Heaven once they die. The idea of this theme is presented in a rendition of Dvorak’s Symphony Number 9. This song tends to provide a source of comfort in that though the loved one has passed from this present life, there is the theme that all believers will be reunited once again in Heaven. There is the acknowledgment that since the work of the loved one on earth has now been finalized, the person can finally rest. The song reminds us of these principles. Then it is noted that another popular song that is played on the bagpipes at funerals tends to be *Flowers of the Forest.* This is regarded as being a folk song that is of Scottish heritage that was created around the time of 1615. This song was developed as a memorial to the defeat that was experienced by the Scottish Army that took place in the year of 1513 at the Battle of Flodden. This song is normally presented only during solemn times, such at funerals. As a result, it is the tradition of many bagpipe players to play this song only during the time of a funeral. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Why Are Bagpipes Played On Remembrance Day? There is the **[playing of bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-to-learn-the-bagpipes/)** on Remembrance Day due to the bagpipes having such a strong connection to the military. The bagpipes had been used during military service to give various commands to soldiers and to honor the death of military soldiers. The bagpipes are reminiscent of solemn soldiers with the portrayal of poppies on their lapels to honor others who have gone before who died in the battle for freedom. The soldiers have made many sacrifices. Many have passed away and some are still present among us. Remembers Day primarily commemorates the Second World War achievements of freedom at a bloody cost. But Remembrance Day also commemorates the efforts of those who have also fought in other wars. It is recognized that the bagpipes are part of the military legacy. This is because of the fact that bagpipes are connected to strong ties of freedom. Fascism could have overtaken the world. But brave soldiers gave their lives in battle to protect the freedom of many nations of the world. Because of their sacrifices, many of us enjoy freedom today and their sacrifices have impacted many others to follow in their steps to protect the freedom of the nations of the world. ## Can Anyone Have Bagpipes Played At Their Funeral? It has been a long standing tradition for bagpipes to be the main instrument that was used at funerals that commemorated the deaths of police officers as well as firefighters. Bagpipes may not seem to be the most preferred instrument in many normal contexts outside of a funeral setting. However, it cannot be denied that bagpipes do seem highly appropriate for the funeral scene as a result of seeming so mournful and thus being in direct associations with the feelings of the people who have lost a loved one. Therefore, the reality is that if you like bagpipe music for funerals, you are able to use bagpipe music at a funeral since there are no rules that say that bagpipe music cannot be used by certain people. For information about **[bagpipes](https://promusicvault.com/best-bagpipes-for-beginners/)**. **Categories:** Bagpipes --- ### [8 Best Ukulele Pickups 2023](https://promusicvault.com/best-ukulele-pickups/) **Published:** December 14, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Some people may find it difficult to decide which ukulele pickup is ideal for them. Transducers are available in a variety of styles, including under-saddle transducer, soundboard transducer, and microphone. These pickups are supplied by various companies, making comparisons difficult. However, each comes with its own set of benefits We’d like to introduce you to the top 8 finest ukulele pickups because we don’t want you to waste any of your time. Furthermore, we’ll provide you with some buying advice so that you can learn more. ## Table of Contents - [Different types of Ukulele Pickups for 2023](#different-types-of-ukulele-pickups-for-2023) - [Piezo Pickups](#piezo-pickups) - [Soundboard Transducers](#soundboard-transducers) - [Microphone Pickups](#microphone-pickups) - [Humbucker Pickups](#humbucker-pickups) - [1. L.R. Baggs Venue DI Acoustic Guitar Preamp And DI](#1nbspnbsplr-baggs-venue-di-acoustic-guitar-preamp-and-di) - [2. Acoustic Guitar Pickup With Flexible Micro-Gooseneck By Myers Pickups](#2-acoustic-guitar-pickup-with-flexible-microgooseneck-by-myers-pickups) - [3. IK Multimedia IRig Acoustic Stage Digital Microphone System](#3nbspik-multimedia-irig-acoustic-stage-digital-microphone-system) - [4. Kremona KNA UK-1 Piezo Pickup](#4-kremona-kna-uk1-piezo-pickup) - [5. KNA AP-1 Portable Piezo Pickup](#5-kna-ap1-portable-piezo-pickup) - [6. Adeline Piezo Transducer Pickup](#6-adeline-piezo-transducer-pickup) - [7. SUNYIN Acoustic Guitar Pickup](#7-sunyin-acoustic-guitar-pickup) - [8. Fishman AG Undersaddle Ukulele Pickup](#8-fishman-ag-undersaddle-ukulele-pickup) - [Summing Up!](#summing-up) ## Different types of Ukulele Pickups for 2023 Here are the different types of ukulele pickups which you could chose from. ### Piezo Pickups Piezo Pickups are pickups that use a ribbon-like transducer to pick up the vibrations your ukulele generates as you play. The vibrations are transformed into a signal by piezo crystals inside the pickup, which are then transmitted through the preamp and amplifier to produce amplified music from your ukulele. ### Soundboard Transducers Simply stated, soundboard transducers are technically piezo pickups that are meant to be placed on the underside of the soundboard. They’re great for ukuleles with fixed bridge saddles because they’re the only pickup option for this sort of ukulele. They pick up a lot of feedback and other noises. ### Microphone Pickups Microphone pickups, like the name implies, are small microphones that go directly into the ukulele and connect to the amplifier. Microphonic pickups are low-cost and easy to use, but they have a significant disadvantage: They’re prone to feedback, which can ruin your performance. Of course, you must make your own decisions. ### Humbucker Pickups Humbucker pickups are well-known among guitarists. This sort of pickup only picks up the ukulele’s strings’ vibrations, so a lot of the warmth and richness from tonewood is lost in translation. Nonetheless, for some styles of playing, this may be an excellent option; it’s a popular choice among jazz players. ## 1. [L.R. Baggs Venue DI Acoustic Guitar Preamp And DI](https://amzn.to/3HrHAEh) [![L.R. Baggs Venue DI Acoustic Guitar Preamp And DI](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/81qhX20u9AL._AC_SL1500_.jpg "L.R. Baggs Venue DI Acoustic Guitar Preamp And DI")](https://amzn.to/3HrHAEh)This may be the finest ukulele pickup you’ve ever seen. I was amazed by how it expanded the EQ section and a built-in tuner. It’s powered by a 3V watch battery, which is tiny, lightweight, and frequently positioned in the soundhole. The L.R Baggs pickup makes use of a low- mass Element transducer, the latest advancement in ukulele pickup design. This pickup is also very sensitive to the slightest string vibration, resulting in a fuller, more natural sound. The pickup is installed by slipping it between the strings and the bridge, making sure that the contact points are lined up with the strings. There’s no need to touch any of the wood. The endpin jack has a special spring-loaded internal mechanism, so when you turn the volume knob down its not in your way. It also uses a rubber gasket to provide a good tight fit against different thickness ukulele bodies. The volume control knob may be placed in the soundhole. The pickup provides clear and undistorted sound. If you’re searching for a high-quality ukulele pickup that also comes with all of the accessories, this is the one for you. However, when compared to other pickups, it is rather pricey. ## 2. [Acoustic Guitar Pickup With Flexible Micro-Gooseneck By Myers Pickups](https://amzn.to/3JiE54m) [![Acoustic Guitar Pickup With Flexible Micro-Gooseneck By Myers Pickups](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/91cbibvCYL._AC_SL1500_.jpg "Acoustic Guitar Pickup With Flexible Micro-Gooseneck By Myers Pickups")](https://amzn.to/3JiE54m)The ability of this micro-gooseneck to be mounted virtually anywhere on your ukulele makes me happy. It does, however, leave no marks or fingerprints on the surface. This micro-gooseneck’s design is beautiful and flexible. It may be positioned next to the soundhole or near the neck,. The combination includes an internally powered, active preamp that will provide you with the most intricate sound ever. A battery was also installed by the manufacturer and is included in the package. Each pickup was thoroughly tested before going on sale, which impressed me. 3 mounting choices are included in the pickup to aid with setup. It produces excellent sound, and the low end is properly added. Despite its high price compared to other pickups, with all of the gadgets included and the sound it creates, I believe it is well worth the cost. ## 3. [IK Multimedia IRig Acoustic Stage Digital Microphone System](https://amzn.to/3XYTT07) [![IK Multimedia iRig Acoustic Stage Digital Microphone System for Acoustic Guitars and Instruments](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/41XjP3yUNQL._AC_.jpg "IK Multimedia iRig Acoustic Stage Digital Microphone System for Acoustic Guitars and Instruments")](https://amzn.to/3XYTT07)It’s not quite a pickup, as the name implies. It’s a device designed specifically for touring musicians. A small microphone attached in the soundhole is used instead. This is an active pickup that produces louder and clearer sound. Instead of using it, it uses a tiny microphone that sticks into the soundhole. It works well with other acoustic instruments. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The sound is rich, warm, bright and versatile thanks to the three settings: natural, warm, bright and with a lot of flexibility. Surprisingly, you may also connect the existing pickup to hear results. The microphone and preamp box are constructed of plastic, so they are light and not as big as metal ones. It also comes with a cover. ## 4. [Kremona KNA UK-1 Piezo Pickup](https://amzn.to/405LTML) [![Kremona KNA UK-1 Piezo Pickup](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/81Ii3eqtNpL._AC_SL1500_.jpg "Kremona KNA UK-1 Piezo Pickup")](https://amzn.to/405LTML)Many people will be surprised by the innovative and elegant design of this Kremona’s pickup. It’s tiny, lightweight, and goes great with the ukulele. The [soprano ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/best-soprano-ukuleles/) is particularly tiny as an additional device, so it suits this feature best. It is simple to put together. However, you must put the ukelele on a table or make sure to have a flat surface for the next step. The installation process is simple, as you simply attach the pickup to the back of your ukulele using adhesive tape and put it in place. In addition, it requires no drilling, soldering, or special wiring – just two screws. It is a good quality ceramic pickup that produces a bright and natural sound comparable to that of any higher-end pickups. The unique tie bar placement has made a significant impact on this. However, keep in mind that it can not be used with ukuleles without tie bars. ## 5. [KNA AP-1 Portable Piezo Pickup](https://amzn.to/3kI9F1i) [![KNA AP-1 Portable Piezo Pickup](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/81ATnrey2kL._AC_SL1500_.jpg "KNA AP-1 Portable Piezo Pickup")](https://amzn.to/3kI9F1i)This is the nicest “low-cost” ukulele pickup we’ve seen in a while, and it sounds good! This portable piezo pickup can be simply attached to your ukulele using the dot and adhesive putty that comes with it. Simply plug it in and begin strumming. If you like, you may leave the pickup affixed to your ukulele but remove the cable after the fun has ended; however, keep in mind that this might change the look of your ukulele’s finish. ## 6. [Adeline Piezo Transducer Pickup](https://amzn.to/3XTZ6qi) [![Adeline Piezo Transducer Pickup](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/613f3NEY6TL._AC_SL1000_.jpg "Adeline Piezo Transducer Pickup")](https://amzn.to/3XTZ6qi)Adeline Piezo’s pickup is elegant. I’m confident that the functionality will delight you as well. This, in my opinion, is the finest ukulele pickup available for this price range. The volume knob is attached to the pickup. A TS female jack is included in the robust vintage wooden case. It’s a piezo pickup that’s resistant to any external interference, according to the seller. It delivers a clear, sharp sound with good replication. It has volume control, making it ideal for live performances. Many people desire this because it includes many instruments such as Violin, Cello. ## 7. [SUNYIN Acoustic Guitar Pickup](https://amzn.to/3HsjwBh) [![SUNYIN Acoustic Guitar Pickup](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/61TlPMWbwEL._AC_SL1000_.jpg "SUNYIN Acoustic Guitar Pickup")](https://amzn.to/3HsjwBh)This is one of the most popular ukulele pickups on Amazon since it is reasonably priced. It’s ideal for individuals who are new to plugging in a ukulele. The pickup comes with a soundboard and additional sticky putty, so you won’t have to worry about any residue or marks being left behind. There’s also a volume knob. The sound, however, is generally quite faint. It does offer some control over the sound, though. It’s simple to put together and simply requires self-adhesive backing that no marks will be left on your ukulele. ## 8. [Fishman AG Undersaddle Ukulele Pickup](https://amzn.to/3DaQrrC) [![Fishman AG Undersaddle Ukulele Pickup](https://promusicvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/81Xlc-0Uz0L._AC_SL1500_.jpg "Fishman AG Undersaddle Ukulele Pickup")](https://amzn.to/3DaQrrC)Are you looking for a passive ukulele pickup? If that’s the case, the Fishman AG is one of the greatest we’ve found. An endpin is included for total installation, but there is no onboard preamp – which isn’t absolutely necessary, but it’s a good idea unless you’re using a tiny amp like the Roland Micro Cube with an audio link jack. In that case, there’s a volume control knob. The Fishman AG is made with a lightweight and durable preamp. It is full-sized and uses a piezo transducer to replicate your ukulele sound as accurately as possible. This pickup will work well with any acoustic instrument, so keep this in mind if you’re looking for a pickup for another acoustic instrument down the line. It does have a battery, so you’ll need to remember to change it every once in a while. The Fishman AG is one of the best passive pickups on the market. If you’re looking for an undersaddle pickup, this is your best bet! ## Summing Up! There you have it! 8 of the best pickups available to buy online. If you’re having trouble choosing which one is right for you, we recommend starting with the [Fishman AG ](https://amzn.to/3DaQrrC)– it’s a great passive undersaddle pickup that won’t break your budget and works well with any acoustic instrument. [Kremona Kna](https://amzn.to/405LTML) Ukulele Preamp is also a great option if you’re looking for an onboard preamp. We hope this article has helped you in your search for the perfect ukulele pickup! Now that you have a good idea of what’s available on the market, it’s time to make a decision. Which one of these pickups is right for you? The [L.R Baggs](https://amzn.to/3HrHAEh) Ukulele Preamp are also great options if you’re looking for an onboard preamp. We hope this article has helped you in your search for the perfect ukulele pickup! **Categories:** Ukulele Reviews --- ### [How Much Does A Trombone Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trombone-cost/) **Published:** January 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Now that you are interested to learn trombone, you need to know first how much does a trombone cost. This brass instrument has a variety of brands for both intermediate and beginner students. Trombones are popular in jazz music. It is a fun instrument you get to play in a band. ## Table of Contents - [How Much Is The Average Trombone?](#how-much-is-the-average-trombone) - [How Much Does A Yamaha Trombone Cost?](#how-much-does-a-yamaha-trombone-cost) - [How Much Does A Trigger Trombone Cost?](#how-much-does-a-trigger-trombone-cost) - [How Much Does A Used Trombone Cost?](#how-much-does-a-used-trombone-cost) - [Why Are Trombones So Expensive?](#why-are-trombones-so-expensive) - [Conclusion](#conclusion) ## **How Much Is The Average Trombone?** The costs of trombones vary from brand to brand and specific models. **You can find beginner trombones in a price range between $400 and $1500.** **Step-up or intermediate trombones may cost you from $1400 to $2800. Whereas, the professional entry-level trombones start from $2800 and goes up.** The materials and features used contribute to the pricing as well. While .500 bore size seems to work fine with a beginner musician, advanced and intermediate trombones have a bigger bore size, a big shank mouthpiece, a different bell size, and an f-trigger. So, the price of trombones begins from a few hundred dollars and continues to a few thousand dollars. However, it depends on whether the [brass instrument](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) is a professional, intermediate, or a beginner grade, the brand, and the age. Other important factors that add to the price include the bore size of the instrument, materials used in the making, manufacturer or brand, and the level of craftsmanship. You may find some trombones with extras and accessory kits that make the price a bit higher. ## **How Much Does A Yamaha Trombone Cost?** There is no question that Yamaha has become one of the largest manufacturers of different [types of musical instruments](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/) around the world. As such, it makes lots of musical instruments and trombones. These instruments are made available in a variety of price points and a range of styles. Yamaha was established in the year 1887 and counted as one of the respected brands when it comes to good music playing instruments. There are different types of trombones made by the Company. And, they are intended for beginner, intermediate and advanced players. So, you get to see a different price range on all the trombones produced by Yamaha. The Company has tons of designs when it is about trombones. On average, you can find Yamaha trombones in a price range from around $700 to $6500, and even up for a few specialized instruments. One of the best advantages of the Yamaha trombones is that they are durable. These musical instruments are tested to make sure that quality doesn’t get compromised before being shipped to the people. ## **How Much Does A Trigger Trombone Cost?** A trigger is a kind of lever used in certain [brass instruments](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) to provide special functionality. You can operate the trigger with your thumb, index finger, or little finger based on the instrument used. A trigger is commonly found on trombones, tubas, trumpets, and horns. Before finding the cost of a trigger trombone, it is important to learn a bit about the triggers on the musical instrument. A trombone falls in the B-flat key category. The tenor and bass trombones have a trigger so that the instrument could be played in the F-key. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The normal usage of the trigger changes the notes and positions slightly. When you are looking to buy a trigger trombone, it is crucial to know beforehand what you want. There are different attributes of the f-attachment on the instrument. This may include a tenor trombone that comes with an f-attachment, a mechanical or string linkage, and a traditional or open wrap. If you are looking to buy a trigger trombone, it could have a price range between $2000 and $3500. A trigger trombone costs a bit more than the regular ones. ## **How Much Does A Used Trombone Cost?** In most cases, buying a used trombone could be a fine option if you are beginning your journey in the area of music. However, make sure you replace the mouthpiece before using the musical instrument. Also, you have to take care of a few important things before heading on to the purchase. Watch out for any kind of major repairs needed in the used trombone. If you need many repairs, it’s better to buy a beginner trombone. Any kind of expensive repairs is not worthy of the price you have to pay to buy the used one. There are many online sites where you can buy a refurbished trombone. But move ahead with caution and don’t forget to evaluate the repairing cost it may need after the purchase. Also, you can buy a used trombone from a local music store, if they are willing to sell. In general, you can find a used trombone with a price tag starting from $650. You could find other refurbished models above the said price. Keep in your mind that while buying ensure that it has the key features included for your specific needs. ## **Why Are Trombones So Expensive?** There are lots of factors that make a trombone an expensive piece of musical instrument. There are tons of manufacturers producing a variety of models. The trombone is durable and easy to handle musical instruments that emit the best-quality sound necessary for a great musical experience. However, it is often seen that trombones are expensive not because of the sound they produce, but for the materials used to build it. Therefore, how much you are paying for the instrument plays an important role. You can go for the expensive one, but it may not deliver what you have anticipated. Always lookout for the key features in the instrument. These musical instruments are durable, and you can use it outdoors as well. If you take good care of them, like proper cleaning and sensible care, it could last up to a few years of regular use. That way, you can get the most out of your investment in this expensive musical instrument. ## **Conclusion** Keep in your mind that the most expensive instruments have a better sound quality and ease of use. However, affordable trombones are perfect if you want to learn the basics of music. That way, you can develop your skills. So, trombone players need to keep affordability and quality in mind when opting for a [brass instrument](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/). Also Read: **[How Much Does a Trombone Weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-trombone-weigh/)** **Categories:** Trombone --- ### [Bassoon vs. Oboe | (What's The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/bassoon-vs-oboe/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** The bassoon and oboe are both members of the woodwind family of instruments. However, the bassoon is considerably larger than the oboe, some would say that it is a touch more difficult to play the bassoon properly in comparison to the oboe too. On this page, we are going to pit bassoon vs oboe. That way you will be able to see the differences and similarities that these two instruments have. ## Table of Contents - [Both Are Woodwind Instruments](#both-are-woodwind-instruments) - [The Reed](#the-reed) - [Size and Shape](#size-and-shape) - [The Sound](#the-sound) - [The Price](#the-price) - [Is Oboe or Bassoon Easier to Play?](#is-oboe-or-bassoon-easier-to-play) - [Should a Beginner Learn a Bassoon or Oboe First?](#should-a-beginner-learn-a-bassoon-or-oboe-first) ## **Both Are Woodwind Instruments** Let’s start with a nice and simple similarity. Both the bassoon and oboe are [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/). No. This does not mean that they are made of wood. Without getting too much into the technicalities of instrument classifications, the best way you can look at [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) is that in order to make them work they need to have a reed (a small piece of wood at the mouthpiece). It is the vibration of the reed that will resonate sound throughout the instrument. There is an exception to this rule in terms of flutes, but we don’t talk about that here since we want to focus on both the bassoon and oboe. Basically, both of these instruments use the vibrations of a reed when you blow into the mouthpiece. This is different to a trumpet (a brass instrument), for instance. With a trumpet, you would have to modulate the vibration of your lips. ## **The Reed** Let’s stick with the reed for a second, because there is a huge difference between these two instruments in terms of where that reed is placed. With an oboe, the reed is going to be placed into the instrument’s mouthpiece. With a bassoon, there will be a small attachment known as a local. This is essentially a thin metal tube that connects to the bassoon. That is where the reed will be placed. In practice, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. We are merely pointing out the different ways that you will be blowing air into the instrument. ## **Size and Shape** This is where we start to get into the differences between the two. Both the oboe and the bassoon look completely different on the look front. The bassoon is long. Over 4-feet long, in fact. There is a U-shape bend at the bottom of the instrument. **[Read More](https://promusicvault.com/how-long-is-a-bassoon/)**. You blow in one end through the mouthpiece, the air will travel down one side of the bassoon, hit the u-shape bend, and come out through the soundhole on the opposite side (this will be a bit higher than the mouthpiece). While you could probably hold one of these standing up, it probably isn’t going to be recommended for long periods of time, particularly if you are new to the instrument. The oboe is much shorter. In fact, it is just 26-inches long. It is a straight instrument. You can play this standing up. **[Read more about how much a bassoon weighs here](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-bassoon-weigh/)**. ## **The Sound** More differences for you. **Bassoon** The bassoon is known for having the largest range out of all of the [woodwind instruments](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/). It can cover over 3 octaves. It is available in bass clef or tenor clef (you want bass clef if you are new to the instrument. We suppose that the best way to describe the bassoon’s sound is having a ‘darker’ sound. Not like a base, but a very mellow feeling. You get the feeling that the bassoon would fit best in the background as opposed to being a center stage instrument. Although, it is going to do a pretty good job providing that background sound and will probably be the most prominent instrument in the mix. Of course, in the right hands, the bassoon can also make a fantastic focal instrument too. **Oboe** The oboe sounds completely different. The range is a little bit lower than that of the bassoon, but not by much. The sound is much higher in pitch. Some people have described the sound as similar to singing. This would almost certainly be one of the focal instruments in a piece. You wouldn’t be able to avoid that. The oboe has a sound that is going to stand out against any other instrument. While the bassoon could work well for solo pieces, we really do feel that the oboe would work even better. So, if you want an instrument that you can really play for fun and get really expressive with the music that you play without having a backing band, then this may actually be the route to go down. ## **The Price** Bassoons are far more **[expensive](https://promusicvault.com/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/)** than oboes. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) If you are buying a halfway decent oboe for a beginner, then expect to be paying around $2,500. If you are buying the same sort of quality for a bassoon, then you will be spending around $4,500. **[Read More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/)**. Both of these instruments can be rented fairly easily. If you are having music lessons, then we have no doubt that there will be some way that your instructor can you point in the direction of places you can rent the instruments. Some may even offer the service themselves. ## **Is Oboe or Bassoon Easier to Play?** This is a tricky question to answer. It seems everybody has their own opinion about which instrument is going to be easier to play. A lot of this will probably be rooted in the fact that they learned one instrument first, or often do not understand the other. We think the best way to look at it is as such: - The oboe is easier to learn fingering patterns - It is easier to make a sound with the bassoon In the early days, you really will find it easier to get a sound to come out of the bassoon. It probably won’t be a very good sound, but it is certainly going to sound musical. With the oboe, you really need to have a lot more control over your breathing in order to make something fairly decent sounding. That being said, it would only take a day or so of practice to be able to make a decent sound with the oboe. There isn’t much in it. It isn’t like you will be spending weeks and weeks on end trying to learn how to control your breathing for that first note. In terms of fingering patterns, then the oboe is a clear winner on the ‘ease of learning’ level. Some people have compared learning the oboe fingering patterns as being similar to learning the flute. Yes. It is going to be a bit more difficult than learning the flute, but learning how to finger the oboe properly should be easier to learn than with the bassoon. The thing with the bassoon is that it is meant to cover three octaves. Once you start getting up into that third octave, learning the correct fingering becomes difficult. We have seen comments from people that have been learning the bassoon for years that still find the correct fingering for the third octave difficult. While simple fingering patterns should be a bit easier to decipher, they are still going to be quite tricky on the bassoon. Now, both of these instruments are known for being some of the most complicated woodwind instruments to learn. You are not going to be having an easy ride with either of them, and each will take years and years of practice to master. However, if we had to say one instrument was easier to learn than the other, then we would go with the oboe. Once you have the breathing down, it is going to be an easier ride for you in comparison to picking up a bassoon. ## **Should a Beginner Learn a Bassoon or Oboe First?** As we said, the bassoon and the oboe are going to be immensely difficult instruments to learn. You can’t really learn one and then learn the other right after. Not if you want to actually master the instrument. Outside of air regulation and music theory, there are very few transferable skills between the instruments. This means that you cannot learn the oboe and expect to find that it is easier to learn the bassoon because of your knowledge. It doesn’t work like that. You would be starting from scratch on the bassoon. This means that, instead, we suggest that you learn the instrument that interests you the most. You probably already have an idea about what sort of instrument you are interested in. If you are not, then head to a site like YouTube and listen to the way in which the instrument sounds. They are both incredibly different from one another, although they both tend to be used in the same sort of music genres e.g. classical, or very orchestra-focused pieces. You can jump to the other instrument at some point if you really want. However, it doesn’t matter which one you start with. Switching between the bassoon and oboe would be the same as switching between a bassoon and a guitar. You will have to learn everything outside of actual music theory e.g. scales and the like. However, you would still need to learn from scratch how to do those scales on your instrument. **Also Read:** - **[Oboe vs. Clarinet (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/oboe-vs-clarinet/)** - **[English Horn vs. Oboe (What’s The Difference?)](https://promusicvault.com/english-horn-vs-oboe/)** **Categories:** Woodwind Comparisons --- ### [How Much Does a Tuba Weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-weigh/) **Published:** January 10, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** When consideration is given to the topic about how much does a tuba weigh, it is noted that it is pretty normal for **a professional tuba that is used to play in orchestra performances to possess a weight of twenty pounds to as much as thirty-five pounds.** The good news is that the one who is engaging in playing this large tuba is not required to support the weight of this instrument that truly is rather heavy without the usage of some sort of provision of assistance. As a result, it is noted that the chair that the person is seated in provides the necessary support for the weight of the large tuba, which is why the person is able to comfortably play thrilling tuba music for long periods of time to entertain crowds. In such cases that those who are playing the tuba are not able to play their music in a sitting position, such as when they are participating in [marching bands](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) or parades, then the tuba is regarded as having a weight that is much less in comparison to the large tubas that are generally played in orchestras. It is interesting to realize that such smaller tubas may often only possess a weight of around fifteen pounds. ## Table of Contents - [Average Yamaha Tuba Weight](#average-yamaha-tuba-weight) - [How Much Does A Tuba Case Weigh?](#how-much-does-a-tuba-case-weigh) - [What Makes A Tuba Weigh So Much?](#what-makes-a-tuba-weigh-so-much) ## Average Yamaha Tuba Weight The **average weight of Yamaha Tuba is around as being thirteen pounds**, as most tubas produced by Yamaha are used in [marching bands](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) or parades. This is quite a light weight in regard to the tubas, so that they are able to be used with relative ease by those who play them while they are marching long distances. As a result, it is noted that the bell is smaller than the bell of the large orchestra tubas, so this element also contributes to the weight being pretty manageable, such as the bell only being 14. 375 inches in length. Also, the total height of this tuba is only thirty-two inches, which makes it pretty decent to maneuver for some great tuba performances. This fact also contributes to the average weight being slight in comparison to tubas that are more massive. ## How Much Does A Tuba Case Weigh? A typical case for a tuba can be pretty heavy. It is normal for them to have a weight of up to fifty pounds. This is due to the fact that they are made ultra well in order to provide the kind of support and protection that a tuba needs. With this being the case, the good news is that often cases for tubas are made with skate type wheels that make it relatively simple to transport the tuba wherever one needs to go. Also, the bumpers are usually molded in, which certainly contributes to the overall weight of the case, as they are needed for the sake of granting valence protection. Moreover, tuba cases often have a detailed trigger release latching system, which is quite hefty and which contributes to some of the weight of the case indeed. Then with the placement of the molded interior, this undeniably contributes to the added weight of the case, as the molded interior is truly required in order to ensure that the tuba is held securely in place at all times. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Due to the fact that tubas are large and weighty, it only stands to reason that the cases for tubas which are quite large also possess quite a heavy weight. ## What Makes A Tuba Weigh So Much? It is to be noted that the size of the tuba does indeed impact the weight of the tuba. This makes sense, as the reality is that the size of anything in life really does have a strong tendency in contributing to impact of the weight of the object. It is realized, therefore, that there are some most prevalent size selections in regard to tubas at this present time, which are classified as being 3:4, 4:4, 5:4 and 6:4. As such, the reality is that there may be noticeable variations regarding such lengths as a result of being based upon the construction of the instruments by the manufacturers. The actual scenario is that each company likely provides its own level of consistency in terms of size. But this does not mean that the sizes of all tubas are equivalent among different tuba manufacturers. This means that these issues also contribute to the variations in the weight of tubas in general. Surely you will have the perception that the tuba makes a gorgeous sound if you like that kind of music. But that sound is not produced with a high level of ease. This instrument needs to be large in size in order to achieve that kind of sound. This is a fact that contributes to the heavy weight of the tuba most assuredly.. In fact, the truth of the matter is that the tuba is classified as being the largest [instrument among the brass](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) group of instruments, which is noted as making the sounds with the lowest range of pitch. As such, it truly does take an instrument that is large and heavy like the tuba in order to derive such sounds that have the lowest form of pitch. The tuba will not produce beautiful sounds if you only try to blow into the tuba. Indeed, it is imperative for anyone who is engaging in playing the tuba to create a sound like buzzing via the lips. The lips must be essentially in a flapping motion to achieve this. In this scenario, it is necessary to have a large instrument that translates the efforts of the flapping and buzzing of the lips into lovely low pitched sounds that are musical in tone and quality. It really does take a massive and heavy instrument like the tuba to apply changes to the sound when there is the application of blowing slower or faster or when the lips are pressed against each other in intervals that are looser or tighter. Moreover, it is comprehended that most tubas are constructed with the usage of brass and are overlaid with either nickel or silver. Metal will be weighty when there is a lot of it used in a product, such as the tuba, which is why tubas are heavy. Related: **[How Much Do Tubas Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/)** **Categories:** Tuba --- ### [How Much Does a Flute Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-flute-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** If you’re thinking of buying a flute, you may be wondering how much they cost. Flutes can vary in price depending on the type and quality of the instrument. However, there are some affordable flutes available for purchase if you’re on a budget. Here’s a look at the average cost of a flute, as well as some tips on how to find the best deal possible. ## Table of Contents - [Flute Price Range](#flute-price-range) - [What Factors Go Into the Price of a Flute?](#what-factors-go-into-the-price-of-a-flute) - [There is an Alternative to Buying](#there-is-an-alternative-to-buying) - [How Much Will a Flute Rental Cost?](#how-much-will-a-flute-rental-cost) - [Rental Agreements Vary, So Pay Attention](#rental-agreements-vary-so-pay-attention) - [It Pays to Be a Good Consumer](#it-pays-to-be-a-good-consumer) - [Renting Vs. Buying: the Ultimate Answer](#renting-vs-buying-the-ultimate-answer) - [Conclusion](#conclusion) ## Flute Price Range The first question you will likely have is, how much will a flute set you back? Knowing how much a flute could cost you could be a very important thing to know, depending on your income and budget. As with any purchase, you should always keep in mind the adage, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” because a lot of people will try to get more than a flute (or any other instrument) is worth. Musical instrument prices are never that cheap. For a child, especially one who might not stick with it, **the best place to start is with a “beginner” flute, but even they will cost you more than $500, and as much as $1,000.** If your child sticks with it, **you will want to buy a “step-up” flute, which is a little more expensive, usually in the $1,400 – $2,500 range.** Since the best flutes – the type used by professionals – run well over $2,500, you’re still saving a lot of money in the long run, but the beginner’s flute will probably satisfy your child until they decide to make flutist their career, and then, they can afford to buy the pro model themselves. ### **What Factors Go Into the Price of a Flute?** There are a number of factors that go into the price of a flute, including all of the following: - The Material Used – these days, the vast majority of beginner flutes are made of nickel and they are only silver-plated. As they progress through the intermediate level and beyond, many more parts are made with solid silver, from just the head joint at the intermediate level or the entire body in the case of pro-level flutes. - The Brand or the Manufacturer – Not all flute manufacturers build flutes the same way. For example, as noted above, some flute makers use high-quality materials, while others do not. In some cases, that means a flute that can’t be repaired when something goes wrong. - The Current Condition – If a flute is a brand new in the box, you will pay more, while a used flute should cost you less, especially if the instrument needs maintenance or repair. - The Quality of the Case – All flutes should come with a case, or you should buy one for your new instrument. Depending on the quality and fit, cases for flutes can run as little as $30-40 and as high as a few hundred dollars. How much you should pay will depend on the cost of the instrument. - The Flute’s Features – Flutes can come with a number of features, especially at the intermediate level and above. These features can include open holes, split e-mechanism, Low B-foot, C# trill key, or even some gold material. Which features are included can help to determine the overall cost. - The Level of Service – Some manufacturers and music stores may offer service after the sale, which can mean instrument, delivery to the school, or even school or community support. This brings up another adage; “You get what you pay for.” Quality musical instruments aren’t cheap, and when you find an unusually low-priced bargain, do your research and make sure you’re not getting taken. ### **There is an Alternative to Buying** You saw the prices, and now you’re thinking and wondering how you can afford your child’s band participation. Well, all is not lost, to be sure. As you know well, a lot of kids play in the school band and they all use instruments, so how do they afford their instruments? That’s easy. Many, if not most, rent their instrument. Rather than tying up hundreds of dollars or more at once, many [families find that renting a musical instrument](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/) is a far more affordable option, and easier to fit into the family budget. **After all, it is usually much easier to pay the $20-50 per month it costs to rent a flute than to pay the $500-$1,000 it will cost to buy even a beginner’s flute.** ### **How Much Will a Flute Rental Cost?** **As noted, in most cases, it will cost between $20 and $50 each month.** The amount varies based on a number of factors, which are remarkably similar to the factors that determine the overall price of a purchased flute. These include: - ***The Material Used*** – These days, it depends on the quality of the instrument. While most students use “beginner” flutes, which are made primarily of nickel and then silver-plated, some higher-end flutes have a lot more solid silver content, which makes them more expensive. - ***The Brand or the Manufacturer*** – As noted, higher quality flutes are made with better materials. That means they are better able to be played in tune, and the high quality means they can handle more of the wear and tear that comes from a beginning musician learning to play in tune. - ***The Extra Features Included*** – Beginner flutes will have closed holes and a C-foot, while step-up and professional flutes come with a number of advanced features like open holes, B-foot, and special key mechanisms. - ***Repairs and Customer Service*** – Many rental agreements come with maintenance and repairs included. You should also make sure the mouthpiece and case is also included. Some rental plans also include pickup and delivery at your child’s school, as well as support for the school and the community. - ***Which Accessories are Included?*** – Many flute rental agreements include a number of basic accessories to care for the instrument, while others don’t. - ***Is an Upgrade Available?*** – Again, in many cases, students tire of playing in the band, which is why a rental plan may be a better idea than purchasing the flute outright. However, what if they love playing in the band and want to continue? If your child outgrows their flute, does the rental agreement include an upgrade? [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) The best way to approach any flute rental agreement is to examine the entire package and make sure your child gets both a quality instrument with services that provide them with the best chance of musical success. What many parents discover is that latching onto the cheapest rate for a rental flute isn’t always the best option. In many cases, children who take up an instrument to join the band tire of the grind soon after and decide they no longer want to play. The question of whether to buy or rent an instrument involves far more than the impact on the family’s bank account and budget. While renting is usually a good idea in the short term, if your child ends up loving it and continues through middle school, high school, and into college, it becomes far less cost-effective to rent. ### **Rental Agreements Vary, So Pay Attention** The most common form of a band instrument rental is a “rent to own” contract. With such a contract, the parent pays the rental fee to the music store every month fee. In most cases, it is automatically debited from a credit or debit card or directly from a bank account. This makes payments easy. This is why it’s important to examine the rental agreement closely. By the time you own the flute, years will have passed, with you paying the rental fee every month (plus the interest that you may have incurred if you uses a credit card to pay), years will have passed, and you will have paid far more for the flute than you would have paid to buy it outright. In most cases, it’s not unlike having the choice between paying the sticker price for a car, versus paying the usual “market” price that most people pay, or paying to rent a car for five years. It is not unusual for parents buying a flute on a “rent-to-own” contract to pay as much as three times the purchase price for a flute. ### **It Pays to Be a Good Consumer** In some cases, parents will end up paying 2-3 times the purchase price of a professional-level flute just to end up with a beginner’s-level instrument. As important as it is to read through every word of the rental agreement, it is also crucial to ask questions in advance. In addition to the cost of the flute, most rental contracts include costs that those who buy flutes with cash will never pay. These include interest charges and insurance fees, which are not usually spelled out in the contract. ### **Renting Vs. Buying: the Ultimate Answer** Another thing that all renters should watch out for regarding whether to buy or rent is the tendency of many music stores to rent used equipment instead of new ones. Imagine paying 2-3 times the cost of a professional flute to end up with a beginner’s version that was already used when your child started playing. In other words, there is no answer to the question of whether buying or renting a flute is more cost-effective and budget-friendly for anyone in particular. While there is a lot to consider, there are some advantages to renting a flute over buying one, with the most important one being convenience. In addition to the ease of simply paying a few dollars every month, there is the fact that most rental agreements include free repairs and maintenance, which can be a godsend to parents whose children aren’t the most responsible children in the world. That can save as much as hundreds of dollars for each repair, depending on the extent of what is needed. Another advantage to renting comes if your child doesn’t follow through with their career in music, and they quit the band at the end of the school year, you will only be out a few months of rental payments. Then, you turn the flute in at the music store and you’re done. ### **Conclusion** Ultimately, how much you pay for a flute will depend a lot on you. You have a lot of decisions to make. First, you have to decide whether you can afford a few hundred dollars today for a new flute, or if you can find a deal on a used flute and save 30-40% off the new price. If you can’t afford to buy one, you can decide to rent one, but you will have to be a good consumer and make sure you understand what you will be paying in the long run and the conditions of your rental contract. You will also have to know your child and what their true intentions are for joining the band and whether they will stick with it for a time, or quit relatively soon. Being a smart consumer means knowing what you’re getting yourself into before you sign on the dotted line. Being able to rent an instrument doesn’t always save you money. Sometimes, the rental, while easier on a month-to-month basis, may cost you far more than you think, or can afford. Consider buying a used instrument, rather than a brand-new one. Some music stores also do consignments, which may save you even more. Therefore, how much a flute costs will depend on a great many questions that only you and your budget can answer. If you’re a good and conscientious consumer and read and investigate everything, the cost can be quite reasonable. However, if you go about it without being a smart consumer, it could cost you a lot more. To answer the question simply is impossible because how much a flute will cost will largely depend on you and how much you investigate the various possibilities. Therefore, let’s just say, good luck. Also Read: **[How Much Does a Flute Weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-flute-weigh/)** – **[Do Flutes Have Reeds?](https://promusicvault.com/do-flutes-have-reeds/)** **Categories:** Flute --- ### [How Much Does a Piccolo Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-piccolo-cost/) **Published:** January 9, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** If you are looking to purchase a piccolo for any particular reason you may be wondering how much does a piccolo cost? **You can easily expect to pay anywhere (on average) from $100 for a basic piccolo to $5,000 or more.** The reason for such a large variation is that piccolos intended for beginners are going to cost less than a piccolo intended for a professional musician. ## Table of Contents - [Two types](#two-types) - [How much does a used piccolo cost?](#how-much-does-a-used-piccolo-cost) - [What about renting? Can I rent a piccolo? ](#what-about-renting-can-i-rent-a-piccolonbsp) - [Why are piccolos so expensive? ](#why-are-piccolos-so-expensivenbsp) ## **Two types** There are two main types of piccolos. The first is a piccolo that is made out of metal. The second type is a piccolo made out of wood. The former is fairly inexpensive and intended for beginners and casual use while the latter is expensive and easily broken if not handled properly. Some price ranges are included below. - **Metal Piccolo – Anywhere from $50 – $300** - **Wood Piccolo – Anywhere from $150 – $5,000+** The price can even vary based on the brand of the piccolo as well. A wood piccolo from a company like Yamaha will be somewhat cheaper than anything made by a more prestigious brand like Pearl. The difference between brands can be a significant gap which will be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. ## **How much does a used piccolo cost?** Like with any used item, the cost of a used piccolo varies depending on what kind of piccolo it is along with the condition it is in. A high-quality piccolo that has been barely used and is in great condition will go for a higher price than one that got treated like garbage. In addition to that, a used metal piccolo that is in good condition will be cheaper than a new one. However, a fairly worn metal piccolo may cost less than $50 unless it has some other factor to it that would it increase the asking price. But generally, you can expect to pay way less for a used piccolo as opposed to a brand new one. So a good range of prices to expect for a used piccolo will be anywhere from $50 to $3,000+. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) As you can see, it will still be expensive to purchase a used piccolo. However, it’ll certainly be cheaper than buying a brand new one. ## **What about renting? Can I rent a piccolo?** Yes, this is an option if the costs of owning a piccolo are too steep for your budget. The challenge you will mainly face will be finding someone with whom you can rent a piccolo or any other instrument. Instrument rental services are a very niche market, so it may be difficult to find someone that offers that service. If you do happen to find someone that offers a rental service for piccolos, the price will be significantly lower than purchasing a piccolo. You can expect this price to range anywhere from $19.99 to $45 per month. While this is a great option for anyone who just needs to borrow a piccolo for a while, this cost can add up if you need to rent an instrument for more than a month or two. Before long that cost can spiral out of control, and the next thing you know you have spent enough money over time to have just bought a decent budget piccolo for the same amount of money. ## **Why are piccolos so expensive?** It comes down to a simple matter of supply and demand. Selling instruments is a very niche market, just like renting instruments. Since there are going to be fewer customers for this kind of product, the companies that make instruments like a piccolo need to adjust prices accordingly in order to make a profit after they recover any expenditures from making the product that they sell. But that doesn’t mean that piccolos, or any other instrument for that matter, are too expensive for a newcomer. This is why there are cheaper versions of a piccolo that can be purchased for those who are just starting out or don’t need all the extra bells and whistles that are found on the more expensive piccolos that are intended for more professional musicians. As a beginner, you don’t really need all the extra features and capabilities that come with a piccolo that costs several grand. **Categories:** Piccolo --- ### [Mulucky Banjo Review](https://promusicvault.com/mulucky-banjo-review/) **Published:** May 1, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Looking for a banjo that will give you the best sound quality possible? Look no further than the Mulucky Banjo! This banjo is perfect for any level of player, from beginner to experienced. Though mainly **[focused on beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-beginners/)**. It’s easy to learn how to play, making it the perfect choice for anyone just starting out. So if you’re looking for a top-quality banjo that won’t break the bank. Read on for our full in-depth review. ### [Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41Zl4iHVwDL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41E3FigNMEL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lWphgUl8L._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) [![Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41Zl4iHVwDL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1)[![Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41E3FigNMEL._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1)[![Mulucky 5-String Banjo](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lWphgUl8L._SL500_.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) Our Score - ♪ Remo Head: This open back banjo kit is flawlessly designed with a Remo head, made by the world-renown Remo drum company. The professional retro imitation animal skin; warm and retro tone, delicate, transparent, with moderate overtones. - ♪ Sound – The open back produces a more mellow, softer sound, and since the sound chamber rests against the player, some of the sounds are absorbed into his clothing and the player’s body, which lowers the banjo’s volume - ♪ Adjustable Bracket – 24 brackets ensure even head panel tension to fusion melodious percussion timbres by gently beating on the head, It can be adjusted according to the sound you want - ♪ Geared 5th Tuner and Adjustable Truss rod - ♪ Mulucky Banjo Kit: The 5 string banjo kit comes with a full-size banjo x1, spare strings set x1, tuner x1, tuning wrench x2, fingerpick x4, strap x1, cleaning cloth x1, and gig bag x1, ruler x 1. [Check Price](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLZT8J3?tag=sjj363-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) ## Main Takeaways - **[Great Value For Your Money](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-the-money/)**. - **Many Accessories!** It comes with everything you will need to get started. - **Great Sound!** The sound is exquisite for the low price point. ## Pros & Cons ### Pros: - A beginner’s kit makes it easier for a beginner like you to learn how to play. - It produces quality sound. - The banjo is simple to pick up because of its distinct tone when played. ### Cons: - It isn’t easy to set up for beginners. - The string is challenging to play. - Standard tuning necessitates the use of solid strings. ## Sound of the Mulucky Banjo Because the sound chamber sits against the player, several of the noises are received into the body, lowering the banjo volume. In classic and highland music genres, the **[clawhammer](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/)** method on an **[open-back banjo](https://promusicvault.com/best-open-back-banjo/)** is famous since the sound does not have to compete with other instruments’ volumes. A transducer can be put on nearly every banjo with an audio system for individuals who require more volume. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## Price Range/Value The Mulucky Banjo is available in a price range of $159.99-$179.99. The pricing is a fantastic place to start for a banjo that performs its job and provides purchasers with entertainment. You got a great bargain. ## Style The Mulucky banjo does have a truss rod that can be adjusted to maintain the neck straight for every player. If the action isn’t right, loosen the screw on the rim’s outside to compress the screw on the interior. Strings would emerge from the fingerboard. The action is pre-set with such a truss rod within the neck, and players can change it as needed with the wrench. The top 24 adjustable consolidation brackets around the drum are followed to ensure that the sound fulfills specifications. To generate music, the drum must be adjusted multiple times. ### Models - MB1101 - B1105 - B1106 ## Quality With its lovely wood grain, the maple body is robust and won’t deform or rust, providing the banjo long-lasting. The Remo Fiberskyn Heads have a warming, encyclopedic tone with excellent clarity and increased mid- and low-range resonance. Mulucky’s banjo has a bright and forceful sound because the drumhead is constructed of polyester, which has a lot of elasticity and responds swiftly. Steel Wire with Mid-Range Closed Handle: The pre-closed handle is comfortable to hold and control. Furthermore, the strings are made of playmaker steel wires that are sturdy but elastic to pluck, making them ideal for long-term use and simple operation. ## Bottom Line The greatest banjo is a well-known and vital string instrument extensively utilized in folk, jazz, and other genres. This economic banjo review guide for beginners is an excellent option if you want the greatest banjo at a low price. For you, this is an opportunity. Musical instruments improve your memory skills, but they also enhance the circulation of blood, aid in recovery, and reduce your odds of sadness and stress since they are therapeutic and comforting, making you feel better about yourself. Music is an excellent method to boost one’s self-awareness. It’s also a perfect opportunity to reconnect with old friends and establish new acquaintances. Two persons with similar musical tastes automatically connect. Those who love to play the very same music or have a talent for penning similar types of poetry get along pretty smoothly. In terms of capability, characteristics, and prices, you can’t go wrong with the Mulucky Banjo. **Categories:** Banjo Reviews --- ### [How Much Does a Tuba Cost?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/) **Published:** March 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Sadly, the tuba is one of the most difficult instruments to get into. Not so much because it is a difficult instrument to play. It is more the fact that the entry price for a tuba is far in excess of most other instruments. In fact, playing the tuba can be quite an expensive hobby to get into, particularly when you add the lessons into the mix. It certainly isn’t a hobby for those with limited bank accounts, which is a shame. In this article, we want to talk a little bit about how much a tuba costs to either buy or rent. We also want to cover some of the things that you should be on the lookout for when you are tracking down a tuba for yourself, particularly if you are a beginner. This way you can be sure that you will be ending up with something that is incredibly awesome. ## **How much does a tuba cost?** This is going to be highly dependent on the type of tuba that you pick up. We are going to go through some of the differences in a short while. **A decent beginner’s tuba is going to set you back somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000.** Obviously, the more you spend, the better the tuba will be. Many people seem to steer clear of the $1,000 range tubas as they simply are not that good. If you are going up to the highest quality tubas, then the potential price is virtually endless. Some models are going for as much as $20,000-$30,000. Of course, you probably aren’t going to be picking one of those up unless you are performing in an orchestra, but it isn’t uncommon for an intermediate tuba to be around the $5,000-$10,000 price point. As we said, this really is an expensive instrument to learn. ## **How much does it cost to rent a tuba?** This is a bit more difficult to determine since there are so many different companies offering rentals for tubas. **We did a little bit of scouting around, and it seems that the average amount it costs to rent a tuba will be between $125 and $150 per month.** There will also be an initial security deposit. After all, these are very expensive instruments, and the company wants to know that they are not going to lose out should you break them. This is the route that we suggest you go down if you have never used a tuba before, or if funds are quite limited. However, a lot of these tuba rental contracts are limited to a few years, and thus you will probably want to purchase your own tuba eventually. You don’t want to constantly be renting tubas. In a year or so, it would have just been cheaper to buy a basic one. ## **Can you buy a tuba secondhand?** You can. However, we have often found that tubas retain their price pretty well on the secondhand market. This means buying secondhand probably won’t net you that much in the way of savings in comparison to buying something new. Where possible, we would always buy something brand new. At least that way you can guarantee the quality. If you buy secondhand, then even the smallest of dents on the tuba can have a massive impact on the sound that it produces. ## **Why are tubas so expensive?** Tubas are massive chunks of metal. Obviously, they have a few sophisticated parts thrown in there, but tubas are made from a lot of metal. Even before you get to all of the sophisticated components that have to be specially machined for a tuba, it is going to be expensive. This big chunk of metal then needs to be finely shaped and machined. A lot of this work will be done by hand. This is especially true when it comes to the smaller components that have been loaded into the tuba. All of this is going to cost a lot of money and tons of man-hours to do. The tuba then needs to be assembled (again, by hand) and the company needs to make sure that the tuba lives up to their standards. If it doesn’t, then it is scrapped. All of this is just going to add more and more to the cost of the tuba. Obviously, it means that you do end up with a better quality instrument, but it certainly isn’t going to be a cheap one at all. Remember; tubas are not that popular as an instrument (in comparison to other offerings). With instruments like guitars, there are enough buyers that companies can buy the parts that they need in bulk. This can help to bring down the cost of their raw materials, and this saving can then be passed on to the customer. Finally, you have to remember that there isn’t a lot of competition in the tuba market. You have a few major companies and that is it. They aren’t really competing on the price of their products, they are competing on the quality of the product. This means that you will never see companies try to outshine one another on price. If they do, you may see a few dollars shaved off of the price, and that is barely anything when the tuba costs thousands in the first place. ## **Is it worth buying a tuba?** If you are just starting to learn the instrument, then we recommend that you start by renting a tuba. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, this is an expensive instrument. Lots of people are excited to buy an instrument, only to find that it isn’t for them. If you were learning the guitar, then this is fine. While it isn’t ideal, most people would be willing to write off a few hundred dollars loss. The story is very different when it comes to tuba. If you don’t like the instrument, then you are thousands of dollars in the hole. Sure, you could probably sell it on and recoup some of your losses, but the market for a tuba is going to be quite limited. It could be a rather hard sell in some areas. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Secondly, many people that do enjoy the tuba will probably want to upgrade their instruments at some point. Remember what we said about tuba valves earlier? Well, 3 is going to be perfect for a beginner. However, at some point, you are going to be progressing past that beginner stage. This means that you may want to upgrade to a 4 or 5 valve model. This means even more expense. Sometimes, it is better to rent in the short term and save up your cash to buy a better tuba later on. Obviously, it is all down to what you want. However, if you have never picked up the instrument before, then we seriously suggest you rent a tuba for a short while. This way you are not going to be majorly out of pocket should you decide you don’t love the instrument. Please do not make the same mistake that countless people have made before you. ## **How can a beginner get an affordable tuba?** So, let’s go through a few of the things that a beginner can think about if they are deadset on buying their own tuba, but do not want to spend huge sums of cash on the tuba. We are going to run you through the places where you could potentially save a little bit of money. We are not going to touch upon the major features of tubas, just those that may be a bit more relevant to beginner players. **The Brand** To be honest, the brand of the tuba shouldn’t matter all that much. We see no reason why you shouldn’t be purchasing one of the cheaper brands if you are looking to make money. Since breaking into the world of tubas isn’t the biggest moneymaker, you will never really find instrument manufacturers trying to make a quick buck on your tuba purchase. Every company is going to be good. Of course, the better the brand, the more you get for your money. However, this probably isn’t going to matter to a beginner all that much. **Surface Finish** There is a difference in the sound when it comes to the surface finish of the instrument. However, this isn’t something that is going to be worrying to beginners all that much. It isn’t until you become more advanced with the instrument that the sound is going to be a huge deal for you. So, if you want to save a few hundred bucks, then you may want to choose a clear lacquer coating for the instrument as opposed to a silver plating. **Valve Number** Beginners only need three valves on their tuba. You do have 4 and 5 valve options available, but you are never going to need that sort of range until you hit the intermediate to advanced level. Of course, we are purely speaking from a beginner’s perspective here. Ideally, 4 valves would be preferable, but if you are looking to save money at the start of your tuba career, then 3 is more than sufficient. **Valve Type** Almost all tubas aimed at beginners will have piston valves. This will be the cheapest to produce for tuba manufacturers. The problem is that these can be a little tricky to maintain. In our opinion, you may want to spend a little bit extra to get rotary valves on your tuba. That being said, both are going to be the same when you are playing. It doesn’t change how you use the instrument, and some people will have their own preferences about which type is right for them. This, again, is another reason why we suggest you rent first. You can find out whether you prefer playing with piston valves or rotary valves. That is all you really need to think about when you are a beginner. We wouldn’t really suggest you pay that much attention to the metal alloy that the tuba has been constructed from. The tone that each metal produces won’t matter all that much when you are new to the instrument. Just go with whatever option is within your budget. ## **Do you need additional accessories for your tuba?** Finally, when you are budgeting for your tuba purchase, you need to factor the following into the equation. After all, you are going to need to be kitting yourself out with some accessories too: - A bag or hard case for your tuba. The latter option will be more expensive. This is an expensive instrument and you want to know that it is properly protected from bumps and scrapes. - Tuba care kit. This way you can ensure that you keep your tuba in pristine working condition. - A strap so you do not drop your tuba when you are playing it. - A mute to help to provide a more consistent tone with your instrument. Maybe not essential for a beginner, but something that you may wish to consider eventually. - A tuba rest to help support your instrument when you are playing it. - Tuner. Although proper tuners for tubas can be expensive, so your instructor may be able to loan you one during your lessons. They will also show you how to tune the tuba, which can be a touch difficult. All of this may add $100-$200 to the cost of your tuba. All of this is going to be an essential purchase too. ## **Conclusion** Tubas can be expensive. If you are still not sure whether the tuba is the correct instrument for you, then it is recommended that you spend a little bit of money to rent a tuba. You only have to do this for a few months, just to get a feel for the instrument. It is only worth purchasing a tuba if you genuinely believe that this is going to be a brilliant instrument and you will be using it regularly. Related: **[How Much Do Tubas Weigh?](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-tuba-weigh/)** **Categories:** Tuba --- ### [How Hard Is Playing The Clarinet?](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-clarinet-hard-to-play/) **Published:** January 8, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** The Clarinet is one of the most famous and popular instruments in all of music. Part of the woodwind family, it has a very particular sound and comes in many forms, including the B flat clarinet and the bass clarinet, as well as the less popular A clarinet and E flat clarinet. **Learning the clarinet, like any other musical instrument, can be a difficult endeavor, but the hours of practice will be fruitful and rewarding if you’re looking to become a musician!** So, is the clarinet hard to play? Read on to find out what it takes to become a great clarinet player! ## **Learning the Clarinet** The clarinet isn’t an especially difficult instrument to learn, but it’s not especially easy either. There are models made for all ages from child to adult, so anyone can learn how to play this fantastic instrument. Here are a few things to help you along the way! First and perhaps most importantly, your clarinet needs to be assembled properly. Make sure the reed is between the ligature and the mouthpiece, with the flatter part of the reed facing inwards. Tighten until snug, but be careful not to overtighten, as it’s bad for the clarinet. Make sure you’re wetting your reed before you play the clarinet. This is as simple as putting it in your mouth and sliding it out, as to avoid it squeaking and being difficult to produce notes with. When playing the clarinet, be sure to sit up straight. This will allow you to hold the clarinet properly. In order to hold the clarinet properly, make sure it is away from your body at around a 45-degree angle. Keep your back straight and your head up, and allow the end of the clarinet to come just past your knees if you’re seated. Use your right thumb to support the instrument on the bottom tube. There is a thumb rest you can find quite easily on this part of the clarinet. Your other fingers should be placed upon the keys on this tube. Your left hand should be on the tube closer to your face. Place your thumb on the octave key, which is on the bottom of the clarinet, and your other fingers on their corresponding keys on top of the instrument. When you put the clarinet in your mouth to play, make sure you have the proper mouth shape or embouchure. This is a difficult thing to do at first, especially if you have no experience with instruments that you need to have proper embouchure to play before. As far as the difficulty of playing the clarinet overall, this is the part that stumps most people and is what makes people think the clarinet is an especially difficult instrument to play. [This short guide will help you get on your way to having proper embouchure.](http://www.the-clarinets.net/english/clarinet-how-to-play.html) Try and keep your cheeks tight, and not puffed out while you’re playing. This will keep the tone the instrument is producing more consistent, and provide a more even sound overall. Then it’s time to start playing! Get some fingering charts to help you out with how to place your fingers and some easy scales and songs to start practicing with. [Here’s a good fingering chart to start out with. Try to play some of the things on this site!](https://www.penders.com/t-clarinet-fingering-chart.aspx) [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## How Long Does It Take To Learn The Clarinet? Just like learning any musical instrument **the Clarinet will take around 1 year to become competent with steady practice and discipline.** Practicing consistently is the key to fast learning even if it’s only 15 minutes a day. ## **Parts of the Clarinet** In order to learn an instrument inside and out, you should be familiar with the parts. The clarinet has five distinct parts. The mouthpiece, which includes the mouthpiece, reed, and ligature, is the piece you put your mouth on in order to blow air into the instrument. This is the piece that will require the most assembly and disassembly, so you should know it very well, as you’ll be seeing it and manipulating it very often. The keys are the part of the clarinet you push down with your fingers to create notes. A fairly straightforward piece, so what you really need to know about them is which note each will create when you push it down. The upper tube is the tube of the clarinet that is closer to your face while you play. It houses some of the keys as well as the octave key on the bottom of the instrument. As stated earlier, keep your left hand on this tube. The lower tube is the tube closer to the end of the clarinet and is the home of the rest of the keys. Keep your right hand on it, and support the clarinet with the thumb rest that is on the bottom of this tube. The bell is the flared out piece at the end of the clarinet. It is there to make the clarinet louder, as well as help with the tone for some of the notes the clarinet can play that are in the lower register. ## **Proper Clarinet Care** Taking good care of your clarinet is of the utmost importance to make sure it sounds great each and every time you play it. After each use, you should disassemble your clarinet and clean the individual parts. Take the time to inspect them as well in order to ensure they’re in proper working order, and none of the parts need to be replaced. Make sure to grease the corks of your clarinet regularly as well. This will make it so it is easy to take apart and put together again. ## **Conclusion** The clarinet, like any other instrument, is a major time investment to really learn properly. However, it is not an especially difficult instrument to learn, and with the proper time and care, can be done by anybody. Remember to take proper care of your clarinet, know your instrument inside and out, and get enough practice in! This includes cleaning your clarinet after each and every use and inspecting it for wear and tear regularly. [Play](https://promusicvault.com/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) with good posture, practice every day, and make sure your embouchure is correct as well. Follow these steps, and you’ll be a clarinet expert in no time! **Categories:** Clarinet --- ## Pages ### [Pro Music Vault](https://promusicvault.com/) **Published:** April 26, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Instrument guides & reviews # Find the right instrument — *without the guesswork.* Hands-on buying guides, honest comparisons and plain-English explainers for your favorite instruments. SearchSearch [Banjo](/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/)[Ukulele](/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/)[Harp](/category/reviews/harp-reviews/)[Mandolin](/category/reviews/mandolin-reviews/)[Recorder](/category/reviews/recorder-reviews/)[Clarinet](/category/reviews/clarinet-reviews/)[Accordion](/category/reviews/accordion-reviews/)[Bagpipes](/category/reviews/bagpipes-reviews/)[Fiddle](/category/reviews/fiddle-reviews/) ## Start with the big guides [String instruments](/string-instruments/)[Woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/)[Brass instruments](/brass-instruments/)[Percussion instruments](/percussion-instruments/)[Keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/)[All instrument families](/types-of-instruments/) ## Most popular [Best mandolins for beginners](/best-mandolin-for-beginners/)[Best harps for beginners](/best-harps-for-beginners/)[Ukulele wood types](/ukulele-wood-types/)[Best fiddles for beginners](/best-fiddles-for-beginners/)[Best harp tuners](/best-harp-tuner/)[Best mandolins for the money](/best-mandolin-for-the-money/)[Best ukulele straps](/best-ukulele-straps/)[Best lyre harps](/best-lyre-harps/) ## Browse by instrument [Banjo](/category/reviews/banjo-reviews/)[Ukulele](/category/reviews/ukulele-reviews/)[Harp](/category/reviews/harp-reviews/)[Mandolin](/category/reviews/mandolin-reviews/)[Recorder](/category/reviews/recorder-reviews/)[Clarinet](/category/reviews/clarinet-reviews/)[Accordion](/category/reviews/accordion-reviews/)[Bagpipes](/category/reviews/bagpipes-reviews/)[Fiddle](/category/reviews/fiddle-reviews/) [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) --- ### [Woodwind Instruments: The Full List, and What Actually Belongs On It](https://promusicvault.com/woodwind-instruments/) **Published:** February 14, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› Woodwind Instruments: The Full List, and What Actually Belongs On It A woodwind is an instrument whose air column is set vibrating by something other than your lips — either air split on a sharp edge, or a cane reed. That is the whole definition, and the wood has nothing to do with it. A silver flute is a woodwind, a saxophone made entirely of brass is a woodwind, and a wooden cornett is a brass instrument. Three sound sources cover the whole family: an edge, one reed, or two reeds beating against each other. Almost everything else — why an oboe is hard and a recorder is not, why a clarinet reads music in the wrong key, why nobody starts on a bassoon — follows from which of those three an instrument uses and how big it is. ## Table of Contents - [Every woodwind instrument, and what starts its sound](#every-woodwind-instrument-and-what-starts-its-sound) - [The three ways a woodwind makes a sound](#the-three-ways-a-woodwind-makes-a-sound) - [Air split at an edge](#air-split-at-an-edge) - [One reed against a mouthpiece](#one-reed-against-a-mouthpiece) - [Two reeds against each other](#two-reeds-against-each-other) - [What that definition rules out](#what-that-definition-rules-out) - [The instruments](#the-instruments) - [Flute](#flute) - [Piccolo](#piccolo) - [Recorder](#recorder) - [Tin whistle and fife](#tin-whistle-and-fife) - [Clarinet](#clarinet) - [Saxophone](#saxophone) - [Oboe](#oboe) - [Cor anglais](#cor-anglais) - [Bassoon](#bassoon) - [Bagpipes](#bagpipes) - [Why your clarinet's C is not the piano's C](#why-your-clarinets-c-is-not-the-pianos-c) - [What an orchestra's woodwind section actually contains](#what-an-orchestras-woodwind-section-actually-contains) - [Which woodwind instrument to start on](#which-woodwind-instrument-to-start-on) - [If it is for a school band](#if-it-is-for-a-school-band) - [The double reeds are rented, not bought](#the-double-reeds-are-rented-not-bought) - [Bagpipes start on a practice chanter](#bagpipes-start-on-a-practice-chanter) - [Two things to buy whatever you choose](#two-things-to-buy-whatever-you-choose) - [The full woodwind instrument list](#the-full-woodwind-instrument-list) - [Air split at an edge](#air-split-at-an-edge-2) - [Single reed](#single-reed) - [Double reed](#double-reed) - [Reeds fed from a bag](#reeds-fed-from-a-bag) - [Often listed as woodwinds, and not](#often-listed-as-woodwinds-and-not) - [Read next](#read-next) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Every woodwind instrument, and what starts its sound InstrumentSound sourcePitched inBoreWhere you meet it**Piccolo**EdgeCConicalOrchestra and band, played by a flautist**Flute**EdgeCCylindricalOrchestra, band, jazz, folk**Alto flute**EdgeGCylindricalFilm scores, occasional orchestral parts**Recorder**Edge, through a ductC or F by sizeSlightly taperedSchools, early music**Tin whistle**Edge, through a ductD usuallyCylindricalIrish and Scottish traditional music**Fife**EdgeB♭ or CCylindricalFife and drum corps**Clarinet**Single reedB♭ (also A, E♭)CylindricalOrchestra, concert band, jazz, klezmer**Bass clarinet**Single reedB♭CylindricalOrchestra and concert band**Alto saxophone**Single reedE♭ConicalConcert band, marching band, jazz**Tenor saxophone**Single reedB♭ConicalJazz, band, rock and soul sections**Oboe**Double reedCConicalOrchestra; tunes the orchestra**Cor anglais**Double reedFConicalOrchestra, played by an oboist**Bassoon**Double reedCConicalOrchestra and concert band**Contrabassoon**Double reedCConicalOrchestra, at the very bottom**Highland bagpipes**Double reed chanter, single reed dronesNominally A, sounds near B♭Conical chanterPipe bands, ceremonies**Shakuhachi**Edge, blown across a notchD usuallyConicalJapanese classical and Zen music ## The three ways a woodwind makes a sound ### Air split at an edge Blow a stream of air across a sharp edge and it flips rapidly to one side of it and then the other. That oscillation drives the air column in the tube, and the tube decides the pitch. There is no moving part and nothing to replace, which is why this half of the family is the cheap, durable half. The split is in aiming the air. On a flute or a shakuhachi you do it yourself, with your lips against a hole or a notch, and it takes weeks before a note comes out reliably. On a recorder or a tin whistle a channel built into the mouthpiece — the windway, closed off by a block called the fipple — aims it for you, so the first note arrives in seconds. That single difference is the whole reason schools hand out recorders and not flutes, and it is covered in more detail in [flute vs. recorder](/flute-vs-recorder/). ### One reed against a mouthpiece A single reed is a thin blade of cane, or of synthetic material, clamped to a mouthpiece by a metal or fabric ligature. Air forced through the gap makes the reed slap against the mouthpiece hundreds of times a second, chopping the airflow into pulses that drive the tube. Clarinets and saxophones both work this way, and so do a great many folk instruments. Reeds are consumable. They soak up moisture, soften, warp and eventually die, and a beginner gets through them faster than anyone because a new embouchure chips them. Cane reeds come in strengths — a stiffness number, usually 1½ to 5 — and a beginner needs a soft one, because a stiff reed simply will not vibrate for someone who has not built up the lip muscles yet. [Which reed to start on](/best-clarinet-reeds-for-beginners/) goes through the strengths properly. ### Two reeds against each other A double reed is two blades of cane bound to a metal tube and shaved so they nearly touch. There is no mouthpiece: the reed goes straight between the lips and the two blades beat against each other. The oboe, cor anglais, bassoon and contrabassoon are the orchestral examples, and the Highland bagpipe chanter is one too. This is the expensive corner of the family, and the expense is the reed rather than the instrument. Serious oboists and bassoonists make their own, because a commercial reed is a compromise and a reed that suits one player’s mouth will fight another’s — which means gouging machines, shaper tips, mandrels, cane and a knife, and hours that are not spent playing. A student on a bought reed still replaces them constantly. [Why bassoons cost what they do](/why-are-bassoons-so-expensive/) covers the arithmetic. ### What that definition rules out The harmonica, the harmonium, the accordion and the pipe organ turn up on most published woodwind lists. None of them belongs. The harmonica and the accordion run on **free reeds**: a metal tongue swinging freely through a slot cut to fit it. Nothing beats against anything, and the reed’s own length sets the pitch rather than a column of air, which is why a harmonica needs one reed per note and has no finger holes to shorten anything. Formally they are wind instruments; they are not woodwinds. The accordion and the harmonium are covered with the [keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/), and [types of instruments](/types-of-instruments/) sets out where the free reeds sit. The pipe organ is the odder case, because a flue pipe really does split air at an edge and a reed pipe really does have a beating reed — the sound sources are woodwind sound sources. What disqualifies it is that the player touches none of it. There is a keyboard between the organist and several thousand pipes, one pipe per note per stop, and no breath at all. It is a keyboard instrument that happens to be built out of woodwinds, and it is covered there. Two do genuinely sit on the line. The Chinese bawu and hulusi have free reeds *and* finger holes over a real air column, so they finger like woodwinds and are built like harmonicas. There is no tidy answer for those. ## The instruments ### Flute The flute is the one woodwind with nothing in your mouth. You blow across the edge of an oval hole in the head joint, and roughly half the air goes into the instrument while the rest is wasted — which is why flautists talk about air supply more than anyone else in the section. Modern flutes are metal, cylindrical, and built on the key system Theobald Boehm worked out in the 1840s, which put the tone holes where acoustics wants them rather than where fingers reach and used rods and levers to close the gap. It reads in C and sounds where it is written. The orchestral flute section carries two to four players, and one of them will also be the piccolo player. It is also the oldest instrument anyone has found. The flute from Hohle Fels in southern Germany is made from the wing bone of a griffon vulture, about 34 cm long and 8 mm across, with five finger holes and a V-shaped notch cut for the lips; ivory flutes from the neighboring Geissenklösterle cave have been radiocarbon dated to 42,000 to 43,000 years old. The point is not the age so much as the design: whoever made it had already worked out finger holes. ### Piccolo Half the length of a flute and an octave higher, the piccolo is the highest instrument in the orchestra and the one that carries over everything else. It is written an octave below where it sounds, purely to keep it off a forest of ledger lines. It is not a beginner’s instrument and it is not a smaller, easier flute. The embouchure hole is tiny, the tolerances are correspondingly unforgiving, and being slightly out of tune is far more audible up there. Student piccolos are molded resin or composite; the orchestral ones are grenadilla wood, which is the reverse of the flute, where wood is the professional option and silver is standard. Nearly everyone who plays one came to it from the flute. [Piccolo vs. flute](/piccolo-vs-flute/) has the full comparison. ### Recorder The recorder is a duct flute: the windway does the aiming, so a first note takes no technique at all. It has seven finger holes and a thumb hole, and it has *no keys* — on a soprano every hole is closed by a fingertip, which is a large part of why it is so cheap and so nearly unbreakable. It comes in a family: sopranino, soprano (descant), alto (treble), tenor and bass, alternating between C and F. Schools use the soprano. The one specification that matters when you buy is the fingering system, because Baroque and German fingering are different instruments to the fingers, and German fingering trades a slightly easier F for a badly out-of-tune F♯ further up. Buy Baroque. [Which plastic recorder to buy](/best-plastic-recorder/) and [Aulos vs. Yamaha](/aulos-vs-yamaha-recorder/) both go into it. It is old, and the physical evidence is older than the paperwork. A near-complete recorder was dug out of a well at the ruined Huis te Merwede near Dordrecht in 1940, and the castle was only lived in between 1335 and 1418, which dates the instrument for you. ### Tin whistle and fife Two cheap six-hole flutes that get confused with the recorder and with each other. The tin whistle is a duct flute like the recorder, usually in D, and it is the standard entry instrument to Irish traditional music — six holes, two octaves, and a fingering that transfers straight onto the Irish flute later. The fife is blown across a hole like a concert flute, has no duct, and is loud enough to be heard over drums outdoors, which is what it was for. See [Irish flute vs. tin whistle](/irish-flute-vs-tin-whistle/), [fife vs. flute](/fife-vs-flute/) and [piccolo vs. fife](/piccolo-vs-fife/). ### Clarinet The clarinet is a single reed on a cylindrical tube, and that combination does something none of the others do. A cylindrical pipe stopped at one end — which is what a reed does to it — produces only the odd-numbered harmonics, so when a clarinettist overblows, the note jumps a twelfth rather than an octave. That is why the instrument needs so many keys: there are three more notes to fill in between registers than a flute or saxophone has to cover. It also gives the clarinet the widest range in the section, close to four octaves, and a bottom register with a dark, hollow quality that has its own name — the chalumeau, after the instrument the clarinet developed from. The standard instrument is in B♭; orchestras also use an A clarinet for sharp keys, and players own both. Student instruments are ABS resin, professional ones grenadilla. You do not buzz your lips into a clarinet. The lower lip cushions the reed against the bottom teeth and the top teeth rest on the mouthpiece; the reed does the vibrating and the lips only control it. Buzzing is what brass players do, and it is the single most common thing written about the clarinet by people who have not played one. ### Saxophone Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone on 28 June 1846: a clarinet-style single reed and mouthpiece on a conical brass body with the Boehm-derived keywork of a flute, invented specifically to fill the gap between the woodwinds and the brass in French military bands. Because the bore is conical it overblows at the octave like a flute, so its fingering is far more regular than a clarinet’s — which is most of why it is the easier of the two to get started on. The patent covered fourteen instruments in two families: one pitched in C and F for orchestras, one in B♭ and E♭ for military bands. The band set is the one that took, and that historical accident is why the alto is in E♭ and the tenor in B♭ today, and why the saxophone — alone among the common woodwinds — never got a permanent chair in the orchestra. Four sizes are in general use: soprano, alto, tenor and baritone. Bands start players on the alto, which is small enough for a twelve-year-old to hold and reads in the same key as the E♭ instruments around it. [What a saxophone costs](/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) covers the sizes and the repair bills, which on this instrument are the larger number. ### Oboe A narrow conical bore and a double reed with a very small opening, which is the source of both its penetrating tone and its difficulty. An oboist uses less air than any other wind player and has the opposite problem to a flautist: the aperture is so tight that stale air backs up and has to be dumped before the next breath. It tunes the orchestra, which is a practical matter rather than a ceremonial one — the pitch of a double reed shifts less with temperature than a flute’s or a clarinet’s, so it is the most stable reference in the room. It reads in C and sounds as written. [Oboe vs. clarinet](/oboe-vs-clarinet/) and [bassoon vs. oboe](/bassoon-vs-oboe/) compare it with its neighbors. ### Cor anglais An oboe a fifth lower, with a bulb-shaped bell and a bent metal crook carrying the reed. It is neither English nor a horn. The likeliest origin of the name is the Middle High German *engellisches Horn*, angelic horn, after the curved instruments angels are shown playing in medieval painting; the competing explanation is French *cor anglé*, angled horn, after the bent shape of the early ones. Neither route passes through England, and the modern instrument was developed around 1720 in Silesia. Orchestras do not employ a cor anglais player. The second or third oboist doubles on it when a score calls for one, which is why nobody learns it first. [English horn vs. oboe](/english-horn-vs-oboe/) has the detail. ### Bassoon The bassoon’s bore is *conical*, not cylindrical, and it is about 2.6 meters long — folded back on itself so a person can hold it, which is where the doubled wooden butt joint at the bottom comes from. It is made from maple, it hangs from a neck strap or sits on a seat strap, and it reads in C in the bass clef. Its reputation is for a fingering system full of exceptions, because the folded tube puts holes where fingers are rather than where acoustics wants them, and half of them are covered by keys with long linkages. What actually decides whether someone continues is the reed: the bassoon takes the same double reeds on the same replacement cycle as an oboe, and neither instrument lets you skip that maintenance. The contrabassoon goes an octave lower again, on about 5.5 meters of tubing folded four times, and reaches B♭0 — the bottom of the orchestra, a note it shares only with the double basses and the organ. [What a bassoon costs](/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/) covers buying against renting. ### Bagpipes A bagpipe is a reed instrument with a reservoir, and the reservoir is the whole idea: the player fills a bag, then squeezes with the arm while breathing in, so the sound never stops. On the Great Highland pipes the melody comes from a conical chanter with a double reed and eight finger holes, and three drones — two tenor and one bass, each with a single reed — hold one note underneath it. The chanter plays nine notes and nothing else. There are no accidentals, no dynamics and no way to stop the sound between notes, which is why piping ornaments are built out of grace notes: a rapid extra finger movement is the only articulation available. The nine notes are written as low G up to high A, and the instrument is nominally in A — but that A has drifted sharp for a century and pipe bands now tune it somewhere around 470 to 480 Hz, which is nearer a concert B♭. It was about 441 Hz in 1885. This is why a set of pipes cannot simply join in with a piano. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) Dozens of other bagpipes exist — Scottish smallpipes, Irish uilleann pipes, the Northumbrian smallpipes, the Galician gaita, the French musette — and several are bellows-blown rather than mouth-blown. [Types of bagpipes](/types-of-bagpipes/) runs through them. ## Why your clarinet’s C is not the piano’s C Most of the woodwind family is transposing, and it catches everyone out at some point. A transposing instrument is one where the written note and the sounding note differ by a fixed interval, so a clarinettist reading a C produces the pitch a piano calls B♭. It is not a quirk of the instrument. It is a convention that lets one player move between the B♭, A and E♭ clarinets without relearning a single fingering — the fingering stays put and the written key signature changes. InstrumentWritten C sounds asInterval**Flute, oboe, bassoon**CNone — these read at concert pitch**Piccolo**C, one octave upOctave higher**Clarinet in B♭**B♭Major second lower**Clarinet in A**AMinor third lower**Bass clarinet in B♭**B♭, an octave downMajor ninth lower**Cor anglais in F**FPerfect fifth lower**Soprano sax in B♭**B♭Major second lower**Alto sax in E♭**E♭Major sixth lower**Tenor sax in B♭**B♭, an octave downMajor ninth lower**Baritone sax in E♭**E♭, an octave downOctave and a major sixth lower**Contrabassoon**C, an octave downOctave lower What this means when you buy music: sheet music for a saxophone or clarinet has to say which instrument it is for, and a part written for alto will not work on a tenor. It also means two students playing the same written note on an alto and a tenor are a fifth apart, which is exactly what band arrangements are built to exploit. The flute, oboe and bassoon escape all of it and read the same notes as the piano. ## What an orchestra’s woodwind section actually contains The standard scoring is called double wind: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets and two bassoons, eight players, seated in four rows in the middle of the orchestra with the strings in front and the brass behind. Larger romantic scores use triple wind — three of each — and the extra player in each pair is normally there to double. ChairDoubles onWhat the section does**Flutes ×2–3**Piccolo, sometimes alto fluteMelody at the top; the piccolo is added for brilliance**Oboes ×2–3**Cor anglaisThe plaintive solo voice; the principal gives the tuning A**Clarinets ×2–3**Bass clarinet, E♭ clarinetThe widest range and the most blending of the four**Bassoons ×2–3**ContrabassoonBass line and inner harmony, roughly the cello’s range That doubling is worth understanding before choosing an instrument. There is no such thing as an orchestral piccolo player or an orchestral cor anglais player; those are flute and oboe jobs. And the saxophone, for all that it dominates concert and marching bands, has no orchestral chair at all and appears only when a composer writes one in. [Orchestra vs. band](/orchestra-vs-band/) covers where each instrument is actually needed. ## Which woodwind instrument to start on Four of this family are worth buying outright for a beginner, and they split cleanly. If there is no school program involved and the question is simply where to begin, the answer costs less than lunch. If a band director has already named an instrument, buy that one and buy it from a maker who sets the instrument up before it ships. The first woodwind### Yamaha YRS-24B Soprano Recorder Baroque fingering, double holes at the bottom two positions so the low semitones play in tune rather than approximately, a straight windway and a cotton bag, for about the price of a sandwich. It is in tune out of the box, which matters more than anything else on a first instrument: when a note sounds wrong on one of these it is the player, and that is information a beginner can act on. Yamaha publishes what their resin clears — Japan’s utensils and toys standards, the European REACH limits and the North American CPSIA lead and phthalate regulations — which is worth knowing about an object a child keeps in their mouth. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4g8Bgli) **For a school band:** Jean Paul CL-300 clarinet — around $250 **If the flute is the one they want:** Jean Paul FL-220 — around $250 **Heading for the Highland pipes:** a McCallum practice chanter — around $88 ### If it is for a school band The clarinet, the flute and the alto saxophone are the three a band room actually runs on, and for all three the thing that separates a usable instrument from a bad one is not the parts list. It is whether anyone checked it before it shipped. Jean Paul has every instrument set up and play-tested by a NAPBIRT-certified band technician, and that step is what the sub-$150 brands skip — which is why two clarinets off the same line can play completely differently. It matters more on a wind instrument than on almost anything else, because a beginner cannot tell a leaking pad from an embouchure that has not formed yet. On an instrument that seals, an airy note is the player’s fault and can be fixed. On one that does not, it is noise, and a term of it teaches a child they have no aptitude. InstrumentWhat it isWho it suitsPrice**Yamaha YRS-24B**Soprano recorder, ABS, Baroque fingering, double holesAnyone from about five, and any adult starting coldAround $8[Check price](https://amzn.to/4g8Bgli)**Jean Paul CL-300**Student B♭ clarinet, ABS resin, 17 keys, hard caseThe default school band woodwind, ages ten and upAround $250[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xnz6pc)**Jean Paul FL-220**Student C flute, silver-plated, closed holeAges nine and up — arm length decides, not the birthdayAround $250[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gxT2yn)**Jean Paul AS-400**Student E♭ alto saxophone, lacquered brassConcert band, marching band and jazzAround $675[Check price](https://amzn.to/3UkxPki)**McCallum practice chanter**Polypenco chanter, reed included, extended lengthThe first six to twelve months of pipingAround $88[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wP4lIQ) ### The double reeds are rented, not bought Nobody’s first instrument should be an oboe or a bassoon, and the reason is money rather than difficulty. A student bassoon worth repairing starts around $7,000 and a student oboe is roughly half that; renting one runs about $100 a month, and a year of rental costs less than a cheap bassoon and puts a proper instrument in the player’s hands. There is nothing usable in between, because a technician charges the same hourly rate to fix a bad instrument as a good one. School programs know this, which is why the oboes and bassoons in a school band are usually the school’s. If a child wants to play one, that conversation is with the band director, not a retailer. The piccolo is a different exclusion for a different reason: it is a doubling instrument. Flute players take it up after a few years, and it is not a way into the family. Start on the flute. ### Bagpipes start on a practice chanter Nobody begins on a full set of pipes, and buying one first is the most common mistake made in this corner of the family. A practice chanter is a quiet single pipe with the same nine-note fingering and no bag and no drones, and the National Piping Centre’s beginner classes say it flatly: “All you need is a practice chanter.” Six to twelve months on it is normal before the pipes come out, because filling a bag and holding steady pressure while breathing is a separate skill from playing the tune and learning both at once teaches neither. McCallum has made pipes and chanters in Ayrshire since 1998, and its chanters come in three lengths — junior for small hands, standard, and an extended one whose hole spacing matches a real pipe chanter. The extended is the one to buy if the pipes are the destination, because the finger stretch transfers directly. Polypenco rather than wood is the sensible choice for a learner: it does not crack when it gets damp, which is a thing that happens to a chanter constantly. [How long the bagpipes take](/how-long-to-learn-the-bagpipes/) covers the timeline. ### Two things to buy whatever you choose If the instrument takes a single reed, buy a box of ten at strength 2 or 2½ and stop thinking about it. A beginner has neither the embouchure nor the breath support for anything stiffer, and cane is inconsistent enough that a box gives you somewhere to go when one warps. Vandoren’s JUNO is cut for people who have just started, in the same French factory and from the same cane as the reeds professionals play. ItemWhat it doesPrice**Vandoren JUNO B♭ clarinet reeds, 2½**Box of ten, JCR0125 — check the strength before ordering, the picker defaults aroundAround $24[Check price](https://amzn.to/4zYVWp9)**Snark ST-2 chromatic tuner**Clip-on with a microphone as well as a vibration sensorAround $22[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gI19IO) The tuner point is specific to this family. Most clip-on tuners read vibration through the instrument’s body, which works on a guitar neck and badly on a resin clarinet or a plastic recorder, because a woodwind’s body barely moves. Snark’s ST-2 is the model in their range that offers a choice of microphone or vibration sensor, and on a woodwind it is the microphone that does the work. A woodwind also goes sharp as it warms up — which is what tuning slides and barrel joints and head joints are for — so this is not a once-a-week job. ## The full woodwind instrument list Grouped by what starts the sound, which is the only grouping that holds up once you leave the orchestra. ### Air split at an edge **Blown across a hole or a notch:** concert flute, piccolo, alto flute, bass flute, contrabass flute, fife, Irish flute, bansuri, dizi, xiao, ryuteki, nohkan, shinobue, venu, koudi, shakuhachi, quena, Native American flute (duct on most modern ones), pan flute, paixiao, xun. **Duct flutes, where a windway aims the air for you:** recorder in all five sizes, tin whistle, low whistle, tabor pipe, flageolet, ocarina, tonette, flutophone. ### Single reed Clarinet in B♭, A and C; E♭ clarinet; alto clarinet; basset horn; bass clarinet; contra-alto and contrabass clarinet; chalumeau. Saxophones: sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass and contrabass. Folk and historical: hornpipe, pibgorn, launeddas, arghul, zummara, pungi, pepa, tarogato, clarinette de Provence. ### Double reed Oboe, oboe d’amore, cor anglais, bass oboe, heckelphone, bassoon, contrabassoon. Historical and folk: shawm, dulcian, crumhorn, rackett, cornamuse, kortholt, suona, guan, shuangguan, hichiriki, shehnai, nadaswaram, sundari, mukhavina, kuzhal, tangmuri, duduk, zurna, piffero, bombarde. ### Reeds fed from a bag Great Highland bagpipe, Scottish smallpipes, border pipes, uilleann pipes, Northumbrian smallpipes, gaita, musette de cour, cabrette, zampogna, düdelsack, mashak, titti, sruti upanga. ### Often listed as woodwinds, and not - **Harmonica, accordion, concertina, harmonium, reed organ, melodica, sheng, sho, khaen** — free reeds. No air column sets the pitch and there is nothing to finger. - **Pipe organ** — a keyboard instrument built out of woodwind sound sources, with no player’s breath anywhere in it. - **Jaw harp, morsing, gogona** — the tongue of metal is plucked, and the player’s mouth only filters the result. Idiophones, and closer to [percussion](/percussion-instruments/) than to anything here. - **Conch, horagai, cornett, serpent, didgeridoo, alphorn** — the player’s lips are the reed, which makes them [brass](/brass-instruments/) whatever they are made of. ## Read next - [Types of instruments: the five families, and how an instrument gets into one](/types-of-instruments/) - [Brass instruments](/brass-instruments/), [string instruments](/string-instruments/), [percussion instruments](/percussion-instruments/) and [keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/) - [Flute vs. recorder](/flute-vs-recorder/), [clarinet vs. flute](/clarinet-vs-flute/) and [oboe vs. clarinet](/oboe-vs-clarinet/) - [Best plastic recorder](/best-plastic-recorder/) and [best clarinet for marching band](/best-clarinet-for-marching-band/) - [What a saxophone costs](/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) and [what a bassoon costs](/how-much-does-a-bassoon-cost/) - [Orchestra vs. band](/orchestra-vs-band/) and [orchestra vs. symphony vs. philharmonic](/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/) ## FAQs ### What are the woodwind instruments? The ones in regular use are the flute, piccolo, recorder, tin whistle, clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone in four sizes, oboe, cor anglais, bassoon, contrabassoon and bagpipes. An orchestra uses four of them as standing chairs — flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon — with the piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet and contrabassoon played by those same musicians when a score calls for them. ### Why is a saxophone a woodwind if it is made of brass? Because families are decided by what starts the sound, not by the material. A saxophone has a single cane reed on a mouthpiece, exactly like a clarinet, and the player’s lips do not vibrate at all. The same rule works in reverse: a wooden cornett is a brass instrument, because you buzz your lips into it. ### Is the harmonica a woodwind instrument? No, though it appears on most published woodwind lists. A harmonica works by free reeds — a metal tongue swinging through a slot cut to fit it — so the reed’s own dimensions set the pitch and there is no air column to shorten with fingers. That is a different class of wind instrument, shared with the accordion, harmonium and sheng. ### Is the organ a woodwind instrument? No. Its pipes use woodwind sound sources — a flue pipe splits air at an edge, a reed pipe has a beating reed — but the organist plays a keyboard and supplies no breath, and there is one pipe per note per stop rather than one tube being fingered. It is classed with the keyboard instruments. ### What is the difference between a saxophone and a clarinet? Both take a single reed, so the difference is the bore. A clarinet’s is cylindrical and a saxophone’s is conical, which means a clarinet overblows at the twelfth and a saxophone at the octave. That gives the clarinet a wider range and a more complicated fingering system, and it is why the saxophone is the easier of the two to start on. ### What is the difference between a flute and a piccolo? A piccolo is half the length and sounds an octave higher, and it is written an octave below where it sounds to keep it on the stave. The bore is conical where the flute’s is cylindrical, the embouchure hole is much smaller, and intonation is far less forgiving — which is why it is a doubling instrument that flute players take up later rather than a starting point. ### What is the difference between a bassoon and a contrabassoon? The contrabassoon is the larger of the two and sounds an octave lower. A bassoon is about 2.6 meters of tubing folded once; a contrabassoon is roughly 5.5 meters folded four times, and it reaches down to B♭0, the lowest note in the orchestra. An orchestra employs bassoonists, one of whom doubles on the contra when it is called for. ### Does a recorder have keys? A soprano recorder has none — seven finger holes and a thumb hole, all closed directly by the fingers. Tenor and bass recorders add one or more keys for the notes a hand cannot reach, and that is the only place keys appear on the instrument. It is a large part of why a recorder costs a few dollars and a clarinet costs a few hundred. ### Which woodwind instrument is easiest to learn? The recorder, by a distance, because the windway aims the air for you and there is no reed to control. Of the band instruments the alto saxophone is generally the quickest to a decent sound, since the conical bore gives it a regular fingering and the mouthpiece is forgiving. The oboe and bassoon are the hardest to make a first note on, and the flute is the one that takes longest before any note comes out at all. ### How do you look after a woodwind instrument? Swab the bore dry after every session, because moisture sitting on pads is what kills them, and take the reed off the mouthpiece and let it dry flat. Grease the cork joints when they get stiff rather than forcing them. Keep a wooden instrument away from radiators and cold cars, since it is temperature swings rather than playing that crack a body. Pads are consumable and a full repad costs more than a student instrument, which is the argument for the swab. --- ### [String Instruments: The Five Families and a Complete List](https://promusicvault.com/string-instruments/) **Published:** May 23, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› String Instruments: The Five Families and a Complete List Every string instrument ever built is a stretched string and something to make it audible. What separates a harp from a guitar from a piano is not the string — it is where the strings sit in relation to the soundboard, and what you use to set them moving. Those two questions sort roughly a hundred instruments into five families and three playing techniques, and once you can ask them you can classify an instrument you have never seen before. This page covers the physics in plain terms, the five families with the instruments that belong to each, the nine you are actually likely to encounter, and a full list grouped by family rather than dumped alphabetically. If you want to play one, not just name them### Start on a ukulele Four nylon strings under low tension, frets so the notes are in tune on day one, and a body small enough that nothing about holding it is a skill. You can play recognisable songs inside a week, which is the only thing that reliably keeps a beginner going. Nylon strings also mean no sore fingertips for the first fortnight — the single most common reason a first guitar goes back in its case. The Donner DUS-1 is mahogany rather than the basswood usual at the price, and the tuner, bag and spare strings are in the box. Around $65 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UldFGN) **Want the sound off the records:** guitar — around $110 **Aiming at an orchestra:** violin — around $150, plus a setup **Already play guitar:** banjo or mandolin, both start halfway in **Drawn to the harp:** a 15-string lap harp, around $150 ## How a string instrument makes a sound ### Three things set the pitch A string’s pitch depends on its length, its mass and its tension, and nothing else. Shorten it and the pitch rises — halve the vibrating length and you get exactly one octave. Make it thicker or heavier and the pitch falls, which is why the low strings on a guitar are wound with wire and the high ones are bare. Tighten it and the pitch rises, which is what a tuning peg is for. Every string instrument is built around choosing two of those and varying the third. A guitar, violin or banjo fixes the tension and the thickness of each string and lets you change the length with your left hand — the fingerboard is a device for shortening strings accurately. A harp or a piano goes the other way: one string per note, each a different length and thickness, and nothing to shorten. That is the deepest division in the whole family, and it is why a harpist has forty-seven strings and a violinist has four. ### The body is the loud part A vibrating string on its own is nearly silent. It is thin, so it slices through the air rather than pushing it. The string’s job is to shake the bridge, the bridge’s job is to shake the soundboard, and the soundboard — being wide and flat — actually moves air. Everything a player means by an instrument’s tone happens in that transfer: the wood, its thickness, its arching, the size and shape of the cavity behind it. It also explains why cheap instruments sound cheap in a specific way. A laminate top is several thin layers glued crosswise, which is strong and stable and stubbornly reluctant to vibrate. A solid top is one piece of wood that moves freely and keeps opening up for years. That single difference accounts for most of the gap between a $100 guitar and a $500 one, and almost none of the gap is in the strings. Whichever one you end up with, it has to be in tune before any of this matters, and a beginner cannot yet hear when it is not. A clip-on tuner reads the vibration through the wood rather than listening through a microphone, so it works in a noisy room and it works on anything with strings. The one accessory every string player needs### Snark ST-2 Chromatic Tuner - Clip-on, chromatic — works on any string instrument - Vibration sensor or built-in mic - Full-color rotating display - Rechargeable over USB - ~$22 Chromatic means it names whatever note it hears rather than assuming a particular instrument, so the same tuner handles a guitar, a fiddle, a banjo and a harp. The vibration sensor is the part that matters in practice: it reads the instrument through the headstock or the frame, so an orchestra tuning up around you makes no difference. It charges over USB, which removes the coin cell that used to die halfway through a lesson. Around $22 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qM7cAR) ## The five families of string instrument Organologists call this class of instrument the chordophones, and the standard scheme — Hornbostel–Sachs, published in 1914 and still the one museums catalogue by — splits them on a single geometric question: where do the strings run relative to the body that amplifies them? Answer it and you land in one of five groups. FamilyWhere the strings runTellExamples**Zithers**Across the body itself, end to endNo neck at allPiano, harpsichord, clavichord, hammered dulcimer, autoharp, koto, qanun**Lutes**Along a neck, parallel to the soundboardA neck sticking out of a bodyGuitar, violin, cello, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, sitar, oud**Harps**Out of the soundboard at a right angleA triangular frame with a pillarConcert harp, lever harp, lap harp, kora**Lyres**From a crossbar, across the face of the bodyTwo arms and a yoke, no neckKithara, Anglo-Saxon lyre, krar, modern lyre harps**Musical bows**Along a single curved staveOne string, a stick and a gourdBerimbau, uhadi, chipendani ### Zithers: strings and body, no neck In a zither the strings stretch from one end of the body to the other and there is nothing to fret against. One string, one note. The family runs from the plain box zither and the psaltery up to the largest and most complicated instrument in the whole class, because a piano is a zither: a huge iron-framed board of strings, one or more per note, struck by hammers and worked from a keyboard. Its Hornbostel–Sachs number, 314.122-4-8, spells out exactly that — a box zither, sounded by hammers, operated by keys. The keyboard instruments split on what touches the string, and this is worth getting right because the three look alike from the front. A [harpsichord plucks](https://promusicvault.com/piano-vs-harpsichord/) its strings with a small plectrum on a jack. A clavichord presses them with a metal tangent that stays in contact, which is why it is the quietest keyboard ever built and the only one where you can add vibrato with your finger. A piano throws a felt hammer at the string and lets it rebound, which is what makes the volume respond to how hard you play. Same family, three mechanisms, three completely different instruments. ### Lutes: a neck, and strings running along it This is by far the largest family and it contains nearly everything you would name unprompted. The defining feature is that the plane of the strings runs parallel to the soundboard, along a neck, so the player can shorten any string by pressing it. Whether the neck has frets, whether the body is a carved bowl or a flat-backed box, whether you use a bow or a pick — none of that changes the family. So the violin family are lutes, which surprises people. A violin’s official number is 321.322-71: a necked box lute, sounded with a bow. The banjo is a lute with a drumhead instead of a wooden top. The sitar is a lute with a gourd. Guitar, mandolin, ukulele, bass, oud, balalaika, charango, shamisen — all lutes. ### Harps: strings leaving the soundboard at a right angle A harp’s strings do not lie over its soundboard — they come straight out of it, perpendicular. That one fact dictates the whole shape of the instrument. Because the strings pull away from the board rather than pressing down on it, the tension tries to lift the soundboard off the body, and the frame has to be closed with a pillar to stop the neck folding in. On a concert harp the combined pull is around a ton, which is why the column is as substantial as it is. A harp normally has a single row of strings, one per note, running diatonically like the white notes of a piano — the extra notes come from levers or pedals that shorten a string by a semitone. Two rows is a rarity found on cross-strung and triple harps, not the norm. If you want the mechanism in detail, we cover [levers against pedals](https://promusicvault.com/lever-harp-vs-pedal-harp/) separately. ### Lyres: a yoke on two arms, and no neck at all A lyre is not a small harp, and the difference is structural rather than a matter of size. Its strings run from a crossbar held up by two arms, down across the face of the soundbox and over a bridge — the same geometry as a guitar, pressing down on the board rather than pulling up off it. That is why a lyre needs no pillar and no heavy frame. It is the older shape by a long way in Europe: the Greek kithara, the Anglo-Saxon instrument from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, the Ethiopian krar and begena. Most of what is sold today as a “lyre harp” is a lyre, and the two instruments play quite differently despite looking related in a photograph. We take the comparison apart in [lyre vs harp](https://promusicvault.com/lyre-vs-harp/), and cover the confusing middle ground in [lute vs lyre](https://promusicvault.com/lute-vs-lyre/). ### Musical bows: the oldest one A flexible stave, one string, and something hollow to press against it or hold near it — often a gourd, sometimes the player’s own mouth. It is the simplest chordophone there is and almost certainly the first. The Brazilian berimbau is the version most people have heard, keeping time under capoeira; the southern African uhadi and the Zimbabwean chipendani are close relatives. Pitch changes come from stopping the string with a coin or a stick, and the resonator is moved against the body to shape the overtones rather than to make the note louder. ## Plucked, bowed, or struck The second question is what sets the string moving, and it cuts across the families rather than lining up with them. It is also the axis that decides how hard an instrument is to learn, because it determines how much has to go right before you produce an acceptable note at all. TechniqueWhat happensInstrumentsTime to a decent note**Plucked**The string is displaced and released — one sharp attack, then decayGuitar, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, harp, harpsichord, sitar, kotoImmediate**Bowed**Rosined hair grips and releases the string hundreds of times a second, so the note can be sustained and shapedViolin, viola, cello, double bass, erhu, kamancheh, hurdy-gurdyWeeks to months**Struck**A hammer or beater hits the string and reboundsPiano, clavichord, hammered dulcimer, santoor, cimbalomImmediate That last column is the honest reason bowed instruments have a reputation. On a fretted, plucked instrument the two hard problems — where to put your fingers, and how to make a sound — are solved separately, and the second one is solved for you. On a bowed instrument there are no frets to tell you where the note is and no guarantee that dragging hair across gut produces a musical tone rather than a scrape. Both problems are live from the first lesson. The techniques are not exclusive to an instrument, either. Violinists pluck constantly — *pizzicato* — and occasionally strike the strings with the wood of the bow. Harpsichordists cannot do anything but pluck, which is the whole reason the piano displaced the instrument: a plucked keyboard cannot play louder because you pressed harder. ## The nine you will actually meet InstrumentStringsStandard tuningHow it is playedBeginner outlay**Guitar**6E–A–D–G–B–EFingers or a pick~$110**Violin**4G–D–A–E, in fifthsBow~$150 + setup**Viola**4C–G–D–A, in fifthsBow~$165**Cello**4C–G–D–A, an octave below the violaBow~$460**Double bass**4E–A–D–G, in fourthsBow or fingersNormally rented**Ukulele**4G–C–E–A, re-entrantFingers~$65**Banjo**5g–D–G–B–D, open GFingers or picks~$185**Mandolin**8, in 4 pairsG–D–A–E, in fifthsPick~$200**Lap harp**15 and upDiatonicFingers~$150 Two things fall out of that table. The violin, viola, cello and mandolin are all tuned in fifths, so a fingering pattern learned on one transfers to the others — which is why [a fiddler can pick up a mandolin](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-violin/) and be playing tunes the same afternoon. And the double bass is the only entry with no price against it, for a reason worth explaining below. ### Guitar A fretted box lute with six strings, tuned E–A–D–G–B–E — fourths all the way up except for the major third between the third and second strings, an irregularity that exists to make chord shapes fit under a hand. Acoustic guitars get their volume from a hollow body; electric guitars are usually solid, and the magnetic pickups under the strings convert the vibration directly into a signal, so the body’s job becomes sustain rather than loudness. Steel strings and nylon strings are not interchangeable and the instruments are built differently for each. A classical guitar is braced for the much lower tension of nylon and has a wide flat neck for fingerstyle; a steel-strung dreadnought is braced heavily and has a narrower neck suited to chords and a pick. Buying the wrong one is the most common first-guitar mistake, and it is not a preference — a classical guitar is not braced for steel tension and fitting steel strings will wreck it. A first guitar from an actual guitar company### Fender FA-25 Dreadnought - Dreadnought, steel strung - All-laminate body — spruce top, basswood back and sides - Walnut fingerboard and walnut bridge - 25.6″ scale, “C”-shaped neck, sealed-gear tuners - ~$110 Around a hundred dollars the field is mostly anonymous starter bundles, and the case for this one is that Fender has to keep making guitars after you buy it. The neck profile and the fret ends are the parts a beginner notices, and this is where a real manufacturer’s quality control shows up rather than in the spec sheet. Fender describes the body as all-laminate and they are being straight about it: the top is laminated too, so it will not open up with age the way a solid-top instrument does. That is the ceiling, and at this price every alternative has the same one. **Pros**- Consistent build, which is the whole point at this price - Full-size dreadnought, not a shrunken travel body - Fender Play lesson subscription included **Cons**- Laminate top, so the tone has a hard ceiling - Sold as the guitar alone — budget for a bag and a tuner - Steel strings hurt for the first two weeks — that part is unavoidable Around $110 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3SsHyEE) Related: [banjo vs guitar](https://promusicvault.com/banjo-vs-guitar/), [ukulele vs guitar](https://promusicvault.com/ukulele-vs-guitar/) and [mandolin vs guitar](https://promusicvault.com/mandolin-vs-guitar/) all cover what does and does not transfer if you already play. ### Violin The smallest and highest-pitched member of the orchestral string section, with four strings tuned in perfect fifths — G, D, A, E — and no frets. It is held between the jaw and the collarbone so the left hand is free to move up and down the fingerboard, and the whole instrument weighs under a pound. Called a fiddle when it is playing folk music; it is the same instrument, occasionally set up differently, with a flatter bridge making it easier to catch two strings at once. The thing nobody mentions when recommending a cheap violin is that it arrives needing work. The bridge is usually lying loose in the case and has to be fitted and stood in the right place, the pegs slip until they are dressed, and the factory strings are worth replacing. Budget $50 to $80 for a shop setup and treat it as part of the purchase price, because a violin that has not been through one plays worse than a cheaper instrument that has. A first violin outfit### Mendini by Cecilio 4/4 Violin Set - Full size (4/4), solid spruce top - Maple back and sides, ebony fingerboard - Four fine tuners on an alloy tailpiece - Hard case, two bows, rosin, shoulder rest, spare strings - ~$150 A solid spruce top rather than laminate at this money, ebony rather than dyed hardwood for the fingerboard, and enough of it in circulation that you are buying a known quantity rather than a gamble. Four fine tuners matter more to a beginner than they sound: tuning a violin from the pegs alone is a genuine skill, and the fine tuners let you get it right without it. Note the size: 4/4 is the adult size. Children need a fraction — three-quarter, half or quarter — chosen by arm length, not by age. **Pros**- Solid top, not laminate - Fine tuners on all four strings - Everything needed on day one is in the case **Cons**- Needs a setup before it plays properly — assume $50 to $80 - The bundled bows are the weak link and will want replacing - Factory strings are the first upgrade Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xZCRB3) There is more on sizing, and on three other outfits worth a look, in our guide to [fiddles for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-fiddles-for-beginners/). ### Viola A violin’s larger sibling, tuned a fifth lower — C, G, D, A — and reading from the alto clef, which is the reason violists have their own jokes. It is the alto voice of the string section, and it sounds noticeably darker and less brilliant than a violin because the body is not actually big enough for its lowest string. That is not a flaw in cheap violas; it is true of every viola ever built, and the slightly veiled quality of the C string is what the instrument is prized for. Violas are measured by body length in inches rather than by fractions, and adults play something between 15 and 16½ inches depending on arm length. Anything under 15 inches is a junior size. Getting this wrong is the one mistake with real consequences, because a viola too large for your reach makes the fourth finger a struggle in every position. The smallest of the adult sizes### Mendini by Cecilio 15-Inch Viola Set - 15″ body — the smallest full-adult size - Hand-carved solid spruce top, maple back - Hard case, bow, rosin, bridge, spare strings - ~$165 Fifteen inches is the sensible starting point for most adults and for teenagers moving over from the violin: it is a real viola voice without the stretch of a 16½, and if your hands turn out to want more you will know within a term. The kit is the same one that makes the Mendini violins a reasonable first purchase, and the same caveat applies — a shop visit before the first lesson is money well spent. Around $165 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4cfN7wJ) ### Cello Tuned to the same four notes as the viola — C, G, D, A — but a full octave lower, and played upright between the knees with a spike resting on the floor. It covers the tenor and bass registers of the string section and it is the instrument in the family whose range sits closest to the human voice, which is most of the reason it carries so much solo repertoire. It is also the point at which a string instrument stops being a casual purchase. A cello outfit costs four times a violin outfit, it will not fit in a car boot with the seats up, and the bow alone is a serious object. If a cello is what you want, it is worth being honest that a student instrument at this price is a starting point rather than a destination, and that a great many cellists never buy one at all because school and conservatory programs lend them. A full-size student cello[See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ### Cecilio CCO-100 4/4 Cello Outfit - Full size (4/4) - Spruce top, maple back and sides - Brazilwood bow, rosin, stand, spare strings and padded case - ~$460 The standard entry point, and the one with by far the largest body of buyer experience behind it, which matters more than usual on an instrument this size — the failure modes on a cheap cello are things like a warped fingerboard and a badly cut bridge, and those show up in the aggregate long before they show up in a spec list. The included stand is genuinely useful and often left out at this price. Ratings across thousands of buyers sit just under four stars, which is fair: this is a serviceable student cello and not a fine one. **Pros**- Complete outfit — bow, bag, rosin and stand - Thousands of buyers behind it, which is rare at this price - Full 4/4, so an adult is not outgrowing it **Cons**- Wants a luthier’s attention before it plays its best - The bag is padded, not a hard case - Consistency is the weak point — check the bridge and fingerboard on arrival Around $460 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zKnoGQ) ### Double bass The largest and lowest of them, standing about six feet tall and played standing up or from a high stool. It is the one member of the section tuned in fourths — E, A, D, G, the same intervals as the bottom four strings of a guitar — rather than in fifths, because at that string length fifths would put the notes further apart than a hand can reach. Its shoulders usually slope rather than curving, a hangover from the viol family it partly descends from, which is why its ancestry is argued over in a way the violin’s is not. It is also the one string instrument on this page that beginners essentially never buy. School and youth orchestra programs keep basses and lend them out, because the instrument costs more than the rest of the section combined and no household wants to store one. That is the honest answer to “which double bass should I start on”: whichever one your program hands you, and the money is better spent on a decent bow and lessons. If you do reach the point of buying one, it is an instrument you choose by playing several — no two basses of the same size feel alike, and the one that suits your hands is not predictable from a specification. ### Ukulele Four nylon strings, a small figure-eight body and a name that translates roughly as “jumping flea”. It reached Hawaii with Portuguese immigrants from Madeira in the 1870s — the machete de braga is the direct ancestor — and became the Hawaiian national instrument within a generation. Standard tuning is G–C–E–A, and the unusual part is that the G is *re-entrant*: it sits above the C rather than below it, so the strings do not run low to high across the instrument. That is what produces the bright, jangly sound that no guitar makes, and it is also why simple chord shapes ring so pleasantly. Four sizes are standard, in ascending order of body: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The first three all use that same tuning, so moving between them costs you nothing; the baritone is tuned D–G–B–E, like the top four strings of a guitar, and is really a different instrument in a ukulele shape. Six- and eight-string variants exist, but they are doubled courses on the same four notes rather than four extra pitches. Our pick for a first string instrument, period### Donner DUS-1 Soprano Ukulele - 21″ soprano - Mahogany body and neck, rosewood fingerboard and bridge - Bone nut and saddle, Aquila nylon strings - Gig bag, strap, clip-on tuner, picks and spare strings - ~$65 Mahogany rather than the basswood usual under a hundred dollars, and a bone nut and saddle rather than molded plastic — both of which do audible work, because a plastic nut with badly cut slots is why cheap ukuleles will not stay in tune. It also ships on Aquila strings, which is what most players put on a ukulele anyway. The soprano is the classic size and the one that sounds most like the instrument in your head. If you have large hands, the concert size is the same tuning with more room between the frets and is worth the extra twenty dollars. **Pros**- Plays in tune out of the box, which is not a given at this price - Mahogany body, bone nut and saddle - The bundle genuinely covers everything **Cons**- Soprano frets are tight for large hands - The factory strings settle for a week before they hold pitch - Laminate, so it will not develop the way a solid-top uke does Around $65 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3UldFGN) More on choosing between the sizes in [how to choose a ukulele](https://promusicvault.com/how-to-choose-a-ukulele/), and on the learning curve in [is the ukulele easy to learn](https://promusicvault.com/is-ukulele-easy-to-learn/). ### Banjo A lute with a drum for a body. A membrane is stretched over a circular rim and the bridge sits directly on it, so the string’s energy goes into a tensioned head rather than a wooden plate — which is why a banjo is loud, why the notes decay fast, and why it cuts through a band the way it does. The head was skin historically and is Mylar now on essentially everything sold; the change happened in the 1950s and it is why a modern banjo holds its tuning through a change in the weather. The five-string is the one people picture, and its oddity is the fifth string: it is short, it starts at the fifth fret with its own peg partway up the neck, and it is tuned *higher* than the string next to it. Open G tuning — g, D, G, B, D — means the instrument plays a chord with nothing fretted at all. Four-string tenor and plectrum banjos are separate instruments with their own repertoire, and six-string banjos are tuned and played like guitars. Adding a resonator — a wooden bowl on the back — throws the sound forward for bluegrass; leaving it off gives the softer open-back tone that [clawhammer](https://promusicvault.com/best-banjo-for-clawhammer/) players want. A complete beginner’s banjo kit### Vangoa 5-String Banjo, 38-Inch - Full size (38″), 5-string, with resonator - Genuine Remo head - Mahogany neck, back and sides; truss rod - Bag, strap, tuner, picks and spare strings included - ~$185 A Remo head is the specification that matters most here, because the head is the soundboard on a banjo and the generic ones fitted at this price go dull quickly. The truss rod is the other one — it means the neck relief can be adjusted rather than being whatever the factory left. Be aware that the nut slots come cut high from the factory, so the first five frets play sharp until a shop lowers them; that is a $50 to $100 job and it transforms the instrument. **Pros**- Remo head rather than a generic one - Truss rod, so the neck is adjustable - Everything needed to start is in the box **Cons**- High nut slots — plan on a $50 to $100 setup - A resonator banjo is heavy, and this one is no exception - The bundled tuner is a throwaway Around $185 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4i57Ua2) Our full write-up is the [Vangoa banjo review](https://promusicvault.com/vangoa-banjo-review/); see also [types of banjos](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-banjos/) and [how many strings a banjo has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-banjo-have/). ### Mandolin Eight strings arranged as four pairs, each pair tuned in unison, and the pairs tuned in fifths — G, D, A, E. Those are exactly the violin’s four pitches, which means every fiddle tune ever written is already in the mandolin’s range and under the same fingering. The doubled strings are what give it its shimmer, and they are also why a mandolin sounds like it is being played with tremolo even when it is not: two strings never decay in perfect step. Body shapes divide into A-style, which is a plain teardrop, and F-style, which has a carved scroll and points. The scroll does nothing acoustically and costs several hundred dollars, so at the beginner end an A-style is straightforwardly better value — we take that apart in [A-style vs F-style](https://promusicvault.com/a-vs-f-style-mandolin/). Bowl-backed instruments, the older Neapolitan shape, are a third branch and are awkward to hold. A brand-name A-style### Ibanez M510 A-Style Mandolin - A-style, eight strings in four courses - Spruce top, sapele back and sides - Okoume neck, purpleheart fingerboard - Floating adjustable bridge, brown sunburst gloss - ~$200 The M510 has been the default recommendation at this money for years, and the reason is consistency rather than any single specification — Ibanez builds a lot of them and they arrive much the same as each other. The floating bridge is worth having on a first mandolin because the action can be dialed down without a luthier: you slide the bridge, you do not cut anything. One thing worth knowing if you are comparing specifications, because descriptions of this model vary: Ibanez builds the current one with a sapele back and sides, an okoume neck and a purpleheart fingerboard. **Pros**- Consistent unit to unit, which is rare under $250 - Floating bridge — action can be set without a shop - A real maker standing behind it **Cons**- Nothing in the box — no case, tuner or picks - Laminate construction throughout - Wants a setup and new strings to sound like itself Around $200 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4xnpnPI) See also [types of mandolins](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-mandolins/) and [how many strings a mandolin has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-a-mandolin-have/). ### Harp Among the oldest instruments there is — arched harps appear in Sumerian and Egyptian art from around 3000 BC, well before anything with a neck. The strings run out of the soundboard at a right angle and are plucked with the pads of the fingers, four per hand; the little fingers are not used, because they are too short to reach the string plane cleanly. Size is the whole decision. A concert pedal harp has forty-seven strings, weighs upward of eighty pounds and has seven pedals, each with three notches, which is what lets it play in any key. A lever harp has between twenty and thirty-eight strings and a small blade at the top of each one to raise it a semitone. A lap harp has fewer still and usually no levers at all, which means it plays in one key until you retune it — a real limitation, and not one that stops it being the right way to find out whether you like the instrument. The cheapest way to find out if the harp is for you### AKLOT 15-String Lap Harp - 15 strings, diatonic - Mahogany body, triangular frame with pillar - Color-coded C and F strings - Tuning wrench, gig bag and strap - ~$150 A genuine small harp rather than a lyre: a curved neck, a wedge-shaped soundbox and a pillar closing the triangle, with the strings leaving the board at right angles the way they should. Fifteen strings is a little over two octaves, enough for melodies and simple accompaniment but not for repertoire. The strings are color-coded, red for C and blue for F, which is the standard harp convention and genuinely how harpists find their place. There are no sharping levers, so you are in one key until you sit down with the wrench. **Pros**- Actually a harp, in a market full of lyres sold as harps - Color-coded strings follow the real convention - Light enough to play on your lap and carry anywhere **Cons**- No levers, so one key at a time - Two octaves runs out fast once you improve - Needs frequent retuning for the first few weeks Around $150 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4zNcos7) More in [harps for beginners](https://promusicvault.com/best-harps-for-beginners/), [how many strings a harp has](https://promusicvault.com/how-many-strings-does-harp-have/) and [is the harp a percussion instrument](https://promusicvault.com/is-harp-percussion-instrument/). ## String instruments in the orchestra The string section is the largest block in a symphony orchestra and usually more than half the players on stage. Five instruments are standard: first violins, second violins, violas, cellos and double basses, with the harp added when a score calls for it. SectionTypical countVoiceUsual job**First violins**16–18SopranoThe melody, most of the time**Second violins**14–16SopranoHarmony, counter-melody, rhythmic figures**Violas**12AltoInner voices, filling the middle**Cellos**10–12Tenor and bassBass line, and the section’s solo voice**Double basses**8BassThe floor, usually doubling the cellos an octave down**Harp**1–2Full rangeColor, arpeggios, glissandi The division between first and second violins is not a ranking of ability — they are two separate parts, and a good second violin section is doing harder rhythmic work than the firsts much of the time. The section’s real power is that a dozen players on one line blend into a single sound in a way that a dozen trumpets never will, which is why composers write for strings when they want something continuous. Guitars, mandolins and banjos appear in orchestral scores but are not part of the standing section; they are called for like any other special instrument. Mandolin is the least unusual of the three — Mahler, Verdi and Stravinsky all wrote for it. The ukulele essentially never appears. ## A full list of string instruments, by family Grouped by the classification above rather than alphabetically, because the grouping is the part that tells you something. Where an instrument’s name is a family of variants — the charango, for instance — the variants are listed together. ### Zithers (no neck) Appalachian dulcimer · Autoharp · Cimbalom · Clavichord · Clavinet · Epigonion · Guzheng (zheng) · Hammered dulcimer · Kannel · Kantele · Koto · Piano · Psaltery · Qanun · Santoor · Yazh · Zither The harpsichord belongs here too, alongside its smaller relatives the virginal and the spinet. ### Lutes: bowed Violin (fiddle) · Viola · Cello · Double bass · Viola da gamba · Viol · Rebec · Nyckelharpa · Hurdy-gurdy · Erhu · Kamancheh (kemenche) · Kokyu · Sarangi · Morin khuur · Gadulka · Crwth ### Lutes: plucked, fretted Guitar · Bass guitar · Lap steel guitar · Craviola · Lute · Theorbo · Bağlama (saz) · Balalaika · Bandola · Bandurria · Banjo · Bouzouki · Bulbul tarang · Cavaquinho · Chapman stick · Cifteli · Cinco · Cuatro · Cümbüş · Domra · Dutar · Guitarra baiana · Guitarra de golpe · Guitarrón (and the Chilean and Cuyano forms) · Mandolin · Oud · Requinto · Setar · Sitar · Strumstick · Surbahar · Tambura · Tanbur · Tar · Tiple · Tumbi · Ukulele · Veena · Vihuela The charango family, all from the Andes: charango · charanguita · hatun charango · ranka charango · ronroco · hualaycho · khonkhota · quirquincho · chillador. ### Lutes: plucked, unfretted Biwa · Ektara · Kopuz · Lavta · Ngoni · Rubab · Sanshin · Sarod · Shamisen · Tuntuna ### Harps Concert (pedal) harp · Lever harp · Celtic harp · Lap harp · Arched harp · Angular harp · Kora · Valiha ### Lyres Kithara · Phorminx · Barbitos · Lyre · Krar · Begena · Talharpa · Jouhikko ### Musical bows Berimbau · Uhadi · Chipendani · Mouth bow Many of these names cover several instruments rather than one. A guitar may be acoustic, electric or both, and may carry six, seven or twelve strings; a banjo may have four, five or six; and the tar of Persia and the tar of North Africa are unrelated instruments sharing a word. Where the design changes the music, we have a separate page on it. ## FAQs ### What counts as a string instrument? Anything that makes its sound from a stretched, vibrating string — the formal term is chordophone. It does not matter what sets the string moving. That is why the piano is a string instrument despite being played from a keyboard and sounded with hammers, and why the harp is a string instrument rather than a percussion one despite sitting at the back of the orchestra with the timpani. ### Is the piano a string instrument or a percussion instrument? A string instrument — specifically a box zither with a keyboard and hammers. The confusion comes from the fact that it is struck, but striking is a technique rather than a family: a hammered dulcimer is struck and is unmistakably a string instrument, and orchestras seat the piano with the percussion for practical reasons that have nothing to do with what it is. We go through the argument properly in [is the piano a string instrument](https://promusicvault.com/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/). ### Is a harpsichord’s string hammered like a piano’s? No — a harpsichord plucks. Each key lifts a wooden jack carrying a small plectrum, which catches the string on the way up and releases it on the way down. That is the single most important difference between the two instruments, because a plucked string sounds the same however hard you press the key, and a hammered one does not. The piano’s original name, *gravicembalo col piano e forte*, was a sales pitch about exactly this. See [piano vs harpsichord](https://promusicvault.com/piano-vs-harpsichord/) and [clavichord vs harpsichord](https://promusicvault.com/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/). ### Which string instrument is easiest to learn? The ukulele, by a wide margin, and the reason is mechanical rather than musical: it has frets, so the notes are in tune without any ear training, and it is plucked, so a clean note requires no technique. Four low-tension nylon strings also means chord shapes need two or three fingers rather than four or five. Guitar is next. The bowed instruments are the hard end, not because the left hand is harder but because the right hand has to produce a tone at all. ### How do you tune a string instrument? By changing tension, which is what every tuning peg, machine head and lever does. Tune upward to the target pitch rather than down onto it, so the string settles under tension and the peg is not left to creep. A clip-on chromatic tuner reading vibration through the wood works on everything on this page. On instruments with one string per note — harps in particular — the whole instrument drifts together with temperature and humidity, so expect to tune the lot rather than one string. ### How should I look after one? Humidity does more damage than anything else. Wooden instruments crack when the air is dry and go dull when it is damp, so keep them away from radiators and out of car boots, and use a case humidifier if your winter is a dry one. Wipe the strings down after playing — the oil off your fingers is what kills them. Loosen a bow’s hair when you put it away, or the stick takes a set. And leave anything structural to a luthier: a lifting bridge or an opening seam is a cheap repair caught early and an expensive one caught late. ### How do I pick the right one for me? Start from the sound you already want to make rather than from what is easy, because motivation outlasts difficulty. Then let the practical constraints filter it: how much space you have, how loud you can be where you live, whether you want to play with other people and what they play. If the honest answer is that you just want to play something and find out, the ukulele costs less than two lessons and answers the question in a fortnight. --- ### [Percussion Instruments: The Full List, and What Each One Is For](https://promusicvault.com/percussion-instruments/) **Published:** May 23, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› Percussion Instruments: The Full List, and What Each One Is For A percussion instrument is one you play by striking, shaking or scraping it. That is the whole definition, and it is loose enough to take in a kettledrum, a triangle, a set of tuned bronze discs and a hollowed-out log — which is why percussion is the only family that has no upper limit on its membership. Everything below sorts by two questions. What is vibrating — a stretched skin, or the body of the instrument itself? And does the thing produce a note you could write down, or only a sound? Those two answers place every instrument here, and they also explain why a percussionist’s job looks nothing like a cellist’s. ## Table of Contents - [Every percussion instrument, and what makes its sound](#every-percussion-instrument-and-what-makes-its-sound) - [The two halves of the family](#the-two-halves-of-the-family) - [Membranophones: a skin under tension](#membranophones-a-skin-under-tension) - [Idiophones: the instrument itself](#idiophones-the-instrument-itself) - [The remainder, and why "percussion" is not a classification](#the-remainder-and-why-percussion-is-not-a-classification) - [Pitched and unpitched, and what separates the mallet instruments](#pitched-and-unpitched-and-what-separates-the-mallet-instruments) - [The timpanist is not one of the percussionists](#the-timpanist-is-not-one-of-the-percussionists) - [What the percussion section actually does](#what-the-percussion-section-actually-does) - [The hand drums, and where each one comes from](#the-hand-drums-and-where-each-one-comes-from) - [Which percussion instrument to start on](#which-percussion-instrument-to-start-on) - [On the drum kit, and the mesh-head question](#on-the-drum-kit-and-the-meshhead-question) - [The cheap ones that are worth having](#the-cheap-ones-that-are-worth-having) - [Percussion is probably the oldest family, and the evidence does not prove it](#percussion-is-probably-the-oldest-family-and-the-evidence-does-not-prove-it) - [The full percussion instrument list](#the-full-percussion-instrument-list) - [Read next](#read-next) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Every percussion instrument, and what makes its sound InstrumentPitched?What actually vibratesWhere you meet it**Timpani**YesA calfskin or plastic head over a copper bowl, retuned by a pedalOrchestra, on its own chair**Snare drum**NoTwo heads, with wire snares rattling against the lower oneOrchestra, concert band, drum kit, marching**Bass drum**NoA large head, struck with a felt beaterOrchestra, band, kit, marching**Tom-toms**NoHeads on cylindrical shells, no snaresDrum kit**Congas**NoA single head on a tall staved shell, struck by handCuban music, salsa, Latin jazz**Bongos**NoTwo small heads, the pair held between the kneesCuban music, Latin jazz**Djembe**NoA goatskin head on a carved goblet body, rope-tunedWest Africa, drum circles, world percussion**Cajón**NoA thin plywood face on a box you sit on, snares behind itFlamenco, acoustic gigs, home practice**Tabla**PartlyTwo heads weighted with a paste disc that tunes the overtonesNorth Indian classical**Mridangam**PartlyTwo heads on one barrel body, played with both handsSouth Indian classical, Carnatic**Bodhrán**NoA goatskin head in a shallow hoop, struck with a tipperIrish traditional**Darbuka**NoA head on a goblet body of clay or aluminumMiddle East, North Africa, Turkey**Frame drums**NoOne head in a hoop barely deeper than the skinAlmost every folk tradition there is**Taiko**NoHeads tacked to a hollowed log, struck with heavy sticksJapan**Timbales**NoSingle heads on shallow metal shells, played with thin sticksLatin dance bands**Cymbals**NoA bronze disc, crashed in pairs or suspended and struckOrchestra, band, drum kit**Tam-tam**NoA flat bronze disc with no raised centerOrchestra**Gong**YesA bronze disc with a raised boss in the middleGamelan, East and Southeast Asia**Triangle**NoA steel bar bent into a triangle, hung on a loopOrchestra, band**Tambourine**NoPairs of jingles in a hoop, sometimes with a headOrchestra, gospel, folk, pop**Castanets**NoTwo hardwood shells clapped togetherSpanish dance, orchestra**Claves**NoTwo hardwood sticks, one cupped in the hand as a resonatorCuban music, and the clave rhythm it names**Cowbell**NoA steel bell with the clapper removed, struck with a stickLatin, rock, drum kit**Woodblock, temple blocks**NoA hollow chamber cut into hardwoodOrchestra, band, kit**Maracas**NoSeed or shot rattling inside a gourd or a shellLatin, orchestra**Shakers, cabasa, güiro**NoBeads shaken, or a ridged surface scrapedLatin, pop, film scoring**Slapstick, ratchet, anvil, sleigh bells**NoWhatever the score asks forOrchestra, when a composer wants a specific noise**Glockenspiel**YesSteel bars in two rows, struck with hard malletsOrchestra, band, marching**Xylophone**YesWooden bars over tuned resonator tubesOrchestra, band**Marimba**YesWider wooden bars over much longer resonatorsSolo repertoire, band, Central America**Vibraphone**YesAluminum bars, with motor-driven discs spinning in the resonatorsJazz, orchestra**Tubular bells**YesHanging brass tubes struck on the top rim with a rawhide malletOrchestra**Crotales**YesThick tuned bronze discs, an inch or two acrossOrchestra, film scoring**Celesta**YesSteel plates struck by felt hammers, driven from a keyboardOrchestra**Steel pan**YesNote areas hammered into the end of an oil drumTrinidad and Tobago, steelbands**Kalimba, mbira**YesMetal tines plucked with the thumbsSouthern Africa, and everywhere since**Handbells**YesA tuned bell per note, one player holding two or threeChurch and school bell choirs**Drum kit**NoSnare, bass drum, toms and cymbals on one rack, played by one personMore or less all popular music since 1930 Two rows in there are worth stopping on, because they are the pair most often swapped. The **tam-tam** is the big flat bronze disc an orchestra hangs at the back, and it has no definite pitch at all. A **gong** proper has a raised boss hammered into the middle, and that boss gives it a note you can tune. The orchestral instrument almost everyone calls a gong is a tam-tam, and the word was borrowed into symphonic scores in the nineteenth century precisely to keep the two apart. ## The two halves of the family Split the list by what is vibrating and it falls cleanly into two, with a small awkward remainder. ### Membranophones: a skin under tension Everything with a head. The sound comes from a membrane stretched over an opening, and the shell underneath is a resonator rather than the source — which is why a conga made of oak and a conga made of fiberglass sound like each other and not like their materials. Timpani, snare, bass drum, toms, congas, bongos, djembe, tabla, bodhrán, taiko and the whole frame-drum world are here. The cajón is the edge case, and it goes in this half by convention rather than by physics. Nothing on it is stretched; the front is a sheet of thin plywood screwed at the edges and left loose at the corners. It behaves like a head, so it is filed with the drums. ### Idiophones: the instrument itself Everything without a head. The whole body rings — bronze, steel, wood or gourd — and the material is the sound, which is exactly the opposite of the drums. Cymbals, triangle, claves, castanets, woodblocks, cowbells, maracas, güiro, every mallet instrument, the steel pan and the kalimba all sit here. Idiophones sub-divide by how you set them going, and the categories are less obvious than they sound. Struck covers most of them. Shaken takes the maracas and the sleigh bells. Scraped takes the güiro and the washboard. Plucked takes the kalimba and the jaw harp, both of which are idiophones despite being played with the fingers. ### The remainder, and why “percussion” is not a classification Hornbostel–Sachs, the scheme museums use, has no percussion class. It has idiophones, membranophones, chordophones and aerophones, and percussion cuts across the first two while leaving a few instruments outside both. A piano is a struck *chordophone*: strings hit by hammers, numbered 314.122-4-8 in that system, which is why the question of whether it is percussion or strings [dissolves rather than resolves](/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/). The cimbalom and the hammered dulcimer are the same case without the keyboard. So percussion is a job in an ensemble, not a category in a taxonomy. That is worth holding on to, because it explains the whip, the wind machine and the typewriter part in Satie’s *Parade*. Those land on the percussion desk because it is the desk with a spare pair of hands, not because a classification put them there. The [harp question](/is-harp-percussion-instrument/) runs the same way in reverse: it is plucked, it sits at the back, and it is a string instrument by every scheme going. ## Pitched and unpitched, and what separates the mallet instruments The second division is whether the instrument produces a note. Unpitched percussion — snare, cymbals, triangle, tambourine — carries rhythm and color. Pitched percussion plays written notes, and in practice that means the mallet instruments, timpani, tubular bells and the steel pan. The five mallet instruments are the ones people mix up, and they are genuinely easy to mix up, because four of them are a row of bars over a row of tubes. Here is what actually separates them. InstrumentBarsRangeSoundsCharacter**Glockenspiel**SteelAbout 2½ octavesTwo octaves above the written noteBright, bell-like, cuts through anything**Xylophone**Rosewood, padauk or synthetic3 to 4 octaves, from F above middle COne octave above the written noteDry, hard, percussive attack with little sustain**Marimba**Same woods, cut wider and thinner4 to 5 octaves, down to the C two below the bass staffAs writtenWarm and round, with real sustain in the low register**Vibraphone**Aluminum3 octaves, F below middle C upwardAs writtenSustaining, with a sustain pedal and an optional tremolo**Tubular bells**Brass tubes, not barsAbout 1½ octavesAs writtenA church bell, struck on the top rim The xylophone and the marimba are the pair worth understanding properly, because they look almost identical and the usual explanation — that a marimba is just a bigger xylophone — is not what makes them sound different. The difference is in how the underside of each bar is cut away. A xylophone bar is undercut shallowly, so its first strong overtone lands a twelfth above the fundamental. A marimba bar is hollowed much more deeply, which drops that overtone to two octaves above the fundamental. Yamaha calls these quint tuning and octave tuning. A note two octaves up blends into the fundamental and you hear one warm tone; a note a twelfth up sits outside it and you hear the bright, woody crack that makes a xylophone carry over a full orchestra. Same wood, same mallets, different cut. The transposition column is the part that catches people out in a score. Write middle C for a glockenspiel and the player produces the C two octaves higher, which keeps the part off six ledger lines. The xylophone and the celesta do the same thing by one octave, and crotales by two. Marimba, vibraphone and tubular bells are all written where they sound. ## The timpanist is not one of the percussionists In a professional orchestra the timpani are a separate chair with a separate audition, and the person in it does not cover anything else. That is unusual enough to be worth explaining, because on paper the timpani are drums like any others. Two things put them apart. They are pitched, and they are retuned constantly — a modern set has a pedal on each drum, and the player is adjusting them by ear, mid-piece, against an orchestra that is already playing. And they were in the orchestra a century before the rest of the section arrived; for most of the Classical period the timpani were the only percussion in the score at all, paired with the trumpets. Everything else was added later, and got a different job description. A standard set is four drums, roughly 32, 29, 26 and 23 inches, covering about an octave and a half between them. ## What the percussion section actually does Three percussionists plus a timpanist is the usual establishment, and the section is the only one in the orchestra whose membership changes from one piece to the next. A string section is the same string section every night. The percussion section is whatever the score names, and the score might name a glockenspiel, a tam-tam, a set of sleigh bells and an anvil. That has one consequence worth knowing if you are choosing an instrument. A percussionist is expected to play all of it. A violinist spends a career on one instrument; a section percussionist will move between snare drum, cymbals, xylophone, triangle and tambourine inside a single movement, and is judged on all five. It is the broadest instrumental training in the orchestra, and it is why the school route into percussion starts with a snare pad and a set of bells rather than with a drum kit. The section sits at the back, behind the brass, with the timpani usually center or slightly left and the rest spread across the width of the stage — mallet instruments need floor space that no other section requires. [Orchestra vs. band](/orchestra-vs-band/) covers how that differs in a concert band, where the percussion section is proportionally larger and the writing is far busier. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## The hand drums, and where each one comes from Most of the percussion instruments people actually buy are hand drums, and they are not interchangeable. Each carries a technique and a repertoire. - **Djembe.** West African, from the Mande peoples of what is now Mali and Guinea. A goblet-shaped body carved from one piece of hardwood, rope-tuned, played standing or with the drum tilted between the knees. Three sounds — bass, tone, slap — and a very wide dynamic range for something you can carry. - **Congas.** Cuban, developed in the twentieth century from Afro-Cuban predecessors. Tall staved shells, played standing at a stand or seated with the drums tilted off the floor. Usually two or three at once, tuned to intervals rather than to notes. - **Bongos.** Also Cuban, and far older than the congas. The pair is held between the knees, the smaller drum on the left, and the technique is fingertips rather than palms. The high, dry crack of a bongo is the sound of a *martillo* pattern under a son ensemble. - **Cajón.** Peruvian, from Afro-Peruvian coastal music, and adopted into flamenco in the late 1970s after Paco de Lucía heard one in Lima. You sit on it and play between your knees. Modern ones have guitar strings or a snare pressed against the back of the striking face, which gives a snare-drum rattle at the top of the box and a bass note at the bottom. - **Tabla.** North Indian, a pair rather than one drum: the wooden *dayan* under the right hand and the metal *bayan* under the left. The black disc on each head is a paste of iron filings and starch, applied in layers, and it is what makes a tabla pitched — it damps the head’s inharmonic overtones until a clear note is left. - **Mridangam.** The South Indian equivalent, and one drum rather than two: a single barrel body of jackwood with a head at each end, played horizontally across the lap. It is the principal percussion of Carnatic music and of Bharatanatyam dance. - **Bodhrán.** Irish, a shallow frame drum of goatskin, held vertically with one hand inside the head and struck with a double-ended beater called a tipper. The hand behind the skin is doing as much as the tipper — pressing it changes the pitch continuously, which is the whole technique. ## Which percussion instrument to start on The choice divides on one question: whether you are joining an ensemble that will tell you what to play, or buying something to play at home. If it is a school band, the answer is decided for you. Beginning percussionists are put on a bell kit — a small glockenspiel, a rubber practice pad and a stand in one carrying bag — because the program needs players who can read pitched music before it needs another drummer. Nobody is handed a kit in year one. If it is for yourself, the strongest first instrument is a cajón, for reasons that have nothing to do with how it sounds. It needs no stand, no sticks, no stool, no tuning and no amplification, it takes up the space of a footstool, and it is quiet enough for a flat with neighbors. Every other percussion instrument on this page needs at least one of those things. The first percussion instrument### Meinl HCAJ1NT Headliner String Cajón Full size, with the snare strings adjustable from a screw on the playing face — tighten them for a crisp backbeat, slacken them and the box turns into a plain bass drum. The playing surface is the only part of a cajón that matters and this one is thin enough to respond near the corners, which is where the high sounds live. It is a finished instrument rather than a starter version of one, and plenty of working players never replace it. Around $130 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4qp6qcK) **If you want a drum you strike standing up:** Meinl HDJ3-M djembe, 10″ — around $110 **If a school band is involved:** a 30-note bell kit — around $90 **If you want to be a drummer:** Alesis Nitro Max — around $450 InstrumentWhat it isWho it suitsPrice**Meinl HCAJ1NT**Full-size string cajón, adjustable snareAn adult with no space, no ensemble and no patience for setupAround $130[Check price](https://amzn.to/4qp6qcK)**Meinl HDJ3-M**10″ rope-tuned mahogany djembe, natural goatskin headDrum circles, and anyone who wants the loudest hand drum per dollarAround $110[Check price](https://amzn.to/4ybohGM)**Giantex 30-note bell kit**Glockenspiel, 8″ practice pad, stand, mallets and sticks in a bagA beginning school percussionist, or an adult learning to read musicAround $90[Check price](https://amzn.to/4gFJqD8)**LP Aspire LPA601**6¾″ and 8″ wood bongos with rims and a tuning keyAnyone heading toward Cuban or Latin repertoireAround $200[Check price](https://amzn.to/4hEZiH1)**Alesis Nitro Max**Electronic kit, mesh heads, dual-zone snare, three cymbalsA drummer in a house where an acoustic kit is not happeningAround $450[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xRCoRv)**Panyard Jumbie Jam**G-major steel pan, tabletop stand, mallets and a bookA curious buyer who wants a pitched instrument nobody else hasAround $200[Check price](https://amzn.to/4xbaTlS) ### On the drum kit, and the mesh-head question An acoustic kit is the cheaper instrument and the harder purchase. A beginner five-piece is a few hundred dollars, but it also needs cymbals, which are sold separately and cost about as much again, and it needs a room where a bass drum is acceptable. Most people who want to learn drums do not have that room. Mesh heads are the reason electronic kits stopped being a compromise. A mesh head is a woven fabric disc tensioned on a real hoop with a real key, so it rebounds like a drumhead instead of a rubber pad, and technique learned on one transfers to an acoustic kit. Rubber-pad kits do not do this and are worth avoiding at any price. The Nitro Max is the cheapest mesh kit with a dual-zone snare, which means rimshots register — the [Alesis Turbo Mesh](https://amzn.to/4wyOttL) at around $300 is the same idea a step down, with smaller pads and a single-zone snare. ### The cheap ones that are worth having Three small instruments do more work in a home recording or a jam than their price suggests, and none of them needs a stand or a technique to be useful on day one. - **[Claves](https://amzn.to/4cTtKK9), around $20.** Two sticks of hardwood. Cup one loosely in your palm so the hand becomes the resonator — held tight, they click instead of ringing, which is the single mistake everybody makes with them. - **[Tambourine](https://amzn.to/4zu2njC), around $18.** The crescent shape is not styling; it leaves the jingles at one end so you can hold it in one hand and strike the frame with the other. Nickel jingles are darker than brass and sit better under a vocal. - **[Maracas](https://amzn.to/4i2txIf), around $27.** Rawhide rather than plastic, because the shell tone is most of the sound. They are played with a wrist flick that stops the fill dead against the far end, not shaken. ## Percussion is probably the oldest family, and the evidence does not prove it The claim gets made constantly and it is reasonable, but it is an inference rather than a finding. Clapping, stamping and striking two sticks together need no instrument to survive, so nothing survives. What has survived is a flute. The bone and ivory flutes from Hohle Fels and Geissenklösterle in southern Germany are between about 43,000 and 35,000 years old, and the Hohle Fels one — cut from the wing bone of a griffon vulture, with five finger holes — is the oldest more-or-less complete musical instrument anybody has dug up. The oldest surviving drums are far younger. Alligator drums, made by stretching alligator hide over a hollowed wooden body, have been found across Neolithic China from Shandong to Qinghai and date to between 5500 and 2350 BC, chiefly from the Dawenkou and Longshan cultures. That is thousands of years after the flutes and it tells you about preservation rather than about invention: a hide head rots, a hollow bone does not. Idiophones close some of that gap, because stone and bone survive. Lithophones — sets of tuned stones — turn up in Neolithic sites across several continents, and rattles and scrapers are older still. ## The full percussion instrument list Grouped by where you are most likely to run into them. - **Orchestra and concert band.** Timpani, snare drum, field drum, tenor drum, bass drum, cymbals, hi-hat, suspended cymbal, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, castanets, woodblock, temple blocks, claves, cowbell, maracas, güiro, cabasa, vibraslap, ratchet, slapstick, sleigh bells, wind chimes, anvil, whip, glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, tubular bells, crotales, celesta, chimes, bell plate, thunder sheet. - **Drum kit and popular music.** Snare, bass drum, rack and floor toms, hi-hat, crash, ride, splash, china, cowbell, tambourine, shaker, egg shaker, jam block, rototoms, octobans, electronic pads, drum machine. - **Latin America and the Caribbean.** Congas, bongos, timbales, cajón, pandeiro, surdo, repinique, tamborim, cuíca, agogô, güira, chekere, bombó legüero, quijada, steel pan, marimba de chonta, claves, maracas. - **Africa.** Djembe, dunun, sabar, ngoma, bougarabou, talking drum, udu, shekere, mbira, kalimba, log drum, balafon, water drums. - **India and South Asia.** Tabla, mridangam, pakhawaj, khol, dholak, dhol, dholki, naal, kanjira, ghatam, thavil, chenda, idakka, damru, mizhavu, udukai, urumi. - **East and Southeast Asia.** Taiko, tsuzumi, kakko, shime-daiko, uchiwa daiko, mokugyo, kane, hyoshigi, bonsho, kagura suzu, paiban, muyu, bangzi, zhu, gong, gong chimes, gamelan gongs, saron, bonang, kendang. - **Europe and the Middle East.** Bodhrán, darbuka, doumbek, riq, bendir, daf, davul, zills, tapan, tupan, spoons, washboard, jaw harp, musical saw, handbells, tubular handbells. Two instruments people expect to find here are missing on purpose. The piano and the cimbalom have strings, so they belong with the [string instruments](/string-instruments/) and the [keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/) respectively, however hard you hit them. ## Read next - [Types of instruments: the five families, and how an instrument gets into one](/types-of-instruments/) - [String instruments](/string-instruments/), [woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/), [brass instruments](/brass-instruments/) and [keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/) - [Is the harp a percussion instrument?](/is-harp-percussion-instrument/) and [is the piano a string instrument?](/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/) - [Orchestra vs. band](/orchestra-vs-band/) and [orchestra vs. symphony vs. philharmonic](/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/) ## FAQs ### What are percussion instruments? Instruments played by striking, shaking or scraping. They divide into membranophones, where a stretched head makes the sound — timpani, snare, congas, djembe, tabla — and idiophones, where the body of the instrument itself rings, which covers cymbals, triangle, claves, maracas, the steel pan and every mallet instrument. ### What is the difference between a xylophone and a marimba? How the bars are cut. A xylophone bar is undercut shallowly so its first strong overtone sits a twelfth above the fundamental, which produces a hard, dry crack. A marimba bar is hollowed far more deeply, dropping that overtone to two octaves above the fundamental, where it blends in and gives a warm tone with real sustain. The marimba is also lower and larger — four to five octaves against three or four — and it sounds where it is written, while a xylophone sounds an octave higher. ### Is the piano a percussion instrument? Not in any formal scheme. Hornbostel–Sachs numbers it 314.122-4-8, a struck board zither operated by a keyboard, which makes it a string instrument played percussively. Orchestras seat the pianist with the percussion when a score calls for piano, which is where the confusion comes from, and this site files it with the keyboards. ### What is the easiest percussion instrument to learn? A cajón gets you further on the first afternoon than anything else, because there is no tuning, no setup and no stand, and two hand positions give you a bass note and a snare. Getting a good sound out of a djembe takes longer than people expect — the slap is a technique, not a hard hit. Nothing in the family is easy to play well; the mallet instruments in particular require reading music at speed. ### How many percussionists are in an orchestra? Usually a timpanist plus three section percussionists, with extras hired for pieces that need them. The timpani are a separate chair with a separate audition and the player does not double on anything else. The section percussionists cover everything the score names between them, which can mean one player moving across four instruments in a single movement. ### Is a tam-tam the same as a gong? No. A gong has a raised boss hammered into the center, which gives it a definite pitch — the gongs of a gamelan are tuned instruments. A tam-tam is flat, has no boss and has no definite pitch at all. The large bronze disc at the back of a symphony orchestra is a tam-tam, and the word entered symphonic scores in the nineteenth century specifically to distinguish the two. --- ### [Keyboard Instruments: The Full List, and Which One to Learn On](https://promusicvault.com/keyboard-instruments/) **Published:** February 14, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› Keyboard Instruments: The Full List, and Which One to Learn On A keyboard instrument is anything you play from a row of keys. That is the whole definition, which is why the group holds both a thirty-dollar melodica and a cathedral organ: a keyboard is a control surface, not a way of making sound. Four things can happen behind the keys. A string is struck, a string is plucked, air is driven past a reed or through a pipe, or a piece of metal is hit. Since the 1930s there has been a fifth answer — nothing physical happens at all and the sound is generated electrically. Almost every difference that matters between these instruments follows from which of those it is. ## Table of Contents - [Every keyboard instrument, and what actually makes its sound](#every-keyboard-instrument-and-what-actually-makes-its-sound) - [A keyboard is an interface, not a family](#a-keyboard-is-an-interface-not-a-family) - [The ones with strings](#the-ones-with-strings) - [Piano](#piano) - [Harpsichord](#harpsichord) - [Clavichord](#clavichord) - [Spinet and virginal](#spinet-and-virginal) - [The ones that run on air](#the-ones-that-run-on-air) - [Pipe organ](#pipe-organ) - [Harmonium and reed organ](#harmonium-and-reed-organ) - [Accordion](#accordion) - [Melodica](#melodica) - [The ones that hit metal](#the-ones-that-hit-metal) - [Celesta](#celesta) - [Toy piano and dulcitone](#toy-piano-and-dulcitone) - [Carillon](#carillon) - [The electric and electronic ones](#the-electric-and-electronic-ones) - [Electric piano](#electric-piano) - [Hammond organ](#hammond-organ) - [Synthesizer](#synthesizer) - [Digital piano, arranger keyboard, MIDI controller](#digital-piano-arranger-keyboard-midi-controller) - [Which keyboard instrument to buy](#which-keyboard-instrument-to-buy) - [Weighted keys are the specification that decides it](#weighted-keys-are-the-specification-that-decides-it) - [The cheaper 88-key option](#the-cheaper-88key-option) - [If you are not trying to learn piano](#if-you-are-not-trying-to-learn-piano) - [Whichever one you buy, buy a book with it](#whichever-one-you-buy-buy-a-book-with-it) - [And if it is the accordion you want](#and-if-it-is-the-accordion-you-want) - [The harpsichord, the Hammond and the Rhodes](#the-harpsichord-the-hammond-and-the-rhodes) - [Read next](#read-next) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Every keyboard instrument, and what actually makes its sound InstrumentWhat makes the soundReally belongs toWhere you meet it**Piano**Felt hammers strike strings and fall away againStringsEverywhere**Clavichord**A brass blade presses the string and stays against itStringsHome practice, early music**Harpsichord**A plectrum on a rising jack plucks the string and lets goStringsBaroque solo and continuo playing**Spinet, virginal**The same pluck in a smaller case, strings set at an angleStringsDomestic Baroque music**Pipe organ**Air driven through tuned pipesWindChurches, concert halls**Harmonium, reed organ**Air over free metal reeds, pumped by the feetWindChapels, Indian classical music**Accordion**Air over free metal reeds, pumped by bellowsWindCajun, norteño, polka, folk**Melodica**Air over free metal reeds, blown down a mouthpieceWindReggae, and school music rooms**Celesta**Hammers strike metal bars over wooden resonatorsPercussionOrchestral color**Toy piano**Hammers strike metal rodsPercussionNurseries, and a small serious repertoire**Carillon**Batons and pedals swing clappers against bronze bellsPercussionBell towers**Electric piano**Hammers strike metal tines or reeds; a pickup hears themElectricSoul, jazz, seventies rock**Hammond organ**Toothed metal wheels spin past magnetic pickupsElectricGospel, blues, prog**Synthesizer**Circuits or software build the waveform from nothingElectronicEvery kind of modern music**Digital piano**Recordings of a real piano, played back by weighted keysElectronicLearning at home**Arranger keyboard**The same, plus hundreds of other voices and backing rhythmsElectronicSongwriting, children, church halls**MIDI controller**Nothing at all — it sends numbers to a computerElectronicStudios and bedrooms A few more have keyboards and rarely get counted. The **clavinet** is a clavichord with pickups bolted on, and it is the sound on Stevie Wonder’s *Superstition*. The **hurdy-gurdy** has a row of keys along the side that press tangents onto strings while a rosined wheel bows them. The **ondes Martenot** and the **Mellotron** both have keyboards; one is an oscillator, the other a rack of tape players. What none of them has is anything in common with each other beyond the keys. ## A keyboard is an interface, not a family The five-family scheme taught in schools — strings, brass, woodwind, percussion, keyboards — puts keyboards alongside the others as though they were the same kind of category. They are not. The other four are defined by what starts the sound; keyboards are defined by what your hands touch. Sort the same instruments by sound source instead and they scatter. A piano goes in with the strings, an organ with the wind instruments, a celesta with the percussion. That is exactly what the formal system used by museums and organologists does, and it is why [the piano can honestly be called a string instrument](/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/) and a percussion instrument in the same sentence: a hammer hits a string, and both halves of that are true. Neither scheme is wrong. The school one groups instruments by how you learn them, which is genuinely useful — anyone who can find middle C on a piano can find it on an organ, an accordion and a synthesizer. [The five families and how they are decided](/types-of-instruments/) covers the other four. ## The ones with strings ### Piano Bartolomeo Cristofori built the first one in Florence around 1700 and called it a *gravicembalo col piano e forte* — a harpsichord with soft and loud. That was the entire selling point. The hammer is thrown at the string and immediately falls back, so it is your finger speed, not the mechanism, that sets the volume, and no earlier keyboard could do that at a useful loudness. A full piano has 88 keys, running from A0 to C8. Grands lay the strings horizontally and let gravity return the hammers, which is why they repeat notes faster and cost more; uprights stand the strings on end to fit in a room. Digital pianos copy the feel with weighted key mechanisms and the sound with recordings, and for a first instrument they have essentially won. ### Harpsichord Pressing a harpsichord key raises a thin slip of wood called a jack, and a plectrum set into it plucks the string on the way past. A pluck is a pluck however hard you hit the key, so touch changes the volume by around a decibel — near enough to nothing. Players change the sound by registration instead: stops that bring in a second or third set of strings at different pitches, a coupler, and often a second keyboard. It was the loud keyboard instrument of the Baroque, which is why almost every continuo part written before about 1770 assumes one. A playable instrument starts around $4,400 used and $12,000 or so new from a maker. [Piano versus harpsichord](/piano-vs-harpsichord/) goes through the differences properly. ### Clavichord The quietest instrument in music, and the only pre-piano keyboard that answers to the weight of a finger. A brass blade — the tangent — rises against the string and stays there, so it both sounds the note and sets the pitch, and it goes on doing so while the key is held. Rock the finger and the pitch bends: that is Bebung, and no other keyboard instrument can do it. The price of that control is about 50 dB at two meters, which is below normal speech. Bach’s sons practiced on clavichords and nobody has ever performed on one to a room. [Clavichord versus harpsichord](/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/) has the full comparison, including what each realistically costs. ### Spinet and virginal Both are harpsichords that have been made to fit a house. A virginal is a rectangular box with the strings running left to right, parallel to the keyboard; a spinet sets them at an angle in a wing-shaped case. One set of strings each, no registration, no second manual. They were the domestic instruments while the harpsichord proper was the professional one — much the same relationship as an upright to a grand. Confusingly, American piano makers of the 1930s onwards also sold small uprights as “spinet pianos”. Those have hammers and nothing to do with plucking. ## The ones that run on air ### Pipe organ The oldest keyboard instrument by a wide margin. Ctesibius of Alexandria built a water-pressurised organ, the hydraulis, in the third century BC — so the keyboard predates the piano by roughly two thousand years. Each key opens a valve and lets wind into a pipe, and a pipe sounds one note at one volume. Everything expressive an organist does comes from choosing which ranks of pipes are speaking: stops select them, couplers link the manuals and the pedalboard together, and a swell box behind shutters gives the only real dynamic control on the instrument. A large cathedral organ runs to several thousand pipes and four or five manuals, and it is played with the feet as much as the hands. ### Harmonium and reed organ No pipes — air is pushed past free metal reeds, the same sound source as a harmonica or an accordion. Western reed organs are pumped by treadles under the player’s feet, which is why they filled chapels and parlours through the nineteenth century: no organ builder, no loft, no blower. The Indian harmonium is the same instrument rebuilt to sit on the floor, with a hand bellows worked by the left hand while the right plays. It is now standard in kirtan, qawwali and Hindustani vocal accompaniment, and it is the one form of the instrument still being made in quantity. ### Accordion Cyrill Demian patented the accordion in Vienna in 1829, and it is the keyboard instrument that carries its own wind supply. The bellows drive air past free reeds; the right hand plays melody on either piano keys or rows of buttons, and the left hand works a grid of bass and chord buttons. The split that decides everything is piano keys versus buttons. A piano accordion plays in any key and its keyboard is already familiar, which is why beginner method books assume one. A three-row diatonic button accordion is lighter and louder for its size but plays only in the three keys printed on the box, which is exactly what conjunto, norteño and Cajun music want. [Best accordions for beginners](/best-accordions-for-beginners/) works through the choice, and [what accordions cost](/how-much-do-accordions-cost/) covers the money. If what you have in mind is smaller and hexagonal, that is [a concertina](/concertina-vs-accordion/). ### Melodica Hohner puts the melodica on the market in 1958: free reeds again, but blown directly down a mouthpiece rather than pumped, so it responds to breath the way a wind instrument does. It was designed for classrooms and is still sold by the classful, and it is also a serious instrument in the hands of anyone who has heard Augustus Pablo’s dub records. ## The ones that hit metal ### Celesta Auguste Mustel built the celesta in Paris in 1886. It looks like a small upright piano and works like one, except the hammers strike steel bars suspended over wooden resonator boxes. The sound is a soft bell with none of a glockenspiel’s attack. Tchaikovsky heard one in Paris, had an instrument shipped to Russia while keeping quiet about it, and gave it the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in 1892. That tune is still what most people are hearing when they hear a celesta, along with Hedwig’s Theme. ### Toy piano and dulcitone A toy piano strikes metal rods rather than strings, which is why it sounds nothing like the instrument it imitates and why it is properly a percussion instrument. It also has a real repertoire — John Cage wrote his Suite for Toy Piano in 1948, and composers have kept writing for it since. The dulcitone struck tuning forks instead of bars, which made it quiet enough for a house and stable enough to be dragged around by touring musicians who could not rely on finding a piano. It has not been built in a century. ### Carillon The largest keyboard instrument there is, and the only one played with the fists. A carillon’s keyboard is a rack of wooden batons, plus a pedalboard, linked by wires to the clappers of at least 23 bronze bells hung in a tower. The player strikes the batons with a loosely closed hand, and how hard decides how loud, so it has the dynamic range a pipe organ lacks. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) ## The electric and electronic ones ### Electric piano A Rhodes and a Wurlitzer are mechanical instruments with microphones on them, not electronic ones. Press a key on a Rhodes and a hammer strikes a metal tine next to an electromagnetic pickup; on a Wurlitzer it strikes a flat metal reed read by an electrostatic pickup. Unplug either and you can still hear it, faintly, from the other side of the room. That is why the two sound so different from each other and from any sample of them: the Wurlitzer’s reed distorts when it is hit hard and the Rhodes’ tine rings clean, and both behaviors come from bent metal rather than from a circuit. ### Hammond organ Laurens Hammond’s organ went on sale in 1935 and generates its sound with 91 toothed metal wheels spinning next to magnetic pickups, one frequency per wheel. The drawbars mix nine of those frequencies together for each note, which is additive synthesis built out of moving parts twenty years before anyone called it that. It was sold to churches as a cheap substitute for pipes and was adopted instead by gospel, blues, jazz and rock players, mostly for things its designer never intended — key click, drawbar changes mid-phrase, and a rotating Leslie speaker cabinet that Hammond himself refused to sell. ### Synthesizer The first keyboard instrument with no moving sound source at all. Oscillators produce a raw waveform, a filter removes part of it, an envelope shapes how it starts and stops, and the keyboard tells the oscillators which pitch to run at. Robert Moog’s instruments made this playable in the mid-1960s, and the Minimoog of 1970 made it portable. A synthesizer is not a piano substitute and is a poor first instrument for someone who wants to learn to play. Its keys are usually short, light and unweighted, and the point of the instrument is designing sounds rather than performing repertoire. ### Digital piano, arranger keyboard, MIDI controller These three look alike on a shelf and are built for completely different jobs. A **digital piano** has 88 weighted keys and is trying to be one instrument convincingly. An **arranger keyboard** has 61 light keys, several hundred voices and automatic backing rhythms, and is trying to be a one-person band. A **MIDI controller** makes no sound whatsoever — it sends note numbers to software, and without a computer it is an expensive plank. Buying one when you wanted another is the usual way a first keyboard purchase goes wrong, and it costs a few hundred dollars to find out. ## Which keyboard instrument to buy Most keyboard instruments are not things you buy. Pipe organs are installed, carillons are in towers, and a harpsichord or clavichord comes from a specialist maker at four or five figures. What is actually on sale is the electronic end, and the choice there comes down to one question: are you learning to play the piano, or do you want a keyboard to make music with? ### Weighted keys are the specification that decides it Three different things get called “weighted”, and only one of them is what a piano teacher means. - **Hammer action** puts a real pivoting hammer behind every key, so the key pushes back the way a piano’s does. Graded versions make the bass keys heavier than the treble, as on an acoustic. This is the only action that builds the finger strength a real piano asks for. - **Semi-weighted** is a spring with a lead weight added. Heavier than a synth key, and nothing like a hammer. - **Unweighted**, also sold as synth action, is a spring alone. Fast and light, which is what an organ or synth player wants and what a piano student has to unlearn. Touch sensitivity is a separate specification and it is the one to check first on anything cheap. It means the instrument hears how hard you hit the key and plays louder or softer to match. A key can be unweighted and still touch-sensitive, which is fine; a key that is neither plays every note at one volume, which makes practicing dynamics impossible and is the single thing that makes a bargain keyboard worthless. The bundles at around $115 that throw in a stand, a bench and headphones are almost all in that last category. The accessories are not what makes them cheap. If you are learning piano### Yamaha P-145BT 88 hammer-weighted keys, graded so the bass end is heavier than the treble, in something you can carry with one arm. This is the current generation of Yamaha’s entry hammer action, the one the rest of the price bracket gets measured against. The P-45 and the P71 are the generation it replaced and are not enough cheaper to be worth choosing. A sustain footswitch and a music rest are in the box; a stand is not, and it is the first thing to add. Around $470 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4ghHgcR) **Same job, less money:** Donner DEP-20, 88 weighted keys — around $310 **Not learning piano:** Yamaha PSR-E383, 61 touch-sensitive keys — around $200 InstrumentKeys and actionWhat it is forPrice**Yamaha P-145BT**88, graded hammer actionLearning piano properly, and keeping the instrumentAround $470[Check price](https://amzn.to/4ghHgcR)**Donner DEP-20**88, hammer actionThe same job for a hundred and sixty dollars lessAround $310[Check price](https://amzn.to/4is67Ml)**Yamaha PSR-E383**61, unweighted but touch-sensitiveSongs, sounds and backing rhythms rather than piano techniqueAround $200[Check price](https://www.amazon.com/PSR-E383-Sensitive-Portable-Keyboard-Beginners/dp/B0D1CTPFL8?crid=2QV6CFVIUEBLQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.lCjzO46JfcvUgJpxemMyTZs-KpYFWXoxE6F8QMKzYCflyYF0lObf7BhS_M_Taglgplk-l-1JSIDXqDCHw1ZBB5r5nv_tSa5NbSnOQQCxx59au89ThyrTK2r3DIwrBp9cEIwn4WkMwkOGxIhUYuloJ6fKdNZrtNUX7BfB1udAYR5oQ8wX4T0dl8TwQZ_aWIhUO8oof6YO9rBgm6SBvzPiBWNLTko0-05wh9tmV-F29U-2-zNUZJk10RzzrT0m3CpQslprwLbBThQWOQOnCDW0xo3ZwId3eAI8SP3VZEqfqlY.4mynMx8nevwA2DMd87p_ZegGXrThzmAMRsG1whtEo9Q&dib_tag=se&keywords=Yamaha%2BPSR-E373&qid=1745366814&sprefix=yamaha%2Bpsr-e373%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-2&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.5998aa40-ec6f-4947-a68f-cd087fee0848&th=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=7655a0442d63cee93532c9a40b902e7b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) ### The cheaper 88-key option The Donner DEP-20 does the same thing for around $310: 88 full-size hammer-action keys, touch sensitivity, a sustain pedal and a power supply. It is heavier than the Yamaha, its speakers are weaker, and its sounds are not in the same class. None of that changes what the keys teach your fingers, which at this stage is what you are paying for. Donner also sells it packaged with a stand for about $100 more. Take the bare piano and buy a stand separately. ### If you are not trying to learn piano Then weighted keys are a cost with no benefit, and 61 light ones are better — quicker under the fingers, and several pounds lighter to carry. The Yamaha PSR-E383 is around $200 for 61 touch-sensitive keys, 650 voices, 260 backing styles and a set of built-in lessons. Touch sensitivity is what the model number is for. Yamaha sells several near-identical-looking 61-key boards below this one, and on the cheapest of them the keys play every note at the same volume however hard you hit them. The number that matters is **PSR-E383**. ### Whichever one you buy, buy a book with it An instrument on a stand teaches nobody anything. Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course has been the standard adult starting point for decades, it assumes you cannot read music, and Level One costs about as much as two coffees. The first thing to read### Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course: Lesson Book, Level One Written for adults rather than adapted from a children’s course, which is why it starts on the black keys and has you playing with both hands within a few pages. It works the same on a weighted 88 and on a 61-key board. Around $8 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/4gCbJkS) ### And if it is the accordion you want The accordion is the one traditional keyboard instrument still made in quantity, cheap enough to own and loud enough to take to a session. It is also the one where the entry point is genuinely expensive: a real beginner instrument runs from about $600, and [the accordions worth starting on](/best-accordions-for-beginners/) covers which one, in which key, and why the number of bass buttons decides more than the price does. The full-size piano accordion — 34 treble keys, 72 bass buttons, 17 lb of it — is the [Hohner Hohnica 1305](https://www.amazon.com/Hohner-1305-72-Bass-Piano-Accordion/dp/B00U0SN3XI?crid=1OBFJVIC4YGZU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.K6vsi3kobGCQtohjgYWVGAzEcCIKu8izBb88pmlkn1blWU-CpIcBu78o9HjauevjiGKMm8bsDXgWWyc1cbF6QvYlBI7SWKFKaUdNCd5wtBkiTNOXQQvRhRLdEvkjW79InOPP7DVBfLENnzHGuhVtdeenK2LbJ4Wfu0pgrAwZqOeQYya4EUYhPAP8liZSkoe0vdbnauo3iFLRg-9GTuV0iTlAX5xL0IasbCx2HTUrOAkaFYiQu226n0DoibYNN7ugZYVnkuNSXEZ7rJJmkY9Nvj-7t-23yxxAy2MUkozswEg.XrKIvlBcbBbLTIEHkGsBXnDgJooehZMKZezWRbVVKXc&dib_tag=se&keywords=hohner+accordion+1305&qid=1745367077&sprefix=hohner+accordion+1305%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-6&linkCode=ll1&tag=sjj363-20&linkId=2ccab7d00f0ba7ba87e573b3932262cc&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), at around $940. That is not a first accordion — it is a lot of instrument to hold up while you find out whether you like it — but it is the one to end up with if you know you will. ### The harpsichord, the Hammond and the Rhodes These are not purchases so much as projects. A harpsichord comes from a maker or a kit, a tonewheel Hammond weighs 425 lb before you add the Leslie, and a Rhodes needs a technician who has seen one before. What people actually do is buy the sound: any digital piano or arranger keyboard has harpsichord, organ and electric piano voices built in, and the good software versions cost less than shipping a real one. That is a genuine substitute for listening and a poor one for playing. A sampled harpsichord will not teach you registration, and a Hammond emulation without a real drawbar under your left hand is a different instrument. It is, though, how nearly everyone who plays these sounds today is producing them. ## Read next - [Types of instruments: the five families, and how an instrument gets into one](/types-of-instruments/) - [Piano vs. harpsichord](/piano-vs-harpsichord/) and [clavichord vs. harpsichord](/clavichord-vs-harpsichord/) - [Is the piano a string instrument?](/is-the-piano-a-string-instrument/) - [Harp vs. piano](/harp-vs-piano/) and [harp vs. harpsichord](/harp-vs-harpsichord/) - [Best accordions for beginners](/best-accordions-for-beginners/) ## FAQs ### What are the four types of keyboard instrument? Sorted by what makes the sound rather than by what you touch, there are four: string keyboards (piano, harpsichord, clavichord), wind keyboards (pipe organ, harmonium, accordion, melodica), struck-metal keyboards (celesta, toy piano, carillon), and electric or electronic ones (Hammond organ, Rhodes, synthesizer, digital piano). The keyboard itself belongs to none of them — it is the control surface they share. ### What is the oldest keyboard instrument? The organ. Ctesibius of Alexandria built the hydraulis, a water-pressurised pipe organ played from a row of keys, in the third century BC. The keyboard is therefore about two thousand years older than the piano, which Bartolomeo Cristofori built around 1700. ### Is the piano a keyboard instrument or a string instrument? Both, under two different systems. The school five-family scheme groups instruments by how they are played and puts the piano with the keyboards. The classification used by museums groups them by what makes the sound, and a felt hammer hitting a stretched string is a struck chordophone — a string instrument, and specifically a percussive one. ### What is the difference between a digital piano and a keyboard? A digital piano has 88 hammer-weighted keys and a handful of voices, and exists to imitate one instrument closely enough to learn on. A portable keyboard has 61 light keys and several hundred voices with automatic backing rhythms, and exists to let one person make a whole arrangement. The key action is the real difference; the voice count is marketing. ### Do you need 88 keys to learn piano? Not for the first year, but you will. Beginner method books stay well inside five octaves, so 61 keys hold out for a while. Weighted keys are the specification that cannot wait: fingers trained on light springy keys have to be retrained for a real piano action, and that is a harder problem than running out of notes at the top. ### Is an accordion a keyboard instrument? A piano accordion is, since the right hand plays a keyboard. Sorted by sound source it is a free-reed wind instrument, the same category as a harmonica. A button accordion has no keyboard at all, only rows of buttons, which is why it is usually treated as a relative rather than a member. ### Which keyboard instrument is easiest to learn? The melodica, if the question is how fast you get a tune out. It costs about as much as a takeaway, needs no stand or power, and one row of keys plus a breath gives a note. Of the instruments worth staying with, the piano is the easiest to find teachers, books and free lessons for, which matters more over a year than any difference in the instruments themselves. --- ### [Brass Instruments: The Full List, and Which One to Start On](https://promusicvault.com/brass-instruments/) **Published:** May 23, 2021 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Pro Music Vault › [Home](https://promusicvault.com "Home")› Brass Instruments: The Full List, and Which One to Start On A brass instrument is one you play by buzzing your lips into a cup-shaped mouthpiece. That is the whole definition, and the metal has nothing to do with it — which is why a saxophone made entirely of brass is a woodwind, and why a wooden cornett and a hollowed alphorn are not. Your lips are the reed. The tube in your hands only decides which of the notes they can already produce will actually come out, and there are three ways it does that: valves that add tubing, a slide that lengthens it, or nothing at all. Almost every difference that matters across the family follows from that, plus one other thing — whether the tube is the same width all the way along or gets steadily wider. ## Table of Contents - [Every brass instrument, and what its tube is doing](#every-brass-instrument-and-what-its-tube-is-doing) - [The shape of the tube decides the sound](#the-shape-of-the-tube-decides-the-sound) - [Cylindrical: bright and cutting](#cylindrical-bright-and-cutting) - [Conical: round and warm](#conical-round-and-warm) - [Valves, a slide, or nothing](#valves-a-slide-or-nothing) - [The four that make up a brass section](#the-four-that-make-up-a-brass-section) - [Trumpet](#trumpet) - [French horn](#french-horn) - [Trombone](#trombone) - [Tuba](#tuba) - [The relatives, and which one gets confused with which](#the-relatives-and-which-one-gets-confused-with-which) - [Cornet and flugelhorn](#cornet-and-flugelhorn) - [Mellophone](#mellophone) - [Baritone and euphonium](#baritone-and-euphonium) - [Sousaphone and helicon](#sousaphone-and-helicon) - [The ones on every list that hardly anyone plays](#the-ones-on-every-list-that-hardly-anyone-plays) - [Three dates that made the modern brass section](#three-dates-that-made-the-modern-brass-section) - [Why your trumpet's C is not the piano's C](#why-your-trumpets-c-is-not-the-pianos-c) - [Which brass instrument to start on](#which-brass-instrument-to-start-on) - [Trumpet or trombone](#trumpet-or-trombone) - [The step up, and when it is worth taking](#the-step-up-and-when-it-is-worth-taking) - [If you replace the mouthpiece, match the shank](#if-you-replace-the-mouthpiece-match-the-shank) - [Read next](#read-next) - [FAQs](#faqs) ## Every brass instrument, and what its tube is doing InstrumentPitched inHow the pitch changesBoreWhere you meet it**Trumpet**B♭Three piston valvesCylindricalOrchestra, band, jazz, everywhere**Cornet**B♭Three piston valvesConicalBritish brass bands, older orchestral parts**Flugelhorn**B♭Three piston valvesConical, widelyJazz, brass bands**Piccolo trumpet**B♭ or A, an octave upFour piston valvesCylindricalBaroque solos, and *Penny Lane***French horn**F, or F and B♭ togetherRotary valvesConicalOrchestra, wind band, film scores**Mellophone**FThree piston valvesConicalMarching bands and drum corps**Trombone**B♭A slide, in seven positionsCylindricalOrchestra, band, jazz, ska**Baritone horn**B♭Three or four valvesNarrowly conicalBrass bands, school bands**Euphonium**B♭Three or four valvesWidely conicalConcert and brass bands**Tuba**BB♭, CC, E♭ or FThree to six valvesConicalOrchestra, band, brass quintet**Sousaphone**BB♭Three valvesConicalMarching bands, New Orleans brass bands**Bugle**B♭ or GNothing — lips onlyConical; the US pattern is cylindricalMilitary calls, Scouts, drum corps**Cimbasso**F or CFour to six rotary valvesCylindricalVerdi and Puccini operas, film scores**Helicon**BB♭ or E♭Three valvesConicalCentral European bands; the sousaphone’s parent**Alto (tenor) horn**E♭Three valvesConicalBritish brass bands**Cornett, serpent**VariousFinger holes, like a recorderConicalRenaissance and early Baroque revivals**Alphorn**Usually F♯ or G♭Nothing — lips onlyConicalSwiss folk music The last three rows are the ones that give the family definition away. A cornett is carved from wood and covered in leather, a serpent is a wooden bass version of it shaped like its name, and an alphorn is a hollowed spruce log twelve feet long. All three are played by buzzing the lips, so all three are brass instruments. Meanwhile the saxophone, which is brass from bell to neck, is a woodwind, because a cane reed makes its sound. ## The shape of the tube decides the sound Two brass instruments can be the same length, in the same key, with the same fingerings, and sound nothing alike. The reason is the bore — whether the tubing holds one diameter for most of its run or widens continuously from the mouthpiece to the bell. ### Cylindrical: bright and cutting The trumpet and the trombone are the cylindrical ones. Their tubing stays at roughly one diameter until it flares into the bell in the last stretch, and the result is a tone with a hard edge to it that carries across an ensemble. This is the sound people mean when they say a section is *brassy*. The trombone has no choice about it — a slide can only work on a tube of constant diameter, which is why the one brass instrument without valves is also permanently in this group. The cimbasso is the odd cylindrical bass, and it is why Verdi’s low brass writing sounds so much more menacing than a tuba playing the same notes. ### Conical: round and warm Everything else widens as it goes: cornet, flugelhorn, horn, alto horn, baritone, euphonium, tuba, sousaphone. The tone is rounder, blends more readily and cuts less. A flugelhorn is the extreme case — same key as a trumpet, same fingerings, and it will disappear into a section rather than sit on top of it, which is exactly what a jazz player picks one up for. The clearest demonstration is the cornet and the trumpet. Same key of B♭, same length of tubing, same fingerings for every note, and a cornet player can read a trumpet part without changing anything. The cornet still sounds mellower, and it is entirely because its tube tapers where the trumpet’s does not. [Flugelhorn vs. cornet](/flugelhorn-vs-cornet/) takes the comparison one step further along the same axis. ### Valves, a slide, or nothing Buzz into a fixed length of tube and you get the harmonic series — a handful of notes, spread wide apart at the bottom and closer together as you go up. That is all a natural brass instrument has, which is why every bugle call in the US Army is built from the same five notes and why no bugle call contains a scale. Valves fixed that. Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blühmel took out a Prussian patent on the idea in April 1818, and it is the single change that turned a family of ceremonial noisemakers into orchestral instruments. Each valve drops in an extra loop of tubing when you press it: the second lowers the pitch a semitone, the first a whole tone, the third a tone and a half, and the seven usable combinations fill in every note between the harmonics. Pistons move up and down and are what trumpets, cornets, euphoniums and most tubas use; rotary valves turn instead, are quieter and smoother under the finger, and are standard on the French horn and on German orchestral trumpets and tubas. The trombone did not need fixing, because it had solved the problem in the fifteenth century. Its slide lengthens the whole instrument continuously through seven positions, each one a semitone lower than the last, and because the movement is continuous rather than stepped it is the only brass instrument that can play a true glissando and the only one where intonation is entirely in the player’s arm rather than partly in the manufacturer’s tubing lengths. ## The four that make up a brass section A symphony orchestra’s brass is four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and one tuba — ten to twelve players against sixty-odd strings, and they can still cover the lot when the score asks. Every other brass instrument is either a specialist substitution for one of those four or a relative that lives somewhere other than the concert hall. ### Trumpet The highest of the four, and about four and a half feet of mostly cylindrical B♭ tubing with three piston valves. It carries melody and it is designed to be heard, which is both why it gets the tune and why practicing one in a flat is a negotiation. It is also the most common first brass instrument by a wide margin, which cuts both ways: the fingerings transfer to cornet, flugelhorn, mellophone and baritone, and there will be six other trumpet players competing for the first-chair seat. [The fingering chart](/trumpet-fingering-chart/) covers the notes, [what a trumpet costs](/how-much-does-a-trumpet-cost/) covers the money, and [the brands to avoid](/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/) covers the ways a first purchase goes wrong. ### French horn The one with the bell pointing backward and the player’s right hand inside it. It descends from the hunting horn of seventeenth-century France, it uses rotary valves worked by the left hand, and it is the hardest of the four to play in tune — the notes of its harmonic series sit so close together in the upper register that neighboring ones are a hair apart, which is why even professionals crack them in public. The hand in the bell is not there for support. Closing it off lowers the pitch, which is how horn players filled in the notes their valveless instruments could not reach for the whole of the eighteenth century, and it survives as a technique: written a certain way, the part asks for a stopped note, and the sound goes thin and metallic. No other brass instrument is played with a hand inside it. A single horn is one instrument: three valves and one set of tubing, pitched in F or, less often, in B♭. A double horn adds a fourth valve under the thumb that switches the air between an F set of tubing about twelve feet long and a B♭ set about nine. The shorter side is more secure high up and the longer side is richer low down, and having both is why the double is what almost every orchestral player owns. [What a French horn costs](/how-much-does-a-french-horn-cost/) goes through the difference in money. Despite the name, [the English horn is neither English nor a horn](/english-horn-vs-french-horn/) — it is an alto oboe, and it is a woodwind. ### Trombone Held horizontally, played with the right hand pushing the slide and the left hand carrying the weight. The B♭ tenor is the standard instrument and it reads in bass clef at concert pitch — no transposition, so what is written is what sounds, which makes it far and away the easiest brass instrument to learn to read on. An orchestra’s three are usually two tenors and one bass, and they spend a lot of their time harmonizing as a block rather than playing separate lines. A bass trombone is the same length with a wider bore and one or two thumb valves that add tubing for the low register. [What a trombone costs](/how-much-does-a-trombone-cost/) and [what one weighs](/how-much-does-a-trombone-weigh/) cover the practicalities. ### Tuba The lowest and largest, and the foundation the rest of the section is stacked on — an orchestra carries exactly one. Confusingly, *tuba* is Latin for trumpet, which is what the Romans called their straight ceremonial horn. Tubas come in four common keys. BB♭ and E♭ are the band and brass-band instruments, CC is what most American orchestral players use, and F is the small one for solo and chamber work. A school will hand out a BB♭. [What a tuba costs](/how-much-does-a-tuba-cost/) and [what one weighs](/how-much-does-a-tuba-weigh/) are the two questions everyone asks, in that order. ## The relatives, and which one gets confused with which ### Cornet and flugelhorn Both are B♭ instruments with the same fingerings as a trumpet, and both are conical where the trumpet is cylindrical. The cornet is the compact one with the mellower edge, and it was the melody instrument of the nineteenth-century band before the trumpet displaced it — Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky all wrote real parts for it. It is still the top voice of a British brass band, which has no trumpets in it at all. The flugelhorn takes the taper further and gets a soft, covered, almost vocal sound out of it. It has a thin orchestral repertoire and a large jazz one, and it is a doubling instrument — nearly everyone who plays one started on trumpet or cornet, and it costs what a second horn costs. The cornet is not in that position at all: a British brass band has no trumpets to start on, so the cornet is its beginner instrument, and it seats ten of them to the flugelhorn’s one. ### Mellophone A marching band’s substitute for the French horn, and the reason is geometry: a horn’s bell points behind the player, which is fine in a concert hall with a wall to reflect it and useless on a field. The mellophone is pitched in F like the horn and reads the same written notes, so a horn player can pick one up in August and play the right pitches on sight. Everything physical is different — trumpet fingerings, a trumpet-width mouthpiece rim, right hand on the valves, and about two pounds less to carry. [Mellophone vs. French horn](/mellophone-vs-french-horn/) works through what transfers and what does not, and [mellophone vs. trumpet](/mellophone-vs-trumpet/) covers the switch most marching mellophone players are actually making. ### Baritone and euphonium These two are the same length as a tenor trombone — B♭, one octave below a trumpet — with the same range and, near enough, the same fingerings, and they are told apart only by how fast the tube widens. The baritone’s bore is narrower and its wrap tighter, so it sounds brighter and closer to a trombone. The euphonium’s is wider and closer to a tuba’s, so it sounds fatter and darker, and it is the one that gets the tune in a concert band. American schools use the two names almost interchangeably and hand out whichever is in the cupboard. Where it matters, it matters: a euphonium solo played on a baritone sounds thin. [Euphonium vs. baritone](/euphonium-vs-baritone/) is the full comparison, and [euphonium vs. tuba](/euphonium-vs-tuba/) and [tuba vs. baritone](/tuba-vs-baritone/) cover the step down from there. ### Sousaphone and helicon A sousaphone is a BB♭ tuba rebuilt to wrap around the player so the weight sits on one shoulder instead of in the lap. Same tubing length, same range, same part. J.W. Pepper built the first one in 1893 at John Philip Sousa’s request; C.G. Conn built his own version in 1898 and got most of the credit. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) What Sousa actually wanted was the bell pointing up so the sound spread over the band rather than at whoever was behind him — the forward-facing bell everyone pictures came later, once bands were marching in front of crowds. The helicon is the instrument he was modifying: the same wrap-around idea, made in Central Europe from the 1840s, with the bell aimed sideways. It is still played across Austria, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and it is essentially extinct in American bands. [Tuba vs. sousaphone](/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) and [what a sousaphone costs](/how-much-does-a-sousaphone-cost/) have the detail. ## The ones on every list that hardly anyone plays Several of these are museum pieces, ceremonial objects or specialist hires rather than instruments anyone takes up, and it is worth knowing which is which before going looking for one. The **bugle** is alive but narrow: military ceremony, Scouting, and drum and bugle corps. It has no valves, so it plays five notes, and every call from Reveille to Taps is assembled from those. [Trumpet vs. bugle](/trumpet-vs-bugle/) covers what adding valves actually bought. It is also the one instrument here that a non-musician buys on purpose, usually for a ceremony or a troop. The specification to look for is **regulation** — the key of G with a pull-out slide to F, which the US Army fixed by specification in 1892 and which is what makes the standard calls come out at the pitch everyone expects. A [regulation bugle with a carrying bag](https://amzn.to/3InqqIg) runs around $110. Anything sold as a decorative or novelty bugle is a wall ornament and will not hold a pitch. The **piccolo trumpet** is a working professional’s instrument rather than a rare one, but it is a fourth or fifth horn, not a first. Pitched an octave above the B♭ trumpet with a fourth valve to fill in the bottom, it exists for high Baroque writing — the second Brandenburg Concerto, and the descant on *Penny Lane* that McCartney asked for after hearing it. The **cimbasso** is a contrabass valved instrument with a cylindrical bore and a bell pointing forward, and it exists because Verdi wanted a bass voice that could snarl where a tuba only rumbles. Opera houses and film scoring stages hire them. Nobody owns one casually. The **cornett** and **serpent** are the early-music survivors — wooden, finger-holed, and played with a small brass-style mouthpiece, which is the combination that makes them so strange to classify and so hard to play. The **alphorn** and the **natural horn** are the valveless ancestors, and the **alto horn** in E♭ is a genuine working instrument that happens to live almost entirely inside British-style brass bands. ## Three dates that made the modern brass section Lip-blown instruments are as old as anything in music — the two trumpets buried with Tutankhamun around 1323 BC still exist, one silver and one bronze, and both were played in 1939. For most of the three thousand years since, they could only do what a bugle does. **1818.** Stölzel and Blühmel patent the valve in Prussia. Within a generation the trumpet and horn stop being ceremonial instruments that composers wrote around and become chromatic ones that can carry a line anywhere. **1835.** Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Moritz patent the bass tuba in Berlin. The brass section finally has a bass that can play every note rather than an ophicleide or a serpent approximating one, and the shape of the modern orchestra’s low end is set. **1893.** Pepper builds the sousaphone. Nothing changes musically, but brass becomes portable at the bottom end, and the American marching band as it exists today becomes possible. The trombone sits outside all of this. It arrived fully formed as the sackbut in the fifteenth century, fully chromatic three hundred years before anything else in the family, and it has changed less since than any other instrument in an orchestra. ## Why your trumpet’s C is not the piano’s C This is the thing that derails more beginner brass players than any fingering, and it is nobody’s mistake. Most brass instruments are *transposing*: the note written on the page is not the note that comes out. Play a written C on a B♭ trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn or euphonium reading treble clef, and a piano hears B♭ — a whole tone lower. Play a written C on an F horn or a mellophone and the piano hears F, a fifth lower. The trombone, and the tuba and euphonium when they read bass clef, are the exceptions: they read concert pitch, so written C is C. The reason is that it lets one player move between instruments of different lengths without learning new fingerings. Every valved brass instrument uses the same fingering for the same *written* note; the transposition absorbs the difference in tubing. Hand a B♭ trumpet player an E♭ alto horn and they can read the part immediately. The cost is that the trumpet part and the piano part in the same piece of music are written in different keys, and a parent trying to help with practice at the piano will find every note wrong by the same interval. ## Which brass instrument to start on Realistically the choice is between two. The trumpet and the trombone are the instruments schools start beginners on, the ones with the most teachers, method books and second-hand instruments, and the two whose fingerings and slide positions open the rest of the family later. Horn and tuba players are nearly always recruited out of that group a year or two in, and marching instruments — mellophone, sousaphone, marching baritone — are assigned rather than chosen. Age matters more here than on strings. Brass needs adult-ish front teeth, lung capacity and hands, which puts a realistic start at nine to eleven, against five or six for a violin. [Orchestra vs. band](/orchestra-vs-band/) covers the wider version of that decision. ### Trumpet or trombone Three things separate them, and none of them is difficulty. - **Arms.** Sixth and seventh position on a trombone are a long way out. A small ten-year-old cannot reach them, and the usual answer is to wait a year or start on trumpet. - **Reading.** The trombone reads concert pitch in bass clef, so it agrees with the piano. The trumpet transposes, which is one more thing to explain in the first month. - **Competition.** Every school band has too many trumpets and not enough trombones. If the point is playing rather than sitting, the shortage is worth knowing about. Renting from the school is the cheapest way to find out whether any of this sticks, at roughly $20–40 a month for a trumpet or trombone and $40–70 for the large brass. Buying starts to make sense at around the one-year mark, and the school-standard instruments a teacher will point at sit between $400 and $900. The first brass instrument### Eastar ETR-380 B♭ Trumpet A hard case, a 7C mouthpiece, valve oil, gloves and a cleaning kit are in the box, so nothing else has to be bought before the first lesson. It is a beginner instrument and will be outgrown in two or three years, which is the point — it costs less than five months of rental and it answers the only question that matters in year one, which is whether the student keeps picking it up. Around $140 [Check current price](https://amzn.to/3RUObKY) **Trombone instead:** Eastar ETB-330, same idea with a slide — around $200 **Skipping the beginner stage:** Jean Paul TR-430 — around $400 InstrumentWhat it isWho it suitsPrice**Eastar ETR-380**Beginner B♭ trumpet, complete outfitA first year, or a spare horn for a household with two playersAround $140[Check price](https://amzn.to/3RUObKY)**Eastar ETB-330**Beginner B♭ tenor trombone, complete outfitThe same first year on the instrument the band is short ofAround $200[Check price](https://amzn.to/3E6UV2J)**Jean Paul TR-430**Intermediate trumpet, rose brass leadpipe, adjustable third valve slide ringA student who is already committed, or an adult returningAround $400[Check price](https://amzn.to/4wwkYZC)**Jean Paul TB-400**Intermediate tenor trombone, hard case, 12C mouthpieceThe same step up on the slide sideAround $450[Check price](https://amzn.to/4zmQ48A) ### The step up, and when it is worth taking The gap between a $140 trumpet and a $400 one is not tone, whatever the descriptions say — it is the third valve slide ring. Every trumpet plays low D and low C♯ sharp, because those two notes use all three valves and the tubing the valves add is very slightly too short when they are combined. On a beginner horn there is nothing to be done about it. On an intermediate one the third valve slide has a ring you hook a thumb into and push out as you play the note, and learning to do that without thinking is one of the things that separates a second-year player from a fourth-year one. So the honest trigger for upgrading is not time served, it is the music. When a student is playing parts that live down there, the ring stops being a specification and starts being the reason the band sounds flat. Until then the cheap horn is doing its job. ### If you replace the mouthpiece, match the shank The mouthpiece in the box is usually the first thing a student is told to change, and it is where a first accessory purchase goes wrong. Trombone, baritone and euphonium mouthpieces come in two shank sizes — the tapered end that goes into the instrument — and the same model number is sold in both. A large shank will not seat in a small-shank instrument and a small one falls into a large-shank one. The model number does not tell you which it is: a Bach 6½AL is a standard *small* shank, because the L refers to the throat and backbore rather than the shank. Take the mouthpiece that came with the instrument to the shop, or read the part number rather than the model name. Trumpets and cornets have their own version of this — a cornet’s shank is shorter and narrower, so a trumpet mouthpiece will not fit one even though the two instruments play identically. ## Read next - [Types of instruments: the five families, and how an instrument gets into one](/types-of-instruments/) - [Woodwind instruments](/woodwind-instruments/) and [keyboard instruments](/keyboard-instruments/) - [Trumpet fingering chart](/trumpet-fingering-chart/) and [trumpet brands to avoid](/trumpet-brands-to-avoid/) - [Flugelhorn vs. cornet](/flugelhorn-vs-cornet/), [euphonium vs. baritone](/euphonium-vs-baritone/), [tuba vs. sousaphone](/tuba-vs-sousaphone/) - [Orchestra vs. band](/orchestra-vs-band/) and [orchestra vs. symphony vs. philharmonic](/orchestra-vs-symphony-vs-philharmonic/) ## FAQs ### What are the brass instruments? The ones in regular use are the trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, French horn, mellophone, trombone, baritone horn, euphonium, alto horn, tuba, sousaphone and bugle. The cimbasso, helicon, cornett, serpent, alphorn and natural horn are also brass instruments, but they are specialist or historical. An orchestra uses four of them: horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba. ### Is a saxophone a brass instrument? No. It is made of brass but it is a woodwind, because a cane reed makes its sound rather than the player’s lips. Families are decided by how the sound starts, not by the material — which is also why the wooden cornett, the serpent and the alphorn are all brass instruments. ### What is the difference between a trumpet and a cornet? The bore. A trumpet’s tubing holds one diameter until it flares into the bell; a cornet’s widens the whole way, which is what makes it sound mellower. Both are in B♭, both use the same length of tubing and the same fingerings, and a cornet player can read a trumpet part unchanged. The cornet is also more compact, and its mouthpiece has a shorter, narrower shank that will not fit a trumpet. ### What is the difference between a single and a double French horn? A single horn has three valves and one set of tubing, pitched in F or occasionally B♭. A double horn adds a fourth thumb valve that switches between two sets — an F side of roughly twelve feet and a B♭ side of roughly nine. The B♭ side is more secure in the high register and the F side is warmer low down, so a double gives the player both. This is a horn term specifically; no other brass instrument comes in single and double versions. ### Which brass instrument is easiest to learn? The trombone, for the first year. It reads concert pitch so the written notes match a piano, and a slide gives you the note by moving to roughly the right place rather than by hitting one of several harmonics that share a fingering. The catch is arm length — small beginners cannot reach the outer positions. The trumpet is the more common start and has more teachers behind it. The French horn is the hardest of the family and nobody sensible begins on one. ### Why do brass instruments transpose? So that one player can move between instruments of different lengths without relearning anything. Every valved brass instrument uses the same fingering for the same written note, and the transposition absorbs the difference in tubing. A written C sounds B♭ on a B♭ trumpet and F on an F horn. The trombone, tuba and bass-clef euphonium are the exceptions and read at concert pitch. ### How many brass instruments are in an orchestra? Ten to twelve players in a standard symphony: four French horns, three trumpets, two tenor trombones, one bass trombone and one tuba. Larger late-Romantic scores add more horns and extra trumpets. A concert band carries far more brass than that and adds euphoniums, which an orchestra does not use. ### Why does a bugle only play five notes? Because it has no valves and no slide, so its tube is one fixed length. A fixed tube gives only the notes of its harmonic series, and the five in the practical middle of that range are the ones every bugle call is built from. Adding valves is exactly what turned the bugle into the trumpet, by letting the player choose between several tube lengths. --- ### [About Us](https://promusicvault.com/about-us/) **Published:** May 28, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** Hi! My name is Silas. I’m so excited to share with you how I started this blog and how I grew it with our great team. Our hope is that through this blog, we can connect you with your favorite instruments and help you learn all you need to about them. So, what is our story? I started this website because I am passionate about music and all [types of instruments](https://promusicvault.com/types-of-instruments/). Believe it or not, there wasn’t much written on the web about a lot of the more well-known instruments, not to mention the obscure or lesser-known ones. So I decided I would take it upon myself to write about them. I wrote many articles myself, then we grew and grew and I found some great writers to help with the more obscure instruments, many of which you may have never even heard of. Our team works diligently to create the most useful guides and information. We want to give you the best information and reviews to your questions and buying decisions to help in your musical journey. We will continue to do just that. Have a great day! [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) --- ### [Contact Us](https://promusicvault.com/contact-us/) **Published:** May 28, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** If you have any questions or comments about our company, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would be happy to hear from you! You can reach us by email. We look forward to hearing from you soon! Email: | [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) --- ### [We Have Acquired Ukuleleadvice.com](https://promusicvault.com/ukuleleadvice/) **Published:** August 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** That company is Promusicvault, which has made a series of acquisitions that have given it a leading position in music streaming and marketing. Its latest acquisition, **[Ukulele Advice](https://www.ukuleleadvice.com/)**, gives Promusicvault a commanding lead in the race to become the top provider of musical instrument content. This acquisition is significant for us as it will help expand musical instrument content’s breadth and depth. With these latest developments, it is clear that Promusicvault is continuing its mission to be the top destination for music lovers worldwide. With so many innovative companies under its roof, Promusicvault is quickly becoming the go-to source for everything music. [Promusicvault.com](https://promusicvault.com/) has acquired [Ukuleleadivce.com](https://ukuleleadvice.com) Learn more about our **[website acquisitions here](https://promusicvault.com/website-acquisitions)**. [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) --- ### [Website Acquisitions](https://promusicvault.com/website-acquisitions/) **Published:** August 30, 2022 **Author:** Sean **Content:** As the music industry has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, one company has been aggressively acquiring startups and building an arsenal of technology to help it stay ahead of the curve. Promusicvault, a well-known online resource for music professionals, and musical instruments have reportedly acquired several other leading websites in the space. This move is seen as a way to consolidate power in an already competitive market and create a one-stop shop for all things music. Promusicvault.com has acquired these websites: - [Borntobanjo.com](https://borntobanjo.com) - [Mandolinmasters.com](https://mandolinmasters.com) - [Betterharps.com](https://betterharps.com) - [Ukuleleadvice.com](http://ukuleleadvice.com) [See also How Much Does a Saxophone Cost? The Prices, and Why a Cheap One Costs More](https://promusicvault.com/how-much-does-a-saxophone-cost/) --- ### [Privacy Policy](https://promusicvault.com/privacy-policy/) **Published:** October 10, 2020 **Author:** Sean **Content:** ## Who we are Our website address is https://promusicvault.com. ## Legal Information Promusicvault.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 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