What Size Ukulele Should You Buy?

Four sizes, four voices — and the two or three questions that actually decide which one goes home with you.

Almost everyone who walks into the shop looking for a ukulele arrives with the same worry, and it is almost never the right one. They want to know whether their hands are too big. Across a great many counter conversations, we have met very few people for whom that was the deciding factor. What decides it, nearly always, is what the ukulele is for.

So here are the four sizes, what each one is genuinely good at, and how to tell which is yours.

Soprano — the sound in your head

The soprano is the original and the smallest, with a scale length of around thirteen inches. When someone hums a ukulele in their imagination, this is what they are hearing: bright, boxy, a little percussive, gone almost as soon as it arrives. It is the sound of the instrument's whole history, from the Hawaiian court in the 1880s through the parlour craze of the 1920s.

Its limitations are the other half of its character. The frets are close together, so complex chord shapes get fiddly above the fifth fret, and the small body will not give you volume or sustain. None of that matters if you want a ukulele to strum, to sing over, and to throw in a bag. The Flight TUS-35 travel soprano is the version of this we sell most of, and at under a hundred dollars it is the one we suggest when someone wants a ukulele for the bach or the boat.

Concert — where most adults land

Add two inches of scale and a slightly deeper body and you have the concert. The frets move apart enough to stop feeling cramped, the midrange fills out, and notes hang around a fraction longer. It keeps the ukulele character but gives you room to work.

If you are buying for yourself as an adult with no strong idea of what you want, this is the size we point at first. It is also where the interesting instruments start: the Kala Satin Mahogany Concert at the practical end, the all-solid Flight Iris Tinta Concert and Kala's Contour series further up, and Martin's C1K in solid Hawaiian koa at the top.

Tenor — the performer's size

At roughly seventeen inches of scale, the tenor is what most players who take the instrument seriously end up holding. It is louder, deeper and rounder, with enough string tension to reward fingerstyle playing and enough sustain to carry a melody line rather than just chords. Watch any professional ukulele player and count the tenors.

It is not a harder instrument to learn on — a common misconception. It is simply bigger and better projected, which makes it the size to choose if you intend to play with other people, plug in, or work at it. Most of the electro-acoustic models we stock, from the Flight Antonia TE up to the all-solid Nighthawk and Fireball, are tenors for exactly this reason.

Baritone — the guitarist's shortcut

The baritone is the outlier. It is tuned lower, to DGBE, which is the same intervals as the top four strings of a guitar. A guitarist can pick one up and play it correctly within about ninety seconds, because every chord shape they already know is still true.

The trade is that it no longer sounds much like a ukulele. It is warmer, closer to a small parlour guitar, and it will not do the bright reentrant chime the soprano does. If you want the classic sound, this is the wrong end of the range. If you are a guitar player who wants something small to keep by the sofa, it is the shortest possible route there.

About those hands

Hand size does matter at the margins. Very large hands can find soprano chords above the fifth fret genuinely awkward, and small hands sometimes prefer the shorter stretch. But the difference between a soprano and a tenor is about four inches of scale, not four sizes of glove. Far more people are limited by an instrument that will not stay in tune than by their fingers.

Which brings us to the thing that actually separates a ukulele you keep from one you abandon: setup. A ukulele with the action set too high is hard work at every fret, and a beginner will assume the difficulty is theirs. Every ukulele that leaves us has been checked, adjusted and tuned first, whatever it cost.

Buying for a child

Soprano, almost always — it is the right scale for small hands and small budgets, and the sound is forgiving. Look for geared tuners rather than friction pegs, which are the single most common reason a child's ukulele ends up in a cupboard. And do not spend a great deal. A ukulele that survives a school bag has done its job.

Come and hold them

Everything above is a set of tendencies, and tendencies are a poor substitute for ten minutes with four instruments on your knee. The full range is in the shop at Victoria Park Market, tuned and ready to play, and there is no expectation that you buy anything on the day. If you would rather ask first, Garrick is at garrick@studio1.co.nz.

Browse the ukulele range, or read on: how soprano, concert and tenor actually differ in sound.