1980s Leonidas Sarmiento (Bolivia) Charango/8-String Ukulele Mod

Despite the fact that there are relatively low numbers of ukuleles gracing the blog in recent years, those who have read it for a long time know that I am an avid ukulele fan. We have them scattered throughout the house in all sorts of variations and they're the one instrument I pick-up most when I have a spare moment to play.

Years ago I used to play charango quite a lot but then moved over to ukulele and then my charango playing ceased, pretty-much, due to the brain-dissonance of changing from GCEA tuning to GCEAE tuning. I have missed having a charango around, however, as the just have a certain sound. Having worked on a number of taropatch ukes in recent memory has made that desire for a charango (or 8-string uke of some sort) even sharper. 

Flash-forward to a few weeks ago when my friend Tim brought in a box full of free "lost toys" to work on. In there was this soprano ukulele-sized charango with a short, 13 3/4" (as I recall) scale length. The neck angle was also (amazingly) decent enough that it could be put back into playing shape without a whole ton of effort. Usually charangos sort-of implode and the action just gets too high or the top shreds itself under the tension of the strings as they age.

My first thought was that... I want this! and my next thought was... but I want to change it! So, change it I did. I reworked the bridge to give it good intonation and action height, reworked the tuners to make them an "8 string" set, did a lot of level/dressing and work on the (wonky) frets, and then strung it up completely strange. I've had 8-string baritone ukes, 6-string concert ukes, and all sorts of variations on the themes come through the shop in the past so I knew I wanted to do a bit of an oddball stringing job.

I could have just used an 8-string Worth set with octaves on the G&C courses but what I really wanted was octaves everywhere (and especially the high chimey E from the charango experience) so that's just what I've done. This has a low GCEA setup with octaves for the GCE strings as normal, but the A string is also octave but features a low A just a full step up from the low G. So -- the outer strings are tuned lower than the inner strings. This "A" configuration is something I borrowed from 6-string ukulele sets I've tried.

What this means is that this instrument fills a huge amount of sonic space in just the right way and is totally addicting to play. I like it best as a fingerpicker but it does the "charango thing" nicely as a strummer, too.