D'Addario Baritone Ukulele Strings, Fluorocarbon, EJ99B, 4-String Set, Pack of 1

I bought four sets of these to use on century-old tenor banjos I’ve reworked slightly to use as baritone banjo-ukuleles. (Their 11” pots make them sound MUCH better than baritone banjo-ukes with eight inch pots.) It is 31” from tailpiece to the farthest tuner. I tried some more expensive fluorocarbon strings, but they were two inches too short. Gold Tone baritone banjo-uke strings fit, BARELY, but they are quite heavy and so quite thump, rather than having a clear ring to them. These strings have an extra six inches of string! They tuned up easily. I liked the tone at once. Fluorocarbon strings, like nylon strings, stretch a bit over several days, and the tone quality definitely improves over three or four days as the string tension increases. Even at this point, however, I like these strings a lot. (Where I live there is a banjo-uke jam every week that has over forty players. I’m fixing these up to resell at cost to people who want quality instruments. I also play five-string banjo with nylon strings on it, and I perform on plectrum banjo. Check out my book called DGBE: Playing Chords All Over the Neck. Available here.)

As a new Ukulele player, I purchased a very inexpensive concert size ukulele here on Amazon. (Under $60.00) in January 2024. I wanted to experiment with a different string set to see if the Ukulele overall sound would improve. I decided to purchase a set of D'Addario Black Nylon strings. I strung them, tuned them and began to play. Like all strings they needed time to settle requiring constant tuning and stretching. For three weeks of playing about 2 hours daily, they sounded dull and lifeless with average tonation. Dissapointed, I began to consider alternatives.Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the sound changed dramatically. Bright projection, excellent tonality and a warm feel when playing them. My point is, I now LOVE these strings and I am happy I had the patience to not dismiss them right away. Maybe it took longer for them to stretch/settle than other strings? I'm not sure but for all of the other new players out there, give your new strings time and play often. You will be happy with the results.

Update: I was contacted by D'Addario the day after I wrote my initial review and was absolutely taken care of by George in customer serviceAfter I received a new set of strings and stretched them in, I must say I'm impressed they have good presence, tone and are comfortable on my fingers to playOkay I was all excited about trying these D'Addario Titanium strings on my new Kala KA-B baritone ukulele. I put them on and was just stretching them in and the D string broke, right in the middle (very odd) I Didn't even get one song on them.I am a long time guitar technician and know my way around changing strings and many other things.I did email D'Addario and hoping they just send another set. I was going to review them here and on my YouTube channel but now I'm not so sureI hope D'Addario comes through and they work out, because I'm certainly not going to buy another set of these, unless they do

Update: After several months of use on my all koa tenor, I can easily say these are my favorite strings of all time. They are much thicker than most other uke brands, and really bring the low mids,but honestly, to me it feels like an orchestra is under my fingers, I can get any tone I want out of them with very little effort, Previously my favorite sounding strings were Worth browns,they sound great in the studio but but they are a little low energy for my gigs (weddings,private parties, etc) and I always liked the volume Aquilas brought, but not the harshness and rattle; these are the best of both worlds to me. Just tried Worth clears, and I still like these better (although the worth clears have a heavy gauge too, I will check that out in the future). $5????????????? I guess these must be repackaged pro arte trimmings but I don't care, they're awesome,Original review:I am a pro player. I have used Aquilas and find them to be good, loud strings. But for my new koa Island Ukulele, which was strung with Aquilas from the shop or luthier, I ran into a problem where the Uke returns so much energy that the A string actually rattled on the bridge, creating a fret-buzz-like tone (I've seen a negative review of Island Ukes where the player thought they had bad fret buzz, I can almost guarantee this is actually what they were experiencing- the Uke actually vibrates TOO much for the unforgiving nylgut strings- kind of a good problem to have if you ask me. One option would be to replace the bridge with wood or another slightly softer material, but I had success using a little piece of foam around the string below the bridge, problem solved, in a slightly ugly way). And frankly, I didn't feel the spanky nylgut tone was doing the best this Uke could do. Worth doesn't make a wound low G as far as I can find, but I LOVE worth brown strings. What I may end up doing long term is buying those and finding an excellent guitar string to use as a low G, I've used Augustines in the past with good results. Or cut the nut to fit the heavy low G fluorocarbon. We'll see about that.Anyway, I tried these pro arte strings since I already use them for my nylon guitar, had never used clear nylon strings on a uke before. Holy cow, these things are thick, had to widen the C and A slots slightly to accommodate (I have proper nut slotting files). But the tone is like a big, warm, soft blanket. I really love it. I can get a velvety thumb sound, a very mellow first finger Tiny Tim strum sound, and my back of the fingernails strum is loud but not harsh. And It DOES NOT sound like a guitar, which I was concerned about. Worth brown strings also have a pleasing warm tone, but are so thin, I just don't know that they'll deliver the kinetic energy these strings do. I feel like I'm barely working and filling up a lot of sonic space. There are dead spots on the fretboard, as with any fretted instrument, but in playing chords the fundamentals are so strong the dead spots are indistinguishable.I notice another review of these strings that notes these are intended for ADF#B tuning, but I didn't notice that in any fine print, and the packaging clearly states GCEA strings (it's called a low g set after all). I think ALL Ukes probably perform better when tuned up to D6 tuning, but it's harder on your fingers for every day playing, and no client has ever walked up to me and said "golly, if only you tuned up to D, your tone would have been that much brighter, and I'd have given you a bigger tip."At any rate, I'm loving the tone and playability so far. I do notice they're taking FOREVER to settle into tune for more than than 10 minutes or so, not even close overnight after 5 days and two gigs. I suppose they act the same on my guitar, but it is taking a while, nothing like nylgut, those things stay in tune after a day or 2. Not that I don't tune every time I pick up my instrument, because I do, but these aren't even close. Yet.If my opinion changes, I will alter my review, but this this point, I am really enjoying the robust feel and the velvet fog tone these strings project (sorry Mel). BTW, one pack I ordered had a PLAIN low G in it, an absolute packaging mistake, glad I bought 2 packs. I don't think I've ever had an error from daddario before, but reminded me to ALWAYS inspect new strings before cutting old ones off.