The best uke for clawhammer ?

The corny answer is the one in your hands or hanging on the wall, but..

Most uke players acquire quite a few instruments. I like using one of my tenor ukuleles as their larger body volume creates a bigger foot-tapping sound. For an authentic old world sound a banjo uke (often concert sized) works well and gives plunky, short notes. Just remember to stuff the banjolele with a foam pad to kill the harsh echoing ring tones.

Despite this I often prefer the sustained ringing of the tenor for solo playing. The subtleties would be lost in a jam situation where the banjo uke can fit in with a clear melody and percussive banging. It would also be heard more clearly in an ensemble situation (the other players might say too clearly!).

 If you are feeling adventurous you could always take a spare concert or tenor sized uke and carefully remove the frets with pliers to make a fretless uke. Fill the grooves with sawdust and wood glue, lower the saddle and you are ready to play all those microtones like fretless banjos and fiddles. Remember with a fretless instrument you fret over the fret lines. Listen to the clawhammer tune ‘Bonfire’ on the home page to get an idea of the sound you can achieve.

I always using a standard string set, some nice Aquila Nylgut or Worth strings with the usual high G string (our drone).

Just like our banjo brethren you will also meet a range of different tunings in my method, so rather than learning which note belongs to which fret, you will tend to play from muscle memory rather than fretboard reading. This also means we will learn tunes by ear or from tablature (TAB) rather than musical notation, although that is sometimes read by uke players in tandem with TAB to work out subtle timings involving dotted and tied notes.

For us the TAB of a song is a starting skeleton onto which we paint performance skill, subtle timing and percussive strikes. Remember you can always revisit TAB once in a while to ensure you have not created a completely new version, although if you have just rename your original tune !