How to look after a ukulele

Ukuleles very rarely die from accidents. They die from a winter in a centrally heated room, and the owner finds out in February when a hairline split appears along the top.

The good news is that the damage is slow, the warning signs are unambiguous, and the prevention costs almost nothing.

Why wood moves at all

The soundboard of a ukulele is a thin sheet of wood, and wood is hygroscopic: it takes on and gives up moisture from the air continuously, expanding and contracting across the grain as it does.

Underneath it are braces, glued at right angles to that grain, which do not move nearly as much. When the top shrinks in dry air, the braces hold it and something has to give. What gives is the top, and it splits along the grain.

The reverse is less dramatic but still a problem. In damp air the top swells and rises, the string height climbs, and the instrument becomes noticeably harder to play. That one usually reverses; a crack does not.

This is the same physics that governs acoustic guitars, and the same rules apply — see guitar maintenance.

The warning signs, in the order they appear

Sharp fret ends. Run a hand down the side of the neck. If the fret ends catch, the fretboard has shrunk in width while the metal frets have not. This is the earliest and most reliable sign of an instrument that is too dry, and it appears weeks before anything worse.

The action drops and buzzes appear. As the top sinks, the strings sit closer to the frets and start rattling on notes that used to sound clean. Most people read this as needing a setup. It is not; it is the instrument being dry, and a setup done at that moment will be wrong again in spring.

The top looks slightly sunken. Sight across the soundboard from the side. A healthy top is subtly domed, not dished.

Then the crack. Usually along the grain, usually on the top, often starting near the bridge or the edge. It is repairable by a luthier and it will always be visible.

Damp shows the opposite pattern: the action climbs, the instrument feels stiff and dull, and in extreme cases the glue joints soften.

Keeping it in the safe range

Buy a cheap hygrometer. Guessing at humidity is genuinely unreliable and a small digital one costs very little. Put it in the room the instrument lives in.

Do not stand it next to a radiator. The single most common mistake. The air directly above a radiator is dramatically drier than the rest of the room.

Not in direct sunlight. Heat plus ultraviolet, and a sunbeam that moves across the room finds the instrument for an hour a day all summer.

Not in a loft, garage, shed or car. All four swing further than any instrument tolerates.

In a dry winter, use a case humidifier. A small sponge-based or gel-based humidifier that sits in the case is inexpensive and is the standard solution. The case matters here: it is a small enclosed volume you can actually control, which a living room is not.

Case or stand?

There is a genuine tension in this, and we come down on the side of the stand for most people.

An instrument on a stand within reach of where you sit gets picked up during a spare five minutes. An instrument in a case under a bed gets picked up when a practice session has been decided upon, which happens far less often. Frequency of practice beats almost every other variable for a beginner, and this is the cheapest way to buy it — the wider version of the argument is in setting up a practice space.

The exception is a house at the extremes. If your winter humidity sits in the twenties, a case with a humidifier is the safer home and worth the friction. Likewise a household with a toddler or a large dog, where a wall hanger is the compromise that keeps the instrument both safe and visible.

Cleaning, briefly

Wipe the strings after playing. Nylon does not corrode the way steel does, but skin oils still build up and dull the sound. A dry cloth, ten seconds.

Wipe the body. Fingerprints and dust come off with the same cloth. A satin finish, which is what most beginner ukuleles have, should not be polished — polish makes it patchy and glossy in the places you rub most.

Clean the fretboard at a string change. It is the only time it is properly accessible. If the board is unfinished and looks gray, a very small amount of conditioner once a year is fine. More than that is actively harmful, because oil swells the wood around the fret slots.

Change strings about once a year. They do not corrode but they do go false, which means they will not play in tune with themselves up the neck no matter how carefully tuned. A fresh set of Aquila Super Nylgut ukulele strings#ad is the cheapest thing you can do for the tone of a cheap instrument. The method is in how to change ukulele strings.

What kind of ukulele do you have?

The rules above apply hardest to solid-wood instruments. Most beginner ukuleles, including the Kala KA-15S#ad, use laminate construction, which is considerably more stable because the layers are glued with alternating grain direction. Laminate is not immune, and it is much more forgiving.

A composite instrument like the Enya Nova U Mini#ad is immune to all of it. There is no grain to split and no glued brace to separate, which is exactly why we recommend it for children and for travel in best travel ukuleles. The cost is tone, and for the right owner that is a trade worth making.

If you are still choosing, what you should expect in the box is set out in what comes with a ukulele.