Tiple Ukulele

Tiple Ukulele aka North American Tiple
The Tiple Ukulele is the same scale length as a Tenor, (in fact it was from the Tiple Ukulele that Martin got the inspiration for it's 17in Tenor scale), but it has 10 strings, usually steel and usually with Ukulele D Tuning, A~D~F#~B. The A and B courses are made up of 2 strings with the D and F# courses made with 3 strings. The A course is made up of the 2 strings an octave apart, and with the D and F# course the 2 outer strings are an octave higher than the middle one; the B course is in unison. So the full line-up is a~A~d~D~d~f#~F#~f#~B~B ! - fun to tune too.

The Tiple Ukulele is a bit of a hybrid instrument in its history. We know the Ukulele history and the Tiple, (means treble in Spanish and is pronounced ti-plee with the last e sounding), was one of those instruments from the Spanish part of the Iberian peninsula that was very similar to things on the Portuguese side, but with a different name, (in this case the Rajão). Then, as was often the case, when taken to the colonies in South America the Tiple changed into a number of new instruments, with in some places the addition of extra courses of strings and in some places reducing the number of courses to 4 or even just 3. The final step was taken by Martin on behalf of Wm Smith & Co. in 1919 when they took the Colombian Tiple, (so this is not really a Hawaiian derivative from the Taropatch), shrank it a little, (or possibly used a Tiple Requinto as the guide instrument?) and lost 2 strings to produce a Tiple Ukulele. This idea was then copied by a number of other manufacturers, like Lyon & Healy, Regal, Oscar Schmidt and others to make it part of the mainstream chordophone landscape of the 1920's.

Martin stopped making Tiple Ukuleles in the 60's, (the others manufacturers had stopped making them in the 30's), when they stopped making Ukuleles for a while and have not restarted, (I believe they will make a custom one on request?). K. Yasuma & Co. in Japan took up making them in the 60's and continued to make them into the early 1970's, Kamaka made the occasional custom one over the years as did a few luthiers but apart from that the instrument largely died out at the end of the 20th century.

With the post millennium revival of the Ukulele, current Ukulele luthiers have started to have a go at making them again and in 2012 Ohana added one to its catalogue.