Bass Ukulele Tuner — E–A–D–G and the Octave Error

A bass ukulele plays bass-guitar pitches on a scale barely longer than a soprano ukulele, using strings that are closer to rubber than to wire. That combination produces a weak fundamental — which is exactly why your tuner keeps insisting you are an octave higher than you are.

The chips under the dial are the 4 targets for a bass ukulele. Tap one to hear it, or start the microphone and tune until it turns green. Audio is analyzed on your device and never leaves it.

Bass pitches on a ukulele body

A bass ukulele is tuned E1–A1–D2–G2 — 41.20, 55.00, 73.42 and 98.00 Hz — which is note for note a standard four-string bass guitar. Every bass line and every piece of tab transfers without transposition.

What does not transfer is the physics. A bass guitar reaches those pitches with a 34-inch scale; a bass ukulele has about 20 inches to work with. Pitch comes from length, tension and mass, and with length cut nearly in half, mass has to carry the load — which is why the strings are thick polyurethane rather than wound steel, running from roughly 2.4 mm to 5.0 mm in a typical set. They feel closer to surgical tubing than to wire.

That trade is what gives the instrument its soft, thumpy, upright-ish voice. It is also the direct cause of the one problem every new owner runs into.

Try itBass ukulele reference tones

The middle tab is worth playing once deliberately: E1 followed by E2, so you know what the octave error sounds like when your tuner reports it.

Why the display says you are an octave high

This is the defining tuning problem of the instrument, and it is not a fault in your tuner.

A short, heavy, low-tension string produces a weak fundamental relative to its harmonics. Most of what you hear — and most of what a microphone picks up — is the second harmonic at twice the frequency. A pitch detector presented with a quiet 41 Hz component and a loud 82 Hz one will sometimes name the loud one, and report E2 when you are playing E1.

Four things make the reading honest:

Pluck softly, and near the end of the fingerboard rather than hard by the bridge. A gentle pluck away from the bridge emphasises the fundamental; a hard one near the bridge emphasises exactly the harmonics that confuse the detector.
Mute the other three strings. These strings are sympathetic and slow to settle, and a second note ringing underneath is a second candidate for the detector.
Wait. At 41 Hz a full wave cycle takes 24 milliseconds, so a detector needs a noticeable stretch of note before it can commit. Read the display after it settles, not during the attack.
Check the octave digit, every time. On this instrument it carries more information than the letter does.

Tuning routine

Start with the 1st string, G2. It is the highest and cleanest note on the instrument and the one the tuner will lock onto fastest — a good place to confirm everything is working before you tackle the hard strings.
Work down: D2, A1, E1, muting the others with your palm as you go.
Pluck gently with the flesh of the thumb. This is not the moment for a fingerstyle attack.
Give each low note two full seconds before you decide anything, and watch the octave.
Check the strings against each other by ear. Each pair is a fourth apart; play them one after the other and listen for the interval. If one string sounds an octave adrift from its neighbours, it is — whatever the display said.
Go round again after ten minutes of playing, especially on a new set.

Fretted, fretless and lined

Bass ukuleles come fretted, fretless, and fretless-with-lines. The tuning is identical across all three, but what a tuner is forchanges: on a fretted instrument it sets the four open strings and the frets handle the rest, while on a fretless one every stopped note is your finger’s responsibility and the dial becomes a practice tool as much as a setup one.

Fretless players get real value from playing scales slowly with the tuner running — not to chase the needle in performance, but to find out where your hand actually lands. On a 20-inch scale the distances are small enough that a few millimetres is a noticeable amount of pitch.

What the needle can and cannot settle

Use the dial for the four open strings, and expect to work a little harder for the reading than you would on a guitar. Beyond that, two limits.

The first is inharmonicity: thick, soft strings have overtones that sit noticeably above exact multiples of the fundamental, so a string tuned dead centre by its fundamental can still sound slightly flat against other instruments. Many players end up setting the low E a couple of cents sharp for exactly that reason. The second is the usual ensemble caveat — a bass holds roots and fifths, which is where the difference between equal temperament and a chord that locks is most audible. Our guide to cents covers both. For the rest of the family, the ukulele tuner is two octaves above this one, the bass guitar tuner has the same pitches on a longer scale, and the guitalele sits in between.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my tuner keep saying E2 when I am playing the low E string?

Because the fundamental of that string is unusually weak compared with the harmonic above it, and a pitch detector offered both will sometimes name the louder one. A bass ukulele produces E1 at 41.20 Hz from a thick polyurethane string on a scale of about 20 inches — it gets there by mass rather than by length, and that combination puts most of the audible energy in the harmonics rather than the fundamental. The fixes are all about giving the detector a cleaner signal: pluck softly near the neck rather than hard near the bridge, mute the other three strings, and let the note ring for a second or two before reading it.

Is a bass ukulele tuned the same as a bass guitar?

Exactly the same: E1–A1–D2–G2, identical pitches to a standard four-string bass. Every bass line, every piece of tab, every fingering pattern transfers without transposition. What differs is everything physical — the scale is around 20 inches against a bass guitar’s 34, so the frets are far closer together and the same shapes need much smaller hand movements. It is genuinely a bass in pitch and a ukulele in size, which is exactly what it was designed to be.

Why are the strings so thick and rubbery?

Because there is no other way to reach bass pitches on a 20-inch scale. Pitch depends on length, tension and mass; with length cut roughly in half against a bass guitar, mass has to do the work. The polyurethane strings used on these instruments are enormous by string standards — a common set runs from about 2.4 mm to 5.0 mm — and they feel more like surgical tubing than wire. The trade-offs are a soft, thumpy tone with little sustain, a weak fundamental, and a very different feel under the right hand.

How long do new strings take to settle?

Less than you would fear on modern sets, but the first hours are still unreliable. Polyurethane strings stretch as they take tension, and older or cheaper sets could need days of retuning before they held. Sets sold today are formulated to reduce that — the common Aquila Thundergut set is specifically marketed on not stretching excessively during tuning — so you can usually expect an instrument to be stable within a session or two rather than a week. Tune, play, retune, and do not judge the instrument on its first hour.

Can I use a bass guitar amp and tuner pedal with it?

An amp, yes — it is bass-range signal and a bass amp is the right tool. A tuner pedal is where you may run into the same problem this page is about: many pedals are built expecting the fairly strong fundamental of a wound steel bass string and struggle with the weak fundamental of a polyurethane one, reporting the octave above or refusing to settle. If your pedal cannot see the low E, a microphone-based reading of the acoustic sound, played softly, often works better than the pickup does.