I've played guitar, particularly classical guitar, all my life (well, since I was in my early twenties), using it mostly to accompany folk songs and ballads, with an occasional bit of show-off from my limited repertoire of classical pieces.

Within recent years, I've had some shoulder problems that make playing a full-size classic next to impossible, so I've been using a small travel guitar. Works okay, but not entirely satisfying.

A friend of mine introduced me to the Yamaha GL1 "Guitalele" (CLICKY), a 6-string baritone ukulele or a very small guitar, depending on how you look at it.

She is sort of an accidental instrument collector. Her main instrument is the classic guitar, but she also sings in the Medieval Women's Choir. She has a batch of instruments like a medieval vielle, a hurdy-gurdy, and I don't know what all. Anyway, bless her heart, she has loaned me her Guitalele to see if that works for me.

The tuning is the same as the guitar, but one fourth up, as if one put a capo on the fifth fret of a guitar, so the chord fingerings and scale fingerings are the same, but up a fourth, i.e., an E chord on the guitar is an A on the Guitalele, a C chord comes out and F, etc.

The main problem I have with the instrument is in getting my bratwurst-size left hand fingers to negotiate the frets, which, on that short a scale, are pretty close together. But it shows promise.

It's a nice sounding instrument, too (a piece by Turlough O'Carolan), and capable of some pretty serious music (CLICKY). To me, especially on the O'Carolan pieces on YouTube, its tone is quite reminiscent of the Celtic harp.

I offer this as something worth investigating.

By the way, I think Nancy said that the Guitalele cost about $100, give or take a couple of nickels.

Don Firth