Talk:Banjo ukulele

Move proposal

• Move to Banjo-uke - more commonly used term. Badagnani (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Queen's Good Company

The article states, "He also used one to compose 'Good Company' for their album A Night at the Opera, although on the recording he used a regular ukulele."

However, the linked article about the song states that May did record using the banjo uke. Abrothman (talk) 16:43, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I'm suggesting this article be merged into ukulele. There's no unique repertory for the banjo uke, nor is there any unique history to this instrument; I think it's merely a variation on the ukulele, as are the different sizes of uke, different string counts, different tunings, and so on that are covered in ukulele. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 19:04, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, if only because a merger to banjo would also be just as fitting, as it's also a variant on that instrument. Being that it could fit either well, having it be part of neither makes as much sense. It's uniquely positioned between both. oknazevad (talk) 19:13, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose I also wondered why move to ukulele as opposed to banjo. It would seem to imply that the instrument is closer to a uke than to a banjo. I myself own a Gibson UB-1, and I can't decide which it's closer to. I suggest leaving it as its own creature, clearly showing the relationship to the other two instruments. Mark Froelich (talk) 01:45, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

• Looking at this a few years later, I stand by my original suggestion. I must have gotten distracted and not replied at the time. The reason it should be merged to ukulele rather than banjo is straightforward: it is tuned like a ukulele, it is played like a ukulele, its repertory is that of a ukulele, it is designed for ukulele players, it has nylon strings like a ukulele, its re-entrancy is that of a ukulele rather than of a five-string banjo...it's just a ukulele with an unusual shape. Any uke player can pick up a banjo uke and play it immediately; no banjo player can. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 16:11, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

  Thing is, there's many varieties of banjo, including four-string variants. This is just another such variant. There's six-string banjos that sport standard tuning from a guitar so guitarists can play banjo. And they are playing banjo, not guitar, because the tone and mechanisms of sound generation are those of a banjo. Conversely, the entire reason the tenor guitar was developed was so four-string tenor banjo players could play guitar without having to learn a whole new instrument. Such is the case with all these hybrid instruments. They exist so someone who already plays the one parent instrument (the one whose neck is copied) can get the sound of the other parent instrument (the one whose body is copied). That holds true here in full. The purpose of this instrument is so ukulele players can play a banjo without needing to learn from scratch. But it's still a banjo because it's built like a banjo and produces a banjo sound. oknazevad (talk) 04:38, 31 August 2025 (UTC)