u/Paralith10

New mandolin player here, I got my Eastman md305 about a month ago and I’ve been trucking along so far. The only problem is, my fingers are shredded and very sore. So much so that I’ve gotten blisters and cracked my fingertips open till they bled into my fretboard(not even kidding). It came with d’addario XT 11-40’s on it. Then about three weeks in and some very sore fingers I swapped those for Ernie ball 80/20 9-34 gauge. Being accustomed to the 11-40’s, the 9-34’s sounded honestly pretty bad to me. They lacked so much depth and resonance. I lost all the bottom end tone, and the top end sounded tinny and shrill. BUT, they felt nice. I have since put on a set of Martin 11-40 monel strings and they sound fantastic, but we’re back to square one with the very sore fingers.

Any one know of any lighter strings that still sound decent?

I’m in a bit of a pickle here. I’m looking to buy my first higher quality uke. Currently playing a basic kala concert size(with a low G string set). I’ve been trying a bunch of ukuleles out in stores, and I definitely love the added finger room tenor size ukes give me, however they are substantially darker and more mellow sounding compared to my concert(even with its low G string set). Are there any tenors out there that are built specifically to sound brighter than normal?