A couple of newsletters ago, we learned about the ukulele tiple that the Martin company developed from the guitar-sized, triple-strung Colombian tiple. Here’s another kind of tiple, from the island of Puerto Rico.

The tiple puertorriqueño, like our beloved ukulele, come in a variety of sizes and shapes. We’ll be looking at the mid-sized tiple doliente, for a couple of reasons: it’s the most common style, and it’s the closest in size to our uke.

The tiple looks like a narrow-bodied ukulele, with a couple of differences: it has five strings instead of four, and the upper bouts look like they’ve been sheared off and replaced by two straight sections. And instead of being built up from a number of pieces, the back, sides and neck are traditionally carved out of a single block of wood, with the soundboard and fretboard glued on after the carving is done.

I got the tiple in the photo when I was asked to speak at a tiple conference in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. It was built by the conference organizer, José “Pepito” Reyes Zamora. It’s made of a beautiful Puerto Rican wood called “majó” (pronounced “ma-hoe”). The most common tuning is EADGC.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video that’ll give you an idea of how the tiple doliente sounds.

Fred Casey