Hi. I have a very nice Oakwood short scale tenor tuned e a d g. I 've been playing for about six months. Have changed the strings a couple of times in that period for the same gauge as the originals but I have never been entirely happy with the G. Although the tuner shows it is in tune it always sounds a bit lifeless compared to the others.
Any tips would be appreciated.

Not that I know anything about banjos but ...

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Short scale tenor banjos or octave mandolins have issues with clunky strings. It's because the neck isn't quite long enough for the a stable GDAE with standard strings (or least that was the case with standard octave mandolin strings on my short-scale octave). You might consider heavier gauge strings. Here's a discussion on 17 fret banjo strings: https://thesession.org/discussions/30915. Last week I played a friend's custom 17 fret banjo, and while the strings were definitely looser than on my 19 fret tenor, I wouldn't have described the strings as clunky.

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Post your question to the mandolin cafe tenor guitar/tenor banjo forum.

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Chat to a luthier about installing a bridge with mother of pearl slots on the bridge, can make a difference

I use a 40 gauge G on my short scale, and it is still a bit flabby. I've read of others going up to 44.

Most hollow body instruments have a natural resonance tone. If it happens to land square on a fretted note, that note will suffer.

I had to sell a really pretty guitar that had that problem. The only real fix was to have the body altered in some way, usually by changing the soundhole. It wasn't something I was willing to do, so off to eBay it went.

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I’ve gone as high as 46 by using octave mandolin strings. Another alternative is to tune it up to an A. I believe I read about someone well known doing this but can’t remember who.

Enda Scahill plays his tenor banjos tuned ADAE. Maybe other players do too.

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Yep! Enda is indeed who I was trying to think of. I tried that tuning for a while but when back to G.
Too many tunes to learn alternate fingerings for, it makes that low C# inconvenient to play, and I like to hit that G as a drone for G tunes like Kesh.