Essential for the investigation and comparison of the pore water pressure (PWP) build-up in different soils is the specimen preparation procedure and the repeatability of the testing conditions. This paper introduces a constant volume cyclic shear test for density dependent PWP build-up in coarse-grained soils. Testing procedure comprises a reproducible specimen preparation method which enables the installation of highly saturated sand specimens (without applying back pressure). Following this, a cyclic shearing of the specimen is achieved through a controlled horizontal displacement of the top cap. By measuring the evolution of the PWP during the test for different initial relative densities in case of several sands, it is possible to quantify the sensitivity of different coarse-grained soils to density dependent PWP build-up. Considering that the evolution of PWP is highly dependent on granulometric properties of soils, such sensitivity can be considered to be an index property of coarse-grained soils. The goal of this research is to establish a simple index test for comparison of density dependent PWP build-up in different coarse-grained soils.