Amp & pedals for acoustic beginner

Love Dave Gilmour's music. I want to not just thumb and strum thru Comfortably Numb but play the lazy lead in some of those songs.

So, maybe the iRig Acoustic Stage is a good pickup for an acoustic uke, and want a pedal or two to a) delay, b) sustain, c) loop. Apparently reverb and chorus often come with the amp.

Are Roland Mobile Cube, or a Behringer Ultracoustic At108, good entry amps, to plug in the uke, and a mike but also the pedals and/or backing track. Will they do this?

Are there uke specific pedals to get these basic effects, or an all in one for simplicity?

First question, active or passive pickup?
(Passive will likely need a pre amp.)

The iRig Acoustic Stage has a thread on here, see if that's what you want.
(It certainly gets the thumbs up from those that have one.)

My little Roland Micro Cube does what I want from an amp, but I record voice with a USB mic into my computer (when needed).
(I only use them at home, for the Seasons on this forum.)

Definitely the iRig looks good, and as for the amp, I'd just like to plug in a mike and a pedal or two and a backing track of drums. If you are working directly into your computer with your mike, why do you need an amp?
The more I read....wish there was a Bluetooth version of the iRig, as I have a wireless mike for my other job because I get wound up in the cord otherwise!

jnorris235 said:

If you are working directly into your computer with your mike, why do you need an amp?

Click to expand...

When I use electric or electro acoustic uke, I mic the amp - when I record acoustic uke & voice, I just use the mic.

Thanks for that. Really am coming up from the first rung on all this.

Your welcome, but it is only 'my way' of doing things.

(There should be a couple of threads on the forum here somewhere, where they go into all this in depth.)
http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/forumdisplay.php?39-Audio-Video
http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/forumdisplay.php?32-Uke-Tech-Support

I have two amps that would be considered electric guitar amps and one acoustic amp. The acoustic amp is a Kustom PA50. It is a nice amp, but it is just an amp. I can reach out with it. People like to tell you to make sure that you get an acoustic amp for your ukulele, but that is because they want it to sound just exactly the way it would sound without amplification, except louder. An acoustic amp is just a PA system that doesn't distort the sound. What goes in comes out. I also have a Vox Mini5 that is a battery powered electric guitar amp that has a ton of settings to cause effects. It is so much fun. Much more fun than the Kustom PA50, which is not so fun. I just sit there and play with it sometimes. I'll play a song, and then change the effects and try it again. It does not sound like a ukulele, but I can really make some outrageous music on it. I know nothing about pedals, but I have so much fun with the Vox that I am interested in getting some pedals to run through the Kustom PA50, because there is so much more wattage there. If you push the Vox, with 5 watts, too hard it turns to mush. So that is what I know about it. I'm still learning. Thanks for the thread, hopefully both you and I will learn something.

I have a Roland BA330 amp -- it's got 40 watts of power and can run either plugged in or on 8 AA batteries. It's got the same wattage whether plugged in or on batteries, unlike Roland's other battery-powered amp, which has lower output when run on batteries. The BA330 has 4 inputs -- two of which have XLR mic inputs or phone-jack inputs and adjustable input levels so it can handle passive pickups or active ones, or a mic. It's a stereo amp and channels 3 and 4 have L/R inputs so you can input stereo output from a keyboard or other instrument, or you can input a mono signal into each of the L/R jacks for a total of 6 inputs if you wish. It does have some effects built in, but the same effect has to be used for all the input channels, so if you want pedals you would run the signal from your uke into the pedal(s) and then into the input so you can turn your own effects on and off with the pedals. It also has a stereo input with its own level adjust separate from the instrument inputs so that using either L/R RCA plugs or 1/8" stereo cable you can have mp3 files playing. My wife and I have used this amp in performances on violin, mandolin and acoustic guitar and I've used it as a PA amp to speak through and mic a soloist through when conducting a community concert band. It has a speaker-stand hole in the bottom and sounds fantastic when put on a speaker stand. It also has a kick-stand on the bottom-front so that the speaker can be angled up if so desired. I have played my uke through it (I have a Kala tenor with built-in pickup) and it sounds great through this amp. It's a bit pricey at $599 but it is a rugged and versatile amp for small-to-medium size rooms. And if you've got the money and want more sound, you can buy a second one to daisy-chain and put them on left and right sides of the stage for a very full sound and twice the inputs!