Which Vox amPlug for RISA Uke-Solid, AC30 or Acoustic?

I ordered a RISA Uke-Solid and need a headphone amp.

It seems Vox amPlug is a popular choice, but I'm wondering what amPlug model I should choose. Please suggest me.

An Amplug is not all that useful in my opinion. If you want to quietly practice, I reckon the sound of strings themselves is sufficient.
If you want to hear yourself plugged in, just about proper amp has a headphone setting. And you'll get an amp eventually anyway (if not already), otherwise what's the point of having an electric?

Where an Amplug may be useful is if you want to travel and plug your headphones in.
But even then, a small sized proper amplifier (such as the Fender Mini Tone Master) is small AND has actual speakers for making some noise AND has headphone jack.

And will you really plug an amplug into the uke to play on the go?
I thought I would.. but not really. Could be a waste of money lol.

But if I was going for an Amplug, I'd go with the one for electric guitars with a gain setting for distortion.

Thanks for your comment, kissing.

I travel overseas some times and it's difficult to carry my Roland MicroCube.

I got Eleuke Peanut and found that earphone jack is very useful. Rigk told me that he has no plan to make an earphone jack on RISA Uke-Solid, and so I'm thinking about using VOX amPlug.

I'm not sure any amPlug will be good for this, unfortunately.. as far as I can tell all of them are designed for guitar singlecoil or humbucker pickups, while the RISA solid uke has a piezo mic, as far as I understand. These have totally different characteristics and impedance. Note that the 'acoustic' amPlug is also designed for guitar pickups, to emulate acoustic sound from an electric guitar - not useful with piezo.

On the other hand I haven't tried this. I have a Vox amPlug somewhere and at first I thought I could try to plug it into my traveller guitar, which is a solid guitar with a piezo mic. Quite a lot like a bigger RISA, in fact. But there is a difference - from what I can tell, the RISA needs a headphone/earphone amplifier, while my Traveller has one built-in. So the impedance would be totally different and there's no point in me trying to test this with my Traveller guitar.

But the answer is in there though: What the RISA needs is an earphone/headphone amplifier. That's mentioned on one of their web pages, and there's a link, but the link loops in a 404 (not found+redirect to same not found page) so I don't know more.

-Tor

I have a Vox amPlug I use with my Ukelctic. Not sure what model I got. It does work, The sound is not so much uke sounding but it gets to sound into your ears. I ot mine so I could practice while my son was sleeping, now he is older and sleeps through most noise anyway so I don't use it to often. But it will work to get more volume for yourself.

In practice, piezo pickup (not 'mic') instruments generally work fine through amps and other devices designed for electric guitar.
A piezo pickup is just a different kind of pickup to a magnetic pickup. But they both produce signals which are picked up by amplifiers somewhat universally.

It's just than an acoustic-amp is better suited to amplify an acoustic instrument with a piezo pickup, and an electric-guitar amp is better suited to amplify a magnetic coil signal. However, a solid-body electric ukulele is sort of a rebel to that "rule". You don't get a solid-body electric merely to sound like an acoustic instrument, and people have taken the electric ukulele to great lengths in what kinds of sounds they produce.


A VOX amplug is merely an "amp" without the speakers (instead the signals are "amplified" into a headphone jack), and if you plug in a piezo instrument, it'll work just fine. It's just like plugging it into an amp and using only the headphone function.

I once asked Rigk Sauer (founder of RISA musical instruments) whether he recommended that I play his Uke-Solids through an acoustic or electric guitar preamp. He told me if I wanted to make it sound like an acoustic, use the acoustic, if I wanted to make it sound like an electric, use the electric.

He is exactly right!

I've seen an article online where some have installed a headphone jack on a Danelectro Honeytone......amazing travel amp.

kissing said:

In practice, piezo pickup (not 'mic')

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Right - that slipped through due to a native language vs. English difference for those kind of things.

instruments generally work fine through amps and other devices designed for electric guitar.
A piezo pickup is just a different kind of pickup to a magnetic pickup. But they both produce signals which are picked up by amplifiers somewhat universally.

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They do, but although I'm not sure what impedance load a piezo pickup presents I suspect it's totally different from a passive magnetic single-coil or humbucker. My guess is that a piezo pickup would prefer a high-impedance (pre-)amplifier. Wrong impedance would presumably just affect the volume in this case though.

-Tor

I understand what you're saying. In theory, you are completely correct.

But in practice (I've plugged in piezo instruments into electric guitar amps many many times, almost every day), they work just fine.

Sometimes you get a bit of hum with a piezo instrument on an electric guitar amp, which wouldn't occur on an acoustic amp.
That could be the impedence thing. Or it could be that the piezo is sensitive to a wider range of frequencies that the electric guitar amp is not designed to handle.

But as far as levels go, they both get amplified somewhat well.

Some hands-on experience with the Vox Acoustic Amplug

I know it's an old thread, just wanted to share my 5 cents of experience in this field anyway, as this was one of the pages that came up in the searches when I was looking for an opinion on the subject myself.
I've recently got the Mahalo Surfboard electric Uke for one simple reason - to be able to play some tunes when I get free time - and that's during the evenings when all the kids are already in their beds.

kissing said:

An Amplug is not all that useful in my opinion. If you want to quietly practice, I reckon the sound of strings themselves is sufficient.
If you want to hear yourself plugged in, just about proper amp has a headphone setting. And you'll get an amp eventually anyway (if not already), otherwise what's the point of having an electric?

Click to expand...

Agree, sound of the strings is sufficient in most of the cases, but sometimes I just need to hear myself in order to enjoy the music I play, not just practice - as practice on its own does not bring much fun.
And yes, after I've started playing an electrical Uke I'm contemplating getting an amp at some point in time in the future - when I am confident my playing will deliver some joy to the people around me, not just me and my small children

kissing said:

Where an Amplug may be useful is if you want to travel and plug your headphones in.
But even then, a small sized proper amplifier (such as the Fender Mini Tone Master) is small AND has actual speakers for making some noise AND has headphone jack.

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Bought that one based on the above recommendation, hehe: while it does deliver an amazing sound (to its size) both through the speakers and headphones, there is a slight inconvenience of having this fat cable running from a uke into the small amp - which weight is comparable to the cable itself, so it becomes fairly unstable due to that.

After some hesitation I decided to buy the Vox Acoustic Amplug with a Vox cabinet - designed specifically for those amplugs - so I can hear myself through the headphones whilst practicing in the evening and could also be a bit louder when I feel like jamming with the kids on the weekends
It delivers quite awesome sound through the headphones. When plugged into the Cab, it feels a bit more noisy than the Mini Fender, but that needs more testing - I just tried it out once on a low volume as yet.

kissing said:

And will you really plug an amplug into the uke to play on the go?
I thought I would.. but not really. Could be a waste of money lol.

But if I was going for an Amplug, I'd go with the one for electric guitars with a gain setting for distortion.

Click to expand...

May be later on I will try out all those fancy sounds - and all it could take is to buy another Vox Amplug with a different flavour - as they all plug in to the Vox Cab described above. But at the moment I seem to enjoy more the sound of the "real" acoustic Uke - when I am able to play it during the daytime - and miss its inimitable sound when I have to strum the electric, which sounds more like a guitar.