Silent Ukulele

Ok , guys and gals ,
Im looking for a ukulele that i can practice with in silence. Not absolute silence , but something that I can plug headphones into. I have this thing about practicing in front of people and i really want to be able to practice at work and at home without being heard.
I have looked at the cheap one on amazon by Sojing and dont really like the look of it. Does anyone have any suggestions? Looking to spend in the $200 range or so.
Thanks !

Ask and ye shall receive. This should work for you: http://www.tetonguitars.com/steu101-series-solid-body-electric-ukulele/ Many sellers.

http://www.tetonguitars.com/steu101-series-solid-body-electric-ukulele/

Absolutely love those but.......... tenor is about $100 above price range. My partner would kill me. He's is already fighting me on getting another one.

You could practice difficult things over the next few days to increase his willingness to comply?

Some people say that a silent ukulele is a wonderous thing! ld:

You can always put a piece of clothing like a sock or scarf under the strings near the bridge... you can practice pretty quietly.

My favorite silent uke is A risa Stick you can get them here used once in a while. Another alternative is the peanut....

I have a solid body electric ukulele from Eleuke that I got for about $200 and I really like it. In addition to the quarter inch output, it also has a headphones jack and a jack for an ipod or mp3 player so you can play along to music. this is their site http://www.eleukeusa.com/ you can find pretty good deals on their models on the web.

Riverpirate said:

Absolutely love those but.......... tenor is about $100 above price range. My partner would kill me. He's is already fighting me on getting another one.

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Look for a used one. I just sold one so there may be others.

I just found a eleuke les paul tenor for sale for $150. Im not sure of the strings though. It looks like it has steel strings , not nylon. I emailed the person about it. I will buy it is it had nylon strings. Probably buy it with steel strings and just change them out anyways ,lol.

Riverpirate said:

I just found a eleuke les paul tenor for sale for $150. Im not sure of the strings though. It looks like it has steel strings , not nylon. I emailed the person about it. I will buy it is it had nylon strings. Probably buy it with steel strings and just change them out anyways ,lol.

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If it has pickups for steel strings, they may not work at all with nylon strings. That would be a very silent ukulele

I highly recommend the Vorson solid-body steel string ukes, which come in Strat, Tele, and Les Paul body styles and various finishes, including flame maple, quilt maple. For the amazing price of about $110-$135 you can get a very well-crafted tenor uke with truss rod, good electronics (two single-coil magnetic pickups, volume/tone controls), two strap pins, individually adjustable saddles. You'd need only new strings (the stock ones are crap) and a little amp w/headphone jack and cable. Be sure to search here for Vorson string-gauge recommendations because the large online sellers of Vorson instruments typically recommend steel-string-uke string sets that are the wrong gauge for this instrument and will impair its intonation.

Using headphones, a solid-body/steel-string uke will always play more quietly than an acoustic/electric uke because the solid body has no sound chamber for ambient reverb.

Yep the LP I was looking at is steel strings and has a magnetic pick up , so no nylon string.

+1 for the RISA Stick. Solid body, nylon strings.

Tootler said:

+1 for the RISA Stick. Solid body, nylon strings.

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and $300 plus

EDIT Just re-read the OP you have already seen this - please ignore this post.

I have heard good things about "Sojing" from a guitar reviewer on YT. He says it works great, and liked the headphones it comes with that plug right into the body no amp needed. There are a couple of brand names for this uke. I personally don't care for the look of them. I have never tired one. But you should be able to find them on e-bay shipped from New Jersey for $155

eleuke peanut would be the cheapest you could go. Hopefully you wouldn't get one of the bad ones...

I have the Sojing tenor. Fit and finish was fine, and intonation was VERY good out of the box. Paid $165 shipped on Amazon.

The problem I had was the electronics. The preamp is based on an LM386 op-amp chip, and I just hate the way that they sound. However it 'worked' fine, but just sounded bad to me.

I pulled the preamp and for a while just ran the rod piezo passively to the output jack, and used other, external preamps when needed. However, doing so, despite shielding the entire body cavity and cover with copper foil tape (which helps reject interference and certain types of hum), I could not get rid of the hum, despite even not being connected to an A/C power source at all, and no matter any combination of new cables etc (literally tried it ALL)

I ended up replacing both the pickup and preamp with the Mi-Si acoustic trio ($115 shipped from Kala), which I have installed in 3 other ukes and guitars.

This fixed both the hum and improved the sound greatly.

The only other problem was finding a hard case for it. Due to the body shape with the protruding 'horns' on both sides of the upper bout, the only case that would have fit it was a rectangular Fremont tenor case, which was sold out or on back-order at all the major online dealers at the time.

A test fit in a standard Uke-Crazy hard foam case showed that the 'horns' were each about 2 inches too long. In the end, I got out the hacksaw and cut the horn's tips off, all the way down to the 'vertical' support, which I sanded, painted and then finished with polyurethane gloss. Now it fits perfectly inside the Uke-Crazy case, and has the same 'footprint' as my Kala KA-T tenor. I made up the difference in thickness in the case (as the body is only about 1.5" thick) using sheets of EVA foam that I cut from those interlocking exercise mats. IIRC two layers of foam, cut to match the rounded edges of the inside of the case, and hot-glued together and they are sized just right to have some tension against the sides and not fall out.

Uke inside, all closed up, it does NOT bounce around at all, and is very secure.

To use headphones, I either plug it into my recently acquired Apogee JAM and then into the iPad, or directly into the Korg PXMINI effects unit (which I already had) for a bit of reveb for ambience. The PXMINI is about the size of the now obsolete cassette tape and runs on a single AA battery.

Costs:

Sojing tenor $165
Mi-Si $115
Uke-Crazy case $29 (from Empire Music in Canada)
2'x2' EVA foam sheet $5
Apogee JAM $99/$129
Korg PXMINI $99

Sure you can get an Eleuke or Teton, but I just dont like the way that they look and the offset fake 'soundhole' seems unnecessary and I feel it would weaken the strength of the body to hold string tension.

The Sojing is one single, solid piece of wood from the headstock all the way to the strap pin, and as such actually resonates quite nicely, even when not amplified, but it is very quiet. The Sojing's neck is a bit thicker (front to back) than most of my other ukes, but in less than 5 mins of playing you no longer notice it any more. Frets were dressed nicely and no sharp fret edges on mine at all. I was quite surprised it was finished so well.

I am now very pleased with it and consider it a keeper, and will eventually be adding MIDI capability to it (probably via the Graph-Tech Ghost system).

Also, I did this long before the Pono solid-body ukes came out, and wanted something cheaper than a Fluke SB or Godin MultiUke, that would be easier to handle than the RISA Stick.

I have no pictures at this time. Maybe I can take some and post later if there is interest.

So i see this Eleuke on ebay and this is the description:

"We made a special purchase on a large batch of Eleukes. They are B stock and may have finish flaws but they work. Now we got them as steel string electric ukuleles and we have been selling them. The an ebay customer just asked how do they work with real ukulele strings on them so we tried it. They have a bridge saddle acoustic transducer piezo pikcup under the bridge saddle and they have an electric guitar style magnetic pickup. They have the knob to blend between the 2 pickups. When you turn it all the way to bridge piezo pickup they sound 100% great then when turned all the way to the magnetic electric guitar pickup they do not make any sound at all.
We can offer these with a FREE set of Aquila real good ukulele strings. "


Will this actually work? Would it be worth buying? I can get it for $170 shipped.

From my experience with electric bass, changing type or brand of strings usually requires a full setup, including truss rod adjustment.

With this instrument, the difference in tension between aquilas and steel strings must be substantial. And I see no way to do any adjustments on this eleuke. I would question intonation.

I hope someone can correct me on this...

Riverpirate said:

So i see this Eleuke on ebay and this is the description:

"We made a special purchase on a large batch of Eleukes. They are B stock and may have finish flaws but they work. Now we got them as steel string electric ukuleles and we have been selling them. The an ebay customer just asked how do they work with real ukulele strings on them so we tried it. They have a bridge saddle acoustic transducer piezo pikcup under the bridge saddle and they have an electric guitar style magnetic pickup. They have the knob to blend between the 2 pickups. When you turn it all the way to bridge piezo pickup they sound 100% great then when turned all the way to the magnetic electric guitar pickup they do not make any sound at all.
We can offer these with a FREE set of Aquila real good ukulele strings. "


Will this actually work? Would it be worth buying? I can get it for $170 shipped.

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nylon strings with a magnetic pickup will never make any amplified sound. magnetic pickups only work because metal strings disturb the magnetig field produced by the pickup, so on one hand this makes sense what they have said about the magnetic pickup not making sound, if in fact they put Aquila nylgut strings on it

however it seems unclear if it makes any sound at all from the magnetic pickup with metal strings, if not then this part is defetive out of the box but might be able to be fixed in a few mins if you are handy with a soldering iron and turns out to be a loose wire

keeping in mind that any strings, metal, nylon or otherwise that press down on a saddle with a transducer underneath is going to produce sound and their are plenty of famous brand steel string acoustic guitars that ONLY have an undersaddle piezo transducer, and they work fine..

more info is needed from the seller regarding metal strings with the magnetic pickup