EQing your uke for live performance and/or recording

AcousticTones

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Well good morning one and all. I recently just purchased a new Pono from HMS and had the LR Baggs installed in it for being able to play both live and record.

Just wondering if any of you have any specific EQing preferences for your Tenor ukes.

I've been playing guitar for 30 plus years, and in that community we share settings for EQing acoustic guitars and/or amp settings all the time, and was wondering if anyone here also would like to share their setting for the uke.

Thanks. I hope this thread also may help start a nice little dialog about what some people do to get their best live and recorded uke sounds while plugged in.
 
As little as possible . . .

If you're into a general purpose mixing console, and there's a High Pass Filter (or "Lo-Cut") you want it engaged unless you play bass, drums, or electronic keyboards.

Other than that, trust your ears.
 
I play a re-entrant tenor. I find that the frequency range of notes doesn't actually extend into "bass" territory much so I roll off the bass control fully on my fishman pre-amp pedal, otherwise it is only affecting the "thumping" sounds that come from hand movement. Apart from that - it depends on your pick-up, but I would bring down the upper treble a little to avoid sounding harsh.
In other words - the uke isn't a "bassy" instrument and you can't make it so by fiddling with eq. Just go with it and leave the low notes to the bass player.
That's my experience anyway. Anyone else found this?
 
If I'm recording, I don't use my pickup (MiSi) at all, opting for two well-placed mics.

For live, I roll the treble back just a bit. Because my main player is a 5 string (low/high G setup with wound C and low G strings), I get a pretty even sound as-is.
 
I play a re-entrant tenor. I find that the frequency range of notes doesn't actually extend into "bass" territory much so I roll off the bass control fully on my fishman pre-amp pedal, otherwise it is only affecting the "thumping" sounds that come from hand movement. Apart from that - it depends on your pick-up, but I would bring down the upper treble a little to avoid sounding harsh.
In other words - the uke isn't a "bassy" instrument and you can't make it so by fiddling with eq. Just go with it and leave the low notes to the bass player.
That's my experience anyway. Anyone else found this?

I concur.

With one caveat -- It depends both upon your signal path from the uke to the audiences ears, and will also be affected by the acoustics of the venue where you perform, either/both of which can influence said adjustments.

For the most part I find that my Mi-Si equipped ukes need to have the bass rolled off at around 90-100hz to avoid the thump that Strumdaddy refers to above, and bringing down the treble at around 8-12kz can tame the brashness, which is more apparent if you strum with a pick or with fingernails than with your thumb or fleshy finger pads.

This reduction of both bass and treble is also called a 'bandpass' filter, which means that the bands in the 'middle' range are passed and those on the ends are not. Think of a 31-band graphic eq, and adjust the curve into a 'frown' and that is the basic idea in this application, but you do NOT increase the mid-range, at all for then it would sound like a megaphone and very harsh on the ears.

You might have also heard of 'low-pass' and high-pass' filters which are similar but work on different parts of the audio spectrum.

There is also a 'notch' filter, which is typically used to reduce or zero out the specific frequency that might be causing feedback or undesired harmonics.

Having said that, it's common wisdom in the audio engineering world that it's much more pleasant sounding to SUBTRACT or reduce offending frequencies during EQ than it is to ADD or raise the gain of other frequencies, especially at high volume levels, otherwise you are going to be dealing with listening fatigue (in your audience) at the least, and uncontrollable feedback at the very worst, nevermind sound very bad to most folks.
 
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With my Risa tenor, tuned reentrant DGBE I apply some bass cut to my preamp to deal with the percussive thud mentioned earlier and leave the treble at null. I've not played the soprano Risa (GCEA) out yet but I suspect I would need the same settings.

Is the percussive "thud" what is commonly referred to as piezo "quack"?

When I record with the Risa, I usually play it through an effects unit into a multi track recorder and deal with the EQ later, again applying some bass cut.
 
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