advice for pickup setup for percussive sounds from uke

Hi everyone. Looking for advice for pickups and preamp for a specific sort of use. I am confident with electronics/DIY but don't know hardly anything about pickups, etc.

I am playing a baritone uke busking alongside my girlfriend's accordion and I need more volume. I am playing a lot of percussive sounds - using the uke as drums and rhythm guitar section basically. I own quite a good small portable speaker (Minirig) and if I can hook my uke up to that, it will be loud enough for my needs.

I think I want soundboard transducers. So here are my questions

1. I have seen super cheap sets of 3x piezo bugs and an end pin jack on ebay. I think I am gonna go with these as they can be had for like 8€ as opposed to 80€ for say a KK product. is this a terrible idea? we're only busking or playing to small groups.

2. is it worth having bugs AND an underbridge piezo? asking because the parts are cheap and I feel confident to install them if I know where, and how to wire them (all in parallel I guess).

3. bug placement. I am playing a lot of bass drum sounds by tapping on the most boomy part of the uke, below the soundhole, toward the bridge

and also I sometimes use a small piece of shell taped above the soundhole, so when I tap with my thumb it clicks sharply against the body of the uke, so I get a good 'snare' click.

where should I place the transducers?

4. I will then need some kind of amp before it will go to the portable speaker. What are these called? Like a headphone amp of the type that electric guitar players use for playing into their headphones? I don't know what to look for. I want something cheap as possible with basic eq, as I think the percussive sounds will be unpredictable with the pickups.

5. on-board preamp - i have seen some cheap ones which are in my price range (e.g. belcat). is this at all necessary? if I have a onboard preamp, will i still need an amp to go to portable speaker?

thanks for any help and sorry if this post is long and rambling. trying to be as specific as possible. cheers, Anthony

Should work fine for your purpose. It would also let you place one of the piezo discs exactly there you want to "percuss" the soundboard. As long as one of them is under or slightly forward of the bridge, you'll be ok.

1. K&K probably makes quite a profit on their products compared to a no-name version with basically the same parts. Is the no-name version as good? Probably not. Will it work? Probably. How well it works is the question. Sounds like your weak link will be the speaker so it's probably not a big deal until you upgrade to something with more juice.

2. I would say yes. Best of both worlds.

3. Pretty sure you can move transducers if you've got enough of the right kind of sticky stuff. I would guess the "kick" transducer you want right under where you tap. Snare might not have to be right underneath. See what happens and adjust accordingly... This is all untested-by-normal-people waters you're in now so you're kind of on your own/trusting other people's speculation.

4. You probably want a preamp like the LR Baggs Venue or Para DI. This will get your signal up to line-level if you can use the XLR out or (still) probably plenty of volume with the 1/4" out. There is a Behringer rip-off of the Para DI people talk about that's like $40. Probably would do the trick.

5. If you have an onboard preamp (active pickup) you don't need the external preamp or amp, but with your variety of frequencies you'll be handling I imagine you'll want the outboard controls anyways so I wouldn't make it a requirement for the project.

Best of luck. Post a video so we can see what you're up to! Uke + accordion sounds cool.

Hippie Guy said:

Is the no-name version as good? Probably not. Will it work? Probably.

Click to expand...

I tend to disagree with this, I've bought no name preamps and pickups on eBay and direct from China and they are exactly the same as the name brands, in fact I venture to say that they are the name brands without the name added, which is a common distribution operation of Chinese manufacturing. The US importer picks from a variety of Chinese items, has them add the importers label and we all think there's something special about them.

Case-in-point; I headed a group buy of a hollow body electric archtop uke I found on a Chinese site a couple of years ago. They told me a single one would be $400, but if I ordered 20 at the same time, they would be $165. During the period of gathering 20 UU members, I ran across a Kamoa uke that looked exactly the same as the one on the Chinese web site, special order only, for $850. The Chinese company told me it is the same one, Kamoa just orders it from them when they can get enough special orders going.

So I say go for those no name pickups and follow the advice given about placing them.

It probably depends on what it is. My experience with cheap electronics and household devices (water boilers, coffee machines, batteries, headsets, etc) is that I tend to get what I paid for it, and that I then end up also buying the brand name product that I should have bought in the first place. The "buying cheap means buying twice" proverb has been on target for me often. There are some exceptions, like with tuners and JBL speakers (not really a no-name product, but I nearly dropped twice as much for a German brand), and some areas with mixed results (Chinese knock off microphones), but overall I have come to the conclusion that quality frequently has its price and is an environmentally better solution.

I'd probably try the $8 pickup, though. Small enough amount to not end up paying all that much extra if it disappoints.

ok thank for the input guys. Yeah I guess it is pretty much into experimental territory with the placement of things, so I will play around and find out!

in the end I ordered a belcat bridge piezo pickup set with onboard preamp eq for 15€
and have got a couple cheap 'bugs' which I will hook up as well, experiment with
and then got a joyo JA03 mini-guitar amp for like €10 euros to give me a line level output for my portable speaker....

i'll send a video

the clip on cheapie cherub [I think i got mine on amazon] really picks up a lot of body noise that can be used to precussive effect. you can also combine it with another pickup for better string sound.

1. I've installed those cheap eBay trio SBTs on a couple of guitars. They work, but are very prone to feedback at low volumes. I've not installed a KK for comparison. A bit thin sounding.

2. Nope, you can't just wire them in parallel. Well, you can, but the impedence mismatch will be problematic. I toyed with the idea of wiring up a mixing circuit to blend both types, but it was a headache. The easiest way to blend UST with SBT is by wiring them to the jack in stereo, using a stereo lead, and an external preamp/mixer to blend them.

Found the link I was looking for. This thread should help you figure out what you need to do to match impedances or mix UST with SBTs on the uke.

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=313568

It's not impossible - I've still got it on my todo list for a guitar.