A pickup that makes your uke look great as well as sound great

chappyware

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I just wanted to share my experience with putting in a pickup into my Kanilea K1 Tenor. First off, the K1 is gorgeous both to the ear and the eye (I got the higher grade koa and to me it's stunning). I put in ebony strap pins in the neck and the usual body position and they work and look great. If I put in a 'regular' pickup, the jack is going to be a run of the mill flat metal 'hole' and I'd lose the look of the ebony pin. Didn't want to go there. In addition, I don't have a luthier nearby so I needed to do it myself.

Long story short, I bought a PickUptheWorld under saddle pickup with the optional vintage jack. I selected ebony for the jack and it looks like a larger version of what I had in there already. Install was a snap. It's so thin that the saddle and it's channel don't have to be modified at all. The jack required you use a reaming tool to get a tapered hole but other than that, it's simple. Thread the pickup through a hole in the bridge (and you don't have to angle it-in fact, you're told to drill straight down). Whole thing is about a 15 minute job and could be less if I wasn't so scared of marring the wood!

Only downside is that the vintage jack is a 1/8th inch jack as opposed to a 1/4 inch jack. They give you a nice matching right angle 1/8 jack to wire up your own cord. A small price to pay because the sound is great (much better than the piezo on my Pono ETO) and the look is elegant.

So if you are looking for something different, easy to install, and great sounding, try the PickUpthe World Uke pickup. Take a look at the vintage jack options. Some are really very cool.
 
hope this pix upload and are clear enough

These show the vintage jack and the saddle. The saddle required no modification at all. I ordered an extra one in case I had to sand it and screwed it up but no need for it. Had to show off my strap-sorry!
 

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Nice install. Your uke looks beautiful. I had a regular flat metal 1/4 in jack Fishman Matrix installed in my K1-T. And I actually think that it looks very elegant on its own. But I don't have the other strap button (b/c I don't use a strap), so I don't have matching problems. Your solution is very elegant. The only thing I worry about is how fragile the 1/8 in male part is going to be. I'm always afraid those are goign to snap off and get left in my 1/8 female audio parts.
 
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