What kind of electric pickup for my solid body steel string uke?

I bought this electric uke a while back. Was never really happy with the piezo pickup. The A string is barely audible. I have since bought an Eleuke that I love and this uke has been sitting untouched. My purchase of a Roland GR-20 guitar synth of Ebay has necessitated the need for me getting a steel string uke, and since I can't afford the new Risa I have decided to convert this one. Since it is essentially one solid piece of wood I think it should handle the increased string tension. I will have to replace the bridge and saddle (I think a mandolin saddle will work?). My biggest concern is what kind of pickup to use. I have seen Almuse mandolin pickups recommended but do not know which model would work best and have never heard one played on a uke. Rob at Jupiter Ukulele recommends either GFS PB Pro P Bass style pickups or the Lil Puncher XL- Neck Pickup. Finally, I really like the humbuckers that Risa use but I have been told these are hand made by Risa and not for sale. The more research I do the more confusing options I find. Is there anyone out there with actual experience in chooseing a pickup for a solid body steel string uke? Any help would be greatly apprieciated. Also, I see that Risa uses four pickups, with such a small area to work with, it is worth while to install multiple pickups and the switches necessary to choose between them? I am off to the book store to find some information on wiring up electric guitars. I have absolutly no luthier or electric guitar experience so any help would be appreciated. Thanks

I'd be surprised if that tie bridge would be usable with a steel string setup. If you use an Almuse, I'd recommend asking for a pickup ring to go with it. Just rut the cavity and drop the pickup in it. It looks like the control cavity is big enough to give you a bunch of options on pickups and switches. That's a pretty cool looking instrument. Who made it?

Andrew

We've used mini humbuckers and small single and double coils. It really depends on the kind of sound you want.

I really wonder what Risa is getting at with four pickups. I mean, come on, a Les Paul has two humbuckers and rocks the walls, same with an SG, our custom strat has two single coils and a humbucker and that's as much as anyone will ever need, and then there's the Taylor T5 :drool: but that's another story. I'm pretty sure that four pickups is one more than anyone needs.

RISA isn't using four pickups. They are using two humbuckers. Each humbucker has two coils so it looks like four pickups. With a humbucker, you can get three distinct tones using a simple three way switch.

For what its worth, I've used just about every pickup imaginable on my electrics and the Almuse pickup is the one that has become the standard option. Prior to Almuse, I used DiMarzios. I have used a Lil Puncher, and it is a good pickup, but a bit thin for my taste. Other pickups I've tried include Razors, Bartolinis, EMG Selects and Seymour Duncans.

If you plan to remove the nylon string bridge to install a steel string bridge....I would suggest a Jerman bridge. It has adjustable saddles like a standard electric guitar bridge for intonation purposes. I think they can still be found on the Moongazer Music website. (I believe thistle3585 is the person that designed it) As far as a pickup goes...I have a DiMarzio Pro-Track in the neck position and a DiMarzio Tonezone in the bridge position on my steel-string ukulele. I have a Jonathan Mann custom....he normally makes electric mandolins, but he made me a tenor ukulele in the style of his SEM-4 model if you want to look at pics with the DiMarzio pickups. They are awesome humbuckers and are able to coil-split too for the single-coil tones!

Good luck with your conversion!

Jon Erickson

Thanks Andrew. Sorry, I should have looked at Risa's electrics in detail before answering.

Jon,
Mr. Mann makes wonderful instruments and you are lucky to have on. Jon Mann was the one that introduced me, not personally though, to the DiMarzio Pro Track and I used them exclusdively for years. The only down side was the width of the pickup in comparison to the width of the string spacing. When Tom pitched the Almuse to me he gave me some graphs where he had put tested several pickups on the same instrument and the Almuse looked identical to the DiMarzio DP188 and I would confirm that they both share the same tonal qualities.

All that aside, in looking at the photos of the mandolin, I wonder if he would have enough room to put a DiMarzio or equivalent sized pickup in that instrument. I'm going to ask Pete and or Tom to chime in here because they really are the experts and Tom has a lot of experience with different pickups.

Thanks Andrew,
At the risk of being chucked off this board for advertising..........
Might be worth a look here!


http://www.almuse.co.uk/mandolin_pickups_custom.html
CheeryBye
Pete

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the input, however I still have a ton of questions if you can bear with me, one at a time:

thistle3585 - I will definitely be changing the saddle and bridge, is a pickup ring the piece that goes around the pickup, is it purely cosmetic, I am working with a really narrow body, kind of like a risa uke stick, if the pickups end up being too wide I will have to do some major surgery. You recommend Almuse, but they make lots of pick ups (humbuckers, single coils etc. and different versions of each of these) which would recommend? The uke is made by Antoniotsai, a Taiwanese Luthier who has a factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam who is known mostely for inlaid guitars. I couldn't honestly recommend them, the nut was poorly made, the action too low and the piezo pick up doesn't like the A string. It does have a nice finish though.

erich@muttcrew.net - You asked what kind of sound I want, I am looking for several sounds which is why I am considering multiple pickups, I would like to able to both strum beatles tunes and shred like Eddie VanHalen.

jerickson - Moongazer Music has two four string bridges for sale, barrel and rectangle saddles, (again, sorry I am brand new to this) which do you or anybody else out there recommend? Also you wrote, "DiMarzio pickups... are awesome humbuckers and are able to coil-split too for the single-coil tones!" What does this mean, is this via switching and do they include a wiring diagram when you order?

I am looking forward to ordering my pickups and saddle to start my project, just want to make sure I order the right ones, any input is appreciated. Thanks again

I'll try to do the best i can to answer your questions.

Obviously, you shouldn't put a pickup in that is too wide. There are four basic ways to install a magnetic pickup. Below are pictures illustrating all four.
1. Rout a pickup cavity from the back that will hold the entire pickup and then rout a smaller opening to allow just the magnets to go through then run screws through either side to attach to the tabs in the pickup.
2. Rout a cavity from the top a bit larger than the pickup and put the springs on the bottom of the pickup to adjust the height.
3. Rout a cavity from the top and use a pickup ring to hide the cavity. The Risa cited earlier is an example of this.
4. Rout a cavity and attach the pickup to a pickguard like what is on a typical guitar.

Choice of pickup is based on the type of tone you are looking for. Typically, I ask my customers what type of music they want to play then recommend a pickup based on that answer. So far, I haven't had any complaints. BUT, realize that you can do some creative switching that allows you to get several tones out of one pickup. My standard wiring option includes a three way switch that gives you three distinct tone.(humbucker/single coil/out of phase. That's more than you will need. As a general rule, the lower Ohm reading the mellower the pickup and the higher Ohm the hotter the pickup. Coil tapping is basically turning off one of the two coils in a humbucker so that the pickup becomes a bit hotter sounding and distorts easier. In essence, you are temporarily shorting out one of the coils. However, not all humbuckers are wound the same. You need one that has four wires, two for each coil. If you're looking for a recommendation then I'd say to buy the MG4 from moongazer. Unfortunately, I think I just cleaned him out on them but he said he'd have more next week. If you'd like, I can send you a wiring harness so that all you need to do is solder the pickup onto the switch.

I'd highly recommend using the rectangle saddle bridges from moongazer. Trust me, you don't want the barrel saddle bridges.

Andrew

thistle3585 said:

Jon,
Mr. Mann makes wonderful instruments and you are lucky to have on. Jon Mann was the one that introduced me, not personally though, to the DiMarzio Pro Track and I used them exclusdively for years. The only down side was the width of the pickup in comparison to the width of the string spacing. When Tom pitched the Almuse to me he gave me some graphs where he had put tested several pickups on the same instrument and the Almuse looked identical to the DiMarzio DP188 and I would confirm that they both share the same tonal qualities.

All that aside, in looking at the photos of the mandolin, I wonder if he would have enough room to put a DiMarzio or equivalent sized pickup in that instrument. I'm going to ask Pete and or Tom to chime in here because they really are the experts and Tom has a lot of experience with different pickups.

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Andrew,

You're right about Jon Mann's instruments....I feel very lucky that he agreed to build an ukulele for me. It was the first he had ever done. It is truly awesome!!! Jon used the custom measures of the fingerboard that I gave him as well as bridge string spacing (much wider than his mandolins). That may be the reason why I have had no issues with the size of the DiMarzio pickups. They work very well on my instrument anyway! I'm not an electrical engineer or pick up guru by any means so I don't have any data to back it up but I really like the tone and response from my set up. The truth is, I play hard rock and blues with the Mann-U-Lele so the DiMarzios give me the sound I was looking for. I would sure like to try the Almuse humbuckers in my next Mann-u-lele (single cutaway PRS style). We'll have to see how that works out! Thanks for the info!!!

Jon

lancemanion said:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the input, however I still have a ton of questions if you can bear with me, one at a time:

thistle3585 - I will definitely be changing the saddle and bridge, is a pickup ring the piece that goes around the pickup, is it purely cosmetic, I am working with a really narrow body, kind of like a risa uke stick, if the pickups end up being too wide I will have to do some major surgery. You recommend Almuse, but they make lots of pick ups (humbuckers, single coils etc. and different versions of each of these) which would recommend? The uke is made by Antoniotsai, a Taiwanese Luthier who has a factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam who is known mostely for inlaid guitars. I couldn't honestly recommend them, the nut was poorly made, the action too low and the piezo pick up doesn't like the A string. It does have a nice finish though.

erich@muttcrew.net - You asked what kind of sound I want, I am looking for several sounds which is why I am considering multiple pickups, I would like to able to both strum beatles tunes and shred like Eddie VanHalen.

jerickson - Moongazer Music has two four string bridges for sale, barrel and rectangle saddles, (again, sorry I am brand new to this) which do you or anybody else out there recommend? Also you wrote, "DiMarzio pickups... are awesome humbuckers and are able to coil-split too for the single-coil tones!" What does this mean, is this via switching and do they include a wiring diagram when you order?

I am looking forward to ordering my pickups and saddle to start my project, just want to make sure I order the right ones, any input is appreciated. Thanks again

Click to expand...

Definitely the rectangle saddle bridge. I've never liked the barrel style (I had a Telecaster once upon a time that had a barrel style bridge). Two strings shared the same barrel! It made for a challenge to set-up the guitar.

As far as the switching goes, my tone knob is a push-pull knob. When my pickup selector is in the neck position and I pull the tone knob up, it switches to a single-coil tone. Same with the bridge pickup. When the pickup selector is in the middle it splits into one coil from each pickup. When the tone knob is down, the pickups are humbuckers. Keep in mind that if you want this option, you need to have 4-wire pickups as Andrew said and you'll probably need to buy new pots unless you already have push/pull pots.

Usually pickups come with a basic wiring diagram...you may have to do some research if you want an "exotic" wiring diagram. Andrew may be able to help with that.

Good luck!

Jon

O.K., I'm making some progress figuring out what I need. Here it goes: I will need a rectangle saddle bridge and an Almuse pickup with 4 wire output (the MG4?), I also need two 500k pots and .022 cap. I am planning on using Fender Bullet strings with .010 (A), .013 (E), .017 (C) and .026(G) gauge for a low-G tuning, which is what Matt “The Jumping Flea” Dahlberg uses on his Risa. Does this look like a good shopping list?
Will I need new tuners for the metal strings? Also, I'm getting a little ahead of myself but, what distance from the saddle do I want to mount the pickup? I'm sure I will have many more questions once I have the parts in my hands, thanks to everyone for their input.
And thistle3585, if you were serious about sending me that wiring harness, it would be greatly appreciated.

I would discourage you from using the Fender bullet strings. The bridge is designed in such a manner that the bullets will leave "dents" in the top just behind the bridge. I use regular ball end electric guitar strings. From the looks of the tuners in the photo, I don't think that you will need to replace them.

I'd highly recommend that you draw out what you want to do to make sure you have room for the pickup, switches, jacks etc. I used to have instructions on how to locate and intonate the bridge on my website but have removed it. I can email that to you.

Email me at andrew(AT)auinc.com and I'll get you the info and we can sort out the wiring harness.

As an option I use D'addario .010 (A), .014 (E), .019 (C), .026 (Low G). Those guages seem to work best for my uke (tension of the strings and intonation). I order single strings from www.stringsbymail.com As long as your uke has metal string posts (as opposed to plastic) you shouldn't need new tuners. I use sperzel locking tuners on mine, but that is certainly overkill!!! I like the ease of string changes with those tuners, but standard guitar tuners will work just fine.

lancemanion said:

O.K., I'm making some progress figuring out what I need. Here it goes: I will need a rectangle saddle bridge and an Almuse pickup with 4 wire output (the MG4?), I also need two 500k pots and .022 cap.

Click to expand...

I suggest going for a 0.047 capacitor.........more treble cut if you need a spot of mellowness (.022s hardly do anything).
I`m also a D`Addario fan!
CheeryBye
Pete

The reason I was going with Fender Bullet strings is that Matt had written that they are thin and easy to bend. I like to play the blues, are the D`Addario strings bendable?

thistle3585 - Sent you an email, mine is thecacyfamily(at)hotmail.com, I thought I could place the bridge in the exact place that the original is since i am not messing with the fretboard. Do you think it is necessary to move the bridge?

Soundfarmer Pete - thanks for the input on the capacitor.

Any other input on what kind of capacitor would best suit my project would be appreciated. I emailed Tom at Moongazer Music last night for a quote. Any additional input before I make my purchase would be appreciated.

lancemanion said:

The reason I was going with Fender Bullet strings is that Matt had written that they are thin and easy to bend. I like to play the blues, are the D`Addario strings bendable?

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Strings are strings. You can't tell the difference between a .010 Fender and a .010 D'Addario. The tension will be the same between the two of them, so you can't saythat one will bend easier than the other. The only time it becomes an issue is when you use wound strings and then its more about flatwound versus roundwound. Just make sure they are all steel and not bronze.

thistle3585 said:

Strings are strings. You can't tell the difference between a .010 Fender and a .010 D'Addario. The tension will be the same between the two of them, so you can't saythat one will bend easier than the other. The only time it becomes an issue is when you use wound strings and then its more about flatwound versus roundwound. Just make sure they are all steel and not bronze.

Click to expand...

Sorry Andrew but I don`t agree........
Different makers use different grades of steel - an easy way to compare strings is to take them out of the envelope, unravel them and drop them onto a smooth surface such as a smooth worktop........some makes will be virtually straight....others like an unwound spring (very noticeable with cheap Chinese strings) and these poorer quality strings take longer to stretch in and loose whatever tone they had far more quickly.
The same trick applies to wound strings - the straighter the string, the more even the wind. Also, not all manufacturers will use the same diameter of core wire for a given string which will also affect tension.
I think the main thing is to try a few different brands and find something that brings happiness.
One thing worth noting - if buying strings in a shop, check the packaging carefully.......if it looks suspicious, don`t buy (there are definitely fake D`Addario mando strings and Ernie Ball guitar strings out there).
CheeryBye

My point wasn't the quality of the strings, which there are surely great differences, but that the difference in tension between the strings to affect the ability to bend a string isn't significant between manufacturers. I don't believe you will notice any difference between a Fender and a D'Addario plain steel string, so why damage the top of your instrument with the bullets that they put on the Fender strings?

I agree that wound strings are a whole different ball game.

I think the one thing we will agree on is that they wont bend as easily as a guitar due to the shorter scale. I usually use lighter sets on short scale electrics for this purpose.