ukulele pick up question

hey guys!

just got a quick question. I've been playing the uke for about 6 months now, loving it, but now I want to upgrade and buy a new uke with a pick up installment. my question is do all ukuleles with pick up installment work with any kind of amp? I ask this because my brother plays electric guitar and it would be great if I could just his instead of getting a new one. sorry if this is a stupid question! I know nothing about amps btw. thanks in advance!

Easy answer - yes.
It might not sound good through an amp designed for electric guitar.

thanks harpdog! what kind of an amplifier you suggest for a good quality sound from an uke? saw this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbwcS38lro and had to get a pick up. the sound is superb. any suggestions for an amp?

For ukes (and mandolins) with UST pickups I actually recommend amps with 10" or smaller speakers, or at least one that has really good EQ offerings if larger speakers are used. Under-saddle pickups can be quite prone to picking up a bit of a "clunk" or "thunk" percussive noise from the pick or fingers hitting the strings. This is true of all under-saddle pickups on all instruments to a degree. Larger instruments, like guitars, have enough naturally occuring sound in the same frequency range that the thunk is not very obvious. Small-bodied, higher-pitched instruments like ukes and mandolins don't have the low-end string sound to help cover the thunk, so the thunk can be quite pronounced.

As long as you have an amp with a good EQ, where you can roll the bass and low mids off without affecting the higher mids, it doesn't matter what speaker size you have. But, if you have an amp with a big speaker and great bass response, and not good EQ to roll off the bass, the thunk can be pretty noticeable.

Any decent acoustic guitar or keyboard amp should work fine, and worst case you can throw an EQ pedal ahead of almost any amp and get pretty decent results.

HTH,
John