15 year old Electric ukulele builder in sticky situation

I have built three electirc ukes in the past 6 months and worked at a guitar builders workshop (Atkin guitars) on work experience but I'm currently having trouble deciding on pickup for my ukes - i have never tried under saddle and currently use half of a p bass pickup. I have some build videos on youtube and limited resources .

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrSpottedpython?feature=mhee

If someone could help me it would be it would be fantastic

My thread over at ukulelecosmos should help/inspire you a bit http://www.ukulelecosmos.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21295

I'd advise an artec pickup. Very nice sounding and much cheaper than the fushman or misi's

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Artec-Ukulele...aultDomain_0&hash=item4a9f4e444e#ht_628wt_902

I love the lipsticks in my Risa, and will probably buy some that can handle more gain (because Ukulele crunch is imperative).
I heard some rail PUPS in a lap steel (and figure they would work on a uke) and they were magical- I think they were Seymor Duncan.
I am going to try winding my own...which translates to hell freezing over before I finish my first electric Ukulele

I've used K&K Twin Spot internals pickups on several acoustic electric ukuleles and I've been very happy with them. It's a passive pickup that attaches under the bridge plate.

I usually use a K&K Pure pre-amp with it but it actually sounds pretty good plugged straight into my little amp. Here's a short video of Brook Adams playing one of my electrics with the K&K. This is without the pre-amp.

Dave, if you install during the construction process how do you go about finishing around the jack?

Liam.

Push the jack into the body while you finish it, then push it back though afterwards.

For a magnetic pickup, I'd recommend an Almuse pickup. They are a vailable in the US through moongazermusic.com. Most P bass pickups have a single bar in them and the bar is offset in the pickup because it is designed to only cover two strings. When using it to cover four, it ends up being weaker on one side since the bar is offset. Does that make sense? Also, most P bass pickups have a pretty low Ohm value since they are designed for bass instruments, so they really distort on the high end. A good, inexpensive pickup is the Lil Puncher from GFS. It is a small tele humbucking neck pickup and has worked well for me on several builds. It handles the highs really well. I've never tried an under saddle pickup, but I've got a bunch of figured maple that is about soprano sized so I thought I'd make a batch of them later this summer and try a piezo under saddle.

liam_fnq said:

Dave, if you install during the construction process how do you go about finishing around the jack?

Liam.

Click to expand...

Depends some on how I'm finishing. But like Nixon says below, the easiest way is to push the jack inside and then fish it out when you're done.

Thanks for all the help ..... with regards to the under saddle pickup do they sound alright without a preamp ??

I use my K&K most of the time without a pre-amp. You have a lot more tone control with the pre-amp, but I think it sounds pretty great without it.

Never bother putting my electric through a pre-amp and it still sounds fantastic.