Electric ukulele on wikipedia

iamesperambient

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 30, 2013
Messages
1,589
Reaction score
27
Location
new brunswick, new jersey
I noticed the page for electric ukes on wiki its cool they added that.
My question here is while they have the main manufacturers of electric ukes like blue star, eleuke, jupiter creek (rip) & RISA they also list buddy blaze which i looked up who apparently make awful looking metalhead guitars i see no ukes here. Does anyone know if they ever made electric ukes because i see no evidence of this.
 
Buddy Blaze made a solid body electric uke for Jake that he called the shredalele. try looking it up on youtube

I tried looking up 'shredalele' but could not find anything.
Being they made only one uke that supposedly existed but
do not publicly and commercially make and sell electric ukes i dont know if its right to list them along with manufacturers like RISA, Monkey wrench, jupiter creek and blue star who are know for their electric ukes. just my 2 cents.
 
I played one years ago. That means there are at least two - unless Jake sold his and that's the one I played. I swear there were ukes on BB's website around that time. They were a big deal since they were pretty much the only electrics around at that point. We're spoiled these days.
 
I played one years ago. That means there are at least two - unless Jake sold his and that's the one I played. I swear there were ukes on BB's website around that time. They were a big deal since they were pretty much the only electrics around at that point. We're spoiled these days.

odd id like to see how it looks. I Literally can't find even a photo of it.
If anyone can send me a link to a video or picture id like to see it.
 
I tried looking up 'shredalele' but could not find anything.
Being they made only one uke that supposedly existed but
do not publicly and commercially make and sell electric ukes i dont know if its right to list them along with manufacturers like RISA, Monkey wrench, jupiter creek and blue star who are know for their electric ukes. just my 2 cents.

Wikipedia is user-written, so it isn't always the most accurate source of information about everything. You could probably let someone at Wikipedia know what your concern is about including buddy blaze as an electric ukulele manufacturer and you might be able to get the entry revised to say that buddy blaze is known to have made a special electric ukulele for Jake but is not known to have mass produced electric ukuleles.
 
Wikipedia is user-written, so it isn't always the most accurate source of information about everything. You could probably let someone at Wikipedia know what your concern is about including buddy blaze as an electric ukulele manufacturer and you might be able to get the entry revised to say that buddy blaze is known to have made a special electric ukulele for Jake but is not known to have mass produced electric ukuleles.
Or you could just edit it.
 
Ok I edited it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_ukulele#Current_Manufacturers

anyway still does anyone have any photos or videos of this ukulele?
I'd like to see it played in action by the master of ukulele himself.

I did a little more editing to make this article more informative.
ANyway I looked up for about an hour trying to find jake and this electric uke. The only stuff I can find his him playing his classic electric acoustic tenor he always plays. I did see one photo of him with a fluke thats about it. As far as I can gather it doesn't seem like this custom 'shredalele' even existed.
 
I'm almost positive that the owner of the BB uke I played was also talking about how Jake had one (or how Buddy was making one for Jake). I spent some time searching the depths for something to share, but all the pictures that were on myspace have since 404ed out. The closest thing to "proof" I found was this page that once showed off the Ali'i line of 'ukuleles he made. http://web.archive.org/web/20070223182638/http://www.buddyblaze.com/.
 
I'm almost positive that the owner of the BB uke I played was also talking about how Jake had one (or how Buddy was making one for Jake). I spent some time searching the depths for something to share, but all the pictures that were on myspace have since 404ed out. The closest thing to "proof" I found was this page that once showed off the Ali'i line of 'ukuleles he made. http://web.archive.org/web/20070223182638/http://www.buddyblaze.com/.


I don't see any pics but i do see somethings mentioning a ukulele. I think im going to try to remove the buddy blaze ukes from wikipedia until i get more confirmed info.
 
$ 950 ?

The guy appears to have a sense of humor.
 
I don't see any pics but i do see somethings mentioning a ukulele. I think im going to try to remove the buddy blaze ukes from wikipedia until i get more confirmed info.

It would be more accurate if you said that they have made them at some time in the past but don't appear to do so any longer. The page Hippie Guy linked to was dated 2007. I suspect that, given the prices, they were always a niche product.
 
It would be more accurate if you said that they have made them at some time in the past but don't appear to do so any longer. The page Hippie Guy linked to was dated 2007. I suspect that, given the prices, they were always a niche product.

just bumping this discussion i have one more concern with 'electric ukulele' on wikipedia.
"An electric ukulele is a ukulele which is electrically amplified. If not plugged in, it can still play acoustically."

I disagree with this definition. To me when someone says electric guitar they mean steel string solid body electric guitar
which unplugged is very quiet and not designed for playing acoustically, they don't mean 'an acoustic electric' which is
an acoustic instrument with a piezo or other pick up for plug in to an acoustic amp or PA to boost the volume for performance.
So i don't agree that an 'electric ukulele' is really playable acoustically in that case they should change the info for electric guitar
to match the same for electric uke.

Acoustic electric ukulele in my opinion is not the same thing as an 'electric ukulele' and really should not be mentioned in this article
because their uses, design purpose really are not the same in my opinion. Having owned both acoustic, acoustic-electric and steel string solid body ukes i can say they are all not the same thing. Just as electric guitar, acoustic-electric guitar, and acoustic/classical guitars have their own purposes.

I don't know if anyone agrees or disagrees but it seems people think ukes like the epiphone les paul A/e concert is an 'electric uke' and i think they have the wrong impression of what an electric ukulele really is. I wanted to change the photo on wiki to match that of a real electric ukulele but i can't figure out how. I feel the information is misleading and not helping those who don't know to understand what an electric uke is all about. I tried to improve on the article a few months ago, in the spaces i could figure out how to edit...but there seems to be some grey area in this article. Anyone wanna add their 2 cents?
 
Many forms of music are not defined in dictionaries, they are defined by recordings and written music. Another way to define the electric ukulele is to build a catalog of recorded music which does the defining. Instead of just collecting instruments, find some albums. Did jake use his BB on an album, are there other records or CDs around?
While the wikipeadia and similar pages continue to just focus on the instruments without relating to audio material, they are just going to be fodder for marketing departments trying to sell stuff. Marketing stooges will be in and out setting up the text to support product lines and the text may reflected a warped reality.

It seems as of now obscure artists (like myself) are using fully electric steel string ukes, but i can't think of any mainstream artists using them being their such a new invention it may take a few years for that to happen. I still think more information in general would be helpful adding acoustic-electric ukulele on the page for electric ukulele to me seems just not accurate in my opinion.
 
If you read the biography of Keith Richards or Jimmy Page etc, and the impact of obscure artists on what became the rock industry, you may realise how much influence your obscure recordings can have over the next 50 years. Music is about sounds not always words, although the lyric is an important part. If you define a music style with audio, you only need a few words. It is very hard to duplicate a well played electric ukulele other than on an electric ukulele. To fend off the "little guitar" thing, you need to define a sound, the best way to do that is with a recording. To fend off the acoustic amplified ukulele thing the same applies. You seem to be spending some effort trying to define a sound with words, maybe you would get further and even enjoy modest commercial success if you, as a connected group, put the words behind for a few days and just work using the instrument to get the defining sounds.

I see where you are getting at. Although I still think its apparent the difference between acoustic-electric and solid electric theres a huge difference and i don't think acoustic-electric should even be mentioned in the article. in my opinion acoustic electric is no different than micing up an acoustic (in my opinion).
 
Top Bottom