Uke that can be heard over guitar

jcarlos

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Hey folks,I been playing with a guitar player for a couple of weeks now and its almost impossible to hear the uke while playing melodies over the guitar. Can anyone recommend a uke that can be heard over a loud guitar rhythm, it will be mainly for picking not strumming. We want to stay acoustic as well.
 
I've heard a spruce top Mya-Moe Tenor that was pretty loud, but you're up against a pretty big mass there...I mean put them side by side!
 
Maybe have the guitar player put a feedback disc in his soundhole, not sure what they are called but i used one for an acoustic electric I had a while back. It could muffle his guitar a little. Have him play without a pick. I really dont have a clue which Ukes are louder than an acoustic guitar. When me and my friend play acoustic guitars together I have to lighten it up just to hear him.
 
I do it the other way around. I play an old Kay archtop with the ukes so it doesn't overpower them. Might try a small parlor guitar. Not very many ukes are going to keep up with a Dreadnought or Jumbo volumewise.
 
Barring the obvious answer of an amplifier (presuming you don't want one or don't have one), KoAloha ukes are the loudest I have ever heard.
 
The Ohana ukes with Redwood tops have a lot of volume too.
 
I electrify to be heard with cello. But, a resonator uke can be pretty loud w/out sounding harsh.
 
Having played in quite a few bands, I can tell you that one player turning up to be heard over another is a no-win situation. You end up chasing each other as it gets louder. A GOOD guitar player should have dynamic control and be able to play softer while you play louder to achieve a workable balance. If your ukulele is naturally soft (even for a ukulele), then there would need to be something done to address that (different strings, a louder model of ukulele, ...). But if you are both going to amplify it would really be better to run through a board and have a sound person adjust the mix.

In the interest of full disclosure, I fully realize that most people today seem to want music LOUD, while I am the opposite - a quiet acoustic gig would suit me just fine. So my comments do come from a definite bias.

Tony
 
You could always get a Clara.

Or strings that let you "dig in" more.

If amplifying is possible check out the Ka'au Crater Boys on Youtube. They made it work in the 90s.
 
Good point, Tony, but if you are jamming with five acoustic guitars, a mandolin, bass, harmonica player, and maybe the lady who plays dynamite cello, they all have to play softly in the extreme to hear your uke. A little amp that adds just enough to balance a louder instrument is easy to control, you have the option of dialing it down. If the giitar player can hear you, you can probably hear yourself ...
 
My Compass Rose can play loud acoustically. I play with guitar players on most Friday nights, and I have no problem hearing myself.
 
I second Bill1's post. Listen to each other and adjust. It is part of the subtilty of music.
 
My Griffin Tenor is incredible when it comes to being heard. I don't know what he does to bring out the robust sound but have had many remark how the sound projects.
 
I'm fortunate, in that I get to play with a lot of guitar and banjo players. I live about 10 miles from the Folk Alliance, and they encourage people to come in, sit a spell, and play. My solution is always to play rhythm and let the guitar or banjo handle the melody. That way there's no competition, and the ukulele can be heard sort of between the notes like any other background instrument.
 
Banjo-uke, reso-uke, or 8-string uke. I lead an acoustic jam that includes 20 guitarists with my Gold Tone tenor banjo-uke and my Lanikai O-8 8-string uke. Aquila strings give a little extra volume, too.

- FiL
 
Good point, Tony, but if you are jamming with five acoustic guitars, a mandolin, bass, harmonica player, and maybe the lady who plays dynamite cello, they all have to play softly in the extreme to hear your uke. A little amp that adds just enough to balance a louder instrument is easy to control, you have the option of dialing it down. If the giitar player can hear you, you can probably hear yourself ...

Good points. A small amplifier might be just the ticket in that case.

Tony
 
KoAloha Sceptre is what I play when my friends get together (2 guitars and a banjo) and it does really well.
 
Tomorrow, I will be playing a solo fingerstyle tune from Daniel Ho's "Polani" CD in front of probably 50 - 75 people in a large room. I had a Schatten pickup installed in my Kamaka Ohta-San (all the tunes on the CD are done with low G tuning) and run that through the Schatten Mini-Preamp and then into my AER Compact 60 acoustic amplifier. My intent, as I typically do when playing solo fingerstyle guitar through it, is to only have it loud enough for people to hear, an attempt to just make the guitar or ukulele "big enough" for the people in back to hear. It really doesn't take much volume to do that, in fact very little. Playing solo, I don't have to compete with anything but room/body absorption of sound and that many people shuffling a bit (ambient room noise). I have attended a couple of solo fingerstyle guitar concerts in recent years and the guitar is often run though the house system and is incredibly LOUD, which is just not how I would expect a solo fingerstyle guitar to sound. I really don't get this seeming cultural desire to have everything so LOUD. Instead of attacking our collective ear drums, solo acoustic instruments (to me) should be soothing and relaxing in an otherwise busy world - a respite from all the noise and hurry. Instead, we seem to want to make everything in our world loud and fast.

By the way, for anybody else using this pickup/preamp combination, I find that turning the preamp's volume up just enough to hear it clearly through the amp (which is really only very little boost), gives me the best overall sound. The normal way to handle gain stages such as this would be to turn up the earlier gain stages and turn down the later stage (the main gain) to minimize hiss. However, when I do that in this case, the low G string becomes a bit more predominant and without a decent parametric EQ to focus on a very specific frequency range, EQ'ing affects the other strings too much. It sounds just fine when using the preamp very sparingly and there is no easily heard noise in the end result.

Tony
 
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