Electric Uke?

TylerGaff

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Hi! I'm looking around for a (relativley cheap, around $200 is prefered but it can be higher!) electric ukulele that I will be able to plug into an amp and use distortion pedals! I was looking at some acoustic-electrics but my dad said they wouldn't work due to the lack of pickups. Is he correct? Does anyone have any reccomendations?
 
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Hi! I'm looking around for a (relativley cheap, around $200 is prefered but it can be higher!) electric ukulele that I will be able to plug into an amp and use distortion pedals! I was looking at some acoustic-electrics but my dad said they wouldn't work due to the lack of pickups. Is he correct? Does anyone have any reccomendations?

Apparently your father is unaware of piezo pickups, both under-saddle, and surface-transducer types, which are the de facto standard, and sole option for both acoustic/electric ukulele, guitar violin and many other instruments that are primarily acoustic.

Any instrument you see listed as "acoustic-electric" is going to have some form of piezo pickup in it, and the mid-to-high end instruments might also have a tiny internal micriphone.

If you were looking at, or your father was thinking in terms of steel string electric or acoustic guitar with magnetic pickups and using that perspective for ukulele, there are only a few brands that have them factory made, and most others are custom made and serious $$$$.

You would do well, to do some research on this.

Some folks believe that because the ukulele has nylon-type strings that this is not optimal to use with a distortion pedal. Remember these are just opinions of other people. You can do anything you want.

Steel strings will have more 'bite' and longer sustain than nylon strings, this is due to physics and how the strings are made. Steel strings have like 10x the molecular weight and linear density than nearly ALL ukulele and classical guitar strings, and that allows them to have way more sustain

I use effects all the time with my nylon-strung acoustic-electric ukuleles, mostly reverb, compression, and delay. I am not a fan of using distortion any more since my music not longer follows a path that requires it.

In my own ukes, I use either the Mi-Si Acoustic Trio pickup and preamp kit, which I've installed myself on several instruments, or other pickups that I have designed and built myself from scratch.

For a pre-made piezo pickup system for ukulele, there are hundreds of options to choose from.

ACTIVE pickups, with a built-in preamp are better than passive pickups because they solve many problems, most notably IMPEDANCE MISMATCH. I have written expensively about IMPEDANCE MISMATCH her eon UU, and you can see those posts via the FAQ link in my forum signature below.

You need to know about IMPEDANCE MISMATCH if you are going to use a pickup with an acoustic instrument, otherwise, if you do not use a preamp, your pickup will sound like garbage, and in such a way that no amount of EQ can fix.

This is an electrical problem, NOT an audio problem.
 
Tyler, your dad is wrong. Lots of people use pedals with acoustic electric instruments. The upside is that with an acoustic electric ukulele you can play it without plugging in too.
 
Vorson/Clearwater make a steel string solid body electric uke, as does RISA (at a price), there are some solid body nylon/fluoro strung ukes, (a good example is the RISA solid/stick uke), & then there are all the electro acoustic ukes, which start around about £150. :)
 
I have a Vorson steel string magnetic pickup that required a bit of setup before I could play it. There is an impedance issue with piezoelectric pickups that can be cured with DI boxes. I prefer active DI boxes that have a built in preamplifier with tonal controls. The Vorson sounds more like an electric guitar, than an amplified acoustic 'ukulele. There are effects geared for acoustic electric instruments, such as:

https://www.tc-helicon.com/Categories/Tchelicon/Vocal/Multi-Effects/PLAY-ACOUSTIC/p/P0CDJ

Your dad is not wrong, in that guitar effects are designed primarily for lower impedance magnetic pickups, but they will also work with higher impedance piezoelectric pickups that "quack". Ric
 
You're dad is definitely wrong, most of my ukes have piezo under saddle pickups and active preamp system that I've used with a variety of amplifiers and effects, plus I've also had a couple of steel string magnetic pickup ukes (Vorzon and Alida) that do have a much more electric guitar sound, but I really didn't have a need for them, so I ultimately sold them.


8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 7 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. http://www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: https://www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos
 
Apparently your father is unaware of piezo pickups, both under-saddle, and surface-transducer types, which are the de facto standard, and sole option for both acoustic/electric ukulele, guitar violin and many other instruments that are primarily acoustic.

Booli, this is not entirely true. There are miniature condenser mics available for acoustic instruments some of which can be used on a ukulele. They do take a little seeking out but they do sound better if you want to capture the acoustic sound of your instrument. The best ones are mounted on a swan neck and have a cardioid pick up pattern which helps reduce the risk of feedback. I use one from UK firm Microvox for most of my ukes. It's more at the "budget"end of these devices and comprises a omni directional condenser mic but it does the job and it's what I use to plug in for most of my ukes. The little "bug" attaches by a velcro pad and connects to a battery psu/preamp on my belt by a dedicated cable and from there to the PA via a standard 6mm plug.

I think these are a better solution than the piezo pickups as they do more accurately capture the tone of your instrument. Even with a good quality pickup/preamp combination, instruments plugged in via a piezo pickup (whether guitar or ukulele) tend to sound samey, IMO.

However, if you want to use effects, I agree that the way to go is a piezo pickup as you are changing the sound of the instrument, anyway so the tone will come as much from the pedals/amplifier combination as the instrument itself.
 
... higher impedance piezoelectric pickups that "quack". Ric

IMPEDANCE MISMATCH is fixed with either a preamp or DI box, and in either case that fixes the quack.

This is an electrical issue. You likely already know this Ric, but other folks repeat it without any understanding of why it happens and how to easily solve this problem.

Passive piezo pickups have like 1 Million ohms impedance, guitar magnetic pickups typically 10 thousand ohms impedance and most dynamic mics and phantom-powered condenser mics have 250 to 1 thousand ohm impedance, as such the equipment you plug each into expects a certain impedance.

Mismatched impedance will result in low volume and high 'noise' (hiss, buzz, hum) as well as degraded audio quality that none of which can be resolved with EQ, gain boost, or compression. There needs to be some kind of transformer in the circuit or digital voltage boost or digital voltage buck to match the inputs and outputs to the proper impedance.
 
Booli, this is not entirely true. There are miniature condenser mics available for acoustic instruments some of which can be used on a ukulele. ..

My bad. It was an error of omission. I consider all mics, whether internal or external in the same category.

The Microvox is an electret mic and similar to a lapel mic in a slightly altered form factor and mounting setup.

My point about piezo pickups is that they are in contact with the surface of the instrument and as such physically sense the vibration of the instrument and convert that to an electrical signal.

ANY microphone relies on sound wave pressure traveling in open air, and then converts that to an electrical signal.

Both are transducers. Mics usually sound closer to what we HEAR in open air, since they are modeled to mimic our human hearing and with a diaphragm that vibrates like our eardrums.

However, there are good sounding piezos and bad sounding piezos, and lots of that is also tied into the electronics of the preamp that is being used.

If they all sound the same to you, then maybe you have not heard a good piezo yet?

There's lots of misinformation and marketing propaganda out there spreading like a virus, and YouTube videos are a poor representation to use for comparison tests of audio fidelity.
 
Hi! I'm looking around for a (relativley cheap, around $200 is prefered but it can be higher!) electric ukulele that I will be able to plug into an amp and use distortion pedals! I was looking at some acoustic-electrics but my dad said they wouldn't work due to the lack of pickups. Is he correct? Does anyone have any reccomendations?

Perhaps a more useful response would be a question. Tyler, what kind of music are you wanting to play? Some examples of the type of sound you are hoping to re-create would better allow our members to predict whether you need a nylon/fluorocarbon string acoustic/electric ukulele, or a solid body steel-string ukulele.
 
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