Dear Friends!
Since there was a video of me linked here and there was some guessing about it, I'd like to explain a few things.
First:
Yes, there are cheap ukuleles that sound phenomenal. It's really true. You don't have to spend big bucks for a great sounding instrument. However you have to search for it. Often there are big differences between different examples of the same model. Often enough, some little adjustments have to be made to get the best out of an instrument. With this particular ukulele, the fretwork had to be fixed a bit, and I put on brown Worth strings, that was all... I believe the pre-owner already optimized the action, which was pretty good. Intonation was quite good too, which is probably good luck, since there is usually quite a lot of variation in this price range.
Second:
Nope, I don't do a lot of post-processing. I *do* add a *slight* amount of reverb since otherwise it would sound too dry (a too damped room and near recording distance will inevitably lead to this if you don't do anything about it), but some of these instruments are so resonant and have enough sustain that I might get away without that too. It depends a bit on the music too. Some music just sounds better with a bit of reverb, while other kinds of music don't really need it that much.
So what else do I do? Not much -- just normalizing and synchronizing to the video. That's all. I could probably improve the sound by doing some EQ, enhancing and so on, but frankly I'm too lazy to do that. I like the sound without it already so I just leave it like this.
However I believe that the following ingredients are essential for making a recording that sounds good:
1.) Make sure to play well: Tune your instrument precisely. Use good strings. Make sure your nails are in good shape. Even little nuances in playing technique are important to get a good sound. I often take care to adapt my arrangements and playing in order to enhance the resonance of the ukulele. If you want to find out more about the playing techniques I'm using you can check out my crash course at ukulele arts. (It's a bit hidden yet, but you will find it with the search).
2.) Make sure you don't record in a noisy environment. Even computer fans will degrade the sound of your recording. That's why I don't use a computer for recording.
3.) Use proper recording equipment. A good condenser mic, a good preamp, and a decent digital recorder will do miracles. The ukulele is not a very loud instrument, and bad recording equipment will have problems making a clean recording of it. I want to mention that I don't use any devices for enhancing or modiying the sound in my recording chain. The mic is a LCT 550, the preamp a DMP3 (which doesn't have any EQ or the like). The recorder really doesn't matter that much as long it does a clean job without making noise, it's a Yamaha D100.
When recording, I often try to select an ukulele to match the sound I want to achieve. There are some very cheap and some more expensive ones in my little collection, and they all have their own beautiful voice and are put to use now and then for recording.
Why did I get a warning that this Message seems to be spam when I tried to post it first?
Best Regards
Wilfried