How to Plug your Ukulele Into an Amp - Uke Tutorial

[@ToddLorencmusic]

Great job my friend this amp has been my whole live ukulele show rig for the last four years and I would not play live without it, amazing quality instrument and mic sound definitely.

[@broadwaygypsy3304]

my lanikai acoustic came without any instuctions , and i have been bounceing around in the abyss ..but i am now, up and running, thanks to you!!!! excellent

[@susanjohnston3846]

As a newby to music and amps....thank you for the great , easy to understand explanation 👍

[@bushwhackeroz]

Great information! Love the sound of your setup, that amp and pedal rock! Thanks for putting this out there

[@flower-qu8oc]

i just bought a new ukulele and saw the like plugs and stuff on it and had no idea how to used it so thank you!

[@BradBordessa]

Glad to hear it. I've been using an HX Stomp by Line 6 for the past few years.

[@dianaaldridge-ukulele7785]

@@BradBordessa Brad… I want to try a Boss RC 30 Dual track looper and an Astral Destiny, of course not at the same time, with my ukes. I use a Roland AC 33 amp. Both of those would work, correct? Thanks

[@BradBordessa]

@@dianaaldridge-ukulele7785 Any effect pedal *should* work with any amp. I would expect both of those to be fine.

[@virginiaebeilstein2849]

THIS was awesome. I really needed this info many years ago but I take it very seriously and am going to do accordingly and you were so right on on all issues I had never heard before and it was so very helpful to me. I appreciate all of what you said it was tremendous

[@virginiaebeilstein2849]

I have had those problems you have spoken about. Thanks for helping me.

[@virginiaebeilstein2849]

Yes thinking about what you said about the amplifier I must have blown my amp up. And my plug in on the fender uke of mine broke off today but I just got a new uke last week so I still have 2 ukes with pickups and I'm going to get the amp you advised as I noticed the tone on your uke is awesome. Thanks for all your lessons. These will take me a while to get through.

[@broadwaygypsy3304]

bravo!! thanks for the excellent,clear info , i am now confident to proceed

[@dianaaldridge-ukulele7785]

Absolute best information I’ve seen on amplification! Do you have a favorite reverb/effects pedal?

[@contentclown]

What do you think about plugging a mic and a ukulele into this amp at the same time? Have you ever tried it? Thanks for the advice!

[@BradBordessa]

That's pretty much the only way I use it! It's fab.

[@contentclown]

@@BradBordessa thank you for the reply!

[@wylancslass]

Super helpful! Thank you!

[@BradBordessa]

So glad!

[@talesfromapartment8497]

Hey Brad, This was awesome. If only I had watched this before I bought my Boss Katana Mini, which, while awesome, is definitely NOT optimized for an acoustic-electric ukulele. ;-) I'm wondering if adding something like a $30 acoustic pedal help improve the tone coming out of my amp? Thanks again for the great video!

[@BradBordessa]

Ooooo.... Tough luck. Yeah, I definitely don't recommend that BOSS. As for as pedals go... You're probably putting an earing on a pig at that point. You're only as good as the weakest link and I sure imagine the BOSS being the weakest link here.

[@talesfromapartment8497]

@@BradBordessa Thanks for the quick reply. And, yeah, I figured it was a long shot. The Fishman's a bit out of my budget, so I may spring for a Fender Acoustasonic 15. I'm still pretty new to ukulele (~8 months) so I just want something I can explore and play around with an "amped" sound on. Thanks again.

[@RichardGarcia93]

Riff Raff looks great these days!

[@haylaila139]

Thank u soo much this is very helpful 👌

[@kknight339]

Thanks for the tutorial

[@mistydennis597]

Would u suggest a fishman loudbox for a banjolele also? Thanks!

[@BradBordessa]

If you want to accurately recreate the sound of the pickup, yes

[@ivorjones3194]

What uke are you using .Sounds good

[@nickhilb8206]

Hey Brad, How would a orange crush 12 work with an electro acoustic uke.... I'm debating to buy it for the crunchy sounds orange has to offer. Also appreciate the content.... Cheers

[@BradBordessa]

It would work, but won't sound like you'd expect. Usually electric guitar amps sound pretty bad with piezo pickups. I need to make a comparison of this.

[@SergeyUdaltsov]

Have you ever encountered the situation when the pedal noises the signal level from the uke? When i connect my uke direcyly to Boss Katana Mini, it is OK, but through Boss RC-5 (loop pedal) i am getting a lot of noise unless i use relatively low gains on both uke and amp - and then overall sound is very low.. any hints for that situation? Should i try doing extra amplification before the pedal?

[@BradBordessa]

Looks like the input level for the looper is -10dBu difference from the amp which is pretty noticeable. What kind of pickup do you have in your uke? You should usually run your uke volume at 80%+ otherwise the input on the pedal won't have much to work with. Keep the gain on the amp low. That's where I imagine a lot of noise will come from since the Katana is not an acoustic amp.

[@SergeyUdaltsov]

@@BradBordessa Thank you so much for the advice! My uke has builtin Belcat UK-500T pickup. I will try your ideas. Perhaps I need to consider switching from Katana to something else...

[@BradBordessa]

@@SergeyUdaltsov Hmm... Can you take the uke to a music store and try a couple different amps? If they're all noisy it could be the pickup. Your sound is only as good as the weakest link with this kind of stuff

[@SergeyUdaltsov]

@@BradBordessa That may be a good way too - check it vs different amps. And also I can try different use (I have 2 + bass), just to be sure

[@BradBordessa]

@@SergeyUdaltsov I'd use the bass amp over the Katana anyways. Much better for uke in my experience.

[@SergeyUdaltsov]

Any advice on PORTABLE uke amps? Especially for the bass uke? Thank you!

[@BradBordessa]

The Roland AC33 I believe is battery powered. Kind of old news, but it's the only portable uke amp that comes to mind. If you go on ukuleleunderground.com there's a HUGE thread on battery powered uke amplification. Probably more up to date than my knowledge on the subject. As for Ubass, anything that works for a normal bass should be fine. I grew up with a guy who uses the Roland Micro Cube Bass. Always sounded great.

[@SergeyUdaltsov]

@@BradBordessa thank you very much! I will check those!

[@brianmcdermott629]

What amp would be best for a Gold Tone concert-size banjolele?

[@BradBordessa]

It all depends on what you want to do with it. What do you want it to achieve? It will be easier to give some better pointers if you share some specifics.

[@brianmcdermott629]

@@BradBordessa My goal is to play on the street with it in a pedestrian zone so passerby’s can hear me and for small house shows.

[@Nektarios13]

Can i use my orange 35rt amp ?

[@beardalaxy]

Hey there, is there any particular reason you recommend having your uke volume set to 75%? I'm having some clipping issues so that's why I came to this video in the first place, going to try your tips on gain control but was wondering about the uke volume itself in regards to that! Thanks for the video :) EDIT: Just finished watching and heard "PA systems are slightly different" and that's what I'm using xD I'm assuming they're not different enough for the information I'm looking for to be totally wrong?

[@BradBordessa]

The practical reason for 75% is so you have some room to turn yourself up if needed. Nothing you do with the volume knob should cause clipping on the output of the uke. 100% just means all of the pickup signal is going down the cable. Clipping happens on the input of whatever is next. So if your uke is too loud at the input of your mixer, you can turn down your uke to avoid clipping, but the clipping itself comes from the mixer, not the uke. Make sense?

[@BradBordessa]

The only reason a uke itself would clip is if the piezo element is overdriving the pickup circuit because your battery is dead

[@beardalaxy]

@@BradBordessa yeah it does make sense, the weird thing is just that i know it isn't the amp itself since i can play music on it far louder than the uke playing without experiencing any distortion. i was having some issues today with really bad string buzzing so i bought new strings, hoping maybe that can help mitigate some of the issue. maybe the "clipping" i'm hearing is some other sort of distortion happening. it's very mild when i'm just playing my ukulele but if i sing while that mild distortion happens, that's when it gets really bad. tested different mics and different cables, done a lot of different stuff with the volume knobs and even tested a different amp and all i can come up with is that it's something to do with the uke itself. i won't ask too much of you though because you've probably got a lot more on your hands that doing audio tech support with a random dude on the internet xD

[@BradBordessa]

@@beardalaxy No problem. If you take a video of your setup, how you've got everything set, and what it sounds like, I'm happy to see if I can see the cause. Send me an email through my website

[@beardalaxy]

@@BradBordessa will do! thank you very much :)

[@GordonPatrickChunFook-g2p]

Ho how do you start an AUX amplifier on a start all over how do you start a box amplifier it's a vox voir amplifier on ukulele

[@GordonPatrickChunFook-g2p]

0 vox amplifier on a ukulele

[@BradBordessa]

​@@GordonPatrickChunFook-g2p Happy to help, but I don't understand the question.

[@GordonPatrickChunFook-g2p]

@@BradBordessawe're| you at

[@4672-m9f]

Happy Smile

[@ragamuffinukes2779]

Where was this lesson 6 months ago??? NOBODY has a decent video on piezo & soundhole pickups versus active and inexpensive amps... After reviewing every video on YT that came up in search for passive & active were worthless for a beginner to understand!!! So, ignorance is bliss! At 69 yrs young i thought the PASSIVE pickups could work with my mini boom speaker with a plugin adapter...Wrong! So i had to wait another 3-4 months before getting a nice little 12x12x2 Lux Amp...

[@ragamuffinukes2779]

...I was so focused on listening to you that i forgot to thank you for this information!!! This is being saved for reference... Miss CharLee