![]() My daughter often plays ukelele with her band. Yes, it sounds great on a piano and a violin, too. (Even my own stretch of ukuleles shows this.) However, it is hard to imagine a need to spend more money than the cost of this pickup for the amplification of most acoustic string instruments. I know that, typically, more expensive items equal better quality than less expensive. With most of my ukuleles the sound holes are small and so the pickup ended up on the headstock, but one of my baritones has dual holes/ports, and both are out of the way of the strings - this is the example that allows me to hear that the pickup sounds most "full" when placed on the main sounding board of an instrument. Thus it should be pointed out that the pickup does NOT make a normal/standard instrument suddenly sound like an "electric" instrument.The pickup can be placed on the headstock and do well, but it sounds best when attached to the body. The pickup is THAT sensitive.Please note - the sound is definitively more "acoustic" as compared to the one electric ukulele. I have tried playing a simple McCartney tune (the opening of "Ram") that only uses the top two strings of a ukulele and even the subtle differences between the woods (of the same brand of instrument) can readily be heard by each of us. In another room (i.e., a "blind" test") I, my wife, and my daughter who lives in town (and her husband) can all clearly and easily tell which is being played when each one is played through the same pickup/amplifier combination. Finally I have an electrified concert strung with a low "G", like the tenor. I have two baritone ukuleles (one with a wood sound board with a rounded plastic body and one with a spruce body, two sopranos (one with a wood sound board with a rounded plastic body and the other entirely plastic), one non-electric concert and one tenor (made entirely of Acacia wood). The one caveat is that the cable is not shielded and thus the whole/entire unit/product is responsive to vibration - this means you MUST place it in a location where you and/or your cloths will not rub against any portion. Wow! I can't believe how effectively this unit does its job. A good extension cable is a worthwhile investment (I happened to have one in my gig bag, and it made things a lot easier). That sounds like a lot until you consider how tall a person is and how wide a stage can be. The next time I have a similar event I will probably pick up 2 or 3 more of these pickups.The one thing to keep in mind is that the cable is roughly 8' (maybe 10') long. I never actually attached this pickup to a guitar, but I have no doubt that it would have been equally good.The pickup provided a mostly natural sound without any drastic EQ - that's more than I can say for the Dean Markley in-hole that the guitar player was using in his Martin. Later we needed to amplify mandolin, and the results were equally good. The trick was to catch as much of the headstock as possible and to avoid the scrollwork. The fiddle player was excited at how easy it was to attach (and detach). But then I clipped it to the headstock of a fiddle, and we were all quite impressed. I was starting to wonder if I'd just wasted a few bucks. Based on the reviews and the price I figured I'd give this pickup a try I'm very glad that I did.My first experiment was to clip the pickup to the soundboard of a hammered dulcimer, but the results were not good at all. In addition to playing I was responsible for providing the PA. I recently had a gig featuring a number of different instruments, and I wasn't sure how I was going to amplify everything. Mounting it as said does not hurt the instrument nor the device, and would suggest it as a possibility to others.With devices like this, acoustic guitar tracks can be recorded completely iisolated from other tracks, and free of any ambient noise. ![]() When I mounted it conventionally (mic sensing the outside of soundboard), the external sounds were not nice. Of course it picks up sound from anywhere in the guitar, but they are picked up very properly. Palm-muting is picked up completely well. This allows also for good "golpe" sound, and prevents any noises I would trigger with my hand if it were mounted in the conventional way. Have not yet routed it to effects, but can do it easily if when I need to. I plug the mic jack into a Focusrite Scarlett 8i6, which is said to have good preamplifiers. My thinking on this was that sound waves and vibration must initiate on the INSIDE of the sound board, and it seems to be corroborated. I did not get this when I tried it clipped to the OUTSIDE as intended. Found that for my Flamenco guitar (made by a Luthier from Sevilla, not cheap at all), I get VERY GOOD results when I put the mic clipped onto the soundhole, and SENSING THE INTERIOR of the instrument.
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