This ebook will teach you the skills you need to confidently amplify your ukulele and get a great sound out of your gear.
90 page, illustrated PDF ebook
1-½ hour “Dialing in a uke tone” video series
Stage-ready Helix preset and IR
Quickstart guide
Gear advice forum
Launch sale until midnight HST on March 1st. Get 33% off!
Thin Tone? Feedback? Too Loud? Too Quiet?
If you’re new to plugging in your ukulele, these things probably happen to you all the time. Plug In is written to be a complete guide to understanding how to improve your amped-up tone, step-by-step.
Most ukulele players plug into a PA or amp as an afterthought, saved for occasional open mics or uke group performances. It’s often a traumatic experience, full of squealing feedback and a uke that sounds like a cardboard box.
With a handful of guiding principles and some hands-on learning, anybody can learn to make their uke sound great through a sound system.
Plug In brings my almost 20 years of bedroom experimentation and experience as a performer and soundman to a straightforward amplified sound guidebook. You’ll learn things like:
When you need to use a preamp
Which pickup is the best fit for your uke
How to adjust EQ and other effects
The best starter setup for a clean sound
Where you can save money …and where you should splurge
By the end of the book, you’ll have a strong idea what factors create a great sound and how to fix bad ones!
If you’re a seasoned veteran of making your uke loud, I’m confident you’ll walk away with some tips that will take your sound to the next level. There are a number of revelatory techniques in Plug In that I’ve never seen implemented by any other pro ukulele player.
You’ll learn all of the concepts I use to get complements from the likes of Herb Ohta, Jr., Bryan Tolentino, and Sonny Lim: “Man, your uke sounds good, Brad!”
What You Get
When you buy Plug In, you get:
A 90 page PDF ebook full of tips, tricks, and illustrations to help you improve your plugged in ukulele tone
A fully-illustrated, three page quick-start guide showing the basic cable connections and settings for a simple ukulele + amp setup
“Dialing in a uke tone” video series that takes you behind the scenes as I sculpt an ukulele tone from scratch in my DAW (1-½ hours of video)
My personal Helix preset and impulse response, should you decide to try my primary pedal recommendation (HX Stomp)
Access to a gear thread in my forum you can use to ask all your questions
Plug In brings the essentials of amplification and live sound, as it relates to ukulele, to a concise, easy-to-read book. The emphasis of all content presented is getting a great sound from your uke pickup.
The guide starts with a look at the signal chain: your ukulele, pickups, preamps, along with amps and PA systems. This will help you understand the pros and cons of undersaddle and soundboard transducers and active and passive pickups, how impedance matching works, and which amp setup will be best for your needs.
Then you’ll learn how to physically connect all the gear. From pairing your ukulele with an amp and plugging in pedals to several options for routing your PA speaker signal wires.
Next is a chapter on general live sound that is useful for practical ukulele players: how to avoid feedback and place your speakers, gain staging so your volume is correct from end to end, DIs, cable styles, and hearing protection!
The longest chapter (over 30 pages!) is my favorite. It includes tons of actionable tips on adjusting effects. In conjunction with four video guides, you’ll learn how to use EQ to clear up your uke’s tone, how to program an impulse response for a more 3D sound, how to set reverb so an otherwise flat pickup sounds realistic, and how to compress the dynamics.
We’ll conclude with some practical sections on only buying what you need and where you can stretch your budget (a gear shopping list), plus some imaginary situations that will help you understand basic sound troubleshooting protocol.
Full Table of Contents
Introduction
The Source
How to Play
The ʻUkulele
Pickups
Types and Styles
Soundboard Transducer (SBT)
Under Saddle Transducer (UST) Active vs. Passive
Active
Passive
Gold In, Gold Out
Real World Pickup Options Getting a Pickup Installed
Getting it Right
Pickup Maintenance
Preamps
Impedance
Gain
Do You Need a Preamp?
Preamp Options
Amp/Mixer/PA
Amplifier
PA or “Public Address System”
Which is Best for You?
My Amp/PA Picks Amp/Mixer Controls
Inputs
Gain
Equalization
Auxiliary/FX Sends
Pan
Mute
Solo/Listen
Volume/Fader/Mix Bus
Plugging It In
Adding Pedals Plugging in a PA
My Cable Picks
Advanced Soundcraft
Cable Types
Gain Staging
Metering
Speaker Placement
Feedback
Direct Injection
Hearing Protection
Effects
EQ
Shelf Filters (Highs & Lows)
Parametric Filters (Mids)
Notch Filters
High-Pass and Low-Pass Filters
General Frequency Guide Impulse Response
IR Preamps Reverb
Ambient Reverb
Blend Reverb Compressor Delay Sound Effects
Clipping
Modulation
Pitch Shifters
Filter
Effect Order
My Pedal Picks
What Do You Need?
How to Save a Buck
Ukulele
Pickup
Cables
Preamp/Pedals
Amp
Mixer
PA Speakers
How to Troubleshoot
Situation #1
Situation #2
Situation #3
Afterword
Who Am I?
My name is Brad Bordessa. I’ve been plugging my ukulele into amps and PAs, striving for a better sound, since 2007.
Much of my teens was spent building out a constantly rotating kit of preamps, pedals, and amps in my basement bedroom. When I went to college for the Institute of Hawaiian Music, I played weekly gigs, where I learned to pin down a consistent sound with a different PA system at every show.
I’ve recorded and mixed two of my own albums and a couple of singles. I’ve ran live sound for Makana, Buckman Coe, Trevor Hall, Pato Banton, and the UH Hilo Jazz Orchestra’s Frank Zappa tribute, to name a few. I’ve jammed onstage with HAPA, Herb Ohta, Jr. James Hill, Ledward Kaapana, the late Martin Pahinui, and the Kahumokus, holding my own musically and sonically.
These days I play in my rock band, Kingside, where a tight, streamlined uke sound is a requirement for keeping up with instruments inherently louder than mine.
Kingside jamming at our local record shop
So Much Gear
Music gear is expensive. If you follow the same path as me, you can easily spend $10k over the course of many years, experimenting and sampling stuff that might or might not work to improve your sound.
One of the main things that I wanted to emphasize in Plug In is how to get great results without wasting tons of money. Music gear is expensive, but by leaning on my experience and expertise, you can get right to the gear that will help you most.
By presenting accurate and important information, my goal is to save you a lot of money that you might otherwise spend on “wonder” purchases. “I wonder if this will help?”
In order to ensure that you can fully take advantage of my advice, in addition to the book and it’s suite of supplementary content, you’ll have access to a forum thread dedicated to gear talk.
Not sure what you need? Want a recommendation for a preamp that does xyz? Just make a post and I’ll help you out.
Plug In is a crash-course, not only in making your uke sound better plugged in, but in the fundamentals of live sound that will serve you at gigs, open mics, and uke gatherings.
