Hello everyone. Today I decided to get down to business and add a pickup to my ukulele. It cost me a total of about $2, maybe a bit less. It may not sound as great as some of the $150 pickups, but hell, my uke cost $80. and this sounds pretty dang awesome!

Here’s what i did:

Here is my ukulele. It’s a Lanikai LU-21C and it’s a great little gal. She sounds great, and is a huge step up from the toy ukes people can get for $30.

Here you can see that i’ve undone the strings, and placed the piezo pickup on the body. This is the piezo unit that I used. It costs 75 cents. Sounds great too. Here’s a close up of it.

I bought a mono 1/4’’ jack from radio shack that came in a two pack. It think that cost me about $2. Here’s a close up of that.

Next I used some copper wire and connected the leads from the piezo to the audio jack, and then removed the casing from the piezo. Becareful taking the plastic off the piezo. These things can break pretty easyily.

Next I used my dremel to make a hole for the jack. I took the washer off of the jack and traced the inside circle onto the body. Eventually it was the right size and the jack fit like a glove.

After putting the strings back on and taping the piezo to the body of the uke, I was all done! One afternoon and $2 and now I can play it through my sweet old Kustom amp. Not a bad saturday afternoon!

NOTES: I used to much wiring from the piezo to the jack and now there is a bunch of extra wire in the body of the uke. It rattles sometimes. Use less wire to avoid this.

If you don’t like the sound of the instrument when you amplify it, try moving the piezo to a differnet spot inside the body. It will pick up different vibrations better in different locations, so give it a try, and move it if necessary.