One of the challenges in playing live is how best to amplify instruments so the audience receives a great listening experience. Over the years I have seen many artists whose performance was marred by poor sound and sometimes poor choice of amplification.
Ukuleles are small bodied instruments so one key consideration is whether to use an internal pickup or to use a microphone to amplify the sound. Both have pros and cons of course and with a microphone a player is quite restricted in movement! Having made this decision the question then is which amplifier to use in a live situation?
Having tried out a range of different amps, we chose Schertler amps for live appearances. These Swiss made amplifiers were created by double bass player Stephen Schertler in the 1980s. Stephen was frustrated with previous amplification methods for acoustic instruments and started to create his own amps and pickups. His products are highly regarded and used by many different artists and pickups are available for orchestral strings and fretted instruments as well as piano, harp and percussion/ethnic instruments.
For The Small Change Diaries the Unico Deluxe and Unico Classic acoustic amplifiers are excellent for amplifying the two ukuleles. Crucially these amps also pack some punch, the Unico Deluxe having 280 watts and Unico Classic has 200 watts. This means there is lots of headroom, ensuring a great listening experience for the audience and lots of scope to adjust levels for different sized venues.
Comments are closed.