By Jeff Kohrman

Just picked up my very first ukulele today.  So far, learning to play is going smoothly, but I can’t help but think of ways I could hack it, ways I could make my ukulele better.  There’s no onboard electronics, so (while many would debate this) almost anything would be an improvement.  Then the thought hit me.  An Electric Uke.

This hack is quite simple, in fact, it only really requires two things, a guitar jack and a piezo transducer.

Here’s what you’ll need to do.

First, take your piezo transducer (direct from RadioShack) and pry the casing open carefully.  I say carefully because the actual piezo element inside is very delicate, and will likely not function if punctured or bent.  Here’s what you should pull out of the casing.

It should be a golden color on one side, and a whitish papery color on the side with wires attached.  Again, be very careful with this, it will break if mishandled.

Now all you have to do is solder the black (Negative) wire to the Ground (Tip) lead of the guitar jack, and the red (Positive) wire to the Positive (Barrel) lead of the guitar jack.  I used some shielded audio cable to lengthen my leads a bit, just so I would have some extra room when placing the piezo element pickup on the inside of my ukulele.

Once you’re finished building the actual pickup, it’s time to test it out.  Grab some masking tape (or painters tape), and lightly stick down the piezo element just below the bridge of your ukulele.  Placement doesn’t especially matter at this point, since we’re just testing to see if our device works, so anywhere will do, really.

Plug it into your amp and try it out!  Not too shabby for a $2 pickup, isn’t it?

Once you’re confident that your handywork will suffice, it’s time to drill a hole in your beloved uke.  Choose an appropriate location for the jack to go, mark it off, and grab your dremel.

One quick note, you may want to take your strings off now, just for convenience.  You’ll need them off to reach your hand inside to place the piezo pickup, unless you’ve got really tiny hands and a huge soundhole.  Anyway, slowly drill out the hole for the jack to go, making it just a hair bigger than your jack so that it easily slides into the fresh hole.

Now comes the tricky part.  Since my hands are a bit too big to fit into the soundhole, I can’t just stick the phono jack in place.  That means that we need a fish wire.  Thread a good length of wire through the phono jack hole, and grab it at the soundhole.  Then shove that wire down through the phono jack, and bending it around the back like a hook, to make sure it doesn’t go anywhere.  Be sure to take the phono jack’s nut and washer off before hooking it onto the fish wire, otherwise you’ll have a hard time securing it.

Now just pull the fish wire out of the phono jack’s hole, bringing the jack with it.  Screw the nut and washer onto the jack, making sure not to tighten it too much.

The next and final step is to tape the piezo pickup into place with a bit of masking tape.  Apply a generous amount of tape to the papery side of the piezo element, and stick it just below the ukulele’s bridge.  This may take a few tries, but once you get the perfect placement, your tonal qualities will be greatly improved.

The end!

Now restring, tune up, and rock out!