Secrets of my sound

I get a lot of questions about my sound and if you've ever seen me play live you might have noticed the collection of stuff at my feet. This is my secret weapon to using the ukulele as a solo instrument. The devices at my feet provide me with echos and effects that help me create the right atmosphere along with distortions and bass sounds. Plus there is a loop station that lets me "record" a passage of music, loop it back and play over top of it creating the illusion of more than one instrument. Here is the whole board.

I'll go into detail about each device from right to left. First up on the lower right is an A/B/Y switch. I plug my ukulele into this box and it directs the flow of the signal along one of two paths (or along both). The 'A' path the uke travels is to the Yamaha AG-Stomp. (seen at right). The AG-Stomp is a great pre-amp from Yamaha that simulates 4 different microphone types and allows me to blend between the simulated sound and the direct sound of the uke's pickup. This helps my uke sound more natural plugged in. The pre-amp also gives me custom equalization along with compression/limiting effects, chorus, reverb and digital delay. It has programmable memory for up to 30 instruments as well so I can run my guitar through it or my uke and still get great balanced signal. 

The 'B' path takes the uke toward two other pedals (shown above). The first of these pedals is the Boss Blues Driver. This is an overdrive pedal which gives my uke that distorted lead solo sound that I use during certain blues numbers. The 2nd pedal is an Electro-Harmonix POG pedal. POG stands for Polyphonic Octave Generator. This pedal can take the uke signal and either drop it one octave or raise it one octave. This lets me simulate a bass sound or I can blend in an octave up and make the uke sound like a mandolin (sort of). 

After the AG-Stomp, the Blues Driver and the POG is the Boss RC20XL loopstation. This pedal is a little recorder. It takes the signals that are fed into it and when I press the left button it begins recording anything that comes into the pedal. When I press the left button again it stops recording and immediately plays back the stuff it just recorded. This allows me to play over it. So I'll start with a simple groove, record that, set up a bass tone and play a bass line and record it. Then add any decorative elements and the loop is done! After that it's just a matter of playing with it to make it a performance. (by the way the bespeco pedal beside the loopstation is a selector that reverses the loop for some tripy  psychedelic sounds.)

So there you have it. This is my live one-man-band rig. It certainly helps me provide a larger sonic pallet for my songs. I'll see you out on the road!