RISA Uke-Solid Electric Tenor Ukulele Review
November 11, 2009
The RISA solid ukulele isn’t like any other ukulele out there: it’s shaped like a hollowed out cricket bat, the tuning pegs are at the wrong end, it doesn’t have a head, its bridge is aluminium. Obviously, I had to have one.
Stats
Construction: Solid walnut.
Fretboard: Walnut 17 frets.
Neck: Solid walnut.
Bridge: Aluminium.
Tuners: Friction
Pickups: Passive Piezo.
Sound
The sound of an electric ukulele is going to have more to do with what you run it through than the uke itself. But here are a few clips of it through a Boss GT-10 to give you an idea.
Clean Tone
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First time: as it comes out of the ukulele. Second time: through pre-amp. Third time: pre-amp, EQ and a bit of reverb. Fourth time: cheesed up (pre-amp, EQ, a bit of reverb, quite a lot of chorus).
Country Slapback
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Rocked Out Widdle-Fest
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Maximum Effects
Link
All sorts in there: looper, slicer, wah, delay.
The Good Stuff
- It’s very easy to play: The neck feels very slick. The action is low. It’s very light. Unlike a lot of ukuleles that pack on useless frets, all the frets are playable with any finger. Because the body and neck are all one piece you can also do a bit of fretless playing above the top fret.
- Design: It’s not just a ukulele with pickups on. RISA have obviously given a lot of thought to what is required of an electric ukulele and designed towards that. It’s also pleasing as an object – to look at and hold (it’s very light).
My only grumble is the big RISA logo slapped on it. There’s a reason you don’t see chairs with ‘THOMAS CHIPPENDALE’ scrawled across the front of them. The design of it says it’s a RISA more clearly than the logo.
- It’s well made: No flaws in mine. And the intonation is spot on.
- It’s solid: Not just in the sense that it’s not hollow. It’s also very sturdy. As the shape suggests, you could play cricket with it.
The Not So Good Stuff
- It takes a lot of getting used to: It’s very different from any ukulele you’re used to. I found myself falling off the end of the neck a few times. The tuning pegs are on the body and it took me a while to get used to which tuning peg goes with which string and which way to turn them. You need to buy a strap to play it comfortably.
- The tuning pegs: This is the main drawback of the ukulele as far as I’m concerned. Even after getting used to the system there are problems. Like a lot of friction tuners, it’s hard to tune them accurately and they’re placed too close together for comfortable tuning.
- Aaaargh, the string is jammed: During some over-enthusiastic widdling I broke the A string. I went to take it off to find that the string was jammed in the hole at the nut end. There’s no way of getting direct access to it either. I had to bash a pin through the hole to free it. Even after setting it free, the rest of the string changing experience was also a pain in the arse.
I haven’t heard about this happening to anyone else, but the fact it can happen seems like a pretty big design floor to me.
- Passive pickups: That means you don’t get the on-board kajiggers like tone and volume controls. Not necessarily a big disadvantage. But you don’t get a headphone socket like you do with the EleUke which comes in handy for quiet practice.
Overall
I enjoy playing the RISA. The string jamming incident has soured me against it a little, but it’s a way better ukulele than the EleUke.
RISA Uke-Solid on eBay UK and on UkeSurfer.
good review woodshed,
i’ve never played one but it strikes me it would play like a steinberger bass where you compensate for the lack of a headstock by thinking the zero fret is the third, i recently bought one of the new kala/eleukes the ftcj100 (with the F holes) and i have to say i’m pretty pleased with it as an electric uke although i’m starting to think the whole electric uke concept is a little bit silly.
Good to hear your experiments with an electric uke, Al.
I prefer the good old non-electric ukes though.
The Clean Tone sounds quite nice but in the other MP3’s I feel the distinctive sound of a ukulele is a bit lost and it sounds more like an electric guitar.
I’ve had a RISA Uke-Solid Tenor for a couple of years now (it’s the only uke I’ve ever had). I think it’s great! I use it with a battery-powered Danelectro Honeytone amp (http://www.hollywood-music.co.uk/products.php?product=Danelectro-N10-HoneyTone-Mini-Amp-).
You can use the strap from the carry bag as a strap for the uke.
I highly recommend this uke.
Cheers, Tony.
cbf: I disagree that it’s silly. It’s just that no one has quite worked out what to do with it yet. It hasn’t been an instrument for very long.
Armelle: I agree with you about the third and fourth examples, but I’m not so sure about the second. It has the close harmony and notes ringing in that I associate with the ukulele. I don’t think the electric uke should sound like an acoustic uke any more than the electric guitar sounds like the acoustic guitar.
Tony: Oh, so you can. Although it is a bit too nasty to be strap. Worth investing in a nice one I reckon.
you got some really great sounds out of that – I was thinking MIDI, but not so much, eh?
Actually, I think an electric uke is a great idea! Personally, I own a guitar that I can do little to nothing with, and a few ukes that I can play chords on. So I can basically sing songs and accompany myself (on uke). An electric uke would give me a lot more stuff to play around and have fun with, without the having to master a guitar. What I think is the greatest quality of the uke, is that it’s SO accessible. An electric uke gives you a whole range of new options (effects), whilst still having the accessibility. Or so it seems to me anyway. So even less then talented players like me can still buy massive amounts of effects and all kinds of other toys to fiddle with! Hooray! And, basically, have fun.
I had a Flea on no.1 of my wishlist, but I’m wondering if a Risa Solid Concert might be a better option…
Count me very solidly in the pro-electric uke camp; I’ll eventually get one that allows for headphone use, & I don’t mind even a tiny bit if they sound like guitars. The sound examples & the video were great.
Maybe electrics are just the shot-in-the-arm the ukulele needs to
extend the third-wave (or 4th, as George Hinchliffe would have it)
& increase the uke’s popularity ala the way the electric guitar completely redefined that instrument & increased its popularity & number of fans/players. The purists were upset when Dylan went electric at Newport, but the impurists (count me as one) won out.
When people think guitar, they don’t automatically think acoustic, quite the contrary. When people think uke, they do think acoustic. This might start to change as people inside the ukulele world
begin to shift their thinking towards electrics, experimenting with them, discovering just how much the instrument can do.
The electric uke’s guitar-like sound can be a huge plus in attracting new players, players who perhaps don’t want the traditional ukulele sound (or image), & find four strings easier to handle than six. Not to mention the fact that a number of new electric ukuleles, some of them shown here onsite, are extremely attractive & appealing instruments that easily could entice civilians into the fold.
Should the electric become a powerful force in the uke world (& I think it will, rather than remaining on the fringe like acoustic-electrics) we’ll be in for an upheaval similar to the one undergone by pre- & post-Beatles popular music. Traditionalists won’t like it, they’ll think the ukulele is selling/losing its soul (some would say that’s already happening), but that won’t stop change. The day is coming when beginning players will consider the electric ukulele a viable option to the electric guitar, & after that, a superior option. The brave new world will have begun.
What is the setup of an electric instrument, or this ukulele specifically I guess? I don’t understand how effects work. Isn’t it with a pedal? Can you use pedals made for guitars with this electric ukulele?
It is a curious little thing and it looks like a bottle. I like it, I think it sounds nice.
I bought my soprano one when it used to be called a ukestick, not a ukesolid. I find the name Ukestick makes more sense. It looks and feels basically like a stick. I too find the pegs too close together when trying to tune and I have small hands. I use mine for practice with (or without) a Dean pocket amp that I plug headphones into. I find it good for practicing quietly.
And to Ron Hale, electric ukes have been out for a while now. I’m not so sure that they will increase the uke’s popularity the way the electric guitar did the guitar. They certainly haven’t yet anyway.
I’ve already mentioned that I’ve had a RISA Uke-Solid Tenor for a couple of years now. Like so many people in the UK, I bought it after seeing “A Concert For George”. I loved the idea of taking a uke with you, as he did, wherever you travel, to have something personal to do while staying in impersonal hotel rooms. The Uke-Solid is great for that, it’s flat enough to pack in my luggage, I pack my honeytone amp as well, and I’m all set when I travel.
Too Anne Marie’s question, the output from the Uke-Solid is the same as the output from any electric guitar, so you can run it through any pedals or such that you want (not that I do myself).
Cheers, Tony.
I have often wondered why you can’t rent ukuleles and guitars and other musical instruments when in hotel rooms, especially when travelling light, or crap at packing. There must be a franchise/business opportunity in there somewhere.
Any idea if you can string them for left handed play? Looking at the video, i reckon having the pegs on the bottom might make things a bit more comfortable
(i do not need another uke i do not need another uke i do not need another uke)
Great review. I want one. Nothing silly about electric ukes in principle, and, as Woodshed said, they can only get better.
“There’s a reason you don’t see chairs with ‘THOMAS CHIPPENDALE’ scrawled across the front of them.”
”
Ha.
Well, it seems a very good eletric uke to me. I`ve never tought of buiyng one, but I don`t know. Maybe they would sound nice with a full band… And this RISA have a pretty good soun to it!
Thanks for the review!
loved the review….and loved this comment ha!
‘I have often wondered why you can’t rent ukuleles and guitars and other musical instruments when in hotel rooms, especially when travelling light, or crap at packing. There must be a franchise/business opportunity in there somewhere.’
good thinking andy! love it….though i like to take my own ukes….what if you couldn’t or you forgot (crap at packing)
next step, collect a small arsenal of instruments and hit up the hippy hostels and college town hotels for the ’start up!’
Great review.
The original name was ukestick, but Rigk had to change it after complaints by Emmet Chapman, who makes a guitar/bass tapping Stick.
One extra drawback: no controls on the instrument itself.
Two more advantages: if you really get used to the absent headstock, your hand goes round it. And if you press the butt against a table or a door, there’s some natural amplification that’s really neat (someone should make a detachable soundbox for it!)
I had trouble getting mine through airport security, they thought it was some kind of weapon. In a way, it probably is.
I nearly bought one of these, but got a flea instead in the end. Considering it again now! Cheers for the review and samples
I had the soprano one of these, and have had or tried pretty much every electric uke out there. That review is pretty spot on. I now favour the Risa Uke Ellie, which is a sort of upgrade on the ukesolid, in that it is more traditionally uke-shaped, with a headstock and a symmetrical oval body (and side dots on both sides for lefties). A little bit bigger, a fair bit more expensive, but it does resolve every one of the issues you raised in your review Al. And Risas are very well made.
You could really hurt someone with one!
I x
The new Elderly Instruments catalog includes a nice toy for the electric ukulele owner – an Electric Kazoo, “…a kazoo paired with
a pickup. Marshall stack sold separately,” $18.00US. Consider the possibilities.
shawnb: It’s all done with the Boss GT-10.
Thomas: The toys are a lot of fun to play with. Have to agree with that.
Ron: I think it could happen if an act came along that used the electric ukulele extensively. Even so, I’m not sure it would overhaul the acoustic uke – I think it will stay a more fringe thing.
Anne Marie: Like Tony said, it’s just the same output as an electric guitar so you can use any effects you like. I’m using one of these – which is like a whole bunch of pedals in one. You plug the uke into that, it does all the fancy stuff and you plug that into your amp/headphones/recording device.
Tamster: It is good for practicing – but it would be even better if it had an active pickup so you could plug straight in rather than going through an amp.
Tony: I agree, good uke for travelling. Particularly since it’s very sturdy.
andy: Damn good idea if you ask me!
mictoboy: The only issue I can see with playing it left handed is that you’d have the lead coming out of the top – it might get in the way when you’re strumming.
alec: Thanks.
Marcelo: They do sound good with a full band – Toy Horses use a RISA.
todd: You’ll make a fortune!
karl: Thanks for the info. I didn’t know that’s why they changed the name.
Olly: Once a uke is on the to-buy list it never entirely gets off it.
Ian: The only problem I have with the Uke Ellie is that I can’t stand the way it looks – even the ones that aren’t covered in glitter.
haha! yeah, it just stays on there until payday…