Comments on: RISA Uke-Solid Ukulele Review

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:49:14 +0000

@Emma it’s Love me Tender from Elvis. You can find the tab here: http://home.arcor.de/crazydawg/ukulele/love_me_tender_v2.txt

By: Emma

Emma — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:38:40 +0000

hey,
can you possibly direct me to where I can find the tabs for the song you played for the demo for this? It sounds fun to play…
Cheers

By: C.P. Hendrix

C.P. Hendrix — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 20:36:08 +0000

I keep coming to this site for about two years. I’m a beginning strummer and won’t have any use for this RISA until I can do my scales and some melody picking. It may be a while, meanwhile the price keeps going up. Or, maybe a Kala UBass (also rising – I first observed $399, and now lowest is $414 up to $600.) Keep ukin’ everyone!

By: Terry McNiff

Terry McNiff — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:38:31 +0000

Wood, pickups and setup. Those make an instrument.
Re-entrant tuning makes a ukulele.
All ukes have one thing in common, the first
task is to play it without dropping it.

When I play by electric uke, both hands touch it and
my right forearm, the heel of my plam, my ribcage and my right side of my groin.

All these are anchor points as I change chords.
The RISA has one point of contact, the neck.
Nice idea and OK for “bicycle built for two”.
As for doing lead, no real point of contact/control.

My solution; build your own. There’s plenty of high quality second hand hardware. I have a tele soprano and a strat tenor. Keep ukin’.
Terry McNiff

By: Kees

Kees — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:56:17 +0000

Julie/Marco,
it’s got to do with grounding. If you work with batteries, you won’t be bothered by hum, but as soon as you use a mains power supply it is very well possible it comes up with a nasty hum. If you touch the metal part on the side of the Stick it will dissappear. Rigk Sauer of RISA did mention something about in on the forum on his website ukulule.de, and he also had some ingenious solution.
quote
Nylon strings and grounding is always a problem. I use a wireless system. It works fine, because the receiver is grounded. You can also add a grounding cable to your connection cable. I also sometime use a little preamp with a metal cover, which I wear under the shirt to get ground contact.
unquote
For practice I use a Zoom A2 pedal which is dedicated for acoustics, works on batteries (and mains too), I have no issues at all with hum.
kind greetings from Holland,
Kees.

ps love your reviews Julie!

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:47:01 +0000

@Marco This isn’t something I’ve noticed with my Risa, so I would assume it’s a problem with the uke. I’ve only tested mine with a very cheap tiny amp though.

By: Marco

Marco — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:42:08 +0000

Julie
I came across your review some months ago.
I wanted to buy an electric Uke for “quiet” practise.
As a pure beginner I have found no issue with the Risa Concert Stick that I bought – I love it.
However I do have a question about its pickup. I have 2 amps, a Honeytone for when I am travelling and a Roland Micro Cube for home.
When I use the Micro Cube (plugged into the mains) I get noticeable feedback when I place my hand to strum. If at the same time I touch the back of the amp this almost disappears.
If I run it on batteries I still get a bit of feedback but it is hardly noticeable. With all the features turned off the feedback still happens on all “type” settings (MIC, Acoustic, etc) to a greater or lesser extent.
Is this normal?
I took the amp back and tried another Micro Cube but it was exactly the same, however the mail order shop I bought the Uke from said the ones they have in stock also showed some feedback. How much is acceptable and is there anything I can do about it. Or do I have a faulty Uke?
Thanks in advance for any help.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:52:11 +0000

Yes, it was Risa Solid Uke Soprano, just as one you reviewed but smaller. I used to play a standard uke, and when I tried that Risa it was a bit difficult (for chords closer to the top). I do hope it is not inconvenient at all, maybe it just takes some time to get used to this shape (?). Anyway, I played just for 10-15 mins and my level is quite low.. Probably I should try again..

By: Julie

Julie — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:47:58 +0000

Ivan, did you play the Risa uke or a different brand? I didn’t find the Risa to be inconvenient at all.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:37:56 +0000

Thanks Julie! Helpful review. I played such ukulele only once and since there is no peg head it was a bit inconvenient and I would say even difficult to play (especially on the first fret). Whereas you say it should be even easier to play it than a standard uke. So, is it just something which takes time to get used to such shape or I will always have this problem with my hand/fingers? or maybe I should hold it differently?

By: ukeeku

ukeeku — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:10:04 +0000

ukuleleworld.com is the only place in the states that I have seen them. But here is the cool thing: If you want a black soprano you have to order it from risa directly. I got one from risa and it came fine to Illinois, no issues. hope it helps

By: Evil Con Carne

Evil Con Carne — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:37:51 +0000

Where can I buy one of these things?

By: grumpy sheep

grumpy sheep — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:51:53 +0000

I have to thank and agree with the people above regarding the superiority of an accoustic amp to really preserve the nature of the ukulele sound. I took my new RISA solid to a huge professional music store today and started out in the electric guitar department with micro cubes etc. and later went to the accoustic department and tried out several amps there as well. In the end there was no comparison in terms of clarity and naturaleness and “cleanness” and I ended up with a Kustom Sierra 30, which is much bigger than I would have liked but was the only affordable amp with both a sound-signatur I liked and a good headphone output.

By: Julie

Julie — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:52:03 +0000

@Jvann The Vox Amplug works very well. I haven’t tried it with Garageband though. That’s something that I’ve been meaning to do, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet

By: jvann

jvann — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:50:14 +0000

Hi Julie,

I just picked up the Risa Tenor and was wondering how you like the Vox Amplug with yours. Have you tried it with the Amplug into Garageband to experiment with any of the effects(I’m assuming this is possible)? I’m mostly going to use it for travel and late night practice, but I love messing with tech:)

By: TheFanHead

TheFanHead — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:28:49 +0000

TThis might be taking it to extremes but I’ve played one of these through a marshall stack and fender bassman. The bassman sounded better with a warmer ‘crunch’ overdrive while the marshall gave me full on pshycadelic distortion. But, as i can’t afoord any of those (they were at my dad’s mate’s house)I am sticking with the behringer ac108 vintager tube amp i have

By: jkevinwolfe

jkevinwolfe — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:50:49 +0000

A good amp option for the Risa Solid is the Roland Mobile Cube. It’s smaller than the Micro Cube, but I think it’s actually a bit heavier at 5 pounds. I have both. The Micro is really designed for steel stringed electrics and as mentioned earlier is not ideal for a nylon stringed electrics. However the Mobile Cube is a stereo amp designed for a wide variety of sources, all guitars, keyboards, and even iPods.

You give up a few effects like flanging and phasing, but the Mobile has a REAL acoustic setting. (The Micro Cube’s acoustic setting is actually designed to make a steel stringed electric sound acoustic and not suited for use with an acoustic steel or nylon guitar.) The Mobile Cube’s Acoustic setting is solid. It also has settings for Clean electric setting (sounds jazzy with the Solid), Overdrive (The Hendrix/Van Halen Brown Sound) and Dist (Mesa Boogie Rectifier style, smooth but crunchy like chunky peanut butter and makes the Solid’s sustain shine). These all sound excellent with the Solid. You also have a stereo Chorus button (fairly pronounced but still in the range of sweet sound) and, like the Micro, a knob that can control the amount and speed of delay or the amount of reverb.

The Mobile can be mounted on a mic stand and is loud enough for your uke and mic when performing at a small coffee house. I have been running mine for about 10 hours now on a set of Lithium AAs and there’s no sign they need replacing. I also use the Mic input and knob on the Mobile to add in the Korg Kaossilator to create rhythm tracks. Very nice combo for some techno tracks while composing.

This amp is not cheap. At $150 it’s well above the $30 mini-practice amps. But then, the sound you get is way above that league as well.

Keep ukin’,

Kevin

By: rbeetsme

rbeetsme — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:31:07 +0000

Here is a video sample of my Risa soprano played through a Kendrick “Champ” style tube amp, a few pedals were used too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1C3gTI6UHw

By: rbeetsme

rbeetsme — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:27:51 +0000

I have a micro cube and it works well as a practice amp, not bad as a busker either. I have the soprano, so easy to carry and less annoying if you want to practice in public. I bought the Risa semi-hollow body strat style tenor, my first electric uke, awesome player, steel strings, very guitar like. I sold off all of my Eleukes and got a Ko’olau solid koa when they came out. The Ko’olau is semi-hollow body and is actually pretty loud unplugged, nylon strings, wonderful intonation. All of these ukeleles sound terrific through vintage tube amps. I prefer the warm sound of tube amps over the solid state amps, including the “acoustic” amps. Just add pedals and forget the clock.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:46:55 +0000

The Microcube probably sounds infinitely better than the extremely cheap mini amp that I have. Since I very rarely play amplified, I’ve not had the desire to upgrade.

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:31:58 +0000

Thanks for the review, I’ve been interested in this for a while.

I won’t pretend to know much about what good sound is supposed to sound like, but I really do like my Microcube quite a bit.

By: lukeap

lukeap — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:33:28 +0000

thanks julie! you helped me figure it out.

By: plainsong

plainsong — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:32:46 +0000

That’s been my personal experience too. He makes you wish you could buy more ukes from him.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:18:21 +0000

Mike has been the absolute BEST of all the luthiers so far. You can email him and expect an answer before the end of the day. He has great ideas and is just an all around great guy.

By: plainsong

plainsong — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:11:44 +0000

I lucked out really. I went there to browse what some of the options were, and then I went to the for sale page and saw uke #044. The only thing I’d usually change would be to go with geared tuners, but the Gotohs are very smooth. And I usually loose my hold on the uke when trying to play something cool and being in the moment, so he put on a strap peg for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a thing about it. You can’t see the maple binding too well in the pictures, but my uklectic has figured maple and it looks great, so I know this one will too.

Mike has been awesome. He sent me higher res pictures, answered all my questions and sent me a sound sample. Maybe it’s not truly a custom because it was already built, but I can’t find any fault with what he already came up with.

Now the struggle comes to try not to open it before Christmas. I’ll have my husband test it out while I walk the dog or something.