Installing a Pickup in a KoAloha Ukulele
Mi-Si Acoustic Trio Pickup

Here we're installing a Mi-Si Acoustic Trio pickup into a nice KoAloha ukulele.

The Mi-Si is made for guitars as well, but works great in a uke.



Here it is as it came from the factory. We have to fit the piezo transducer underneath the saddle, and hide the preamp assembly inside with the output jack protruding through the end.




Before drilling




After drilling
(You can also see how tiny the preamp assembly is in this shot)



Endpin Jack mounted (preamp board hangs on the inside of it)




Piezo slips up between the saddle and bridge through a small hole underneath the slot.
Now we need to trim the saddle down so the action isn't crazy high



Charged the preamp, plugged in and testing
It works! Now this thing can be amplified and can be tuned with a cable plugged into a tuner for great accuracy.



The finished ukulele. You can barely tell anything was done to it.

The Mi-Si pickup sounds fantastic when installed in a uke. It's a great option for those of you who perform live, or just want more volume or clean recording capability.

One of the coolest features of the preamp design is the way the battery recharges. It comes with a charger that takes 60 seconds to fully charge the battery. It is supposed to run for 16 hours on a charge. That's pretty incredible return for your wait time. The instructions even show a way to "hot-wire" it with a 9 volt battery in case you forget or lose your charger.

All said, highly recommended pickup system. We like it a lot.




Need Ukulele custom work or repairs in Orange County, CA?
Check us out. We work on many small instruments.
We're in Huntington Beach close to the 405.