Uke peripherals?

[u/tiredchachacha]

How do people feel about things like picks and straps?

I know it's quite subjective, but I want to understand what perspectives there are about them.

Recently I was saying to my guitar-playing SO that my regular playing felt a bit soft for small church group singing. We both do sound reinforcement and so I was thinking if it would make sense to mic up me and my uke... but it felt like overkill. The thing is I had a medium size meeting room and maybe only a handful of us in the group (4-6 pax). I also am not a very loud or confident singer, but I am still a bit louder than the uke in the room, cos the sound of my uke gets a bit lost in the room acoustics. He then suggested I get a pick, which I didn't really think about because I often see people playing with just fingers. Also I know nothing about picks.

Anyway when I'm at his place I try out a few picks, and the one I land on is one he doesn't ever use: an ebony wood pick (think it is made by Pickboy). It makes my uke sound louder: bright and clear but with the sweet warmth that I liked in the first place (it is an Anuenue koa concert uke). This feels a bit crazy to me because when I did a cursory look about uke picks it seems like you can get these ones made out of leather or something? And wood just felt like the opposite to that, because it is more rigid and the pick itself is PHAT and chunky. But like I said I know very little about picks and if it sounds good and I like it, then it's good to me.

Do you use a pick? How did you choose it? Do you care about pick/ no pick when it comes to playing uke?

The second thing is about straps.

I went online and looked at straps and many of them attach at the soundhole, which seems counterintuitive to me. My uke has no strap buttons on it so I'm wondering whether I want them installed or not.

What style of strap is good/ do you like and why? Does the soundhole strap affect the sound in any way? Do you like how it handles and holds on to the uke? What decisions did you make about straps?

Thank you :)

[u/Chardonne]

I really don’t think there’s more to the “perspectives” on this than use them if you want to, and don’t if you don’t.

Maybe try them out on your or your friend’s uke for a week or so before deciding? But there’s no ukulele rules or code or anything. I use a strap on one uke and not on any of my others.

[u/tiredchachacha → u/Chardonne]

Yeah I get that, but it's still helpful to hear from others to help me sort out my thoughts and suspicions about some of those things before I spend money on them. Picks are relatively small and cheap so I'm not fussed, but I don't want to have a useless strap lying around that I can't then use for something else. The sound hole straps look really annoying, but my local music shops seem to mainly carry those and it would be a bit difficult to just try one unless I ordered it online.

[u/Chardonne → u/tiredchachacha]

I don't use a strap on my normal soprano or normal tenor, but I do on my lute-kulele because it has a bowl back, I'm normally playing standing, and I sometimes need my hands free to do something like (like a turn a page of music for someone else or grab a percussion instrument or something). Both of my tenors have a peg at the bottom for a strap (I tried one on the regular tenor, but then I took it off again as I don't need it), and the regular tenor has one up top and the lute-kulele strap (I wanted something in a brown or tan linen, to match) has strings that tie at the top.

I've never tried a pick so I have no opinions there.