I have blogged a great deal on the excellent Henriksen Bud amps and last week I took the one channel Henriksen Blu out for the first Caravan of Dreams live outing. The venue had a very small stage and with The Caravan of Dreams there are five of us, so space is tight. I decided to take the most stripped down rig I could and that meant only taking the nine pound Henriksen Blu and a Lava Ultramafic cable. We took a DI out from the Henriksen Blu as well as miking it up. Usually, I will also take a preamp/volume booster, but this time I didn’t bother. The challenge with ukuleles and other small bodied instruments is to get great sound. In the world of ukuleles often the sound is far from great and often really horrible. It’s not easy to find a good solution as different ukes respond differently and there is in my experience no one solution for all situations.
The Henriksen Blu has 120 watts and superb EQ, so there’s a huge amount of sonic flexibility. It’s also wonderfully small, but more than loud enough for live situations. In the Caravan of Dreams ensemble, I’m competing with percussion, double bass, piano and violin, so I need an amp that will cut through. The major lesson in taking the Blu out for live gigs is that often “Less is more” and this was probably the best on stage sound I have come across to date, just fantastic.
I admit to being a sound obsessive, but make no apologies for this. I like to hear the very best sound and have discussed this at length with fellow musicians and my good friend Martin Simpson who wonderfully described the Henriksen Bud (a two-channel version of the Blu) as ‘a tone monster”