I found this on the VLM-Augustin website. The Vi-Vi electro-acoustic violin is a fusion of wood and carbon fibre and with a Stringamp pickup system.
The design is a quite traditional Chanot shape, which is often seen on carbon fibre violins. But the Vi-Vi has chosen spruce for the top and maple for the neck and scroll.
Later on there should be a cello with the same pickup system.
It is a while ago I first heard of the Fuse violin by Fourness. At that time there was not any sound clips available and so I thought it was just a revival of the ZETA Jazz.
In the looks department there is nothing new, but the sound is a little different. It is always hard to evaluate sound quality from a youtube clip.
I have since last december tried to post updates, test and news every time I had the time for it and now a year later my humble blog has reached 20.000 visitors.
I did some tests with a colleagued, who needed a non-permanent pickup.
We took a good 4 hours trying out some of my pickups and mics.
The choice was for me a little surpricing: A B-Band 1470 pickup mounted in a certain spot on his fiddle and viola sounded great, both natural and with a good amount of feedback rejection.
I decided to make some further testing on this pickup. Hopefully, if time allows, I will be able to present some soundclips and more in depth thoughts on placement soon.
I have been doing some research on blender/mixer preamps on behalf of a couple of my colleagues, who needed to blend a mic and pickup.
I came about this system I did not hear of before: Vintage Revolution Acousticbox and thought I would share my findings with you.
The unit is actually designed for Upright Bass and it features two channels, an active (phantom power) and a passive channel (designed for pickups). Both channels have 1 band of parametric EQ and mid-level adjustment. When summed an additional 3 band graphic eq is available.
One of the big icons in Danish music is Svend Asmussen.
He is of course famous for his fiddle playing on the many jazz recordings he have done, but he is also know as a talented multi instrumentalist and composer.
He has played with all the big names throughout the history of jazz and continues to play at a very high level even at an age of 97.
The article tells us about his life with music, about jazz and Svend Asmussens collaborations and recordings. There is also a part on his gear, violin and electronics, which I of course have read many times :-)
At the end there is a transcription of the song: Swing Manouche
Not many makers of electric violins have been using magnetic pickups, I know of only a couple.
I think the problems described here are part of explanation, but never the less I find it striking that almost every electric guitar is made with electromagnetic pickups.
The violin in the picture was made by Siegmund Guitars and is not the one described in the project it is just quite beautiful i think.
Clark Huckaby is a musician a musician, audio electronics technician and recording engineer. I found him while searching for good articles on amplification of fiddle.
While this article is a bit old I really found it to be quite interesting with some good info and observations.
It covers 4 subject: Microphones, pickups, preamps/amps/monitors and a chapter on how a pickup "hears" the bowing.
Found this very inexpensive Romanian pickup from Doze. The Mishuyama MV100-A is an active (buffered/preamped) piezo disc pickup for violins and violas.
I have earlier promised an article about microphone placement for violin, but I never really got around how to go about that topic.
In varies recording websites and magazines you can find general rules about where to locate a microphone to get a good sound from violin, viola, cello and so on.
This info can often be a good starting point and explain some general rules and the theoretical back ground of instrument recordings.
JamHub Tracker can be connected to an existing JamHub setup, but it also has 8 inputs onboard and a special 16 channel breakout cable, which can be connected to any mixer.
USB hard discs or thumb drives as well as SD-cards can be used for recording storage. Recorded sessions can be uploaded wirelessly via wifi.
A couple of years ago I tried the Kurmann Soundpost pickup, which is popular among Irish fiddlers.
An unusual idea, which placed the pickup in the soundpost of your bowed instrument.
(The soundpost is the small piece of wood hold in place inside the violin, viola, cello or doublebass between the bottom and the top plate.)
Now there is another soundpost pickup on the market sold thorugh the Violorama website.
Where the Kurmann Soundpost had a special cable running from the instrument to a bespoke preamp with internal EQ filters. The Violorama soundpost has a more common RCA plug and a RCA cable to XLR plug with a built in FET buffer preamp with no EQ.
Here at home I have for a long while been trying out a Stringamp system, which is one of the systems that goes the loudest before feedback.
Michael Edinger who is the maker of this system has been very patient and has been listening to all my comments.
I have been trying out different preamps with different systems trying to evaluate the system.
The other day I came by a youtube clip of Lars Lilholt, one of the most famous troubadours in Denmark, who incidentally also plays a Stringamped fiddle:
He plays a one minute solo at 2:56, where you can hear the Stringamps sound.
I just got this video from Thorkild, the microphone designer at Remic microphones.
This is a preview of their new line of microphones for strings, of which I have been testing the prototype v5200-lb. A test you can see and hear here on this blog.
I have also been testing two never versions of this mic and at the moment I am testing a wireless system consisting of the Remic V5200 and a Sony GB30 digital wireless system.
It is a quite different approach to combine a mixer and a recorder, and most likely one of the simplest solutions around.
There is plenty of compact mixers with a 2 channel usb interface around and some even have a full fledged 16 i/o firewire interface.
The Cymantic LR-16 has 16 ins and 2 outs and is a stand alone 24bit/44-48khz recorder. (you just add a HD or thumb drive via USB). Or it can double as a 24bit/96khz USB audio interface.
It is fed from the inserts of your mixer with regular TRS jacks to hardwired inputs. You do not need to arm the right tracks but just hit the record button, simple.
This is of course not a product exclusively for fiddles.
I have choosen to tell about the Zoom H6 because it fits well with the segment of players that plays solo, duo or in small bands using a small number of channels on the mixer.
The H6 is a six-channel hardware recorder using SD flash Cards and it has a lot of nice features in a resonably compact case.
Among the features are the possibility of adding microphone modules: An XY stereo module, A mid-side module, a shotgut and a 2 channel preamp.
Acoustic Electric Strings have been introducing a variety of interesting fiddle products in the last years.
They recently released The Fiddle Jack; a cable with a mono jack and a microphone on a gooseneck with a clip in one end and a mono jack and xlr connector in the other.
This allows the fiddler to use a blend of microphone and pickup for a feedback resistant and natural sound or use the microphone in the PA front and pickup in the monitors.
Here is a video of the Headway vl-3 pickup. An in-bridge pickup with 2 piezo elements.
This test is made a follows:
"The VL3 Bridge Pickup on Chinese made Violin was recorded onto Hard Disc, via Headway EDB-1 DI Box, recorded with flat EQ. This was played back via EDB-1 DI Box into Headway Shire King 120 Acoustic Amp, which was Mic'd up using AKG C414 Condenser Mic., to achieve a recording of live type sound, using all Headway gear entirely from pickup No microphones were used while recording fiddle.
Amp controls were set with flat EQ, tiny amounts of EQ cuts were applied from EDB-1 on 5 band EQ controls ( 0-3 dB) to balance room, Instrument and speaker cabinet sounds etc. A small amount of reverb was the only outboard treatment used."
I would of course like to test this one as well. This test is good, but Headway is clearly is making this sound as good as possible (why should they not?), I would like to hear a sound sample before eq and reverb was added.
I found this video of the Dazzolin pickup. It is a comparison to the L R Baggs in bridge pickup.
I am not sure if both pickups are used with the same preamp, and I do not know which preamp is used.
Also I do not know if it is the same violin used - It looks like two different fiddles? In my opinion both pickups should have been mounted on the same violin and the comparison made in one go for the best evaluation.
I would of course like to test this pickup myself. This would make it is easier to compare with the others tested here on my blog.
Many fiddlers talk much about strings. There are bunches of threads on different forums and a lot of questions about which strings sound and feel the best overall.
I have done a lot of experimentation with strings playing both the violin, viola and occasionally the cello and double bass.
One thing, which is often overlooked when talking about strings are gauges.
The Tav TB-38 pickup is a Spanish designed pickup system for violin and viola.
They have pickups for every kind of acoustic instruments.
The tested TB-38 pickup is mounted and held in place by pressure under the low-side foot (g/c) of the bridge and there is a short wire terminated in a standard female RCA connector.
This is my second part on how to use EQ with your bowed instrument.
This time I am going to give a some "hands on" practical use when playing with a piezo pickup. You will be able hear the difference for yourself in my sound clips and hopefully be on your way to better sounding gig and recordings.
This is an integrated violin and pickup system.
It was built by the Danish luthier Richard Murholt in 1988.
Murholt has built instruments for some of the most famous Danish jazz fiddlers.
The pickup system was based on a design called Elkit which Murholt crafted into the instruments he built.
Elkit is a electrodynamic pickup and works much like a ribbon microphone, with the strings being the ribbon.
Murholt refined the Ekilt system and added a possibility of balancing the strings with 4 small potentiometers and he added a new transformer to the preamp.
When playing in an amplified setting it is good to know some of the key frequencies in the tonal spectrum of the violin.
This will make it a lot easier to target the right frequencies when eq'ing and to communicate with the sound engineer in a language he understands.
Knowing the frequency for each string is only a small part of understanding what is going on.
The harmonics of each note are a big part of the perceived tone and timbre of a bowed instrument.
I found this on the VLM-Augustin website. The Vi-Vi electro-acoustic violin is a fusion of wood and carbon fibre and with a Stringamp pickup system.
