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.
I have been so lucky to be able to try and test this instrument and the built in pickup system.
I did not feel comfortable with changing the balance of the strings (I have it on loan) so the E-string is a little weak in the pickup samples. The 4 dots on the tailpiece are the pots for adjusting each string and just below you can see the special 2 pin output jack.
First, a sound sample of the acoustic instrument recorded with a Neumann tlm-102 directly to disc with not eq or effetcs added:
Moving to the pickup system, here is a recording through my AER alpha Plus. No effects or EQ:
Here is a sample of the pickup recorded straight to disc:
This fine instrument is currently for sale. If you are interested send me a message and I will get you in contact with the owner.
ReplyDeleteHenrik - I have been involved in the early 80,s in helping Richard Murholdt on amplification of these systems. We found that Transistor Guitar Comboes with a 12" speaker did the best reproduction. Somehow you would always think that a complete 3-way system would be the best, but the tone of a violin gets to hizzy when played loud so running through a (bad) 12" speaker reduces ourput above 3,5 kHz.
ReplyDeleteHelp. On a quest. My late father bought an acoustic violin in Denmark. Inside is a label with RICHARD MURHOLT DK 4000 ROSKILDE REPARERET. Any advice. Is this a person or an address?
ReplyDelete