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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
I was just browsing a little on youtube and found this clip with Darol Anger and The Furies.
Darol is playing a London five-string fiddle from G. Edward Lutherie, and
I must say I find the apparent tone of the pickup really good, very clean and effortless.
I do not know which other gear is used but it looks like it is only the built in pickup through a preamp.
I will have try and get a chance test these instruments from G. Edward Lutherie.
The Schertler Basik is an electrostatic stick on pickup made by a Swiss company, who specializes in making pickups and amplification for acoustic instruments.
The Basik is as the name implies Schertlers most basic and cheapest pickup system.
There are three versions of Schertler Basik - the Basik Set, the Basik pro and the Basik Road.
The Set comes with a battery box and a non invasive putty for the application of the pickup to the instrument (this is the tested version).
The Pro adds a 48v adaptor for phantom powering.
The Road provides both the battery box and 48v adaptor.
