Sonic Violins - Electro Acoustic Violins

One brand of electro-acoustic violins I have not featured here on the blog, is actually a system I have known for a long time.

Here is a video with Richard, who is the owner of Sonic Violins, explaining about his system.

DIY magnetic pickup for fiddle

Actually this is an DIY project about making an entire electric fiddle from scratch. I find the part about the magnetic pickup the most interesting.

See the project here

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.

DIY in-bridge piezo

Paul Walster has a couple of nice projects on his blog.

This diy project is a little harder than a beginners level, but I found it very interesting and very nicely described.

Have a look at the project here:
http://www.paulwalster.com/

Clark Huckaby article on amplification

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.

Read part 1 here, 2 here, 3 here and 4 here

Hurley Pickups

I just found the Hurley Pickups website the other day.

The violin and cello pickups are rather conventional looking piezo wedge pickups, but they look well made.

Hurley Pickups also make a nice compact preamp for all of their piezo pickups. It has lots of gain and what seems like a variable lowpass filter.

Mishuyama active pickups

Found this very inexpensive Romanian pickup from Doze. The Mishuyama MV100-A is an active (buffered/preamped) piezo disc pickup for violins and violas.

Watch the video for mounting instructions :


There is alternative mounting instruction video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXlvwDl1PfE

Shenzo Gregorio amplified viola

I have not met a that many viola players playing amplified out there.

One of the players I found is Shenzo Gregorio, who has a couple of youtube videos on how to play the rock viola.

Quite fun videos, so I thought I would share them with you today so you have something to do in the weekend.

Here are part 1,  2 and 3 from Shenzo Gregorio