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

Fiddlers gear links

I have been trying find out what gear and setups varies fiddlers have and here are a couple of links to their pages about the gear they use:

Aidan O'Rourke
Billy Currie
Casey Driessen
Erik Friedlander
Ian Cooper
Jean Luc Ponty
Jesus Florido
Michael Mullen
Nigel Kennedy

I would like to make the list as long as possible, so if you have a link please send it to me and I will add to this list.

The bedroom recording session

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.

New strings

Warchal announced the new Amber-E strings.

D'addario launched a new Kaplan Viola string set and a new Helicore Titanium-A to supplement the
set.

A while ago Pirastro introduced the new Evah Pirazzi Gold set.

JamHub Tracker MT16

Another new recording device, that caught my attention in regards to having a good quality recording of rehearsals or live gigs.

The JamHub Tracker MT16 is a 24bit/96Khz 16 track recorder similar to the Cymantic Audio LR16, but it has some more tricks up its sleeve.

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.