Electric violins

[rgwebb6]

I'm just curious whether anyone here has made or is making electric violins. Are there any good instruction books out there on making one. I would be interested in doing it once, just for the sake of doing it.

[Stephen Churchill]

I'm just curious whether anyone here has made or is making electric violins. Are there any good instruction books out there on making one. I would be interested in doing it once, just for the sake of doing it.

Hi Dick,

I'm making my second. Not out of passion, but practicality (portable & near silent).

I'm not aware of any books. You can get the concept idea from looking at available ones.

My lessons from the first one are:

1. make it light (solid bodies are nice on electric guitars, but those guys have a strap).

2. if you play with a should rest, make sure there is somewhere to put one on. You often see a u-shape at the bottom where the lower bouts would be.

In both of mine I used a standard neck and finger board. The principal of an electric instrument is a solid mass which the stings vibrate against. The more solid the longer they will vibrate. I left a spot for a the clamp-on jack so that I can put on a standard violin pick-up bridge.

I guess one deep question would be can you accurately reproduce the tonal qualities of a acoustical violin in an electric. That's certainly not what I'm attempting here. My first electric was my first instrument a solid hunk of birch. It actually plays well and has a decent round tone. I expect this one to be better, as there is more opportunity for the maple to resonate due to the structure. Its also way lighter.

I'm not that familiar with amplifying, I'd love to hear people's experience with the pick-up bridges, etc out there.

Not done yet, but here are a couple pictures. In this case I'm -attempting- to make it a break-down electric, the neck,partial upper bout, and lower-bout/shoulder rest support come off. I'll name it the EMP: extreme modern pochette

[rgwebb6]

Interesting info, thanks. I am also very curious about built-in electronic controls for volume and effects, etc. Are there any pictures of your completed one?

Dick

[Stephen Churchill]

Interesting info, thanks. I am also very curious about built-in electronic controls for volume and effects, etc. Are there any pictures of your completed one?

Dick

Sure, I built the first as my first instrument - its rough. I actually took the parts out of another electric. It has a built in pre-amp and the volume controls are on the side. The pickup is a pizo-electric pad under the bridge.

I have seen some with a volume adjustment on the jack like this: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/shadow-sh-940-violin-bridge-with-built-in-pickup/300147000000000 or on the tailpiece: http://www.barberatransducers.com/violinpickups.html (bottom of page).

Stephen

[Bill Yacey]

We've had this discussion sometime in the past. Most violin bridge transducers are a very high impedance piezo element. Passive volume controls don't work very well with these due to loading of the element that drastically changes the tone. In fact, even the type of cable used between the amplifier and the pickup can create capacitive loading thus dragging down the impedance of the transducer.

If you want onboard controls for volume, tone, etc., it's best to have a FET input type preamp first of all, before anything else. It should have a minimum input impedance of 1 meg ohm, and 5 to 10 megohm even better. In a solid body or "stick" instrument, the majority of the tone production is determined by the bridge / transducer quality, and the strings used. I once saw a local personality that put a bridge pickup and tuning gear heads on a toilet plunger; it actually despite outward appearances, sounded acceptable for its new found secondary purpose.

Because of the above mentioned factors, the actual construction and design should focus more on comfort and ease of playing, rather than any sort of acoustic concerns.

[lyndon]

i know from building electric guitars, that the wood used for the body has a very important influence on the tone, on the other hand i cant think of any good reason why maple or spruce would be any better than other woods(for an electric), you want to go with a really resonant wood

there could be some problems if you make the body too light, feedback might become a problem at higher volumes

on electric guitars i chose two african woods with really good tap tones from the lumberyard, padauk was lighter and had a really clear crisp sound, ideally suited to jazz or country, bubinga was heavier and had a built in distortion to the sound which made it excellent for rock or grunge

[saintjohnbarleycorn]

red eye makes a good preamp for the above reasons.