Violins

[NightWinder]

Does anyone have any insite on making violin pickups? Pro's and Con's, do's and don'ts? I realize this can be quite a challage, but I'm up for a good thinker! Thanks

[Satamax]

Violin players seem to preffer piezzo pickups, than magnetic. But it's been done. There's more on that subject on the mimf i think. Polyvinilidene has been the material of choice the past few years iirc.

Bye.

Max.

[Sweetfinger]

Violins are weird beasts....

Well, weird to guitar people. One problem: the strings are arched to the extent that you'd have to use 4 coils. Second: I believe that many types of violin strings may not have much ferrous content which limits what you can do with magnetic pickups. and third: Attaching things to or cutting into a violin rank right up there with farm animal sex on the 'no-no' list.

That's why you seem to have just the two extremes of 'electric' violins -
traditional instruments with VERY unobtrusive piezo type transducers, or
Super-modern Zeta type fully electric violins.

If you were going to try magnetic, it would probably have to mount on the fingerboard extension. You'd probably end up with a low z system that requires a pre-amp.

[Spence]

I have made a prototype violin pickup. It works very well but does require a preamp. Essentially there are 4 pickups; one for each string. They are based on knife-edge record player stylii and mounted near the end of the neck where the electronics can hide under the neck overhang.

Now I've given most of it away, I will leave it to you to work out the details.

[Mark Hammer]

I'm guessing that piezo or some other contact pickup is preferred by violin players because they often make ample use of body and other extra-string sounds. What is anathema to an electric guitar player is sometimes fundamental to a violin player.

Some 35 years ago, I attended a concert of an "electric" string quartet by American composer George Crumb. The quartet players were individually contact mic'd and each player had their own Fender Twin (I think the cellist had a Showman). They played between the bridge and tailpiece, on the backof the neck, and other places. Little or none of that would have been capturable with a mag coil under the strings.

[Spence]

What is critical to a violinist is to be able to be heard above the rest of the orchestra. Volume is more important than tone. A violinist will make most of the tonal input with fingers and bow. Therefore, although piezo systems will work they are not the be-all and end-all of a violinist's quest for volume.

[Peter Naglitsch]

I'm experimenting with a magnetic violin right now. The first thing I noted was that you cannot place a traditional SC type pickup with the magnets under the strings. You get almost zero output. BUT if you place the same pickup with the magnets BETWEEN the strings you have a completely different ballgame. I have only started to experiment but I expect to start some serious winding for this pickup in a few weeks. And about the political correctness of putting magnetic pickups on a violin it is no problem in this case. The guy that I’m doing this for is playing electric violin with MASSIVE distortion!!!

[Joe Gwinn]

I'm experimenting with a magnetic violin right now. The first thing I noted was that you cannot place a traditional SC type pickup with the magnets under the strings. You get almost zero output. BUT if you place the same pickup with the magnets BETWEEN the strings you have a completely different ballgame.

With bowed strings, the string vibrates more or less parallel to the body of the violin. That is, parallel to the bow motion. By contrast, plucked strings tend to vibrate in all manner of planes, unless the plucking is done very carefully, too carefully to be achieved outside the lab.

The sensitivity of most pickups depends on the direction of motion with respect to the poles, and the most common variant is for pickups to be least sensitive to side-to-side motion, exactly the motion of a bowed string.

There are pickup designs with good sensitivity to side-to-side motion; this is done by cleverly shaping the magnetic field. As an experiment, if one moves the pickup from side to side (parallel to the plane of the strings and the body, but perpendicular to the strings), there may be a sweet spot to be found. It will look wrong, though: The poles will not be under the strings. Better to hide the poles under a blank cover.

[NightWinder]

So somethink similiar to the Ta2b-1 S.D? It has poles on each side of the string,with nothing directly under the string. Setting up you poles/bars this way would capture the string vibration? Maybe a beter example/ A carvan pickup w/24 poles? This type of construction Joe? This is a new ballgame for me too, so I figured I'd ask and see what comes up. I was thinking a simple humbucker.....with maybe 39 awg. Something like that. maybe 4 ohms total. Very clean. By the Way.....this is for an electric violin, not a thirtenth centry war piece....

[Peter Naglitsch]

With bowed strings, the string vibrates more or less parallel to the body of the violin. That is, parallel to the bow motion.

There are pickup designs with good sensitivity to side-to-side motion; this is done by cleverly shaping the magnetic field. As an experiment, if one moves the pickup from side to side (parallel to the plane of the strings and the body, but perpendicular to the strings), there may be a sweet spot to be found. It will look wrong, though: The poles will not be under the strings. Better to hide the poles under a blank cover.

That is exactly what I found out “the hard way” by experimenting. There are some violin pickups out there (Google Bowtronics) that utilize magnets with the tops filed to an angle to shape the magnetic field and direct it to better sense the bowed string. And separate giols for every magnet. I’m hoping to achieve that with a slightly different method. My idea is to use a steel blade parallel to but between the strings. Then I’m going to use small magnets to create a magnetic field similar to a P90. And to copy the Bowtrinics concept of individual coils. I think that it will create the best magnetic field to pick up the string vibrations. Any thoughts about the idea?

And yeah, I’m going to make an ebony casing fotr the pickup so that it will be almost invisible at the end of the finger board.

So somethink similiar to the Ta2b-1 S.D? It has poles on each side of the string,with nothing directly under the string.

Nightwinder: I cannot find info about the Ta2b-1. Do you have a link? It sounds very much like the Bowtronics pickup.

[Joe Gwinn]

That is exactly what I found out “the hard way” by experimenting. There are some violin pickups out there (Google Bowtronics) that utilize magnets with the tops filed to an angle to shape the magnetic field and direct it to better sense the bowed string. And separate giols for every magnet. I’m hoping to achieve that with a slightly different method. My idea is to use a steel blade parallel to but between the strings. Then I’m going to use small magnets to create a magnetic field similar to a P90. And to copy the Bowtrinics concept of individual coils. I think that it will create the best magnetic field to pick up the string vibrations. Any thoughts about the idea?

A blade pickup with the blade cut into a coarse sawtooth, the blade being under the strings and perpendicular to the strings should work. There are a number of old pickup patents that do some variation of this approach. Lots of effort has gone into shaping the magnetic field for one purpose or another.

One thing to be careful of when shaping the field is to ensure that the curve depicting magnetic flux through coil as a function of string displacement is monotonic and reasonably linear, or you can get excessive distortion. The classic worst case is if the magnetic peak is at the resting position of the string, decreasing in both directions of offset. This will cause frequency doubling.

With plucked strings this hasn't been such a problem because the string vibrates in many planes at once. With a bowed string, the effect should be more apparent.