Though apparently I was a bit off, they do have purely electric violins with magnetic pickups, too @Tribrix. You just have to use strings with ferrous metal cores.
It’d be great to see someone make magnetic pickups for bowed instruments again, like Bowtronics which, unfortunately has been out of business for a while. There’s a company called StringAmp that makes magnetic pickups but they only work with StringAmp’s proprietary preamp, and there’s no indication of how they would sound in a rock situation. I currently have an EVL 5-string violin with a Barbera pickup, and a viola with a Bradivarius bridge pickup (a bridge with the piezo pickup built-in). I used to have a Fishman V-100 pickup on the viola - sounded fine going into my Ampeg Jet-20 tube guitar amp, sounded like a tin can going into a full range amp (granted, it was a Roland KC-150, not the greatest sounding keyboard amp). The Bradivarius is a dramatic improvement over the Fishman.
as long as the strings are the right kind of metal any old magnetic (standard) style guitar pickup should work fine for any instrument .
Warren Ellis claimed to have used a guitar pickup on his violin before switching to the Fishman pickup. However, even he ended up switching to a Fishman bridge pickup, and this is a player who is clearly not a purist.
Jonathan Wilson experimented with various pickups before arriving at his present designs for the Togaman GuitarViol (a guitar designed to be played with a bow). He arrived at a similar conclusion as those who have experimented with pickup technologies for the violin - the physics of the string when bowed is just too different from the physics of the plucked string to produce a sound that most people would like when using an electric guitar pickup. Today’s electric GuitarViols use piezos for bowed tones and magnetic pickups for plucked tones.
Bowtronics, StringAmp, and other magnetic pickups for violin are thus designed differently than guitar pickups.
Surely, the Elektronauts would have been buzzing with activity if it was true! I don’t see it as Elektron’s current style to release hardware updates to existing machines. Hope it isn’t an mkIII, I’m still saving for my Rytm! Nice pic though
Im looking at the cheapest of the telefunkens, the U47, but not sure if the price hike is going to make much difference over somethign like a groove tubes given i dont have super expensive pre’s (am running fireface 400)
(also, vocal mics are super subjective to the vocalist, so not being able to try before i buy on a 1k mic is a bit tough for a jobbing musician!)
