2006 - Violin - Going Electric

 A few years back, I decided it was time to get a little more serious about playing violin in band settings. 

The church I was attending at the time, like most others, was transitioning away from traditional orchestras and choirs, and embracing the newer trend in more compact 'worship bands' utilizing the standard rock band instruments: electric guitars, basses, keyboards, and full drum kits. Church music took a dramatic swing away from traditional organ and piano dominated hymns to contemporary rock-style music. 

I quickly found that if I was to continue being involved in the music ministry at church, I would have to update as well. An acoustic violin just couldn't cut being heard in the mix with all of those other amplified instruments. Playing up next to a mic was OK but proved impractical for me because I tend to move around a lot while I'm playing.

The solution: spring for an electric violin.

After assessing my budget and exploring the Wonderful World Wide Web for a suitable instrument, I landed on this:

This violin is a Hohner four-string solid body with a peizo pickup, a standard quarter-inch cable jack, volume control, and tone control.

At the beginning, I played this through the only amplifier I had at the time, the small Line6 Spyder. The amp didn't have a line-out to plug directly into the church's house system so it had to be mic'd.

One thing that I quickly learned with the electric was how shrill the higher strings sounded. This was a product of the peizo being played through a high-gain amp. I was able to fix the situation by turning the violin's tone control all the way down and turning the amp's treble knob way down. 

I also let the people running the sound boards know to drop the treble EQ on my channel on that end, too.

Once these things were in place, the instrument sounded sweet!

Since the Line6 amp was a modeling variety, it came with a number of effects that could be dialed in. After experimenting with various reverbs, delays, chorus, etc. I found a pretty cool sound to stick with. One delightful thing I discovered was the heavy distortion setting. With this dialed in, I could play double-stops (playing two strings at once) with a bouncing bow stroke that created a growl that rivaled the sound of an overdriven electric guitar!

This violin, along with the later addition of a proper acoustic-instrument amplifier, and a full-sized effects processor, has now become my go-to fiddle!