Could this work? (includes violin modding haha)

[Silver Hammer]

Ok, so I've been listening to the Velvet Underground lately and I love the droning violin on some songs and I've been listening to Rasputina and I love the distorted cello. Now I can't afford a cello but on www.rondomusic.com they have a $50 violin which I could definitely swing. I know cello doesn't equal violin but I want another instrument to mess around with.

Anyways, I was wondering if I got said $50 violin, which I wouldn't be worried about abusing, is it be possible to electrify it? Haha. Because I want to distort a violin. I'm wondering if I could fill it with crumpled up newspaper, duct tape the F-holes, stick a guitar pickup I have laying around under the strings (Would the spacing work out? I know it wouldn't line up perfectly but would it still pick up?) and send the signal out into my guitar amp... I know there are electric violins but I can't swing the price at the moment and I don't think I can get a job right away as I'm 15.

I jam with some friends and we're talking about starting a band and I love doing experimental stuff- I already play bass pretty well in my opinion, I play drums proficiently (love to play in odd time signatures), can pick out leads on guitar and if given a little time work out chord progressions and play them, can play keys pretty decently if I think about it before I play (in other words I don't know the entire keyboard by memory) and would like to throw another instrument into the mix as I love switching instruments for different songs and using new timbres. Anyways thats my rant lets see them answers.

[superbassman2000]

i don't know if the guitar pickup is the point of your experiment or if it is to just amplify the violin--if you just want to amplify it, wouldn't a violin pickup work better?

[Silver Hammer]

Honestly, I didn't know such a thing existed. I just knew I had an extra guitar pickup laying around. I thought all electric violins had piezo pickups.

[superbassman2000]

Originally Posted by Silver Hammer

Honestly, I didn't know such a thing existed.

Originally Posted by Silver Hammer

I thought all electric violins had piezo pickups.

so you didn't know that there were pickups for violins, but you knew that there were pickups for violins?

[Silver Hammer]

What I meant is I thought all electric violins had piezo pickups in the bridge, should have kept the entire thought together. I didn't think there were pickups you could install.

[T-Bird]

Hi.

A single P-pickup might work better, but the string balance would probably be poor.

IMHO just experiment with an acoustic stick-on piezo disc, that will probably be the easiest/cheapest solution.

Just my 0.02€
Sam

[uethanian]

theres been few attempts at putting magnetic pickups on bowed instruments, and even fewer have been successful.

its because a magnetic pickups, placed under a string, only reads the up and down motion of the oscillation, and not the back and forth. a bowed string is all back and forth, and no up and down. in theory it would work if you were able to have pickups sideways and inbetween strings...but havent seen it.

any "violin transducer" is going to cost you more than the instrument itself, so i'd recommend getting the cheapo piezo disk from radioshack and mess around with it.

[Silver Hammer]

Thanks everyone who replied. I think I will go the Radio Shack route as money is an issue and sound quality isn't the main issue as it is a $50 violin.