i went overboard and bought a "Bridge" electric fiddle decades ago, that thing was indestructible. i mean falling from 6ft onto a concrete floor and hardly even going out of tune indestructible. Sounded OK with minimal eq, and was nearly as light as a very heavy fiddle.

it was set up beautifully. i bought it from the factory when they where first establishing themselves. I noticed they had quite a few instruments returned to them by pro players for re-adjusting, with oscilloscopes, expert luthiers, and electronics engineers etc. Expensive to buy and expensive to keep up to spec, (i suspect you needed 2 of em, one for playing, and another back at the shop for tweaking)..i sold it when it started playing up. Way above my pay grade.

They had a custom made and fitted bridge with an integral piezzo, custom made and adjusted for each player/instrument/preferred strings etc.

After all that i would say, that it was ho hum ok, and about as good as it gets with a piezzo pickup. Then you need all the electronic gubbins for it to go through And the Albert Hall, wind machines, lighting and makeup to make use of it.

Maybe it was just "Pearls before swine" in my case :)

My experience with electrics were when I did battle with the Les Pauls. I got a cheap Cecilio. No matter what processing, it still sounded like crap to me. I then got a Fishman bridge pickup for my acoustic violin. But here's the rub, I didn't want to sound like Jeff Beck with a fiddle ala Jean Luc Ponte. I still like that woody tone. Recording, I use a mike. Yes, it gets processed, but the air, I've found, is important for the tone I like.
Now, on a stage, tone matters less than being heard. As long as I damp down my strings when I'm not playing, feedback isn't much. The knuckleheads had a very loud stage. Old school fun.

Yeah electrics its always 'thats close enough' if its an acoustic sound you are after. Even with modern samplers and all the other doo dads in the mix, what you are chasing is best done with a great microphone, good placement and a smart sound man. Playing out these days I use a DPA 4099 rammed against the lower bass side F hole. Perfectly captures the sound of my fiddle and virtually no feedback. Easily competes with the Les Pauls, Steve, though I don't play that kind of music anymore. It does fine when I get the occasional call from a C&W band to fill in.

Another problem with electrics - sweat! I 'm not a big sweater but years of playing in hot, smelly bars - I had to replace the plug in jack on that Barcus Berry fiddle like 4 times because of that. The contacts would just corrode away. Even with good American made, sealed Switchcraft female jacks, I had to replace it every so often. Replaced the volume pot too once, same reason. Stage life in bars is frikken hard on equipment!

Actually, you can see that same white Barcus Berry fiddle in my sig pic to the left there.  Considering all I put that thing through, it does not owe me one thin dime! 

How about this gizmo?
youtube.com/shorts/QhHnkZOQRXY

I had a LR Bags bridge on a fiddle that I have since sold. It was okay. Sounded like an electrified acoustic instrument, much like the fake sounds you get from plug in acoustic guitars - not right. If I ran it through my electric guitar set up, it sounded just like an electric guitar.

I purchased The Band II pickup over the summer. It sounds amazing and I use it on whatever fiddle I want to use. Could have two fiddles on stage and swap the pickup as needed for, say, cross tuning. It sounds like a violin and I run it through a Tonebone PZ Deluxe preamp for added warmth. am using it with a wireless set up (Ammoon brand 1/4" cord replacement, great battery life, transparent, at least half the price of some others) that gives an amazing amount of freedom. Sometimes I'll use it for a dance if the venue is noisy, but mostly use it in a plugged in bluegrass-ish band.

I got a Band original version sitting in the case with the old Barcus fiddle, kept there for emergencies if the Barcus system crapped out on me at a gig. Never had to use it, but I did try it out a few times. I found it was too feedback prone at the volume levels the bands I used to play with were at ( drums an gitars). Wonder how much better the Band II is. So so glad I got off the C&W,/ electrified country rock / rock bar choo choo train! My ears thank me all the time!

Yeah, drums (cymbals especially) are loud, driving the already loud guitars to be louder, I am also glad to be out of that world. Even the bar gigs I do are better. No smoking, early quitting time (11 / 12 at the very latest), better beer...

I haven't had it up loud like that so I'm not sure about feedback issues. I do often stand in front of the PA while playing and don't get feedback. I'll have to look at what's different between the two.

I have two electric fiddles: a Yamaha YEV-104 and a Wood Violins Stingray SVX4. Those are both purely passive, with no onboard electronics. They both sound good with an Impulse Response (IR) pedal. The Prosody pedal that Charley W pointed out is such an IR pedal, though I don't know anything about that one. I use a Fishman Aura.

The Woods Stingray is my favorite in terms of playability. That's why I bought it in the first place. The action is low. I like the bridge curvature. The feel of the bow on the strings feels pretty normal, which I think is a result of the bridge construction being relatively normal. My only reservation is that the body shape of the Stingray is very rock and roll, whereas I'm going for what I think of as a country blues sound. I'm thinking about buying a Wood Nashville instrument with the same TruTone pickup. I think it would sound and play almost exactly the same. So the only motivation to do it is aesthetics.

The Yamaha YEV-104 has a much hotter pickup. The design is nice. The action is pretty good now that I've lowered it twice. It's still higher than the Stingray. The tone is good through my IR pedal. Something about the feel of the bow hair on the strings has never felt quite right. I suspect it has something to do with the massive bridge. My choice of metal strings could also be a factor. (Yamaha ships them with Zyex strings.)  I put Wittner geared tuners on mine.

Yamaha recently came out with a YEV-104 Pro that has a significantly different body construction and a different bridge. I'm optimistic that it will be more playable and sound better. I'd really like to try one before buying, though, and no one in Tucson has one.

Bottom line is that I have a Wood Stingray and a Yamaha YEV-104. If money were no object I would replace those with a Wood Nasvhille and a Yamaha YEV-104 Pro.

Most of the time, for loud gigs, I use my old DeArmond 700, some call potato bug... they were popular in the midwest. It sits on top of the fiddle (I use elastic to keep it in place), you can vary where to place it, to change the tonal quality; can give a bit more of the smoother woody acoustic sound than just bridge piezo. Has lot's of GBF, but as any acoustic instrument, body will still have microphonic effect if pushed. Can place more direct behind bridge for more EV qualities, and more GBF if needed.

I do have a Fender FV1 I use sometimes, it has classic solid body electric violin sound. It's under bridge pickup system; some folks like to replace it with a Barbera bridge PU. "Electrics are always going to sound like electrics." -  I don't really try to think of trying to make it sound like an acoustic; similar in I wouldn't try to make an elec guitar sound like an acoustic; rather elec has it's own usable sound.

For either, I run thru a Boss GE7 to shape the tone a bit before the amp... usually like to use small Ashdown Engineering acoustic amp, (it has high impedance input and a DI to board). For the FV1, I might play around a bit more with adding various effects, tube saturation, reverb, delay, chorus.

edit: didn't see previous post as I was typing  but brought up what I mentioned. Related to the - "Electrics are always going to sound like electrics."  The recent IR (impulse response) convolution technology is interesting. This is idea what the Tonedexter/Aura type pedals do, takes the input from pickup, outputs the sound of acoustic instrument as thru a mic (based on waveform capture). Not sure if others here have tried IR, but examples I've heard are pretty impressive, while still might be perfect, at minimum certainly improves the dry pickup to sound more acoustic. There are other IR pedals, such as Aura, Neural... they are all pretty pricey, but maybe worth it for some folks, needing more pure acoustic sound with loud stage. Of course in those situations, other alternatives, such better sound setup management, lower the stage volume, using IEM.

It turns out that Wood no longer makes the Nashville, so that's not an option. I ordered a YEV-104 Pro. I plan to sell one of my current electric instruments, as I don't have room for three.

As alaskafiddler suggests, the impulse response convolution technology is a game changer.

It was a good thread to start Al. Seems like we're all in a similar boat.
I do have to try a Band2.

I was using a 32 band EQ when I was using the ol Barcus fiddle, that and a Holy Grail reverb pedal. Honestly I no longer need the super volume that an electric fiddle allows. There is no doubt that e-fiddles and the boxes used with them have progressed and will continue. My acoustic fiddle w/DPA 4099 works just fine for the concerts and shows we are doing - our stage volume is pretty low, in fact we dont even use monitors, which raises a lot of sound man eyebrows. Let the house sound belt it out there, my ears are shot enough! So, you guys using up to date equipment, have they gotten rid of the piezio 'quackyness' ? That was always my biggest gripe.

No quackery with The Band and it sounds good without the addition of the pedal, but sounds better with it, mostly because I use the pedal for a solo boost and to dial off any unnecessary low end. The pedal also has phase shift and ground lift if needed.

The problem with impulse response is lag.
youtube.com/shorts/QhHnkZOQRXY

quote:

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Originally posted by chas5131

The problem with impulse response is lag.
youtube.com/shorts/QhHnkZOQRXY

Have hearing problems.  Like using the electric because the sound source is not close to my left ear, which should help avoid damage. 

I've got a Cecilio I bought to see if I could pick up playing after 50 or so years, something cheap to dip a toe in the water. It wasn't bad at all for the price, and I went in and bought a decent acoustic. I made a project out of the Cecilio, cut the head off, chopped most of the body off, put Wittner geared pegs behind the bridge, ended up with a KNA VV-3V pickup that slots into the bridge and has a volume control on the jack. I play it through a NUX preamp that I use for eq and reverb, chorus. Sounds nice, clean, and very good at much lower volume than my acoustic, even with a practice mute. I have hearing problems also in my left ear and I like having the sound not right in my face.

Here's my Klingon Bird of Prey fiddle that I mentioned above. Weird, huh?

https://www.hangoutstorage.com/fiddlehangout.com/storage/photos/large/37/37620-14231221122024.jpg

That Klingon Bird of Prey fiddle is pretty awesome! And versatile, because you would be a big hit with it at both Star Trek and Steampunk conventions!

Yeah, except it sounds like "QI'yah". Heavy as hell too.

The YEV-104 Pro that I ordered arrived on Saturday. Because I've owned a YEV-104 for about 7 years, have an awesome pedalboard setup and multiple amps to test it on, I can give a meaningful first impression. I'll likely post a separate review in January. I don't want to do it until I can get Zyex strings on my old YEV-104 for a better comparison. Because my current choice of strings may be affecting playability.

Not surprisingly, I like the new 104 Pro better than the old 104. I ordered it from a vendor where I was pretty sure they would set it up correctly, and they did. So the action was good right out of the box. Playability is better than the 104, though string choice could be a factor.

In addition to a different bridge, the body has some sort of hollow cavity, there's a cutout that makes a "table". But it looks considerably stiffer than a normal, so that table may not rotate much. In any case, the body is resonant. With just a normal preamp (no IR convolution filter), it sounds pretty good. But it sounds significantly better to me with some IR filter. With all of my electrics, I typically use a 50/50 blend of raw and filtered signal.

I went to two local stores to get a set of Zyex strings for my old 104. I had forgotten that Yamaha ships both the 104 and 104 Pro with Zyex strings. One store didn't have a complete set. The other store definitely would have had them except they are closed until the new year.

I'll sell one of my old instruments, most likely the old 104, in January when I can replace the strings. I have neither the space nor the need for three electrics.