Mellow Out that Electric Violin

Fender FV3
NS Design Electric Violin

One of the most blatant problems with electric violins is that there is only one piezoelectric pickup in the bridge, and the same equalization controls have to apply to all of the strings, the low strings and the high strings. That means that one cannot really even out those annoying high frequency components on the low strings, the G and D strings, without also shutting down the high strings where the high frequency components rightfully belong.

I had arrived at a kind of a sound stage compromise where I had been turning up the base and dumping the medium and high controls to almost nothing, and enough of the high strings would get through while attenuating most of the buzzy high frequency components on the low strings. But the fix was not perfect.

Then it occurred to me that one has more than electronics to fiddle with, excuse the expression. One can deal with the physical properties of the violin. I was thinking of how when neighbors are playing their music too loud, mostly it is the Bass that gets through the wall. The only time one hears a lot of high notes is when someone hits an iron railing and one hears the complete full bandwidth twang twang through the iron. So it is that hard materials will pass all frequencies, even the high frequencies, but if one adds less hard materials, such as plasterboard and insulation, then the high frequencies are attenuated and mostly the low notes get through.

Hmmmm. So I thought of the solid piezoelectric bridges on most electric violins. Solid little rocks, really. Why not introduce a softer porous more resilient material between the strings and the solid bridge – the low notes will get through and the high buzzy frequencies will be attenuated.

So I found an old bicycle inner-tube and cut a square that I could drape over the bridge and tie in place with a slip-knotted string. I have an NS Design WAV 4, and the bridge is set a bit low to begin with, so the extra bit of height added to the bridge with this dampening padding only helped, as it is easier to modulate the strings if they are not entirely flat down on the finger board.

Yes, it worked. The low notes are a lot cleaner, far less buzzy, and I really didn’t notice any difference with the high strings. The Electric Violin is a great more civilized now.