Klarinet Archive - Posting 000318.txt from 2004/07

From: "Bernie Hunt" <bernie_ml@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Electric Violin help
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 04:13:01 -0400

On 5 Jul 2004 at 17:31, GrabnerWG@-----.com wrote:

> My son, age 14 and a violin player, asked for an electric violin for
> his birthday. I know absolutely nothing about them. I got out the
> catalogs and looked at prices. They range from a couple of hundred
> dollars to thousands.
>
> I'm reluctant to spend a lot of money, as I really don't know yet
> exactly what he is planning on using it for.

Walter,

I don't know anything about violins, but I remember that musicyo
(www.musicyo.com) have/had one in their range of offerings. Basically
musicyo is a direct outlet for brands owned by the Gibson (guitar
etc.) company, which no longer have full distribution deals. As a
result the prices tend to be very good for what you get.
So it's worth a look, although I don't know how you would judge if
the instrument was the right one.

Don't forget you will probably need to get some amplification too!
Probably this needs more discussion with your son - if he wants to
accurately amplify the instrument, you are likely to want either a
keyboard amp (peavey would be an obvious suggestion) or PA
(preferably small for your sake 8-) ), but if he wants to play in
rock bands, he might want more of a guitar amp, which colours the
basic tonality of the instrument, but also allows for distortion etc.
If you have something already which can be used to get him started,
you could let him play with it for a while, then go and test a range
of different amps in different styles. Otherwise, unless he says he
really wants a guitar amp, I would probably go for something more
neutral, because it is always possible to add effects units,
including distortion* separately, but it is very difficult to de-
neutralise a guitar amp.

Cheers,
Bernie

*Note that if you want to add distortion to a neutral amp, you may
need one which includes amp/speaker modelling, to include the
inherent tonal bias of guitar amps - otherwise you may get something
very fizzy and "wasp in a jam jar".

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