Amplification is a must for anyone who wants to play strings outside the purely classical sphere these days. Even unpretending ceilidh bands playing barn dances in church halls will plug most stuff in, and by the time you hit anything like a gig venue everything bar the drums will be expected to be plugged in. Anyone who’s tried it will testify that playing into a condenser mike (or worse still the vocs close-mikes that are sometimes all that’s available) is not a going proposition for bowed strings with an amplified group, so you really do need something that plugs in.

However, I think it’s fair to say that after around a century (yes really!) of experimentation, the question of amplifying violins and violas still isn’t straightforwardly answered. Solid- or closed-bodied fully electric instruments are gradually gaining market share, and they may eventually become the default option for serious players. However, some of them are made with a shorter string length than their acoustic cousins (which is a pain for swapping instruments and keeping spot-on intonation – it’s like someone always moving your car seat back or forward before you get in and have to judge the accelerator). They are almost all a lot heavier than an ‘ordinary’ instrument, which may not seem a big issue unless you think about the fact that for conventional technique and certainly when doing position changes you have to support the weight of the instrument largely between your chin and your shoulder, and more than one violinist gets muscle trouble just from doing that badly with lightweight acoustic instruments! Some come with a sort of crosswise strap that seems to mean you don’t need to worry about this, but I haven’t seen one of these in the flesh, only in videos, so I’m not sure how well they work. An electric and an acoustic violin means another instrument of course (or in my case, with viola as well, two) and the possibility of that much more lugging around if you just have to ‘bring everything’, as well as possibly being caught short without the right one. Finally, most purpose-built electric instruments seem to be designed as a violist’s equivalent of the electric guitar – something that works really well plugged in, even through a guitar-type amp rather than a flat-response system, but has a sound and possibilities of its own and is definitely not just a louder version of the acoustic one. Which is fine, but hasn’t chiefly yet been what I’ve wanted (though I did use a distort pedal on a couple of Ragdoll songs just for laughs – sadly only live).

So then there are the various options for fitting a pickup to the instrument as it stands. They are very various – you can get grotty piezo buttons for about 20 quid of which about the best that can be said is that they give you an amplifiable signal and tend not to go wrong until the fancy bluetack you stick them on with gets too much dust and fluff on it. At the other end of the scale, a lot of the more expensive options are actually fitted into the bridge or belly of the instrument (sometimes a jack socket in the chinrest as well). Which is evidently mechanically preferably, but means it’s there permanently, and I’m insecure enough not to want to carry a wired instrument into an orchestra or quartet rehearsal, even if I’m not sure how much difference the extra gubbins attached to it make to the unamplified sound (there’s bound to be some). Some people are very keen on arrangements with very small microphones, usually a pair attached to the tailpiece or the strings behind the bridge pointing at the strings roughly where you bow from close range. I’ve certainly heard good results from these, though they seem to doom you to having your own preamp as well, and I think they are a little more prone to feedback than a pickup sensu strictu. Personally, they look rather fragile and fiddly to me and I have enough things like that to be going on with with two instruments, two bows and wearing glasses given I’m often somewhat clumsy!

My chosen solution (at least for the moment) is the Band series of pickups by Headway, as seen in the photo (by the way, also check out those nice brightly coloured jack leads from Klotz – so much easier to find and be sure they’re yours on a gig floor than everyone else’s black ones!). They’re a piezo pickup that straps round the instrument just below the waist – the main problem that comes up with them is getting up the guts to wrap them round tightly enough with the velcro strips, as they really have to be tight enough to not move at all. This tends to feel like you may crush your beloved fiddle at any moment till you get used to it! However, provided this is avoided and so there isn’t mechanical buzz or rattle of the pickup against the instrument, they produce a very dependable signal and a pretty good sound, though I think they do distort slightly. Feedback is well-nigh impossible which is a relief, there’s not a significant amount of crossfeed into them because there’s no microphone as such (the body does resonate with ambient noise to some degree of course, and the pickup will in theory transmit that, but it’s not on a level to concern anyone in practice). The manufacturers claim you don’t need a DI with the Bands and a PA system because of their signal level – in practice I have got better results more easily through a DI, but it is certainly possible to do without in extremis. Also usefully, you can plug one into an instrument amp and get a useable signal, though in an electric guitar type amp the EQ will need throwing all the way over the treble end because the instruments have a higher tessitura than guitar, and whatever you do it will mangle the tone because that’s what guitar amps do deliberately. On the other hand, using the Headway devices with no or bad monitors is fairly OK because the instrument still sounds very much as it usually would under your chin / through your jawbone. More prosaically, they go in the lids of instrument cases very easily (off the instrument, virtually just a long strip of black plastic) and having two matching pickups eases sound tech if I’m playing violin and viola in the same set as they behave very similarly (especially handy if they can’t find me two mixer inputs and so I’m plugging and unplugging through one channel!). All in all, a handy road instrument, even if I’d still always use a good instrument mike setup in the studio for preference.