Electric
violins are simply a violin with an electronic signal output. The
term can refer to an acoustic violin with an electric pickup of
some type, but usually refers to a solid-body electric instrument.
The solid body violins typically have a non-traditional, minimalistic
design to keep weight down.
Acoustic violins may be used with an add-on piezoelectric bridge or body pickup, but often suffer from feedback on stage, in addition to the raw piezo sound. Some magnetic pickups have less sharp sound and no feedback. To prevent this feedback from the resonances of the hollow body under high amplification on stage, many instruments have a solid body, which helps reduce or eliminate such feedback. The timbre or tone color of an acoustic violin is created directly because of these resonances, however, so depending on how the signal is picked up, an electric piezo violin may have a much more "raw", "sharp" sound than an acoustic. Electric violins
signals usually pass through electronic processing, in the same
way as an electric guitar, to achieve a desired sound. This could
include delay, reverb, chorus, distortion, or other effects. Generally, piezo pickups are more common because of very cheap piezo materials available. They are used to detect physical vibrations, sometimes in or on the body, but more commonly in the bridge. Some piezo setups have a separate pickup (or two!) embedded in the bridge under each string. Piezo pickups have
a very high (capacitive) output impedance, and require a powered
preamp for filtering the raw sound (a charge amplifier is best,
and tube-driven is sometimes favored over solid state for the
purpose of desired distortion), and to avoid signal loss and excessive
noise pickup in the instrument cable. A solid body provides room
for this circuitry and a battery, although phantom power can make
the battery unnecessary.
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