We had phone calls last week from, not one, but two players wanting to put a pickup on fine Cremonese violins – a Stradivari and a Rogeri, both over 300 years old! We discussed their concerns just like we do with every customer, but the stakes are certainly higher when the instrument in question is worth more than my house, my cars, my business and pretty much everything I own!
To be trusted at that level speaks to the role Electric Violin Shop plays in the music retail world. We are not just a low price website (although many people do appreciate that part of it!) – we are honored to function as a knowledge repository for amplifying strings. Every day people vote with their time, and their money, for this specialty shop and the services we provide. We appreciate and thank you for your trust in us, and share in your excitement every time you perform and are clearly heard by your audience because you have the right gear for the job!
The little things sometimes make all the difference. Given the number of instrument cables used by a typical band, if you can bring more pleasure to plugging in (literally!), then you’ve got more energy for your musical expression. The new Planet Waves American Stage cables are not only made in the USA, sound great, and are reasonably priced, but also offer one of the nicest in-hand feel of all cables I’ve tried! The wire is flexible, with a small profile that coils easily, and the Neutrik plugs feel great in your hand. If it was a car, it would combine the feel of a luxury sedan, the handling of a sports car, and the utility of a pickup truck!
When we received the following message from a customer who had recently purchased a J.T. Jet violin bow, it reminded us once more of how fundamentally useful the Jet is as a great sounding, responsive utility bow for players of any level:
“Hi EVS,
Just wanted to say thank you for selling me the JT Jet Bow. It’s a great spare for when I can’t get my Coda[bow] re-haired in time! The [video] below is of me using it for a live performance with my indie-rock band.
The genius of the J.T. Jet is that in addition to drawing a great tone and feeling quite responsive, it is virtually indestructible and incredibly inexpensive! Given the following examples of its utility, I imagine it would be MacGyver’s bow of choice were he a violinist (or Bear Grylls’, for our younger readers ) Read the rest of this entry »
Hi – my name is Susie Sneeringer, and I’ve been with Electric Violin Shop for over a year now. I’ve played in a number of bands with various types of amplification for my violins. Needless to say, some have worked better than others! Over the last ten years or so, I’ve gone from playing my acoustic violin outdoors at the San Francisco Ferry building in a bluegrass and old-time band (salt air, I found out, is not great for your acoustic violin) to using a stick-on guitar pickup in a blues band, to using a replacement bridge on my acoustic violin in a local country band. After all of this, it’s such a relief to have instruments – and sound — that do what I want them to do when I show up for a gig. I play in a fiddle band and a full-blown rock band, and while I’d like to have one of everything in the building here at EVS, this is a reliable setup that works well in most of the medium-sized venues I play with my two bands. It’s like a car that is fun to drive AND gets great mileage. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ted Hardin Any guitarist who has heard Jimmy Page draw a bow across the strings of his Les Paul in the Led Zeppelin song “Dazed and Confused” has wondered about the possibilities of trading their pick for a stick. The promise of seemingly infinite variation of string attack and virtually limitless sustain was solely the dominion of those who played classical strings before that particular moment in music history, and ever since then guitarists have wanted a better way to emulate the sound of a violin.
Here is the Electric Violin Shop conversion for a six string violin to be strung like a guitar and still have close to proper string tension. Some of the strings end up having greater than normal tension, and some less, but all are close enough to be safe for the instrument and still provide good tone. Read the rest of this entry »
Hi–Duncan here, from Electric Violin Shop. I’ve been with EVS since 2008 and have probably considered every violin we carry my favorite at one time or another. There is so much variety in our line that choosing just one is nearly impossible. However, if forced to decide I would probably own…
Violin:6-string Vector Prodigy Pro with Barbera Twin Hybrid pickup. Nick Tipney’s violins are minimal, almost rustic in their design, yet the lines and shapes have a real elegance about them. The Vector Prodigy is among the very lightest weight violins on the market and the Barbera Twin Hybrid pickup bridge is agreed by most professionals to be one of the finest sounding transducers available. Nick has made a few of the 6-strings for us and our customers over the years and I’ve always enjoyed playing on them, finding the neck width and fingerboard curvature highly navigable considering the extra strings. And for as great as the Barbera bridge sounds anyway, something about the resonance of the Vector’s (Nova Scotia-grown) maple top adds a gorgeous character to the tone. Read the rest of this entry »
Believe your eyes and ears — world-class classical cellist Johannes Moseris in fact seated behind a Yamaha SVC-110 electric cello, surrounded by an array of effects processors and flanked by twoRoland JC-120 amps at center stage. The venue: Walt Disney Concert Hall; the ‘backup band’: the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel; the set list: a brand new electric cello concerto by Mexican composer Enrico Chapela entitled MAGNETAR. Moser gave the concerto its world premiere on October 20 in Los Angeles on a program that included John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.
This is not the first electric cello concerto written, nor the first that Johannes Moser has premiered. In fact, just this April, Moser gave the inaugural performance of Electric Cello Concerto, a work written for him by French composer Fabrice Bollon… Read the rest of this entry »
“Time For Three‘s epic music video “Stronger” (see below) is perhaps the most eloquent expression I have seen/heard about the journey of young musicians, and why I have stayed so long in a type of business that renders support to such dreams and dreamers.
At EVS we always go the extra mile for our customers. Once in a while though, for a truly extraordinary customer, we go the extra 383 miles. EVS owner Blaise Kielar traveled from North Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia, to the Fox Theatre to show Jean-Luc Ponty the new Fourness Fuse electric violin by maker Evan Fourness. Read the rest of this entry »
We had phone calls last week from, not one, but two players wanting to put a pickup on fine Cremonese violins – a Stradivari and a Rogeri, both over 300 years old! We discussed their concerns just like we do with every customer, but the stakes are certainly higher when the instrument in question is worth more than my house, my cars, my business and pretty much everything I own!
) 
Hi – my name is Susie Sneeringer, and I’ve been with Electric Violin Shop for over a year now. I’ve played in a number of bands with various types of amplification for my violins. Needless to say, some have worked better than others! Over the last ten years or so, I’ve gone from playing my acoustic violin outdoors at the San Francisco Ferry building in a bluegrass and old-time band (salt air, I found out, is not great for your acoustic violin) to using a stick-on guitar pickup in a blues band, to using a replacement bridge on my acoustic violin in a local country band. After all of this, it’s such a relief to have instruments – and sound — that do what I want them to do when I show up for a gig. I play in a fiddle band and a full-blown rock band, and while I’d like to have one of everything in the building here at EVS, this is a reliable setup that works well in most of the medium-sized venues I play with my two bands. It’s like a car that is fun to drive AND gets great mileage. 
Any guitarist who has heard Jimmy Page draw a bow across the strings of his Les Paul in the Led Zeppelin song “Dazed and Confused” has wondered about the possibilities of trading their pick for a stick. The promise of seemingly infinite variation of string attack and virtually limitless sustain was solely the dominion of those who played classical strings before that particular moment in music history, and ever since then guitarists have wanted a better way to emulate the sound of a violin.
Hi–Duncan here, from Electric Violin Shop. I’ve been with EVS since 2008 and have probably considered every violin we carry my favorite at one time or another. There is so much variety in our line that choosing just one is nearly impossible. However, if forced to decide I would probably own…
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