Bridge Tasman 5-String Electro-Acoustic Violin

If you've been looking for exceptional tone in a five-string acoustic-electric violin, but the Bridge Golden Tasman 5 is outside of your budget, their Tasman 5-string electro-acoustic offers similar performance at a more affordable price. Its amplified tone has a nice warmth and darkness, with a powerful output and good resistance to feedback, it. Under the ear, the Tasman 5's sound is rich and warm, and with good projection for an acoustic-electric.

Construction of the Tasman is (for the most part) quite traditional. A top of tightly grained spruce and a highly figured maple back and side are finished in a golden oil varnish. That finish is artistically antiqued. There are two main departures from the look of a classical violin. The first will be familiar to anyone who's seen a Bridge violin. The shield (inspired by the 1710 Stradivari Viola da Gamba) that has become one of the company's trademark details sits atop the peg box, instead of a traditional scroll. To mark the electro-acoustic's dual nature, a lightning bolt inlay on the shield goes in place of the stylized lowercase "b" that marks their line of purely electric instruments.

A bigger departure, and one that's conceptually brilliant, is the placement of the Tasman's output jack. Recessed into the arch of the violin's back the inset output jack is a stroke of design genius. It allows any player, even traditional classical players who don't use a shoulder rest, to play the violin comfortably, as long as they use a cable with a straight (rather than right-angle) jack, solving a problem that players who don't use a shoulder rest quickly discover when they attempt to play certain acoustic-electric violins.

Features

• High quality spruce front and flamed maple back, with single black purfling and a lightly antiqued rich Venetian-style spirit varnish
• Ebony fingerboard, nut, pegs, and endpin
• Thomastik Dominant strings (or equivalent) for the G D A and E strings with a D'Addario Helicore C string
• Lightweight alloy tailpiece, with integrated fine tuners
• Ebony Guarneri style chinrest
• 3V coin cell battery provides approximately 500 hours of playing time -- drains only while the jack is connected
• Custom hardshell case is included

Specs

Construction

• Body Length 356mm
• Neck Stop 130mm
• Body Stop 195mm

Set Up

• Nut width 27mm
• String spacing at nut 20mm
• String spacing at bridge 39mm
• Weight 550g approx

Electronics

• BRIDGE pickup Piezo Configuration
• Active surface mount preamp
• Instrument Output 200mV nominal
• Load Resistance 10K Ohms minimum
• Battery 1 x Lithium 3V CR2032
• Battery Life approx. 500 playing hours