“THERE ARE NO EASY ANSWERS WHEN IT COMES to amplification,” says Julie Lyonn Lieberman, an improvising violinist who runs amplification clinics throughout the United States. “Each one of us has different needs, and our needs change depending on band configurations, styles of music, personal taste, and where we are—professionally speaking—in our lives.”

Players of non-amplified acoustic fiddles find that volume can be a problem, even though the bodies of those traditional bowed-stringed instruments actually are amplifiers designed to project that concerto over the orchestra all the way to the back seats of the hall. But in today’s world, string players often need even more power. And if you can get that boost without being tied to a microphone stand (and save yourself lugging that heavy thing) so much the better.

What you’re looking for is pickup or a clipon microphone. Or a combination of both. But which one is right for you? There are a lot of options available. To help you choose a system that meets your needs, here’s a look at what’s out there for string players (leaving bass-specific gear aside), what the pros use, and what they have to say about it.

As you read, think about your personality, your professional needs, the situations in which you’ll be using this gear, and how often you’ll need it. If you’re the type who goes in for frequent sound adjustments, you may want a system that doesn’t involve replacing or moving your bridge. If you’ll plug in infrequently and don’t want the device on your instrument all the time, keep that in mind.

Will you be using it in relatively low-volume situations like a bluegrass band, or do you need to fill a stadium? Do you need to hold your own in a horn section? Or do you just want the most natural sound you can get through a public-address system?

The Basics

A transducer is a device that senses mechanical vibrations and transforms them into an electrical signal, which can then be amplified. Pickups and microphones are both transducers. In general, microphones pick up the vibrations of air waves, while “pickup” is a catch-all term for devices that pick up vibrations from the instrument itself.

The electrical signal travels through a wire to an output jack (place to plug in) on your instrument. Often the output jack is mounted on the side with chinrest-type hardware (called a Carpenter jack), but some attach to the tailpiece or through a modified end button. Some output jacks have volume or tone controls built in, but most do not.

An instrument cable connects your instrument to the amplifier or sound board. In between, there may be a DI (Direct In) box which transforms the pickup’s signal into the type required to feed a sound board. Many DI boxes also act as a pre-amp (pre-amps give the signal a boost before it gets to the board), and some have equalization (EQ) controls which allow you to shape the tone. EQ might occupy a separate box, or be managed at the sound board.

Pickups

Let’s start with pickups. At the heart of many (but not all) bowed-string pickups is a piezo element, a piece of material that generates an electrical signal in response to changing pressure (vibrations). Popular materials for instrument pickups are naturally occurring or man-made crystals, ceramics, or various polymers. Other types of pickups use different types of transducers.

Bridge Pickups

Piezo pickups are often connected to the bridge in various ways—slipped under the feet, built into a bridge, or simply stuck or clamped on.

The Schatten VVM is a stick-on with twin piezo elements. It can be placed anywhere, but for bowed-stringed instruments, the company suggests putting it on the bridge. Schatten offers an optional volume control on the output jack.

The Fishman V-200 slips into the wing cutout on the bridge, while the Barcus Berry 3100 clamps onto the side. One advantage of these is that they are convenient to take on and off if you don’t play amplified very often.

The following pickups require some installation, moving, or modifying of the bridge. There is no modification to your instrument—just the bridge—but you won’t want to be taking them on and off frequently.

The elements in such pickups as the Shadow Nanoflex (which includes on-board volume and tone control at the jack) and the Realist (a joint project of David Gage and Ned Steinberger) are encased in a thin housing and slip under the bridge feet where they are held in place by the pressure of the strings on the bridge. You can do this installation yourself, but it’s tricky even if you’re experienced at setting up bridges. Keep in mind that the pickup strip does add some height to the bridge and can alter the action under the fingers, tension on the strings, and pressure on the instrument’s top. You might want to have a luthier check the fit, or install and adjust it for you.

Several companies offer pickups mounted inside a regular maple bridge, which must then be shaped to fit your instrument. These include Schatten, Barcus Berry, and L.R. Baggs. The Baggs is Darol Anger’s favorite bridge-mounted pickup. Mark Summer of the Turtle Island String Quartet has been happily using a Baggs bridge for 20 years. Baggs sells pickups mounted inside a standard Aubert bridge, but Summer sent them a bridge already fit for his cello and had the pickup installed. Ryan Angle of L.R. Baggs says the company will do this for musicians who have a bridge that really works for their instrument (bridge carving is an art), but sometimes a bridge will be too thin to accommodate the piezo crystal.

Non-bridge Pickups

Interested in avoiding bridge pickups? The Kurmann Soundpost is a ceramic transducer mounted in a wooden soundpost, which must be fit by your regular luthier. The cable comes out through a modified endpin. (Your original post and pin can always be re-installed.) The advantage of this type of system is that you can use your regular bridge and the transducer is completely invisible from the outside. This new system is popular with Irish fiddle stars Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, and Oisín McAuley, who are looking for a very natural sound. Says McAuley, “The positives of the system are: great pure tone and strength, cosmetically as good as it gets as it cannot be seen on the instrument, and it sounds like a violin.” One possible downside: “It takes a little work to set up the EQs [equalization levels] properly,” McAuley notes.

Another easy-on, easy-off solution is the contact microphone from Accusound, used by violin virtuoso Nigel Kennedy and some musical-theater productions. This is a very thin polymer strip that lies on the soundboard of the instrument. The included double-stick mounting tape damages violin varnishes, but the solution for that problem is the type of non-adhesive plastic film used for window stickers. If the surface of both your violin and the pickup are very clean, the piezo strip stays in place thanks to air pressure or static electricity.

Non-piezo Pickups

Not all transducers are built on the piezo principle. The StringAmp system, for example, was invented by Michael Edinger of Denmark. Basically, the motion of the vibrating string over magnets installed under the fingerboard creates the electrical signal: “Not enough to cook a pea!” says Edinger, “but enough to be amplified.” The system requires professional installation, but it creates a very natural sound and a big dynamic range.

Jazz and Latin violinst Paul Anastasio endorses StringAmp, as does Svend Asmussen.

Contact mics work more like microphones, but pick up vibrations from the instrument body or bridge rather than the air. Schertler and AKG are two popular makers. Schertler offers three contact mics for bowed strings. For rock, jazz, and other high-volume situations, the company offers the STAT series, miniature elecrostatic mics that are placed in the high-string wing of the bridge for a direct, punchy sound. For a natural sound at moderate to loud volumes, Schertler makes the DYN series, an electrodynamic mic that sticks on the body with removable putty. The BASIK is Schertler’s entry-level electrostatic mic that captures the instrument’s vibration. DYN-series transducers have more dynamic range and lowfrequency response while BASIK has more high-end brilliance.

AKG offers the C-411, a stick-on condenser mic in an enclosed capsule. It can be mounted on the bridge or body with reusable putty. Melora Creager of the all-cello indie-rock group Rasputina uses an older AKG C111 (C411 is the current model). “It works so well—sounds so warm!” she says. She learned about it from the indie group Belle and Sebastian.

Tips from the Pros

Placement is important with body-mounted mics and pickups. “You get more feedback further from the string,” electric-violin maker John Jordan explains. Different spots on the body resonate at different frequencies, “and the first place they feed back is at the body’s resonating tone.”

Find that spot and avoid it!

“A soundboard pickup picks up every time your finger hits the fingerboard,” Jordan says. He points out that such musicians as Zoe Keating have exploited that characteristic, taking what might have been a liability and working percussive and brushing sounds into their music.

Muting can be a common problem with contact mics as Anastasio found. “For me, the Schertler’s sound was not too bad,” Anastasio says, but he thinks the sound is a little “closed-in and boxy.” He has tried placing the mic on the back of the fiddle, as Schertler recommends, but found that “the sound was better if I stuck it on the top, on the upper bout on the E-string side.”

“[The contact mic] has to be in the right place on that particular instrument—you have to find that spot for it to sound any good,” San Francisco soundman Marty Brenneis points out.

To do this, Brenneis suggests gathering three friends, a video camera, and a video recorder. Connect the mic to the camera. Then, while one person plays, another moves the mic, and the third runs the video recorder. “Then you can play back the tape with a good speaker or headphones and determine what it sounds like from different positions,” Brenneis says.

Microphones

To amplify a pure, rich acoustic sound, a mic might be your best bet. The downsides are that they are prone to feedback at moderate to loud volumes and they will pickup and amplify every sound around you (other instruments, drums beating, people talking, and so on). Directional mics help cut down on these problems. Most string players use miniature condenser microphones wired to a flexible, adjustable “goose neck” that clips onto your instrument.

Clip-on condensers give a consistent, quality sound in nearly all venues once you find the best mic placement. They also allow the musician the freedom to move comfortably without changing the sound, according to Brenneis, who carries AudioTechnica Pro 35 clip on mics for strings. Countryman and Danish Pro Audio are two companies that offer a variety of high-end mini condenser mics suitable for stringed instruments. The Fiddler on a recent Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof wore a DPA mini mic hidden in his hair.

For real freedom of movement, AMT makes the Roam 2 for bowed strings. The tiny, high-grade condenser mic is suspended in an isolation ring (think recording studio) and attached to a small Samson Airline wireless transmitter. This is jazz giant Regina Carter’s rig. Other pickups and mics will also work with wireless gear.

Accusound offers three varieties of microphones, one omni-directional and two directional—the advantage of directional mics is better isolation from other instruments and less feedback. In addition to the gooseneck mount, “We also have a suspension mic which fastens to the strings by a piece of light weight foam behind the bridge. The capsule is then positioned pointing at the bridge about 5mm away,” writes David Anderson of Accusound.

“Clip-on condenser mics work extremely well for classical and chamber music,” says Tolling. TISQ uses Crown GLM-100 condenser mics. (GLM stands for Great Little Mic.) “We use these when we’re in a hall that doesn’t quite support the sound level and impact we want to reach by its acoustics. These are great for us because they sound warm and have a natural high roll-off [of the treble end], which is good for amplifying strings. So you avoid some of the less desirable ‘violin-sound qualities,’ such as tinnyness and thinness, particularly in the high end.”

A Word about Combos

Sometimes, one type of gear isn’t the best solution. “A lot of people use a combo,” says fiddler Stacy Phillips. In fact, Fishman manufactures a combination bridge pickup and Crown GLM-200-E condenser mic wired to the same output jack. Accusound makes a mic/pickup combo, too. “We offer a system which can be combined to give a single signal to the mixing desk. The small combining box has individual volume controls for each of the two mics so the user can adjust the relative volumes of the two pickups to achieve the sound they want.”

Phillips says that in quiet situations some players use the mic signal for the concert hall’s public-address system and pickup for the stage monitor speaker.

Anastasio’s ideal combo? “If I were playing almost acoustic music, such as in lowvolume bluegrass or country settings, I might want to have the StringAmp pickup going through a small amp—and play into a mic during solos to boost the volume a little.”

TISQ cellist Summer has had good experiences with a combo set up. He uses an L.R. Baggs bridge pickup with a Baggs Para DI 5-band equalizer through a Gallien-Krueger bass amp. His music alternates frequently between bowing and playing the cello like a jazz bass. “I use the pickup for pizzicato,” he says, “and turn it off and stick with a mic for bowing.” He turns it off with an Ernie Ball volume pedal—on/off switches were too noisy. He always uses the pickup for pizz, even in otherwise unamplified performances. When they do need to mic up, he uses the Crown GLM 100 for bowing.

“My setup is particular to what I’m doing, the way I use the cello for bass. It might not work for someone else.”

Choosing Your Sound Solution

So what’s best for you? Be prepared to shop around and test drive a few different systems. Talk to friends and colleagues to see what they’ve tried. And ask a friendly sound technician for suggestions. As Lyonn Liebermann explains, it’s important to see, hear, and try out a number of solutions before you make your final decision.

Tolling agrees: “I think, as string players, we need to find the system that suits us best and that works the best for the environment we are using it in.”

He suggests that any string player looking to explore amplification possibilities should “look less at the wallet and instead get what you really need, despite it being a little more.

“In the long run you will be happier.”