Violin Pickups

A violin pickup is a microphone (or transducer) that captures mechanical vibrations from the instrument and converts them to an electronic signal which can be amplified or recorded. There are two common types of pickups that are used with the violin and other string instruments; magnetic pickups and piezo pickups.

Magnetic Violin Pickups Recommended Pickup: Wireless Pickup: A magnetic violin pickup consists of a permanent magnet wrapped with a coil of a few thousand turns of fine copper wire. The pickup is mounted on the body of the instrument. The vibration of the nearby soft-magnetic strings modulates the magnetic flux linking the coil. The signal created is then carried to amplification or recording equipment via a cable. There may also be an internal preamplifier stage between the pickup and cable. More generally, the pickup operation can be described using the concept of a magnetic circuit. In this description, the motion of the string varies the magnetic reluctance in the circuit created by the permanent magnet.

Piezo Violin Pickups

Recommended Piezo Pickup:

A piezo (pronounced "pee-ay-zo") microphone uses the phenomenon of piezoelectricity — the ability of some materials to produce a voltage when subjected to pressure — to convert vibrations into an electrical signal. Piezo transducers are often used as contact microphones to amplify acoustic instruments for live performance, or to record sounds. Many violins have been fitted with piezoelectric pickups instead of, or in addition to, magnetic pickups. These have a very different sound which some prefer, and also have the advantage of not picking up unwanted magnetic fields, such as mains hum and feedback.

Piezoelectric pickups have a very high output impedance and appear as a capacitance in series with a voltage source. They must therefore have an instrument-mounted buffer amplifier fitted if the sound is to retain its full frequency response. Piezo pickups are usually mounted under the bridge and sometimes form part of the bridge assembly itself.

The piezo pickup gives a very wide frequency range output compared to the magnetic types and can give large amplitude signals from the strings. For this reason, it is usually necessary to run the buffer amplifier from relatively high voltage rails (about ±9 V) to avoid distortion due to clipping. Some musicians prefer a preamp that isn't as linear (like a single-FET amplifier) so that the clipping is "softer", although such an amplifier starts to distort sooner, this makes the distortion less "buzzy" and less audible than a more linear, but less forgiving op-amp.

Sometimes, piezoelectric pickups are used in conjunction with magnetic types to give a wider range of available sounds.

Connectors

The most common connectors used by microphones are:

* Male XLR connector on professional microphones
* ¼ inch mono phone plug (UK "jack plug") on less expensive consumer microphones
* 3.5 mm mono mini phone plug on very inexpensive and computer microphones

Some microphones use other connectors, such as TRS, 5-pin XLR, or stereo mini phone plug on some stereo microphones. Some lavaliers have a proprietary connector to connect them to their transmitter. Since 2005, professional-quality microphones with USB connections have begun to appear, designed for direct recording into computer-based software studios.

Microphone Directionality

A microphone's directionality or polar pattern indicates how sensitive it is to sounds arriving at different angles about its central axis. The above polar patterns represent the locus of points that produce the same signal level output in the microphone if a given sound pressure level is generated from that point. How the physical body of the microphone is oriented relative to the diagrams depends on the microphone design. For large-membrane microphones such as in the Oktava (pictured above), the upward direction in the polar diagram is perpendicular to the microphone body. For dynamic microphones such as the Shure (also pictured above), it extends from the axis of the microphone.

An omnidirectional microphone's response is generally considered to be a perfect sphere in three dimensions. In the real world, this is not the case. As with directional microphones, the polar pattern for an "omnidirectional" microphone is a function of frequency. The body of the microphone is not infinitely small and, as a consequence, it tends to get in its own way with respect to sounds arriving from the rear, causing a slight flattening of the polar response. This flattening increases as the diameter of the microphone (assuming it's cylindrical) reaches the wavelength of the frequency in question. Therefore, the smallest diameter microphone will give the best omnidirectional characteristics at high frequencies. The wavelength of sound at 10 kHz is about an inch (2.5 cm) so the smallest measuring microphones are often 1/4" (6 mm) in diameter, which practically eliminates directionality even up to the highest frequencies. Omnidirectional microphones, unlike cardioids, do not employ resonant cavities as delays, and so can be considered the "purest" mikes in terms of low coloration; they add very little to the original sound. Being pressure-sensitive they can also have a very flat low-frequency response down to 20 Hz or below. Pressure-sensitive mikes also respond much less to wind noise than directional (velocity sensitive) mikes.

A unidirectional microphone is sensitive to sounds from only one direction. The diagram above illustrates a number of these patterns, with the microphone capsule being represented as a red dot. The mike faces upwards in each diagram. The sound intensity for a particular frequency is plotted for angles radially from 0 to 360°. (Professional diagrams show these scales and include multiple plots at different frequencies. These diagrams just provide an overview of the typical shapes and their names.)

The most common unidirectional mike is a cardioid microphone, so named because the sensitivity pattern is heart-shaped (see cardioid). A hyper-cardioid is similar but with a tighter area of front sensitivity and a tiny lobe of rear sensitivity. These two patterns are commonly used as vocal or speech mikes, since they are good at rejecting sounds from other directions. Because they employ internal cavities to provide front-back delay, directional mikes tend to have more coloration than omnis, and they also suffer from low-frequency roll-off. These problems are overcome to a large extent by careful design, but only the best cardioids can begin to approach the performance of a tiny low-cost omni in terms of absolute accuracy. This is not always recognised, but is the price paid for directionality, often needed to exclude ambient reverberation wherever very close placement is impossible.

Figure 8 or bi-directional mikes receive sound from both the front and back of the element. Most ribbon microphones are of this pattern.

Shotgun microphones are the most highly directional. They have small lobes of sensitivity to the left, right, and rear but are significantly more sensitive to the front. This results from placing the element inside a tube with slots cut along the side; wave-cancellation eliminates most of the off-axis noise. Shotgun microphones are commonly used on TV and film sets, and for location recording of wildlife.

An omnidirectional microphone is a pressure transducer; the output voltage is proportional to the air pressure at a given time.

On the other hand, a figure-8 pattern is a pressure gradient transducer; the output voltage is proportional to the difference in pressure on the front and on the back side. A sound wave arriving from the back will lead to a signal with a polarity opposite to that of an identical sound wave from the front. Moreover, shorter wavelengths (higher frequencies) are picked up more effectively than lower frequencies.

A cardioid microphone is effectively a superposition of an omnidirectional and a figure-8 microphone; for sound waves coming from the back, the negative signal from the figure-8 cancels the positive signal from the omnidirectional element, whereas for sound waves coming from the front, the two add to each other. A hypercardioid microphone is similar, but with a slightly larger figure-8 contribution.

Since directional microphones are (partially) pressure gradient transducers, their sensitivity is dependent on the distance to the sound source. This is known as the proximity effect, a bass boost at distances of a few centimeters.