Issue Three
This issue should (with any luck) reach you for the time of year when you are trying to motivate yourself back into hours of practice after a long summer off…  With this in mind we've got lots of book and sheet music reviews, some advice about choosing metronomes, a brief introduction to amplifying the violin, a sale on school ensemble music and even a voucher towards your next item of sheet music from us!
We are constantly updating instrument and bow stock lists, price lists (accessories, cases, strings etc) and information sheets (hire, assisted purchase, shop map, part exchange etc) so let us know if you would like any of these stock lists sent out by post, email or fax. It is often worth having the information to hand before visiting the shop as there is a lot of information to assimilate aside from the business of actually choosing the bow or instrument! 
Soon all the issues of the newsletter so far should be pasted up on the website but if you would like any copies of either issue one or issue two we still have a few left.
Good luck and best wishes for the new academic year from the Bristol Violin Shop team!

•Florence Lovegrove

Amplification- a Brief Introduction
There are three main ways to amplify a bowed stringed instrument: you can use a good quality microphone to amplify what the ear hears, you can use a pick up on the bridge, and you can use one of various amplifiers on the body of the instrument. They all have advantages and disadvantages.
It is important to decide from the start what you want the instrument to sound like and choose the pickup to give you that sound. Do you want a pure electric sound or are you interested in making the instrument louder while keeping as much of the acoustic sound as possible?
Playing into a good microphone should reproduce the sound that the ear would hear naturally. Unfortunately it can cause feedback in some P.A. systems and be

comes increasingly problematic at volume. It may also pick up other sounds going on around you. For freedom of movement small swan-neck microphones are available that can be clamped to the instrument.
Using a pick up on the bridge will give you a more distorted sound as it amplifies the bridge vibrations rather than the acoustic sound of the violin body. Bridge vibrations contain no tonal qualities whatsoever since the bridge's job is to transfer string movement to the resonating chamber that is the violin itself. Bridge pickups therefore require modification with effects pedals to sound like anything other than a chainsaw crossed with a harmonica.
We stock the popular Fishman and the cheaper Shadow, which fit into slots at the side of the bridge. It is important to visit the shop with your instrument since the majority of bridges will have to be modified slightly to accept the pick up. Several people who have brought this type of pickup have inadvertently damaged them by forcing them into slots that were too tight. The bridge modification only takes a minute and will have no noticeable effect on the violin's tone.  This type of pickup is very popular with double bass players as the larger instrument body size seems to reproduce acoustic sound more easily. We also sell, but get in to order Barcus-Berry pickups. These are bulky but seem to be liked by our Bluegrass customers, several of whom have recommended playing them through a bass amplifier. Strip microphones made by Accusound produce hardly any feedback, they don't mark the instrument and produce a fairly accurate acoustic sound. Contact strips pick up body vibrations so although they cannot reproduce the sound of the violin carried through the air they can pick up much more complex signals than those that come from the bridge. If you buy them with a preamp you can plug the pick up directly in to a public address system (P.A.). The Accusound is 160mm long by 16mm wide and is the more fiddly of the pick ups to apply. Because of its great sensitivity it can pick up extraneous sounds such as the sound of percussive fingers descending on the fingerboard.

Continued on  page 4